This is what the elites don’t understand. They keep trotting out facts and figures, as if they matter, but to the masses they don’t, it’s all about how they FEEL!

It’s as simple as Trump calling Hillary a “nasty” woman. That confounded Democrats who were familiar with the lady and her education and experience. But to those who’d felt abused by globalization, the epithet resonated. They felt bad, it had to be somebody’s fault.

That’s why Biden is in trouble. All his support is intellectual. Trump sucks, we’ve got to beat him, let’s do the math and nominate Joe. But without emotions, there’s no passion, and you can’t get massive support.

This is the essence of music. Good beat, good changes, terrible lyrics. IT DOESN’T MATTER! If it touches someone’s core, that’s all that’s needed. It’s got to resonate with someone’s insides, not their brain. This is how Taylor Swift lost control of the narrative. At first she was a geeky outsider delivering her truth to the bullies, the hip kids. But once she became the cool kid, sans the life experiences of the peons, she did not know how to adjust. She turned up the diss to ten. Then she tried to cover it up with friendships. But it doesn’t FEEL right to the audience anymore. They’re not aligned with her, irrelevant of who works on the records, what they sound like.

People feel good about Drake, because he’s not totally narcissistic. He put out his playlist “More Life” featuring other people’s material.

Madonna has lost the plot completely. She doesn’t see that she comes across as an aged star willing to do anything to stay relevant, with attitude to boot. She’s the queen of narcissism. And it hurts her. Younger people don’t care, it’s only her old fans who still do, if they do.

And then there are hard rock bands like Aerosmith and the Stones. The tracks hit your groin first, it feels like sex and revolution and debauchery and that appeals to you in your straitlaced world, where you want a release.

Elizabeth Warren can’t win on policies alone. She has to be seen as human.

This is the key to Howard Stern’s success. Oh, he’s got a high opinion of himself but he keeps putting himself down, about the size of his penis, his inability to do math, his anxiety in social situations, to the point where he appears an everyman.

Hell, your brand can be smart, we all love to admire and revel in the thoughts of intellectuals. This is how Elon Musk was anointed. Wow, look what he could do! But then he lost the plot and got into Twitter wars and we realized he was unstable, and no one wants to have faith in the unstable.

Even Ozzy… He’s the king of poking fun at himself.

Or Letterman. That’s why Fallon fails, we don’t see the vulnerability, we just see someone striving to entertain us, with no edge, and we all abhor being sucked up to.

So, the facts can be clear but the people still won’t believe them. Like on vaccines. The “New York Times” published an exhaustive article on Tuesday with facts, from research. Your odds of getting measles is way higher than having a reaction to immunization. But to some people, that doesn’t FEEL right. Intellectuals who’ve been robbed of power by billionaires believe this is a way they can stand up to the man. They can go their own way, they can have their own beliefs. Hell, that “Times” story featured a pic of a kid with measles, with spots all over him. Circulate that photo. Hell, if you’ve ever been to a Body Worlds exhibition and seen the lungs of the person who smoked you will never inhale again. The facts may not reach you, but the vision of someone who’s dead with decrepit lungs will turn your stomach.

I’m not saying facts are bad, just that you can’t sway people on them alone.

What the right does so well is speak to people’s emotions.

The left acts wounded and counters with facts and it does not work. But they keep doing the same thing over and over again.

It’s kinda like impeachment. Pelosi and her pals look at polls, research, the facts say not to do it. But if they took action, they’d speak to people’s emotions, get them excited, bond them to them. Right now they’re just unwoke wonks. But, if they were to do this, to impeach, they’d have to have a plan to respond to the right’s hate, to Trump’s denunciations. But they keep relying on process and lose the narrative. Hell, everybody on the right thinks the President has been fully exonerated. And impeachment is not even specifically about Trump, it’s about unchecked power of the executive branch. John Oliver delivered this message with humor and intensity. The Democrats just back away.

And this is why if you’re not an aged superstar you’re gonna get in trouble with slow ticketing, extracting as much money as you can. It makes you look greedy, people feel ripped-off. Sure, you’re combating the scalpers, but they’re the act’s enemy, not the audience’s. As a matter of fact, people love StubHub, they can get the tickets they want at the last minute. And they’re willing to pay for them, the upcharge is seen as convenience for what you want. Who knows what you’ll be doing a year later, when the tickets initially go on sale.

This is how rock lost, all the anti-internet wankers. Turns out those who were trading friendly won, like John Mayer. The audience doesn’t want to hear you bitch, they were screwed under the old system.

And now rockers appeal to your head, not your heart. So many of these bands are making wimpy music with wimpy singers and those on the other end of the spectrum purvey lame riffs no better than those of the progenitors, in an era where the progenitors’ music sits right alongside.

People’s emotions are torn. They want comfort, but they know the future is always coming, and it will be new and different. Everything dies, and there’s resistance to the future until there’s an embrace of it. Play it safe at your peril. The bleeding edge always wins. Maybe not right away, but eventually. Sure, you can be too soon. But right now everything’s up for grabs, we’re looking for leaders, in art, commerce and politics. Now is the time for the new. Which is how Trump won. Which is why you’ve got to be scared of the DNC and its media partners, they just want to preserve their power, they’re out of touch with the emotions of the public.

People feel abused, ripped-off. Anti-Trump is not enough, you’ve got to speak to how people feel, you’ve got to make them believe things will get better. That’s what swept Obama into office, hope. Where is the hope today?

They’ve been trying to get Andy Zax on the podcast.

Zax is the archivist responsible for Woodstock complete, the 38 CD set coming out this summer.

I wasn’t sure. I don’t know the guy, hadn’t heard of him previously, so I asked for more information, on him and the project.

After a bunch of e-mails, today they sent me the recordings…HOLY SHIT!

Took about 11 minutes to download. I used the time to empty my closet, clean the dishes, pay a bill, and I was coming back to the iMac to finish the e-mail and shut it down. Tomorrow I’m working on my MacBook Pro. And I find if I don’t turn the computer off, I’m on it all night, searching for nuggets.

So, I’m getting the e-mail aligned, I use POP, not IMAP, because I get too damn much to use IMAP. That’s right, I keep EVERYTHING. As long as it’s addressed directly to me. So I can look up the pricks who keep sending hate mail. Yup, someone’s excoriating me so I go back into the archives, fifteen years, and almost always I find this person has been a prick from day one. Like the right wingers. Whenever I say anything positive about Democrats, or negative, even mildly, about Trump, I know I’ll hear from the exact same people, they’re working the refs. But only since I write so much do I know they’re on a campaign and I should ignore them. They’re one note Johnnies. Some are rich, and some are so poor, tenuously making ends meet, that I can’t understand how they’ve bought the B.S. I mean if you’re rich and a Republican I can understand, but if you’re poor? You want the rich to continue to rule and have the safety net eviscerated? Then again, this has been well-documented, people voting against their interests. But most people opining are not on the front lines, they’re faceless, they don’t get blowback on a regular basis.

So, having finished the e-mail, I decided to sample the Woodstock box. As I said, I have a hard time getting off the computer.

And I’m wondering what to pick, and then I decide to make it Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, since they’re noted for being unable to duplicate the studio sound, the harmonies are always off. So I drop the needle/click on “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and… I’M ASTOUNDED!

Now I’ve got a first rate speaker system hooked up to my iMac, a Genelec three-way. But I hadn’t noticed they’d sent me AIFF files. It was like I was going through a time warp, right back to ’69, with a direct line to the Woodstock stage.

Now my understanding is these are the raw tapes, not overdubbed. Hell, the version of “Sea of Madness” on the original three disc set is actually from the Fillmore East! But I truly know the tapes weren’t fixed because…

Stephen Stills’s voice was intact. Crosby sounds like an angel. Stills sounds like an angel with broken wings. There’s the sweetness and the roughness. He’s got emotional miles on his voice, at least he did before he had literal miles on it. And that’s why he was the star. He wrote, played and sang…

It’s getting to the point
Where I’m no fun anymore

We all knew these lyrics. The initial Crosby, Stills & Nash album had come out in the spring of ’69, but it took a while to percolate in the marketplace, when they played Woodstock they were not yet superstars. But by the spring of ’70, if you were hip at all, you knew the track, knew it was about Judy Collins, played it on the guitar if you were talented, but we all sang along…ALL THE TIME! “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” was never a single, but it was bigger than any single in the marketplace today. Forget Drake, Beyonce and Swift. CSN was embedded in the culture, and music was embedded in the populace, the whole world ran on music, that’s what Woodstock was about, a celebration of this fact, when 400,000 people showed up the straight media, the disbelievers, were hipped, that music was the primary driver of a generation.

Now when you’re listening to CD quality on an almost $2,000 system you can hear EVERYTHING! Like I said, it’s like it’s happening right now, not 50 years ago. The guitar is not processed, it’s not fixed in the studio, it sounds like you do in your bedroom, picking away. And you can hear each individual voice when they’re singing, you tingle…THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT JONI MITCHELL HEARD IN HER HOUSE!

How could this be fifty years ago?

That’s another thing, our music was not temporary, but for all time. We’re not re-evaluating CSN today, we’re as addicted as ever, which is why all those old acts can tour to throngs at high prices.

So halfway through, I look at the set list, the Mac window, to see what else is included. And I see “4+20.” Yes, Stephen Stills wrote it when he was 24 years old.

Now the first year I lived in Utah, my housemate in Sandy used to sit in front of the stereo and play this track and contemplate his own life, he’d just turned 24.

It was way different back then. You graduated from college and you didn’t look for a job, YOU LOOKED FOR YOURSELF! You didn’t know where you were going, you had an inkling, but you wanted to get high and go on road trips and listen to music while you were figuring it out. No one was a billionaire, you were not falling behind by not selling out. Furthermore, you could live on minimum wage. Less than two bucks an hour. I know, BECAUSE I DID IT!

But “4+20” didn’t resonate for me in Utah. Oh, I always liked it, but it wasn’t until I was completely lost in the nineties and the CSN box set was released that it truly resonated.

Four and twenty years ago I come into this life
The son of a woman and a man who lived in strife
He was tired of being poor
And he wasn’t into selling door to door
And he worked like the devil to be more

It wasn’t much different for all of us. Our parents were not our best friends, they didn’t always know what was going on with us, but they knew they had to provide. My father was poor, had nothing. Started out as an engineer but only did that for one year, he was not a company man, he opened a liquor store. He was on a long journey to be more.

A different kind of poverty now upsets me so
Night after sleepless night I walk the floor
And I want to know, why am I so alone
Where is my woman, can I bring her home
Have I driven her away, is she gone

Money doesn’t solve all your problems. You think it will, and there’s nothing worse than being unable to pay the bills, it messes with your head, you’re always on guard, but once cash is not your number one priority and you can survey the world, your life, you wonder if you’re getting it right. And what you want most, is love, sex, companionship. It’s so hard to make it, you’re one-minded, working around the clock, all hit and run, but once you’ve got traction you want to delve deeply into all that you left on the back burner.

Morning comes the sunrise and I’m driven to my bed

Today everybody brags how early they wake up, that’s the badge of honor. If you’re not waking up before six, four-thirty, you’re laughed at. But that’s not the way it used to be. Almost everything good, everything cerebral, happens when after dark. Musicians are famously night owls, hell, it takes time to come down from the gig, but… It’s those conversations after, the jamming, that makes the road and studio life worth it. You’re bonding. It’s just like going to college, but you’ve got no tests, no restrictions.

I see that it is empty and there’s devils in my head

Loneliness. You can live with someone and bitch, but there’s a floor, a base as to how low your feelings can go, but if you’re alone, your mind can go into free-fall.

I grow weary of the torment, can there be no peace
And I catch myself just wishing that my life would simply cease

It’s so different today. Today it’s all about braggadocio. My life is FABULOUS, I’m better than you! And then there are the diss tracks. No one’s owning their inner feelings. Listeners feel inadequate, or just slough off the mindless crap, knowing it’s just background music.

Then again, CSN&Y weren’t just born yesterday. David and Graham had been in bands with a slew of hits, they’d ridden the merry-go-round, they’d paid their dues. And Stephen and Neil… Buffalo Springfield was seen as one of the most credible bands extant, and Stephen wrote an anthem, one that still gets traction today, “For What It’s Worth.” Then again, that song was about the youth standing up to the man. Today, the policeman is not the Fuzz or a Pig, but your supposed friend, your protector, and the only thing the youth will come out in droves for is jobs, or festivals, where the truth is they are the stars. Coachella survives, the acts don’t. And we keep on hearing about how much money everybody makes. If you’re into music for the money…hell, there are much easier ways to make money. And why is everybody creating clothing and perfumes and… Back then you could leave money on the table, no one does today.

Now “4+20” wasn’t even out. It was on “Deja Vu,” which was released in March of 1970.

But you don’t have to know great acoustic music to get it.

So Graham introduces the track, and Stephen starts to pick, all by his lonesome, he’s got the talent, he’s got the chops. And he starts to sing.

You had to have it all or odds were you weren’t gonna make it. You had to be able to write, play and sing, the Beatles set the template, and everybody followed them. All the action was on FM, not AM. These acts were giants!

And the funny thing is if you lived through that era and you listen to these cuts you’re truly brought back to yesteryear, because they live and breathe, you’re bought back to when you saved your money to buy records, when concerts were a tribal rite, when you fell asleep to the radio.

It was a long time comin’, and unfortunately it’s been a long time gone.

First came corporate rock. Then MTV, where it was about how you looked as opposed to how you could play. And now it’s everybody for themselves, with no filter, everybody’s yelling for attention.

It didn’t used to be that way.

Now we have these artifacts, these tapes, which is why the Universal fire was such a big deal.

But the people making this music are not going to live forever. And when they’re gone, they’re gonna be missed, their reputations will grow…hell, to the point there are hologram tours.

But there’s nothing like the real thing.

These Woodstock tracks are the real thing.

P.S. I’m now listening to “Helplessly Hoping.” Whew, it’s almost better than the original, it’s got this intense humanity…IT’S MAGIC!

Don’t feel bad that you don’t know what’s going on, today no one knows what is going on.

Do ignore the trolls, what they’re looking for is a reaction, and once you give it to them they’re not only satisfied, they’re encouraged and double-down.

Don’t assume you’ve got all the facts. Chances are your news sources are biased. Or shaded.

Don’t believe all the facts. Despite the internet being built on 0’s and 1’s, it’s easier than ever to employ subterfuge, since there’s no common police, or referee.

Don’t follow leaders and watch the parking meters. This is the era of the individual. Go your own way.

Don’t assume anyone is that big and influential. We live in a decentralized world with little commonality.

Do check Twitter once a day. The app is vastly improved. Click on the tabs at the top, “For You,” “Trending,” “News,” “Sports,” “Fun” and “Entertainment.” It won’t take you long and you’ll get a snapshot of what is going on. The point is you no longer have to follow anybody to get the benefits of Twitter, which is the true town square. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat…they’re one to one, Twitter is now many to one. Sure, it’s built on one to one, but you don’t have to play it that way.

Do think twice about buying an expensive gasoline car. Its value will decline precipitously over time. Better to lease. Or to jump into the electric game.

Don’t think you can become famous without a unique, definable talent.

Do watch English dramas on Netflix. They’re more rewarding than the American dreck.

Do know that cable news is all about talking heads bloviating, they do almost no reporting.

Do know that reporting is done by newspapers, and when it’s national and international the biggest players are “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post.” “The Wall Street Journal” is good for business news, but its national and international news is second-rate. The “Times” and “Post,” set the agenda for the whole country, they’re what both the left and the right react to, whether they agree or not.

Do know a tree can fall in plain sight and no one hears it.

Do know it’s all about software, not hardware these days.

Do know that software can be confusing, but a lot of it can be conquered and understood if you just put in the time. Youngsters know this, oldsters don’t. And if there is a manual, it’s always a good thing to read it, to extract power if nothing else.

Do know that football outside of America does not mean the NFL, and that basketball and soccer are the international sports.

Do know that everybody needs something to live for, and if you can provide it, you can be rich. Sure, people need products, but what I’m talking about here is ideas.

Don’t bother hating Apple or Microsoft…that war is over.

Do know that #1 is oftentimes not really #1. The “Billboard” #1 is based on streaming, sales and radio, in weights that don’t make sense. But more than ever, it’s not about the current or mainstream, it’s hard to quantify the success and mindshare of acts that are not on that chart.

Do know the game is rigged against you, but in many situations you can beat the game.

Do not bother going to the movies to catch up. We live in a Tower of Babel society where there’s almost no commonality. If you want to go to the theatre, cool. But know that everything hits the flat screen soon. What the purveyors don’t understand is that their platforming is working against them, they’re losing the hype factor, the word of mouth, because everybody is beginning at a different starting line.

Do know unless you learn a trade you’ve got to go to college. And in college what you learn outside the classroom is more important than what you learn inside. Although you need a degree to get a job, don’t believe that the courses you take in college are preparation for your future, unless you take computer science or accounting or are on a couple of other tracks. You’ve got no idea what you want to do at eighteen or twenty, and the truth is you’ll get kicked around and wake up and end up doing something different anyway. So you want a foundation for the future. You’re better off taking an art class than a business class. This is contrary to what the anti-elites and the super-elites want you to believe. The antis because they feel left out and must criticize, and the supers because they think their path is the only one. But neither one of them is correct. It’s your life and your life only, better to do what you want to do than be unhappy.

Do know that its harder than ever to make ends meet. But if you’re not willing to sacrifice, you’re not going to achieve success going down the path less traveled. There are no guarantees in art, no matter how many degrees you’ve got, no matter where you went to school.

Don’t bother going on late night TV to spread the word, despite all the press, few people are watching, and their odds of being motivated are very low. Better off being on Howard Stern, he’s got a large audience that is motivated, he can move the needle.

Don’t bother accumulating assets, it’s about experiences. No one wants to hear about your car, unless it’s a Tesla, they want to hear about where you ate, what you saw and where you traveled.

Do read fiction, you’ll learn more about life than reading non-fiction.

Do know your parents were not always right, and by adhering to their precepts as opposed to questioning them the only victim is you. The older you get, the more you respect others’ way of doing things.

Don’t be late.

Bill Squier’s pink video?

Peter Frampton’s “I’m In You”?

David Lee Roth leaving Van Halen?

Or…

“Lefsetz Live,” Tuesday June 18th, on Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

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