Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/5pGdWJIkt47ovJcBOKHl2S?si=37b1eea995ea47c9

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlR8JwdB8Qk

You’ve got to listen to the whole thing. While you’re doing something else, distracted. So you can suddenly turn your head and say to yourself WHAT IS THIS?

I don’t want to oversell “Sushi and Coca-Cola,” that would do the track a disservice. Keep your expectations low and let your mind drift. When done right music penetrates you in a way nothing else does. Sure, there are some great in your face numbers that demand your attention, but what you really want is something to ride shotgun, something personal that can lift your mood and make you think you can conquer the world…or at least survive!

I know St. Paul & The Broken Bones had their moment a few years back, when that video from Letterman was ping-ponging around the internet. I didn’t get it, I liked the emotion, but I didn’t find the song to be that good. But this, THIS I LIKE!

I spent hours today trying to penetrate new music. Got to say the new Justin Bieber album is listenable, but do I want to listen to it? Unnecessary. It scares me that Olivia Rodrigo is a respected act. Have we sunk so low that we’re kissing up to this two-dimensional stuff? This is paint by numbers, commerce. As for Chappell Roan…good for her that she’s got success but do I think her music is for the ages, do I think it truly adds something to the canon? No.

Needless to say I burned out on the Spotify Top 50.

So then I started checking out Americana playlists. The best one was the best from 2024, but this is 2025, and I wanted something more current. And I heard a bunch of tracks that I understood, but didn’t move me. And now I’m thinking of why “Sushi and Coca-Cola” moves me.

It’s certainly not the lyrics. This is not Bob Dylan, this is simple, serviceable.

But there’s no 808, THANK GOD! It’s kind of like tattoos…if you want one, cool, but don’t think you’re rebelling.

And then there’s the piano bed. Underpinning the entire thing.

And let’s be clear, the vocal is EXQUISITE! Hearkens back to the days of yore, fifty plus years ago, before everybody thought they could sing and deserved Spotify royalties and you’d go to the local bar and there’d be a soul singer…

But then soul was eclipsed by hip-hop.

But really, what puts “Sushi and Coca-Cola” over the top is the HORNS! Do you know why we don’t have more horns in today’s music? IT’S TOO EXPENSIVE! That’s one of the reasons we’ve got solo acts, not bands…no one wants to split the money that many ways. A drummer is necessary. A bassist. But can’t you just hire horns when you need them? But the budgets of yore are out the window. Who is sitting in their home studio saying they’re going to call in the horns?

Now this sounds nothing like Chicago. But once upon a time, there were horn bands…really started with Al Kooper and the initial iteration of Blood, Sweat & Tears. But that sound went out of favor…

Now if you were in the venue and St. Paul & The Broken Bones started to play “Sushi and Coca-Cola,” you’d find it impossible to stay in your chair, you’d stand up and start to groove, and you wouldn’t even need a partner, even though one would be fine. When the music penetrates you this way you put your phone down, you stop shooting selfies, you don’t want to impinge upon the experience, you just want to revel in the mood.

Not that a major label is interested in a band like this. They don’t want music, they want hits, they want instant commerciality. Something that just feels right, that might infect the populace and grow upon people…there’s no room for that. And this isn’t smooth, like the Average White Band, but that was fifty years ago itself. This is not a soul revue, this is too many musicians on a small stage playing for the love of it, because believe me, they can’t be making much money.

Maybe you don’t like this. You’ve got to know there are so many people immersed in the punk sound that if there’s more than a couple of guitars and if the singer is not shouting they’re out. Good for them, but most people have broader tastes.

Then again, the world is so broad that most music doesn’t reach most people.

This is the kind of music you want at your Bar Mitzvah party, at your corporate retreat, the kind that makes people move and just feel good.

Once again, “Sushi and Coca-Cola” is not classic, but we haven’t really had this sound since the Commitments thirty plus years ago, and St. Paul & The Broken Bones are more authentic.

So what we’ve got here is a journeyman band. Spreading their sound around the globe. You don’t go to the show to hear the hits, you go to enter a trance, to levitate from this everyday world in a way that music used to specialize in but is hard to find today.

This is basic, this is human. It evidences talent. It’s not about the looks, but the music. Do I expect everybody to glom on on instantly? Hell, this song has been out for a month and doesn’t have significant traction, that’s how hard it is to break through. You’re on your own.

The record business is run by lemmings, but not all the acts are such.

We’re looking for something authentic, that doesn’t say BRAND in bright lights. Something that is basic, that is just music.

Like “Sushi and Coca-Cola.”

Hulu/Disney+ trailer:

I know this show is a year old, but an e-mail put me over the top, I decided to check it out and I highly recommend it, I’d like to think everybody would watch it, but not everybody likes a Holocaust drama and not everybody has Hulu or Disney+.

So… There was a book, back in 2018. A million seller. The attendant hype told us that a woman found out that her relatives were Holocaust survivors and ultimately wrote this thinly fictionalized book. People loved it, not that the highbrow reviewers were on board, but having read so many true stories of that era, I was not up for anything that was made up.

And then last year the miniseries came out. And the initial reviews didn’t resonate, but a relative told me it was great and it would come across my transom now and again, but a couple of weeks back someone I don’t know insisted I watch it and the cumulative effect got me to dive in. And I went down the rabbit hole for eight episodes.

Now this is TV Holocaust. What I mean is in big screen Holocaust dramas it’s all about the look and feel. Figuring if the visuals are right you’ll suspend disbelief and get into it. But at no time are you watching “We Were the Lucky Ones” and not thinking it’s TV. The accents alone…which are far from perfect. And everybody speaks English, unlike in real life. HOWEVER, the emotions…this is about as good a depiction as I’ve seen. What it was like to feel the walls closing in, being hated and abandoned with no options.

You’re going to think this story is too unbelievable to be true, but I was stunned after the fact to find that almost all of it was. When you’re done I point you here for a comparison of the show and reality:

“How Accurate Is ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’? History vs. Hollywood”: https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/we-were-the-lucky-ones/ 

Watching made me feel more Jewish. Now let me say, it’s a rare friend who is actually a believer, but there are these rituals that we’ve partaken of from youth that we don’t think twice about, but when you see them documented…

I guess in December we’re all implored to please come home for Christmas… Well, Jews are implored to come home for Passover, and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur too. Over the years memories are built via seders. There are inside jokes, searches for the afikomen, arguments about the afikomen… Little kids trying to substitute wine for grape juice. The Four Questions… Jews have been doing this for millennia.

And the New Year and the Day of Atonement… Funny how so many non-Jews think Hanukkah is a major holiday. Actually, it’s quite minor, but it coincides with Christmas and little kids have gift envy and…I guess it’s another way we’re separate but equal to the rest of the population.

Now I’ve been thinking a lot about the Israel/Gaza conflict and I think it’s different if you’re a boomer as opposed to someone younger. You see we grew up with concentration camp survivors in our communities. With numbers tattooed on their arms. I always wondered how they could march forward, but Benny the butcher did…that’s what he was always referred to as, “Benny the butcher,” that’s what he did, cut meat.

So you’ve got this Jewish family, solidly middle class, with a son studying engineering in Paris, coming home for the High Holy Days, and then he cannot.

Borders close. The Nazis invade.

Where does that leave you?

They take your house, they put you in the ghetto, you lose touch with your family and it’s hard to maintain your optimism.

You can feel the fear. That’s what makes the series so great. Bombs nearby. People disappearing. And seemingly everybody from the Germans to the Russians just following orders. Some escape to Palestine, but most thought it would never come to this, but it did.

There’s a visceral quality that you’ll resonate with if you’re a Jew, certainly a boomer Jew. When you realize your possessions are meaningless. When you see people packing suitcases for no reason. When you see people bribing others just to survive. You’re on your own. And the odds are not good. There were 30,000 Jews in Radom, Poland. A few hundred survived the war.

If you’re a dedicated fan of Israeli TV you’ll recognize Moran Rosenblattt as Herta. She is always good. And Lior Ashkenazi as the patriarch. And even Michael Aloni from “Shtisel” as Selim.

And Robin Weigert, who was so great as Calamity Jane in “Deadwood,” plays the matriarch…she keeps the family together.

But it’s hard to put yourself in their situation and keep your chin up. Luck played a big factor. But in order to survive you also had to break the rules. That’s something in the offing in America, if it gets really bad.

Then again, if you’re Jewish, there’s one place you can go…

Israel.

Especially when people are marching in the U.S. chanting “Globalize the Intifada.”

Watch this.

Everything old is new again.

SoundScan told us what was actually being sold.

Spotify tells us what is actually being played.

SoundScan taught us that country was much bigger than perceived.

Spotify teaches us that great songs never die, that they are discovered by younger generations. And no specific marketing event is necessary to make this happen. It appears cream rises to the top. Never in the history of the chart did we have a 48 year old album triumphing, as we do with “Rumours” below. It’s Fleetwood Mac people want to listen to most, more than Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or even the Beatles…when it comes down to specific tracks.

Old albums will no longer die. As for new music… I want you to look at the concert grosses. You’ll be positively stunned how many acts are making bank around the world. It’s nearly incomprehensible, no one can know every act and their audience. And my point here is the world has splintered, and we see this nowhere near as much as in music, where all songs are on an equal footing, available to all.

It wasn’t playlisting that caused these ancient songs to surface, it’s sheer quality and word of mouth. It’s not a rigged system.

Having said that, four of the top ten weekly Spotify songs are from Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters” movie. Proving first and foremost that distribution is king and a la carte is dead. This and “Happy Gilmore 2” are the two biggest movies of the summer in terms of audience share. The fact that the industry and the media don’t acknowledge their penetration is irrelevant. Furthermore, never has anything so big been embraced by so few. All the juggernauts of today may be putting up big numbers, but their overall penetration of the marketplace/human consciousness is quite low. You had to see “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” do you have to see ANY movie today? Despite all the fake hoopla?

In music it’s the newbie’s worst nightmare. Not only are you competing with new artists, you’re competing with the greatest artists of all time. It’s kind of like MTV… If you’re jetted into the stratosphere immediately, you’ll probably fall back quickly. But if your build is slow and steady you could be forever.

And acts have much longer career arcs.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard just played the Hollywood Bowl. Kudos. But their first album came out in 2012,THIRTEEN YEARS AGO! Can you imagine an act launched in 1980 getting big airplay on MTV in 1993? Never mind that King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard is still niche, most people have never heard their music, never mind of them.

Goose, which seems to be just now gaining major traction, released its first album in 2016, nine years ago.

Bands were done in a decade back when. And if they were still on the road they did not have hits. Now it takes a decade for people to find out about you.

The below songs are tried and true hits. They may not be your cup of tea, but consensus is that they’re great. And the younger generations who dominate streaming agree.

Today the disposable rules…for a short while. And then the legends come back with a vengeance.

And it’s only going to get worse. If you’re in the me-too business, better change direction or give up.

If you’re a new artist wanting to get paid for streaming, I only have one question, do you have a song as good as “Dreams”?

P.S. Just like there are no new songs of the summer this year, with last year’s tracks dominating, the hits of the future will be smaller and smaller and smaller with less and less penetration.

______

Fleetwood Mac has two songs in the “Weekly Top Songs Global” chart:

#51 – “Dreams”

It has been as high as #20.

It was streamed 13,478,407 times in the past week.

Overall, it has been streamed 2,255,207,970 times.

“Dreams” is #17 in the “Top 50 – USA” daily chart

#173 – “The Chain”

It has been as high as #119.

It was streamed 8,439,790 times in the past week.

Overall, it has been streamed 1,440,773,242 times.

The Fleetwood Mac album “Rumours (Super Deluxe)” is #31 this week.

THE GOO GOO DOLLS:

#20 – “Iris” 

It has been as high as #18.

It was streamed 18,928,523times in the past week.

Overall, it has been streamed 2,617,179,657 times.

“Iris” is #24 in the “Top 50 – USA” daily chart

The Goo Goo Dolls’ album “Dizzy Up the Girl” is #132 this week.

COLDPLAY

#32 = “Yellow”

It has been as high as #19.

It was streamed 15,797,887 times in the past week.

Overall, it has been streamed 3,216,440,455 times.

#38 – “Sparks”

It has been as high as #33

It was streamed 14,781,201 times last week

Overall it has been streamed 1,544,132,437

#73 “Viva La Vida”

#93 “The Scientist”

#182 “A Sky Full of Stars”

The Coldplay album “Parachutes” is #44 this week.

The Coldplay album “A Rush of Blood to the Head” is #145 this week.

RADIOHEAD

#47 “Creep”

#65 -“Let Down”

The Radiohead album “OK Computer” is #67 this week.

ARCTIC MONKEYS

#48 “II Wanna Be Yours”

#81 “%05”

The Artic Monkeys album “AM” is #19 this week.

The Artic Monkeys album “Favorite Worst Nightmare” is #194 this week.

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

#54 – “Sweater Weather”

BLACK EYED PEAS

#63 – Rock That Body

KEANE

#110 Somewhere Only We Know”

ONE REPUBLIC

#115 “Counting Stars”

LINKIN PARK

“#71 “In the End”

#117 “Numb”

The Linkin Park album “Meteora” is #52 this week.

The Linkin Park album “Hybrid Theory (Bonus Edition)” is #53 this week

The Linkin Park album is #150 this week.

a-ha

#135 “Take on Me”

NIRVANA

#139 “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

#197 “Come as You Are”

The Nirvana album “Nevermind” is #86 this week.

THE KILLERS

#140 “Mr. Brightside”

JOURNEY

#141 “Don’t Stop Believin'”

EVANESCENCE

#144 “Bring Me to Life”

GORILLAZ/DE LA SOUL

#148 “Feel Good Inc.”

TOTO

#151 – “Africa”

GUNS N’ ROSES

#152 “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

The Guns N’ Roses album “Appetite for Destruction is #117 this week.

IMAGINE DRAGONS

#170 “Believer”

The Imagine Dragons album “Evolve” is #115 this week.

The Imagine Dragons album “Night Visions” is #192

TEARS FOR FEARS

#192 “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”

HAMILTON

#54 on the album chart this week.

EMINEM

“The Eminem Show” is #114 this week.

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS

“Californication (Deluxe Edition)” is #134 this week.

ADELE

“21” is #137 this week.

50 CENT

“Get Rich or Die Tryin'” is #139 this week.

SYSTEM OF A DOWN

“Toxicity” is #149 this week.

METALLICA

The Black Album is #172

NELLY FURTADO

“Loose” is #176

THREE DAYS GRACE

“Life Starts Now” is #179.

GREEN DAY

“American Idiot” is #184

Tune in Saturday August 16th 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