Who is greater?

Tune in today, June 29th, 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

Actually hit 117F today here in Salem, Oregon. Hottest ever in recorded history. “Hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum,” as they said on Monty Python. Thank god for AC.

Scott William Carter

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Sometimes the truth can really suck.

I’m about 100 miles north of Portland. It’s 2:30  in the afternoon and it just hit 106.

It’s been a miserable past four days here.

Your latest screed did little to lift my spirits.

Dammed truth!

Burke Long

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115 just outside of Vancouver BC, in the Fraser Valley.. Can’t wait until it cools down to the mid 90’s tomorrow..

Funkright

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Hi Bob , thanks for brightening my day ! I’m up in Vancouver BC . Its 38 celsius at noon . Never seen anything like it up here … crazy times ..

John Kieselhorst

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My Nieghbor out here  in Colorado (in the middle of nowhere, 7600 ft -94 degrees last week) , 82 years old just got covid as did his wife. Both Trumpers- nice people, but can’t believe how stupid they were. Here we go again, it’s ridiculous we are fucked.

Peter O’Fallon

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According to the National Weather Service, it’s 106 in Seattle today, and counting. Google the weather in Portland, Boise, Salt Lake City, it’s hot in a lot of places. We moved to NYC to Seattle 5 years ago, so we’re no stranger to hot summer days.  The difference is in NYC hot summer weather has existed for an eternity, but that’s certainly not the case in Seattle, the city with the lowest household penetration of air conditioning in the U.S. It was never considered necessary!! Each summer since we moved here it’s been hotter and hotter, and it isn’t even July yet.  Oh, I’d be remiss in not sharing, I write all of this from a downtown hotel. We checked in 2-days ago to escape the heat from our downtown condo.  Climate change?  Wait, haven’t you heard, Bob? “There’s nothing to see here, so just move along.” It’s like a parody of that Stormtroopers scene from Star Wars. Just insert healthcare, election reform, gun control, etc., and you’ll get the same response.  “Nothing to see here, so…..”

Stuart K. Marvin

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I am working from my car right now in actual 113 degree Portland heatwave — because inside my temporary top-floor rental it’s a deathtrap — 103 degrees. Hallways are about 120.

The next time a cheap-ass landlord, leasing agent or Realtor tells you “Oh you don’t really need air conditioning here” – run. The era of ‘cool’ summer days in the mountains and particularly in the Pacific Northwest ended long ago.

I’ve been here off-and-on last several months hanging w my daughter during pandemic. My brother has lived here 30 years.  Always been amazed by the number of homes/apts here  — fancy ones at that — without AC — there have been plenty of scorchers preceding this history-making one.

But talk about an American scam! The Pacific Northwest is flooded with cheap, giant apartment companies such as UDR, still building brand new buildings without HVAC systems: It’s all junk ‘cadet’ wall-heaters in winter (you’ll freeze) — and mostly useless rolling “portable ACs” in summer, that landlords then rent at monthly fees. Skip building the HVAC, then rent back pieces of it if tenants want it !!!

Inside my “luxury” temporary rental right now this bogus machine has been running nonstop, 24/7. Indoor temp never went below 90 last week. The real eye-opener is they’re ‘vented’ out the back wall/window like a clothes dryer, actually creating more heat, worsening climate crises.

This particular building went up in 2018.  How are cities, counties, municipalities still greenlighting these shadeless ovens — with skylights no less — let alone allowing REITs to call them “luxurious?”  Get with the times people. Climate change is real.

Deb Wilker

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In socialist New Zealand we were forced to lock down for 6 whole weeks. But that ended April 2020 and we’ve had zero covid restrictions since then asides the strict border restrictions and a couple short regional lockdowns. The total death toll is 26.

It’s still far from over and there are a small group of anti lockdown morons but most people are standing by ready to work together by staying at home and wearing our masks in the event that covid breaches our border. It’s so comforting knowing our government and our people will do whatever it takes to completely eliminate the virus and as a result our economy is booming. Living here it’s easy to forget there’s a pandemic ravaging the rest of the world unless you switch on the news.

It’s sad watching the US fall apart and proof that individual freedom is intrinsically linked to working together as a community.

Ben Carter

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What were you doing in Sharm-el-Sheik?

That would have been about 1971?

We took a bus there from Eilat in 1971.

There was nothing there.

Slept on the beach.

Woken up by the IDF doing an early morning sweep.

Best,

Julian Burnett

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I was in Sharm El Shiek when it belonged to Israel too! There was just a bath house and we slept on the beach. Woken up in the morning by fighter jets about 10 feet off the ground screaming over our heads. I remember when we left, by bus, and stopped in Eilat and I bought a big bottle of chocolate milk and several bottles of water which never tasted so good. I don’t remember the heat – I think it was April. I still have a map of Israel showing those boundaries.

Lee in Nashville

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I am fully vaxxed yet tested positive for
Covid last week. I got tested at the recommendation of my doctor because I had also been dealing with extreme allergies this past month so when I lost my taste and smell but was not running a fever I initially attributed it to my allergies.  When the test came back positive I was quite worried because I am a singer and had been singing for three days to large congested groups Of people while I unknowingly was infected. Oddly enough my partner whom I live with, as well as my singing partner, both tested negative. When the health department contacted me, I inquired as to how many fully vaxxed people they are encountering who have tested positive.  They said it was about 5% most likely due to the new mutant strains. Thankfully being fully vaxxed extremely lessened the severity of my symptoms while lowering how contagious I was.

Murphy’s law of course.  Live music gigs are finally coming back and nows the time I test positive for covid having to miss out on work that has been largely non existent for the last 15 or so months.

Regardless, just a stark reminder that, despite what the anti-vaxx dumbs and right wing news outlets are saying, the pandemic is still here.

-travis von Cartier

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As an Egyptian born in Oregon, I’m loving this hot af weather… haha feels like home!

Sarah El Ebiary

It’s not like they didn’t warn us.

Yesterday it was a 112 degrees in Portland, Oregon.

But I don’t live in Portland, Oregon.

Ever been in weather that hot? I have, in Sharm El Sheik. Back when it was still part of Israel, before it was given back to Egypt, when it was a tent city as opposed to a built-up resort. One day it was 121 degrees, another 123. What I remember most vividly is drinking seven bottles of the equivalent of 7-Up and not having to pee, that’s how much I was sweating.

But I don’t live in Sharm El Sheik either.

But I do live in Southern California, where I never know when I must vacate my house because of fire danger.

And then there’s the Delta variant. It’s all over the news, assuming you read the news. Then again, Tucker Carlson constantly implies that you should not get vaccinated while he won’t say whether he’s gotten the jab or not. Hmm… Anyway, in Israel and Australia they’re back to wearing masks, I guess they’re willing to give up their “freedom.” Yes, in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and Australia, where the strict quarantine of those entering the country, even citizens, kept Covid at bay. As for Melbourne, they locked down the city even though infections were in the single digits, as in LESS THAN TEN! Because you stamp out a flickering flame before it becomes a conflagration.

Now the truth is in unvaccinated parts of the country, Covid-19 cases are rising, but it doesn’t feel like they are, so it must not be happening. But then it happens to you. Too bad if you’re an American. Because the country was built on individual freedom, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and if anything goes wrong you’re on your own, we don’t bother to help you, or if we do you’re labeled a taker, and you circle your wagons and endure the hardship as the rest of the population ignores you.

It’s not like they haven’t been talking about global warming. They renamed it “climate change,” learning from Frank Luntz that branding is everything and in truth, parts of the globe can become colder while others become hotter.

And then it happened. Drastic cold in the northeast. And it was 118 degrees in Siberia last week. But nobody bothers to lift a finger.

We’re leaning towards authoritarianism, it looks like it’s going to happen. Yes, the left has been complaining about the death of democracy ever since the southern states started enacting voter suppression laws. But the real problem isn’t the voting laws as much as our form of government. Nothing can get done. Doesn’t happen this way in China…President Xi comes up with the plan and it’s executed, and you toe the line or you’re incarcerated. I’m not saying that I approve of what Xi is doing to the Uighurs, or Hong Kong, but the truth is they just built a ten story building in China in a day, and they’re in the middle of an infrastructure boom, highways and railroads everywhere, meanwhile America falls apart in a game of musical chairs, where you just hope you’re not in the building or on the highway when it gives out.

Nothing can get done in America.

Furthermore, the country can’t even get on the same page. There’s endless tribalism and misinformation and the truth is we can’t get everybody to agree, so nothing gets done. As for the right, their goal is to return is to a golden age of white America when things weren’t that good to begin with, as for the left…they must be wrong, they must be fought, because if the right is flawed the left must be too. It’s an endless debate of false equivalencies, although the truth is as a result of cable news and the internet you never have to see news you disagree with, your prejudices are reinforced and you should read the studies about getting people to change their minds…when confronted with the facts, they usually just double-down.

We’re past the tipping point. There may be a recall in California, but there’s no way a Republican can win, the state is far different than it was when the Terminator replaced Gray Davis and proved that government is a skilled job and experience counts.

And getting a Republican elected in a major urban center is also a nonstarter. So the divide gets wider, the south hunkers down, not radically different from the Confederate states of yore, they want to preserve their culture, irrelevant of the consequences.

As for the public?

Jeff Bezos can afford to personally jet himself into the stratosphere, but Amazon can’t have unions, collective bargaining, they must depend upon the benevolence of Jeff’s farm. And unions have a bad name, as do regulations. Come on, a building collapses in Florida and all the experts say that never happens in America. Why? BECAUSE OF REGULATIONS!

Or you sign a contract of adhesion causing you to go to arbitration where the corporation always wins.

But you live outside the battle, you’ve experienced no consequences, and then suddenly you do and…it’s just too bad, you’ve got to lose so the wheels of progress can move forward. Anybody can go broke as a result of medical costs, just do your best not to get sick, avoid that cancer, will you? And while you’re at it, don’t go for treatment anyway, better to roll the dice with your health than be out of pocket, never mind that your lifespan will be shortened.

The above are indisputable facts. Hiding in plain sight. I’m telling you, but the truth is people have been saying all this for years, but it falls on deaf ears.

I hope you’re vaccinated. I don’t care what your reasons for not getting the shot are, religious beliefs, distrust of the government, fear of side effects, none of those are gonna keep you safe if the Delta variant comes knocking, you’re gonna get infected and there’s a good chance you’re gonna die. As for going to a mass gathering, that’s like playing Russian roulette. Tell me, do you want to be Christopher Walken in “The Deer Hunter”? Oh, that’s right, you haven’t seen it, you were too busy watching cartoons at the multiplex.

So there’s heat in the Pacific Northwest. And little water throughout the west. The ski season has shrunk by a month over the past decades. But there are senators telling you to look at the bright side of global warming, that you won’t need a jacket, when the truth is science rules, trumps everything, and nothing happens without consequences, without an equal reaction. Who knew? US!

So one ends up feeling powerless. Greta Thunberg dedicates her life to saving the environment yet those who disagree with her don’t debate the issues, but her age, her delivery, her sex, her nationality…when the truth is the young people are going to inherit the earth, and they’re damn scared, that’s one of the main reasons they’re not having children, they can’t afford it, meanwhile all the economists are freaking out because without population growth our economy will stagnate, like in Japan. Human issues? Those aren’t important.

I feel powerless. Then there are those who say to join the system, to run for office. Now I vote, every single time, but the truth is when the game is rigged you just can’t win. That’s what all these election laws are all about, and based on a falsehood that Trump actually won the election. And Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are still in office when Al Franken had to vacate his seat, killed by his own party.

There’s nothing rotten in Denmark, but there’s plenty of decay in America. But if you point out the country’s flaws so they can be addressed you’re a disloyal un-American hater who must be isolated and castigated by the tribe, the same one that tells you to be an individual, confused yet?

And this is all happening in plain sight, it can’t go on forever.

So you can’t follow leaders, because they’re all beholden to the corporations, big money interests, and as far as those parking meters, they were all sold to hedge funds and operate on Sundays and holidays now so you’d better watch them very closely.

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.

But there are no subways in rural areas.

And the billionaires don’t ride the subway and today artists are not prophets but mini-corporations who are income-ranked, message be damned.

Meanwhile, it’s over a hundred degrees in Portland and I can’t leave my house for fear of the Delta variant.

https://spoti.fi/3w2gg6y

1

Bonnie Raitt couldn’t break through.

Her initial album was cut live to four track at a summer camp in Minnesota with Spider John Koerner and Willie Murphy. This was before record labels clamored for hits, they let you find your way, especially Warner Brothers. Also, people pooh-poohed AM radio. If you were authentic, you saw it as anathema. And Bonnie was nothing if not authentic, she hewed to her blues roots, she didn’t want to sell out, and she didn’t, but her debut barely sold.

But then came “Give It Up.” Suddenly Raitt was writing her own songs, and “Nothing Seems to Matter” and “You Told Me Baby” are stellar. But so are the covers. Most notably the second side opener, Joel Zoss’s “Too Long at the Fair.”

“Won’t you come and take me home

I’ve been too long at the fair

And lord I just can’t stand it anymore”

Until 1991’s “Luck of the Draw,” “Too Long at the Fair” was my favorite Bonnie Raitt track and “Give it Up” my favorite Bonnie Raitt album. And in those days you made it via word of mouth and the road, radio oftentimes came last, Bonnie developed an audience, she could tour, but the average person still had no idea who she was. Raitt was anything but slick, you believed every word she sang, she touched your soul.

But not so much on the follow-up, 1973’s “Takin My Time.” “Takin My Time” had a much slicker sound, it was anything but rough. There were a number of excellent tracks, most notably “I Feel the Same” with its chicken pickin’, but it moved the needle on Bonnie’s career just a wee bit. Now she’d made three albums and she had an audience, but she was far from a star, she may have been enamored of Little Feat, but even that band was rarely played on FM radio at the time, and Bonnie was heard only on college and adventurous stations. So Bonnie took a hard turn to a soft sound with producer Jerry Ragavoy and ended up nowhere, neither fish nor fowl, she didn’t satiate her hard core audience and made no inroads with others. However “Streetlights” did contain a track that eventually became a classic, her cover of John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” but it was anything but AM radio fodder, even AOR fodder, “Streetlights” was a detour that cost Bonnie’s career momentum. Yet if you were a fan you bought it without hearing it first and the opening track was the best, breezy yet meaningful, a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “That Song About the Midway.”

“I met you on a midway at a fair last year”

With no prior knowledge it seemed like a carny story. Yes, a tale of traveling gypsies. This was before we knew that almost every song has a backstory, and I learned that backstory Thursday night.

2

David Crosby is very intelligent, yet self-satisfied and not always informed on the issues. He’s been wrong on digital music from the get-go. He says streaming does not pay, could it be that no one is listening?

Let’s take “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” his 1971 solo LP, the worst of the initial four band members’. I bought it when it came out, it’s interesting, but does not deserve the accolades it has recently gotten. I mean if you’re really stoned… But the truth is “Music is Love” has ten million streams on Spotify and three other tracks are in seven figures but the rest are in six figures, shy of a million, considerably. Now I know that a million SOUNDS like a lot, but it isn’t. Forget that a lot of songs on Spotify have a billion streams, even two billion, the truth is if it weren’t for Spotify, digital music, no one at all would be listening to “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” because it would be out of print, completely unavailable, there’s not enough physical space to stock the entire history of rock and roll in a store, never mind the fact that you get paid ad infinitum on streaming, it’s an endless annuity, unlike a sale, whose money you probably blew.

Also, there’s a good chance “If I Could Only Remember My Name” is in the red, it cost so much to make, and with the anemic royalty rates of yore…

As for the hits, with Stills, Nash & Young… Let’s see, there are four members splitting a low royalty rate, I can see why you’re not making much, but the problem lies with the label, not Spotify. As for the publishing…it’s so valuable that Crosby could sell it to Irving Azoff for seven figures, so…

But Crosby has a new album out. He’s made five records in the past seven years, a track record no other classic rocker can equal. He’s embraced the new market wholeheartedly, that’s the new paradigm, you record new music, go on the road to promote it, and then you repeat the process. But it gets better, CROSBY CAN STILL SING! And the dirty little secret is so many stars of yore cannot, at least not very well, even though they’re on the road and people are paying to see them. I pulled up “River Rise” and was stunned, I didn’t want to turn it off immediately, I wanted to continue to listen to it. And that’s the reason David Crosby was on Howard Stern last week, promoting his new work, and I was listening Thursday night on the SiriusXM app as I was hiking, and the truth is Crosby is always fascinating to listen to.

Now if you want to be particular about it, and why not, as good as Crosby’s new music is, it could benefit from some money, to afford a first class studio with a first class engineer, the tracks sound just a little too homemade, the choruses with harmonies are great, but a pro would do just a bit better with his voice, use studio tricks so it sounded a bit less naked and alone.

And the new album, ironically entitled “For Free,” won’t make any money, but it’s a calling card, for the fans who still want to see Crosby on the road.

So Howard’s wants to get Crosby, Stills & Nash back together again. But the truth is they were back together and I saw them and I’d like to tell you the vocals were up to par, but they were not. Stills can play, but… And Stills is the star, David owns up to this, endorses it, seems like we’re gonna have to wait until Stephen Stills dies before he gets the accolades he deserves, before he gets into the pantheon.

And despite all this talk about the new album, Howard continued to ask questions about the past, and the most interesting dialogue was about Joni Mitchell, Crosby said they weren’t close, and that she’d written a breakup song about him. HUH? Which song was it?

3

Crosby set the scene. There were twenty people together in a house, probably in the canyon. And Joni showed up and said she had a new song, and everybody wanted to hear it, so she sat down with her guitar and played the song. Twice.

You see Crosby is sitting there, getting embarrassed, because everybody knows it’s about him, she’s breaking up with him via this song. Crosby and Stern go on about this, and finally it’s revealed, the song is “That Song About the Midway.”

Hmm…

I bought a new copy of “Clouds” in the early eighties, at a swap meet, it was still covered in shrinkwrap. I didn’t own it previously, one only has so much money. And the best track is “I Don’t Know Where I Stand,” which in retrospect is probably about Crosby too. And the opener, “Tin Angel,” is superb, the opposite of a Stones album intro, quiet and introspective as opposed to in-your-face. And the album ends with Joni’s take on “Both Sides Now,” which Judy Collins had already turned into a monster hit, and track four was the original “That Song About the Midway.”

I’m a big believer that the writer does the song best, but not in this case, then again Raitt and Mitchell’s versions are very different, same chord changes, same lyrics, but completely dissimilar feel. Raitt’s is an ensemble, slick, the sound supersedes the lyrics, the story seems to be told in retrospect, it doesn’t feel like it just happened yesterday. But Joni’s original is essentially just her and her guitar, and it’s her pure voice, it’s not treated like Bonnie’s is, like I’d like Crosby’s to be on his new work, it’s not a woman on stage in a theatre, it’s a singer in a coffee house, playing to forty people, it’s made to be heard, but it’s personal, it cuts right to the gut, but I still thought it was fiction, I couldn’t figure it out, until Crosby and Stern started talking about it.

So it took me the entire hike to finish the interview, the longer the better, don’t cut it short if you’ve got an interesting guest, you want to cover the ground, and when I got into my car I pulled up “That Song About the Midway” and listened with new ears.

“I met you on a midway at a fair last year

And you stood out like a ruby in a black man’s ear”

On the road, they met on the road, as part of the traveling circus of music performance, at least that’s how I remember it. And Crosby was a star, wearing his capes and…

“You were playing on the horses, you were playing on the guitar strings

You were playing like a devil wearing wings

Wearing wings you looked so grand, wearing wings”

Yes, Crosby was playing the field, his music his calling card, he was an angel, at least on the outside, but the inside?

“Do you tape them to your shoulders just to sing

Can you fly

I heard you can, can you fly

Like an eagle doin’ your hunting from the sky”

Well, these are fake wings, taped on, easily removed. Meanwhile, he’s flying like a bird of prey, circling in on…women.

“I followed with the sideshows to another town

And I found you in a trailer on the camping grounds”

Yes, every act has their own schedule, they rarely meet up on the road, but sometimes, missing their significant other, one will change their route, fly in for a little of that human touch.

“You were betting on some lover, you were shaking up the dice

And I thought I saw you cheating once or twice, once or twice”

I literally thought it was about gambling, but now, rounding the Sunset curve by Mandeville Canyon, I finally knew the truth, yes Crosby was cheating on Joni Mitchell!

“You were betting on some lover, you were shaking up the dice

And I thought I saw you cheating once or twice, once or twice”

Whew!!! Now it was perfectly clear, I could see the scene, Joni was the faithful one, we always hear about her leaving relationships, but in this case… It was a dagger straight to Crosby’s heart, it’s very clear.

“I heard your bid once or twice

Were you wondering was the gamble worth the price

Pack it in

I heard you did, pack it in

Was it hard to fold a hand you knew could win”

She was committed, was it really worth it to screw around and lose her? Did he not foresee the consequences?

“So lately you’ve been hiding, it was somewhere in the news”

Cheaters always hide, you can’t get a hold of them, they’re embarrassed! They hate confrontations. However they say adultery is not about the person you do it with, but the person you’re involved with, and if you only told your significant other your issues, progress could be made, instead you pull away in this sneaky way, like a weasel.

“And I’m still at these races with my ticket stubs and my blues”

When you’re deceived, when you’re abused like this, you feel so bad, you were ignorant, out of the loop, you’re still here, but they’re long gone.

She’s tired, she feels like she worked overtime on the relationship and it was all a waste of time. And then she pushes the dagger in further:

“And I envy you the valley that you’ve found”

I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY!

And they never are, because you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.