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Tune in today June 30th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

F2020 TikTok (until it’s taken down)
F2020 Instagram

This is a hit!

I didn’t spell out the F-word in the title, otherwise anybody working at a corporation wouldn’t receive this, and they should.

I know nothing about this other than the video. I’ve never heard of the act before, I don’t know if what they’re saying re acceptance is true or not. But I want to believe they had 4.5 million views in half a day before this was taken down and then re-upped.

Why is this so engaging?

It’s the chorus. Not only the words, but the actual music, hear it enough and you want to sing along.

And the deadpan women… It’s almost like Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” video, and the fact that there’s no emotion while the lyrics have so much meaning…

And then the middle finger(s).

Maybe TikTok fulfills the promise of great undiscovered acts that the internet was supposed to surface. I’m not sure where else this stuff lives. The F-word makes it a nonstarter in many places. And TikTok is singular, user-created content, whereas YouTube is too broad.

So, you’re flying on your ingenuity, your creativity…in an era where those are secondary to a team of twenty writers polishing a turd.

Isn’t it funny we’ve been waiting for an anthem encapsulating these insane days from the usual suspect superstars and none have come close and then these unknowns nail it.

And referring to the year as human.

And giving the personal viewpoint as opposed to painting in the broad platitudes most pop stars employ.

And one thing is for sure, a committee would never come up with this, never mind the professional songwriters.

This is the essence of “popular” music. It’s about inspiration more than execution. In other words, you can refine your chops at Berklee and still be unable to create anything original that anyone wants to hear.

This song represents the zeitgeist, employing TikTok, profanity, attitude, personality…and it’s more about the message than the money.

FANTASTIC!

Overkill Spotify
Overkill YouTube

A couple more tequilas
And I’ll tell you how I’m feeling

Actually, I no longer drink. It has to do with being stopped for drunk driving on the night John Lennon was assassinated. Getting a suspended sentence and not being able to drive within eight hours of having a drink. And a new girlfriend biting me much too violently and me being unable to leave her house and drive home, afraid to risk getting stopped and losing my license for two years, before the days of Uber, when it was unfathomable in Los Angeles.

But I’d love to tell you how I’m feeling.

Then again, I’m a big believer in Jackson Browne’s “The Late Show”:

Maybe people only ask you how you’re doing
‘Cause that’s easier than letting on how little they could care

I want to talk, but they don’t want to listen. So I stay quiet, so I internalize, kind of like Tori Amos’s “Silent All These Years.” Not that I’m gonna spill my guts right now. Do that online and get ready for the blowback. People don’t know you, but they hate you anyway, and need to let you know it.

This music thing is funny. They’ve been making it for an eternity, and everybody purveying it says it’s the same, that you’re too old if you don’t get it, it’s just as good…

But it’s not.

Or maybe it’s the feeling I’m looking for.

Music can engender many responses, but the one that resonates most for me is the one wherein I’m elevated, floating above the surface, in a bubble with just the music and me, it’s set me free, to a space where I can be myself, understood for who I am and happy.

Most of the people making this music are damaged. Not open and understanding, instead they’re off-putting and difficult. I’ve met the household names. But when they speak from their souls, it resonates with mine.

Funny thing about music, if you’re in the wrong mood it’s like nails on a chalkboard, you need to stop it immediately. But if it’s right, you don’t want to turn it off. I’m capable of playing the same track ten or twenty times in a row, literally, I want to bask in the feeling, I don’t want to let it go, I’m anything but a playlist guy, they’re buzzkills.

Don’t wanna kill your evening
Don’t wanna be a buzzkill
If I’m coming on strong

I like to come on strong, I don’t like to hold anything back, no hidden agendas, I want to make my message clear, do you agree with me, that’s what I’m looking for, someone who feels like I do.

Maybe this time I’ll say something
Something a little wild, out loud
Maybe this time I’ll say something
I’ve been feeling for a while, out loud

But I’m not gonna. It’s too tough, I feel it, but I can’t verbalize it, maybe I want to own it, if I reveal it it’ll be cheapened.

I guess I’m different.

I didn’t go to the gig to get drunk and meet people. I went to sit and bask in the sound, connect with the performer one on one.

But that paradigm seems to have evaporated. First and foremost, there are no longer any seats, who said you have to stand to enjoy music, it just takes energy away that I need to create the bubble and drift.

Now doing research, I see that a Vevo video of Holly Humberstone’s “Overkill” has been released. So, there must be a backstory, even though she doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, even though she only has three songs on streaming services.

So the truth is I discovered Holly Humberstone from an e-mail I did not want to get. I hate mass e-mails. Personalized, are cool. But too many are self-promotional in some way, there’s an agenda, and that turns me off, what I like most are the ones that reveal truth back.

And you don’t have to say it back
I jus wanna know where your head’s at

I want to know where everybody’s head is at.

So, as I deleted this e-mail with a playlist, debating whether to e-mail the sender to take me off his list, I decided to check it out, because it came from the U.K.

Which is a very different market.

And the first cut on the playlist was Holly Humberstone’s “Overkill.”

I’d like to tell you the remaining twenty-odd tracks were just as good, even worth listening to again, but that would be lying, there was a good change in this one Haim song, “Gasoline,” but when I checked out the rest of the new album it was not as good.

But when I played “Overkill” again, it still reached me.

And then I took a break for lunch, some business, and when I sat back in front of my computer to write about it, “Overkill” sounded awful, I had to stop it. Was it really not that good, or was it me?

It was me.

When I was a teenager, there was no internet, you could be bored, your music was all you had. Now there are so many distractions. And I’m so busy. And I’m not complaining about that, but I must admit I miss the feeling of going deep into something that may not appeal at first, today I just click through.

But right now I’m frustrated. My dermatologist prescribed five days of 20mg of prednisone to address my skin problem. An interim step while we wait for approval of the multi-thousand dollar net to me IVIG which requires five hours five days in a row in a chair. The prednisone worked. The itching went away, the spots mellowed, but prednisone works differently from IVIG, and it doesn’t last as long, will it carry me through until the Rituxan kicks in, obviating the need for said IVIG?

So I think I’m crashing.

I retreated into my lair. I was deciding what to do.

And that’s when I pulled up Holly Humberstone’s “Overkill.”

All three Holly Humberstone tracks are good. Well, “Falling Asleep At The Wheel” is close to “Overkill,” but “Overkill”…

Going up and down the country

“Overkill” is the kind of cut you listen to driving up PCH with the sunroof open and the A/C on. When you feel like the luckiest person in the world, when you feel like your life works, when you’re happy.

And I’ll get e-mail saying it sucks. In more ways than I can even conjure.

But no one likes everything.

But if you’re looking for something that speaks to your head and heart, as well as your hips, that elusive elixir that makes a hit song…

“Overkill” may reach you.

Live on Vevo

“Chase Rice’s Tour Stop #1 – Hosts Absolutely Packed Concert… No Masks, Social Distancing”

Who thought this was a good idea?

Interesting this is getting no coverage in the music trades. Crickets on “Billboard,” ditto on “Pollstar,” never mind “Hits.” Funny how a business that makes its money working weekends is covered by writers who don’t. So, what happens is insiders find out from outsiders and outsiders control the narrative. Right now there are 13,800 stories covering this insane event online, my e-mail is blowing up, now what?

It’s all about superspreader events.

Hopefully you trust the “Scientific American”:

“How ‘Superspreading’ Events Drive Most COVID-19 Spread – As few as 10 percent of infected people may drive a whopping 80 percent of cases in specific types of situations”

“These numbers mean that preventing superspreader events could go a long way toward stopping COVID-19, says Samuel Scarpino, a network scientist who studies infectious disease at Northeastern University. Scientists have identified factors that catalyze such events, including large crowd sizes, close contact between people and confined spaces with poor ventilation. Current evidence suggests that it is mostly circumstances such as these, rather than the biology of specific individuals, that sets the stage for extreme spreading of the novel coronavirus.”

And if you only trust right-leaning media, let me point you to this “Wall Street Journal” article, which unfortunately is behind a paywall:

“Superspreader Events Offer a Clue on Curbing Coronavirus – Some scientists think banning mass gatherings may be enough to keep the pandemic in check”

“Superspreading events could even reignite the epidemic when the situation appears under control, said Cristopher Moore, a physicist with the Santa Fe Institute.”

As if Covid-19 cases are not burgeoning in Tennessee at this very moment!

But from a business perspective, the one issue that screams out, that is pulsing in lights, is LIABILITY!

You know people are gonna get sick. If Trump’s people got infected setting up for Tulsa, imagine what happened last night.

Just wait. From the same “Wall Street Journal” article above:

“Superspreading events exist in many infectious diseases, but with Covid-19, the disease the new coronavirus causes, they are especially dangerous because the virus has a longer period of incubation in which patients show no symptoms but can infect others.”

In other words, you don’t think you have it, but then you do. And when you do, someone’s got to pay for it, literally, especially if you die.

Can you say deep pockets?

If you get it from a family member, or a neighbor, you’re not gonna sue. But when it’s Chase Rice represented by CAA in a public venue…it’s open season! Hell, let’s sue the record company and the manager too, we can always strip their names from the lawsuit at the last moment.

And do you know how much it costs to defend these suits?

Assuming you don’t settle them.

And I guarantee you there was no insurance last night, not for this, not for Covid-19 infection. So, the entities are bare.

Last time I checked CAA was controlled by private equity firm TPG, which paid $400 million to CAA execs last year, which has $103 billion under management. You think some lawyer doesn’t want a piece of that, on contingency, it’s a GOLD MINE!

So, the people who booked this show need to be fired. To set an example. Otherwise the music industry is just like the federal government, ceding Covid-19 decisions to the fifty states, without coordination.

And what we know now is this lack of uniformity has resulted in soaring infection rates, because states opened too soon. Meanwhile, the EU won’t even let Americans in. So, if their venues happen to open up, which I sincerely doubt, since they’re way more intelligent than us, without this b.s. concept of “freedom”…to infect people so they die…Americans won’t be able to play there.
Now if you’re following this, Chase Rice has been ostracized, the blowback has been incredible.

But they told attendees to social distance!

That does not absolve them of responsibility. And it also proves that people not only need to be told what to do, but it needs to be enforced, and the easiest way to do this is to have no concerts at all, not to provide the opportunity to get infected, just like you don’t invite your friend who just got out of rehab to watch you shoot up.

Notice, AEG and Live Nation are sitting on the sidelines. One is controlled by a billionaire, the other is a public company. They’re run on smarts. They see the whole picture. They’d never do this.

And now you know some other bozos are gonna try to have shows. And we’ll be arguing about them just like we are about masks. But in this case, if the dates play, many more people will get infected.

I’m sure Chase Rice is too ignorant to realize he set himself up for blowback, that people would not be posting hosannas online.

But this is America. Where science is irrelevant and we must respect the whims and wants of the uneducated and dumb as much as the informed and intelligent. Where you have the right to kill others willy-nilly, in the name of freedom. Where people are so into money, they’ll sacrifice life.

INSANE!

P.S. Chris Willman just posted about this on “Variety,” kudos

Country Stars Chase Rice, Chris Janson Spark Outrage With Videos of Packed Concert Crowds