Tune in today, September 28th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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The cinematography is a 10.

Billy Bob Thornton may be an anorexic weirdo, but he’s one of America’s best actors.

Nina Arianda is about as good as Billy Bob, she deserves to be hired ad infinitum in Hollywood, she proves that being in the gossip columns has got nothing to do with talent.

But the script sucks!

The last season of “Goliath” was so bad, I figured this one had to be better, especially since it was billed as the last one. But there are dream sequences so long and obscure you don’t feel inferior for not understanding them, but angry at the producers for including these bogus episodes that contain so little.

Yes, I’m watching for the plot. And there’s nothing worse in streaming television than doing this.

You see in 1999 we had a revolution, it was called “The Sopranos,” it shifted the needle on visual entertainment completely. “The Sopranos” was better than any film in the theatre. And it focused on what the studios did not, character study, real people, human interaction. It showed life as it is today, kids manipulating parents, clergy who are schnorrers, it took a while to gain traction, but it was irresistible. Don’t let people tell you it’s not the best TV series ever, if you haven’t watched it, do, it still holds up, it still resonates.

Sure, “Larry Sanders” came before. Even “Sex and the City.” But they did not revolutionize a whole medium. It only takes one.

It’s about shooting high. Lowbrow hits don’t take you very far. The more intellectual, the more the reward, that’s what you want in a flagship. It doesn’t even matter how many people watch it, it’s how many people TALK ABOUT IT! When you dumb down entertainment the joke is on you. Kind of like new music production amongst the three major labels. They’re playing to an ever smaller audience as the rest reject music completely or listen to catalog. Imagine if Universal was actually releasing hit music, not something that plays to a minority, but everybody, its stock price would climb even higher! You’ve got something like Adele’s “21,” an LP that did TEN TIMES the business of its contemporaries. But have we gotten any more “21”s? No. Just more of the same dreck we’re told is good even though the public is rejecting it. If 70% of the listeners would rather stream oldies, how addictive can the new music be?

So HBO used “The Sopranos” as a stepping stone, to build its platform with other unique, limit testing shows, like “Six Feet Under.” It kept pushing the envelope. And then Sunday night became about HBO, at least in the days before streaming. And in the heyday of premium cable you only needed ONE HIT! One show would keep people subscribing. But now you need a plethora of product, because streaming television is the hottest artistic medium and the public’s appetite is insatiable.

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So Amazon thinks since Video is free with Prime, that’s good enough. Free is no longer a big enough enticement, not in a world where there’s endless product, endless diversions. You’ve got to pull the audience in, push was only for the three network world of fifty years ago.

So what does Amazon do? Release endless mediocre product that inhabits a world somewhere between network and pay cable. Is there a huge demand for this? No, people want something different, they want you to capture the zeitgeist!

And then Amazon has one hit show and they cancel it.

“Bosch” took a long time to gain traction, because of the crummy interface at Amazon with its plethora of pay product. The service’s homepage resembles Amazon itself, where you can’t find what you want for the ads, where you can see the company trying to steer you off course as you search for the product you want to buy. Amazon is beholden to its advertisers, its stockholders, whereas Netflix is not.

Netflix has the best interface, has first mover advantage and is the biggest producer of new product. And what built Netflix’s reputation? HOUSE OF CARDS! A brilliant show that like “Bosch” took a while to gain traction but was an irresistible watch, educational and informative as well as thrilling. That’s how you do it.

Oh, you tell me Amazon has commissioned an extravaganza, a remake of “Lord of the Rings.” Talk about insurance, then again it’s hard to strike gold twice, how many films can you count the second, never mind the ones thereafter, better than the first in a franchise series? I can think of one, “Godfather II.” Some say “French Connection II,” but I disagree. We learned this from great musicians, repeating yourself is death, you can never measure up and the audience abandons you. So first the Amazon “Lord of the Rings” must be as great as the movies, which is highly doubtful, then it’s got to convince people to watch it, good luck!

But it’s worse, even if the new “Lord of the Rings” is great, it won’t have much of a halo effect on the service. “Game of Thrones” was a phenomenon, but it seems many of those who watched it canceled HBO right thereafter. HBO specializes in family drama, not spectaculars, that’s for the big screen, and like popular music, only a slice of the public.

“Goliath” is a David Kelley show, he was retired for a while, he should have stayed that way. He’s a middlebrow hack, the only great thing he ever did was marry Michelle Pfeiffer, he’s network, he certainly isn’t cable, never mind streaming. Hulu put its eggs in Kelley’s basket with “Nine Perfect Strangers.” It was better than his usual fare because he didn’t write the underling material, but the reviews have been positively mediocre, no one is signing up for Hulu just to watch it, there is no word of mouth, and in the streaming world word of mouth is everything, you can’t deliver a hit via publicity or advertising.

So Amazon is buying MGM. The volleyball of movie studios. Sure, it’ll get whatever catalog is left, the great stuff was sold long ago, but unless it turns over the reins to the brass of the storied company, don’t expect much, and the truth is after getting their check executives in Hollywood move on, they want to find another deep pocket to squeeze.

The most talked about show on streaming television is “Ted Lasso.” But that’s all Apple TV+ has got. Most people are watching for free. If anyone’s paying, they’re going to stop after the series ends. And Netflix has proven you need a broad swath of product, you finish “Ted Lasso” and then what…it’s not like Apple TV+ has got a deep catalog, it’s got essentially nothing at all.

And it’s not like the paradigm wasn’t already established. Netflix had plowed the way, you just had to imitate Netflix. But Amazon was and still is oblivious, needing to reinvent the wheel itself, poorly, because it’s not learning from history.

As for Disney… It had children’s content no one else possessed and it then pulled a masterstroke, pricing way below people’s expectations.

HBO Max? The exclusive shows on the service, even when great, and there are a couple, like “Love Life,” get no traction. Now there’s “Hacks,” but then what? People watch HBO Max to stream the product from the pay channel. As far as people who subscribe directly to HBO Max, the number is de minimis, there’s not enough new product, never mind the price being outrageously high.

As for the other streaming competitors? Dead in the water. They just don’t have the shows, they need to merge and create an alternative, try to gain an audience while people are still willing to check things out, when the excitement still revolves around streaming television, and it won’t be forever.

Now don’t count Prime Video out, because of all the subscribers who get it for free, with the membership they’ve got for quick delivery. But first, there needs to be an interface overhaul. Feature free product, as in included with Prime, at the top. And then, below a very clear line of demarcation, just the icons of pay services you can subscribe to through Amazon. Don’t mix the product people can access with no further payment with that they have to pay an additional fee for.

But even more, do your best to create halo product, which despite “Ted Lasso,” is usually highbrow, nearly intellectual. Then again, “Ted Lasso” works because it’s actually the opposite, Ted is akin to Forrest Gump, someone brain damaged and unique, sunny all the time, that’s something we don’t see on a regular basis.

Amazon has a long history of launching products and improving them over time. But it also has a long history of launching products and killing them, especially when the company is not breaking new ground, when it is competing with others.

I watch streaming television because it represents the zeitgeist of today. I don’t need entertainment, I don’t want to watch just to see the ending of the story, I want to connect with real life, get a reflection of myself and my society. It’s visceral. Something music specialized in which has been abdicated. As for the wannabes asking for a chance, the truth is it’s a very high bar, creating top-notch entertainment product, and while we’re looking for newbies, experience counts, at least in streaming television we don’t have the ridiculous ageism of music.

Streaming television is a professional business.

Amazon Prime Video is run by amateurs

Nothing can convince them to get the shot.

The most important article you can read this week is this:

“Our constitutional crisis is already here”: https://wapo.st/3zQXgtI

It’s no longer behind a paywall, but it wasn’t really written for non-subscribers. In this essay neoconservative Robert Kagan tells us to be afraid, very afraid. That the train has already left the station, that democracy is on its way to extinction as we fiddle while the wildfires burn.

It was written for those inside the Beltway, those that subscribe to “The Washington Post.” Influencers. Newsmakers. Not those on social media, but the old guard, in the government, elected officials, you have the D.C. paper of record publishing what everybody knows but what everybody is afraid to say, the Republicans are leading us into autocracy.

Doesn’t matter if you agree. Like I said, this heads-up was not for the Covid deniers, the Trump enthusiasts, but the somnambulant believing it’s business as usual, when it definitely is not.

The best story I read today is how Liz Cheney’s Wyoming Senate challenger went from Trump hater to Trump lover, a complete 180: 

“How an Anti-Trump Plotter in 2016 Became His Champion Against Liz Cheney – Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, is the former president’s choice to take on his leading G.O.P. critic. But five years ago, she tried to overturn his victory in the party’s primary race”: https://nyti.ms/3uiFsq7

Not that you’ll find this on Fox News. The big news last week was how the White House already knew there was no issue with the Dominion voting machines, how the election results were secure, yet Giuliani and Sidney Powell still went out and testified to the opposite. I scrolled the Fox site for days, I couldn’t find a reference to it.

That’s the big story in a just posted article in the “Washington Post”: 

“How badly unvaccinated Republicans are misinformed, in one stat – The median unvaccinated Republican believes the vaccines have effectively zero efficacy in preventing hospitalizations. This is not the case with unvaccinated Democrats”: https://wapo.st/3AUueeg

The median unvaccinated Republican believes the unvaccinated population requires hospitalization at the same rate as the vaccinated, whereas in Los Angeles County, for example, the unvaccinated were “29.2 times more likely to require hospitalization.”

Bottom line? The hard core unvaccinated Republicans are not refusing vaccines because of their freedom, because they don’t want to get shot up, BUT BECAUSE THEY’RE CONVINCED THEY DON’T WORK!

And why are they so convinced? It’s the media they’re exposed to, that’s what this article says.

Now the world runs on gossip. Always has, always will. But it used to be gossip was inherently limited. To those in your social circle, to those in your school or at your workplace. Gossip couldn’t travel from east to west very easily. Someone would have to get on the phone, or travel, and it was a one to one proposition, whereas with social media it’s one to many.

And the truth is prior to the internet the average person didn’t know much news. Most people did not subscribe to a newspaper and most people did not watch TV news broadcasts. They were uninformed and happy with that. They’d tune in around election time, maybe, then again vast swaths of Americans didn’t vote. Some felt powerless, others felt it didn’t make any difference, their life wouldn’t change no matter who was in power.

But then the internet came along and it was gossip on steroids. As a matter of fact, it’s all gossip all the time. And you know gossip, unless it’s juicy, it doesn’t spread. When someone tells us something boring, or something we already know, it ends there, we don’t pass it on. But if it’s a salacious rumor we can’t wait to tell others, we’re itching to tell others. And that is what is now happening.

So the truth is there is no authoritative source. And as a result, as William Falk, Editor-in-chief of “The Week,” posited, there is a lack of trust. In Denmark, 90% of Danes trust the health service and the politicians, as a result 86% of them are vaccinated and deaths over the course of the pandemic are only 22% of those in the U.S. Today Denmark is wide open, today you integrate with other Americans, especially in red states, at your peril.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

“How France Overcame Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy – The French have long been wary of vaccines, but a mixture of mandates and inducements encouraged millions to get the shot as the Delta variant spread”: https://on.wsj.com/39GBGO7

This is behind a paywall. Like good food, you have to pay more for good news. Fast food is cheap, fruits and vegetables are not. Fast food makes you unhealthy and sick. Therefore only the wealthy and informed can AFFORD to eat well, never mind be aware of food facts. As for news, gossip online, on Facebook, on social media, it’s free. And it’s a free-for-all. Anybody can post anything, and Facebook bumps that which gets a reaction, the aforementioned juicy gossip. If you want to get the truth, you’ve got to pay for it. And except for “The Wall Street Journal”‘s opinion pages, you’d be shocked how aligned the paper is with “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post.” Facts are facts. But if you’re never exposed to them…

So in France you need a health pass, i.e. vaccine passport, to go almost anywhere. That’s right, to eat out, go to clubs and attend sporting events. Talk about a mandate… And at the beginning of the Covid crisis, France “had one of the highest rates of (vaccine) hesitancy in the world.”

“A poll in 2018 gave France the lowest levels of trust in vaccines out of 144 countries surveyed. In December, an Ipsos poll conducted found that France ranked at the bottom of 15 countries on willingness to take a Covid-19 vaccine, with only 40% of the public saying they wanted the shot.”

“Some 88% of people over 12 years old in France have received at least one shot of vaccine, more than the U.S., U.K. or Germany. Its infection rate is now below 61 cases per 100,000 people, compared with 241 cases per 100,000 in the U.S. as of Sept. 24. The French figure is declining by more than one-quarter each week, with deaths and hospitalizations falling, too.”

Whew! See how fast you can turn things around? Assuming you’ve got the balls to lay down the law, assuming people are not ignorant, assuming they have trust in institutions.

But that’s the point of the Kagan article, Trump and Fox and other outlets are undermining trust 24/7, and it’s been happening for years, so what are the odds we can convince all Americans to get vaccinated? ZILCH!

Then again, how many people are on the Trump train anyway?

“America is not facing a civil war – only loudmouthed extremists”: https://lat.ms/3uiIuL1

As a result of gerrymandering and the Electoral College and loud angry voices we have the impression that the two sides are equal in numbers, when this is patently untrue. Most Americans want abortion rights, most Americans want gun control, but good luck getting any laws passed.

Furthermore, Michael Hiltzik, the author of the above column, has absolutely no impact, because his words appear in “The Los Angeles Times,” and now with the big three newspapers available 24/7 all over the world the L.A. “Times” has been marginalized. Keep cutting the budget and eventually people stop reading and no one pays attention.

But they do read “The New York Times.” And last week Paul Krugman wrote this article:

“Are Centrists in the Thrall of Right-Wing Propaganda?”: https://nyti.ms/3igp8S3

Bottom line, the infrastructure bill is $3.5 trillion over TEN YEARS! And the centrist Democrats have bought into the Republican mantra, fearful of looking like they’re taxing and spending. So there’s no there there in government, never mind Mitch McConnell, who single-handedly fixed the Supreme Court in his party’s favor, not only admitting he wants no bills passed, he doesn’t even want to pay for those that were already passed upon which the money has been spent. That’s what raising the debt limit is all about, not about new spending, but the money that already left the coffers. Try telling someone you bought their goods but refuse to pay for them, let me know how that works out, it won’t be good.

So, being in “The New York Times,” Krugman’s words have an effect, since he wrote this the Democrats have started to emphasize the ten year period of spending. 

As for Robert Kagan’s article? Bill Maher was all over it last week, as well as Rachel Maddow. You see it’s a club, you can join, but it takes effort and oftentimes you have to pay for the information. And everybody in the club knows the truth, but plenty are banking on your not knowing it, keeping you in your backwater where they can manipulate you. And you can die.

The best website I was turned on to this week was:

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com

You’ve got to go here. Please click through. These are people who believed the Covid misinformation and spread it far and wide and then died of the virus.

And what the gossip will tell you is if you’re not over 65 and obese, if you’re sans comorbidities, you’re immune. But that is patently untrue. Really, read these people’s stories. Totally healthy forty year olds. Twenty year olds. They thought they were immune, but they weren’t. They’re DYING! Do you really want to take the risk of dying when there’s a vaccine?

OF COURSE YOU DO!

That’s the astonishing element of these stories. So many left behind ARE STILL ANTIVAXXERS!

As William Falk said in “The Week”: 

“People shun a simple shot largely because they see it as a form of surrender.”

So you can’t convince the unvaccinated to get the shot, the only thing you can do is force them to, make it so they can’t go into public places without being vaccinated. Is there enough political will in the U.S?

I don’t think so. Which is just plain sad.

Umair Haque wrote last week:

“Brexit is Destroying Britain – And Britain Still Can’t Face It – Where Can’t You Get Gas, Milk, Bread, and Beer? Welcome to Soviet Britain”: https://bit.ly/3CRBtE5

There are no truck drivers to deliver goods. They just broke their own rules, they’re allowing foreigners to come in and do this job, those they wanted gone. But the irony is it’s still not enough, and most foreigners won’t come, the pay is too low. And you can’t get beer because the CO2 to make it comes from the Continent!

But what really got my attention in the Haque article was the put-downs of America.

“She was right. Britain’s turning Soviet. Even America – for all its folly and self-inflicted ruin, guns and theocracy and whole nine yards – isn’t as badly off as Britain.”

But the conclusion is even worse, you don’t want to turn into AMERICA!

“Eventually, Britain will probably find ways to get a little more bread and beer and so on. But they won’t be European. They’ll come from America, probably, and if you like American beer and bread, my friend, I feel a little sorry for you. Britain will eventually end up something like America’s 51st state – it’s NHS and BBC owned by American hedge funds, its people eating American diets, their minds poisoned by American junk culture.

America’s a vastly poorer society than Europe. Americans live worse lives in every possible way — from health to wealth to trust to intimacy to stability and safety to basic decency and thoughtfulness. Britain’s only real destiny left at this point is to be Americanized. That was always the endgame of Brexit – to sell Britain off to American capital. But American capital has made paupers – literally, they’re lifelong debtors, without a penny to their names, most of them – of Americans.”

The problem is this all rings true. The hedge funds buy the parking meters and therefore you’ve got to pay to park 24/7, there are no holidays. And the hedge fund buys the trailer park upon which your rust bucket sits and raises the price of rent on your little square of property, after all their investors have to see a return, and you lose your POS residence, forget YOUR investment, it’s history.

I mean we have no national health care, no mandated vacations, no government funds for child care…we’re working like dogs to try and keep our heads afloat. Is this really the best we can do?

America is no longer the country I grew up in. It slid while I wasn’t even realizing it. In the rest of the world our status has fallen to the level of…theirs. Haque posits the EU is more powerful than America, it fights bad actors like the tech companies while the FTC is paralyzed, if member countries get out of hand they stop sending them money, they freeze them out. But we’re supposed to believe the federal government has no power over Texas and Florida.

Now the truth is Britain got Brexit because a lot of sentimental oldsters and rural folk wanted to return to a country that no longer squares with the modern world, just like those on the right in America want to go back to an era totally out of date with today’s trade and mores, it’s a fantasy. The Britons with money, the educated, they understood what was at risk, they overwhelmingly voted to stay in the EU, but they were defeated by the votes of the idiots told falsehoods. It’s no different in the U.S. Mexico was gonna pay for the wall. China was going to pay the tariffs. Say it enough and people believe it, after all they’re not exposed to the truth, and they wouldn’t believe it if they saw it.

But you can…discover the truth and be informed. Unlike the right winger who sent me an antivax article from a PARODY website! He didn’t even realize it was a joke!

We are in a crisis. Whether you admit it or not. Never mind politics, there’s that pesky climate too. And there’s no way we can convince those on the other side, the deniers, the ignorant, we must FORCE THEM to do what’s right, like France. Yes, that’s how far we’ve fallen, we need to model ourselves after the French. But they have it right. Because contrary to what Kellyanne Conway said there are facts, unassailable, and once we make people aware of them, get them to believe in them, we can make progress. But that day seems to be far away.

“Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen”: https://bit.ly/3CWe4l7

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Everybody’s dead. Well at least the two stars, Joe Cocker and Leon Russell. And Carl Radle and Bobby Keys and…Jim Gordon’s in jail.

I actually saw Mad Dogs & Englishmen. At the Capitol Theatre, in Port Chester, New York. The mania from the Woodstock movie was selling tickets, but Joe was a star already, with two albums played incessantly on FM radio, where all the action was. His cover of “With a Little Help From My Friends” became a staple of the FM rock format just after it was released in 1969. And I knew about Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

Today there’s too much information, yesterday not enough. I read about the tour in “Rolling Stone,” a couple of other places, but I had no idea who most of these people were, Leon Russell being the exception, I purchased his debut solo LP back in March, I still prefer his version of “Delta Lady,” and you’d be surprised how many people know “Roll Away the Stone,” and I learned that he co-wrote those Gary Lewis & the Playboys hits, I loved “She’s Just My Style,” a Beach Boys flavored track, but I did not know the details of his years in the studio, the dues he’d paid.

As for the band’s third star, the other breakout? The first time I became aware of Rita Coolidge was when she was singing on stage.

Back then there was an almost impenetrable barrier between the players and the audience. There was no social media. No way to easily look up their address. Maybe if you were in L.A. you could see them driving around, hanging out, but if you lived in the rest of the country they were exotic animals, who dropped down into your town and then jetted out, to where the action was.

And it was only about the music, at the Mad Dogs & Englishmen show they weren’t even selling any merch. The Fillmore East didn’t sell merch, wasn’t the music enough? Concert t-shirts didn’t really become a thing until the seventies, and although the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour took place in the spring of 1970, it might as well have still been the sixties, with Kent State… Once rock became corporatized, blasted on stations all over the country, then the merch became a big deal. People in backwater hamlets were just as infatuated, just as eager to get attached as those in the cities. I could compare the musicians of yore to the techies, maybe even the bankers, of today, but it’s not really a good fit. With the bankers it’s just about the money. With the techies…well, it used to be about innovation, pushing the envelope. But the musicians of yore…IT WAS ABOUT THEM! Not only did they sing the songs, they wrote ’em.  They embodied the lyrics, you felt that you knew them. Then again, Joe Cocker did not write, and as a result he was kind of a cypher, and the endless testimonials to his character in this film ultimately tell us nothing about him, he’s dead, you never want to speak ill of those who’ve passed, I mean what was Joe really like? I don’t know, nor do most other people.

So you know the history… The band goes on the road, the double live album comes out only a couple of months later and Leon Russell becomes an overnight superstar and Joe Cocker disappears. Not only did Joe not record for two and a half years, ultimately releasing the substandard “Something to Say,” he grew an enormous beer belly, there were pictures, he seemed completely burned out.

But Leon’s comet burned very quickly and flew by soon. One can state that Leon’s peak only lasted three years, three solo albums and then a bloated triple album set and then he went country and he never could recapture the magic. He was seen as stealing the spotlight from Joe, using the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour to his advantage, so there was little good will to sustain him, and by the end of his life he was barely able to walk, getting around on a scooter, playing clubs, even Elton John couldn’t resuscitate his career. Maybe because Elton and Leon both played the piano, could both be flamboyant, in dress and in their playing, but their roots were completely different. Elton was from England, Leon was from Oklahoma.

Oklahoma, have you been there?

I’ve been to every state surrounding it, but never to OK, despite knowing the musical by heart. But a certain creativity came from the flatlands of the oil-producing state. Not only Leon, but Dwight Twilley, who with his partner Phil Seymour released one of the iconic tracks of the seventies, “I’m on Fire.” And sure, Jimmy Webb came from Oklahoma, but soon left. Garth Brooks went to Nashville to make it. But Leon Russell was constantly going back to the Sooner State, Shelter Records set up a studio in Tulsa and…if you were from the coast you just couldn’t understand it, there was nothing there, thank god you left, why in the hell would you want to go back?

But Leon Russell is Oklahoma through and through. That’s what you see in this new movie. It’s the way he talks, the cadence. Slow, with a drawl. And with attitude. They don’t talk this way in the north, or on the coasts. And his roots were different. There was a bunch of country, soul and gospel mixed in with the rock, so the ultimate sound is unique. And for a while there, it resonated throughout the country.

So you want to see this new movie for Leon.

But the star of the show is Chris Robinson, another musician people have a bad taste in their mouth about, another one hated by many, but when Robinson steps to the mic, be prepared to be wowed. He doesn’t sound like Cocker, but he evidences the same blues roots, filtered through years of rock and roll. Robinson doesn’t shout, he just emotes with extreme intensity, and the music lives in him just like it lived in Cocker, he moves to the sound, he can’t help himself. I was watching thinking how he also sang the Zeppelin hits with Jimmy Page, and he even sang with Phil & Friends, Phil Lesh’s side project.

I know you don’t want to hear this, you just want me to pour endless love on Tedeschi and Trucks and the oldsters, but I’m being honest here, when Chris steps up to the mic you’re convinced he’s a national treasure, and he’s still here!

Not only so many of the old band are gone, so is the sound. This concert was filmed at LOCKN’, one of America’s hippest festivals, but it gets very little media love, it’s for fans of the music as opposed to those who just want to parade, be seen and post. But that’s today’s world, all the focus is on the Spotify Top 50, but that’s just a smidge of what’s truly happening out there.

So it’s a reunion of the oldsters, paired with the Tedeschi Trucks band.

Let me just state straight that Derek Trucks is an incredible player. Like Jeff Beck he uses no pick. And as much as he’s lauded, he still doesn’t get enough respect. He’s genius, probably the best of his generation. And his wife Susan Tedeschi has the pipes to sing these old songs, as well as the ability to play guitar, despite getting only a tiny bit of press, which flummoxes me, then again, Tedeschi Trucks has a significant following, that can keep their large band on the road.

Today everybody’s a solo performer. The music is made alone in your bedroom and the creator makes all the money. To create a sound like Tedeschi Trucks, which is akin to the Allman Brothers, but with its own twist, it takes a lot of players up on stage, which means it costs A LOT OF MONEY!

It’s not about the money…it’s about the money. That’s a classic music business aphorism. And you see all these people on stage and one thing is clear, no one is getting rich, you’ve got to be doing it for the love of the music, the love of playing, because that’s all there is.

It used to be different. No money was made on the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, but there was plenty of money in the music business back then. Most of it in the records themselves, a ten dollar ticket was unheard of. Then again, managers and labels were famous for screwing the artists, hopefully you wrote something and regained the rights via copyright reversion in this century, but if they’re still alive, so many of these old players are broke. Because you’re hip, and then you’re not.

It’s different today, because no one is as big as those of the past, they don’t have the mental footprint. And you can’t possibly make the money of the techies and the bankers, even though musicians keep complaining they can’t. In other words, there’s a bifurcation. Either you’re in it for the money and fame, or you’re in it for the music. But if you’re in it for the music, you must be really damn good, because you’re gonna earn your keep on the road. Watch Derek Trucks and the rest of the band, are you as good as they are? If not, keep your day job.

So yesterday you used to shine incredibly bright for a few years, and then you fell back to earth. The band broke up. You were so burned out you sat at home, licked your wounds and adjusted your perspective and then, in the nineties, if you’d had success, you went back on the road with the reunion tour. But people wanted to see you, commensurate with your impact the first time around.

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So first we’ve got the camp reunion, Rita Coolidge, Pamela Polland, Claudia Lennear, the Moore Brothers, Leon… It’s been half a century, almost none of these people played together ever again. Rita Coolidge went on to become an icon, but she appears so normal here it polishes her image, she’s throwing off no star vibes, no divadom whatsoever, but when she steps to the mic, she’s still got it.

Ditto for Claudia Lennear, another cultural icon, often referenced as the inspiration for “Brown Sugar,” sexiness incarnated, she ultimately punted the music business and became a school teacher. She couldn’t be more normal in this film. But then she steps to the mic, and she’s still got it.

The Moore Brothers? For all their writing credits, they get no history, no backstory in this movie, hell, Matthew Moore WROTE “Space Captain,” which is one of the highlights of this film, if not THE highlight.

And Pamela Polland?

If you were reading the music news you knew who she was, but she never broke through, I had to look on Wikipedia to see that she’s been making her living in Hawaii, playing music there, literally off the radar screen. And now she’s 77, 71 when the concert was filmed in 2015, it took the producers that long to raise finishing monies, but she’s still lucid, SHE’S STILL THE SAME! She’s a rock chick, but not in leather like Lita Ford, but an equal of the guys back then. Sure, there was a ton of sexism, but the women got record deals, and they didn’t have to sing pop tunes.

And I know all this because I lived through it. But almost everybody testifying other than the old band members WASN’T EVEN ALIVE WHEN THE ORIGINAL TOUR TOOK PLACE!

So they’re talking about the old show and you realize it’s just history, moving images from the original concert film, they’ve got no idea how it really was. An oldster in the flick states that they didn’t think there was one person over thirty in the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen entourage. Music was a youth business. The oldsters had given up, hired house hippies to tell them what to sign, twentysomething managers were making it up as they went, inventing, formulating a business that is a smooth running machine today, at least in comparison.

So this is not the movie I thought they’d make. I figured it would be a concert film of the 2015 show, with a few interstitial conversational moments, like the rock movies of the seventies, but no…this is really a documentary juxtaposing the old with the new, with music at best equal to the story.

You see they’re constantly referring to the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen movie, a 1971 production that almost no one saw. Distribution was sketchy at best. It wasn’t quite like “Cocksucker Blues,” but prior to the VCR and digital TV, almost nobody had seen it, it was a secret, all the money was in the double live album. The players of today are testifying about the film, not realizing it was a dud upon release, almost nobody was aware it came out, you had to be a big rock fan to know about it, and then you had to find somewhere they played it, which was essentially nowhere.

And the original film is 57 minutes. And the new one is 111 minutes. “Learning to Live Together” is essentially the two shows put together.

But really, it’s a peek into the way it used to be. When you see Leon Russell and Chris Stainton play the piano, you’re wowed, you can’t believe they’re actually playing those notes you know so well, sans flaws, sounding almost identical to the originals.

And then there’s a horn section, adding a broadness to the sound that you can’t get anywhere else, never mind a flourish.

And the endless backup singers… Nobody ever carries this many on the road. They’ve got the music in them, they’re singing along, and since they’re pros they’re singing in tune.

So…

I finished watching the movie and I felt sad. Because what once was is no longer. Did you see that Commander Cody just died? This is a regular thing now, old rock stars kicking the bucket. Cody, real name George Frayne, passed away at 77, you’d think from hard living, but the truth is the Big C got him. There’s not a single boomer who doesn’t know “Hot Rod Lincoln,” but they’ll never hear the original sing it ever again. Same deal with David Bowie, Glenn Frey…

But Mad Dogs & Englishmen were unique. It was a lark, pulled together for one tour, with little rehearsal. Leon Russell called up some friends…

That’s right, you had to know somebody. Which meant you had to live in L.A. and hang out. There was a community. You only wish there was this community today.

And it was a big band and it was a one time thing. Either you saw that tour or you never did, like the Beatles there was no reunion, until LOCKN’.

Where they’re playing the music once again.

But there are no originals being written as good as the songs of the past. Not only is there no McCartney and Lennon writing “With a Little Help From My Friends” and “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,” Wayne Carson Thompson is gone and there is no under two minute gem like “The Letter” anywhere and Leonard Cohen left us “Bird On the Wire,” but the heir to Mr. Cohen has yet to appear. Dave Mason is still singing “Feelin’ Alright,” a song so good it’s been covered endless times, who is covering the music of today? And Bob Dylan is still plying the boards, but if you think what he’s doing today is anywhere near equal to what he did back then, you’re a blind, boot-licking apologist.

So we’re used to beats. And electronic sounds. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with either, but a real band, like Mad Dogs & Englishmen, evidences a humanity absent in the digital world. It’s people with practiced skills coming together to present a cohesive sound that looks easy yet is anything but.

At some point “Learning to Live Together” will come to you. Probably on some streaming service. You should definitely dial it up. Because irrelevant of the film’s arc, you’ll get a look into a world that is soon to be gone forever. And if you were there the first time around, you’ll weep. As for the Tedeschi Trucks Band keeping the sound alive, you’ll be thrilled, but you’ll also notice they inhabit their own world, which doesn’t really cross with the mainstream.

Then again, what does.

And what is mainstream.

You watch this new movie and you get depressed, but you also gain hope. You see it can still be done. You just have to take the road less traveled. You’ve got to pick up an instrument, practice really long damn and hard, build a band and then…

Building a band and keeping it together is nearly impossible. But a sole performer is inherently something different.

As for songs?

I’ve yet to hear new classics, but there are tons of old numbers just waiting to be redone, even reworked a la Joe Cocker.

And I could say you can only do it with a little help from your friends, a summing note equivalent to the summing up scene in this movie, but I don’t want to leave you with a cheap shot.

But I think of the words of “Space Captain.”

We’re never gonna learn to live together. But as big as the generation gap was fifty-odd years ago, the truth is all the youth were on the same page. They drank, smoked dope and listened to music.

It was the music that kept us together. It was our reference point. It’s what we talk about in our old age. What the songs meant to us, where we first heard them, the shows we attended. Ultimately, the music is bigger than the players, which is the way it should be. Ultimately no one owns the sound, the inspiration…then again, we can say all of us own it!

“I lost my memory of where I’ve been

We all forgot that we could fly”

But “Learning to Live Together” will remind you. And you’ll realize you’ll be caught up in the music until you die. You can try to deny it, but if you’re a boomer, everybody was in, everybody knew the music, everybody went to the show, everybody had to get closer.

And it was clear the stars were on stage.

And the truth is they were just regular people.

But not to us. To us they were untouchable stars.

You’ll remember that watching this movie. You’ll ponder your own life path. And then you’ll just crank up the music and feel good once again. The music brought us together, and it still can. Because we’re all just birds on a wire, trying in our own way to be free, and the music helps get us there. It inspires us, it sets our minds adrift, we remember what once was and still can be. And there’s nothing more powerful than that.