Academy Award winner for “20 Feet From Stardom,” as well as director of last summer’s surprise hit “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” Morgan Neville is the go-to documentarian. His Rick Rubin docuseries premieres on Showtime on July 12th. Morgan’s a huge music fan, listen to how he got from there to here, I could have talked to him all day!

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You know you’re striking a nerve when you get a reaction.

This is an analog of “all press is good press.”

In the attention economy, it’s nearly impossible to get attention. But Elizabeth Warren has figured out how to do this, and the heads of those on the right are exploding.

I know, I hear from the right whenever I write something vaguely political, even if that’s not the point.

My point with Warren was not her politics, but her marketing, her declaration of positions, how she was doing it.

But as soon as you say WARREN you touch a nerve on the right.

And the blowback is fascinating.

Yup, I’ll go on record, your and you’re, they’re and their…I see these mistakes on the right more than the left. You’d think naysayers would at least get their spelling/usage right.

I’m gonna tell you something, people judge on spelling/usage. Especially women.

That’s right, I know a woman who decides who to go out with based on spelling errors. As for sending pictures of your junk, isn’t that like whistling at a woman passing by? When did that EVER work?

And what those on the right are most afraid of is someone is gonna take what they’ve got. As if what they’ve got they acquired in a vacuum. You work at a company, your customers are keeping you in business. And same deal in tech and energy and…

But somehow on the right there’s this canard that the left wants THEIR money.

So let’s say there are no taxes. Who is gonna take care of the roads? When you call the police because of hooligans, who is gonna respond?

It’s every person for themselves in right wing America. I’ve got mine, SCREW YOU! That attitude is separating right to begin with, we live in a society, we all have to get along.

And then there are the inaccuracies in facts. That’s right, the right wing disinformation campaign is rolling 24/7. You could go to Snopes, but now, like the “New York Times” and the “Washington Post,” that’s considered fake news. The only real news is Fox and the blogs and the self-appointed nutcases spewing online. It’s amazing, someone will e-mail you a screed…didn’t they even google before they accepted it as fact, sent it in defense of their position? Yup, right there in Wikipedia it’s revealed that the site is biased. But you can’t trust Wikipedia, right? After all, our President is busy claiming everything he says is true and any corrections/opposite opinions are fake. Mick Jagger stood up to Trump’s claim about the airports two hundred odd years ago

Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger mocks Trump over blunder in Fourth of July speech

remember when we were all on the same side, rallying around the music? But that was back when music had meaning.

And the facts say that despite claiming minority status, Warren never benefited from it. But the right wing says otherwise, and keeps repeating the falsehood. Meanwhile, Trump is regularly accused of rape and he’s an all right guy. He took the biggest tax write-off in history and initiated a tax cut that has resulted in a shortfall in collections.

But all of that is too deep in the woods, let’s separate the wheat from the chaff…

The right is freaking out, the same way the left did in 2016.

The right is convinced Trump’s a shoo-in, just like Hillary in 2016.

Somehow, Democrats have lost the war of messaging. They’ve been saying for years, put faith in the elites and everything will work out. BUT IT DIDN’T!

Meanwhile, the right has been saying not only that it’s your money and you should be able to keep it, but gays are bad, abortions are bad, immigrants are bad, women don’t deserve equal rights…they’re trying to scare you into submission.

Then Elizabeth Warren comes out and speaks truth, which resonates and…

That’s how Trump won, by speaking to people’s anger and frustration.

But Elizabeth Warren is more intelligent and more experienced.

And what about Trump promising all that stuff he hasn’t delivered. We still have Obamacare, which the country overwhelmingly wants, we’re in insane trade wars messing with the vaunted farmers, and there’s still not a wall, he couldn’t even deliver it when Republicans controlled all three branches of government.

So the pendulum has swung.

And never forget it, they hate African-Americans, other than the ones who speak just like them. They hate Asians for taking their spots in the Ivy League. They hate Jews, because they control entertainment and money and are the root of all evil. And they think you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps, just like them, even though tons of them haven’t and are living off the largesse of the government, not only via Medicaid and other social services, but the disproportionate spending in red states as opposed to blue.

But let’s not get mired in facts, this is a war of EMOTION!

And believe me, the right is riled up, unified behind someone even foreign countries think is incompetent.

But now that the left is riled up, they don’t like it, it’s unfair.

So don’t nominate a wuss, that’s just what the Republicans want, someone blah who they can declare irrelevant. You need a fighter. After all, not only has Trump kept the tax man at bay, but Congress too.

So now I’ll be inundated with e-mail saying I’ve got it wrong. That those on the right LOVE minorities, that it’s all about finances.

But this is obfuscation. Which can be ignored.

That’s right, the press calls foul every day against Trump and McConnell and the right laughs and ignores it, why shouldn’t the left ignore the calls of foul on the right? Yup, the right’s defense is always decency.

We need leaders, screw the parking meters. And now that there’s one on the left, a dreaded woman to boot, the right is going insane.

THAT’S FUNNY!

This should be the television hit of the summer.

My only anxiety is the five night a week stripping (as in TV, not clothing, but that will happen too) and the practice of U.S. television to focus on the surface as opposed to the essence. This is not about who is the best-looking, this is about the best at coupling up and having sex.

Yes, that’s an integral part of “Love Island”… The f…ing.

Admit it you watch porn on your computer, imagine if it came to real life, on the flat screen, would you check it out? OF COURSE YOU WOULD!

This is for ladies and gents. After all, it takes two to tango. And everybody’s curious.

I saw a billboard for the show today. I wondered if it was the U.K. one I was familiar with. After all, the names are so similar, “Temptation Island” and…

You see “Love Island” caused conversation in the U.K. By demonstrating how vapid the contestants are, how they’re ruled by the physical as opposed to the mental, how they smoke and break traditional societal mores…it’s hard to take your eyes off a train-wreck, especially when that train-wreck is you!

You see we live in a puritanical country. Last week on Sirius XM I asked people to tell me their favorite album to make love to. CRICKETS! I got tweets the week before about not letting callers expound, but those same callers refused to weigh in on this topic. Of those who did call in, most were women. And Volume is dominated by guys, albeit not in the percentage you see at a Rush show. Women are portrayed as meek and shy and…the truth is, they’re not. And what did I learn? Most couples put on music less for the inspiration than to drown out the sound, so their children can’t hear. For others with older children, it’s a sign that they should not open the door, they might not, probably won’t, like what they see. You see sex is a taboo.

But not on “Love Island.”

This is just the first season, so they’re not stacking the deck, like they used to do on “The Real World,” with Puck and other pot-stirrers. You’ve got no trans-people, switch-hitting is not a factor, and too many of the people are beautiful and white. But…the sex remains.

And the audience participates. People no longer live tweet awards shows, they’re boring. And voting at the end of the series is de rigueur, but voting in the middle of the show? To change the cast?

And that’s one thing different from the usual reality series. They keep injecting new contestants.

People don’t really have sex, right? On Volume I remarked that on the radio no one knows who you are, you can even employ a fake name…but the same public watching porn inside refuses to reveal its peccadilloes outside. Hell, there was that suit in Utah, a few decades back, the officials wanted to get rid of porn. But then the cable company revealed that its customers in the Beehive State were huge porn viewers, and porn remained on TV.

But you probably don’t know about “Love Island.” And it’s not like CBS has done an incredible job of promoting it. Actually, I can applaud them for depending upon word of mouth. But the truth is, CBS is its own echo chamber. Netflix does a better job of promoting its shows. They appear every time you log in, and more people watch Netflix than CBS.

This also demonstrates the failure of advertising. First and foremost, youngsters hate ads, so even though networks charge a fortune for the largest audience, it’s a fallacious concept. And even if you promote the hell out of something, you can’t reach people. Actually, today the promotion is done after a show hits. That started with “The Sopranos,” moved on to “Game of Thrones” and now “Stranger Things.” Once you’ve got a base of fans, then you pile on the stories and the tie-ins and the ads.

So, the initial “Love Island” promo won’t draw in outsiders. No, CBS is dependent upon traditional TV viewers to spread the word. Then again, there will be live streaming, but once again, that gets traction after the fact.

So it all comes down to execution and word of mouth. Can CBS execute as well as ITV? And will the show be titillating and engaging enough to engender word of mouth?

The story of “Love Island,” the U.K. version, has been all over the U.K. press and the elite press in America. Yes, you can read the international press here in the U.S.A., hell, you can read “The Daily Mail” on Apple News. But, the stories are not as good as the TV show is. The TV show is a view into the psyche of the population, a visual demonstration of the human condition, and too often writing is just the facts.

And on “Love Island” the facts are important. But it’s the penumbra that makes the show garner ratings. You see, life runs on nuance. And sex.

And there’s plenty of both on “Love Island”!

Love Island

She’s not using consultants.

And she raised $19.1 million dollars last quarter, nearly as much as Biden and Buttigieg. Even more dramatically, she’s not doing the fat cat fundraisers and phone calls.

How did she do this? Via message, via credibility, via eschewing the conventional wisdom.

Message. That’s the song. It always comes down to the song. And if you’ve got one good enough, that’s not the usual dreck, when people hear it, they resonate.

In other words, the infrastructure doesn’t get it, but the public does.

The infrastructure has decided it’s all hip-hop all the time.

At this point hip-hop has had an almost forty year run, nearly as long as rock. Rock faded, will hip-hop?

That doesn’t matter. Although they are different. Hip-hop is about culture. It is oftentimes like professional wrestling. The players/wrestlers come and go, it’s more about the game. And some people, like Kanye, are so outrageous they draw in viewers. And there are beefs and…

Rock was never this kind of lifestyle, it was sometimes about attitude, but mostly about songs.

Sinatra and what came before…all about songs.

So, is there room for genres other than hip-hop? Don’t forget, the mainstream media, the infrastructure, said that Elizabeth Warren had no chance. But now there’s a good chance she’ll be the Democratic nominee.

Warren continued to hammer ideas, i.e. release new material, when no one was listening/paying attention. But her tsunami of policy proposals caught fire, and when attention shifted to her, she had a catalog. You always want a catalog, when people love your hit, they want to go back and check out what you’ve done before.

Then there comes credibility. This is a matter of ideas and behavior. Your message must hew to a consistent philosophy, message is always first. But then, you can do nothing that undermines that message. This is where music has lost the plot. First and foremost, what is the message? Furthermore, musicians are always willing to sell out to the highest bidder. Most usually the corporation. And the infrastructure says it makes no difference, but it does. When you sell out to the man, you become a professional wrestler, willing to do anything and everything, which screws up your message, and you’re not outside the system, but inside. Corporations are not your friend. Your goal is to stand up to them. What kind of bizarre world do we live in where Warren knows this, and “musicians” don’t.

And then it comes down to money. Conventional wisdom is you need the deep pockets of the label to break through. But Warren did it based on her fans.

And you need a slew of high-priced consultants to get the message out. I.e. the label and its radio promotion people and the indie promotion people and the video/TV person and… They’re bleeding you dry. Not only do they own your copyrights, they’re charging back most of this “work” to you, decimating your royalties.

And the label does it the old way in a new world.

Instead of buying TV ads, Warren spent the money on the ground, one to one, because that’s how you infect an audience today, by getting down to their level, by not talking down to them.

So Elizabeth Warren becomes a sui generis rock star. The kind we used to make in the music industry. Someone who is outside the system doing it her way.

They always say you don’t have the right look, the right presentation…Warren can’t win because she comes across as a schoolmarm. No, she appears dedicated and enthusiastic, she’s doing her act and her act only, she doesn’t care what others say. She’s a rock star. She pivoted in her early life, she developed over time, not like the nitwit twelve year olds we think will save music, will go to the top of the chart.

This is how it always happens with something new, something of substance, something outside that becomes inside. It begins off the radar screen, when no one says you’ve got a chance. And then, while the mainstream isn’t paying attention, it becomes an overnight sensation.

As for the Pocahontas thing… On the internet, there are new memes every day, almost nothing sticks. You just keep powering on. As for youthful behavior you now regret, have you seen this Cream ad for Falstaff beer?

Falstaff Beer Commercial

Elizabeth Warren don’t need no stinking label.

And she’s not complaining that the system is rigged against her, just that it’s rigged in general. You’ve got to speak truth, you’ve got to be an agent for change.

This portends the future of the music business. There won’t be a lock on the game by the usual suspects in the future. Maybe there might be new usual suspects, but not the same ones. The majors got Spotify to stop direct uploads, the streaming company’s investment in the marketing of acts. They call that leverage. Too often the old man employs it to keep the status quo. But still, in an era of change, there are ways around this.

That’s what the internet delivers.

We keep hearing the internet broke music. Quite the opposite, it provided a zillion opportunities! You can make your music cheaply with technology, post it online, and market it via the internet for free.

But you can only gain traction this way if you’ve got something to say.

Like Elizabeth Warren.

“Can Elizabeth Warren help break the political consulting cartel?”