https://cruelworldfest.com

It was Coachella for Generation X, and it was GREAT!

Not that I’d planned to go. But Kathy Valentine extended an invitation months ago and I’m not going to say no to her. But as the date approached I asked myself, did I really want to hang with the unwashed masses outside the Rose Bowl on a hot afternoon?

This is my post-Covid dilemma. This is my aged dilemma. What does it take me to get out of the house? There’s a Covid hangover no one talks about. The difference between then and now, before and after. Before I was on the go, in the mix. Then I was mandated into enforced stasis. Now it’s hard to get back in gear, inertia keeps me in place. But even worse, I now think about what I want to see. The same band I saw in their heyday, their comeback, their legacy tour and…at some point it is enough.

But if you’re a friend of mine, I’ll go anywhere. Because it’s about support, and hanging with friends.

And that’s why I went to Cruel World.

Now how early am I going to go?

Almost no one goes at the opening bell, because it’s a long day standing in the heat and the bill builds, the best bands are on last, so you need to pace yourself. As a matter of fact, at many festivals people start to leave before the headliner even takes the stage, they’re already worn out.

But not last night.

So I’m debating what time to arrive and I tell myself I can’t miss ‘Til Tuesday doing “Voices Carry.”

“Hush hush, keep it down now

Voices carry”

And I’m schlepping across the grounds, it’s not only a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll, it’s a long way from the parking lot to the Outsiders Stage. And I’m passing all kinds of ethnicities, L.A. is a rainbow of colors and they all listened to KROQ way back when. And as I approach the stage I can hear, but…

I can’t see a thing. I’m watching it on the hi-def screens. But the band is really good. I’m wondering how many original members are on stage. I try to look it up on my phone, but there’s no cell access. Oh, I’ve got plenty of bars, but the circuits are overloaded.

And I’m looking at the schedule and I know these festivals run on time and there are only a few minutes left and the band plays what appears to be their last song, but then, when it’s over, they launch into “Voices Carry.”

“Oh, he wants me

But only part of the time

He wants me

If he can keep me in line”

Every single person knows the words and is singing along. This was the eighties, this was MTV. If you made it then, everyone knew your name and song. Aimee Mann said the video caused people to recognize her in airports. And Aimee… It was an old song, but she was picking her bass like it was all happening today. And she was wearing jeans, the kind you don for a trip to the grocery store, she was letting the music speak for itself. AND IT DID!

As for OMD… I was going to check out a couple of numbers before I went backstage.

They looked the opposite of Aimee Mann. Like men. Sixtysomething men. But they’re singing these songs from their youth. And I never bought an Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark album, but I know every song and am bopping along…how can this be?

But I eventually walk across the mud-strewn field to the backstage area.

I didn’t mention that it was raining. A near impossibility at this time in Southern California. I was worried that this would impact attendance, but Paul Tollett said not a bit.

Now after catching up with Frank Riley I went back out front, because I had to catch Madness.

ONE STEP BEYOND!

They started with that.

And I’m looking around at the assembled multitude. It’s not the influencers of Coachella, there are a few people dressed up to show off, but most have the misshapen bodies of elders, many are wearing the rock t-shirts of yore, it’s a completely different generation, an ignored generation, but this is their music.

Sure, I saw a couple of people dragging along their twentysomething progeny, but this festival was not attended by a younger generation that had discovered this music online. And you didn’t see the septuagenarian baby boomers like me. No, it was late fifty and sixtysomethings. There for the music more than the hang.

And it was about the music. The food stalls were carb city. If you went to hang…didn’t seem like such a good hang to me.

I was there for the music. And I couldn’t get enough of it!

Of course Madness did “Our House.” But a few minutes before their set was over I trekked across the wasteland to the Sad Girls stage to see what was ultimately the highlight of the night, DEVO!

Not that I expected them to be such. But they brought a modern show to an antique world. There was no nostalgia involved other than the songs themselves. There was video. This was not a dash for cash, this was about reverse evolution, as the back of Mark Mothersbaugh’s jacket said.

Oh, they had the yellow nuke outfits, and the red flower pot hats, and even the shorts and knee socks.

But they also had the synths, a sound that dominated back then but is absent today. And the RIFFS!

Now I didn’t buy every Devo album. Certainly the first, with “Satisfaction,” but the album I play most, which I play a lot, is “New Traditionalists,” which was seen as somewhat of a comedown after “Freedom of Choice” and “Whip It.” And when the band started playing “Going Under”…

“Left home with a friend of mine

Gone two years and I don’t know why”

No one does that anymore, they can’t afford to move, and in the internet era you can’t leave your past behind.

“I know a place where dreams get crushed

Hopes are smashed but that ain’t much”

Alienation. Not the disillusionment of today. Before you felt like you didn’t fit in, and the music made you feel connected, whole. Today’s “musicians” keep telling you how much better they are than you and you dance mindlessly because you see no future.

“I’m going under

I’m going under”

But this is dance music. The kind you hear and your body starts moving. It’s involuntary. The sound penetrates and you start to jump. It’s got nothing to do with the crowd around you, you’re jerkin’ back and forth in sync with the band on stage.

Speaking of jumping beans…

“She sings from somewhere you can’t see

She sits in the top of the greatest tree

She sends out an aroma of undefined love

It drips on down in a mist from above”

This was not pornography, but it was imbued with a sexual hunger, a truth absent from the images readily available online today. She’s definitely THE GIRL U WANT!

The band is not going through the motions. 75 year old Mark Mothersbaugh is moving as if he’s still in his twenties and this is the most important era of his life, delivering this sound and message. And it occurs to me that this music is anything but dated. Young people would cotton to Devo if they were exposed to it. On TV it was sometimes hokey, an inside joke. But make no mistake, live Devo ROCKS! And you get pulled in instantly. It’s totally FRESH!

As for Nick Cave… Never been a fan. But in Toronto a friend was testifying about his show, so I had to go.

So I ambled across the field once again…

HOLY SH*T!

This is another act youngsters would be entranced by if they just saw it.

It’s eerie. The sun had gone down, the screens were projecting black and white and Cave was revealing the underside of life in that baritone of his… I almost couldn’t tear myself away to see the Go-Go’s. It was positively riveting, not something you can get anywhere else but at a live show. No video, no movie, no TV show competes. You could feel the energy coming off Cave, you could not ignore it, it confronted you and made you pay attention. To stories about the less than successful, about the underbelly of life. If more people just saw Nick Cave live he’d be a SUPERSTAR!

As for the Go-Go’s… They rocked, HARD! This is not the girl band you saw in videos, nor the poppy melodies of the records. These were girls competing with the boys. You got the vibe of the era. When everybody wanted to start a band. Almost no one does today, because there’s not enough money in it, there are easier ways to make bread, and even if you’re a big star, everybody doesn’t know your name like they did in the MTV era.

And the music is now made by different people. More the lower classes than the middle. The music is made by committee and is just one part of the persona. Whereas with the Go-Go’s you could see that they thought they could do what they boys did, AND THEY DID!

I walked across the field to catch New Order, but…

It’s kind of how I feel about Kraftwerk. When you squeeze out key members such that the band is now controlled by one…it’s just not the same.

And sure, I wanted to hear “Blue Monday,” but I’m not the biggest New Order fan.

So I punted.

But almost no one else did. They were staying to the end. Which confounded and impressed me. You were really going to stand out there until eleven o’clock, in the fading mist atop the drying ground? Angelenos are legendary for leaving early. But not this crowd.

And I’m thinking how our parents wouldn’t have stood in a field all day to hear music at this age, no way.

And I’m thinking how the music means more to these people than today’s tunes mean to today’s young ‘uns.

Oh, don’t argue with me. Music is forever, but right now music is not hot. Music was hot from the mid-sixties until the end of the seventies, when it imploded. And then along came MTV to rescue it. MTV was hotter than any social media site. And we were all glued to it and watching the same videos. They were the lingua franca. We watched the acts test the limits. And sure, they were getting rich, but the tunes were infectious, and one step beyond what had come before.

And it meant so much to these people there in Pasadena. To the point that they braved the weather to attend. I mean my windshield wipers were going full bore on the way there, and when I lowered my window to ask the cop where to park, I was afraid of getting wet.

But this is just how much the music means to us.

And still does.

We’re living separate lives. Many have raised children who are already out of the house. They’re doing jobs they may not want to. Their lives may not have worked out the way they planned. But they’ve still got this MUSIC! The acts on stage are their heroes, they committed to the road less traveled and got to the destination, they won! Therefore they and their music are an inspiration to listeners.

Sure, there was an element of nostalgia. But if you were there watching Devo or Nick Cave, that’s not the word you would use. They were alive and kicking even more than today’s acts. They could wipe the stage with them.

That was the power of rock.

And for one day yesterday its acolytes congregated between the trees to celebrate yesterday and today. You left there smiling, you had HOPE!

That’s the power of music.

When you think you’re down in the dumps and can’t get up.

It lifts you up.

We were new traditionalists.

And proud to be so!

It was a peek at what once was, yet stunningly is still here.

It’s the power of music.

It’s the power of life.

All I can say is WOW!

It’s impossible to gain the public’s attention. And when you’ve got it you want to hold it as long as possible. This is the genius of video games. Could take weeks to get to the end, maybe months, and some go on forever! The hardest part is getting people to partake, then you’ve got to keep them as long as you can.

For a while there it was believed that releasing a track every week or month was a good plan. But assuming you’ve got traction to begin with, assuming you make music that many people will cotton to, that’s no longer a good way to do it. This does not mean you can’t drop a track here or there, especially if it’s a collaboration, but you need to save up all your stuff for one big drop when you can gain as much attention as possible, and then KEEP IT!

The new Morgan Wallen album “I’m the Problem” has thirty seven songs. It lasts for an hour and fifty seven minutes. You may not be interested at all. And unlike in the old days, if you don’t care, you not only do not have to partake, you won’t even be exposed to it! Top Forty radio? Who’s listening to that? This is not 1973 and Charlie Rich’s “Most Beautiful Girl” crossing over from country to Top Forty, such that listeners who loved rock find themselves not only listening, but knowing every word…today you don’t listen to anything you don’t want to!

I was at a dinner party with boomers and they started talking about TV commercials. I had no idea what they were talking about, I hadn’t seen a single one, I no longer watch television in a linear fashion, but what I want when I want. And yes, there are ad-supported tiers on streaming services, but most people pay to avoid the spots.

But my point is if you don’t want to see it, if you don’t want to hear it, you don’t have to!

If you’re a subscriber to SiriusXM and you hear what you don’t like you can find a bunch of channels in the same genre, never mind scores in other genres. And if you’re listening on Spotify, et al, the world is yours.

So, once again, it doesn’t matter if you don’t like Morgan Wallen, a ton of people do, to the point where he’s having his own festival, Sand in My Boots, down in Alabama, a state you might never have been to, not even been close to, at this very moment. How many other acts do you know who can headline their own festival?

Yes, Morgan Wallen is the biggest recording artist in America, but he’s still competing against not only the new, but the old, the greatest hits of all time available at a fingertip’s click.

So if you drive a wedge into public consciousness…you try to take as much air out of the room as possible.

Furthermore, Wallen is playing today’s country music which is like the rock of yore. Modern rock, Active Rock, is a marginal world, the word on the street is rock is dead when in truth it’s just morphed into country.

So you labor over your twelve tracks and release them to crickets and…

Once again, attention comes first, fans come first, which is why major labels will only sign acts that have proven their mettle, have the data to show it. Doesn’t matter how good you are anymore, but whether you have an audience!

And the question becomes whether you can grow that audience to something that resembles ubiquity. Which is why the majors tend to only be interested in hip-hop and pop, because they have the most market share. You can have diehard fans as a jam band, does anybody have more hard core fans than Phish? But how many more people want to listen to Phish?

So either you’re pouring out material, doing gigs, active on social media to gain an audience and build a career or…

You’ve got a career and how do you monetize it and make it even bigger?

The rappers started putting out double CDs/long albums decades ago. Drake puts out a mixtape. But the traditional white audience saw that as anathema, IT’S TOO MUCH MUSIC!

Not to fans. Fans can’t get enough music. They want more and more!

Furthermore, these long albums are review-proof. They’re just too long and too dense to be adequately assessed by snapshot, which is how most reviewers do their work. They listen to an album for a day, maybe a few more, and render an opinion. Morgan Wallen FANS may be discovering new tunes SIX MONTHS FROM NOW! It took decades for the public, even most reviewers, to catch up with “Exile on Main Street,” now considered to be a masterpiece, and that was a double album with only eighteen songs that last an hour and seven minutes. How long is it going to take for people to digest, never mind assess, “I’m the Problem”?

We live in a world of winners and losers. And the winners take up ever more airspace/mindspace. You need to take all that you can, because there are too many other distractions/options. After listening to ten tracks for a week or two listeners are on to something else!

This is one of the reasons that Taylor Swift’s remake albums are successful. In theory, they shouldn’t be, they’re note by note recreations of already existing material. But the public wants MORE!

But there is such a thing as overexposure. How do you manage your career such that people don’t get sick of you?

First. beware of celebratory press. If it’s not moving the needle in terms of audience, increasing it and bonding people to you, forgo it. If there’s a story, it must have some nougat, something interesting, we are sick of pronouncements of record setting grosses/streams/sales. Even the most jaded person knows the numbers are manipulated and there’s a limit to how much self-attention, self-burnishing, LOOK AT ME press someone can get without alienating the public.

But Wallen only puts out an album every couple of years. And it’s got enough tracks that they carry the audience through until the next one! Used to be an act put out an album, hard core fans devoured it, and then they were subjected to dripped-out singles from it for years, with record companies and acts trying to reach the casual/normally disinterested fan. No, today you satiate the hard core and forget about the penumbra. If the hard core can’t spread the word for you you’re doing something wrong, better go back to the drawing board. You deliver the goods to the audience and then they are in control of your fate. BUT GIVE THEM ENOUGH TO WORK WITH!

You don’t bite back. That’s rule number one of the internet. How come the oldsters don’t know this?

Because they didn’t grow up online.

It’s not only Trump, but Gayle King… The dirty little secret is most people don’t know most things. We no longer live in a concentrated world. Rather we live in a land of infinity, and if you’re surprised by the record that’s number one, having not only never heard it, but never heard OF IT, you know this.

But readers hate when I rag on old people.

Everybody can do everything. It’s not only the left that are woke. Disillusion and orthodoxy rule the old. Just because you smoked marijuana and grew your hair long that does not mean you’re hip today.

And the dirty little secret is NEITHER ARE THE YOUNG!

For a while there was this canard that if your computer was broken a young ‘un could fix it. Turned out they didn’t know how it worked either. However, computers and smartphones and tablets have improved to the point where they’re nearly idiot-proof. Tap away, the device will survive, this is not the nineties where one false move will brick your computer.

So Trump thinks it’s still 2016 and his act is new. But that was ten years ago. The left was surprised that he used social media and profanity. But all these years later, it’s de rigueur.. Did you see that Bill Maher clip of Democrats employing curse words?

The world changes and you must change with it.

And the truth is Bruce Springsteen was ubiquitous and powerful in the eighties, but now although not marginal, like all old acts he cannot reach the Spotify Top 50, even worse, despite all the clamoring about high prices and platinum ticketing, he does not go clean everywhere in America. Want to see Bruce? Wait until the last minute and show up at the building, you should have no problem buying a ticket. However this is not the case in Europe, in Europe Springsteen is huge, A GOD!

So Bruce ranks out (talk about aged verbiage) Trump at the start of his tour in England and unless you follow music news closely, you’re unaware of it. Or even if you see the headline, do you even read the story? I forwarded the video and boomers were completely unaware.

But then Trump barks back.

And no one on his team has the balls, never mind the intelligence, to tell him to cool it.

Now more people know about Springsteen’s rant. And why is he attacking Swift? Her tour is over and she’s been quiet, letting the land lie fallow so that people will come back next time, unlike Beyoncé.

You have to be able to take a punch.

And you must know who to attack.

Assuming someone cares, people know that Bruce is a Democrat. Trump is not earning points with his acolytes. He’s just looking cringey to those who are on Bruce’s side.

As for Swift… She’s not as big as the press makes her out to be, no one is, but she probably has more hard core fans than Trump himself. And she’s been silent. You’ve got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.

It’d be one thing if Trump were surrounded by smart people. But that was his first term. Now he’s got a “Real World” star and someone with a worm in his brain who moments before was a Democrat, and Tulsi Gabbard…whose side is she on anyway? If you think these people are willing to risk their jobs by speaking truth to power, then you think the members of Congress are more interested in doing what is right than keeping their gigs.

As for the Boss… Notice he didn’t respond. He’s been here before, with the aforementioned ticketing fracas. You can’t win against the public, it just can’t be done. And denial doesn’t work either. Yeah right, Oasis had no idea of the ticket prices in the U.K. They were only doing it for the money! Don’t undercut people’s fantasy, they want to believe, don’t reveal that you have no clothes.

As for Swift… She used to bite back right away, but people turned against her. That’s another feature of the modern era, forgetfulness. Don’t you remember when everybody was against Swift? She changed her tune. Her skin is not as thin. But she does say something eventually. And Trump better beware.

Oh don’t tell me that Swift couldn’t get Harris elected. NO ONE could have gotten Harris elected! We had to hear for eons that Biden was in tip-top shape, if you said he was old and out of it you were delusional. And now the Tapper book comes out and what is delineated is what those with eyes and ears knew eons ago…THE MAN WAS COMPROMISED!

And you wonder why people have no faith in the parties, never mind the system.

The Democrats are in disarray, deservedly so. And although a few of them, like Pritzker and Murphy, never mind AOC, are hip to the new reality and fighting back with intensity, the rest are silent, in truth afraid of losing their gigs. They think it’s business as usual. But we haven’t had that spirit here in years!

So the public is unmoored from the government. Elon Musk thinks he knows what people want, that he’s in touch with the hoi polloi, and he finds out otherwise. Notice how you haven’t heard Elon’s name recently? He thought he was winning, but he was losing. Teslas stopped selling and the value of the stock which he borrows against to live tanked. That’s the power of the public.

Taking the temperature of the public is a job. But today, the only way you can win is by spending tons of time online. Whereas the old paradigm was to make phone calls and go to lunch, try to get inside information via your relationships. If you do this today you’re out of the loop!

The oldsters excoriate the internet and social media and the youngsters live on it.

Kind of like privacy… If I read one more story about the information we’re coughing up online… YOUNG PEOPLE DON’T CARE! We can debate whether they should, but they don’t. As for scraping your info from the net… It’s essentially impossible, it’s a full time job and you can’t win. As for those who believe that by not being online they’re victorious… They don’t know that all their info is out there anyway. I can find out your age, where you live, even pictures of your domicile in map apps.

You’ve got to get your head out of the sand.

As for the knee-jerk Trump supporters… They’re just as bad as the knee-jerk Biden supporters. As for those who still believe in Harris…even the Democratic pols are backing away from her, saying she never would have been the candidate if there was a primary. But if you say that Harris is toxic, that she’s inauthentic, that she didn’t lose because of racism and sexism, you’re beaten down by a left that refuses to face the truth, or lives in a bubble as bad as the right and thinks they know better when they know little.

If only people would wake up to the fact that as much as they know, more than ever in history, they know less than the total.

You’re online, getting information. But it’s a fraction of the information out there.

As for the big swinging dicks… The brass at Warner Bros. Discovery changed the name from HBO MAX to MAX because they believed that lowbrows would be turned off by the HBO moniker, as if the lowbrows don’t all want to drive Ferraris and wear LV and Prada. And the dirty little secret is ALMOST NOBOODY WAS WATCHING THE DISCOVERY CONTENT! All those lowbrow shows on MAX, the reality crap, turns out people don’t want to stream them. I’ve got no belief in Zaslav and his cronies, but at least they were smart enough to realize they were wrong and switch the name back to HBO.

So Putin is not dumb. Nor is Orbán. Putin is manipulative. If he’s losing public confidence he’ll manufacture a war as a distraction. These men are one step ahead of their detractors, they rule with an iron fist. In order to maintain power as a dictator you must be intelligent and playing the three dimensional chess that acolytes say Trump does, but I’d be stunned if he could play the one-dimensional game.

Now Trump is smart enough to know that you win by controlling the courts. And after that comes the military. And if you have both of them under your thumb you can breathe a sigh of relief, but not forever, the landscape is continually changing.

This is the path that Trump is on. Hell, ignoring court orders and having a military parade? Never mind the chilling of action and speech. But will he be able to execute, maintain power?

I wouldn’t bet against him, but if he keeps evidencing this level of insanity, he’s going to make those who are not dyed-in-the-wool MAGA question their belief in him.

You want people on your side. When you attack Springsteen and Swift what are you achieving? You’re just showing how small you are.

The public is not with him on this.

I’d expect further faux pas in the future.

Tune in Saturday May 17th  to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

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