NOTE: FACTION TALK IS NOW ON CHANNEL 137

So, tune in Saturday September 12th to Faction Talk, channel 137, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

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

You can sing along to it, it’s got melody and a catchy chorus, what a concept!

Meanwhile, most of the rest of today’s “hits” are filled with 808s and other synthesized instruments and chord changes can be rare, sometimes there is only one chord!

But “Choosin’ Texas” has far outstripped them in popularity. It is the only track that has risen above, that is a true national (international!) hit, that seemingly everybody is aware of.

That is not the case with the rest of the Spotify Top 50. The songs may have chart numbers, but most people have never heard of them, never mind actually heard them, contrary to the hype in the media and inside business publications.

It’s not solely an old fart thing. Most people are unaware of most “hits” today, there’s just too much in the channel.

But “Choosin’ Texas” has risen above.

Now there’s been a ton of focus on the lyrics…probably because they’re the easiest thing to write about, but really, “Choosin’ Texas” is successful because of the underlying music.

Yes, it’s a good story, and “Texas” is a hook, but this is not revolutionary, not twenty one weeks at number one on the Hot 100, second only to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” in longevity.

This track has not been ghettoized, it’s not solely a country phenomenon, it’s a worldwide phenomenon!

How can this be?

Now when Tom Petty played the Fonda for a week, he labeled today’s country music “the rock music of the seventies.” And that’s true in most cases. This ain’t the twang of the country western songs of yore, oftentimes sans a fiddle or a steel guitar or banjo and a vocal affect, these modern country songs are closer to classic hits than the rest of the stuff purveyed today.

When did the music business become too hip for the room?

Well, the last big revolution was hip-hop, which started in the eighties but really flourished in the nineties and early 2000s.

Rap was a reaction to stale rock. It was the sound of the street. It contained the truth rock music had long lost.

And rap was more than music, hip-hop was a culture, well delineated in the media. But this all started decades ago. Today?

Sure, we’ve got Kendrick, but mainstream rap ain’t much different from the rock of the late eighties, formulaic, made for a market. It’s not real, it’s a cartoon. The lyrics are fantasies littered with braggadocio. There’s no vulnerability evidenced, unlike in “Choosin’ Texas,” wherein the Tennessee woman loses the man to a denizen of Texas.

That people can relate to. Being on the losing end. And how refreshing in our everybody’s a winner culture, where it’s all about putting up a good front.

But it’s not only hip-hop, did you listen to the new Miley record, “Bass Persuades”? It’s the antithesis of “Choosin’ Texas,” filled with modern, electric sounds, a whispered vocal at first. “Bass Persuades” is anything but a one listen smash, but we’ve been subjected to Miley hype for months now, how she switched labels…

Who exactly is “Bass Persuades” made for? Well, maybe it works in dance clubs. Or maybe snippets can be utilized on TikTok, but most people are never going to cotton to this track, but “Choosin’ Texas”…

“Choosin’ Texas” was not foisted upon the public, the public embraced it!

And it’s formulaic in the old way, with the aforementioned melody and catchy chorus, what a relief.

People want to be involved in songs, they want to own them, and the best way to achieve that is by making a record that not only can they comprehend, but that they can sing along to…

Now country has traditionally been seen as a backwater, made for only part of the population. And at this late date, it’s seen as part of the red South, and it’s a genre that is still controlled by country radio, even though there’s so much great music that doesn’t fit the format, the foremost exponent being Jason Isbell… But the most respected, most award-winning act in country today is Chris Stapleton, and change the vocal just a touch and you find someone who is closer to Gov’t Mule than what dominates the country hit parade.

And Stapleton plays stadiums.

Begging the question… Despite all the pooh-poohing from the intelligentsia, is country the dominant format today, is it country that contains the heartbeat of America?

It’s a stealth attack, “Choosin’ Texas” has been embraced by the left as well as the right, the media is championing it and…

Can you relate to “Bass Persuades”?

I certainly can’t.

And relatability is key.

So the question is why we don’t have more records like this. Why do the labels keep foisting this narrowcasted junk upon us. Niche product with a sliver of very active fans which most people will never listen to.

Adele sold more CDs than anybody, but no one in America signed another Adele. But Olivia Dean inhabits the soulful soft lane that is not that far off from Adele’s, yet she had to come from England. People heard Olivia Dean and immediately embraced her and her music. Sure, “Man I Need” was all over TikTok, but snippets of one song do not lead to a sold out arena tour…no, the general public embraced Dean, if for no other reason than her music is LISTENABLE! Things go better with it. You can put on the Olivia Dean album and relax, it sets a mood. Most of the other stuff, especially the metal, if you’re not a hipster or you’re not angry it’s not for you.

So why can’t there be more Ella Langleys and “Choosin Texas”-like songs? This is not Kraftwerk, this is not sui generis, it’s positively mainstream.

But the true mainstream pop hit has become a lost art.

This is beyond cult, this is beyond Taylor Swift, who went pop to broaden her audience but then country ascended and pop descended. “Choosin’ Texas” is for everyone.

And that’s the point.

1

Five plus hours later…

My mother died because she didn’t go to the doctor. She had some ugly scab/rash on her leg and completely ignored it. This all happened in Connecticut, but when she flew out to California my sister insisted she see the doctor and she ended up in the hospital for a couple of days and then they sent her to a rehab center where she died of septic shock.

But she was strong, she believed she could beat anything. She literally thought she could will my father to beat cancer. She dragged him to L.A., he even had to go to the hospital here, and when he got home he died in a week.

So we never went to the doctor growing up, other than for checkups, unless we were bleeding profusely. Even if we were diagnosed with something, my mother told us to get out of bed and go to school, to stop being a lazy bum, literally.

So I don’t know how to go to the doctor. What’s worth the effort. And this has gotten me into trouble, serious trouble, but I’ve gotten better over the past couple of decades and…

I’m brushing my teeth ten days ago and I feel a tickle, with a bit of pain. Kind of like blowing air on an open wound.

Well, this was new. But this tooth… I could buy a car for what I’ve invested in it. And just two months ago I had a bit of pain and the dentist adjusted it and…he told me it would take three weeks for the muscles to calm down, and then I’d know…and he’d know, because if it didn’t work, I’d come back.

BUT IT DID WORK!

Ah, so satisfying.

But now I have a completely different symptom, this tickle pain.

So what the hell is going on here? I whip out the stimulator, the Waterpik, and I feel the pain, but I figure maybe there’s something lodged inside the gum, who knows, and with a bit of work I can fix the situation.

Now it got a bit better, but then… Let’s just say it never went away.

I started to freak out before Labor Day…because what if it got bad over the holiday? And the dentist does not work on Friday. And when in the hell am I going to schedule this anyway, I’m booked so solid, needing to go to three eye appointments a week for three weeks for my macular degeneration.

Now my heart doctor is all about the teeth, saying a problem there can lead to a heart attack.

And there was that story back in May, about that Haitian man rounded up by ICE who died of a tooth infection in custody. So it does happen.

And one of the last things you do before going to sleep is brush your teeth. And I feel the pain and my anxiety goes sky high. One night I futzed with it, with the Waterpik, and I got so wound up I couldn’t fall asleep for hours.

So…

I think I’ve got it under control, it’s not that bad, I can cope. And then Tuesday night I’m brushing and I hit the spot and I jump! This thing ain’t going away. But it’s only when I brush there…

So I’m lying on the couch, trying to read a book, but I can’t, because I’m wrestling with my tooth…what is it, should I address it?

And then I think of OCD therapy… What would the reasonable person do, would they get it checked out? I wasn’t sure what the reasonable person would do and I’m thinking about it and the OCD therapist says if it’s unclear, take action right away. And right then and there I decide I will do so.

But I can’t go to the dentist on Wednesday, I’ve got an eye appointment and then a podcast in Malibu…

And Thursday I’ve got a shrink appointment and then an SXM pre-tape, but I tell myself, if I have to cancel my shrink appointment I will, it will be within twenty four hours so I won’t have to pay for it. As for the pre-tape…the engineer is going out of town for weddings two weekends in a row, and when will we find time to do this pre-tape if not Thursday, I’m booked solid next week.

So I can barely sleep thinking about if I can get an appointment, and when it will be. And if I push it to next week, then they’ll think the problem is not that bad, they won’t take me seriously.

So I get up in the morning and call and…

They can see me at two p.m. on Thursday. Well, that’s going to be really tight. Can they do it a bit later? No, take it or leave it. I told them I’d take it, I’d be there.

And I got the engineer to start fifteen minutes earlier today and…

I was anxious. Because how bad was the pain this morning when I brushed? Not that bad.

And I’m so uptight about going back for a problem. I returned so many vinyl records that they told me not to shop at one store anymore. Believe me, they were defective. People’s love for vinyl? God, no surface noise, no skips, no warps…digital is fantastic!

And I’m getting more and more uptight about taking up the dentist’s time. But I’m thinking of the OCD therapist’s advice. For social anxiety he says to go to a restaurant, order a glass of water and then leave without ordering anything else. It’s all about exposures.

So it’s not like I’ve been back to the dentist a zillion times, if there’s no problem now…

2

So the dentist comes back from lunch and he’s walking past my room and he says ROBERT! The last time he called me “the philosopher,” and when I ran into him in the loo that day on my way out, he insisted we go to lunch. I was going out of town for three weeks, but how was this going to work? How would I schedule it? And what if we went for a meal and we ran out of things to say? But, if I never reached out for lunch he might hold it against me.

Now dentistry is different from how it used to be. In that you rarely see the dentist. Unless you complain about pain to the hygienist, you don’t see the doctor until you get x-rays, which could be every other year. The dentist is the Grand Poobah.

And I’m so anxious about taking up this guy’s time, but he comes in, sits down, and we B.S. for twenty minutes! This is the most expensive dentist in the world, or so Irving says. I figure he’d be hit and run. But no! We’re talking about Israel and immigration and Trump and the homeless…

Okay, I’ll run with this.

And then, all of a sudden, he jumps up, says he’s got to go to work! And he leaves the room, but comes back less than a minute later, the other patient doesn’t need him, so he stands there and almost as an aside asks me…”So, what are you here for?”

And I’m telling him and I realize I’ve been so distracted that I’m not conveying this story well and he gets in my mouth, pokes around and says he finds nothing.

But then I tell him exactly where I feel the pain and he pokes there and I do feel it but he says he doesn’t see anything. He tells me to stop brushing there! That he can’t see a problem.

Now this is my worst nightmare, that I wasn’t justified in coming in, I was wasting his time. But we did have a good talk, but I was saying…

I was worried about an infection, that’s what happened with two other teeth. And I’m so old, and I’m so reluctant to go to the doctor, not feeling entitled, I’m gonna get this infection and DIE!

He says he doesn’t see anything.

But then he goes back in and sees a tiny crack. And as we’re just about to wrap it up, he says he’s going to call in Justin, the periodontist, for a reading.

And I love Justin, but now I’m wasting his time too?

And Justin comes in and it’s like old home week and he looks in my mouth and only sees this tiny crack and then says…we should take a CT scan, to see how low this crack goes, to see if there’s any bone loss. He doesn’t expect any, but to be sure…

And now the cash register is ringing in my head. Used to be you had to go to a special office for a dental CT scan. But now they’ve got these small machines that fit in an office, and they have one here and one at the root canal guy’s office and I don’t know if they’re de rigueur, if they’re everywhere now, but I do know they charge a fortune for the test, they’ve got to pay for the machine and…

In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m gonna do this, I don’t believe in saving money on my health.

3

So this Russian woman is the technician. Conversation is not easy. But eventually the test is completed, I get shown to a room, Justin comes in and wakes up the screen and there’s a percentage bar, he says the images are being rendered, they’ll come right up.

And they do.

Well…the crack does go pretty far down. And there is a bit of bone loss. And I’m going to need an implant eventually, but I can wait.

And as we’re discussing how long I can wait, what symptoms might occur to bring me back, the Russian woman weighs in.

She’s manipulated the image, turned it around, and not only is there more bone loss…

There’s an infection.

Turns out she’s a periodontist too!

And now I have to schedule implant surgery. When in the hell am I going to do this? I am booked solid, September is nuts!

And then Justin says he can do it right now!

But before that he brings in the dentist, who is wowed, taken aback, says he missed it, but there it is. But at least he was smart enough to call in Justin for a deeper look.

And then they come in with forms on an iPad, they need my credit card to go downstairs and get drugs from the pharmacy, and the bill…

I could tell you the amount, but you’ll go insane. You can probably get it done for fifty five or sixty cents on the dollar, but this guy went to Harvard and the dentist is a magician, he’s saved teeth other dentists said were goners, even the root canal guy thought the dentist couldn’t save one tooth.

So they’re numbing me up and Justin says he may not be able to place the implant. He’s going to remove the old tooth, get rid of the infection, but there might not be enough bone left, and if this is the case I’ll have to wait another three months after this heals to get the implant post, and then wait another three months after that for a new tooth.

So Justin is surprised how deep the crack went. And he’s scraping out the infection. He puts this stuff on it that makes it turn white, so he can see all of it, and then I’ve got to bite down on a piece of cotton for five minutes, which turns into fifteen, and Justin comes back and…

He touches my tooth, or what’s there now anyway, and I go wild! There’s a sharp pain. He can’t believe it. Then he assumes the novocaine was metabolized by my body and he’s got to shoot me up with more.

Which he does, but the pain remains.

Then he gives me more and a nerve block.

The pain remains.

Then he shoots me up with more novocaine.

The pain remains. But at this point, I say it’s not terrible, maybe I should endure it. But Justin says no, he’s got to drill four more times, and he’s going to shoot me up exactly where the pain is.

How many shots have I gotten?

Definitely more than ten.

And this happened the last time I had an infection, the endodontist had gone on and on when I had my root canal, how he’d never ever shot someone up with this much stuff.

So I’m super anxious, I keep asking Justin, are you sure you got all of the infection?

He keeps reassuring me, says it’s the bone that’s sensitive, and he implants the post and then after a break he packs in cadaver bone, and stem cells, and then he sews it all up and we’re done.

4

Except for one final x-ray, which is going to be taken by the Russian.

Earlier she seemed reluctant to talk, but now it’s almost seven p.m., I thought she’d want to book, but we get deep into conversation.

You go straight into dental school from high school. And she had TWELVE YEARS of training! But still, she needs two years of dental school here to get her U.S. license.

Now she was born in Moscow, but grew up in Ukraine, but went to dental school in Moscow, because she had a Russian passport and it was much cheaper, four grand a year for tuition, and she’s in the U.S. on political asylum, it’s all legal, and…

So what exactly is it like living in Moscow?

Well, it’s super-clean. And restaurants are better, unless they’re the tippity-top. And there’s plenty of nightlife and the subway has no dirt and goes everywhere… It started to sound like a paradise!

So I asked her about the downsides…

Well, you can’t be LGBT, no way.

And there are certain books you cannot read, and if the police find one in your home… Well, why would they be searching your home? This turned out to be not so infrequent, whereas in the U.S. there must be a specific reason. Then again, a neighbor could have turned you in.

And I’m going deeper into her life, her parents, romance, but ultimately she takes the x-ray and it’s PERFECT!

Or so they say.

5

Now you might expect me to be in pain and complaining, going through all this, spending all that money, but I’m THRILLED! Because I went to the doctor! Yes, I didn’t go right away, but within ten days I made an appointment and stuck to my story and it turned out there was an infection.

I’m not gonna say I would have died from it, but who knows?

Have I broken the curse, am I no longer my mother’s son, can I go to the doctor without an obviously broken bone or blood all over the floor?

I HOPE SO!

Maggie Rose has a new album, “Half Moon.” Hers is a story of survival, the big breaks never happening, yet slogging away and building an audience. Listen to her, she could be the new Brandi Carlile.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/maggie-rose/id1316200737?i=1000788833265

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/52a9a53e-ecbd-4363-902b-d01482e40a1e/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-maggie-rose