He didn’t want to repeat himself.

I know people my age who are doing the exact same thing in the music business they were doing forty years ago, the only thing that’s changed is the names. The acts come and go, they remain. Paid well, but isn’t it soul-crushing?

Speaking of soul-crushing… What is it like to be a grown man and have to hit the stage year after year and sing songs you wrote forty years ago? That’s what the audience might want, but it’s got to be depressing. Ultimately you’re doing it for the money and the adulation. Those aren’t nothing, bur are they enough?

Not for Robert Crumb.

This book got phenomenal reviews. But it took a long time to hook me. I ultimately figured out why, it was the art analysis. The writer is from the world of art, and just writing Crumb’s story was not enough, he had to analyze the comics and…it takes a very special person to be able to make this interesting, even live. That’s actually why I became an art history major, because of the professors. They were ENTERTAINING! I went to college because I was supposed to, I wasn’t interested in ANYTHING they were teaching, not a single thing. As for English…they didn’t want to hear my opinion, they wanted us to analyze historical takes…WHO CARES! But in the art history lectures the professor would talk about a great ice cream place around the corner from the museum and I found my mind never drifted, which it did in seemingly every other class.

Not that I’m a visual person, which is kind of funny. I can read an entire newspaper and not remember a single ad…I’m a word person. But the artistic sensibility? That’s what I learned in college.

And it’s different from a commercial sensibility.

Everybody in music wants to make it, become a brand.

That was never Crumb’s goal. He didn’t enforce his rights on merchandise and he’d rather own his work than cave to a publisher. It has to be pure, and honest, and when it isn’t…

So I never read Crumb’s comics. NEVER! I’m not a comics person. Never read the superhero work… Sure, I read some “Archie,” but once I grew up, no way. I respected what Crumb did, of course I read a strip here or there, but it’s just not my thing.

But my sister went to college with Justin Green’s brother and we were in San Francisco and he took us over to Crumb’s apartment and…what do you say to a famous artist?

At that point, 1973, Crumb was into music. Old time music. Which I knew from the music press. I didn’t know the tunes. But in the silence I picked up a spare guitar and started playing early sixties hits like “Boys” and Robert played right along. My sister’s buddy Keith couldn’t believe it, he wanted me to shut up and fade into the woodwork, but Crumb and I got along famously, even played “Gloria”…G-L-O-R-I-A!

Would Crumb remember?

I doubt it.

Have I ever seen him again? I don’t even reach out to rock stars who give me their contact info…what am I going to say? I’m too nervous.

But as a result of this experience, I’ve followed Crumb’s career and I went to see the movie thirty years ago which I could never forget, nobody could. Crumb had moved to France by that time and…let’s put it this way, underground comics had a moment and it’s never returned.

Speaking of that moment…

After it was over, after Crumb got divorced, he had NOTHING! He was broke, not even a car.

And he was not living in the Bay Area anymore, nowhere near the coast, but closer to Sacramento. He never stopped working, but he also didn’t feel like a has-been.

Now if you’re a musician and reach the peak and then fall to the bottom you’re anything but bright and sunny. You’re depressed. Everywhere you go people ask you what happened. You ultimately stay home, until you face the facts and get a day job where you’re hassled for who you used to be.

But Crumb is making music, which he quits when the band wants to take it too seriously.

Crumb wasn’t afraid of riches and fame, they’re just not what he needed. They weren’t the goal.

And Crumb knew who he was. A nerd. And when he became famous and women came on to him…

He took advantage.

But then he started to make comics about his sexual predilections. Was he sexist? Yes, he had to be hipped to the fact. But also, as years went by, he continued to reveal all his fantasies, he was honest in a way only artists can be…

And he never fit in.

And he was always alienated. AND KNEW IT!

Even when he was famous he’d take the bus hours to San Francisco. He had none of the trappings, despite being so revered.

And the work had to be pure. He turned down so many options, especially after Ralph Bakshi made the film of “Fritz the Cat.” If you weren’t going to get it right, he didn’t want to be involved.

And he’d had enough of fame. He turned down an invitation to appear with his band on SNL. Turned down Letterman too, even though his compatriot, Harvey Pekar, who he drew for, was a staple on the show and built a whole career around his appearances.

Now Crumb did not live a normal life.

He did not have a normal family.

Then again, who does?

Man, we were hit, abused by today’s standards, back in the fifties and sixties.

His father was from the military, his mother was overwhelmed. Robert got out, he escaped the family drama, he was lucky, not everybody was.

And he didn’t get into comics to make a buck, he was into it from a very young age, it was his passion. And no one had to teach him how to do it. College was unnecessary. His talent was innate, but he worked on it.

And he didn’t do what was expedient. He didn’t want to paint and be a member of the fine art world…he thought both the artists and buyers were phony.

Sounds a little like Holden Caulfield, but Crumb was always up for a good time. And he was led by women. He’d jump from one to another, had multiple women at the same time, they took the edge off, they took care of him.

And he made those with less confidence feel beautiful.

Now I’m not going to recommend you read this book. Because it’s long and at times dry and I thought about quitting once or twice myself.

But then I started to see myself in it.

There are all these questions…

Do you do what is expected of you?

Do you do what’s expedient?

Do you do it for the money?

And everybody else can’t understand your choices. Because they’re part of the flow and you’re sitting on the riverbank, outside. There are threads between you, but always a distance, always a distance.

So when I finished the book earlier today I was in a stupor. I stared off into the distance. I tried to evaluate my mood.

I felt a stronger connection reading this book than hanging with most people. So is that what I should do, just sit home and read books?

And Crumb got a ton of negative feedback, and was not always commercially successful in his enterprises, but he kept marching forward, for himself!

It’s hard when everybody tells you to go back to doing what you always did, the famous stuff, but that’s death inside, you can’t do that.

And then Crumb saying he was dying to work but was out of ideas.

Happens to me, I’m eager to write, but I don’t have anything I’m dying to say.

It’s a lonely journey, then again, Crumb always needed his alone time. Me too, I can’t party every day, even be with people every day, I’ve got to retreat and reorganize, metabolize and evaluate.

We’re all looking to be known, and I felt known reading this book.

A little.

https://www.skirball.org/programs/dinner-party-animal-recipes-make-every-day-celebration

This is why I live in L.A.

People ask me if I’m moving to Colorado. NEVER! I love to ski, but year-round? Not for me. I’ve lived in small communities…everybody knows your name and has a preconception of your identity and…I’d rather be anonymous at the supermarket.

Now in the old days, before cable TV and FedEx, never mind the internet and Amazon, if you lived in the hinterlands…you might not be completely off the grid, but you could be a day or two or three behind, might even miss things completely. But today? The people in so-called flyover country are just as informed, just as hip as those on the coasts.

But they don’t have the same cultural options.

Growing up in the suburbs I never thought I’d live in a city. We lived fifty miles from New York and went in frequently, but I had no desire to be there full time. As a matter of fact, I could have gone to college there, but that meant I wouldn’t be able to ski as frequently…

But New York is completely different from Los Angeles. In New York, on the east coast, everybody’s on top of each other, there’s a constant jockeying for position, people letting you know they’re smarter or richer or more pedigreed than you are. Los Angeles? It’s a free-flowing society where where you went to college is irrelevant, and everybody is making it up as they go, and I love that!

Also, it’s a giant suburb. Yes, the traffic is terrible and real estate prices are stratospheric, but if you compare it to Manhattan… No one owns this much property in Manhattan, where buildings spread vertically as opposed to horizontally, where you have common walls, where you’re on top of each other, whereas in Los Angeles you have room to move. You can own a car…then again, I wish we had a subway like New York, it would be great to be able to pop downtown to the Crypt or to Inglewood and the Forum on a train instead of being gridlocked in traffic, but that’s the price you pay. At least every act comes through Los Angeles!

That’s another reason I live in L.A. Everybody in the music business has to come through at least once a year.

And there are the restaurants and ready access to anything you want to buy and…

Of course, the weather, but I’d live here even if it got cold and rained.

One of the great things about L.A. is the cultural advantages.

Now in Colorado, they have many more events than they used to, a veritable plethora, I’ve seen household names at the Vilar in Beaver Creek, but…not everybody comes through, and the left field events like Dinner Party Animal don’t happen.

Felice saw a listing and bought tickets. 4 PM on a Sunday afternoon. Who has plans then? Sunday is a slow day, so okay.

So I was stunned at the number of people in attendance, I was trying to find out the exact hook to bring hundreds of people to the Skirball, which is just around the corner from where we live, with free parking and everything.

And they hit the stage and…

You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s, but if you are…

Well, actually if you are, you know there are much better places to buy rye bread, but…

We keep hearing we live in a Christian nation. As if homogenization is the goal. But it is our various tribes, the melting pot, that makes America great, all the different flavors. And being Jewish…

There was immediately a remark about the constant talking… These are my people!

I’m not saying you need to care, but it feels good to be in the pocket, amongst your cohort.

So what we had here were three roommates and a TV producer. Three guys and a girl. And one of the guys wrote a cookbook, “Dinner Party Animal.” So I guess this was kind of a launch…

When Felice first told me about the event I thought it would be cooking and eating. Then I thought it would be a cooking demonstration. Ultimately, it was four Jews riffing. As if you were at their house.

It made me envious. I wanted to be involved.

And I could see the attraction to non-Jews, and why Jews do so well in the arts.

You see we’ve been persecuted for years. And we know we’re tarred. But that does not mean we don’t have our rites and rituals, that we can’t have fun!

These three guys were talking over each other and cracking jokes (with Jenji Kohan occasionally adding flavor) and I said to myself, “That’s not my life!”

And I wondered why.

Did I just not hold enough dinner parties? Was I just not invited to enough dinner parties?

Or was it my age.

I read somewhere that when you’re seventy you don’t need new friends. It’s not like you’re going to use connections for business purposes. Everybody’s kind of settled and satisfied and it can be boring and scary.

And then you get a left field event like this.

Purely conversation. No plot needed.

What question was best to start a dinner party?

When was the last time you got into an argument with a stranger?

So many people I know want to talk to me about business, they’re trying to get ahead, they’re trying to be a good friend of mine (thanks Joni!)

But I just want to know how your relationship is going. Where you’re going to travel next. About a good meal. The ins-and-outs of people you know. All irrelevant, but the spice of life.

This is why techies will never truly rule the world, because they’ve got no soul.

This is why Black people can be happy despite being oppressed.

This is why ethnicity is a badge of honor.

It’s all about life. I’ve got mine, you’ve got yours…TELL ME ABOUT IT!

Tune in Saturday September 27th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

As of this writing, “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery,” is unrated on both RottenTomatoes and Metacritic, there’s just not enough data. So the question arises, has anybody seen it?

Oh, the documentary has gotten reviews. Then again, even Sarah McLachlan herself pulled out of performing at the premiere in protest against ABC/Disney’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel.

But I don’t think that’s the issue.

I think part of the issue is Hulu doesn’t have the traction or gravitas of Netflix or HBO, but also…it’s an indication of today’s era, where everything is niche and nothing is that big. But when Lilith Fair toured the continent, it was peopled by household name stars who had hits all over MTV. You may not have liked their music, but you knew it!

And you knew what these women looked like.

In retrospect, Lilith Fair was a last hurrah for the pre-internet era, even though at that point the internet was burgeoning, albeit on dialup. I went to the initial show with a woman I met on the internet, at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank in 1996, it was a test run. Ron Fierstein, the manager of Suzanne Vega, who was on the bill, hipped me and got me tickets. It was a “tryout.” I didn’t get it, because a hit is a hit, and Sarah McLachlan had had some, as had Susanne Vega, and Paula Cole was bubbling up, isn’t that enough?

OF COURSE IT WAS!

The following year was the first full-blown tour, and then it continued for a few years and then it was over, this film says because Sarah McLachlan was burned out. I buy that, after all it was her tour.

At the end of the film, Brandi Carlile is on stage at the Gorge, and she says it’s Sarah McLachlan’s house, and then she brings Sarah out, and I got goosebumps. I guess that’s the power of a star, that’s the power of music.

One other high point I must mention is when the Indigo Girls and the assembled multitude do “Closer to Fine” and drop out for the chorus and then the audience sings it, loudly. This was not a thing in the nineties, although it’s de rigueur today.

Today…

The funny thing is the script has flipped, you’ve got men complaining the charts are dominated by women. In some cases, like Sabrina Carpenter, evidencing the sexuality that men used to trade on, that they used to own.

But that’s today, and Lilith Fair was yesterday.

There’s an overarching theme here, about the little engine that could, a lineup of women, could they sell tickets. Then there’s the bonding and safety of women. And I can understand all those elements, but I went for the MUSIC!

The second time I went to Lilith it was at the Rose Bowl, and the second stage was outside the stadium. I remember going out there to hear Billie Myers do “Kiss the Rain,” and K’s Choice perform “Not an Addict,” and then when the song broke, there was this bass thump and then a vocal that pierced the atmosphere, reached all the way outside the stadium and grabbed me, it was Sinéad O’Connor performing “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.” I ran, literally RAN through the tunnel to see and hear Sinéad, who evidenced a power that most males never achieve.

She’s gone now. And her later years were turbulent, but here we still have the young Sinéad, who supposedly ruined her career by ripping up a photo of the Pope on SNL. But all these years later, you see Sinéad in the film, you hear her talked about, and you realize she was brave, a trailblazer who inspired other women.

The film starts with Sarah talking about her sheltered upbringing. Ultimately learning how to stand up for herself and say no when necessary via Lilith.

And she was not the only one who had a learning experience, one performer informed another.

Joan Osborne is told not to talk about Planned Parenthood from the stage in Texas, and then she wears a shirt emblazoned with the logo of the organization. She was anything but meek.

But, Paula, Shawn and Sarah are forced to do a medley at the Grammys as opposed to each getting a solo slot, even though they were all nominated and the male nominees got to play alone. It made me think of Ken Ehrlich and his “Grammy moments.” I don’t think Ken even thought of sexism, but the three women…they debated refusing to perform. They ultimately took the stage, but they’re still thinking about it.

And the endless backlash, the endless jokes. We live in a different era now, where internet hate is rampant, but this film is a great demonstration that you should never listen to the feedback, that people are out to get you, they make fun of you because they’re jealous, don’t adjust.

As for backstage… It looked like summer camp, made you want to be involved.

As for the set-up… They do a good job of delineating the players and showing them at work. Terry McBride as the manager, Marty Diamond as the agent and Dan Fraser as the road manager. I’ve seen a lot of rock docs, but this is the best when it comes to conception and execution, what a heavy lift it is. You’ve got an idea, will promoters buy it? And then you go out on the road and as smooth as it may appear on stage, hellzapoppin’ off it, unanticipated problems are rampant.

Every day there’s a press conference, where idiots ask inane questions. Maybe rock critics had cred in the sixties and seventies, but that was gone even before the internet.

Meaning if you’re an act you must listen to your inner tuning fork, because most other people just don’t know, don’t kowtow to them.

So I think everybody watching “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery” will take something different from it. Some the female angle, some the gay angle, some the business angle…but for me it comes down to the music, writing a good song is the hardest part of the enterprise. And then reaching people with it comes next. Very few have the talent, very few.

And as the movie was winding down, I wondered if they’d mention the failure of the 2010 revival of Lilith Fair. Stunningly, they did. They said singer/songwriters were over, but if you ask me the problem then was time had passed and Sarah was just not that hot anymore, and you need a hook, you need a headliner.

Today?

If you’re a star of Sarah’s caliber you play arenas, you may even be able to play stadiums. But the funny thing is most of the public, outside of the attendees, may be familiar with your name at most, as for your music…they may not even be able to name one song.

The film may be about female breakthrough, standing up to an entrenched male society, disproving conventional wisdom, but I must say what hit me most was these were all big stars, and they may even still be around, plying the boards, but their hit eras are over. None of them are having hits today. Did they all just lose the muse? Or maybe the perspective should be like above, today no one has the ubiquitous hits of yore. But for me, it showed cycles. After all, this was nearly thirty years ago. THIRTY YEARS! A lot transpires in thirty years. New acts come along. With the same hunger of the old ones, maybe even inspired by the old ones.

So, have we made progress? There’s the #MeToo movement, but there are still men who pooh-pooh music made by women, who think they and the male acts can do it better. The truth is they’re just insecure. Unlike so many of the men, the women on the Lilith bill did not depend upon production, studio wizardry, they could sing and play their songs and…

I was watching thinking if this were the old days and this film was licensed to MTV it would be played ad infinitum, and become a cultural institution, bedrock. But today? Everything comes and goes, marked by lovers and styles of clothes. Yes, Joni had it right.

Will your jaw drop watching “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery”?

It’s not that kind of film. But I got an e-mail from a woman saying she shed a tear and I didn’t wholly get it until the end, when Sarah took the stage with Brandi at the Gorge.

You know if you need to see this movie.

Will it influence younger generations? Who knows how and why things spread today.

But one thing is for sure, when you wipe away the business and social elements Lilith was peopled with talented stars, whose music drove audiences to them, both men and women.

That’s the message for me. Not that women are doing it for themselves, but that women are EVERY BIT AS GOOD AS MEN!

And these women proved it.