They’re doing a good job of ruining one of my favorite shows.

We’re living in an overwhelming, confusing time. What with the war, gas prices, other political and economic issues, it’s hard to stay calm, to keep your head on straight. But this is not what the people on the autism spectrum on this show are concerned with. They’re just trying to navigate life.

And ultimately, it all comes down to life. Love and happiness. They’re the root of being human. But too often, in the everyday struggle, we lose sight of this. And “Love on the Spectrum” focuses us.

The people on this show… They’re navigating human interactions, relationships, they’re trying to find love. They’re not covering up, manipulating, it’s all out front, and it’s fascinating and heartwarming.

I thought I could watch this show forever, I love it.

But as it got closer to the end…

This is the problem with reality television, it becomes too self-referential, too inside, it disconnects from truth, it becomes entertainment as opposed to reality.

Bottom line…these people are now stars.

What have we learned about child stars? They end up on drugs robbing 7-11’s. Not all of them, but they’ve been plucked from the pack and had the light focused upon them, oftentimes for not much of a reason other than being lucky, sometimes being cute, and then it ends. Then what? Try coping with that when you’re on the autism spectrum. When the bottom falls out.

But even worse than the attention these people get on the show, the greedy corporations are now using them as influencers, hawking products. Their promotional clips are all over TiklTok, Instagram Reels. We use this, we love this, buy this… Yeah, right. Forget that the influencers burn out, do you think these people will not? Do you think these corporations will be looking for them to promote products five years from now? Five months even? When they crash, then what?

But there’s a facsimile of truth, until by the end of the show, the prior participants get together to celebrate the engagement. Like they’re all part of a special club. Do you get together with the people you were on TV with? No, because you weren’t even on TV. And when you get together with your old school/camp buddies, no one is filming it for everyone to see.

However, before we get to that point…

James and Shelley… Now she sought him out, but how can she cope with him? She can’t get a word in edgewise! I’d argue the true stars of the show are James’s parents. Who are nice, regular, but with a sense of humor. They can chide James, poke him, soothe him… Their son who is 37 and still living at home. As for buying a house, where did the money come from? Certainly not James’s work… There’s so much revealed in this series, and so much held back.

Connor is a savant. He knows so much about so many things. Makes me feel inadequate at times. But sometimes he seems so serious, nearly frozen, that you believe he is acting, when this is just who he is. Give him credit for leaving the show in the future, then again he was signed by UTA and is trying to become an actor. If you read online, he’s mostly looking for voiceover work, and I can see that, but…what if it doesn’t work out. It’s hard enough to be a has-been if you’re not on the spectrum.

Emma? She’s bubbly and alive. It’s kind of stunning no man has ever approached her for a date. Then again, you’ve got to have sympathy for the parents. We only see their children for moments, they’re exposed to them all the time, and that can be very difficult, with the repetition and meltdowns…

Logan… Hailey works, has he, can he? Ditto on Dylan…nice guy, mother far from rich, they’re living in a one bedroom apartment. He stays at home all day watching TV. He smiles, but it’s so sad, and sometimes this sadness slips through in this show, which is why it’s so compelling. But now Dylan is on social media too.

The awkwardness of the interactions on the dates… They’re not that far removed from the ones average people experience, which is one of the reasons the show is so relatable. What do you say? How do you engender conversation while you’re evaluating all the time whether you like them and whether they like you.

And there are too many holes. The show was shot a year ago, what has happened since. Abby and David, are they still together? They haven’t been posting about each other on social media, scuttlebutt is it’s over. But the real reason we’re interested is they were on the verge of getting married… Are their parents fearful of this or is the relationship just over?

As far as getting married…

Then what? How are the bills paid? What about children?

And little things slip here and there, Madison went to and graduated from college, yet she still has a helper. And then she has that meltdown when someone calls her “Maddie” as opposed to Madison. A person she labels a “fan.”

Is that what we want for these people? Fame? Fans? People who think they know them but really don’t? God, musicians take drugs to cope, how about these people?

And then you’ve got the parents cashing in with podcasts and…

Do you remember that Afghan girl on the cover of “National Geographic”? You know, the one with the green eyes? If you’ve seen the photograph, you’ll never forget it. But she didn’t know she was on the cover, she didn’t know she was famous. Ultimately “National Geographic” reconnected with her in 2002 and showed her the picture, but they said this was one and done, because they didn’t want to screw up her life, like “Love on the Spectrum” has done with its “cast” members.

Watching “Love on the Spectrum” makes you want to go deeper, work with people on the spectrum. But the bottom line is unless you’re a psychiatrist, there’s no money in it. So the best and the brightest don’t help those who need aid the most.

But this is life. Or at least it was, until the show gained traction and the people in it gained notoriety and not only did the producers start to trade on it,  the participants did too.

Bottom line, they’re screwed up for life.

Not that things were necessarily so great for them before, but at least they were rooted in life and its realities, its frustrations, its challenges. Now they’re like those kids on the “Real World,” famous for nothing, but still famous, when you see them as a waiter or in some other service job… They were on your TV, everybody knew their name…and many still do, but so many of these people are broke.

So I’m conflicted. If I’d written about this show after the first three or so episodes, it would have been a complete rave. But now, I’m a bit creeped out. The participants are all just grist for the mill, tools for others to make money. The fame will remain, haunting them, but the money will not.

As for the show itself… It’s a club with a cast party at the end. Which is strange, because so many of these people have trouble making friends at all. And when they go back home…

The three main principals involved in the film, director Paris Barclay and producers Stephanie Allain and Jeanne Elfant Festa, opine about their careers and testify as to the making of the movie. All three are major hitters. Barclay is one of the most in-demand television directors, having worked on “ER,” “The West Wing,” “The Watcher” and many more. Allain was responsible for bringing “Boyz n the Hood” to the screen, and has even produced the Academy Awards. And Jeanne Elfant Festa is a principal at White Horse Pictures, where she has shepherded projects like “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week-The Touring Years,” “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” and “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery.”

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-billy-preston-documentary/id1316200737?i=1000760441021

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/29495a14-9af2-4d81-9649-c88bc902ba83/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-the-billy-preston-documentary

Be different, me-too is everywhere. But different is a state of mind, that too often goes untaught in today’s society., which is one of the reasons why so much “classic” music was made by baby boomers. Life was not as hard, their parents were not solely focused on ensuring their children got a leg up in life, college was not considered to be a trade school, but a place to have different experiences and open your mind. For the last few decades, all the innovation has been in tech, where people have been unafraid to challenge/break the rules. In music, creators didn’t go to college at all. In tech, they dropped out because they got what they needed and saw opportunities to change the world elsewhere. And that was the mission, to change the world, which used to be the case in music.

Hone your chops. The basics never go out of style, they’re a jumping-off point. It’s the extraneous that pays dividends. That film or TV series you saw, that picnic you went to. I’m not saying to live a life of hedonism, just that if you’ve had no experiences, you’ve got nothing to say. The script has been flipped where people see everything as being about instant success and money, whereas today, when literally everybody can be famous for a brief while, it’s all about careers/staying power.

Be unafraid to state or do the unpopular. Sure, shock effect can work, but living in an era of constant shock, it has less impact. So the unpopular is less about the exterior than the interior. March to the beat of a different drummer. Chances are if you’re good at getting along, being part of the group, you’re not going to change the world. Our heroes, those who make a difference, are singular, with a vision. Whether it be Steve Jobs or even Elon Musk. I’d love to list a series of musical acts, but we haven’t had that spirit here since the internet became popular.

Use the tools, don’t be the tools. Use social media platforms, don’t become them. In other words, unless you’re making a living being an influencer, unless that’s your goal, don’t focus all your time and effort on that concentration. Then again, don’t avoid it.

Ignore the mores of the baby boomer generation, which is anti-tech. We are never going backwards. Social media is here to stay, whether it’s the same platforms or different ones. People have a need to connect.

Don’t count on the institution to solve your social problems. You can’t solve bullying by going to the principal, you’ve got to address it head-on yourself. And sometimes there’s no solution other than grinning and bearing it. But everything you’ve heard is true, life is long, bullies fade into the background and you can thrive, the bad experiences growing up only serve to toughen you up.

People don’t want you to be successful, because it makes them question their own success, i.e. how good, how important they are. Which is why you have bullies in business. Those in power will do their best to thwart you, because they don’t want to be challenged. Life is about putting yourself in the proper circles, gaining experience and seeing how to thrive.

Find out what your area of expertise is and focus there. You may think you want to be an athlete or musician, but there are many other avenues to pursue if you just realize what you’re good at. Everybody is unique, everybody has something to add, it’s just a matter of perspective, seeing that you have this advantage.

Question authority. Sure, some rules are valid, but many are outdated and others are there just to protect the infrastructure.

If it came easy, it’s not going to last. Success depends upon hard work.

Keep innovating or you die. You’ve got to disrupt yourself. You can’t be a prisoner of your customer/audience. Giving people what they want is a fool’s errand, at best it is for business, not art.

Take advice with a grain of salt. Too many either reject all advice or accept it. Bottom line, many have experience and wisdom that you can benefit from. But you must be able to parse fact from fiction. This is a skill.

There is no one major breakthrough, no moment that lifts you into the land of success, but many minor triumphs.

No one can reach everybody, don’t try to. This just means you’re blanding/dumbing your product down.

People want information.

People want someone/something to believe in. In the past, it was almost always artists, today it’s mostly corporations. Like Apple. Because these lauded corporations are all about creating excellence on the bleeding edge, delivering what you could not even think of yourself. Artists today are mini-corporations, whored out to the man making expedient business decisions.

Get in bed with sponsors at your peril. Their mission is different from yours. They detract from people’s belief in you. There’s plenty of money if you go your own way, if you’re great.

If you’re not great, give up or double-down to be better. And maximize the product. Unless you’re a lyricist as good as Bob Dylan, the person singing your songs should have a voice as good as one of the Beatles.

Don’t try to convince people you’re great, either they know it/accept it, or they don’t.

Your job is not being a star, your job is to create. Don’t be burdened by the constructs of the past. Craigslist killed newspapers by superseding the classifieds. The album was a result of technology, i.e. being able to put a certain amount of music on a piece of plastic. If you’re not looking forward, you’re burdened by the past.

This is all financial engineering.

The best explanation I’ve read is in the “Wall Street Journal”:

“Is Bill Ackman’s Deal for Universal Music Really Worth $63 Billion?”

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-04-07-2026/card/is-bill-ackman-s-deal-for-universal-music-really-worth-63-billion–WYWiZPspSu6UibG7trfl?mod=Searchresults&pos=1&page=1

You don’t need an MBA to understand all this, yet it still might be above your pay grade.

Ackman wants to sell Universal’s stake in Spotify, add debt to the company and list its stock in the U.S. All in the hope of raising the share price which has been languishing, he believes unfairly.

What is depressing Universal stock?

Primarily two things… AI and the fear that Spotify, et al, are running out of potential subscribers.

Now somehow, Netflix keeps adding subscribers, even though the Street thought it couldn’t and the stock cratered before it rebounded, and if you look at the number of people in the world…then again, only the low-hanging fruit can pay western prices. And Universal doesn’t control the pricing, so…

Analyze the numbers all you want, that’s not what I’m concerned with.

What does Bill Ackman know about music?

I won’t say absolutely nothing, but it’s far from his area of expertise.

Isn’t this how we got into this mess?

Edgar Bronfman, Jr. rolled up companies to form Universal, but then blew control to Vivendi and…

Now the company is publicly traded, but…

Kinda like Hipgnosis losing control of all those copyrights, them going to the bank.

Ackman doesn’t care about Taylor Swift, nobody on the Universal roster, he cares about MONEY! He wouldn’t be proposing this deal unless he thought it was profitable. It’s not like he’s got a hit act in his back pocket…

And then there was Guy Hands and EMI…

Now the difference between tech and record companies is that in tech, the founders learned their lesson, they maintained control after their companies went public. You’ve got Zuckerberg at Facebook, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google and…

Zuckerberg might have been plain wrong about the metaverse, dropping nearly a hundred billion wasted dollars into the effort, but no Wall Street titan would approve such an investment. But one thing Zuckerberg knows about tech…you evolve, reinvent, disrupt or you die.

It’s not quite the same thing in music, where what you’ve done in the past, the catalog, is an incredible driver of revenue, and oftentimes pure profit.

Actually, one could make a good case that Universal should stop investing in new music and just become a catalog house. One can look at the numbers that way.

But music is not about numbers, but feel. 

But everybody with ground floor experience, the founders are not in control at record labels. Oh, we’ve got a couple of post-indie people like John Janick, but he doesn’t call the big shots, he doesn’t steer the ocean liner.

Which is why innovation is all coming from the indie sphere. Which is why the majors woke up and invested in indie companies.

So is Ackman’s plan good for music?

Well, the film/TV industry thought that Netflix’s proposed purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery was bad for production…

Then again, Netflix is a newbie. And nimble.

There are no nimble newbies in the recorded music landscape, because financially it doesn’t add up, because the majors all have their catalogs.

If this deal goes through is it terminal?

No, but it’s a step in the wrong direction.

Music is an entrepreneurial business. Not only can production be cheap, but distribution is now too. And this is good for music, but potentially bad for Universal… I mean where is the innovation at major labels? They don’t take any major risks anymore, signing unknown talent in various genres and breaking it, they sign that which is already broken…

If you sell out to the man too much, it ultimately bites you in the ass.

Take that record deal, sell your publishing, if you think you got the better of money, you think money can write a hit song. It can’t, but money knows finance, and it’s not going to let you get the better side of a deal.

And now these same financiers are in control.

Look at Kyncl over at Warner, it seems his plan for growth is to continue to purchase new, mainly tech companies. Note that it’s not about signing/breaking new acts.

It’s a sad day for recorded music.

Then again, one can say the indies have already won. The hits are smaller than ever and the indie piece of the pie keeps growing and…

Financial engineering is never good for art. Remember that.