I guested on J.G. Michael’s Parallax Views joining such estimable previous guests as philosopher Slavoj Zizek, Harvard international relations scholar Stephen Walt, controversial filmmaker Uwe Boll, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nyugen, Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former FBI agent inside the CIA's Bin Laden Unit Mark Rossini, longtime union organizer and author Daisy Pitkin, UFC Hall of Famer Pat Miletich, and bestselling authors like Nomi Prins, Greg Palast, Noam Chomsky, Neil Howe, James Bamford, Jacob Silverman, Thom Hartmann, Stephen Singular, Nina Burleigh, John Perkins, Christopher Leonard, and Thomas Frank.
Wow, pretty prestigious company for a semi-infamous UFC blogger.
From the show description:
On this edition of Parallax Views, J.G. Michael is joined by writer and commentator Nat Wilson Turner to discuss his article “Stressed Oligarchs at Meta, OpenAI, and the Ellison Empire” and the growing pressures facing some of America’s most powerful tech and media billionaires. We dig into Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for artificial intelligence, Meta’s increasingly aggressive AI ambitions, and the company’s enormous legal exposure over allegations that its platforms deliberately hooked young users and contributed to harm to children. We examine the explosive internal evidence cited in the lawsuits, including research into the long-term retention of young users and the infamous “hook ’em young” comment.
We then turn to Sam Altman and OpenAI, including the company’s staggering computing commitments, executive departures, mounting financial pressures, uncertain IPO prospects, and the broader question of whether the AI boom is actually a sustainable business model or an increasingly precarious bubble. From there, we explore the potentially enormous consequences for Oracle and Larry Ellison if OpenAI falters; and how that connects to the Ellison family’s rapidly expanding media ambitions.
Finally, we discuss David Ellison’s controversial attempt to merge Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, the antitrust battle with California and other state attorneys general, his threat to move Paramount out of Hollywood, and what the merger could mean for the future of the entertainment industry. Along the way, we get into Big Tech, corporate monopolies, AI hype, oligarchic power, Hollywood’s political economy, media consolidation, and the increasingly strange intersection of Silicon Valley, Washington, and the culture wars.
Also Yves Smith was kind enough to let me feature a bunch of Let It Roll podcast episodes on today’s Naked Capitalism Coffee Break. Here they are:
Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, Gene Autry and Woody Guthrie Led Country Music Through the Hard Times
As part of our Country Roll series which reacted to Ken Burns Country Music series on PBS, Chicago blues musician and DJ James Porter and I discussed the hard-scrabble 1930s and the country musicians who provided Americans a soundtrack to survive via live radio, touring and records.
Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, Josh White & Jean Ritchie and the first Folk Revival
I spoke to author Dave Thompson about his book “An Evolving Tradition: The Child Ballads in Modern Folk and Rock Music” for our Let It Folk series and this episode focused on the 1930s-40s folk revival and the people who led it.
The Weavers Brought Folk to the Masses and Made the Blacklist
In the early 1950s, four stalwarts of the left-wing New York “folk music” scene found themselves atop the pop charts and very quickly atop the McCarthy-era blacklists.
Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman hoped to bring the folk songs of their friends Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie to a mass audience when they signed to Decca Records and went into the studio with smooth producer Gordon Jenkins.
Their popular appeal was undeniable and so was the hate they inspired from the American right — then at its post-war paranoid zenith. Caught up in anti-communist witch hunts, the group went underground for nearly a decade before their triumphant late 50’s Carnegie Hall show.
I spoke to their biographer Jesse Jarnow about the Weavers in 2019. Listen here.
Next let’s hear what happened after the Dust Bowl chased the Okies to California and the hillbillies came down from the hills and conquered Nashville.
The Bakersfield Sound Brought Working Anthems to the Radio
The children of the Okies who’d survived The Grapes of Wrath came roaring back into the national consciousness via the electrified Bakersfield Sound and its leaders Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.
They went toe-to-toe with the Nashville establishment — itself being integrated by Charley Pride and bringing the proto-feminist anthems of Loretta Lynn — and influenced everyone from the Beatles to the Byrds and Gram Parsons.
Merle Haggard took a hard-right turn in the late ’60s via “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fighting Side of Me” that pre-figured the GOP co-optation of the white working class that culminated in the MAGA movement and the election of Trump.
Trump’s re-election, of course came when many of the Black & Hispanic working class followed their lead into MAGA-land. Now it’s biting us all in the ass. But back to the music.
James Porter and I continued our CountryRoll mini-series’ look at Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary with a look at the turbulent 1960s in country music.
Chula Fronteras Documented Tejano Legends Like Lydia Mendoza, Narciso Martínez and Flaco Jiménez
Working class America doesn’t get more auténtico/auténtica/auténticx than Tejano, the music of the Texicans. Les Blank told their story in his classic 1976 film Chula Fronteras.
Then South by Southwest CTO Justin Bankston and I discussed the film and the music that inspired it as part of our We Love Rock Docs mini-series in 2022. Listen here.
Next, London’s working class made themselves heard across the Atlantic in the 1960s.
The Kinks’ Class-Consciousness Made Them Wary of the Promises of Swinging London
Swinging London was driven by working class talent, but most of those who broke through to stardom like the Beatles and actor Michael Caine rarely bit the hand that fed too hard, the Kinks couldn’t help themselves.
The Davies brothers and co. initially took the rock world by storm with distorted guitar anthems like “You Really Got Me” but after conflicts with the American Federation of Musicians (Ray allegedly refused to sign his member’s agreement throughout their 1965 tour and finally decked a loud-mouthed, crew-cutted union rep backstage at the Hollywood Bowl at tour’s end) found themselves exiled home to England.
Their music took a biting turn, mocking both the British establishment first and then the music scene itself via socially conscious songs like “A Well Respected Man”, “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” before Ray settled down into celebrating the British working class which had spawned him — always with a wink and a bit of tongue in cheek, and his fangs were never all that well hidden.
In 2021 I spoke to Mark Doyle – author of “The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached” about Ray Davies, his brother Dave, and the band they formed in Muswell Hill. Listen here.
The MC5’s Combination of Hard Rock and Radical Politics Was Too Volatile to Last
They may have invented hard rock, heavy metal, and punk rock all at the same time. They definitely ruled over the incredibly competitive Detroit scene that spawned Iggy and the Stooges, Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad, and Ted Nugent.
But coming under the sway of local radical leader John Sinclar led these angry young men — all sons of Detroit autoworkers — too far to the left for the American record business and law enforcement to leave alone.
They were the only band that actually showed up and played at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago — breaking down their gear and bailing only minutes before Mayor Daley’s police force stormed the park.
Their commitment to “rock’n’roll, dope, and (family blogging) in the streets” got them dropped by Elektra Records and attacked both from the left and right when they toured hipster capitals on both coasts, but their impact lingers on.
In 2022, Justin Bankston and I discussed their epic and tragic tale based on the unreleased documentary MC5: A True Testimonial.
Hip-Hop Is Born In The Bronx
When America isolated and abandoned the ghettos that redlining policies forced minority groups into, landlords burned tenements in a frenzy of mass arson, the Deep State flooded the zone with cocaine & heroin and the young Black and Latinos trapped there created a world-transforming genre of music with the only tools at their disposal — turntables and records.
I did a whole series with my pals Alexei Auld and Eugene S. Robinson to discussing Netflix’ Hip-Hop Evolution.
This episode covers “The Foundation.” The conversation covers DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. Listen here.
Next, a working-class anthem and the story of the man who took it to number one on the pop charts and more than paid the price.
Johnny Paycheck Told America “Take This Job and Shove It” and Our Response Was to Make Him Rich
Johnny Paycheck was a veteran Nashville musician with a classic hardcore country body of work behind him when he cut David Allen Coe’s working class anthem “Take This Job and Shove It.”
The success of that song made Paycheck a millionaire and according to legend he spent all of that money on cocaine.
Mike Judge of Beavis and Butthead, Office Space and Silicon Valley fame did an animated music history series for Cinemax in the late 2010s called “Tales From the Tour Bus” and Johnny Paycheck featured on the first episode.
Produced and directed by Jeff Feuerzeig, best known for his classic doc The Devil and Daniel Johnston, the episode is hilarious, informative, and strangely poignant.
It’s no longer available for streaming (even if you “purchased” a copy) but there’s a Reddit thread with lots of links if you’re curious to see it.
Justin Bankston and I discussed Johnny Paycheck and Judge/Feuerzeig treatment of his story on Let It Roll. Listen here.
Next, what happened when Punk failed to make the charts in the late 1970s and its hardest-core fans refused to let that matter.
Hardcore punk was a nightmare for 80s corporate America
Between 1980 and 1986, hardcore punk bands built their own labels, their own venues, their own fanzines, and their own touring circuit, entirely outside a music business that wanted nothing to do with it.
I spoke to Steven Blush – author of “American Hardcore: A Tribal History” and maker of the 2006 documentary of the same name – in 2021 and talked about the scene I came along just too late to participate in.
Let’s wrap with the working class musical revolution that happened when Black (and often gay) Chicago teens got hold of samplers and drum machines.
Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy and the Birth of House Music in Chicago
Frankie Knuckles left a good-paying DJ gig at a gay bathhouse in Detroit for a steady gig in Chicago at a club called the Warehouse, bringing the Disco of New York City with him.
Soon he and his local rival Ron Hardy had created a whole new genre called House Music that would inspire a global dance revolution initially led by working class Black kids from Chicago and their more middle-class brethren in Detroit.
Veteran DJ Ryan Harkness and I discussed “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life – The History of the Disc Jockey” by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton in the first part of our epic TechnoRoll series on DJ-based music forms.