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

The mainstream media is always last.

No, wait a minute, even if you hate Elizabeth Warren you’ve got to hear what I say. Because it applies to you. The issue is how do you get famous and have your ideas heard in America today.

You’ve got to do the work and you must be selling substance.

Elizabeth Warren is on the road. Most of the audiences are relatively small. There’s not a ton of press coverage of each event. She’s just like a crack band bubbling under, that is not understood by the mainstream, is seen as an also-ran and then…THEY BLOW UP! Can you say Bruce Springsteen? His first LP was an anomaly, not representative of his sound, the band was there, but deep in the background, “Greetings From Asbury Park” was more New Dylan than the Springsteen we all now know. But the sound was there for everybody to hear on “The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.” But now Springsteen was no longer the new thing. And the mix on the LP was a bit muted, it lacked edge. So the album didn’t sell and Bruce went on the road convincing consumers one by one. If you saw him, you talked about him. Until that famous moment when Jon Landau said he’d seen the future of rock and roll and the tide turned. The Landau article was in Boston’s “Real Paper,” the paper of record amongst the youth, devoured by everybody, Landau’s review wasn’t first, but it was the most important.

Same deal with Elizabeth Warren. She’s been around for years. Mostly in the background until the right started attacking her. And before you get your knickers in a twist you righties, know that she wanted to protect the populace, the rank and file, from the corporations. You can’t be against that unless you’re sucking at the tit of the corporation yourself, making seven figures, and that’s a very small number of people. You’re getting screwed and don’t even realize it. Those insane interest rates on your credit cards? Warren wanted to stop them.

But Warren was depicted as a schoolmarm and no one on the left ran to her side, to defend her, because they don’t want to get caught up in any war that doesn’t benefit them directly, they don’t want the potential stink upon them.

So Warren went her own way and ran for Senate and won.

This is the act that refuses to do what the A&R person says to. Who won’t cowrite, who won’t work with the producer du jour, who has a sound he or she wants to get down and doesn’t want any interference. But can you go on your own, do it your way, prove it yourself? We hear about the winners, but not the losers. The truth is most people are scared to do it by themselves, they’re convinced they won’t succeed, they tell themselves they need money, it’s undoable. But even today, if you’ve got the goods and you play live, or release an undeniable hit like Lorde, you can make it.

And then Warren got into the Senate and spoke English. Nobody speaks English in D.C., it doesn’t behoove you. You obfuscate, keep the lobbyists close, it’s all about raising money for your reelection campaign. Screw the people you’re representing, you give them lip service, but your true constituency is the corporations. And when someone comes along and blows the whistle on that, says she’s for the people, you blanch.
It comes down to big media too. You can’t make a ton of bucks writing stories for a newspaper or magazine, and the subjects you write about know this. So they lay on perks. And if you say you can’t take those, they work around it. Give you access they normally wouldn’t. Give you stuff that’s theoretically outside your beat. Or dangle a job when you’re ready, at a much better salary. Furthermore, mainstream media depends upon ads. The corporations are the customer, via their ad agencies, not the audience. So, “The New York Times” is not gonna be a hotbed of revolution. And Fox is gonna play to its base. Because otherwise, they’ll lose audience and lose ads, or the value thereof. So, the mainstream media is always last.

So now you get the voices in the wilderness. The small periodicals, the individuals. And in the old days, there was a clear line of demarcation. If you weren’t on the major label you were ignored, seen as inferior. If you couldn’t get your stuff published in a mainstream mag, you were a kook who should be stayed away from.

And that describes a lot of people online, but not all of them. This is what the internet has wrought, a whole bunch of interested citizens writing about news and analyzing it that the mainstream media just can’t fathom. They’re the kings, right? Well, maybe not. Like the major labels during Napster, like the major labels today. And all the emphasis is on recordings, but the truth is today it’s about the road, not only because of the economics, but because personal appearances bond you to the audience. Which is why the more it’s on hard drive, the less you connect. If you play it all yourself and don’t cover up the mistakes you’re seen as human and attendees have a true experience as opposed to watching a canned show and talking amongst themselves. That’s how you know when you’ve truly connected, when everybody’s put down their smartphone and is focusing on you. You don’t need rules banning devices you just have to be that good.

So the shadow news is where movements start, where stories break. And if you don’t think they have power, look at Steve Bannon and Breitbart.

But when the noise becomes big enough, when it’s loud enough, the mainstream media dives in, it wants to own the story. And this is a good thing if you’re the act/purveyor, it signals to everybody paying attention that you’ve made it. Whereas if you get the publicity first, it’s wasted, today you have to have something to back it up.

So the mainstream media wisdom was that Elizabeth Warren was unelectable. All the focus was on non-candidates like Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg. Yes, even Mayor Pete, he’s got no chance this time around. Maybe close, but no cigar.

And then there was the excoriation of Bernie and the wait for Biden to rescue the Party and put the Democrats on top.

But everybody in entertainment knows the best-laid plans often go awry. Hell, the big story in movies today is the failure of the latest “Men In Black” iteration. Everybody discounted the public’s opinion, the film grossed even less than already low projections.

This is just like in music. How many highly touted albums stiff? It happens all the time. Illustrating all the pre-hype is worthless…coming albums, coming books, reviews before you can hear or read… The public is addicted to the Tomatometer. People wait until it hits the street and then they put their finger to the wind and judge the mood, if it’s a stinker, they stay away.

But how come the public is more sophisticated than the purveyors, the mainstream media? That’s the story of the internet era, how those supposedly “in charge” get it wrong over and over again. They’re inured to the past, whereas it’s always about looking forward, not back.
So Elizabeth Warren percolates in the marketplace, is sometimes begrudgingly acknowledged, and then she goes way up in the polls and the mainstream media gloms on. Hell, if they weren’t so busy lunching and bloviating to their peers, and were surfing the web and were out on the street, they’d have felt it, just like I felt the Trump wave and everybody in the mainstream did not. Because I was on the front line. Anybody who was on the front line felt the blowback. But if you’re not… And everybody in the mainstream is not, the talking heads cashing their checks on TV, the reporters who don’t want to hang with THOSE people and…

“The New Yorker” feature is excellent. It’s mostly facts, not opinion.

But today’s “New York Times” feature is half a takedown. I’ll attribute it to woman on woman hate. Women criticize each other more than men criticize women. Oh, men commit many faux pas and hold women back, but the perception is that if you leave it to women, it’ll be all right. For an example to the contrary, look at the Women’s March, which was riddled with anti-Semitism.

So the author of the “New York Times” piece, Emily Bazelon, has got quite a CV, she went to undergrad and law school at Yale, her grandfather was a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Who is this interloper who went to run-of-the-mill colleges and Rutgers for law school think she is? Bazelon’s viewpoint is that of the insider, assessing the game she knows, and not the one she doesn’t, to her detriment. But, once again, the usual suspects have an investment in the past, these are the elites not only Trump fans abhor, but rank and file lefties too.

But this is Sheelah Kolhatkar’s beat. Business. And that’s the essence of Warren’s candidacy, economics.

That’s why Warren’s booming, she’s speaking English about income inequality, she’s got plans to decrease it.

And what do the usual suspects say…IT’S UNWORKABLE!

No one likes to snuff hope like someone already in power. They’re afraid of the new.

But not the public.

Meanwhile, Warren is playing the long game, with her plans. She’s so far ahead of the rest of the pack, they can’t catch up. Biden is afraid of offending someone, Sanders has the right viewpoint, but he’s nowhere near as specific as Warren, and everybody else is playing personality politics. Like we care about your dog and your smile and your likability.

Anybody becomes likable if they deliver what you want, the ugliest person. And right wingers know they got shafted by Trump, because he’s erratic and didn’t deliver on his promises. And the media no one pays attention to keeps talking about this, but who wants to listen to these self-righteous wankers? But they want to listen to Elizabeth Warren, who is not top-down, but grass roots.

Whether she wins the nomination or not, Warren has proven the game has changed. That she’s more in touch with a changed public than the “New York Times” and most of D.C.

As for the debates, assuming she gets the nomination, where is it written that substance doesn’t matter? Warren is the queen of the takedown, she’s famous for it, watch this video where she gives it back to John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo:

Senator Elizabeth Warren questions Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf at Banking Committee Hearing

All the attention is paid to the mob, not the individual. You get the feeling no one cares about you or me. Hell, I’ll talk about me. I was on the road and entered payments on two credit cards in my checkbook, but spaced it and didn’t pay them on my phone app. Fine, my fault. BUT THEN I HAD TO PAY NEARLY FIFTY BUCKS IN PENALTIES ON EACH CARD! AND THE BALANCE ON ONE OF THE CARDS WAS EVEN LESS THAN THAT!

I hate making mistakes, but I can afford it. But how about someone who is struggling to make ends meet, fifty bucks means a lot to them. And Warren has learned those who are poor are not lazy takers, many times they’re working two jobs and one blip and they’re on the road to bankruptcy. But it’s a better story if it’s the individual’s fault, no one wants to admit the system is broken and doesn’t serve the people but the corporations.

Everybody but the rich can identify with Warren’s statements.

And we’ve seen the Trump movie before, in Minnesota, with Jesse Ventura. Every action has a concomitant reaction. One thing’s for sure, Trump is not an expert on policy, international relations, so much. The public is now ready for someone experienced, which is why if they wanted to win the Republicans wouldn’t even run Trump, they’d find someone with experience to speak to the base he awoke.

But, like I said, institutions abhor change. Not only the newspapers, but the TV companies too, they can’t stop bitching about Netflix, which was seen as a joke until it started making its own hit programs and got 100 million subscribers. It might even be too late for competitors to get real traction.

And record labels are risk averse, now more than ever. They want a predictable hit, something that sounds similar to what’s already successful. This is why music is stagnant, a joke. But one thing’s for sure, someone in the trenches, outside the system, is gonna turn the table over, the audience demands it.

And the audience demands our country step forward and change, because it’s just not working for too many of us.

This is the road Elizabeth Warren is taking. This is the road the mainstream media couldn’t see in 2016 and can’t see today.

But they’re waking up.

Because you can’t keep a good woman down. You can’t muzzle a knowledgeable source whose views are based on substance. You see it’s the same as it ever was, America believes in truth, justice and the American way.

Is Elizabeth Warren Superwoman?

We’re about to find out.

Elizabeth Warren Is Completely Serious “The New York Times”

Can Elizabeth Warren Win It All? “The New Yorker”

This movie is made for tomorrow not today. Kind of like “Don’t Look Back,” a footnote when it was released, a legendary artifact from the past today, a rite for college students. Maybe because that era does not exist anymore. When performers could be mysterious, and stay that way. Today it’s all about self-revelation, documenting every detail of your life in order to bond an audience to you. But the truth is with nothing underneath, purveyors get no traction, or are instantly forgotten. Music, when done right, is the other. Something ethereal that you truly cannot describe accurately, something you’ve got to experience, something delivered for your mind, not for your wallet.

Parts of this movie are fake. I point you to this Vulture article for an explanation:

What Is Fact and What Is Fiction in Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue: a Bob Dylan Story?

But the thing is too much time has passed, there are few Dylanologists, most people believe the falsehoods, and therefor the trick falls flat. Kinda like that old question, “If a tree falls in a forest…”

But that’s not the way it was when Dylan broke, we hung on every word.

And although disco came along and killed corporate rock, and the music industry tanked at the end of ’79, it is kind of curious that Dylan survived in that era, because he wasn’t playing what anybody else was, although Mark Knopfler is all over ’79’s “Slow Train Coming.” Then again, as a “Christian” album, many people ignored it. I’m waiting for the renaissance in reputation, “Slow Train Coming,” with Knopfler and production by Barry Beckett and Jerry Wexler, is a monster, check it out.

Now I saw the Rolling Thunder Revue. I had to.

But not everybody did.

You see Dylan had come back the previous year, with the Band, documented in the “Before The Flood” double LP on Geffen. That’s a famous story, how Dylan screwed Geffen, how Dylan gave him two albums and then went back to Columbia. Sure, Geffen ended up a billionaire, but Dylan didn’t care.

That theme runs throughout the movie. Dylan just doesn’t care. About the audience’s expectations. About making money. This was an experience, and no amount of money would buy you a spot in the Rolling Thunder Revue. This was when there were no billionaires, and the corporation wasn’t trusted, especially by musicians. Hell, the footage at CBS, with Walter Yetnikoff, is so uncomfortable. Dylan’s out of place, the suits are trying to appease him, but you know that everybody just wants to get back to their own world.

But Walter has said that Bob Dylan introduced him to his mother.

You see Dylan’s a cipher. Who created a myth from day one, when he got to New York. And he was aided by his manager, Albert Grossman, and became so successful, he could do whatever he wanted to. Dylan would have never made it without Albert. All superstars owe their breakthrough to a manager, who opened doors, who pushed. In Dylan’s case, Grossman got covers, Bob was famous for his songwriting long before he penetrated the recorded music market.

So there was press. Rolling Thunder was a big story in the “New York Times,” it was covered by “Rolling Stone,” if you were interested, you found out. But the dirty little secret is although the Stones do boffo on the road, they’ve always sold few records, and although Dylan’s got a rep nonpareil, the audience for his shows is not that huge. Watch the film and you’ll see why. There’s a limited audience for this music. But never underestimate Dylan’s wisdom, his talent, his impact. The biggest stars don’t top the chart, they impact the culture. Sometimes they do both, but rarely.

So there are so many nuggets in this movie. Joan Baez dancing. Whew! Who ever knew she was that young. And skinny. Like Dylan, like everybody else in this movie.

And Joni Mitchell is as charismatic as they get. When everybody is dressed down, she’s dressed up, with her beret, she’s got her look on. And her artistic sensibility is intact. She won’t play her hits on stage. And when she plays “Coyote” backstage in the movie… If you’re a fan, your brain is brought back to then, when you just wanted to live with your favorite artist and experience their lifestyle.

And when the whole gang sings “Love Potion #9″… That was the sixties, when we all knew the same songs and we could sing them and did.

Now unlike most music documentaries, “Rolling Thunder” includes whole songs. Which makes for a less than perfect viewing experience, it slows the pic down, but in future years these performances will be studied.

And to hear today’s Dylan talk… He’s the same guy, the same voice, the one from XM, the one in the commercials. Was he born that way or is it affected? Has he been doing it so long this is the only way he can speak? Believe me, they don’t talk that way in Hibbing, Minnesota.

And you’re hanging on every word. As Bob drops nuggets. Mostly evading the question, sometimes humble and other times arrogant.

So what we’ve got here is more akin to a movie than a documentary. Documentaries are about facts, movies are about suspending disbelief, falling for the myth. We’ve been falling for the Bob Dylan myth for over fifty years. He’s bobbed and weaved more times than Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. He’s outlasted everybody at his record label. Been through vinyl, cassettes, CDs and streaming. Always following the road less traveled, always one or two steps ahead of the audience.

Kind of like changing the melodies to his songs. He was doing that back in ’75, watch this film. He wants the music to be interesting to him, not us. He’s not trying to fulfill our wants, but to make us contemplate, and think, ending up with more questions than answers.

You couldn’t do a tour like this today. Economically, if for no other reason. And no one would care, there wouldn’t be a ton of press. and we’ve got themed festivals, like Lockn’ and…

If you lived through the seventies, you will recognize your past in this movie. When you wore bell bottoms, when grooming was lax, when it was still more about what was inside as opposed to outside, your brain and personality more than your bank account.

If you didn’t live through the seventies, you’ll probably be bored, you won’t get it. After all, it’s not like these songs are classics to you, the only one you hear now is “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” a throwaway for the film “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” in which Dylan had a minor role.

And Dylan has a long history of failed film projects, artistically as well as economically.

But this is something different. Once you realize you’ve been had, you step back and question what is real, not only in the movie, but Dylan’s life, your life.

That’s what art is supposed to do, challenge you, push you, make you think.

That’s the problem with cinema today, movies make tons of money, but almost all of them are empty calories.

So you’re better off tuning in to Netflix, where you can see the “Rolling Thunder Revue.” If you read the newspapers, you think you can only see it in the theatre. Don’t bother. There’s no reason. Don’t waste the time. Hell, watch it up close and personal on your iPad.

And turn on the subtitles, otherwise you’ll miss too many lyrics and dialogue.

And at times you’ll be excited, and at times you’ll be bored, and when it’s all over you’ll yearn for those days of yore,

Most of those people are gone.

But not Bob Dylan, he keeps soldiering on.

Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.