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I can’t SLEEP!

So here’s the story. I was skiing with a friend on my birthday, April 22nd, Pickeroon, at Vail. And it’s relatively flat and then it falls off into a steep part, and normally I’d stop and wait at this ridge, at this transition, but the guy I’m skiing with is twenty years younger than me and you know how the testosterone flows and I’m in the lead so I just continue and when I make my first turn on the steep part, I feel this pain shoot through my back. Let me be clear, I didn’t fall, there were no big bumps, no jolting or jarring, it’s just that I turned my skis and got this pain.

Whereupon I made two more runs and went back in. I had to, you couldn’t go down from there, it was too damn sticky.

O.K. We go out to Flame, my favorite restaurant in Vail, for dinner, and it’s about a ten minute walk and I’m uncomfortable, but not writhing, and when we get back to the condo I’m all riled up, agitated, and I inject that because of the Sarno book, but I’ll get to that.

I want to finish this book I’m reading, “Shotgun Lovesongs,” which I kind of recommend, because it’s about a faded rock star and it’s pretty good, but if I stay up too late I won’t be able to get up early and you’ve got to get up early, because the snow gets too sticky sometime after noon and it’s the last day of the season and they close early anyway.

But I toss and turn, there’s too much on my mind.

And I wake up late and I’m in a rush, because we’ve got to meet Fricke at 11 at 11, which is Vail talk I won’t bother to explain, other than it’s the top of the mountain and it takes half an hour just to get there, so I’m in a rush and I’m stretching, and using a tennis ball to work out the kinks and my back goes NUCLEAR!

I’m familiar with nuclear, but it hasn’t happened in twenty years. And they say after ten you’re usually in the clear.

And I’m stretching and starting to writhe and then I get on the floor and conclude I’m not going skiing today, I text Fricke, and I start reading the Sarno book, which is on my KIndle, to try to calm myself down.

Sarno says it’s all in your head. I felt stressed, I wanted to believe that.

But when I couldn’t get comfortable, I had Felice go through my personal pharmacy and I took 10 milligrams of Oxycodone, which I had left over from my shoulder surgery.

But it didn’t work.

And Felice thinks we should call the doctor and I agree and when we’re on the phone with him, trying to find a pharmacy open on a Sunday to call in a steroid dosepak, my pain goes INSANE!

Now you have to know, this pill I take, the miracle drug, Gleevec, for my CML, its two main side effects are…fatigue and muscle cramps. And the fatigue, it only means I’m gonna have trouble climbing Mt. Everest, I’m good in regular life, but the cramps, it’s like out of a horror movie, your fingers seem to be rolling over each other at the joint, the arch in your foot has stabbing pain, and this doesn’t happen often, but when it does…

Well now my whole body is in a Gleevec cramp. Was it a drug reaction? Who the hell knows, all I do know is I wanted the pain to go away.

So let’s jump to the ER.

They do an MRI. I’ve got two herniated disks and a collapsed disk. The collapsed disk I’m familiar with, as the physiatrist said a couple of years back, when I got an MRI for my hip, YOU SKI WITH THAT BACK? There’s no disk THERE!

Yes.

Ok, ok, so they need a stool sample.

And after eating a few crackers I give ’em one.

They’re looking for colitis, which they do not find. But they do find the NOROVIRUS!

And this is where I catalog my other problems. So, it’s the end of the season and snow is thin and two thirds of the mountain is closed so they groom Prima, the hardest slope on the front side. And you cut off from there to Pronto and I get to the bottom and I’m so tired, I mean really tired, WTF?

I can barely eat the energy bar in my pocket. I call it a day and go back to the condo and tell Felice how insanely tired I am, I can barely eat dinner, even though I ate no lunch.

That was Thursday.

Turns out, as stated above, I had Norovirus, which is that infection you get on cruise ships. There’s no treatment, you’ve just got to wait it out.

And since I’m doing one-stop shopping, I ask the doctor about my ear, I can’t hear out of it, my right one. Was freaking me out. Turns out he could not see the eardrum, they did a half hour of cleaning and voila! I could hear again!

So…

They decided not to keep me overnight. They cleared me to fly home the next day. And I didn’t think I could make it but then in a window when the drugs kicked in we put it in high gear, bought a $90 flight, took an SUV to DIA and when I got out of the car…

I couldn’t stand up straight. I could walk maybe twenty five feet at a time. If I straightened up…WHEW!

So I get home and I’m worse. But I’m gonna power through.

I drive a standard and it’s my left leg so I’m Ubering and I’ve got to go to the skin doctor, to have my stitch removed, it’s been two weeks, he did a biopsy, and I can’t walk to the goddamn building, they have to bring out a wheelchair.

Thereupon I called my internist for serious pain pills and canceled everything on my schedule.

The physical therapist came to my house. And when she said I needed to see the surgeon…

So I call the guru, the guy who I depend upon, who got me to avoid surgery after every doctor said to have it two decades back.

I can’t get through.

Then I get an e-mail from Irving and while we’re at it, I run this all by him. He says I can’t see the famous guy, he’s the one who messed up Steve Kerr, I’ve got to see this new guy, who operated on his son-in-law, he’ll facilitate it.

And he does, but the price is exorbitant but Irving is never wrong and I’m barely functional so I go.

The guy gives me so much time, an hour, and explains everything, but wants more tests, to see if there are bone fractures.

So I Uber to the lab and he squeezes me in five days later and says…

I DON’T NEED SURGERY!

Ever hear of such a thing? Oh, I’ll need it at some point, I’ve got that collapsed disk and the vertebrae above it has slipped, but the herniations should work themselves out in six to eight weeks, and I’m elated.

But still in pain.

You see, most people have a problem with conventional sciatica, from the butt down the side of the leg to the foot. But since my herniations are higher up, my pain is in the thigh and the knee. So I’m good when I’m sitting, but sleeping?

No way.

Whereupon…

I’ve taken more medication than I have in my life and the pain is still intolerable and then I decided…

I’d go for the injection.

2

I know, I know, this story is long and insane but welcome to my life, that’s why I thought this could be psychological, even though I’m the only one who believes that, it’s been a helluva year, but not in a good way.

And I’ve seen the dawn too many times, trying to white knuckle it without Oxy, since my pharmacist freaked out about it being so addictive.

And I can go without pain pills during the day, but…AM I ENTITLED TO TREATMENT?

I mean I’m getting better, however slowly. But they called me from the pain doctor’s office and said I could cancel any time and I was wavering but the night before last…WHEW!

So…

They were so UNTOGETHER!

I spoke with three different people and they all said different stuff.

And I’m reading the pre-op page last night and holy crap, I’m doing stuff I’m not supposed to, although the page contradicts the phone calls, and I’m an i-dotter and a t-crosser, I’ve got to do it right, but if this injection is canceled I’ve got to wait A WHOLE ‘NOTHER WEEK!

So I Uber to Beverly Hills…

Now this is a surgery center. Where you die. So, do I want to be put under or not? The first phone call gave me the option, all the next ones assumed I was going down.

But I walk in and the guy there is asking the same question!

But his wife won’t shut up and she’s so loud I can’t fill out the forms and the clerk says eighty percent of the people go under so I decide I will too.

But then when I go into the facility, the nurse says I won’t be going under, it’s not in the paperwork, HUH?

It’s the untogetherness that’s blowing my mind. Can’t they get their story straight?

But then they’re inserting the IV… Now I’ve been poked and prodded so much that I can tolerate the pain, but it’s becoming clear, this ain’t working.

THE WOMAN SCREWED UP TWICE! MISSED MY VEIN TWICE! ONCE IN EACH ARM!

I said NO MAS, bring in someone else! And they did, and she got it right. But when they say you never want to be in a hospital, believe them.

And we’re waiting for the doctor and he comes in all harried and disheveled and I’m wondering whether I should just bolt.

But he turns out to quite a nice fellow, impresses me with his competence.

And the anesthesiologist tells me he’s been on all three sides of this, putting people out, injecting them, and being injected himself.

Finally, he says he went under for the injection, so I decide I will too.

I mean how paranoid do you want to be?

And they wheel me in and we start talking music, this guy went to the final Springsteen show at the Sports Arena, and I always wonder whether to be all business or friends, since I had a bad experience once, bonding with a doctor who poked a hole in my spine…

And I’m lying face down and they put in the twilight medicine and they prick me in the back and it’s all done in about ten minutes. I’m never completely gone, I run a sexual fantasy in my head, I try to feel good, because there’s nowhere I need to be, no commitment I need to fulfill, I’ve just got to go along for the ride, float down the river in heaven, assuming I don’t end up in heaven.

And that’s it.

They wheel me out and make me drink some water and say I’m done.

Whereupon I get into it with the anesthesiologist. He says it’ll take forty eight hours for the steroid to kick in, to lay low before that, but not too low, but it could take eight days for the steroid to take effect.

And then the nurse hands me my exit papers, one I’ve never seen before, I’ve got to document my pain, for my follow-up appointment with the pain doctor…no one told me about that! Yup, in two weeks.

And then I’m literally walking out and I run into the injector.

Who says no, I don’t have to come back. And that no, I don’t have to wait forty eight hours for full effect. And to do whatever I want. And I could get relief that lasts an hour or forever or not at all.

So where does that leave me?

Who the hell knows.

On one hand my back pain is reduced, then again, I’ve got pain where they shot me up, I’ve got to ice that.

As far as my knee… Pain is reduced in three areas but still remaining in one. But sometimes you feel better a few hours from now. And even if this doesn’t work, I’m on the road to recovery.

So what have we learned?

Damned if I know.

You won’t know right away.

That’s what the internet promised, instant response. But now the pipes are clogged with messages and if your project has any virality, you won’t see the signals immediately, but rather two days to two weeks to a month later.

Don’t confuse this with hype-driven action. With enough publicity you can get something paid attention to, kinda like that initial Lorde single, but it didn’t stick. You want to see an acceleration, a ramp.

And when you’re done, you still won’t be ubiquitous, you see number one is no longer number one.

How can that be you say?

There’s a chart! We believe in data! Logic beat out Chris Stapleton last week!

But how many people know who either of those acts are? Never mind the inane metrics that decide the rankings. Multiple streams of one track equal an album and country has lousy streaming numbers and hip-hop rules online.

Confused yet?

I think it was put best by Chris Robinson on the Howard Stern show yesterday.

I’M NOT IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS!

Huh? Isn’t this the frontman of the Black Crowes, with those huge MTV hits, with that tour with Jimmy Page?

But Chris said his wife was his manager and his records don’t sell and when asked if his kids wanted to be rock stars he said…

There are no rock stars anymore, just musicians.

Think about that. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. That everybody could be a star. Not only those on Spotify, but the makeup queens on YouTube, the jokesters on the dearly-departed Vine. Article after article talked about their impact, even though in most cases you’d never heard of these people, and a great percentage have gone back to their day job, or into porn, literally.

So, there’s no there there.

Kinda like with D.C., the biggest story extant. It’s reported that Donald Trump shared secrets with the Russians and you go to the Fox News website…and it’s not even there. Literally. Check it out next time there’s a crisis. It’s like CNN and Fox are two different worlds, never mind MSNBC. And isn’t it interesting all the stories are being broken by the WaPo and the NYT, we’re in a glory era for journalism, it’s finally doing its job, once it got over the false equivalencies and Bezos injected capital, but the WSJ is silent, although the WSJ did break the Theranos story.

But the point of all this is if we can’t get consensus on the biggest story in our nation, what are the odds we can get consensus on you?

All the tools you used to employ… The late night TV appearances, the feature stories, they don’t work. Those hanging on to the last chads of a dying paradigm will still tout NPR and “CBS Sunday Morning,” but at best they’ll give you a bit of attention, make your core feel good, convince just a few others and then it all stops.

So you’re back where you always were, in the business of building your own career.

You’re waiting for someone to rescue you, for your one big break, but…

YOU’VE GOT TO RESCUE YOURSELF!

And stunts rarely work and when they do they don’t last and…

Amazon celebrated twenty years as a public company and Jeff Bezos attributed its success to a seven year plan in a three year world. Like Fleetwood Mac sang, you’ve got to go your own way, and they’re a good example, it took almost a decade for that band to find the right formula.

And it does take time, and you do have to refine your message, take chances, figure out what works, but when it does…

You will never be as big as you dreamed you’d be. If you’re lucky, you will have established a cottage industry, that pays your bills, that allows you some luxuries.

No one is as big as they say they are, never mind how big you think they are. Don’t confuse the celebrity industrial complex with true reach. It’s all smoke and mirrors, you’re on your own now.

But that’s not a terrible place to be.

As long as you put your head down and do the work. Put one foot in front of another. And stop dreaming of that rocket ship to success, it no longer exists.

From: Bob Lefsetz
Subject: Hey Elton!
To: Elton John

Hope you’re good.

I know you’re a big new music fan.

Today’s music world is incomprehensible, we need curators who will make sense of it for us, and not just endless playlists on streaming services, so…

Can you recommend ONE recent track (now, or from the previous two years) that you think is a stone cold one listen smash?

I’m not asking you to be obscure, I’m not asking you to come up with one that burnishes your image. I’m asking you to put your programmer hat on. What’s the track you think would resonate with the most listeners?

Any explanation as to why would be helpful but unnecessary.

I was listening to the new stuff on Spotify and was overwhelmed, especially by the dreck. And then I was listening to some of my favorites on  my iPhone and I got this idea of reaching out to experts and you were the first I thought of…

Thanks!

Bob

____________________________

From: Elton John
Re: Hey Elton!
To: Bob Lefsetz

Dear Bob, nice to hear from you. I agree that the majority of songs on the charts are awful mass produced robotic drek. However,“Human” by Rag And Bone Man should have flown from day one.

Although it is gradually rising up the radio charts it is taking its time.

I am not sure what Sony are doing but this is a number one record in my opinion and has been all over the world. It has a great hook, beautiful production and his voice is wonderful.

My theory is it is too sophisticated and too good a record. Therefore it does not fit in with the tinny, vapid crap constipating the top 100.

I still think it will get there, but Why so long?

All best wishes Elton x

There are three record companies, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

If you want to know what it was like in the late sixties, during the seventies in the record business, look to streaming TV.

Not the eighties and nineties, those were victory laps, when MTV blew up bands beyond comprehension and then the CD rained down coin. No, go back to the sixties, when record labels were the poor stepsisters of movie studios and then…

Kids couldn’t get enough of the newfangled sounds.

What started out as a singles business evolved into albums, with a concomitant increase in revenue, and said revenue funded…Warner Cable. That’s why Steve Ross paid Mo and his crew so much money, they were throwing off cash that could be used to fund new projects. And record companies were not like Snapchat, with fake valuations based on financial mania, rather none of the labels was traded separately on the street and they were all selling tonnage. Because people couldn’t get enough of the music, it captured the zeitgeist.

Like today’s streaming TV.

Now the big change is on demand. This is what hindered the record labels, what put them in second position. They kept trying to hold back the future, whereas Netflix was ahead of its customers, when it went streaming the public blinked, but Reed Hastings was right, never forget, the customer is always last, he doesn’t know what he wants, but brilliant seers like Steve Jobs do.

And now we just can’t get enough of our TV shows.

Like Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None.

No, he’s not an unknown. He played in a band, known as “Parks and Recreation,” but he wanted a solo deal and Netflix gave it to him.

This is how it was way back when in the record business. Labels were in the habit of saying yes instead of no. They wanted to keep the talent happy, because the talent was everything, the keys to the kingdom, this was before the execs started to believe THEY were the talent, which happened first in movies, and look what a black hole that industry is today.

So Netflix makes a deal with Ansari and he makes an award-winning season and then…

He doesn’t repeat himself. That’s what the shock is of Season 2. It’s different. Just like Dev doesn’t want to host “Clash of the Cupcakes” for seven years, Aziz just didn’t want to do bro riffs about being South Asian in New York City.

So the series starts off in black and white in Italy, with a takeoff on “The Bicycle Thief.” Did you see that in college? Does anybody even watch foreign movies anymore? That’s what I love about Aziz, he assumes you did, and if you didn’t, he’s not gonna pander to you. Everybody’s pandering. Did you hear Howard Stern excoriate Ryan Seacrest’s new hosting gig with Kelly Ripa? He said Ryan was too busy working to prepare, going from his radio show to TV, and that he was just coming up with lists and the more Howard talked the more you realized he was right, Ryan is stupid, and we want smart.

Aziz is smart.

And the show moves back to New York and it’s uneven.

This is what happens when you test limits, you don’t always get it right. But if you’re not willing to fail, you can’t succeed. In music, everybody’s repeating themselves, trying to be just like everybody else. You jump from hit to hit and are desperate in between. But a real artist follows his own vision and takes risk.

So, there’s an episode Aziz is barely in.

And another with a long, lingering shot of pain, the kind after a great date when you realize you’ll never get what you want. That loneliness, inside your own head.

And the episode on acceptance? His gay friend’s family won’t accept her lesbianism, won’t accept any of her girlfriends, but ultimately they come around, it’s a beautiful thing, a real thing, what we need in our lives today, for right and left to come together and find out they’re both human, work together to be as one.

Aziz is our new Woody Allen. BECAUSE HE’S GOT SELF-RESPECT! As Woody woodshedded he became comfortable being the winner, not the loser. He could see his appeal to women. Could demonstrate his wit and intelligence. Instead of saying he’s not good-looking enough, not enough period, Aziz ventures through life like he’s an equal, although if you categorize him, lump him in with all Indians, he barks back, like any minority, when you’re downtrodden you take no gruff, but somehow it’s the whites today who see themselves as underdogs, don’t ask me how.

But the truth is these downtrodden whites watch Netflix too. That’s right, we all listened to the same music back in the classic era and now we all watch the same television shows. We’re more together than apart. This is what we want to spend our time doing and talking about. Going deep into series and then wrestling with the concepts, arguing about them with our friends.

And this is all because Netflix, Amazon and Hulu spend. And give control to the creators. Their win to loss ratio ain’t great, but neither was that of the record labels back then. A few hits make up for all of it. A couple of “13 Reasons Why” and “Narcos” fund a zillion experiments wherein you might find the next pot of gold. This was the Warner Records formula. And they didn’t give the money to just anybody, but those with a vision, artists.

So enjoy the new golden age. Whenever I write about television my inbox is inundated with recommendations. When I write about music it fills up with insults. How can I not like this hit, how can I have such terrible taste? But music is nearly incomprehensible, there’s so much product, so many niches, and then you tune in the hype of the month and listen and say…Eh. But you watch one of these TV shows and they titillate you.

It won’t be this way forever. They’re gonna run out of potential subscribers, they’re gonna tighten the spigot. But Netflix has already eclipsed HBO, not only in subscribers, but content. Every comedian jumped from HBO to Netflix, because of the MONEY! Kinda like the live heyday ushered in by Led Zeppelin. If the gig was gonna sell out anyway, the promoter should only get 10%. Everybody wants to see the new Chappelle and Chris Rock specials, and you sign the stars and that’s where the newcomers want to be.

The second season of “Master of None” is not perfect. But the peaks are new and different, they touch your soul.

And isn’t that what living is all about?