The media is not prepared for a Democrat who doesn’t apologize.

For over twenty years, the Republicans have set the agenda and the Democrats have reacted. And you can’t win playing defense the entire time.

As for the media?

It lost a lot of credibility supporting the Bush (Cheney) incursions/wars in the Middle East. It didn’t root out the facts, that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs, and was so fearful of appearing pacifist, it was rah-rah and lost its role as an independent arbiter. Ironically, at the same time TV and internet news became partisan.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were squabbling within, and at the same time losing control of their constituency, and their pulse on America. Let’s not forget, globalization flourished under Democrats, and globalization is inevitable, but there was no provision for shoring up the lives of those displaced, who ultimately realized the Democrats were mostly talk and little action and then switched parties to the Republicans, who were as angry as them, despite still being in service to the fat cats.

That’s income inequality, goosed by St. Reagan. Our country has never been the same since. Because if you earn a billion dollars, you think you’re better than the rest of us. Come on, would we be listening to Bill Gates if he didn’t have all that money? No, it’d be some academic, someone with history in the field, but in America today, money trumps everything.

So the Democrats detach from their base. It is an issue of elitism. Yes, the elite ran the Republican agenda too, but they mostly operated behind the scenes, a lot of them inherited their wealth and position, whereas the Democrats worked hard to get where they were, via education and innovation, and they had contempt for the little people, but they did not realize the little people knew it, and couldn’t be controlled.

So the country becomes radicalized technologically. We have a government that cannot function in today’s digital world, if for no other reason than elected officials do not understand how it works, are not familiar with its ins and outs. Happens all the time, Congress brings in techies for hearings too late, after the fact, and then nothing happens. Facebook buys WhatsApp and nobody in D.C. seems to understand the power of that platform, maybe because its strength was overseas, where it ruled. And those in D.C. thought the aughts would continue forever, with new hardware and new apps, not realizing it was a game of musical chairs with the end result being a handful of gargantuan companies that became too hard to mess with. Come on, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon…they’re bigger than the country. China realizes this, and the irony is these companies completely back down, to stay in business, because money is king, but in the U.S. not only do they operate unfettered, they act with impunity, they push back, or pay a little lip service and then go back to their heinous ways.

Gateways… Amazon is where people do research for products, not Google. And if you don’t play by Amazon’s rules, you can’t get on the platform and the chance of your business being successful is almost nil. Google truly controls information. But it’s all in the algorithm, no human is involved. And the search engine got so good that almost no one goes beyond the first or second result. So if you’re below… Furthermore, everybody gets different results, even to the same damn question! Microsoft misses so much but gets rid of Ballmer and focuses on its corporate customers and the cloud and is about to overtake Apple as the world’s most valuable company. As for Apple… The truth is it’s very profitable, but waning in influence. Their handsets, their cash cow, may have a healthy market share in the U.S., but elsewhere? As for their App Store rules…they only matter because Apple punches far above its weight in apps, because the elite are on iPhones. As for the hoi polloi on Android? They can’t even update the operating system and their phones and app stores are riddled with viruses and scams, but Android is not as sexy as Apple, so it doesn’t get the attention, those in D.C. are too stupid to look at the facts as opposed to focusing on the hubbub. As for Facebook? For four years we’ve known it’s a repository for inaccurate information, and that it thrives on sensationalism, but what has changed since the election of Trump? Almost nothing!

So you’ve got the media and D.C. believing they’re in touch with both business and the public when that is patently untrue. Come on, the media completely missed Trump’s rise in 2016. Anybody who actually interacted with his constituency was aware of the strength of his position, he channeled people’s anger while Hillary was oblivious. And then she labels people deplorables and all hell breaks loose and she apologizes…when the truth is they were and still are deplorables, look at America today, where ignorance and agendas based on falsehoods are badges of honor! Hillary came from her husband’s camp, triangulating, never go with your gut, get everybody’s advice and then try to appeal to the most people, which has been history since the advent of the internet. Hillary couldn’t own that our country was divided and be the leader of one side, as a result her mushy, uninformed campaign was doomed. When things are bad, you need a leader. And many Republicans thought things were bad and we got Trump.

Who never ever apologized in his life. He came from the world of a controlled spotlight into the glare of the world stage and didn’t change a whit. Come on, so much of what you read about entertainment is just complete B.S. No one calls the perpetrators on this crap because they don’t believe it really matters. That’s Trump’s background. Smoke and mirrors. But he ascends to the throne and acts the same damn way!

But even worse, the establishment, the press, believes he will play rationally and abide by the rules. And fearful of being beaten up by the right, the left wing media prints false equivalencies, so fearful of looking biased when the media on the other side of the fence so clearly is.

And then the younger generation comes in. AOC.

Funny, she doesn’t back down either. And what those who decry her don’t understand is many on the left, especially those skewing young, finally believe they have someone who is fighting for them. And, an educated woman of color! Forever, woman and minorities have been told to shut up and wait their turn. The white establishment even neutered affirmative action. But AOC doesn’t care about any of that, she jumps to the head of the class, ignores the rules. And the funny thing is as everybody keeps beating up on her, both the left and the right, it’s only the right who glom on to the paradigm wholeheartedly. Ergo, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Two wackadoodles who you can’t take seriously on the surface, but they represent their base so they got elected. What do we hear on the left? Play to the center! We’ve got to appeal to everybody. Let’s do it the old way. Meanwhile, after last November’s election AOC doubles-down and says if only they employed her playbook they would have won…which was utilization of the internet. But the old pols playing by the old rules still spend money on TV, reaching ever fewer, but since it skews old and a greater percentage of old people vote, they say it’s the right thing. It’d be like playing in internet land with no knowledge of it. Actually, that’s exactly what it was!

And this same media said Biden had no chance, and then he won. Proving, once again, the media has got its head up its ass, if you’re looking for someone to tell you where it’s going, don’t listen to a reporter, the talking heads on TV are even worse.

So, Biden gets elected and…

Goes his own way.

But stumbles on infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the story in the media is 2022. They can’t stop weighing the odds, following the horse race, as if that’s the most important story. Actually, we’ve got a government, what is happening now!

And then comes Afghanistan. Something the mainstream media ignored, believing it didn’t garner eyeballs, didn’t sell advertising. But suddenly it becomes a sexy story, it’s war, and people are trying to get out, and there’s a suicide bomb, it’s a phenomenal movie, and it’s real!

As for the right, they’ve been waiting for this, they see it as Benghazi on steroids, forgetting that they’re talking out of both sides of their mouth. Save the interpreters, after voting not to! Stay in Afghanistan, after Trump makes a deal to leave! It’s so myopic as to be humorous, if the American public were not so ill-informed sans the power of analysis that it can be blown this way or that like a feather.

And in slow motion, with constant coverage, the Afghanistan situation looks bad. Everybody’s beating up on Biden, the left and right press, the Democrats and the Republicans. Everybody’s opining his tenure is now hobbled, it’s over for the Democrats. Biden should be at home, paralyzed, wondering how he lost the favor of the left wing insiders and gave fodder to the right wing haters. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT HE DID!

First Biden says he owns it.

And then yesterday he comes out and declares victory. Yes, he got us out on time and did a good job of it. He cites facts and figures. He addresses naysayers, saying if he started withdrawing earlier it wouldn’t have made any difference, might have even been worse. No one foresaw this, no one! Biden was supposed to be a senile oldster with no backbone who delegated all power, who was clueless as to what was going on. One expected him to cower in the indignity and become completely neutered. So what does he do? Unlike Trump, he doesn’t go after his attackers so much as fly above it all. The most powerful person on the planet with the most information speaking from his heart and mind and telling the truth from his perspective. And he owned the news cycle. To a great degree he quashed the blowback. Especially since so much of this is opinion anyway. I mean some guy on TV says Biden cocked it up and we should have stayed and then the guy himself comes out, without worrying about the effect of his words on every single person and says no, that’s not the way it is, he did a phenomenal job. Trump might say something like that, but never a Democrat.

And in addition, he pooh-poohs the old mantra, the old armed forces on the ground mantra. No, the new war will be fought in cyberspace, against the Russians and Chinese. And if they need to take action they’ve got drones. Meanwhile, every elected official dependent upon military pork for their state to keep their job is quaking in their boots.

And Biden isn’t worried about the rearguard, but he’s not insulting them either. He’s moving forward, but he’s also got his finger on the pulse more than anybody in the media, he knows the public, those whose kids actually go into the military, are glad we’re the hell out of there. People worried about budgets can’t fathom the twenty years of spending, someone spoke English!

So what does this mean?

Not that those on the right will embrace Biden, they hate him in principle, he’s a Democrat. But that maybe the tables will be leveled, maybe the left will realize it’s got more power, more room to move, than previously thought.

As for the right, it’s got Gaetz, who stays in power, even though the Democrats fire anybody who even looks at a woman too long, and Boebert, whose husband made over $450,000 in each of the last two years yet didn’t put it in her election filings, stating that his income was “N/A.” And you wondered how Shooters Grill stayed in business… It was all a front, a way for her to boost her image, it was a failed business from day one, and now it’s out of business. But the Democrats aren’t zeroing in on this, she’s still in power. The supposed woman of the people is anything but. Then again, those who voted for her will say at least she’s not a Democrat.

Yes, the Republicans play by different rules than the Democrats, I’m not even sure they’re playing the same game! The Republicans circle the wagons, get on the same page, and will do anything to win. The Democrats fight over the making of the sausage and when they’re done no one is happy and they can never get on the same page and no one can get everybody in line. But even worse, the rules are out the window for the right… Voting law protection? Forget it! Meanwhile, there’s a Supreme Court that doesn’t represent the public which was tilted right by Mitch McConnell that as of this writing is allowing Texas’s six week abortion rule to stay in place. The Republicans are like insects, who never stop, they don’t win nationally, they organize locally, there’s more than one way to win. And they form the Federalist Society, they play the long game, they’ve got a whole host of young presidential candidates in the wings, from DeSantis to Noem to Haley to Cruz. Who do we have on the left? Pretty boy Newsom who is in the middle of an recall election. Buttigieg, who the more you investigate his tenure as mayor the worse it looks. But he went to Harvard and then into the military! Trump skated from the military and Boebert is a high school dropout. And they both won!

So Biden is being a leader, and the Democrats haven’t experienced this in eons. St. Obama was so busy not being seen as an angry black man, trying to appease absolutely everyone, that he got so little done. Meanwhile, no one on the left can blow the whistle on him, he’s sacrosanct. But not on the right. It’s all about today’s team…they’re not busy defending Cheney’s warmongering strategy, which proved to be plain wrong.

So, this is utterly astounding. Biden is not just taking responsibility, he’s saying it was the right thing to do and he did it well and then he says why. Where’s the contrition? Nowhere to be found!

At least somebody is fighting back. 

Since we discussed Charlie Watts last week, the topic this week will finally be:

Your favorite long song – six minutes or longer…

Tune in today, August 31st, 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

The oldsters and the wannabes are convinced that Spotify is ripping them off, when the facts say completely the opposite. But nothing can convince them otherwise.

The most insightful article this week was in the “New York Times”:

“Britons, Unfazed by High Covid Rates, Weigh Their ‘Price of Freedom’ – Britain is reporting more than 30,000 new coronavirus cases a day, but the public seems to have moved on. Experts say this could be a glimpse into the future for other countries.”: https://nyti.ms/2WHPape

Bottom line? They’re packing them in at concerts and sports events with impunity, no one seems to be troubled, despite rising covid rates. I can’t get this story out of my mind, believing it’s a harbinger for the rest of the world, certainly the United States.

Then again, can the newspaper be trusted?

For weeks we’ve been inundated with stories about the fall of Afghanistan, it’s considered to be the most important thing in America. And everybody is beating up on Biden. You’d think it’s a disaster for him.

However:

“What Voters in a California Swing District Say About Afghanistan – In a battleground district, even some Trump voters said they were hesitant to hold President Biden accountable for the casualties and chaos in the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.”: https://nyti.ms/3BnD43G

Seems like the news media is out of touch with the public, the same way it was out of touch with the groundswell for Trump in 2016. Meanwhile, most reporters are concerned about the Beltway, they don’t interact with any regular people, so they’ve got no idea what they’re thinking. As for news… We now live in the internet era, where things come and go so fast it’s like they didn’t even happen. So people concerned about Afghanistan now that we’ve pulled out completely? Unless they want a political battle cry, like the anti-Spotify crowd above, they’ll forget about it, the same way the public ignores the cries of the artists and pays up for streaming services and is in heaven.

“Sitting in a park in Paris France

Reading the news and it sure looks bad

They won’t give peace a chance

That was just a dream some of us had”

“California”

Joni Mitchell

These lines have been going through my head for the last month, the news is all bad. I have felt powerless and doing my best to detach, since nothing I say will change anybody’s mind. But I wake up this morning and hop on my phone and see this story:

“G.O.P. Governors Fight Mandates as the Party’s Covid Politics Harden – As several Republican-controlled states confront their worst outbreaks yet, their leaders — following the base — have doubled down on resisting vaccine and mask requirements.”: https://nyti.ms/38vs0VP

You must read this story.

In Florida, covid is worse than ever before: https://nyti.ms/38vxuQq but Ron DeSantis refuses to enact any mask mandates, as a matter of fact he’s making sure local businesses cannot do this even though this is the opposite of traditional Republican doctrine wherein decisions are made at a local level.

And Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, went to Sturgis to greet the half a million in attendance and covid numbers SPIKED! And if you’re Trump, or a Republican governor, and you go against the orthodoxy, if you applaud vaccination, support masking, you are booed and excoriated. The mob has taken over the asylum and the wards are too scared to go against them.

But the United States is the greatest country in the world, the undisputed leader!

Well, I’m not sure the rest of the world sees us that way:

“E.U. Set to Propose Travel Restrictions on U.S. Visitors – Three officials from the bloc said that starting Monday, the European Council would advise its member states to ban nonessential travel from the United States.”: https://nyti.ms/3sZ3p5m

It’s a result of low vaccination rates. How come the rest of the world can see what American cannot?

As for ignoring the coronavirus and just soldiering on, the music business is down for that, the only person in opposition is Neil Young:

“Concerts and Covid”: https://bit.ly/3kCUaEg

But it took two days for Young’s words on his website to get any traction. Yes, even legendary Neil has trouble getting the public’s attention. He’s too scared to play Farm Aid, he calls out AEG and Live Nation, but…in a corporatized world the execs are insulated anyway, they’re not showing up at the shows. America was opened on July 4th weekend and it appears nothing can close it, nothing!

As for mask/vaccine requirements, read the review of “Hamilton” in yesterday’s “Los Angeles Times”: https://lat.ms/3mPtwdK

“But when I asked the ticket check-in person if he wanted to see my proof of vaccination, he declined the privilege.”

“It wasn’t until I went inside the theater that I began to spot the scofflaws. The first was a guy with his mask hanging from his chin like a wayward bandage. He appeared to be hitting on a female acquaintance who, by the way she slipped away from him, didn’t seem all that impressed by his undraped nose.

Directly across the aisle from me, an arrogant-looking fellow in his 60s sat unmasked for nearly the entire show. ‘Hamilton’ is long, nearly three hours. That’s a lot of time for not a single usher to confront the smugness of a guy who assumed that rules don’t apply to him.”

So we can talk about vaccine restrictions, but they seem to leak like sieves, and everybody thinks they’re immune.

As for facts?

“No, the Taliban did not seize $83 billion of U.S. weapons”: https://wapo.st/3zxcFju

But don’t let your emotions get in the way of an internet meme that aligns with your position, that feels right.

Which brings us back to Spotify.

So, all the oldster and younger musicians testified in front of the U.K. government about Spotify and other streaming services. And what was the government’s conclusion? IT WAS THE LABELS’ FAULT!

Everybody who studied the sphere knew this was true. It’s kind of like blaming Ticketmaster for fees. When you should really blame the acts. The only profit is in the fees, because the acts take all the rest, this is a way to create a pool of money the acts can’t commission. Furthermore, Ticketmaster doesn’t keep all the fees… They’ve got to pay the venue, the promoter, sometimes even the act itself. But you’ve got to have someone to blame, so Ticketmaster is the enemy, nothing will convince you otherwise! And when an all-in ticket is proffered you don’t buy it, you click on the link with the lowest price and end up paying the same amount with fees at the end. So who is really the enemy here?

As for Spotify… It keeps approximately 30% of revenues, from which it must pay all expenses and hopefully extract a profit.

As for the remaining monies…

One can argue strongly that publishers should get more, but since the major record labels also own big publishers they won’t budge. But in any event, the remaining 70% is paid to rights holders, i.e. labels and publishers. Now if you’re your own label and publisher the truth is you can make beaucoup bucks on Spotify, ASSUMING ANYBODY IS LISTENING!

Let me ask you… Do you really think your fifty year old music should be as popular as today’s top ten or fifty? Was Sinatra in the top ten in the seventies and eighties? Of course not, even though he was cleaning up on the road. Even more important, in the days of physical retail, there were limits, a store couldn’t have everything, so unless you were hot, the store might only stock your greatest hits album, maybe one or two other LPs if you were a superstar, and if you were a less impactful act…YOUR RECORDS WEREN’T IN THE STORE WHATSOEVER! So what we’ve got here is a bunch of old acts who believe they’re entitled to partake at the gravy train ad infinitum. Which is like saying the ratings of “Leave It to Beaver, “”The Real McCoys” and “My Mother the Car” should be cleaning up today!

As for the endless stories about income:

1. What was the use? On demand pays a different rate from radio. And online pays for the record as well as the song, unlike traditional, over the air radio.

2. What was the split? How much of the song did you own? Did you own the publishing?

3. Raw numbers. Spotify can’t pay more per stream, absolutely impossible, it would instantly bankrupt the company. It’s already paying out 70% of income, as stated above!

4. So you’ve got millions of streams. Be thankful anybody is listening at all! Because in the pre-internet era your albums wouldn’t be in the store and your music wouldn’t be able to be heard unless someone bought it, which in many cases they would not be able to! As for radio…good luck, maybe on an oldies station. And millions don’t mean much anymore, in the overall scheme. There are tracks, one single track, with over a billion streams!

5. The canard that if streaming payments don’t go up there will be no music. We heard this twenty years ago, in the heyday of Napster, and what was the end result? TOO MUCH NEW MUSIC! And if you believe anybody who wants to should be able to earn a living in music…think back to the pre-internet era when if you didn’t have a label you couldn’t even get your records distributed!

6. Never mind that Spotify, et al, lay the groundwork, via availability, to monetize elsewhere. Ticket prices have outpaced inflation by a multiple. And there are other avenues than live. And you can record at home and distribute essentially for free…

7. As for dominance… Nothing else is dominant, why should your music be?

But it just doesn’t feel right. You were making all this money before Spotify…

Well, the internet cut recorded music revenues in half, it’s only streaming that has allowed income to come back.

As for ownership… Let me ask you, buy any DVDs lately? Everything is on demand, music was actually a leader, to its benefit! But no, let’s try to jet back to the past. While you’re at it, why don’t you use your Mac Plus and a Motorola StarTAC?

But nothing I write here, NOTHING, will sway any musician’s opinion. Because the truth doesn’t matter. They’ve got their agenda. They believe someone is out to get them, they refuse to see any advantage to the new model and they’re dug in, not even listening to facts or reason.

So why should it be different in any other sphere?

Fauci is Spotify to the right. And vaccines make you grow a third head, which is magnetized, and your body transmits data via a chip to the government so you’d better not get one!

It’s bigger than vaccines. It’s bigger than politics. Team sports have influenced our entire society. Everybody’s got their tribe and if you go against it…

Hell, if I was only interested in the money I’d jump on board. Yes, Spotify is the devil! State the unpopular truth and not only are you hated upon, you’re excommunicated.

But all of America is now about leverage. Building your tribe and pushing its agenda, irrelevant of its veracity or benefit. The only difference is institutions don’t have the power they once did. They still don’t realize the power of the people, their ability to organize online, oftentimes around inaccurate information.

So what they’re doing in China is cracking down. On social media stars. On gaming. And the truth is, there are many Americans who would sign up for that, especially on the left, where everybody with an elite degree can’t stop bitching about the downsides of technology, despite being dependent upon their smartphone. They refuse to see any advantage to the new systems, and therefore just put themselves into a backwater. Just like the oldster musicians, who bitched about internet distribution while youngsters gave music away for free and embraced streaming. The youngsters are not bitching, at least those who are not wannabes. Only the marginal newbies have the time to complain, the rest are busy working to get ahead.

There is a way through this morass. But we’d need leadership based on what’s right as opposed to what’s wrong, not letting the tail, the uneducated, sway their opinions and directions, willing to do the unpopular. And a willingness to stay the course, evolution keeps happening. It used to be about computer hardware, now it’s all about software. There used to be a new app every week, now there’s nothing new on the horizon. It shakes itself out if you’re willing to stay in the game. Sitting on the sidelines bitching that it’s not the way it used to be, letting the ignorant have power, is the path to destruction. And that seems to be the path we are on.

“Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones”: https://bit.ly/3sZEcYo

This guy must have never worn a condom. He fathered six kids out of wedlock and he died at 27!

Then again, Brian Jones was famous for being amoral, mean and manipulative. And when you mix these characteristics in with someone who cannot say no to any drug and who is incorrigible…you can understand why Mick and Keith took over the band and ultimately kicked Brian out.

Now if you’re under forty and you die and they do a documentary on you there’s gonna be tons of footage. Your parents have been shooting video from the moment you were born, and you’re posting pics to social media, but this was the sixties, cameras meant film, which was expensive and needed development, and most of what happened in that era has fallen through the cracks. So, the truth is there’s very little footage of Brian Jones in this movie. It’s really just an oral biography, but in movie as opposed to book form. Should you watch it? Yes.

If you don’t have a documentary on you you were never a factor in the music business. It’s astounding. And most are amateurish and barely watchable, for fans only. I watched the Bill Wyman doc because it got great reviews. Did I need to watch a movie on Brian Jones that I wasn’t even sure I’d heard of? Well, compared to the other music documentary offerings…I decided to give it a few minutes, especially since the blurb said the filmmakers were experienced and looking for the truth, although I took that with a grain of salt, but it costs nothing to dive in, in this case on Amazon Prime.

So the first thing you notice is Brian Jones lived a long time ago and the people who’ve survived are OLD! And they live up to the English rep, they have bad teeth. And then you’re watching the story unfold and you realize that these guys were all in their twenties. Look back from beyond that and it’s flabbergasting, they were babies, at an age when a breakup can devastate you, Anita Pallenberg leaves Brian for Keith and Brian can’t recover, and Keith was hanging with Brian and Anita because he was devastated that he’d been dumped. And you think being a rock star you always call the shots, never!

So Brian figures he’s gonna give it one more shot. He wrote film for this movie that Anita is starring in that’s opening in Cannes so he flies down with his buddy to steal her back, and she’s all lovey-dovey, but she’s not returning, so they fly in a babe from the U.K. to make Anita jealous, and this new woman, Suki, is about as good-looking, but she doesn’t have Anita’s personality, a limit tester who drags people into trouble and feels she’s invulnerable, making great conversation along the way. People are people, as Depeche Mode sang, and if you can’t understand why John Lennon was with Yoko Ono, you’ve never hung with a six foot tall cover girl with nothing to say.

Brian doesn’t suffer fools. He wants the stimulation of conversation. He wants to talk about blues records. So he’s mostly silent until he feels the resonance and then… He was the Stone hanging with John Lennon. He met Bob Dylan and then called him every day, he was so thrilled to CONNECT!

How do you make friends in this world? You know when you have that resonance, and the older you get the harder it is to find. And the truth is music and celebrity culture are not known for their intellectual rigor, so if you’re looking for that…

So Brian is born into an upper middle class family. He’s learning to play the piano, the clarinet, but then he discovers jazz, and his parents can no longer keep him on track, he’s all in. So they pack a suitcase, put it on the front stoop and lock the door, Brian is now on his own.

And he mooches and is broke but he follows the music.

But contrary to so many of the stars of that era, Brian knew how to play, so he was the focus. He started bands. The Stones were his band. Talk to Andrew, he’ll tell you. Brian was the spokesman, he was the one who negotiated. But then Brian took a secret five pound commission on gigs and the rest of the group never forgave him. But then it got worse, he lost control because he didn’t write, a friend testifies he was categorically unable.

So not only is there little footage, there’s absolutely no Stones music, they couldn’t pay for it, never mind whether it would be licensed to them. But it’s not really necessary, because this is a character study, of someone who’s been left to the past. And yes, his friends defend him, but just when it starts to slip into hagiography they talk about what a pain in the ass Brian was, a girlfriend says he was “a shit”…

So the film paints the Stones as dangerous, and the government out to get them. Which is hard to believe in today’s hip-hop world where porn is a cottage industry that you run out of your home. The Stones were blues purists, but then the Beatles blew it all up and you needed your own songs and…

The flourishes Brian added made so many tracks hits, like the marimba in “Under My Thumb”… Sans the marimba, it’s not a hit. And the sitar in “Paint It, Black.” And then when he’s fading, intransigent and barely showing up, he lays down the slide in “No Expectations,” which makes that track too. That was Brian’s calling card in the beginning, he could play slide.

But for every positive aspect, there’s a negative one. He would push people to the edge just for the hell of it. He would disconnect.

And the truth is Brian Jones has faded into the rearview mirror. He who writes history owns it. And all that happened over fifty years ago, all we’ve got is these geezers who testify, and so many, like Anita Pallenberg, are already gone. So now Mick and Keith are lions, and Brian Jones is a footnote. Proving, if you’re a budding musician…WRITE YOUR OWN SONGS!

Then again, musicians used to worry about publishing rights, now they don’t really care because it’s all about building your brand and cashing in elsewhere, where the real money is, so if you’ve got eighteen writers on a song, who cares? And they’re used to the labels not paying, so they believe they’ll get screwed on the publishing anyway. And who knows how long they’re going to live?

But everything today is an extension of what was developed in the sixties…EVERYTHING! Which is why if you were around back then, so much of it seems boring today. Concert promoters were like app developers, and just about as honest, didn’t Sean Parker steal the names from one app for another that went bust anyway? You cut corners in rock, as you did in tech, but not anymore…LIVE NATION IS A PUBLIC COMPANY!

So you’ve got to be into it for the music and the lifestyle, and these guys were primarily in it for the music, they’d sit around and listen to records all day. Life was slower, you weren’t interacting with everybody you know on a handheld device all day long. There were long stretches where nothing was going on, where you went deeper into yourself and your surroundings, ergo the music renaissance. Albums were not for listening together, but listening alone, they kept you company!

Unfortunately, the last fifteen minutes or so are an investigation into Brian’s death. And I hate to say it, but who cares? Dead is dead. No one has ever brought anybody back, and I’m doubtful about Jesus, but if you believe he did they killed him anyway. It’s kinda like the coronavirus. Other than blame, what would we achieve if we find out it was leaked from a lab? It’s not like China is gonna give a mea culpa. That’s one thing being a lawyer teaches you, being right oftentimes doesn’t pay.

So it was a long, long time ago. Almost all of the images are in black and white. You get the feeling of dark, damp England back then. The world these musicians wanted to escape from.

And I don’t want you to think that Brian Jones was a saint who was solely responsible for the band’s success, because that’s patently untrue, but he was a guy who was infatuated with the music, who lived to play the music, who was always exploring before the drugs got the better of him.

So it appears Brian was killed by his just-fired contractor. But the contractor is dead and…

The funny thing is the records remain. There may not be images, but we’ve got the records. Pull up “Paint It, Black” or “Under My Thumb” or “No Expectations.” They’re magic. I only had to hear “Under My Thumb” once to get it, and I can tell you where I heard it, in Howard Johnson’s on Mount Washington…”Aftermath” was literally the only album that was there.

And Howard Johnson’s was just a hut halfway up the mountain, it shared nothing with the orange-roofed enterprise that sold fried clams and ice cream. And I’d love to have video of the week we spent there, when our tent blew over, just below where the highest wind speed in history was recorded, but it’s all in my brain, it’s just memories.

But memories have feelings.

Watch “Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones,” that’s one thing it will evoke, feelings. You’ll feel the passage of time. You’ll marvel that you weren’t as hip or experimental. And even though it’s not on the soundtrack, the music will play in your head, it’s there forever!