Tune in June 13th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

1

It was invigorating!

Now the truth is if you were a rock music fan before the advent of the internet you know Rush, because the band’s music was played on the radio, which you were addicted to, it was your Bible, your source, your heart.

But you might not have been a Rush fan.

Then again, there were and still are Rush fans. For a band that never had a Top 40 hit, that were doing it the own way, jumping off musically from established sounds into a new territory. Rush were sui generis. You could call them “prog rock,” but no one sounded exactly like the band. That was a feature, not a bug. Back when music was an exploratory medium that not only drove the culture, but pushed it forward.

Today?

What we’ve got is entertainment. A lot of me-too. And because the barrier to entry is so low, there are a lot of complaints from substandard acts that they cannot get traction, they cannot get paid. Did you see that lawsuit against Spotify from the guy complaining he isn’t making any money? I checked on the service, each of his cuts has under 1,000 streams, what, does he expect to get rich?

Yes, people are still complaining that their cheese has been moved.

So what we’ve got is commerce, which most people are not interested in, never has music meant less in the culture since the advent of the Beatles, and an underclass of niches and wannabes, none of which deserve mainstream attention.

And then we have Rush.

Now when we go to a show today we expect an extravaganza, the music almost secondary to the images, the antics. Of course there are acts like Zach Bryan who operate in a more singer-songwriter mode, but the old rock of yore, the kind that you cranked to the max and banged your head to…

That’s gone. Oh, there are niche metal bands. But Rush was bigger than all of them.

And now Rush is back.

Did we expect Rush to come back? It’s been a decade, so no. Everybody’s got enough money and the dirty little secret is these acts are getting older every day, and eventually you fall off the conveyor belt, you cannot do it anymore, although right now we’re seeing acts who should have hung it up still plying the boards, their audience giving them a pass while so many are wincing.

That is not Rush.

Now the thing about Rush is it’s not a cult of personality. It’s not based on larger than life figures. Rather it’s three men from Canada sans airs. Sure, over time their drummer (and lyric writer!) Neil Peart was considered one of the best, if not the best, behind the kit, but still, the band did not get a lot of respect. Everybody knew them, but they were not held up as a paragon of excellence that must be paid attention to. They were just there, with acolytes, mostly male, but NOW!

Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder, maybe everybody else is running on fumes, but last night rock and roll returned with a vengeance. Without plastic surgery, without trying to look young and modern, but by just being itself. And that was astounding. In an era where rock is considered dead, Rush were fully alive. It was a jolt of electricity, like finding the Holy Grail.

2

Now I’m not a huge Rush fan. I know the radio tracks, I’ve seen the band, I’ve corresponded with and met Alex, but the people last night…

NO ONE WAS A CASUAL FAN!

Other than maybe the women brought along with their significant others. Never have I seen so many women at a Rush show.

Because this was an event, not to be missed.

Which started off with a lengthy film, including the “I Love You, Man” men, Jason Segel and Paul Rudd, and even the Lil Rush South Park characters. There was an honoring, with respect, but also a sense of humor.

And then the music began.

Now there were some sounds triggered by keyboards, but really, everybody was playing live. And that you can feel. There’s a power in rock and roll, and it was evident in the Forum last night.

Despite not getting a lot of attention and respect, you realize that Alex Lifeson is playing all those guitar parts, on a million different guitars, hanging it out there alone.

As for Geddy Lee… He’s thumbing his bass with the entire force of his body.

And the drummer, Anika Nilles… She was the secret sauce.

This was not a YouTube replacement, someone picked to recreate the old sound like Arnel Pineda. You didn’t have to close your eyes and remember when. This was alive and kicking, the thunderous bass drum underlined the music and…

Now we live in the modern era. Which means technology is rampant. Which means there are giant screens and you could see Annika playing… She was CONCENTRATING! When everybody else seems to be going through the motions. She wasn’t lazily smiling, rather she was in charge of moving this freight train forward, it was amazing. I’m sure Annika will inspire young girls to become drummers. She’s not bombastic, she’s EXECUTING! It was fascinating to watch.

As was Alex’s fretwork.

As for Geddy, he’s the frontman. Being himself, having fun.

God, everybody else is so concerned about their image, trying to convey that they’re separate and better than us, whereas Geddy seemed to be plugged into the wall and jumping on electricity, wholly being himself.

And there were all the production tricks, the moving lights, the see-through screens, if you haven’t been to a show for a while you’ll marvel. But they were in SUPPORT of the music, they were subsidiary, they added to the effect, they didn’t overwhelm or replace it. No one left the stage for costume changes.

It was the same as it ever was.

And it hasn’t been that way for a very long time.

3

So the truth is there are four different sets. The plan was to play four nights in every city so diehard fans could experience their favorites. There are 38 songs in all. If you want to hear it, chances are they’ll play it.

My favorite, which I just found out the band hadn’t played live since 2002, was “New World Man.”

There’s that percolation, that groove, the twinkly guitar figure and then…

“He’s a rebel and a runner

He’s a signal turning green

He’s a restless young romantic

Wants to run the big machine”

And just the way Geddy sings the next line, “He’s got a problem with his poisons,” there’s a different delivery, it’s like he’s having a conversation, not just singing the lyrics straight, you feel like he’s talking directly to you.

And all the while, it’s all getting intense, and then…

“Learning to match the beat of the old world man

Learning to catch the heat of the third world man”

And then the sound EXPLODES! Everybody’s doubling-down in intensity, it’s like the roller coaster has reached its peak and is now descending…

“He’s a new world man”

While you were just sitting there the track snuck up on you, amping up almost imperceptibly. You can no longer sit still. Your body is moving involuntarily, your arms are flexing as your head goes back and forth praying to the steering wheel. And at the show you’re shocked into activity, you’re fully awake, moving to the sound of the music.

Just like you did back when the years had a 19 in front of them.

But maybe because Rush music doesn’t sound quite like anything else, since there’s really no context, it sounds just as fresh as it did when it came out. So much other material sounds like it was a product of its era. But if you’re not competing with anybody, you’re only competing with yourself.

4

Don’t go if you’re not a Rush fan, it’s not for you. It’s a club, the band knows who its fans are, it’s not softening the sound, changing it to try and appeal to the fringe, to make itself bigger. But it’s not a cult. It’s bigger than that. Because if you’re of a certain age, you know this music, and if you were a fan you know the albums, you’re in deep, because that’s the way it used to be. That’s why you went to the show, not to hear the hits, but to hear the album tracks, that were just as important to you.

This was what the business was built upon. Unique acts with skills and vision, who were pushing the envelope and exceeding our expectations.

And we haven’t had that spirit here since 1999. So to be confronted with it at the Forum last night was a revelation.

It was a return to the garden.

It was the same as it ever was.

Turns out the formula was not lost, just that Rush had to reform to remind us.

Go see Rush and you want to come home and listen to the records, you want to not only see the band again, but OTHER bands. You get that hunger, you want more of this. Something outside the b.s. of regular life, but in its own way just important.

Not anybody can do this. It’s a tightrope walk. And Rush pulls you right up on the wire with them.

It’s EXHILARATING!

This is the second time this has happened, an English act that has been hiding in plain sight, successful across the pond, only gets traction here in the U.S. years later. That’s the story of Olivia Dean and now Sienna Spiro.

Now Dean was boosted by opening for Sabrina Carpenter on her “Short n’ Sweet” tour back in 2025. But it wasn’t until “Man I Need” was adopted by TikTok that she triumphed in the U.S., to the point where her tour is one of the hottest of the summer, people complaining they can’t buy tickets. But her first album came out in the U.K. in 2023 and reached a pinnacle of number 4 on the chart. She was nominated for a slew of Brit Awards in the wake of that success, however, it was crickets over here in the U.S.

But the funny thing is anybody who actually heard Dean’s work would know it had mass appeal. The only issue was reaching the public.

As for Sienna Spiro, she had chart action in the U.K., but it wasn’t until the inclusion of “Material Lover” in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” that she gained mindshare over here.

So what have we learned?

A bunch of things:

1. American outposts of international conglomerates are doing a piss-poor job of promoting the work of overseas artists. There are many reasons, but I’d bet the classic one plays a factor…people want to promote their own signings to bask in the glory if they hit, something they won’t get, at least not in spades, if they boost a foreign number.

One can also argue there’s a lack of vision, that both these acts don’t sound exactly like what is in the U.S. Spotify Top 50, so to break them is seen as a heavy lift, which the American labels don’t want to attempt, they’d rather go for the low-hanging fruit.

2. Movies don’t have the mental reach they once did. The hype for “The Devil Wears Prada 2” was inescapable. But did anybody CARE? I saw the first film, it seemed self-contained, no sequel was implied or necessary. But in Hollywood, an old success is always lying in wait to be dredged up and repeated. But whatever I think of the new film, it did gross $216.2 million in the U.S. and Canada, which is approximately 20 million attendees. Now that’s not chump change, but today the public does not buy soundtracks, they pick and play that which gains notoriety.

Let me restate this… “The Devil Wears Prada 2” definitely lifted the included Sienna Spiro track “Material Lover,” but the days of “The Bodyguard” are over, it didn’t make the song an instant, ubiquitous cultural success.

But why did it take a soundtrack inclusion to shine a light on Spiro? Why couldn’t her music stand on its own previously?

But as much of a push, as much of a breakthrough “Material Lover” is. it still hasn’t penetrated the Spotify U.S. Top 50. And with 36,391,982 streams it only has a fraction of the listens of “Die on This Hill,” which has 480,556,851 and “The Visitor,” “You Stole the Show” and “Maybe,” all of which are over 100 million.

3. Do charts reflect success? Now the funny thing is “Die on This Hill” made it all the way to #9 in the U.K. last year, but it also made it to #19 in the U.S! So, the label did make somewhat of an effort, but does #19 mean anything anymore? Are the singles charts out of whack with reality? The Luminate charts use a manipulated number. They’re comprised of streams, digital downloads, physical sales and airplay. They’re a metric for the industry, but in reality? The raw Spotify listening numbers are the ones that tell the truth, that everybody relies on. There’s no weighting, nobody out purchasing physical product to goose the chart number, they’re a reflection of raw demand.

Then again, does #19 mean that anybody really heard it?

One thing is for sure, whatever the chart number, Sienna Spiro was essentially unknown by most Americans until very recently.

But the funny little thing is you only have to LISTEN to Sienna Spiro, just like Olivia Dean, to get it. This music is the opposite of most of the drivel purveyed today. These two acts are steeped in traditional R&B, not a far cry from the music of the sixties and seventies, the perennials that are still played today. This isn’t novelty music based on one chord. There is no 808 on “Material Lover,” a sound which has even infiltrated the country world.

The bottom line is Spiro could be a gigantic act if most Americans heard her, were exposed to her (the movie helped, but that’s far from everybody in the country).

So, our avenues of exploitation are broken. How can an act as good as this not be an instant smash, she would have been in the pre-internet era.

The youth-focused music business has excluded much of the country, playing to an ever-dwindling slice of the market. Believing only youngsters are interested in new music. But the dirty little secret is the industry has burned out the public by hyping niche stuff that many find unappealing. And there’s so much in the pipeline that it’s overwhelming for most people, they just listen to their old favorites, they’ve given up on new music. But if they heard “Material Lover”…

That’s the challenge, how does the industry get people to listen to Sienna Spiro?

If this were the seventies, Spiro would be embraced by rock fans who did not need singles success to validate their listening choices. She’d be seen as a credible artist. You know, one who has something to say beyond the single, who is just not cookie-cutter, following trends.

“Material Lover” sounds good, it’s upbeat and soothing, and you can dance to it. What more can you want?

How do we connect the dots between the song/act and the audience? That’s the challenge. But the truth is “Material Lover” has more mass appeal than the movie it was part of. This is music’s power, the ability to reach all and affect the national consciousness.

How could Sieanna Spiro be hiding in plain sight and go unrecognized until now and still by so few?

That is the question.

“Material Lover”:

The Roastmaster General released the best comedy special of the year, “Take a Banana for the Ride.” In this wide ranging conversation we cover the creation of the special as well as the story of Jeff’s comedy career, starting in standup, breaking into roasts and ultimately roping in Tom Brady!

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jeff-ross/id1316200737?i=1000772170544

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/d931f8ea-aff8-4d9c-9d1e-c10c6cd7ffc0/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-jeff-ross