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There’s only one problem with this movie…IT’S MISSING THE THIRD ACT!

Forget the reunification like in “Behind the Music,” all those years after the band stopped having hits, what happened then? I was surprised that wasn’t covered in the movie.

And I was also surprised how great this documentary is.

A lot of times your mind is drifting while watching these retrospective documentaries, you know so much, it’s hagiography, but this film…

Funny how’s it entitled “Boy George & Culture Club,” because that was an issue, delineated well in the film, how Boy George ended up dominating and overwhelming the other three.

And it does cover George’s descent into heroin addiction, but what happened over the decades after that? That’s always fascinating to me, when you can walk the streets without bodyguards, when you’re not exactly a has-been, but the mania has moved on to others.

And there was mania for Culture Club.

When people talk about the explosion of MTV, the wiping away of the old and the replacement with the new, they always focus on Duran Duran, with their expensive, exotic videos. And that was all great, but Culture Club was there first. It was Culture Club that not only broke from what was, but also broke MTV.

It’s hard to believe, but MTV was once exotic. Not everybody had it. It was rolled out market by market. Such that when you went to someone’s house and they had access, you stared at the TV for hours.

And Culture Club is when the script flipped. Culture Club was broken by MTV, not radio, a paradigm that continued for decades, to the point new MTV-centric Top 40 stations appeared on the FM dial and the old AOR rockers either collapsed, like KMET, or moved into oldies or…

It was a whole new world.

Demi was the one who turned me on to Culture Club. I was at their house in the afternoon, probably ready to go to Los Tacos with Freddy, as we were doing every day at that time, and Culture Club appeared on the screen and she got excited, started waxing rhapsodic about Boy George’s clothing.

Meanwhile, the song… “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me”…was confounding. We’d come from the era of bombastic rock, this was more akin to what came earlier, nearly twenty years before, but with a reggae beat. I mean how could this guy have such a sweet voice? Even back then we thought it was a trick, long before Pro Tools and AutoTune, never mind Suno, could make anybody a singer in any style.

Now once Culture Club broke, the gates opened and a slew of English acts blew in. We had lasting ones, like the Eurythmics, and those that seemed to go as fast as they came, everybody from Haircut 100 to T’Pau to Spandau Ballet… Something was happening across the pond, and it wasn’t the old farts, but young ‘uns, who seemed to be living the life of Carnaby Street with a twist. Fashion was a key element. And it was bright in a way that rock had been dark. And there was no equivalent in the U.S. This music was both accessible and exotic.

Fashion was a key element. You purchased “The Face” on import to see what was going on. When you went to see these acts live, the audience looked like those on stage, and…

It all started with Boy George.

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What is utterly fascinating in this film is the charisma of Boy George. Stay around long enough and acts are baked into their success, their role as stars, many are still hanging on decades later. But Boy George? He’s sui generis. Never been someone like him before and never since.

He’s very endearing without being cloying. He doesn’t want to be your best friend but you know if you ran into him he’d be open and nice.

And he’s self-deprecating. What a breath of fresh air! Everybody else is myth-making and this guy is owning his drama and his faux pas and laughing about it. Usually the leader of the band fights back, settles old scores, tries to prove they’re worthy, never mind respectable.

But not Boy George.

The thing about George is he was going nowhere. And worked in a clothing store. Today, for years since, clothing and image have been key. Look at Billie Eilish! A manufactured look, and when she changed it, her audience went berserk. But this is who Boy George was. There was nothing made up or fake about it.

And it was clear he had a good voice, and as a result he was pulled into Bow Wow Wow and then pushed out, for hogging the mic, for being himself. So different from the U.S., where everybody plays it safe to stay on the ride. Get booted and usually it’s the end.

But George didn’t seem to care, never mind not being bitter about his exit, he admits he deserved it!

And from there he runs into Mikey Craig in a club, and the bass player asks him if he wants to form a group. And rather than foaming at the mouth or being standoffish, George says sure, he was going with the flow, there was no five or ten year plan, like there’s been with musical acts for years now.

So they get a guitar player who they replace with Roy Hay, but…

Jon Moss comes in as the drummer.

It’s been well-documented that George had a thing for Jon, but stunningly, Jon owns it in this movie. How when he encounters George he’s entranced, even though he never swung that way before.

And most of the lyrics are written by George to or about Jon. Did Jon still care about him after they’d gained fame, with all its attendant opportunities? And George owns how he was insecure, that he didn’t know how to have a relationship, he had no models in his life.

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Now I won’t say they were handing out record deals to everybody, but back in England in the early eighties it wasn’t that heavy a lift. Now KEEPING your record deal, that was hard. Culture Club signs with Virgin and are going to be dropped, but “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” becomes a hit, even though George doesn’t want it to be released (but laughs about how he was wrong), and the juggernaut begins.

And oh, what a juggernaut it was.

It wasn’t quite Beatlemania, but an eighties version thereof. Unlike so many image-heavy groups, the songs stood up, they transcended the clothing. Which made the act even more enticing.

So you’re watching this movie and…

You’re brought right back to the era. It’s palpable. How we were alive and optimistic. Sure, many were disillusioned that Reagan had become president, but you were not consumed with politics 24/7, you could take your eye off the ball and live your life. And you still believed you could get to the destination.

In an era where you bought the albums and played them, knew them by heart.

And the bands didn’t start in arenas, I remember seeing the Eurythmics at the Hollywood Palace, even though their hit was monstrous. You were there on the way up.

And you were either in the club or not.

It was kind of akin to the sixties when either you grew your hair long or you didn’t. Either you sat by the sidelines or you jumped in.

And once Culture Club and the English acts broke through, both youngsters and oldsters threw off their shackles and embraced this new sound and its hedonistic mores.

Not that it was only hedonism. Although uneducated, Boy George is smart. He can opine on not only his career, but the world around him. Which is a far cry from today’s barely pubescent acts looking to become brands.

As for what they were selling…

Think about it, an obviously gay front man, dressed out of your grandmother’s closet on steroids, was singing these sweet tunes…

And they were not identical.

My favorite Culture Club song is “Church of the Poison Mind,” which actually opens up this film, my jaw dropped. It’s not like the song is obscure, but as time goes by usually only the monster smashes are remembered, focused upon.

And they do cover “Karma Chameleon”… George knows this is a hit, but the rest of the band thinks it’s too soft.

And there’s mention of Mikey’s bass lines and if you can’t say Culture Club was pushing the envelope musically, you can say that they brought together so many different strands of music and melded them together into something new and appealing.

The tropes of yore… The long hair, the guitar solos…they were nowhere in evidence. Now they did reappear cloaked in spandex at the end of the eighties, as every hard rock act sang a ballad they hoped would be a hit, but that was after the power of MTV was established. George and the crew weren’t thinking about world domination, they knew what breaking in America meant, and how difficult it was to do, but really, they got strapped to a jet and flew around the world and worked 24/7 until they  burned out.

That’s what outsiders aren’t aware of, the work involved. They see the recording and the releases and the tour in their country, but all the interviews, the radio appearances, getting up at the crack of dawn needing to be upbeat and friendly even though you were on stage and partying until the wee hours the night before…

It’s a job. That causes you to do drugs just to cope. It burns you out.

And then George starts hanging with Marilyn…

God, I haven’t thought of Marilyn in years! Another failed music business hype. The most cutting edge thing about him was his name, but we only read about Marilyn in the press, we see him here, and he looks like some guy who sat in the back of your high school class.

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So this is the rocket ship. This is a peek into the early to mid-eighties.

I kept looking at the bar at the bottom of the screen, seeing how much time was left, when were they going to go deep into the denouement…

But they didn’t.

It peaks and then…

Ultimately they get back together and go on the road and… That’s not satisfying enough for me, that’s forty years gone by, quite a life!

And the truth is this is a promotional flick. Primary Wave acquired a stake in Culture Club’s assets and created this film to amplify earnings.

This paradigm started with the Amy Winehouse movie, which is the Holy Gail of these docs, especially about latter-day groups, but the thing about this Culture Club movie is…

IT WAS NEVER BORING! My mind didn’t drift, I was positively entranced. Because I’d been there. And it felt like a badge of honor, having lived through something. Also, it was inspiring, as to future possibilities.

But it was quite an era. And this film encapsulates it.

If you were there, you’ll love it.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”: