https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/muhammad-ali/

Are you watching this?

You’ve got to. Even though I wasn’t going to.

I came home from hiking on Sunday night and Felice said she’d watched the first episode. I had no interest, I lived through it, I knew enough about Muhammad Ali. And there’d been so many other movies and documentaries, what else could be uncovered? And I’m burned out on Ken Burns. “The Civil War” was one of the best documentaries/TV shows ever, but since then…his docs have been too long and labored and I’m sick of Peter Coyote and the way he delivers the narration, with too much gravitas and heaviness, and it ends up being an endurance test. And I must say I watched the Hemingway doc and enjoyed it, but still I got Peter Coyote, and as much as there was in the series, I wanted more.

But last night I wanted to watch “Reservation Dogs” with Felice but she shooed me away, she was watching the second episode of “Muhammad Ali.” So I’m lying on the floor, stretching in front of the flat screen, watching along before I get up to read my book and…

I got hooked.

It blew my mind. Because I lived through it.

The sixties, they were coming alive right in front of my eyes.

We live in an era of upheaval today, but it’s very different from the sixties. Then again, white supremacy is still a thing. But back then misinformation was not an issue, it was all about pushing the envelope, throwing off the shackles, becoming free, to be your best self. Today the white supremacists and their brethren just want to bring us back to an era that wasn’t so good to begin with, especially for the blue collar workers who make up the majority of their base.

So what you’ve got is Muhammad Ali blazing his own path, not kowtowing and…

The country is against him.

Boston says his return matchup with Sonny Liston can’t happen, but it ends up taking place in Lewiston, Maine and Ali KO’s Liston in a matter of minutes. It was a big controversy back then, did Liston throw the fight? But Ali said he hit Sonny with this special screwdriver punch and…not only did I remember all this, they go into it in the documentary. And when you watch the footage it’s hard not to think that Sonny threw the fight, after all he was controlled by the Mafia.

But we only saw still photos back then. Here, they have all the moving pictures. Most of which I’m seeing for the very first time.

And I’m thinking how my generation is the first that can experience this, what we grew up with being on film/tape/archived. That’s de rigueur today, if anything life is over-documented, but if you want movies from the 1800’s, good luck with that.

So they show Howard Cosell. He was the first to call Cassius Clay “Muhammad Ali.” Cosell was a fixture in the environment, a player, everyone knew his name, he was far more powerful than any Kardashian, if not as rich, far more powerful than Drake and even Kanye. But today, no one knows Howard’s name, if you weren’t alive back then he doesn’t exist.

AND CHRIS SCHENKEL! We saw him over and over in sports presentations, even though at the end of his tenure people started to make fun of him.

AND JIM McKAY! In 1960, so early that he’s so young you wonder if it’s really him!

Never mind Howard Cosell on “Wide World of Sports.” That was religion if you were a kid back then, every Saturday afternoon, it was a tribal rite. You’d come in from playing sports to watch it.

That’s another thing we did, sure, there was Little League, but mostly we played sports in backyards and fields and… Baseball in the summer, football in the fall, a cornucopia of snow sports in the winter. At times I’d even grab a golf club and go hit balls in the schoolyard. Well, make that “ball,” I only had one.

So Cassius Clay is born in segregated Louisville and ends up a boxer on a lark, looking for a policeman after his bike is stolen.

And it’s not like he’s an instant phenom. And once he gets traction, everybody says he can’t win, because he doesn’t fight in the traditional manner, he doesn’t keep his hands up, he leans away from punches. Clay is dancing, but they’ve never seen it before. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

So after winning the gold medal at the Olympics a syndicate of white guys is formed and they ship Clay off to San Diego for training by the great Archie Moore.

Clay gets sent home. Because he wouldn’t buckle to Moore’s methods. Archie wanted Cassius to conform, Clay wanted to do it his way.

So Cassius ends up with Angelo Dundee in Miami and the long road to superstardom begins.

A road that’s been glossed over in the history books. Sure, Clay won, but it wasn’t always smooth, and it was far from inevitable he’d make it to the top.

Meanwhile, the country is erupting. Blacks will no longer go to the back of the bus, there are freedom marches and… Today they march for authoritarianism.

And the truth is people of color are much better off today than in the sixties, but there’s still a long way to go, and the whites still want to keep the “boys” down, they’ve given them something, ISN’T THAT ENOUGH! Change doesn’t happen overnight, be happy you’ve gotten this far. Remind you of Deborah Dugan and the old boy network at the Grammys? A cabal of men, the usual suspects, unwilling to give up control, against all change.

And as Clay moves up the boxing food chain, people want a piece of him. Johnny Carson, because the entertainment and news media strike like dogs on anything new, chew it up, and eagerly discard it for the new new thing. But Ali maintained. With endless self-promotion. Believe me, today’s social media influencers have nothing on Muhammad Ali. Ali created the paradigm, the sell was all in service to his career. The influencers? It’s really no different from the Ali game except there’s nothing underneath and everybody’s doing it.

But Ali was the only one back then. Especially a Black man, you were supposed to know your place.

But if Ali fought in the internet era one thing would be clear, his dedication to Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. By time Ali was reclassified 1A and told to report for service most people thought the Black Muslim affiliation was a convenient crutch. But this documentary shows how that is patently untrue. Ali got interested in the Nation of Islam back in Miami, long before he was a famous professional. And he maintained his interest.

And that brings us to Malcolm X. Honestly, I was too young when Malcolm X was killed, he was never three-dimensional to me. But you learn all about Malcolm X here, this documentary is not only about Ali’s career, but the context of his success, what was happening in society simultaneously. And watching it makes a boomer like me marvel that I was there and I remember it. That I lived through such turbulent times, paying attention, optimistic, yet still going to school and jumping through the hoops.

This is history come alive. I don’t care if you have no interest in Muhammad Ali, you need to watch this.

And learn that Ali was right, we should have been calling him “Muhammad Ali” as soon as he changed his name. But whites didn’t believe him, didn’t think the change was genuine, even after Cosell called him Muhammad it took years for everybody else to do so.

And then everybody loves him.

They hate you before they love you.

But not everybody. Not everybody has the wherewithal, the inner strength to pay their dues. Sure, the spotlight was bright for Ali’s fights and bloviations, but there was a lot of hard work that went unseen, the training, you watch Ali run with the bus, seemingly effortlessly, and if you are a boomer you realize how hard that was, especially because you can’t do it now.

As for the narration…

It’s done by actor Keith David. Who is far superior to Peter Coyote. David is more straightforward, there are fewer pregnant pauses, less fake gravitas.

And the talking heads…

Sure, some of them are the usual suspects, but most are Black men, eloquent and insightful. For far too long we’ve let the white man tell the Black man’s story.

And there are some surprises. David Remnick? Editor of “The New Yorker”?

But that’s how far Ali’s reach was. And how important sports were.

America was active. As a result people were skinnier and healthier. Sports weren’t professionalized at a young age, there were no traveling squads, no specialization, we were all just people, together in the pool.

But not always the Black people. They fought not for their right to party, but their right to be included, to be equal. And now, half a century later, these same white supremacists want to deny them the right of participation. Even worse, a tilted phony Supreme Court says equality reigns and there are no needs for voter protection. Imagine if you’re one of the oppressed. Oh, that’s right, today THE WHITES ARE OPPRESSED! The Black man got too much, affirmative action, he must be put back in his place.

But not Muhammad Ali.

This is a tour-de-force!

Tune in today, September 21st, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive

https://bit.ly/3krrf77

If you’re interested in the recorded music business you must read this article.

Used to be, in the first decade of this century, when music was the canary in the coal mine for digital disruption, everyone was tuned into the business and when a player spoke they got heard.

Not anymore. You’re probably unaware of Hartwig Masuch’s words.

The big news of the past week has been about Universal Music going public. You may have seen the puff piece about Lucian Grainge in the “Financial Times”: https://on.ft.com/3zv2qvc It doesn’t really tell you anything you don’t know, and Lucian deserves kudos, but the question is where the business is heading, the fact that Universal dominates new music, is that as laudable as it seems?

You see all the money is in catalog. Turns out the classics of the past are much more valuable than the hits of today. With everything in recorded music history available on streaming sites new music has to compete with the old and the verdict is in, people favor the old, by a large margin, 70% to 30%. How much does it cost a record company to stream old music? Right now essentially nothing. You just put it up there and reap the rewards. Might that change in the future, when the business acknowledges the power of the past? Yes, in many cases labels would be better off promoting the old acts, Queen is light years more popular than any new act.

And Universal, as a result of consolidation, has the best catalog, so it is positioned well for the future, but when investors start looking at costs are they going to get pissed how much is spent on new product for so little return? And are we going to see the breakup of these companies, since catalog is so much more valuable than new material? And even if you break new material, will it be classic in the future, or is it one and done? A moment in time. That people in the future won’t be that eager to visit.

We’ve already seen the separation of publishing from recordings. Used to be big acts owned their own publishing and just made administration deals. But it turns out their catalogs were undervalued, and once Pimary Wave and Round Hill and Hipgnosis came along and offered big bucks, a multiple far outstripping previous prices, artists started to sell. And now so many of the greatest songs of all time are no longer controlled by the major label publishers. And Merck just started a songwriters guild… Bottom line, publishers are underpaid on streaming, because of the majors’ leverage. But that leverage is eroding, will there be a righting of the wrong? Furthermore, despite the big ticket purchase of Bob Dylan’s catalog by Universal and Paul Simon’s by Sony, the truth is these companies are now rearguard operations, they’re only dipping their toe while the new independent players are all in. In addition, the new players are putting far more effort, money and time, into their acquisitions. Most legacy publishers are about picking up the phone, the new ones are much more active.

And publishing is a predictable business. Why should it be tied up with a record company blowing all that money on new artists? You’re taking a steady income and jeopardizing it. Investors don’t like this.

There is so much institutional b.s. that needs to be corrected. Like executive salaries. Hartwig posits that a $10 million salary requires 2 billion streams just to pay for it. Actually, in truth the numbers are even worse.

And when I talk to promoters, the acts selling tickets are far different from the Spotify Top 50. Many doing boffo at the b.o., year in and year out, see recordings as an afterthought. Which is one reason Live Nation’s stock price has gone up. Then again, despite Rapino’s huge push and success in sponsorship, the lion’s share of the show money goes to the acts. But not in recordings. This is going to have to change. Not as many acts want to give up all that upside for the power of a major label, especially if they don’t make radio-friendly music in a world ever less radio dependent. And those that do want a bigger piece of the pie.

This is the financial industry. These are not Luddites, at least not compared to musicians. Musicians frequently want a leg up from a label that is not interested in them. They refuse to see the present, which is positively cottage industry, where you build it from the ground up and you’re almost never ubiquitous. Financiers look at the hard numbers. They are hard to impress with smoke and mirrors, especially when your predictions perennially don’t come true. And investors want to cut costs.

The music business believes it is winning by becoming more professional, it just isn’t aware of the cost of said victory. Once the Universal bigwigs get their payday and the bean counters come in they’re going to start asking about the waste, all that money spent for little success which is less success than ever before. Yes, despite the reams of b.s., today’s hits have a fraction of the power of those of yore. If you’re sitting at home dismissing the Spotify Top 50…it turns out you’re in the majority, MOST PEOPLE are rejecting new music. Which begs the question why labels aren’t doing more to promote old music. After all, there’s a built-in audience.

The music business is about to become a whole lot more professional. Sure, the movie studios hoodwinked investors for years, but they weren’t selling the company, at most investment in a few films. And by constantly doubling down on the old model Hollywood ceded control to Silicon Valley. A movie studio used to be a trophy property, now it’s just a depreciated asset whose primary value is its library. Everybody said Reed Hastings was too far out there, ahead of his time, and then the time came to him, as the future always does, and everybody else is now playing catch-up. Not only is Netflix a big power, but so is Amazon, which is in the process of purchasing MGM, and Apple, which has nothing but money. As for HBO Max? It was bought by AT&T who had to lay it off, the telco didn’t understand entertainment and realized a whole hell of a lot of investment was necessary and it didn’t want to lay down the cash. But HBO and Disney are the only two survivors of old Hollywood in the new world. Everybody else came too late and has minor impact. As for theatrical distribution… Why do they keep pushing the ball uphill? Most people never go to the theatre. They’re at home, in front of the flat screen. How long can you succeed by not giving them what they want? The pandemic helped move new flicks to streaming day and date, but foreign flicks have cratered, they belong on the flat screen, not in the theatre.

Music is a mature business. When that happens, you see consolidation, ergo Universal and Live Nation. And then you squeeze the costs and get ready for further disruption.

Which could happen in new music. The old model of paying an advance and then spamming media is inefficient. And you might be able to make bank on a TikTok star today, but what about tomorrow, will there be any meaningful catalog? Doubtful.

Change is brewing.

https://amzn.to/3CjD3hU

I was afraid to go to sleep.

Then again, I didn’t want to, I wanted to stay up another hour or so to finish the book but it was already long past midnight.

There’s initial publicity about books, but most books catch fire and last as a result of word of mouth. That’s how I found this one. Recommended by my sister’s stepdaughter.

Not that I’m open to all recs, but my sister gave her taste a ringing endorsement and I’m always looking for something good, which is hard to find. Most of the best sellers are either genre fiction or not that good or too hard to read or all three. That’s right, I’m talking fiction, made up, I rarely read nonfiction. I don’t need no stinking self-help, it’s not worth anything, the writers are not the readers and the insight is not translatable, then again people have so little confidence in themselves they believe the answers are out there when they’re not, and they’ll pay attention to charlatans, many of them with no CV who are doing it to get rich.

But “The Sound of Gravel” is nonfiction.

Not that it was at the top of my list. Felice read it before I did. But having finished the books at the top of my mental pile I dove in on Thursday night and…

I can’t say that I was hooked at first. But then…

There are a lot of books like this, that take a while to ensnare you, to build up steam. And the problem with the beginning of “The Sound of Gravel” isn’t that it’s hard to read or uninteresting, it’s just that it goes on and on about Mormon cultists in Mexico and you think this is where the entire book is going to be set, it’s hard to relate, but then…

Yes, the writer, Ruth Wariner, was the daughter of a polygamist, who ended up having over thirty children.

And Ruth’s mother had ten children.

But it’s the poverty and blind belief that that stun you, that keep you reading. The fact that people grew up this way, and not so long ago.

And I’m loath to give away any of the story, because it’s the twists and turns that keep you reading. They’re essentially unpredictable. Just when you think the hammer is going to fall, that everything will be set straight and harmony will reign…

And since it’s nonfiction, the unexpected happens. Because truth is stranger than fiction, believe it.

And I was debating with myself when to shut down my Kindle. You know how it is, you make a deal with yourself that you’re going to stop reading at a certain time and then, completely out of the blue, the book you’re reading takes a total left turn that you could never predict and you’re just positively blown away.

I mean I was reading the book in the dark. My Kindle has a light in it. So I felt like I was somewhat in the story, across the street, not that far away. And there’s a little foreshadowing, but what ultimately happens is a complete surprise. And never forget, in nonfiction, everything doesn’t always turn out so well.

So you’ve got these Mormon polygamists. In Mexico because you can’t get away with this in the U.S.

And they are true believers, they’ll sacrifice anything and everything for their beliefs. The pull of their religion has them making one bad choice after another, at least by most people’s standards. But they think they’re the winners and the rest of us are heathens who are going to pay a price.

What is it like to grow up in an environment like this?

You’re just a kid. Your mother is your mother. Remember trying to run away as a little kid? How well did that work? Maybe you were gone for half an hour, you couldn’t be without your mother, never mind forage for yourself out in the real world. And when you’re a kid your parents call all the shots.

So I was afraid I’d have bad dreams. Actually, I did, but not related to the content of the book.

And I woke up and finished it and…

I wasn’t in quite the same mood, after all it was sunny out.

And reviews are fantastic, but there are still some one star ones. People can find fault with anything. Which is why if you’re listening to the feedback, you’re probably inhibited and going in the wrong direction. Not that you should never make adjustments, but today people want you to be who they want you to be, and even that doesn’t satiate them.

So are there some people who won’t like “The Sound of Gravel”? I guess so. Maybe those who can only read sunny, upbeat tomes. But that’s not the way life is, life has ups and downs.

And most of what we see in the media is not real people. We see beautiful people, rich, and their shenanigans. What about those just like us?

We want love. And we’re jealous. And we feel alone and want to be comforted. And giving up just a tiny smidge of attention is so hard that people stay in bad relationships and you mix in some religion and…

“The Sound of Gravel” came out in 2016. But it’s new to you if you haven’t read it yet. And it’s timeless. And scary.

And riveting.