PERSEVERANCE

It takes longer than ever to make it. If you are not in it for the long haul, don’t even start.

YOU CAN PLAY BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN WIN

The barrier to entry has never been lower, but the odds of getting noticed and growing have also never been lower.

YOU WILL NOT BECOME A HOUSEHOLD NAME

No one is anymore. Unless maybe you’re president or a tech billionaire. You may want to increase the size of your audience, but there’s absolutely no way you can reach everybody.

HATE

Once you have some success, you will have people taking you down online. Be prepared.

STUNTS MAY NOT GET YOU NOTICED

Used to be you could make a flashy video, perform some outrageous stunt and you’d get publicity and you’d be on your way. Today, the internet is an ongoing flashy stunt machine, can you say TikTok? Best to focus on the underlying art as opposed to the marketing.

MARKETING

You can have a campaign with a lot of tear sheets that ultimately reaches no one, has no effect.

NEWSPAPERS

Are worthless unless you’re appealing to an older demo, the younger, more active audience just doesn’t read them. Local newspapers have never meant less. Subscription levels keep decreasing. So you can send the article to your mother but you won’t be any further down the road to success.

PRACTICE

In an era where everybody can do it, those who can do it well have a leg up. Furthermore, in an era where everything is easy, where the computer tools help you, being able to perform at a high level in the offline world is notable. You can fake it online, you can’t fake it off, at least not without tech. In an era dominated more and more by machines, it’s the human that translates. If you learn how to play an instrument, or paint, or do anything which is not easy, eventually people notice. They’re awed because there are so few skilled at your level.

INSPIRATION NOT SKILLS

Inspiration is the basis of great art. Period. Without it you have something inert that does not affect people. Inspiration usually happens in a flash. The key is to act on it immediately, and don’t let in your naysayer voice or outsider criticism. When you’re inspired, you capture the zeitgeist. It’s all about catching lightning in a bottle. You know it when you do it, but it happens very infrequently, usually when you’re not even working.

LIVE A LIFE

Otherwise you have nothing to build upon, nothing to say.

THERE ARE NO RULES IN ART

You can get up at noon, you can work five minutes a day… Artists channel the world so the rest of the public can understand it.

YOUR GOAL IS TO BE SELF-SUSTAINING

There are no longer any markers that definitively say you’ve made it. No record deal, no TV appearance. You have to learn to be happy with the success you have, not the success you dreamed about.

ART FIRST MONEY SECOND

People can tell. They know what you’re all about, what you’re in it for. There’s commerce and then there’s art. There can be money in commerce, but don’t confuse it with art. Art touches people, art lasts.

WHAT’S HATED TODAY IS LOVED TOMORROW AND VICE VERSA

You have to adhere to your own inner tuning fork. If you compromise and do it their way chances are your work will lose its essence. Sure, the Beatles were loved by critics in their era. But not Led Zeppelin. Which never changed its sound to satiate critics.

CRITICS

It used to be a small club based on access and free records and tickets. Today everybody has access and everybody’s a critic, so criticism means less than ever before. Furthermore, don’t pay attention to any criticism made by someone who doesn’t love your work or genre to begin with. Who cares what a critic of Renaissance art has to say about abstract expressionism.

YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE ON YOUR TEAM

Culture has changed. Nobody’s in it for the long haul, everybody’s in it for themselves, everybody wants money and they want it now. As a result, you’ll get a plethora of bad advice, mostly in the vein of do this now because everybody else is.

CONSTANT CREATION

You must be creating work on a regular basis, so that fans can keep up with you constantly, otherwise you’re forgotten. Don’t shoot the messenger, this is the reality. If you’re waiting years to debut your work you’re laboring under the fiction that people are eagerly waiting for its delivery. There are a few fans who feel this way, most people have moved on, because there are so many options/choices in the marketplace. You have to be really special for people to be waiting for your pearls of wisdom with bated breath. And if you believe mainstream publicity can bridge this gap you’re wrong. Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities,” his first and most successful fiction work, was serialized in “Rolling Stone” before publication.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS A CHOICE

The goal is to deliver a large enough audience that their chatter sustains your career. If part of your art is social media, interacting with your fans, go for it. But if it is not, don’t. But, at the beginning, you’re going to have to play this game, you’re going to have to participate.

INVITE DON’T FORCE

No one wants anything jammed down their throat today, everybody is overscheduled, it’s a privilege to be able to gain someone’s attention and time. Don’t hammer, don’t chide, don’t say you’ve delivered the best thing since sliced bread, be warm and open, invite, so that tastemakers will be interested in checking you out and spreading the word.

GROWTH

If it’s not happening, you’re doing it wrong. Or you’ve been too afraid to play, to allow your work/career to grow. You’ve got to post your work online. It doesn’t matter if it’s imperfect, if it’s unfinished, just by participating you will improve and this will make more people stick to you.

VIRALITY

Happens very very slowly. Almost under the radar. Once or twice a year something blows up virally nearly instantly. And most of these have a short shelf life.

GENRE

There are no channels. Do whatever you want. Sure, some types of creative work have a larger built-in audience than others, but now, more than any time in history, the world is open to anything, you can grow an audience for anything. Don’t shave off the edges to grow your career, it’s the edges that hook people.

YESTERDAY’S HEROES

Can succeed on the nostalgia circuit, but barely have a leg up online. Your name gets you entry, but the work decides whether you get traction or not.

BITCHING AGAINST THE SYSTEM

Is positively fruitless. It’s a waste of energy. Furthermore, there’s this canard that there is an impenetrable system that is working against you. How can this be where anybody can post for free on YouTube or SoundCloud and for a de minimis price on streaming services like Spotify and Apple? You have a bigger chance than ever before. The system is working for you!

DON’T PAY ATTENTION TO THE SCUTTLEBUTT/NEWS

Successful people rarely bitch. It’s only the unsuccessful, used to be successful and wannabes who spend their time complaining endlessly, it’s easier than creating great work. Furthermore, most people writing in major news outlets have no real understanding of how the system truly functions, nor does the government. And the more people bitch, the more systems operators retreat from view, because there just can’t be a rational discussion based on facts. Mob mentality rules today, as well as misinformation, don’t be a victim of falsehood.

THE INTERNET IS THE MEANS

You create the end. Computers and the internet are your toolkit, mix and match and innovate. Some of the greatest products of all time were mistakes. And some of the greatest sounds in music history were created by people playing with equipment in the studio, oftentimes contrary to instructions by the manufacturers and the poohbahs.

YOU’VE GOT TO LOVE IT

It’s a long hard road and success might be long in coming, or it might not come at all. Anybody who’s a legend contemplated giving up at one point.

MEANS TO AN END

If your art is a way to get rich, to become a brand, sell clothing and tchotchkes…that paradigm does exist, but it’s very different from creating art. Creating art takes all your time. You’ve got to experience, you’ve got to distill, you’ve got to polish…it’s a full time job. Today money is paramount, most respected, but never confuse that with art. In a world where everybody can’t get rich, in a world where no one is as big as they think they are, in a world where the public is searching for soul fulfillment…art is king.

Tune in tomorrow, February 9th, 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

Never was so much spent on so little.

You rise to the occasion. Getting the gig is one thing, delivering is another. And it’s not as simple as performing, art is all about conception, and the Weeknd seems to have ceded his entire production to third parties and in the process lost control of his art. It was almost like we still live in the pre-internet era, when MTV ruled and if you didn’t spend money and dance you couldn’t make an impact, but those days are through. Contrary to mainstream disinformation this decade is about the niches, the triumphs away from the Spotify Top 50. Never has music been a bigger tent.

Name recognition. That’s why you play the Super Bowl. It’s not so much a notch in your belt as a step in growing your fan base. Usually tickets go on sale right after the performance, striking when the iron is hot, but there are no shows now and the Weeknd wasted his opportunity, in one flash he made the rest of the world outside the music industry bubble realize how big he is, but he didn’t come close to closing them, at best you could shrug. My inbox is filling up with those who were non-plussed and disappointed, how could this travesty be presented? Sure, football is a spectacle, and music can be too, but oftentimes the bigger you make it the smaller it becomes, whereas that which is tiny and precious triumphs. Like H.E.R.’s rendition of “America the Beautiful.”

Most people have no idea who she is. But she sang the song like she owned it, like she’d written it, and it wasn’t only her vocal, it was her guitar-playing that wowed and made you pay attention, her performance stuck with you as the game progressed, a game hobbled by penalties…thank god there are no penalties in music, music is about being pure, distilling it all to an uncompromised essence, like H.E.R. did tonight.

We’ve gotten too far from the garden. We’ve become focused on stars as opposed to music. Money rules and it cannot be contradicted. If someone is successful you can’t criticize them. I think it’s ridiculous that the Weeknd wasn’t nominated in the big Grammy categories, but I can’t say his music is memorable, that it moves the needle, never mind the football, especially when he started working with producers-du-jour who homogenized his sound, sawed off the edges in pursuit of consumption. Yes, the Weeknd is now safe.

We want to be wowed, we want to take notice, we want to be able to tell everybody about it, we want to FEEL SOMETHING!

That’s one thing that separates human beings from other species, we have feelings. And we live to be touched, otherwise it’s just drudgery. And sure, one can be moved by athletic performance, but not as much as music, which when done right comes from the soul and transfers the message, the feeling, into the listener. I can try to explain H.E.R.’s magic, but it can’t compete with what I felt, like I’d been remiss in not paying her much attention previously, that not only was she talented, she played like she owned the place. That’s how Prince owned the Super Bowl, he was bequeathing his music, his material, to everybody watching, both in the stands and on TV. Can you remember who competed, never mind who won? OF COURSE NOT! Can you remember the production? NOT REALLY! All you remember is Prince wailing on the guitar and reaching you in a  way no one else ever has in this setting, you had no choice but to take notice.

Funny that America’s game is hobbled by penalties. This is why soccer, the rest of the world’s football, is superior. It’s just like life, make too many rules and people become dispirited and innovation wanes. But if you set people free you’ll be amazed what they’ll do.

And H.E.R. was set free tonight.

So expect further travesties at halftime at the Super Bowl. Bigger and better. But intimate is what really triumphs these days. It’s the key to social media, the more money you put into it the fewer the rewards. We want to see YOU, not the trappings. Which is why you can spend a fortune on a music video and it still stiffs in the marketplace, because that paradigm hasn’t really mattered since PSY, and that was years ago.

And Lil Nas X triumphed on TikTok. And it was the song that generated the videos. The public embraced it and expanded upon it. People want to be engrossed and participate, in the twenty first century watching is oftentimes not enough.

So you can play the Super Bowl and everybody knows your name, but it may not drive up your business, it may even backfire on you, as it did with Maroon 5. Just showing up is not enough, Just giving a performance is not enough. We’re not looking for lights and lasers, we’re not looking for dancing and production, we’re looking to you…are you real or are you affected, do you have credibility or have you sold out, are you doing it their way or your way?

H.E.R. did it her way tonight. She sprinted far beyond the Weeknd. This one appearance will pay dividends. People have a good feeling about Gabriella Wilson, they’re tuned in and want more. Watching Abel Tesfaye tonight you winced, you wanted to change the channel, and if you continued to watch you wanted it to get better, but it only got worse, especially with all the dancing fools at the end.

When we strike the production and effects, when it’s just you on stage, it is quickly revealed whether you have it or not. In truth we’re rooting for you, because so few have it. H.E.R. obviously practiced, she paid her dues, she was confident, you could see all her experience, all her talent in a couple of minutes. Let her be a beacon, if you want to triumph in music, if you want to have a long career, follow H.E.R., not the Weeknd.

https://bit.ly/36SiPOR

What kind of crazy, fucked-up world do we live in where Liz Cheney stands up for truth, justice and the American Way?

“‘People in the (Republican) party are mistaken. They believe that BLM and Antifa were behind what happened here at the Capitol, that’s just simply not the case. It’s not true. And we’re going to have a lot of work we have to do. People have been lied to,’ the congresswoman said.”

One in which groupthink and fear have come to dominate the American way of life. America used to stand for the rugged individual, now it’s for the cowering lemming afraid they’ll be excommunicated for displaying thoughts that are not concomitant with what the group thinks. And god forbid you make a mistake, then you’re canceled. Who came up with this policy? One strike and you’re out, imagine if that applied to you, and we all make mistakes.

It’s bigger than political parties. Say something negative about a pop act and that act’s fans will inundate you with hate. Kinda funny how with all this talk about bullying it happens online constantly. And you’re supposed to appeal to some theoretical referee to right the wrong but one doesn’t exist, what you need to do is stand your ground and speak your truth, but too many were brought up in a world where their parents complained to the authorities to quash behavior, and this just doesn’t work in the real world. In the real world you either have to remain silent or fight back, neither of which get any cred in society at large. In America you’re supposed to accept the punches as punishment, for violating the policies of the the group, and if you fight back, no one comes to your rescue. Come on, you can’t find a single man to weigh in when one of their brethren is canceled, when it comes to a discussion of women’s rights. And there can’t be a reasonable result without a conversation, so they’re afraid. And true discussion, if there is any, goes underground.

I am not condoning heinous behavior. I am not condoning sexual abuse. But too often today if someone wants to get into the nuances, analyze the issues, they’re booted off stage by a plethora of heckling, they’re supposed to get back down in the hole they came from.

And too often the baby boomers are responsible. Believing their parents raised them improperly, they did their best to coddle their children, the millennials, going to bat for them AGAINST the teacher, complaining to the administration whenever Mallory or Phineas got in trouble. Furthermore, millennials’ strongest desire is to be a member of the group. That is paramount. They all got trophies, no one is better than another, hogwash. We are not all alike, isn’t that one of the great features of America, that you can be different and be accepted? At least that’s the way it used to be.

“‘The extent to which the president, President Trump, for months leading up to January 6th, spread the notion that the election had been stolen or that the election was rigged was a lie.'”

Truth. It’s gone out the window. If it doesn’t fit your agenda, ignore it, or deny it. The big story these past three months is how Fox has moved rightward because its audience was being stolen by Newsmax. So let me get this straight… If ignorant lemmings listen to the false spewings of ignoramuses you’re supposed to abandon truth and get on board? In what world does this work? But ratings and money are everything. And even Fox is a team. Shephard Smith was hassled to the point where he jumped ship. But at least give him credit for standing up for truth for all those years before he did. It’s hard to resist the mob, it’s hard to be a party of one. But, once again, this is what America was based upon.

I really don’t understand this. When I grew up it was clear who were the winners and losers. In sports, in school… But now under the aegis of togetherness, we’ve thrown out the statistics, competition is eviscerated in the name of harmony. In what era of history has this worked? There are superior people in all walks of life. Some are better athletically, some are better intellectually, and as Bob Dylan so famously sang:

“Now, each of us has his own special gift

And you know this was meant to be true

And if you don’t underestimate me

I won’t underestimate you”

Truly, no one is better than anybody else. The key is to find out what you’re good at and pursue that, not to try to convince yourself that you’re good at everything, equal to others in that pursuit.

But the truth is we now revere cash. And life is so hard that people who might have pursued their dream do not.

A good example of this is Amor Towles. Who has written the lauded and successful books “Rules of Civility” and “A Gentleman in Moscow.” Even though his teachers told him he should pursue a career in writing, he worked for decades in banking, because you know mazuma is the highest calling in America. But it’s the arts that give us insight and direction. But now all the artists are in pursuit of cash so that’s history. And since everybody was brought up believing they could do everything they believe they can become a famous rapper or pop star, why not? Forget paying your dues, forget practicing. You were told from a young age you were special and you could do anything so…WHY NOT?

And people are confronted with this day in and day out. Work at the corporation and the number one criterion is getting along, it’s more important than the work you do. Don’t hang out, spend your time at your desk trying to push the envelope and chances are you’ll be ostracized and excised. This is another reason old corporations fail… Once they’ve become established they’re taken over by MBAs and bean counters, there’s no American exceptionalism left, only the running of a machine until it sputters, usually as a result of a third party disrupter. You’ve got to deliver quarterly profits, that’s more important than innovation, more important than the future. And isn’t it funny how the biggest tech corporations in America haven’t run that way. They brought in a manger at Google, Eric Schmidt, AND THEN THEY KICKED HIM OUT! Turns out so many of these techies don’t need adult supervision. Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg. You may hate him, but you can’t argue with his success, talk about making the stock rise… Zuckerberg has always pivoted and invested, unlike staid American companies. Yes, Zuckerberg paid zillions for WhatsApp and Instagram, do you think a conventional manager would have signed off on those purchases? No way! And Zuckerberg knew where the ball was going and went there while most people were ignorant.

Like Daniel Ek, who single-handedly save the recorded music business and has gotten shit for it ever since. Talk to the labels, they LOVE Spotify! But artists and ignorant writers and politicians don’t stop excoriating Spotify and Ek, they won’t be happy until the company is busted, gives all the cash to performers, especially the ones without listens. Who said you were entitled to be an artist? Who said you were entitled to make money at it? Those boomer parents once again? Hell, when I was brought up it was instilled in me that you had to be great to make it in show business. Artists went their own way, they were always different, not only in music. Then again, that’s when you could make a living in so many artistic pursuits that you cannot now. Then again, the winds of change blow and if your goal is to calcify the landscape, freeze institutions, paralyze progress, you’re heading for death. It always makes my head spin when people rail against streaming music when they can make their work for free on a laptop, promote it for free online and distribute it almost for free on streaming services. Don’t they get it? In the old world they wouldn’t even have gotten a chance to play, the doors would have been closed, costs would have been prohibitive. Then again, no one knows history anymore. And you’re proud of your ignorance. Yes, Trump paid fealty to you and the elites are the problem. Elites do cause problems, but the day we denigrate education is the day our nation becomes a second class citizen in the world. Then again, that has happened! After Trump European countries are wary of the U.S., looking to it for leadership, falling in line behind America.

“‘We will not forget what happened on January 6th. And that the single greatest threat to our republic is a president who would put his own self-interest above the Constitution, above the national interest.'”

Liz Cheney might have said this, but this ethos left the planet after the sixties. Now it’s all about self-interest, even if it causes problems for others. As a matter of fact, it’s the lower classes who are the most charitable, that’s been statistically proven. So some billionaire gives away a micron of his fortune, why doesn’t he pay more taxes! Oh, that’s right, because the government will waste it and government is bad. So, let me see…you want a nation without roads and dams where the rich get even richer? That’s been one of the pandemic stories, how the wealth of the super-rich has skyrocketed. Not only Jeff Bezos, but those invested in the stock market. Meanwhile, most people own no stock. As for the Redditors and GameStop…they may have been ignorant, they may have ultimately lost, but one thing they knew for sure was Wall Street is rigged, against them, and that’s true.

“‘We’ve had a situation where President Trump claimed for months that the election was stolen and then apparently set about to do everything he could to steal it himself..”

Even high-ranking Democrats don’t put it so directly, for fear of Republican blowback. Yes, Trump tried to steal the election himself. But since nearly half of the country doesn’t believe this, you can’t say it. This is how far we’ve fallen, we must adjust the game to play to morons, or the woefully uninformed. As for the educated like Cruz playing to these people…his own party doesn’t call out this behavior, because it aligns with the team, and it’s all hogwash anyway, it’s not about Trump, it’s about laying the groundwork so he can ultimately become president, god forbid, self-interest rearing its ugly head once again.

But Rand Paul comes out and says there’s no way Trump will be convicted in the Senate. But that begs the question…what does a president have to do to be impeached and convicted? Trump tries to steal an election and foments an insurrection and that’s okay? And if some Democrats had fallen in the process, that would have been fine too, as long as the Republicans remained intact. But, the mob was going after Pence…isn’t this akin to what Martin Niemoller said?

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

The team doesn’t need you, everybody is expendable. You think you’re integral, that you count, but the truth is you don’t, everybody can be sacrificed to achieve the team’s goal. And Liz Cheney realizes this and draws a line in the sand, says she won’t take it anymore.

This all was said in conversation with Chris Wallace on Fox News today. But go to foxnews.com and you have to scroll down deeply to find it. Fox is burying its own story. Because it doesn’t align with what its viewers think. Maybe you do that in entertainment, but not news.

But the truth is playing to the audience permeates all walks of life. In music, acts give people more of what they’ve already consumed. Go to a major label and tell them you’re different and it will take time to develop and spread the word and they’re not interested. Same deal with the film business, so busy making movies that will play around the world that it left real life stories, smaller stories, to television, which is eating the movie business’s lunch. And streaming outlets don’t control the artists like they do on networks and conventional channels. Netflix makes a rich deal with Shonda Rhimes, essentially giving her a blank check to do it her way. And her first project, “Bridgerton,” is a raging success. The artist always know best. They don’t always get it right, but they’re the ones who hit the home runs. And it turns out the people are only interested in home runs, this philosophy has changed the fabric of baseball, and everyone is afraid to undercut it for fear fans will abandon the game, meanwhile the game gets further and further away from its essence, almost becomes a caricature of itself. Used to be Home Run Derby was once a year, just before the All Star Game, now it’s 162 games a year, never mind the playoffs and World Series.

So, confronted with slings and arrows, from not only her party in Wyoming, but the national party in Congress, Cheney not only stood her ground, she barked back. She’s not worried about her individual future, she’s worried about what’s right, about the nation at large. Therefore, she’s a beacon, she evidences a spirit this country hasn’t had since 1969, truly. We used to count on artists for this. But today if you’ve got a profile, artists are afraid to stand up and take a side for fear they might alienate a potential customer. But play to all and you ultimately play to none. You shave off all the edges such that your creation is ephemeral, it does not have deep impact and it disappears.

We are looking for people to stand up and speak to our hearts and minds with truth. We’ve gotten so far from that mantra as to live in scary times. And of course the internet is at fault, but the only way we get out of this mess is through us, people. Yes, the machines are not going to save us, only we can save us. But we need leaders. Forward movement, putting a dent in the universe, is not a popularity contest. Come on, ever notice someone is hated until they are loved? That’s because most people can’t understand what they’re doing. But that was also when people were confident enough in their identities and beliefs to put it all on the line. Liz Cheney might lose her next election. Or, it might turn out there are a lot more silent believers than vocal nitwits. But she is willing to sacrifice her own personal interests for the greater good. What a concept! We need more of this.