"Griftopia"<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Love the attitude, but most of what’s in there I already know, except for the explanation of the gas price increase back in 2008, remember that?\u00c2\u00a0 I do.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly I was debating driving an extra mile or two to save a dollar or so, just wasn’t worth it, gas cost too much.\u00c2\u00a0 Some said it was overconsumption, too many greedy Americans driving SUVs, others decried regulation, the inability to drill for more oil, but the real story is it all had to do with bets on a new commodities index.\u00c2\u00a0 How did this happen? Goldman Sachs asked for private rulings from the CFTC, then created a game predicated on commodity prices always going up, which they don’t, but for a time there, you could barely afford to go anywhere.<\/p>\nDon’t think that Wall Street is playing by the rules.\u00c2\u00a0 To the degree there are any left, they lobby and cajole to eliminate them or create exceptions.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can’t do this in music.<\/p>\n
I’m not talking about the labels.\u00c2\u00a0 As soon as a streaming service takes hold you can bet your bippy Lyor Cohen and Jimmy Iovine will pay people to scam the count, that’s the way this business works.\u00c2\u00a0 But what they’re selling…that can’t be rigged, that can’t be faked.<\/p>\n
Let’s be clear, you can imitate, you can rip off what’s been done before.\u00c2\u00a0 You know that Kia that looks like a Benz?\u00c2\u00a0 But it doesn’t drive like a Benz, and Kia certainly ain’t gonna create the next breakthrough, they’ve got no one on board to do that, no one investing in testing the limits, it costs too much for too few dividends.<\/p>\n
Why did we want to play music?<\/p>\n
The Beatles.<\/p>\n
Sure, everybody in the U.K. picked up an axe to escape the factory, but in middle class America we bought Fenders because we wanted to be just like the Fab Four, we wanted the music to come out of us, we wanted the girls to fawn all over us.<\/p>\n
And soon there was a schism.\u00c2\u00a0 Started in 1967, although one can argue the Beatles began it even earlier, with "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver".\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, it was no longer about the one hit wonder.\u00c2\u00a0 It was about the statement.\u00c2\u00a0 Created by people who’d paid their dues.\u00c2\u00a0 The original British Invasion was over, replaced by a plethora of players who could truly do just that, expatriate Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, all the FM staples.\u00c2\u00a0 They had one thing in common, they could play.<\/p>\n
Their stories were all the same.\u00c2\u00a0 They bought records and practiced in their basements and bedrooms until they were good enough to get a gig.\u00c2\u00a0 And then they gigged long enough until someone noticed them.\u00c2\u00a0 And then they got a chance.\u00c2\u00a0 And some of them broke through.<\/p>\n
That’s a long hard road.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not like Snooki getting on "The Jersey Shore", or Kim Kardashian getting enough plastic surgery to look like a Barbie Doll.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no short cut.\u00c2\u00a0 And you’re starting from scratch.\u00c2\u00a0 How many of those bankers would be rich if they couldn’t start out at the aforementioned Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley?\u00c2\u00a0 Never forget, Steve Jobs started out in his basement.\u00c2\u00a0 Without rich parents or a college degree.\u00c2\u00a0 Just passion and hustle and…<\/p>\n
Jobs was just like the musicians, only he was peddling tech, not tunes.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, the sky was the limit.<\/p>\n
A reader e-mailed me a video.\u00c2\u00a0 Of the Eagles on the BBC.\u00c2\u00a0 The concert I wrote about and downloaded over the weekend.<\/p>\n
My jaw dropped.<\/p>\n
It was like being transported back to ’73 instantly.\u00c2\u00a0 Better than "Almost Famous", better than reading about it in "Rolling Stone", this was exactly it.<\/p>\n
The clip begins with "Train Leaves Here This Morning".\u00c2\u00a0 But what’s stunning is the band is sitting on stools singing all the music. ALL the music.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no one in the background, nothing on tape.\u00c2\u00a0 And the harmonies are ALMOST perfect.\u00c2\u00a0 And when something is almost perfect it’s just like life itself.\u00c2\u00a0 Perfection is not human.<\/p>\n
And Bernie Leadon is wearing a UCLA t-shirt.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think he thought much about it.\u00c2\u00a0 It was probably at the top of his suitcase, or the only clean thing he had.\u00c2\u00a0 You see it wasn’t about the look, but the music.<\/p>\n
When Glenn Frey sings about sleeping in the desert tonight you know why all the girls ran to grab their sleeping bags.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve been hearing how Glenn was so cool for years, how he was a ladykiller.\u00c2\u00a0 You get it here, it’s not the "Miami Vice" guy hyping gyms, it’s that guy on the couch who you can’t wait to zip apart, who you can’t wait to get inside of you.<\/p>\n
This is a band.\u00c2\u00a0 Remember bands?\u00c2\u00a0 They rehearsed until they got it right.\u00c2\u00a0 And when you get it right, you’re undeniable.\u00c2\u00a0 People clamor to sign you.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because you’re making the music on the radio, but because you’re making music so GOOD!<\/p>\n
And there are some snide comments.\u00c2\u00a0 How do bands stay together?<\/p>\n
Actually, they don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Because one person can no longer take it.\u00c2\u00a0 You might say to not quit, but musicians aren’t looking for security, they’re following their muse.<\/p>\n
And when Randy Meisner sings "A Certain Kind Of Fool"!!!!<\/p>\n
You see him smiling, and then what comes out of his mouth…WHERE DID HE GET THAT VOICE?\u00c2\u00a0 How does it sound so right? He’s like a choirboy having sex for the very first time.\u00c2\u00a0 You get why we needed to get close.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t want to have dinner with Lloyd Blankfein, but you can’t wait to just be in the VICINITY of your favorite musician.<\/p>\n
And Bernie’s guitar has got that distortion that’s just a bit different from the studio, which is why you go to the show, because it’s just a little bit different, it’s a one time only performance.<\/p>\n
And Glenn is playing lead.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no hired hand.\u00c2\u00a0 And he can DO IT!<\/p>\n
And when Bernie picks his banjo at the beginning of "Earlybird"…\u00c2\u00a0 How’d he get that good?\u00c2\u00a0 PRACTICE!\u00c2\u00a0 You remember practice, don’t you?\u00c2\u00a0 All the Olympic athletes do it.\u00c2\u00a0 And standing in front of the mirror perfecting your ‘do is not practice!<\/p>\n
And when you hear Henley sing "Witchy Woman"…it takes you right back to the first time you heard it, when you had no idea who this guy was, only that the sound reminded you of times when anything could happen, both good and bad.<\/p>\n
Still, it’s got nothing to do with any specific notes, although it does have a lot to do with the songs.\u00c2\u00a0 They wrote ’em.\u00c2\u00a0 And they weren’t their first.<\/p>\n
But what is striking is the fact that you’re watching a band.\u00c2\u00a0 A living, breathing thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Something that developed.\u00c2\u00a0 Something that exists in the minds of the players, not the label.<\/p>\n
This is the way it used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Inspired journeymen woodshedded to the point where they established a vision.\u00c2\u00a0 And then they rode that vision to unknown places.\u00c2\u00a0 Watching this ’73 show you can’t see "Hotel California" in the future, but it happened.<\/p>\n
They’re impossibly skinny.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re not dancing.\u00c2\u00a0 A stylist would be yearning to clean them up.\u00c2\u00a0 As would an engineer.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can’t clean up live.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s messy.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s so SATISFYING!<\/p>\n
I don’t care if you hate the Eagles, you’ve got to watch this show.\u00c2\u00a0 Because this is how it used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Create a 24 hour cable channel with all this heretofore unexposed greatness and watch catalog sales explode.<\/p>\n
This is not "Glee", this is not covers.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not a tribute.\u00c2\u00a0 This is like stumbling upon the Dead Sea Scrolls.\u00c2\u00a0 And you’re\u00c2\u00a0 yearning to know the backstory.\u00c2\u00a0 How did they come up with this shit?\u00c2\u00a0 Did they practice the harmonies?\u00c2\u00a0 Did they get along?\u00c2\u00a0 How do you write a song?<\/p>\n
They watched the Beatles and formed the Eagles.<\/p>\n
We watched the Eagles and…<\/p>\n
And when you’re that good, you write your own rule book.\u00c2\u00a0 You become so successful that you tell the label the way it’s gonna be. The agents and promoters work for you.\u00c2\u00a0 Money and sex and drugs rain down.\u00c2\u00a0 Because you’re delivering life.\u00c2\u00a0 People want to be closer to you, you just\u00c2\u00a0 can’t get enough.<\/p>\n
Goldman Sachs is not building America, one can argue strongly it’s destroying it.\u00c2\u00a0 And at the center, all there is is money, nothing real.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can be broke and still sing "Take It Easy".\u00c2\u00a0 And when you lower the car window and put your elbow on the sill while the radio blasts your favorite song you feel more alive than when you’re at the bank, you’re right where you want to be.<\/p>\n
I don’t know if these days will ever return.\u00c2\u00a0 It was so hard to get noticed.\u00c2\u00a0 But there were fewer people vying for attention.\u00c2\u00a0 And radio was about music, not commercials.\u00c2\u00a0 And it wasn’t bad if you looked good, but we hardly ever saw you.\u00c2\u00a0 At best, from a distance, at the show.<\/p>\n
But we went to the show.\u00c2\u00a0 We had to.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like we drank and ate.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no choice.\u00c2\u00a0 And although there were programs and t-shirts, they were only on sale because fans needed totems, tangible representations of the experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the music was enough.<\/p>\n
\nThe Eagles – Live on BBC T.V – ’73<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s no cheating in music! I’ve been reading Matt Taibbi’s book, "Griftopia".\u00c2\u00a0 Love the attitude, but most of what’s in there I already know, except for the explanation of the gas price increase back in 2008, remember that?\u00c2\u00a0 I do.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly I was debating driving an extra mile or two to save a dollar or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Yo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744","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=3744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3745,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions\/3745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}