Tune in today, May 4th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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It only happens on Saturday night.

Honestly, during the week I jump between Howard Stern and the news, I just can’t slow down enough for music. Then again, if those don’t appeal I’ll go through the presets, 60s on 6, the Beatles Channel, for some reason the more familiar resonates in this scattered world.

But I did not know “Train to Nowhere.”

This first happened a few weeks back. I was driving back from hiking and I was listening to the radio and I suddenly felt like I’d jumped back in time, like it was the seventies and I was back in that era, something akin to smellavision, as in all the feelings I had back then returned. I was listening to the tunes and it felt like I was in college, or working at a summer camp, or traveling and…I haven’t had those exact same feelings in eons. I mean I was alone in my car, there wasn’t much traffic, the music took me back, to be honest that’s why I wrote about “Strange Brew,” it was playing on Deep Tracks and it was like I was listening to it back in 1968.

Now on Saturday night the news is lousy. CNN is on some theme programming, MSNBC…I don’t know what they’re up to, they keep changing weekend format. And I enjoy the car guys on NPR, the only problem is Tom’s dead, and many of the problems people call in about are no longer relevant, cars need so much less service today, especially electric ones. And I’ll go to the POTUS channel, but it’s on reruns, and political talk that is not of the moment is hard to listen to. And the BBC…sometimes you hit, sometimes you don’t. Same deal with Bloomberg. As for Fox? Even its weekend programming is second-rate. So, driving on the weekends, I always listen to music. And last Saturday night, two days ago, what I heard on Classic Vinyl was too obvious, so I switched to Deep Tracks and they were playing “One World (Not Three)” by the Police, is that really a deep track, not to me, I know it by heart. But just when I parked my car, the station started playing a song I didn’t know, and when I started hiking and pulled up the station…it was still playing the Police song, you see the streaming app is behind the radio, which I actually like because I don’t miss anything in the interim, but for some reason Saturday it seemed like there was a five minute gap, and usually it’s much shorter, so I was listening to the Police song and it was just too much, but I hung in there.

Savoy Brown… I’ve written about the band before. It’s famous primarily for being the start of Foghat, unjustly maligned, if only we had straight ahead boogie rock today. Lonesome Dave was just a secondary member of Savoy Brown, but in Foghat!! And Savoy Brown constantly played the Fillmore East, I never saw them, but they seemed to be billed constantly, about as much as this band AUM, which I think they used to fill holes in the bill, when they needed a third act.

So I’m hiking up the trail and finally “Train to Nowhere” comes back, and it’s just as satisfying.

“You can catch it if you want to ride

Don’t you worry if it pass you by”

But it’s not about the lyrics, it’s about the guitar! They don’t even make records like this anymore, with this sound, which was bedrock back in the late sixties, a feature of British blues bands.

It’s funny, so much of what I hear makes me want to turn it off, but these notes, this sound, this groove immediately hooked me, and it was not like the song was a big hit, but in the pocket. Actually, I checked it on my phone, maybe I was out of the loop, maybe it was an FM smash, but it wasn’t, but it was the opening track on the band’s 1969 album “Blue Matter,” WHICH IS NOT EVEN ON STREAMING SERVICES!

And truthfully, the vocal is imperfect, it resembles nothing so much as Canned Heat, but maybe we can go up the country on that road again.

You see there’s not that much on “Train to Nowhere.” It’s the band, the guitar is not soft, but there’s a lot of air. And the drums come in and it’s got that driving, solid Cream feel.

“Train I ride goes to god knows where

I don’t know and I don’t care”

And I’m thinking how nobody writes train songs anymore, that era has passed. But it’s hard to care about the rest of the world, especially when Kim Simmonds starts to wail two minutes in, it’s simple, unadorned, yet so right, and the rhythm section sustains the groove. This is not music made for TikTok, nor for video, just to listen to, not dancing, not standing, but with your ass parked, on a couch, a chair… It’s all about the music, even though it’s so simple. It’s a fulfilling trip, you don’t need to multitask, it’s enough, you go on a singular adventure, it’s just you and the music, and that’s more than enough, and you don’t want the mood to be broken.

“If you ain’t got money don’t despair

‘Cause you don’t have to pay no fare”

We all need money, but not like we do now, income inequality was much less of a thing, you could make it on minimum wage, your defining characteristic could be that you listened to music, knew all the players, followed the sound like you used to follow baseball. And everybody playing had reached puberty, and had been practicing for years, to be good you had to.

“Ride the wrong rails live your life in vain”

Now if you’re sitting in front of your computer with hellzapoppin’ endless input, chances are “Train to Nowhere” won’t resonate. Then again, that intro guitar is magical. But the track is not in-your-face, it does not demand attention, rather you hear the sound and turn your head, wanting to know where the music is coming from, you need to get closer, you need to luxuriate in it.

And it’s over half a century since this track was cut. A longer period of time than the one between Robert Johnson and its recording. But through the miracle of streaming music, it’s readily available, it’s right here, right now.

Can you slow your life down enough to enjoy “Train to Nowhere”?

It’s hard these days, but it was the rule back then, there was limited input, we could take time to explore, to go deeper, we were more open.

So I’m sitting here two days later and I pull up “Train to Nowhere” and my head starts involuntarily nodding along, it’s doing so now, I can’t tell you the science, but I will tell you I know the feeling, and the feeling never changes, it’s not one we’re selling today, but that’s just because like the Aztecs, the Greeks, we’ve lost the classic formula, only today it’s hiding in plain sight.

Maybe marijuana helped. Dope slows you down, whereas drink makes you verbal and ecstasy makes you manic. That’s another reason what they now call “cannabis,” for fear of negative connotations, spread far and wide, it was part of the culture, it was part of the music, today it’s mainly about looking cool, it’s a door to nowhere, just a dark room where you’re disconnected from this painful world. But in the dark back then you were not sitting there somnambulantly, you were on this aural adventure, a trip, better than any ride at Disneyland, any VR experience, it was so good that you had to go to the gig, you sacrificed your life to the sound, it was a train to somewhere, that somehow doesn’t exist anymore.

“Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe – Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.”: https://nyti.ms/3xLGGvm

I read this this morning and I went INSANE!

I’m not one of those people who sleeps with their phone by their bed, if I did I’d never get any sleep. As for those who e-mail me telling me not to send missives late at night… Do you really get that little incoming? And if you want to be available for emergencies do you really not know how to adjust your settings so you’re not awakened by interruptions of a lesser sort?

Ah, power users. David Pogue’s contract with O’Reilly for the “Missing Manuals” expired and he now has a new series, “Unlocked.” Over the holidays I read the books on the Mac and the iPhone. Genius. If you don’t read the manual, you’re unaware of so much you can do. Like in Big Sur, the Do Not Disturb feature. Yes, just like on your iPhone, you can click on Do Not Disturb and all banners and sounds are silenced, there is no incoming, so you can concentrate. I use this every damn day, during Zoom calls, but mostly while I’m writing, otherwise I can’t concentrate. Check it out: https://apple.co/3tdFCgr Also, the Pogue book will tell you how to put the Do Not Disturb icon in the menu bar, readily available always. As for the iPhone…did you know you could ask Siri for your passwords? Try it, amazing!

So all this is to say the first thing I do every morning is to unplug my iPhone in the kitchen, take it to the bathroom and catch up. I’m sorry if you’re grossed out, but I watch these foreign TV shows where high school students sleep over at each other’s houses and have sex and the parents don’t bat an eyelash. Can you imagine how much healthier our nation would be if it stopped being so puritanical and admitted we all have bodily functions and desires? Don’t hold your breath.

So I’m reading this article about the failure to reach herd immunity because of the anti-vax camp and…I want to write but will it have any impact? And then I think we’ve got to get the country artists on board. But I Google, and it turns out they already are, they made a PSA which has…325 views! A kid farting in his basement has more views! Check it out: https://bit.ly/3gZewYa

What this tells us is the Academy of Country Music has no idea how to reach its audience, never mind impact it. And it’s not only the ACM, the entertainment brass is so inured to the old methods that it’s lost touch with the majority of the public. Grammy and Oscar ratings keep tanking and they think it’s about the show…no, it’s about the CONTENT! Most people don’t care! You may call it “Record of the Year,” but I’ve never heard it and have no desire to listen to it. Think about this, when it comes to entertainment most people are anti-vaxxers, they can’t be swayed, because in this case they’ve been turned off by crap or are deep into something more appealing or both. BUT NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGES THIS!

I could write about how insane the anti-vaxxers are, how the vaccine didn’t work for me and now I’m subject to their bad behavior, BUT I CAN’T REACH THEM! I’d just be preaching to the converted, and how exciting is that?

But think about that. The anti-vaxxers have an infrastructure appealing to them, and that’s all they listen to. Not only Fox News, but the Daily Caller and so much more. There’s no need to read news that you don’t like. And the algorithm twins, Facebook and Google, have reinforced this. Let me tell you right now, America is going down the drain, and it’s our own damn fault, we let these internet giants disrupt our nation and around the world authoritarians are taking over, because otherwise you’ve just got chaos, nothing gets done. Think about that, Biden wants an infrastructure bill passed, and the right wants to debate the definition of infrastructure, it’s more worried about appealing to its base than what’s right. Do you think they do this in China? Of course not! And a whole hell of a lot gets done in China, but in America, you have the freedom to be an uninformed idiot, freedom not to worry about the greater good, and we end up with gridlock. And false protests. You want to recall Newsom? Waste our California money to do so, there’s no way in hell a Republican will replace him, no way, but I’ve got to pay for you to stroke your tiny unit.

No one can reach everybody, NO ONE! But systems keep operating like they can. The movie business…pre-Covid it raises its prices to keep grosses up while attendance flags. And then it focuses on foreign exhibition and for a while it works but now domestic films dominate in China. Everybody’s selling out today to ruin themselves tomorrow. Kinda like the online “influencers” who forgo educations because they believe their momentary fame is forever. Why not ask Milli Vanilli? Oh, Rob is dead and Fab…who knows what even happened to that guy!

It’s like our nation is comprised of 340 million cars with the pedal to the metal heading straight towards the cliff. And so much of what we’re told is just plain wrong.

So when it comes to music… Do it your way, focus on art not cash. You’re never going to be as rich as Jeff Bezos, but you can make him squirm.

If you’re involved in politics, it’s all about grass roots, going door to door, just ask Stacey Abrams.

And if you make any progress, expect the losers to move the goalposts. Or to double-down. Do you hear the record companies saying they’ll increase streaming payouts? No, they like that Spotify is getting the heat, just like you think Ticketmaster is the criminal when the truth is it’s the acts themselves. If people can’t understand this, what are the odds they can understand the big issues? And you can’t complain about anti-vaxxers if you’re bitching about streaming payouts, think about that.

As for vaccinations, the best article I read on this came from CNN:

“Covid-19 vaccine myths: These reasons for not getting a shot don’t hold up. In fact, they’ll set the US back”: https://cnn.it/3xL2wPS

Send this and the “New York Times” article above to every anti-vaxxer you know, each and every one! Forget all the “science” coming down from the top, how you can’t change people’s minds. Of course you can! By making them feel like a minority! Everyone wants to be a member of the group, freedom is no match for ostracization. If people were inundated with these messages, were taught that their reluctance to get vaccinated is hurting everybody else, not only themselves, maybe they’ll re-evaluate. What people don’t realize is opinions switch on a dime. If door to door canvassing got people to vote against Trump, why do you think it won’t work against the anti-vaxxers!

As for Rupert Murdoch, like Trump you’ve got to know he’s been vaccinated. As a matter of fact, if you Google you’ll find out he got his first shot back in December. Yet he lets Tucker Carlson spew falsehoods ad infinitum, stirring up an ignorant base that continues to act and vote against its interests under a false conception of freedom. Words have power. Thank god Tucker Carlson can’t reach the majority of the population, but when it comes to herd immunity we need 90% of people to get the shot and he’s messing it up for all of us!

Never forget, you don’t shame the mouthpiece, you shame the deep pocket. Rupert is married to Mick Jagger’s old flame, Jerry Hall, he wants to be included, how about an anti-Rupert song? No, we’re too busy singing about inanities to focus on the big issues. Where’s the money in an anti-Rupert song, where are the branding possibilities?

And it’s always someone else’s responsibility.

No, the truth is it’s yours. And you’re the only one who can save yourself, via action. Power now comes from the ground up, not only in politics but the arts. But those at the top don’t want you to know this, they want to keep you uninformed and dumb. And no one wants any responsibility and everyone’s afraid of losing a potential fan. But not the corporations, they take a stand and lose real money but the artists are wimps. Yes, Delta lost a Georgia tax break and you’re unwilling to risk the fandom of someone who doesn’t like you that much to begin with?

Things are not only rotten in Denmark, they’re rotten in America too. The smell is overwhelming. We can’t rely on our politicians and talking heads, we certainly can’t rely on musicians, we’ve got to take action ourselves. Don’t shut up about vaccines, it’s literally life and death, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise!

1

You absolutely must listen to the third episode of the Foundering podcast on TikTok. I don’t care if you’re an agent or a promoter, a label executive or a wannabe act, this will set you straight on where we’re going and where we’re not.

“TikTok Redefined the Economics of Fame – Episode three of ‘Foundering: The TikTok Story’ explains how the startup chooses who gets famous, which videos go viral and which trends blow up.”: https://bloom.bg/2Rjj00K

You see there’s a great bifurcation in music today. All the focus has been on streaming payouts, when the ball has moved, now it’s all about the kind of music that’s being made!

I know, I know, that does not correlate with the news, but when did the news ever tell you where you were going to go?

This podcast episode will tell you that TikTok is active with its users in a way that YouTube and Facebook/Instagram are not. Those are old models, TikTok is new. TikTok is consumer facing. Sure, the other platforms depend on users, but they’re hands-off, they provide the tools and then it’s a free-for-all. But not on TikTok. TikTok handpicks its stars, nurtures them, provides information to allow them to maintain their stardom and does not close out newbies. Yes, once a platform reaches critical mass, if you’re late to the party you’ve got no chance. Sign on to Facebook for the first time today, good luck building a friend base, that was something people did ten years ago. Same deal on Twitter. The stars have been anointed, and even though a few new ones may be minted, the odds are really long. But TikTok focuses on building new stars, otherwise the creator class, in this case the hoi polloi posters, gets discouraged and moves on.

You see TikTok knows its creators are the stars. They are the focus, they are number one, they supersede rights holders and advertisers, everybody in the ecosystem. And the creators can get rich. Come on, try to make it as a musician, you’re gonna be broke, quite possibly forever, your odds are better online, and fewer skills are required.

Now TikTok satiates the music companies, the site is music dependent, but when you listen you’ll learn that labels were reticent. This is what has hampered music for decades, there’s so much money in it that those involved are averse to risk, whereas art is always about throwing the old over for the new. And believe me, if you’re making bucks on TikTok, you’re reinventing the wheel every damn day, you’ve got to post content that is appealing all the time, or you’re forgotten. That is today’s internet paradigm, something oldsters rebel against. If you’re not posting content constantly, you’re never going to make money online, look to other avenues. And the amazing thing is there are other avenues, in the real world.

So the record labels are businesses. They don’t create trends, they follow them, and they go where the bucks are. And before the internet, there was a very narrow sieve of exploitation. If you didn’t have a record deal, you were SOL. But today, you don’t need the label’s imprimatur, you can just start. That doesn’t mean you can get fans and get rich, that just means the barrier to entry is low and some genius will figure out how to make it.

But now you don’t focus on the platform. This is what all the wankers complaining about streaming music payments don’t get. That paradigm has sailed. With the twentieth century. Now it’s about the music itself.

Let’s be clear, TikTok is not about the music, but the performances. But even more significant, only a snippet of a song is used. Which is why you’ll find the tracks in the Spotify Top 50 have brief intros, if they have intros at all, and they’re laden with hooks. But as we make the tracks ever more bite-sized, the more we open the playing field to other music.

Let’s start with the money. You pay your dues until you make it. And you make it much slower in the real world as opposed to the virtual world. It’s kind of like education. You can make bread on TikTok without schooling, but you can’t get a job in the real world sans degree. You see TikTok fame is an extension of Kardashian fame. But now you don’t even have to know Ryan Seacrest to get you a TV show. YOU DON’T WANT TO GET A TV SHOW, THAT’S NOT WHERE IT’S HAPPENING!

2

You complain the Spotify Top 50 is crap, no-talent music made by committee for those with challenged ears. And to a great degree you’re right. Hell, try to find a hit written and performed by one person, it’s an impossibility, never mind the insurance of adding a featured performer to the track. Popular music is swirling down an ever-deepening drain, and if you’re complaining about this, your head is up your rear end, you should be jumping for joy, so much of the landscape is open for exploitation! And one thing is for sure, the major labels don’t want it. They operate under internet metrics, but not all art can be quantified this way, all listeners don’t go around liking online. What I mean is…

If you want to be successful, don’t go where everybody else is, blaze your own path!

Once again, I must remind you, very few people can make a living making music. Don’t get too enthused, because odds are you’ll never make it. You have to be a near genius creatively to make it, and most people are not. Not everybody can be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and not everybody can be a hit act. But someone can be. And not all the hit acts are in the Spotify Top 50.

And too many other acts are focused on radio genres. Active Rock is very active, in that it’s loud and in-your-face, they’re not playing the equivalent of Crosby, Stills & Nash on Active Rock.

What I’m saying here is…

To focus on the music.

When everybody else goes short, you go long. Now is the best time ever to create a long track. Demonstrating your skill, entrancing the listener. These tracks grow via word of mouth, not via hit pathways. A perfect example, Alice In Chains’ “Rooster.” It’s slow and dirgey and over six minutes long, but it’s fantastic, ethereal, hard to burn out on. Or Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song,” from “Houses of the Holy,” that’s the track people e-mail me about the most, and it’s seven minutes and thirty nine seconds long! And neither of these tracks are about instant hooks, never mind multiple hooks…

You see what is outside today is inside tomorrow. But in today’s world, there’s not just one pathway to success, but many.

The key today is live performance. That’s where you feel the music. That’s where you get touched by it. And the truth is you’ve got to pay a lot of dues to get good enough to get people’s attention when they’ve never heard your music previously, that doesn’t happen out of the box, but if you can… Today’s world is all about experiences, streaming music on demand is not an experience. On some level TikTok is, proving that the online recording game is now subsidiary to the layers of creativity poured on top!

3

Want to break through today?

Form a blues band. Yes, someone in the act has got to be able to play guitar, and the vocals must be excellent and the songwriting must be stellar, but if all three align, you’d be a breath of fresh air talked about everywhere. The problem today is most people focus on fame before songs, and people don’t realize we only have room for excellence, for greatness, if you’re not the best songwriter of all time, you can’t have Bob Dylan’s voice and expect to be a star.

The truth is active music listeners are looking for a cornucopia of sounds. Even more they’re looking to be affected by the music. Today’s hit music slides right off of you, it’s sauce for your efforts to hook up. Today’s music is secondary, not primary. And it’s all about the money. Everybody in music talks about the money, even people who’ve never made a record, that’s the focus, but that’s never the focus in art. If you don’t love it for itself, stop. And if you love it and take the public on an exquisite journey the doors are open!

But for far too long the best and the brightest have avoided music, the odds are too long, and innovation is abhorred. But the key is to use the notes, the instruments, to create something new and different, not me-too and expect a new result.

You see today’s music is so in pursuit of the dollar, a platform for branding more than standing alone, that it satiates fewer listeners.

And look at the concert grosses. They’re rarely packed with those in the Spotify Top 50. And if they are, they’re usually different acts the following year.

Yes, you can get depressed learning about TikTok or you can be inspired. Everything you love about music has been excised. How long a journey can you go on? Sure, the TikTok clip can be replayed ad infinitum, but let’s also be clear it’s about the trick, not the music.

As systems become ever more digital, you want to go analog. Even acoustic. Look at movies, they chased the dollar with cartoons/superheroes and the end result is that most people never go to the theatre anymore, never mind watch the Oscars, they’re too busy consuming humanity-based longform content online.

The medium changes the message. But now the medium has resulted in music that’s all about brief hooks, which is ultimately background, disposable. Never in the last fifty years has the landscape been more wide open. Now is not the time to complain, now is the time to innovate!

The public is all ears.

But only for the new and different.

That’s your responsibility. Only a few are up to the task. But those few will be bigger than all the rest. We saw this when FM superseded AM. Sure, there continued to be AM hits, but all the action, the money, the respect, the gravitas was in the FM acts.

The Spotify Top 50 is AM.

The world at large is FM.

FM started small and took over. That’s what’s going to happen again. Look at the rest of the world, the non-musical landscape, it’s endless niches, many of them profitable, why should there be only one profitable niche in music?

THERE ISN’T!