Don’t tell me what to do
And don’t tell me what to say

Don’t these guys learn? After leaving Lorde out of the ceremony last year?

Medleys suck. If they were so desirable, they’d be on the hit parade. As for the vaunted “Grammy Moments,” none of them equal Prince at the Super Bowl. Come on, what’s next, the Donald singing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” with Pelosi on backup? The winds of change have blown, and the Grammys and CBS did not get the message, despite having Tina Tchen heading a “diversity task force,” does anybody at the Grammys even speak to each other?

For twenty years, the artists have been tools of the man, now a tiny woman with a big voice who is arguably the biggest star in the land has been told what to do and wants no part of it.

Meanwhile, the bozos from U2 appear three times on the telecast in 2018, and they weren’t even nominated for any awards, unlike Ms. Grande.

Furthermore, as if they had the talent and gravitas of Tom Petty, the Academy won’t back down. Hell, this is 2019, you apologize and move on. What, are you teaching Ariana a lesson? What, are we being jetted back to the fifties? Women have power now, she’s exercising it, and you cry foul?

As for playing her current hit… You opened the show with the Police who hadn’t recorded a new track in decades. Furthermore, people have played their non-nominated cuts seemingly every year.

The institution is not as big as the players.

This business runs on talent. Every executive is disposable, but the acts are not.

Ever since the days of Tommy Mottola, the execs have believed they were king. But not anymore. Because acts don’t even need a label, and they can monetize in so many ways other than recordings. The industry and the lame Grammys are subservient to the talent, not the other way around.

How in the hell can you say no to a woman after last year, is it because Neil Portnow and Ken Ehrlich are on their last legs? They fired Al Campanis, the heads of these guys should have rolled a year ago, when their egregious behavior was on display for the world to see.

CBS and the Grammys should be groveling to have Ariana on the show.

Then again, CBS blew out Les Moonves, and Neil Portnow is still bloviating.

Some people are categorically incapable of doing the right thing. They don’t deserve second chances.

So Rihanna and a slew of other acts refuse to play the Super Bowl in support of Kaepernick, they abhor the plantation mind-set of the NFL.

And now Ariana punts the Grammy football away.

Neither star NEEDS the institution. They’re doing fine without it.

The Grammy ratings keep on going down and all we get is endless medleys, hackneyed scripts and TV stars reading from teleprompters.

Did the VMAs insist on medleys?

Telling Ariana Grande what to do…who do they think they are?

You don’t own me
Don’t try to change me in any way
You don’t own me
Don’t tie me down ’cause I’d never stay

THANK YOU LESLEY GORE!

I gotta quit this habit
It’s like this drug for you

Actually, after a ruinous New Year’s Eve I was finally recovering, finally seeing a road unfolding in the future. She’d left back in May the year before and for a long time I thought she’d come back, but she didn’t. And then just when she said she was ready, I was worried, fearful of the craziness returning, but just before I could tell her I was unsure, her doctor told her the time was not quite here, and togetherness was tabled.

Until two months later, around noon, when there was a knock on the door. There she was.

That’s how life works in case you don’t know. Once you give up on something it happens. You can’t play mind tricks, convincing yourself it won’t happen, you’ve got to have truly given up, gone through all the Kubler Ross stages. And then…

She was smiling. Walking into the house we used to share. And for some reason, I showed her the video of Elton John’s “Club At The End Of The Street.”

I was a massive Elton fan, still am. And after he took a break, after “Blue Moves,” when he ultimately showed up on Geffen, it wasn’t quite the same. There was that other lyric writer, Chris Thomas instead of Gus Dudgeon, and there were hits but they didn’t have the same essence of what came before, until…

“Club At The End Of The Street.”

This was when MTV ruled. Before Nirvana eviscerated the hair bands, when you turned on the television to know what was going on, radio followed in MTV’s footsteps, after all, the programming team was poached from KROQ, the hippest station in the land.

And this was also when production values mattered, when a performance video no longer cut it. And I couldn’t get over how in the animated video Elton’s flip was imperfect. Like the clip was done on the cheap. In any event, I taped it and played it again and again, it made me feel good. Especially the bridge:

There’s a downtown smell of cooking
From the flame on an open grill
There’s a sax and a big bass pumping
Lord, have mercy
Ooh, you can’t sit still
Oh, you can’t sit still

That’s right, listening to “Club At The End Of The Street” lit my spirit, Elton was back, and quite possibly so was I. Lord have mercy!

And she walks in and it’s like she never left. And caught up in the mood, I showed her the video, you can watch it here:

Elton John – Club At The End Of The Street

And then she was on her way, to Seattle, to recover. We went out to her truck and she showed me our wedding picture and then she was gone. Like always.

I was doing my back exercises the other day and I was calling out songs to Alexa, on the Echo Show. I don’t believe in playlists, they’re unsatisfying. And I didn’t want to hear the hits, I wanted to hear the album tracks, songs that resonated with me.

And that’s when I thought of “Blue Avenue.”

And it’s no use each way we lose
You and me at the crossroads of Blue Avenue

Actually, I thought of “Club At The End Of The Street” first, but I wasn’t in an upbeat mood, I wanted something to soothe me, that lived in my head, that would make me feel comforted, not alone.

You see “Blue Avenue” is the last song on that 1989 album containing “Club At The End Of The Street,” “Sleeping With The Past.”

And playing the CD in the wake of loving “Club At The End Of The Street,” I fell in love with “Blue Avenue,” it’s got the gravitas Elton’s famous for, all the way back to “Sixty Years On” and “The King Must Die.”

And I’m lying on the floor listening, and I was wishing after the farewell tour Elton would go on the road to play all the album cuts. Yes, he does “All The Girls Love Alice,” but I need to hear “Elderberry Wine” and “Teacher I Love You” and “Blue Avenue.”

You’ve got the same obsession

And then she called. Just when I was coming down from her disappearance. I couldn’t be all lovey-dovey, I couldn’t make nice, I told her she called me when she needed me, but what I needed…

Was to get off, and I did.

And I found new love. Just like that. I was done. I was on the high of connection, finally feeling good after a year of hell.

And then she came back to L.A. and called.

She was now ready.

But I was not. I told her, I was involved with somebody else.

But that phone conversation totaled my love connection with the record company girl. You see she was upbeat and game, but I was married to the other one, we’d lived together for years, she could not be instantly forgotten, she’d touched my heart, and then broke it.

And it’s no use each way we lose
You and me at the crossroads of Blue Avenue
Hit and run hearts collide here
True love passes through
Looks like we’ve got a wreck babe
Up on Blue Avenue

Blue Avenue Spotify

Blue Avenue YouTube

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday February 5th, on 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

Is all publicity good publicity?

It was a strange game, since the NFL’s ratings were resuscitated by the Chiefs and their passing attack, and this contest was fought on the ground, until the Rams realized that going to the air was their only chance of victory and then Brady aired it out and put the stake in the heart of the competition.

Actually, the only heartfelt moment in the contest is when Robert Kraft honored Belichick and Brady after the trophy was awarded. Although I must say I liked it when they booed Goodell, before Jim Nantz elbowed him aside.

That’s what Trump has wrought, decorum and respect are out the window, you can say what you want to whenever you want to. Actually, that Republican Congressman yelling out YOU LIE during Obama’s State of the Union address predated Trump, but that’s the America we live in, a divided one. Separated into elites and nincompoops.

Kind of like that laughable talent show after the game was over, “The World’s Best,” what a train-wreck that was. A dog and pony show of those ignored if it weren’t for this program, pitched to the brain dead. Talk about shooting low, it’s as if CBS just decided to throw in the towel, concede to Netflix. But that’s the America we now live in, one of dumb and dumber. Meanwhile, the evening was sans politics and all we care about is politics, which is another reason why Maroon 5’s performance seemed so lame. When given an opportunity to take a stand you punt?

It’s not that Maroon 5 were bad, it’s that they were EH.

A rock band that went pop and followed trends with featured artists that stands for nothing, just like the game of football itself. There was no way in hell Maroon 5 could have succeeded. And they’re being trashed in every publication known to man, never mind the Twitterverse.

You see we’re at the end of the paradigm. Not playing the Super Bowl is more important than playing it. You get more cred for not doing the show. As for reaching potential customers… Adam Levine already reaches them via “The Voice.” Reminds me of my friend Chris Zarou, who manages Logic. Logic did his 1-800 suicide song on the Grammys and there was no bounce. Everybody who cared was already aware.

Used to be football games had marching bands. And Up With People. We made fun of sports. That was part of the sixties ethos, we rebelled against conformity, organization and dictators, like Belichick. The players are interchangeable, it’s a coaches game. Otherwise why would they all need headsets with BOSE painted upon them. Once you yield to the almighty dollar, you’ve lost the plot, like the commercial time outs.

Then again, if you’re addicted to football, there’s no convincing you the game is not America’s Pastime.

But I implore you to listen to Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast

“Burden Of Proof”

How much evidence do we need before we stop watching football because of C.T.E? You will stop, you just don’t know it yet. Kinda like the MTV Video Music Awards. They were cool and exciting, a must-see with memorable moments, and now they’re completely irrelevant. That’s what’s gonna happen with the NFL and its halftime show, it’s just that the commercial industrial complex doesn’t want you to know. Kinda like in the sixties people were for the war until they started showing all the atrocities on the evening news. The “New York Times”‘s latest C.T.E. story, of a guy who barely had any experience in the NFL, will make your skin crawl.

“Was C.T.E. Stealing His Mind? A Gunshot Provided the Answer”

You remember how MTV used to have its own halftime show during the Super Bowl, before the NFL got “hip”? Pretty soon, Netflix will have a C.T.E. documentary that launches on Super Bowl Sunday, it’s coming.

So the game was boring, there was only one broken arm, but we won’t know the true injuries for maybe decades. Kinda like smoking. Which is way down now, people got the message, you’re a pariah if you smoke.

As for tattoos… Did Adam Levine convince you not to have them? I remember cutting my long hair when it was no longer a statement of your beliefs, just a fashion choice. Now that we’re tattooing faces, a real rebel would go clean. As for Adam doffing his shirt and showing us his ink…it seemed like a wannabe rapper from the suburbs trying to be hip, it was laughable.

If you’re sensing a lack of passion in this article, BINGO!

I just don’t care.

I liked hanging with friends. I liked eating all the things I don’t except for special occasions. But I felt like I’ve experienced this ritual too many times, and it’s long in the tooth.

And I’m sitting on the couch thinking…am I just jaded and are kids into this?

And then I realize kids have much better things to do with their time. Why dedicate four plus hours to the ancient games of adults. It’s not like we have the Super Bowl of the Colosseum, what would that be in Roman numerals, Gladiator Bowl MMXIX? These contests die out, the paradigm shifts.

Steve Jobs makes Super Bowl commercials a thing, and everybody tries to imitate Apple’s for thirty five years and no one succeeds…isn’t it time to give up?

Isn’t that the story of today, of this decade, how those who think they know what is going on don’t? Like Trump, like Brexit, like so much in the world today.

There’s been tumultuous change and everybody thinks everything is still the same.

But it’s not.

Like music is so dramatic and fascinating that our eyes will bug out when we see it performed during football halftime. And that we will be impressed with explosions and fire, talk about primeval.

As for the movies advertised… Calorieless fantasies.

It’s like the powers-that-be are convinced everybody in America is dumb, and will accept this pabulum. That we will not be able to watch men causing brain damage to each other and we won’t be able to stop watching mediocre pop acts and tertiary sideshow performers on television.

The revolution is happening now, and you just don’t know it yet.

This is the nadir. No one in their right mind will play the Super Bowl again.

Parents are already keeping their children from playing football.

It’s kinda like global warming. People scream about it but you don’t see the changes and then you do and believe too.

Audi trumpets the percentage of electric cars they’ll produce and Trump cuts CAFE rules.

But that’s business.

In a country with no soul.

We need someone to bring the soul back.

And so far Kaepernick’s got more of the right stuff than Gladys Knight.

Today it’s about refusing the check, standing up for what’s right.

Be forewarned.