How do we sleep while our beds are burning

I woke up at 6:30. Maybe reasonable for you, out of the question for me, the last time I saw the sun rise was to catch a flight, I like the darkness, when everybody’s sleeping, when the world is mine.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. I ended up going to breakfast. I’ve got to ask you, why do they undercook the sausage? And the bacon should be CRISP! I could barely look at the bacon, I took a few bites of the sausage and got grossed out and immediately ate some yogurt to kill the taste. There’s protein in yogurt, that was breakfast, at an ungodly hour, would I have enough sustenance to carry me through?

To Studios 301 to do a podcast with Peter Garrett.

This was hard to make happen. It was confirmed, then canceled. I was told that Peter had a hard out at 11:50, he needed to get to the studio to record with his band.

We were there early, so I got to look at the gear. They had every tape recorder, that high end Technics that isolated the tape, two track Mitsubishi digital, I actually saw two of them, a couple of Studers. From a bygone era, before digital. And there were racks and racks of outboard equipment, this is how they used to make records. The studio was a sacred place, not just for anybody, it was expensive, it was the belly of the beast, it was where you made records, my heart still goes pitter-patter when I’m in the inner sanctum.

And then, while I’m checking out the iMac Pro we’re going to record on, avoiding the 72 track desk mere feet away, Peter Garrett arrives.

I’m intimidated. I feel like I’m imposing upon him. He’s almost 6’5″, he’s got a bald head, you know the type, irritable, asshole… BUT HE WAS NOTHING LIKE THAT!

Peter was warm and congenial. Like maybe someone I went to high school with, well no, nobody I went to high school became famous, no one took the road less taken.

And most musicians are reticent, their music speaks for them. But Peter… I was thinking of his choices, ones I was too afraid to make. Then again, he’s confident, his parents supported him, the opposite of my upbringing.

And Midnight Oil was an indie band before they signed to Columbia and were all over MTV. It was about the message, they refused to be compromised, actually, “Beds Are Burning” was not written to be a hit, but to be part of the soundtrack of a minor movie. Excellence comes when you’re not trying to execute it.

And we talked not only about the Oils, but Peter’s tenure in the government. As minister of education (should I capitalize that?) He was passionate and nice, I didn’t know they made rock stars like this.

But the best part was when we turned the mics off, after ninety minutes of conversation, long after noon, long after Peter was supposed to be gone. Actually, we’d still be there talking if I didn’t have a video commitment at 1:30. We were sitting there, analyzing the world, Peter’s smiling…do you know how good it feels to feel connected, to be listened to, to wrestle with the issues with someone who wants to? It’s what I live for! I always find I resonate most with the artists, even though I’m afraid of them. Joe Walsh reached out and volunteered himself for a podcast…I told him I’d been afraid to ask him, I hate imposing upon people, but it made me look like an amateur, I never believe I’m a member of the club, but it’s astounding how few of these people are intimidating, I felt like Peter was a friend for life!

And then we went to Fox Studios, to record this interview. When the lights go on, or down, depending on whether it’s a recording or live, I turn it on, this is when I deliver, because you never know what will put you over the top, usually the thing you were reluctant to do. And I’ll be honest, I wince when I find myself telling the same stories over again, especially when there are people in attendance who’ve heard them, but I try to tell myself they’re new to the audience.

And then we went to ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Company. The public outlet. I had my picture taken in front of legendary cartoon characters who I had not grown up with, the building was empty, maybe because of the Melbourne Cup, the famous horse race, but…

Then I did a radio interview and by time I got back to Cronulla it was time for my next gig, a dinner. I’m just running on adrenaline, like I said, I’m working hard for the money.

And I ran into this guy who started Australia’s third biggest ticketing company, from scratch, sixteen years ago. After listening to him for five minutes, I knew he’d be successful at anything he did, because he was passionate, he believed, he was his product. That’s what they don’t teach you in music school, not even entrepreneur programs, you’re born with it, it can be taught, but only those born with it are great at it. Find what you’re great at, you can’t compete with the naturals unless you’re one too, even if you put in the 10,000 hours, you can learn the notes, but you can’t write the song.

And I meet the guy who runs the arenas. And Don stands and thanks all the sponsors, usually sponsors are there to be ripped-off, but Don truly made them feel included.

And then we ate dinner.

Geoff had told me his partner made great Lebanese food. I had no idea. It was phenomenal! I overate, but I can’t stop when it’s that good, and I hadn’t eaten lunch until three p.m., I was running on empty.

And I got into a conversation with Adam Lewis, who lives in L.A. but I only see in foreign countries, he’s here to sign up bands, to do their radio promotion, publicity.

And these conversations are free-flowing, like the alcohol, everybody gets loosened up and tells stories and you feel part of a fraternity, of lucky freaks, we couldn’t do anything else, but we’re privileged to have fun doing our jobs, to never stop talking about them. As I said earlier today, go anywhere and say you’re involved in a hit record, a hit band, and all the billionaires will go ignored, that’s the power of music, the money is secondary, it’s the personal impact. As Peter Garrett said, it energizes people, gets them motivated.

And hours into this dinner conversation, the topic switched to television, it always does, politics and TV, that’s what people want to talk about today.

And Adam said he wished he could watch more TV. Huh? Isn’t everybody trying to watch less? So I ask him what he watches, and he says reality shows. He starts testifying about “Below Deck,” Felice is hooked on that too, it’s upstairs/downstairs in the private yacht world. But the show Adam liked best was…

DR. PIMPLE POPPER!

I thought I didn’t hear right. Couldn’t be. That wasn’t the name.

Adam said it was.

Okay, that was the name of the doctor, but not the show, right?

No, it’s the name of the show!

So I Googled it and it had its own Wikipedia page, so it was real.

And everybody at the table starts testifying about the show, about the growths these people have, how Dr. Pimple Popper saves their lives, how they’ve been afraid of leaving the house… HOW DID I MISS THIS?

I like to feel I’m clued in, I’m reading all day every day to take the pulse, but I’d never heard of “Dr. Pimple Popper.”

That’s the power of people, that’s the power of conversation, that’s when you feel most alive, talking to others, listening and learning.

The time has come, a fact’s a fact

Like global warming, like the power of a liberal arts education, like music. It’s what you do about it. Peter believes you can’t do it alone, it’s about getting together with other people, compromising, making the sausage, executing. It’s all right to complain, but you’ve got to do something.

There are people all over the world doing something. Not that the power of the individual should be dismissed, Greta Thunberg single-handedly motivated students to stand up, to protest, to tell the old men in charge that action needs to be taken. And then she declined the Nordic Council’s environmental award, and its prize money. It’s not about her, it’s about the cause. That’s rock and roll. An unfiltered opinion rendered by someone who is not sold out and is unwilling to cripple their vision.

These are the people we need more of, these are the people who change the world, people who believe it can be a better place.

Where we can feel free to watch “Dr. Pimple Popper” without worrying about our planet burning up.

Peter Garrett wants you to wake up, Greta Thunberg too, because when the beds are burning you don’t want to go up in flames with them.

People are inspiring.

I was inspired today.

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday November 5th, 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

They’re treating me like a rock star. As in shuffling me from place to place for publicity. Tomorrow is radio, today was photography for the newspaper interviews I did last week. You can see how relationships matter, at least in terms of promotion. A team of pros build you.

First we went to Geoff’s venue, the Brass Monkey. There were posters all over the door, even one of me, but what struck me most was the tribute bands, the seventies have not died. One was a doubleheader of Eagles and the Doobie Brothers…does the promoter know Irving manages both? And speaking of Irving, there was a Steely Dan tribute, and last Saturday they had Fleetwood Mac. Then again, Amy Winehouse plays too, it’s not all oldsters. People are fans of the music.

And then the photographer for the “Australian” showed up.

He came with a suitcase full of gear, even a bag of lights. And he started shooting, all angles, changing lenses, I kinda cracked up that out of all these shots, they’d probably only use one.

But as John was setting up his umbrella, I asked him about his gig. He was the last photographer left, they’d all fallen by the wayside in the great internet crunch. He shot everywhere, like…Iraq.

Yup, during the war, they got ahead of the Americans. It was John, a reporter and an interpreter. They got accosted. Had guns pointed at their heads…talk about feeling alive.

And then we went downstairs into the venue and John shot even more. I was digging it, it’s good to be the focus of attention, then again, I’m sure it gets old and overwhelming, assuming you’re on the rocket ship to the top.

And when it was all done, we walked down to Geoff’s office, killed some time, and then Don and I went down to the beach, for a shoot with the “Sydney Morning Herald.”

Now you’ve got to know how beautiful the beach is. It’s green and then blue and the surf today isn’t that big, but there were people out there, albeit in wetsuits. I asked what the flags were about, figuring they were warnings not to go in the water, but actually it was just the opposite, you’ve got to swim between the flags, to avoid the rips, if there are no flags, don’t go in.

And Cronulla Beach is…a resort town. Little did I know I was coming to Australia on vacation. Then again, like Donna Summer, I’m working hard for the money. A podcast tomorrow, two radio shows, and then podcasts and panels, sometimes twice a day, until I’m gone.

So we amble down to the beach and there’s a blonde woman with one camera. Yup, she’s got a Canon similar to John’s, but that’s all. I figured we got the B-team, after all, I’m B-level talent at best.

And this woman Kate has me walking down on the beach. I’ll tell you, I was wondering whether to take my shoes off, there’s nothing worse than getting sand in your shoes, then again, that Dido song said just the opposite:

I’ve still got sand in my shoes
And I can’t shake the thought of you
I should get on, forget you
But why would I want to
I know we said goodbye
Anything else would have been confused
But I wanna see you again

“Sand In My Shoes” is about a vacation romance, you know, a fling to be forgotten, only the protagonist in this song cannot, forget that is. Isn’t it funny how what we think is the sideshow becomes the main show.

And I got into Dido because of hearing “Life For Rent” in my mother’s car, with only FM and no satellite. Repetition builds bonds. And when I got home to California I looked through hundreds of CDs until I found that one, and then played it over and over again, discovered “Sand In My Shoes,” even went to see Dido at the Wiltern.

She recently put out a new LP and it didn’t even make a ripple in the water. The paradigm shifted. Funny how you stay the same and times change and you’re done.

So after leaning against rocks and standing by the lifeguard shack, I asked Kate about her gig.

She just came back from Syria. She started telling stories of the Kurds, of going to funerals. How the Kurds hate Trump and no one in the world trusts America anymore. These were not the words of a talking head on MSNBC, Kate had been there, she’d felt it.

Had she been shot at?

“We all have.”

And it soon became clear Kate was part of the fraternity, of journalists.

Recently she was in the Congo. She’s not an adrenaline junkie, she just needs to tell these stories, people need to know them.

And I’m standing there talking to her knowing she can’t get rich, but her life is richer than most of the people who are.

And I asked her what was going on.

Kate said it was about resources, that’s what everybody in the world is fighting for. That Trump’s troops made sure the oil flowed, he was in the process of making a deal with Chevron for its distribution.

And I can’t stop talking to Kate. You see most people are uninformed or unable to tolerate contrary opinions. Then, there are facts. She’s talking about Erdogan’s movement of Turks into this tiny strip, with little infrastructure. She showed me pictures of the Americans leaving, with their tails between their legs. But somehow, it’s all about abortion, identity politics, anything but the real issues.

Now thereafter I went in search of Coke. As in Coca-Cola, caffeine-free, the diet iteration.

I eventually found it in the IGA.

And now I’m back in my hotel room contemplating.

One thing I like about my heavy schedule is the excitement of interaction. As I like to say, walk out the front door and you have no idea what will happen.

And the truth is to a great degree the media is a disinformation society. I’m not talking about Fox and fake, I’m talking about perspective and holes. Unless you have boots on the ground, unless you’ve been there, oftentimes you don’t know. Kinda like the reporters pontificating on what the people want without knowing them.

Everybody’s got a story, and I want to know it.

What are you willing to risk?

Kate doesn’t want to die on the job, but fear won’t keep her from doing her job.

This is who she is.

Who are you?

“Sand In My Shoes”

Spotify

YouTube

P.S. After our first date, I told Felice I was listening to “Sand In My Shoes,” I told her “I wanna see you again.”

“And Tommy doesn’t know what day it is…”

Actually, it’s Monday morning, 9:32 AM. Which is pretty strange, since I left L.A. on Saturday.

I flew Qantas. Didn’t Rain Man say it never had a crash? Well, I think since then they have, but if you think your aircraft is gonna crash, you probably shouldn’t fly to begin with. They say it’s the lack of control. I feel that when I’m not behind the wheel. Felice and I were driving, actually she was driving, to Glacier Point in Yosemite, and if you miss a turn, good luck, I was pumping the imaginary brakes, but on an airplane, you’ve got to have faith, even if George Michael himself is gone.

It was an A380. One of those double-decked thingys. They’re not gonna make any more. Turns out the flying paradigm has shifted, now it’s about shorter flights with smaller, more fuel-efficient aircraft. And now they’ve got these long-range 787s… As for the 737 Max, it’s not the MCAS that concerns me, it’s the whole concept. Rather than compete with Airbus’s new plane, Boeing gussied up an old one, the 737 launched in the sixties, when there weren’t even jetways at most airports. So, the Max had to fit engines on wings with a low height and then came up with software to accommodate the lack of balance…this is kinda like making digital vinyl records. Sometimes you’ve got to throw out the old to get started with the new. Or, as Dylan put it, “you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.” The times are certainly changing, but what’s weird is to a great degree they’re changing back, with populism reigning, a return to what once was that can never be regained, but that does not stop people from believing they can return to an era that wasn’t that good to begin with.

So they gave you pajamas. I shit you not. Was there going to be a rush on the bathroom, for changing?

At first I finished Elton’s biography “Me.” Wherein the music is barely mentioned, it’s all about interior dialogue and experiences, a revelatory music bio. Should you read it if you don’t like, care or know Elton? Probably not. But if you want to know what it’s like to be one of the biggest stars in the world… What’s amazing is how many people Elton knows and stays in touch with, at least when he wasn’t isolated in his bedroom on a coke binge. He talked to Ingrid Sischy every day! But at this point, most people probably have no idea who Ingrid was. But if you lived through the seventies, when Warhol still had impact… Think about that, a visual artist ruling the cultural world. Warhol sold out upfront, which constantly left you guessing, was it art or a joke, was it commerce or conception? That’s back when art was all about challenging perceptions, before it became a second-class citizen all about scrapping for cash. Were Brillo boxes art? Are Marvel movies art? One thing’s for sure, Marvel movies are all about the money, I mean has there ever been a comic book that has been anointed as great, key to the cultural fabric? Oh, I’m not talking about today’s graphic novels…the whole world has gone lowbrow, and the highbrows are so out of touch that they should be ignored. And where does this leave us? With no direction home.

So they had a lot of good movies on the plane. I wanted to watch “Booksmart” and “Yesterday,” but I never got to them, I was too busy reading. After I finished “Me,” I turned to Gary Shteyngart’s 2002 novel, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” written before social media, when everybody decided they were a winner. Used to be you graduated from college and then…who knows? You tried to find yourself, get loaded, have sex, try to identify yourself before you were tied to kids, a mortgage and car payments. The funny thing about “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” is the interior dialogue is much more intriguing than today’s art. You know, doubts, dreams, reflections on one’s parents, your upbringing, where you fit in the social structure… All of this has been wiped clean. In music, you have to boast or blast. In movies the characters aren’t even real. But there is hope in television, for now anyway.

So I changed into my pajamas and slept quite well. And when I woke up it was only forty five minutes till touchdown. So I went to the bathroom to change and…there was a line. So I ended up changing under the covers. I mean I couldn’t wear my PJs into the airport!

But I’d missed the instructions. And when I got to the machines, I didn’t know whether to use them or not. And just when I was ready to pull my passport, voila!, I got a ticket, allowing me to avoid the line.

Don met me and we got into his Audi and he told me how he was eager to get a Tesla. He talked about the acceleration. Yup, the upper middle class are the trendsetters in this case, and none of them are going back to gasoline cars. But what’s really weird is in Australia they drive on the wrong side of the road. I know, I know, it’s the right, but how come we can’t all get on the same page here? I guess for the same reason the U.S. never adopted the metric system, even though Canada did. It’s easy, like taking candy, from a baby. And we could switch overnight in the States but somehow that would be unpatriotic, we’d be sacrificing our freedom, to be ignorant, left behind. What kind of country do we now live in where up is down and vice versa? One in which the underclass is so far behind it has contempt for the educated and successful. Income inequality has consequences, but the rich don’t want to suffer, they believe they’ve earned their cash, as if they could have made it without customers, i.e. the hoi polloi.

So we’re driving away from Sydney, to Cronulla Beach.

You see it’s spring here. Which is so weird, having exited L.A. in the fall. You can feel the rebirth, even though there was a Christmas tree in the airport. But I guess they didn’t have snow in Jerusalem.

You feel the optimism, even though statistically more people commit suicide in the spring. Then again, what do we have to live for anymore? Art, baby. And sex. And art that explains sex. It’s all about the human condition, but we’re denying that.

So I’m here for Australian Music Week. Doing interviews, doing press.

Funny how you can go to sleep in one time zone, and then wake up halfway across the world. Where rugby and cricket supersede the NFL and MLB. But where football/soccer is making inroads, just like back home. Yup, just you wait, we’re all gonna be kicking the ball soon, it’s just a matter of time.

But no one thinks the future will ever come. Even worse, in the States, everyone wants to be inoculated against its consequences…I can’t lose my job, my standard of living… But just like yesterday’s music does not top the chart today, things change, and you’ve got to change with them or fall behind to your detriment.

Then again, learning, education, has a stain on it in America. You see it generates elites, who think they know more, who think they are better than the rest.

Only in America can bettering yourself be seen as a detriment.

Now I’m a big supporter of a social safety net, no one should starve, everyone should have a roof over their head. But the truth is while you’re busy denigrating the achievers, you’re falling farther behind.

How did this turn into a political screed?

I guess in an era of social media backlash, you can cower, protest that you are not worthy and get out of the way or…

There are more ways to get ahead than jumping through hoops. Believe me, I’m not in a hotel room overlooking the beach because I’m a lawyer, my SATs have got nothing to do with it, baby.

The truth is I went down the road less taken. Which most people are unwilling to do. I ain’t got no kids, I sacrificed. But that’s the only way to get to the unknown, to the pot of gold, which in many cases isn’t even cash.

You get there via art, via music.

There’s no degree that will get you there, you fly by your wits.

But the payoff… People don’t do it for the money, they do it for the experience, the learning. Then again, in a culture where cash is put first, it’s all gone to hell.

Keep your eyes open. Figure out how to go your own way, and not the one Lindsey Buckingham was singing about.

As Jim Carroll put it, “I’m just a constant warning to take the other direction.”

It’s those that do who change this world. Money has no chance against art, it’s all about hearts and minds, baby.

And as Bon Scott so famously sang…

“It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock n’ roll.”