“BREAKING: Here’s the 60 Minutes Segment Trump and CBS News Executives Don’t Want You to See – Hours before it was set to air last night, CBS News executives pulled the segment, but Canada’s Global TV app received it prior to broadcast.”

https://www.thereset.news/p/breaking-heres-the-60-minutes-segment?brid=B5tlw2JeGMed9O2l7reARA

This reminds me of the record companies and Napster. By suing the file trading company, by trying to keep the record business in the past, the labels amplified the story to the point where not only everybody in America knew about Napster, they wanted to try it! People secured broadband just to download files! And once you used Napster, there was no way you could go back to the overpriced CD for one good track model.

Now the labels could have looked into the future, tried to get ahead of the public. This is what Spotify did. People had never used streaming, they didn’t believe it would work, but when they tried it, they adored it… AND SPOTIFY SINGLE-HANDEDLY SAVED THE RECORD BUSINESS!

But you can’t say that, because Spotify and Daniel Ek are the devil, don’t you know? They’re keeping people whose music the public doesn’t want to stream in quantity from making beaucoup bucks. MEANWHILE, those artists whose music is streamed prodigiously are making more money than ever before (assuming a bad record deal doesn’t have their label siphoning off most of the revenue).

It probably never occurred to Bari Weiss that this video might be leaked. I mean it existed… And the funny thing is, after suing people who leaked albums early, the artists and labels figured out that getting noticed at all was the problem. We had unannounced drops. The story wasn’t the hype, but the underlying material…is it good enough that people want to pull it, listen to it?

Now I stopped watching “60 Minutes” years ago, and if there wasn’t this brouhaha, I probably wouldn’t have watched this segment either.

But Bari Weiss poured gasoline on a smoldering fire and now the conflagration is burning worldwide and I watched the video… And it looks bad, really bad. But if Bari Weiss hadn’t tried to bury it, most people would have never seen it, after all, Trump is flooding the zone and no outlet has universal mindshare.

This is just another straw on the camel’s back. This “60 Minutes” piece is not going to cause a revolution unto itself. But like the renaming of the Kennedy Center, it will stick in your craw. It just doesn’t feel right, so much doesn’t feel right.

Now everybody is expendable. Elise Stefanik just realized this and rumor has it that Kristi Noem is on her way out. The only person who needs to survive is Trump.

And it’s not only his cabinet, but the citizenry at large. Doesn’t matter if you’re MAGA or an extreme lefty… Trump is out for himself, look at all the money is family has made since he’s been in office.

It’s a matter of more and more people waking up.

And you never know when they will.

It’s not like prices suddenly jumped, they were high and going higher, but “affordability” rose to the surface, it’s the number one issue in America today. And it is a problem…just go to the grocery store.

So what is going to bubble up to the surface next?

I don’t know.

But if you’re playing a team sport, if you’re defending Trump to the death, the joke is on you, you just haven’t realized it yet.

As for Bari Weiss and her billion dollar cronies, they don’t understand the power of the public, they don’t understand they can’t enforce their will upon people willy-nilly. Furthermore, they are vulnerable. These techies, they’re not heroes, they’re ZEROES!

Bari Weiss was too stupid to know that the video would out. Because she’s so busy sucking at the tit of the monied class that she doesn’t fully comprehend the internet, which is denigrated by seemingly every publication run by Boomers and Gen-X’ers.

It’s laughable. The internet is here, as are smartphones. And if you’re putting down the phone that just means you’ve got less information, and he or she with the most information wins, always.

Say you’re not on TikTok. Rail against social media. Decry youngsters staring at their phones… But the joke is on you, the internet addicted are plugged-in, they’re much better informed than you, they know how the world turns.

But you know better.

Everybody knows better when in fact they know very little. If you were on TikTok you’d know this, the man on the street interviews are horrifying.

It’s all of a piece…news, music, streaming TV… After all, Apple not only distributes music, it commissions television shows… And Paramount and Netflix are duking it out for Warner Bros. You can’t separate politics from media and vice versa. This is the world we now live in.

As for music… It used to have something to say… But where are the artists today? Alone and afraid, hoarding their dollars.

Oh, I’m not going to play nice. Decorum is for losers. If you just want to read stuff you agree with…

The joke is on you.

But right now, the joke is on THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES!

P.S. Don’t e-mail me that the video is no longer at the above site (right now it’s still available). CBS will do its best to kill distribution, the video has already been taken down in places…but it will never die.

P.P.S. Don’t self-satisfiedly complain that an article I’m linking to is behind a paywall. If you can’t afford $12.99 a month for Apple News+… The old saw that information wants to be free… You’ve got to pay for it, and if you don’t, you’re out of the loop. You pay for Netflix, why not the news?

Everybody can’t do everything.

My inbox is littered with people saying not to use their name. As if the average citizen in New Jersey has to worry about Trump’s revenge. (Then again, maybe they do…)

They call this a “chilling effect.” Bedrock in Constitutional law. Something might look benign on the surface, but have the unintended result of stifling speech or action by Americans.

Americans are ShuttingTFU for fear of retribution by Trump.

Actually, our nation is so fractured that many people refrain from making statements if they don’t comport with conventional wisdom, even if they believe they are correct. You don’t want to support Israel instead of Palestine…(Did you see Chappelle’s statements over the weekend, reinforcing the divide between Blacks and Jews?) You’ve got the woke left, the anti-DEI right…we can’t even have a debate in America anymore.

Even about music…

W. David Marx has a new book “Blank Space,” which refers to the hole in culture that we’ve experienced in the recycled twenty first century. He references “poptimism”… You know, the junk that dominates Top 40 that true fans of music used to decry. Now, that stuff is considered good, criticize Taylor Swift or BTS at your peril. Their minions will attack you. And the main reason you can’t say anything negative is because of the MONEY! If it makes a lot, it’s good. Period.

And you wonder why so many have checked-out of popular music, don’t listen at all…

As for “musicians,” did you see yesterday’s “New York Times” article talking about the influence of Britney Spears?

“Gen Z’s Pop Breakouts Danced in Britney Spears’s Footsteps in 2025 – Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae and Addison Rae’s music is influenced by the superstar who shot to fame before they were born. They’ve learned lessons from her hard times, too.”

I’m not going to dignify this article with a link, never mind a free one. It’s the end of music when Britney Spears is seen as a paragon of excellence, someone whose legacy is worth referencing, never mind exalting. Britney Spears had one great song, “…Baby One More Time,” a certified smash that I went out and purchased just to be able to hear on demand. But that record had little to do with Spears, it was written, and co-produced with Rami Yacoub, by Max Martin, who is the biggest star of the past thirty years… Can you say “Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)”? While the top line artists have recycled themselves and the past, Martin has evolved, no producer since the Beatles has had this long a run making different styles of music than Martin. Sans Martin, Taylor Swift is a country artist. It was Martin who brought her into the mainstream with “1989,” who is propping Swift up on her latest album… Martin is the star machinery behind the popular song.

And you can’t get a modern musical star to make a statement, take a side, for fear of alienating some potential audience member. This ain’t art. The job of art is to challenge convention, surprise people, make them uncomfortable. Today’s artists just give listeners more of the same, and we read about their vapid lives in massaged publicity efforts.

And we’ve got the wannabes… Just because it’s now easy to create and post music online that does not mean you deserve to be a professional musician. And I can’t even say that! I’m pissing on people’s dreams! Truly, I hear from people all day long that musicians should be guaranteed a living, that the system is stacked against them… Hogwash, if you’re good, you’re surviving. BETTER than you did in the old days. More people are making more money in music than ever before. But if you don’t say that everyone deserves a chance, that Ticketmaster is screwing the artists and the public, you’re a pariah.

Which brings us to Bari Weiss.

You might have seen John Oliver’s takedown, but the article you need to read that got much less fanfare was recently in “New York”: 

“L.A. Woman – Bari Weiss left New York five years ago under a cloud of infamy. Her exile in Hollywood paved the way for a triumphant return.”

 

https://apple.news/ABwYAe3IBTL6_rbA9v9zPkQ

This is the music business article you should read. This will tell you more about how to become a success than any of the fawning tripe you read in “Rolling Stone” and elsewhere. You see first and foremost Weiss is a businessperson. Who charmed contacts to become a star and ultimately a multi-millionaire and head of CBS News. These are the skills that make someone successful in the U.S. today.

Do you have access to household names? Do you know how to charm them?

This is what you learn in college, this is what elite breeding and education yield. You’ve got to be able to speak their language, manipulate them, otherwise you’re just a pawn in their game, truly.

As for becoming a star… Bill Maher says in this article that he made Weiss one, and I’ve got to say he probably did. He gave her all that exposure.

And now she’s head of CBS News. Which is like Andy Lack becoming head of Sony Music. Remember the rootkit controversy? Maybe not… But Andy Lack came from news to get the trains to run on time at Sony, and then he nearly ruined the company with this fiasco and more. Just like Bari Weiss is doing at CBS News.

You know… The reporters at “60 Minutes” are amateurs, no match for the insight and skill of Bari Weiss…

This is like saying your middle schooler is ready for the NBA!

Like no one in TV news knows anything.

And unlike the wimpy, brain-dead, fearful musicians (people hate when I criticize musicians…but why should they be off limits, can’t I implore them to lift themselves and the music up?), the “60 Minutes” producer responsible for this pulled story barked back… Saying she reached out to the Trump administration and that it hadn’t responded, that the story was screened five times and was cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. Furthermore, it was ADVERTISED! Was Weiss now giving Trump a KILL SWITCH?

But Bari Weiss said the story wasn’t complete, that it wasn’t ready…

Because it nailed the Trump administration, and CBS is part of Paramount and Paramount wants to own Warner Bros. Period.

Have you been following this story? “60 Minutes” settled with Trump on a specious claim so that the Ellisons could buy Paramount. But now Trump is wavering, he’s been attacking “60 Minutes” again… The game is to get Trump to put the kibosh on Netflix’s acquisition of Warner so that Paramount will get it. Period.

Don’t think otherwise.

As for the news… Who can you trust?

That’s where we’ve arrived. Our institutions have crumbled. Not only because of Trump, but the string-pullers referenced in the Bari Weiss article linked above.

Meanwhile, there’s so much news, from oil tankers in Venezuela to killing the offshore wind industry to sending a special envoy to Greenland that this “60 Minutes” story is now being buried under the tsunami of everyday B.S.

As for Weiss… Like a pre-internet dolt, she has gone on record today defending her position, believing her elite status is such that she’s entitled to do things her way…

That’s America. The rich and powerful don’t even live in the same world as the hoi polloi, they fly private, live behind gates and have contempt for those who are not in their circle. Weiss is too stupid to know that by doubling-down she’s undercutting not only her own reputation, but that of CBS. If anything was required here it was a mea culpa… But Weiss believes she’s bigger than the game, bigger than the institution, just like when she cried foul at the “New York Times.” How come Bari Weiss knows so much and we know so little?

Now most of the rich and powerful refrain from publicity unless it is manipulated by a team, they don’t want you to know how evil they are, and how they’ve arranged their finances so they pay few taxes to boot. But Bari Weiss is bigger than the system, she knows better.

And you and me?

WE’RE SCREWED!

1

Where were you the first time you heard “More Than a Feeling”?

Probably driving around in your car listening to FM radio. This was 1976, the first Ramones LP came out that year, but it took decades for it to go gold. The Stones were changing guitarists. McCartney had followed up 1973’s “Band on the Run” with 1975’s “Venus and Mars,” but he never reached this peak again.

As for Led Zeppelin… 1975 was the year of “Physical Graffiti,” 1976’s “Presence” was a disappointment.

In other words, the old guard was stumbling, but the new guard?

Now you’ve got to know, by 1976, the sixties hangover was over. The war was finally wrapped up in ’75. What we had in ’76 was a nation where the power of music was acknowledged, the surprise of Woodstock was seven summers before. And every market had an FM station that dominated the conversation within its signal range.

It wasn’t quite the monoculture of the MTV eighties, but there were a slew of hits on FM that everybody in the nation knew. Frampton came alive. Steve Miller came back with “Fly Like an Eagle.” Aerosmith cemented their legacy with “Rocks.” Bob Dylan was mainstream with “Desire.” Hall and Oates followed-up their breakthrough RCA debut with “Bigger Than Both of Us,” with the ubiquitous “Rich Girl.” Genesis showed us they could triumph without Peter Gabriel with “A Trick of the Tail.” Joni Mitchell released “Hejira” and Boz Scaggs “Silk Degrees.” And 1976 was the “The Year of the Cat.”

It was a cornucopia of riches. Disco was on the horizon, but it hadn’t gone mainstream. And Stevie Wonder capped his incredible run with “Songs in the Key of Life.”

But there was a song by a new act that emanated from the car speakers that was undeniable, that you got on the very first listen, that has not faded over the years, that is not only still played today, but still sounds fresh.

Of course, that song is “More Than a Feeling.”

You didn’t have to be known. You didn’t have to slug it out in clubs, never mind on the internet… If you had the goods and they were exposed on FM radio, you could go from zero to hero literally overnight.

Like Boston.

To tell you the truth, I never loved “More Than a Feeling.” I actually like it more today than I did in the seventies. But there is one song on that album that is positively indelible, that utilizes the Led Zeppelin trick of going from electric to acoustic and back again, “Long Time,” with its ethereal, jazzy intro “Foreplay.” When “Foreplay” ended… It was like a space captain pulled back on the controls, held the ship steady, and out of the blue there was this singing guitar and…I get goosebumps just writing about it.

That was forty nine years ago,

And it was very different from today.

2

Same as it ever was. That’s what I keep hearing people in the business say. But nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, Daniel Glass told me recently he wasn’t exactly sure what a record label was anymore. But back in the seventies…

There were six and the men who ran them were titans. And the records they released were cultural fixtures that exceeded the power of not only television, but movies too. As great as the movies of the seventies were, the decade ran on music. It was a veritable victory lap after the explosion of the sixties. All kinds of genres. A zillion publications. Everybody knew the hits, and everybody knew Boston.

Sounds quaint, I know…but it wasn’t.

First and foremost because the second side of that debut LP was just about as good as the first. Opening with “Rock & Roll Band” and then segueing into “Smokin'” and then my personal favorite, “Hitch a Ride.” This was an album you could play over and over and never get sick of, and I did, and many others did too. It was the best-selling debut album to date. The internet tells me it ultimately sold 20 million copies (in the pre-SoundScan era everything is up for grabs…or as Jerry Heller told me about “Straight Outta Compton,” “My company, my number!”)

But word was that the second album, “Don’t Look Back,” was rushed out against Tom Scholz’s wishes and ultimately there was a third LP, “Third Stage,” and the complete story is told in this book, “Power Soak,” which was the name of the original incarnation of the Rockman.

3

Today everybody’s sophisticated, they’re more knowledgeable about the business than their instrument. And anybody can record and release their material. However, in the old days, the seventies, you had to get a record deal… And you would sacrifice, sign anything, just to have an album on a major label.

Which is exactly what Tom Scholz did. And as bad as the production deal he made with Paul Ahern was, Ahern changed it thereafter to his further benefit, making one of every four LPs royalty free to CBS. Scholz got screwed so bad…

And Scholz had agreed to split the royalties equally with the band. Even though they were Johnny-come-latelies… This was not today, when you didn’t have to tour, you needed a band…

And when Tom was tinkering in the studio, what was the band to do?

“Power Soak” tells the complete story.

Critics hated Boston, called it corporate rock, which it is anything but. For the critics your backstory had to be poverty, crawling from the gutter to deliver insights the bourgeoisie needed to hear. So something polished, from an MIT graduate from a rich family who worked at Polaroid? That was a nonstarter. But the public, the public devoured Boston, it was exactly what people wanted.

4

Now this guy I do not know, Brendan Borrell, e-mailed me to tell me he’d written a book about Boston, the inside story. Well, how much is left to tell? I’ve even gotten e-mail from Scholz setting the record straight.

And I prefer reading fiction to nonfiction, I like to be taken away, but trying to close out my e-mail, two nights ago, long after 11 PM, I pulled up the PDF Borrell sent.

Wow. This was not the typical rock book. Slapdash, printing the myth instead of the truth. “Power Soak” is deeply researched. All the agreements, the court records, Borrell studied them.

And the Boston story is here. Scholz does not have a warm and fuzzy image, and he doesn’t come across as a saint in this book, but he is first and foremost an artist (after being an engineer!). He wanted to do it his way.

And he didn’t think Paul Ahern was on his team. And Walter Yetnikoff was until he wasn’t.

You see Boston was CBS Records’ biggest seller. Walter wanted more. So he told Tom he could call him at home. It was all warm and fuzzy, until Tom kept missing deadlines, not delivering a new album, and then Walter held back royalties and ultimately sued Scholz.

This was a big story back then. But there was no internet for fans to marshal support for Scholz, the record companies had the ultimate power, which they no longer do. They could not only make your career, they could break it.

So you get the ins and outs of Scholz’s record-making and legal issues, but the most fascinating part of the book is when Tom’s lawyer, Don Engel, shops a new record deal…

This is when we get David Geffen, in cahoots with Walter Yetnikoff. A deal was hammered out but Geffen could never seem to sign it, Walter was supposed to go to Warner, a deal Geffen was brokering, and David wasn’t going to put pen to paper until the deal was done.

But Myron Roth told Engel that Irving Azoff would sign the same deal. And Irving did. And ultimately, years later, “Third Stage” was released and sold millions.

5

So who runs record labels today? They may be more well known than movie studio heads, but both of these categories of people used to be titans known by all. They lived above the hoi polloi, they were all powerful, and they were guiding the success of artworks that truly defined the nation.

That’s been lost. That era is gone.

Now in the earlier part of this century, everybody who’d been in the business pre-internet started to say it was no longer fun. “Power Soak” is about the era when it was fun, when it was peak fun, when the money was raining down… Warner records built the Warner cable system. Nothing scaled like music. Sure, album budgets were going up, but the costs were de minimis when spread over millions of records sold. And the labels and execs got rich… The acts? Sometimes. Oftentimes they had bad deals, maybe the manager made real money, but not the musicians.

“Power Soak” delineates the way it was. The shenanigans, the successes, the personalities. If you were around back then, every note of this book will ring true. It was not today’s music business, where #1 might not even be known by most of the public…this was an era of giants, who were dominant, on both sides of the deal.

Now you can buy a digital copy of this book on Amazon for $2.99. And you should. And it’s only 87 pages and you’ll whirl right through them. But the feeling you’ll get when you read them…it’s a peek inside the gold mine, into a past era, the way it used to be, when the acts were bigger than they ever were before and are still much bigger than almost all of the acts today. They do call it “classic rock.”

And Borrell doesn’t do it like Fredric Dannen and “Hit Men,” he’s not out to get anybody, you can tell he’s a fan. He just wants to get it right.

And we get it right about so few of our heroes.

You need to buy this book. The barrier to entry is incredibly low, like I said, $2.99. Or you can pay $9.99 for a paperback.

Forget the autobiographies, forget most of the writing about this business. “Power Soak” is the real story, and if you want to know the way it was, you need to READ IT!

Completion of playlists from previous shows.

Tune in Saturday December 20th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz