{"id":23685,"date":"2026-09-14T17:23:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T01:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=23685"},"modified":"2026-09-14T17:23:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T01:23:20","slug":"dont-look-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2026\/09\/14\/dont-look-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Look Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Don&amp;apos;t Look Back\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/12LSxtfVVtiQ0NqMAc6QqP?si=10ffaeb22ed34608&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hsxAeng5nXM?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I had no idea it was a Temptations song.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not quite sure if I thought the Peter Tosh take with Mick Jagger was an original composition, but that&#8217;s the one that rings in my head when I hear these words (when I don&#8217;t think of the movie&#8230;oops, research tells me the name of that classic Nicolas Roeg film with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie was &#8220;Don&#8217;t Look Now,&#8221; that&#8217;s right). Actually, the Tosh take was a greater commercial success than the original, which only made it to number 83 on the Hot 100, then again, Tosh titled it &#8220;(You Gotta Walk) Don&#8217;t Look Back.&#8221; And when Buddy Miller was talking about doing a cover of the Temptations song &#8220;Don&#8217;t Look Back&#8221; it was the Tosh record played in my head, but I didn&#8217;t expect it to be the same song.<\/p>\n<p>I came upon this Buddy Miller interview after returning from one of my umpteen eye appointments. The radio was set to Outlaw Country. I&#8217;m trying to break my news habit&#8230;actually, I&#8217;ve been listening to Morgan Wallen&#8217;s station on the satellite&#8230;they even played R\u00fcf\u00fcs Du Sol, really! The stations in that vicinity are the best, I also listen to Chris Stapleton and Chesney&#8217;s No Shoes Radio.<\/p>\n<p>Now they were in the middle of conversing as I was exiting the parking lot. I didn&#8217;t know if this was an interview, long-form promoting a new album, or just an interstitial bit, but&#8230;Buddy started talking about Dan Penn and that piqued my interest, so I stayed on the station.<\/p>\n<p>Now I first became aware of Buddy when he was playing with his wife, Julie. And then he had that heart attack, resulting in triple bypass surgery, don&#8217;t know why that sticks with me, but whenever I hear his name&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And Buddy&#8217;s a great guitarist, very talented, and when he started out the world was separated into winners and losers, but not anymore. Sure, there&#8217;s a hit parade, but those songs reach fewer people than ever, and if you&#8217;re a journeyman (woman) you can have higher status than people like this have ever had, you see people are no longer judging you on your chart numbers, but your music alone. Funny how the business has lost control of the business, the record labels are off to the left, in their own world. They used to be the dominant force in music, now it&#8217;s the acts themselves. You have a direct connection with your fans which is cemented online and live. The intermediaries, the gatekeepers, mean less than ever before.<\/p>\n<p>And the readout says &#8220;Don&#8217;t Look Back&#8221; with both Miller and Penn&#8217;s names, and now I&#8217;m confused. I thought Buddy was just referencing Penn and his talents.<\/p>\n<p>And then the song started to play, and lo and behold, it was the Peter Tosh song! Which of course I now knew was originally a Temptations song. And I&#8217;m listening&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Everybody does covers these days. It&#8217;s seen as a way to get attention, traction, it&#8217;s so hard to do this with originals. And I&#8217;m not expecting much, but&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I mean the guitar intro gave me no tip that it was the same song, but then Buddy started to sing.<\/p>\n<p>But it was like he was on that porch in &#8220;Deliverance,&#8221; but without an audience.<\/p>\n<p>And then comes a fiddle, and the song starts to saunter, and there&#8217;s a female chorus, and then the second verse begins and the vocal duties have been handed off to Dan Penn, and then the both of them sing the chorus and then the rhythm becomes more emphatic.<\/p>\n<p>This is not a rote rendition, using someone else&#8217;s arrangement, sure, it&#8217;s a well-known song, but this is a somewhat unique spin, not quite a Joe Cocker version, but you&#8217;re not listening thinking you just want to hear the original.<\/p>\n<p>And as soon as I got home, the first thing I did was go to Spotify to see if this version had been released already, or I had to scrounge for a live take on Spotify or if it was one and done, floating into the ether forevermore.<\/p>\n<p>Now it turns out &#8220;Don&#8217;t Look Back&#8221; is part of an album, just released on Friday, not that I was aware of it, not that almost anybody was aware of it. How do I know? It&#8217;s not even listed on Buddy&#8217;s Wikipedia page! So either Buddy&#8217;s fans are unaware or they&#8217;re not rabid enough to do the update or maybe it&#8217;s just another case of a musician not knowing that they&#8217;re their own promotion team these days, and that your social media presence and your mailing list are key to sustaining your career&#8230;if you&#8217;re depending on your label, you&#8217;re depending on vapor in most cases.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I read this article in today&#8217;s &#8220;Los Angeles Times&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He sold out a DJ set in a California state park: Here&#8217;s how Chris Lake made it happen&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment-arts\/music\/story\/2026-09-08\/heres-how-dj-chris-lake-financed-his-biggest-la-show-to-date<\/p>\n<p>I had no idea who Chris Lake was, but obviously a segment of the public does, because he played two nights in L.A. and sold 40,000 tickets, and much of the Spotify Top 50 is unable to do that.<\/p>\n<p>And he&#8217;s his own label. He&#8217;s doing his own promotion. He focuses on the live show. Read the article. You may think &#8220;EDM&#8221; is different, but it&#8217;s not&#8230; In a live concert world it&#8217;s about a bond with your audience, selling an experience. Concerts triumph in a digital world, a live show is one and done, you were either there or you were not, it&#8217;s never to be repeated, like a recording.<\/p>\n<p>Now I played another track on Buddy&#8217;s album, but really I wanted to hear the Temptations original from 1965.<\/p>\n<p>Yup, it&#8217;s the same song, but it sounds Motownified, unlike the Peter Tosh\/Mick Jagger remake, with its reggae beat.<\/p>\n<p>In  any event, it&#8217;s a great song. Check it out.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had no idea it was a Temptations song. I&#8217;m not quite sure if I thought the Peter Tosh take with Mick Jagger was an original composition, but that&#8217;s the one that rings in my head when I hear these words (when I don&#8217;t think of the movie&#8230;oops, research tells me the name of that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-6a1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23686,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23685\/revisions\/23686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}