https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WydkvjVOtDk
It was a simpler time. We lived in tract houses. We knew nobody rich. We were all in it together. And our horizon was limited. To our own neighborhood and California, because all the TV shows and films were shot in California.
And there were seasons. The wait from September to June was interminable, but strangely shorter every year. You learned that spring would come.
But I loved the winter.
Why?
Because of the coziness, because of the disconnectedness. You could stay home and read or play board games, wrestle with your Lionel train, or you could go out into the great outdoors and explore, have fun.
Have you ever walked in a snowstorm? It's one of the greatest feelings extant. It's so QUIET! Just you and Mother Nature. And Mother Nature is both friend and foe. She can turn on you in an instant. Those have been the scariest moments of my life, when I realized this could be the end.
Obviously it wasn't.
But how close to the line do you want to get? The thrills are on the edge, but you don't want to fall over.
Now everything's completely different. As a result of global warming oftentimes there is no snow, or little of it, like in the west this year, one of the worst three snowpacks of all time. And people think nothing of getting on a plane for a vacation, even for the afternoon, whereas we used to be locked to our landscape and dream about faraway destinations, if only... And skiing was a middle class sport.
It was 1964. I was up at the schoolyard, partaking of the snow. I'm not sure which device I had from the garage, the Flexible Flyer or the dreaded flying saucer or the mini-toboggan, but Bobby Hickey had skis. With bear trap bindings, which means they didn't release. His dad had bought them for him from the hardware store, for under ten bucks.
He let me try them.
And I was THRILLED!
Skiing is all about the sensation, the thrill, the freedom. I don't know anything else that requires complete concentration other than orgasm. And you can ski for a lot longer.
And then my sixth grade teacher showed us a promotional movie about Mt. Snow and I convinced my parents to go. We all stayed in one room at the Novice Inn. We took lessons at Carinthia. We got hooked.
Three years later we rented a house in East Jamaica with our dentist. People would ask us where we got our tans, JAMAICA! But the truth is it's barely a waystation before Stratton and Bromley. Where I know every inch of the terrain. Because on a below zero day my dad bought a house in Manchester. For the grand sum of $14,000. In 1968. He loved that house, he could try out all of his experiments, most of which failed, but the house could handle it.
Anyway, my life became about skiing.
That's why I went to college in Vermont. Sans ski area, I wouldn't have gone to Middlebury. And for the two years after I graduated I lived in Utah, back before the tech boom, before Park City was a reasonable place. But we pooh-poohed that area, we only skied at Alta and Snowbird, before they were connected. It truly is the Greatest Snow On Earth.
And now.
And now...
If I tell someone I ski they pooh-pooh me. It's too dangerous, I'm too old, I've got to think about my safety. But then is life worth living?
Because I'm never happier than when I'm cruising down a mountain, singing Bad Company's "Simple Man" at the top of my lungs.
"Freedom is the only thing, means a damn to me"
You see I'm a square peg in a round hole society. But on the mountain I can be free, I can do what I like.
But what has this got to do with Warren Miller?
You see he was the progenitor. God's first ski bum.
And he was the cheerleader.
And ultimately he was the through thread.
You see when you ski, all you think about is how you can ski more. I know people who've sacrificed their entire lives to the sport. On minimum wage jobs. Chasing the feeling.
Warren got the bug and lived in a trailer in Sun Valley and slowly made a life. Befriended some wealthy people who gave him a camera and he was off to the races.
Well, the truth is back then that was a business, travel movies, he didn't invent that paradigm, he just peppered it with skiing. And dialogue. That was part of Warren's routine, the jokes, bad and off color, but of the times.
So you'd go to the theatre in October or November, before the snow started to fly, before the lifts started to turn, and Warren would take you to ski places around the world. And you'd sit there and wonder if you still had it, if you could still turn 'em. That's a funny thing about the sport, you doubt your ability, you don't think you can do it, unless you're on the hill.
And to be on the hill there's got to be snow and proximity and you can't do it every day, but every day counts.
Now as time went by I was in the film of a progenitor, John Jay.
And Dick Barrymore made one of the best ski films, "The Last of the Ski Bums."
But the only man who prevailed, who stuck with it, was Warren Miller.
I was filmed for him too, but I was left on the cutting room floor, after doing a spread eagle into Wipeout at Mammoth. Off the cornice. I didn't. People were impressed.
I still remember that feeling.
I still remember talking to Warren at the Santa Monica preview back in '98, they served pizza after the show.
I still have the one piece Helly-Hansen Lewi gifted me from the Warren Miller closet.
Mostly I still have my memories.
But like Warren I still hit it. I just can't get enough.
I've watched his movies far from snow country, once they were available on video, once they started to play them in marathons over Christmas.
I read his autobiography.
I wanted to understand him.
Because deep down inside I know he's just like me. Money is important, but not as much as the experience, as living a full life, as refusing to sacrifice your dream of the sensation, of sliding down the hill fully alive.
Warren isn't, alive anymore. He died on Wednesday. At age 93. I like to believe the skiing and outdoor lifestyle kept him young. Who knows. But one thing I do know is he affected people, he made our lives more rich, even if you've got no idea who he is, millions do, I'm stunned at the tributes in not only the ski world, but the straight press.
So let Warren be a beacon to you.
There's more than one way to live your dream, to cobble together a life based on your passion.
And the truth is we all want to live life to the fullest.
Warren Miller did.
May you have as much fun and as much impact as he did. Knowing that you've got to seize the moment now, because as Warren always said...
"If you don't do it this year, you will be one year older when you do."
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Friday 26 January 2018
How To Make A Hit Record
That was the name of the NAMM panel I was on this morning.
I thought it was referencing how to make a record a hit. But everybody else thought it was about creating a hit. And they all had.
I ran into Jack Douglas outside. He told me he'd been working with Joe Perry. Great to see people still excited about music. Hell, that's the thing about NAMM itself, it's an alternative universe. Ostensibly an insider merchandiser meeting, everybody can get a pass if they want one, and they get one, and they make the pilgrimage. Even at 9 AM you could see the throngs marching towards the Convention Center. You can tell by the look. Musicians and music fans just appear a bit different. They're scruffy. Longer hair. Not completely put together. It's what inside that counts.
So then Bob Clearmountain arrives and this foreign guy starts pitching gear. Everybody's into the gear, Jack testified this was good stuff. I don't know who's buying and who's being comped, but you get to check it out on their dime first. Can I say I'm into gear, I LOVE IT!
And then when we're ascending the stage, Tony Brown gets my ear.
What everybody forgets about Nashville is it's the south. These people have an accent. For someone brought up in New England and living in Los Angeles it's still a shock, even though I lived for years with a woman from Tallahassee, which is more like Georgia than Miami in case you didn't know, she had an accent. And the truth is we northerners judge the southerners, it's in our roots. And the culture is different and they do speak differently. They're not direct like New Yorkers, while riding in the car with you they don't say to roll up the window, but that they're a little bit cold, you have to interpret, they don't want to offend you, took me years to catch on.
So Tony's whispering to me that the last panel he was on they didn't let him speak. And I've been on panels like this, someone hogs the mic, and is oftentimes boring to boot, so I make a mental note to let him get his turn.
Meanwhile, he's got a look.
It's 10:15 in the morning and Tony's got the full-on rooster hairdo and the jewelry and the leather wrap around his wrist and I'm both cracking up and smiling. I don't know whether the bear ate him or he ate the bear. Whether he was a unique guy to begin with or whether the success and the fame made him this way.
So the first question is what record you're most proud of. Jack Douglas says "Walk This Way" and "Starting Over." Then he tells the inspiration for the former. They were hung up in the studio and the band took a break and went to see "Young Frankenstein" and when they heard those words in the movie, Marty Feldman imploring Gene Wilder to WALK THIS WAY, they were inspired and VOILA!
Tony talked about Reba. And then Vince Gill and George Strait and the funniest thing was for a guy who was worried about getting a word in edgewise, you couldn't shut him up! I heard later that he was all fired up for the panel the night before, he certainly behaved like it.
And Clearmountain's going on about the Stones and to tell you the truth I'm a bit intimidated, everybody's got one helluva CV, including Nashville songwriter Dale Dodson.
But it's Tony that's cracking me up.
He and Dale start laying out the Nashville system. They rail on about radio and gatekeepers and streaming and Tony says he loves Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me," but there's no room for women on country radio and Dale doubles down and that's when I drop the nuclear bomb, how that's the past and streaming is the future. That we must follow the hip-hop paradigm. It's all about reaction, whether you get one or not, and radio is last. Every format is migrating to streaming, radio means less and less, and we've got winners and losers and the data will tell you which one you are right away.
But then it became about music you'd worked on that you never thought would become a hit and...
Clearmountain mentions "Avalon," he mixed it. I about swooned. You know when someone touches your heart... Clearmountain says he still plays the album today, so do I, so do so many people, that's a true hit.
And then Tony gets on a rant and I can't stop listening to him, I'm eating it up, he's talking about what defines a hit and then I ask him...IS THE NEW JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE/CHRIS STAPLETON SONG A HIT?
And Tony says NO!
Whew! That's what's valuable about the aged and experienced, they KNOW! And that's worth something. I'm watching the video last night thinking whether I'm the only guy who thinks this track isn't good enough. Isn't it obvious? Didn't we learn this with Taylor Swift? Can't anybody say no? Is this the best they can do?
Maybe. U2's been trying to have a hit for eons and has been unsuccessful, maybe they just can't do it anymore.
And then Jack changes the conversation to hobbyism, saying that every song can't hit and you've got to own who you are and have fun.
Which is when Tony starts testifying about Americana music. Going on how these acts gross $10 million without any hits.
So I interrupt him, which ain't easy, he's into his flow...
IF JASON ISBELL WAS SPUN ON COUNTRY RADIO WOULD HIS SONGS HIT?
And Tony says NO!
Thank god! That's what I like about professionals, they know the score.
He lauded Isbell for selling seven nights at the Ryman, for having a passionate fan base, for writing good songs, BUT THEY'RE NOT HITS!
And then, of course, during the Q&A we got statements instead of questions, which drives me nuts.
But after it was all over, I had to talk to Tony, to make nice, to connect.
Turns out he's 71. He looks nearly a decade younger, I'll let you decide why.
And he starts telling me about working with Elvis. How he's playing keyboards for the opening act and Elvis's piano player moves on to Emmylou and Tony steps up and says I CAN DO THIS! And they give him the job and it's all groovy until Elvis dies and he's out of luck, but the same dude he replaced with Elvis leaves Emmylou and he gets that gig and ultimately becomes a producer. Not that anybody wants to give him that job, he's got to fight for it, but he delivers and...
Every word coming from his mouth is gold. How some of his greatest productions were never even RELEASED!
How he's putting out a coffee table book of country star photos because nobody would want to buy his autobiography. How he paid five hundred bucks to see Van Morrison at the Ryman and the Man didn't play a single song he knew, although he dug it, even though the three friends with him were pissed.
And he reminded me he cut Rosanne Cash's "Seven Year Ache," and the hook was the intro.
And Tony's so old school. Talking about sales. But if every one of his words didn't ring true, the stories, the presence...
Once upon a time that was the goal, to get inside, the club, the studio, and everybody on the panel had been there. It got the blood flowing in a jaded jerk like me. Not in some basement room, some home studio, but in the big space where the time is tripping by in triple dollar digits and it's all important and you're there to make money and change the world.
That's what it's all about, changing the world.
AND THESE GUYS CHANGED MINE!
https://www.namm.org/nammu/how-make-hit-record
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I thought it was referencing how to make a record a hit. But everybody else thought it was about creating a hit. And they all had.
I ran into Jack Douglas outside. He told me he'd been working with Joe Perry. Great to see people still excited about music. Hell, that's the thing about NAMM itself, it's an alternative universe. Ostensibly an insider merchandiser meeting, everybody can get a pass if they want one, and they get one, and they make the pilgrimage. Even at 9 AM you could see the throngs marching towards the Convention Center. You can tell by the look. Musicians and music fans just appear a bit different. They're scruffy. Longer hair. Not completely put together. It's what inside that counts.
So then Bob Clearmountain arrives and this foreign guy starts pitching gear. Everybody's into the gear, Jack testified this was good stuff. I don't know who's buying and who's being comped, but you get to check it out on their dime first. Can I say I'm into gear, I LOVE IT!
And then when we're ascending the stage, Tony Brown gets my ear.
What everybody forgets about Nashville is it's the south. These people have an accent. For someone brought up in New England and living in Los Angeles it's still a shock, even though I lived for years with a woman from Tallahassee, which is more like Georgia than Miami in case you didn't know, she had an accent. And the truth is we northerners judge the southerners, it's in our roots. And the culture is different and they do speak differently. They're not direct like New Yorkers, while riding in the car with you they don't say to roll up the window, but that they're a little bit cold, you have to interpret, they don't want to offend you, took me years to catch on.
So Tony's whispering to me that the last panel he was on they didn't let him speak. And I've been on panels like this, someone hogs the mic, and is oftentimes boring to boot, so I make a mental note to let him get his turn.
Meanwhile, he's got a look.
It's 10:15 in the morning and Tony's got the full-on rooster hairdo and the jewelry and the leather wrap around his wrist and I'm both cracking up and smiling. I don't know whether the bear ate him or he ate the bear. Whether he was a unique guy to begin with or whether the success and the fame made him this way.
So the first question is what record you're most proud of. Jack Douglas says "Walk This Way" and "Starting Over." Then he tells the inspiration for the former. They were hung up in the studio and the band took a break and went to see "Young Frankenstein" and when they heard those words in the movie, Marty Feldman imploring Gene Wilder to WALK THIS WAY, they were inspired and VOILA!
Tony talked about Reba. And then Vince Gill and George Strait and the funniest thing was for a guy who was worried about getting a word in edgewise, you couldn't shut him up! I heard later that he was all fired up for the panel the night before, he certainly behaved like it.
And Clearmountain's going on about the Stones and to tell you the truth I'm a bit intimidated, everybody's got one helluva CV, including Nashville songwriter Dale Dodson.
But it's Tony that's cracking me up.
He and Dale start laying out the Nashville system. They rail on about radio and gatekeepers and streaming and Tony says he loves Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me," but there's no room for women on country radio and Dale doubles down and that's when I drop the nuclear bomb, how that's the past and streaming is the future. That we must follow the hip-hop paradigm. It's all about reaction, whether you get one or not, and radio is last. Every format is migrating to streaming, radio means less and less, and we've got winners and losers and the data will tell you which one you are right away.
But then it became about music you'd worked on that you never thought would become a hit and...
Clearmountain mentions "Avalon," he mixed it. I about swooned. You know when someone touches your heart... Clearmountain says he still plays the album today, so do I, so do so many people, that's a true hit.
And then Tony gets on a rant and I can't stop listening to him, I'm eating it up, he's talking about what defines a hit and then I ask him...IS THE NEW JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE/CHRIS STAPLETON SONG A HIT?
And Tony says NO!
Whew! That's what's valuable about the aged and experienced, they KNOW! And that's worth something. I'm watching the video last night thinking whether I'm the only guy who thinks this track isn't good enough. Isn't it obvious? Didn't we learn this with Taylor Swift? Can't anybody say no? Is this the best they can do?
Maybe. U2's been trying to have a hit for eons and has been unsuccessful, maybe they just can't do it anymore.
And then Jack changes the conversation to hobbyism, saying that every song can't hit and you've got to own who you are and have fun.
Which is when Tony starts testifying about Americana music. Going on how these acts gross $10 million without any hits.
So I interrupt him, which ain't easy, he's into his flow...
IF JASON ISBELL WAS SPUN ON COUNTRY RADIO WOULD HIS SONGS HIT?
And Tony says NO!
Thank god! That's what I like about professionals, they know the score.
He lauded Isbell for selling seven nights at the Ryman, for having a passionate fan base, for writing good songs, BUT THEY'RE NOT HITS!
And then, of course, during the Q&A we got statements instead of questions, which drives me nuts.
But after it was all over, I had to talk to Tony, to make nice, to connect.
Turns out he's 71. He looks nearly a decade younger, I'll let you decide why.
And he starts telling me about working with Elvis. How he's playing keyboards for the opening act and Elvis's piano player moves on to Emmylou and Tony steps up and says I CAN DO THIS! And they give him the job and it's all groovy until Elvis dies and he's out of luck, but the same dude he replaced with Elvis leaves Emmylou and he gets that gig and ultimately becomes a producer. Not that anybody wants to give him that job, he's got to fight for it, but he delivers and...
Every word coming from his mouth is gold. How some of his greatest productions were never even RELEASED!
How he's putting out a coffee table book of country star photos because nobody would want to buy his autobiography. How he paid five hundred bucks to see Van Morrison at the Ryman and the Man didn't play a single song he knew, although he dug it, even though the three friends with him were pissed.
And he reminded me he cut Rosanne Cash's "Seven Year Ache," and the hook was the intro.
And Tony's so old school. Talking about sales. But if every one of his words didn't ring true, the stories, the presence...
Once upon a time that was the goal, to get inside, the club, the studio, and everybody on the panel had been there. It got the blood flowing in a jaded jerk like me. Not in some basement room, some home studio, but in the big space where the time is tripping by in triple dollar digits and it's all important and you're there to make money and change the world.
That's what it's all about, changing the world.
AND THESE GUYS CHANGED MINE!
https://www.namm.org/nammu/how-make-hit-record
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Thursday 25 January 2018
Mailbag
From: Elliott Murphy
Subject: Re: THE SECOND ACT OF ELLIOTT MURPHY
Hi Bob,
You are the only global network that matters! I wake up in Paris this morning and there's a heads up email from Norway label head Stig Slaattun telling me about your very insightful and generous piece on my film, then another from legendary Halifax club owner Mike Campbell, and one from the great John Oates down in Nashville, and Don Zakarin, famous music biz litigator who I once worked for, and from NY's Gary Borass of GB Records and so many more …
I learned much about myself in the making of THE SECOND ACT OF ELLIOTT MURPHY and then your fine essay put it into a larger context which I found very satisfying. The music business, that all-encompassing term that means everything and nothing, continues to fascinate, frustrate and facilitate the stuff dreams are made of. And nobody quits ...
Thank you for helping to shine a little light on my distant flame.
From Paris,
Elliott Murphy
____________________________________
From: Ken Kragen
Subject: RE: The Product Is Not Enough
Bob: Good piece. Several similar things I have taught in my "Stardom Strategies for Musicians" at UCLA. Let me add some to what you've said and disagree with a bit of it as well.
First, you are totally correct that you can't sell anyone on anything if you don't first get their attention. However, to do that you need to 1) Have something unique or special to promote; 2) It has to have real substance to it. In other words it has to have something people will take action on if you get their attention; and 3) It has to be unexpected!! At that moment in my classes the UCLA Marching Band bursts through the doors in full uniform and playing like crazy. When they leave I say to the class, "Now I have your attention! But where is the Marching Band in everything you do? Where is your version of it? Where is your WOW factor?"
I then go on to teach them about my discovery of "The Magic of Threes" the fact that it takes at least 3 impressions in a concentrated period of time from different directions to get anyone's attention in the sea of noise we all now live in. Social Media can in fact be one of the directions but only one as it tends to be redundant to the recipient. Now if you are trying to get the attention of a single individual you can put just three things out there in a day or two or perhaps even a week targeted specifically to the individual. However, if you are reaching out to a large audience you need to put 6, 8, 10 things out there so the recipient receives at least three of them. Look at what the movie studios do to see how they surround you with every sort of thing from print to television to on line to even billboards.
This is not a "theory" from some academic tower. It's the stuff I actually did in my years managing superstar careers (Kenny Rogers, Lionel Richie, Travis Tritt, Trisha Yearwood and many, many others). It's based on analyzing my successes and failures and seeing what was done or not done in each case. For example, Lionel Richie closed the 1984 Olympics with the #1 song "All Night Long." Two billion or more people saw that spectacular performance and it didn't advance his career one bit. Why? Because there was nothing around it. No record release, no touring, minimal press, etc. Six months later he hosted the American Music Awards and that same night recorded the song he wrote "We Are The World" to raise money for world hunger. He was on the cover of TV Guide that week when it had the biggest circulation in the country and he did lots of press before and after the AMA. He won 6 AMA's that night and 3 Grammy's a few weeks later. And yet nowhere near the number of people saw Lionel on all those things as saw him close the Olympics. But people saw multiple things with Lionel in a concentrated period of time and his career soared.
One of the tricks to doing the above is finding a central event or piece of exposure to build around and moving other things up or back to be close to it. I've often used holidays to build things around with several record releases scheduled to be close to Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving or Christmas. The key is concentration around some central event.
One other thing. I disagree with you suggestion to lie because "everybody lies..." That's exactly the reason to not do it. You get attention by doing something unique or special, something unexpected. If everybody does it you can standout by doing the opposite! I teach my students that instead of lying they should "Get Caught Telling The Truth" and business will beat a path to their door. I built my career on that principal and I now have the United Nation's PEACE MEDAL and am a proud member of the Personal Managers Hall of Fame. Tell the truth because it works!
That's more than enough response for now.
Ken
____________________________________
From: Holly Gleason
Subject: Re: The Product Is Not Enough
part of why tv -- late night, morning shows, even awards shows -- doesn't matter is this:
they're always playing "the new single," instead of what's going to connect with the viewers.
Midland? in NYC this week -- with TWO Grammy nominations. on non-country-skewing "Seth Myers"
They play the new single, to people who don't KNOW them, instead of the song that earned them TWO Grammy nods.
Uhm, hello? oh, and today was named Single of the Year in the Nashville Scene's annual Country/Americana Critics Poll
i predict no sales spike. because the new single is the safe follow-up, not the interesting new sound.
when I booked Kenny Chesney on "Conan" in 2002 -- because Letterman and Leno weren't having it,
i was able to get a guy nobody wanted on the hip show by promising Jim Pitt, "We won't do the single, we'll do the song that works for you."
It was "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems," the title track of the album where Kenny owned who he (and his audience) was.
Guess what? Sales spike. Ratings spike. A look at Kenny Chesney that wasn't more of the same...
AND they re-aired that episode 3 times. How do i know? All of a sudden, we'd see a sales spike. I'd call Jim, and yup, re-run.
In 1997, I believe, a songwriter named Matraca Berg won the CMA Song of the Year for "Strawberry Wine."
i'd started working on a CMA Awards performance for her in January, for a long sad ballad about aging called "Back When We Were Beautiful."
She stood on a bare stage with a piano player, a string quartet and a vulnerable, stunning song... and killed.
Vince Gill even called her "a poet" in his introduction.
Mat's label folded four or five weeks after the performance, but every time I was saw Walter Miller *after that night, he'd say the same thing:
"Les (Moonves) told me it was one of the five best music things he's ever seen on tv... and he says it again every time we talk about putting performances on shows."
You have to know the difference. You have to be able to tell what's a hit that's fun and will drive, versus ear candy or a ballad that matters versus a slow song someone thinks is important. AND you have to know what the audience will like. Often it's not what the people in power (promotion teams, the publisher or manager, even the artist) think. It's that asking yourself the hard questions that gets you there.
But, yes, marketing is important. Because people need to know why they care.
____________________________________
From: jminiman
Subject: Re: The Grammys Are More Important Than Ever
You are dead on right with this one Bob.
The example that affected me personally was my wife watching Sturgill Simpson perform "All Around You", from his album, "A Sailor's Guide to Earth", on last year's broadcast. The album ended up winning the Grammy for Best Country Album. When my wife looked up his tour dates, we decided to travel to Austin for a vacation and combine it with seeing him play a sold out show at the Austin 360 Amphitheater this past September.
Once I saw him live he sold me. I've since purchased 2 T-shirt's and all three of his albums on vinyl because I WANT to support the guy so he will keep making music.
But all of that started with my wife seeing his performance on the Grammy's. Because country radio doesn't play him.
Jim Blaney
Nashville
PS. Here is a link to the YouTube of Sturgill busking live outside the Bridgestone Arena during the CMA's last October, where his Grammy winning record didn't even garner a nomination within the Country Music Industry. He initially did this on Facebook Live, and had his Grammy award in his guitar case.
https://youtu.be/-LrKYpAgT3s
____________________________________
From: steve poltz
Subject: Re: The Elliott Murphy Documentary
Hey Bob,
I love Elliott! I met him through my pal Mike Campbell who runs The Carleton in Halifax Nova Scotia. I shared an in the round session with Elliott at HUFF (Halifax Urban Folk Festival).
He was so kind and giving. We hit it off so I texted him when I was in Paris and it just so happened that he was receiving an award that day. It was Oct 1, 2012 and he was awarded The Medaille de Vermeil de Ville de Paris in a ceremony presided by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë for recognition of his career as a musician and author.
The Hotel de Ville was packed with press and fans. It was incredible to see how much he was loved. We met up the next day for coffee and he was still glowing.
I want to see this documentary but I don't see it being streamed anywhere. I don't even own a DVD player. Why isn't it available for streaming? I'd gladly pay.
Cheers,
Steve Poltz
____________________________________
From: Sean Kegelman
Subject: Re: The Elliott Murphy Documentary
This is one of the things that is so great about a global streaming platform like Spotify - an artist has access to a potential audience in over 60 countries and growing. This doesn't just benefit the top 100 or top 1000 artists, everyone one of the over of hundreds of thousands gets listeners from across the globe organically - this is without even ring picked up by recommendation engines like discover weekly, daily mix, etc.
hell, my kid who is a fledgling rapper with really only promotional awareness within his high school sphere in state, has quickly picked up listeners across dozens of countries in Latam, Europe and Asia.
P.S. Forgot disclosure - I work at Spotify.
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Subject: Re: The Fall
Dear Bob,
I couldn't agree with you more about how great "The Fall" is.
A point of interest, if you're a guitar nerd, like myself, you will notice something interesting about the surnames of many of the shows characters, which makes me suspect that the The Fall's writer Allan Cubitt is a guitar nerd also.
Keep up the good work and get well soon.
Graham Gouldman
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Subject: Re: The Fall
I've been subscribed to you since I was 17 (I'm 23). And I've just woken up to your review on The Fall, I acted in the second and third series. Made my day.
Tara Lee
X
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From: Diarmaid Mac Aonghusa
Subject: Re: The Fall
"The war between Catholics and Protestants"
There was no religious war in Northern Ireland. There was a war between Irish Nationalists who wanted a united Ireland independent of the UK and the British. Those within Northern Ireland who wish to remain part of the UK are called "unionists". It always suited the British to allow people abroad - especially in the US - to think of the war in Northern Ireland as a religious one - those crazy Irish fighting over their god. They could then be seen as trying to sort the whole thing out. The truth, however, is quite different. It is true that, broadly speaking, those who wanted to stay with the UK were Protestants and those who wanted a united Ireland were Roman Catholics however that does not mean the battle was over religion. It's an important difference.
Regards
Diarmaid Mac Aonghusa (a lapsed Protestant in favour of a united Ireland)
Dublin, Ireland
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Subject: Re: Recorded Versus Live
"Traditionally you make recordings, assemble enough of them where you can go on the road and repeat them."
Being older than you, I reserve the right to disagree. :) The goal of recording used to be to try and capture the magic of live performance, typically from an act that had been honing that performance for months on the road. Then the concept got flipped to trying to recreate what happened in the studio on stage. I think one reason classic records are considered "classics" is because they benefited from the filtering that happened on the road...you found out which songs worked, which didn't, and what specific elements wowed the crowds.
Craig Anderton
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Subject: Re: Recorded Versus Live
Just listening to your Andrew Loog Oldham podcast and deep in the zone. Wonderful stuff.
It's all in the mix. In the UK we had the three pillars: record companies provided the venture capital and marketing, Radio 1 allowed people to hear the music and the NME (and Melody Maker et al) provided the story and the look. Without each part the system fell over, acts couldn't scale.
Great acts know they have to play all three. It's why I had the 'good hair, good shoes' policy at NME from 2002 onwards - it's pop, it's part of a bigger cultural conversation, and just rocking up with the tunes doesn't cut it. Andrew Oldham understood the relationship between pop music and pop fashion. You have to have something to say, you have to have a look that makes fans want to change their clothes. It happened to me with The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays in '89-91 and I wanted to inspire the next generation.
Each act will flex between radio and live and sales - the mix will be different and the tunes will always be king - but a story gives you longevity. With the death of the music press on both sides of the Atlantic that element had been dialled-down and it's sad. People want something to believe in, celebrated heroes (of any gender) that power pop culture forward to new, undiscovered places. It's the element that drives Disney's Marvel empire now, but we used to have it in pop. If Ziggy Stardust appeared today the character should be bigger then ever, I fear he'd actually get lost in the Spotify algorithm. We need new story-telling places to get people enthused.
Conor McNicholas
Editor, NME 2002-2009
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Subject: Re: Marketing Is King
Bob, you're right about the whole paradigm being upended. I'm in the band The Sweet Remains, and except for some lone wolf DJs around the country (like Rosalie at KFOG), our music doesn't make it on the traditional platforms. We find our audience- or rather it finds us through streaming platforms. We just crossed 28 million plays on Spotify. We're not getting rich on those Spotify checks, but our music is getting to places we never would have. And we track where we're getting listens and tour there, whether that's Ann Arbor MI or Hamburg, Germany. We also made a feature film, loosely based on our experience in music, using our music as a core of the storytelling. That film premieres at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival next month.
The game has changed. But authenticity matters more than ever! And for a band like ours, there are new ways of connecting with people. But you still have to bring the goods at a live show!
-Rich Price (The Sweet Remains)
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From: Kenneth Green
Subject: Re: Marketing Is King
Hi Bob,
Hope all is well. Writing in reference to "Once you hear an artist say he's not getting paid enough, know that he or she does not have good representatives, or is not good enough period." At the risk of taking this one sentence completely out of context and given that the latter excuse occurs more frequently than the former, here are the alternatives:
Once you hear an artist say he's not getting paid enough...
..know that the bass player has decided that years of playing bass (usually way too loudly) has equipped him sufficiently to manage the band.
...know that the artist has already started looking for new representation and you WILL hear about it through the grapevine.
...know that the lead singer has a girlfriend in the south, a girlfriend out west, and a wife in the north. Each one of whom needs the rent paid and the car fixed.
...know that each member of the band has at least 2 children for whom they feel guilt for not being there for them during the formative years. Better give them each $1K per month, even though they're both over 21 and fully capable of making it on their own. Hell, they've done it without the artist thus far.
...know that the artist's wife is quietly biding her time until her rich father dies. Then she'll cash in and move on. In the meantime, the artist cuts financial corners and sells out his or her integrity (Wait! Is that still a thing?) so to fund the wife's life in that too-big, too-expensive home near that pretentious country club. She's extra special by association, ya know.
...know that the artist continuously over-plays key markets in an attempt to wring every last cent from a dwindling audience that is still hanging on to those two songs that were written over twenty years ago.
(In reference to #6) ...know that, despite his or her better judgement and to save face, the artist's agent is now complicit just to keep the artist on the roster and/or use the artist as leverage for the up-and-coming acts. Hell, 10% of something is usually better than 10% of nothing.
...know that supporting a life on the road (at least in the early days, out of your own pocket), providing for beneficial deals on the artist's behalf in an industry of conniving, two-faced "professionals" with opposing agendas," creating opportunities out of thin air, answering the artist's call at 3am to listen to him or her bitch about the guitar tech/merch guy/ex-wife/et al, providing free psychological services when the artist has that next break-down, bailing out that dumb-ass drummer, firing the guitar player so that no one else in the band actually has to confront another human being, etc was never and will never be enough.
...know that, more often than not, you are working for someone who considers you and your role in their career to be an impediment to their creativity and artistic expression.
Don't get me wrong. This partial list comes from a place of masochistic love, not bitterness. I have plenty of meaningful, heart-warming observations to go along with this list (though, none to do with money). It is merely my tragicomical observation on an era where two dimes and a nickel are supposed to take the place of one dollar.
Saving the rest for the book.
Best,
Ken Green
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From: Benjamin Rigby
Subject: Re: 61 Days In Church
Hi Bob.
Long time reader, first time reply-er. Being Eric's monitor technician on the road, I had the esteemed privilege of recording and mixing all of his performances this past tour.
When I was presented with this opportunity, I was immensely overwhelmed and exceedingly excited. Fast forward to 3 months later I was still locked away in the mixing room of my Nashville bachelor pad, a slave to my work. Without a doubt the most tedious, painstaking, (insert synonym for maddening) undertaking I've experienced.
Thanks for the feedback and a fair listen.
Ben R.
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Subject: Re: Tony Hawk-This Week's Podcast
Dear Bob Lefsetz,
The Tony Hawk Foundation helped us lots of shares and a $5K grant to help us raise the $350K to build the Rusty Berrings Skatepark in memory of my beloved son Tyler.
Here's a clip from the local community cable CATV on the opening and back story..
https://youtu.be/0fs7JYUEhWw
I hope that you are doing well and that your health is good.
Best wishes,
Buddy
Buddy Kirschner
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Subject: RE: Letterman On Netflix
One other point you don't notice in the US.
Netflix is GLOBAL. They are in every country that matters (except China), and nearly all of the ones that don't. They also carry local stuff you never see in the US, special to every market.
One reason Netflix is spending on their own stuff is so they have the rights and can show it globally, all day and date, without being tied down by studio region restrictions.
Spotify is very near global too.
Amazon Prime is only in a very few countries. People might see Donald Trump at Davos, but they won't see anything on Prime because it still isn't even in Switzerland.
Yes, I can watch the new Star Trek show here in Switzerland. It's on Netflix.
Mark Jeffrey
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From: Kohl Harrington
Subject: Re: Letterman On Netflix
My first film "Pet Fooled" landed on Netflix.
I couldn't get accepted to any "film festival". I don't even think film festivals were watching my film. I created individual links and received no views on those links but denials from festivals anyway...
fuck that game.
To be eligible for the "awards game" was a minimum of $20,000. Who is going to the theater to watch movies though...especially a documentary?
I wanted Netflix. Screw the rest.
Netflix put my film in 82 languages and in an insane amount of languages. Luckily the dice rolled that way and Netflix picked up my film from my distribution company. I now get letters from all across the world in every language. Even Singapore! And I made the the film basically by myself.
Are people calling me and begging to give me money for my next film? No. But Netflix gave me clout and credibility. I can now call and get serious responses from people. I can now bust the pavement and raise money unlike before where people laughed in my face and said "ok kid..."
Everything is constantly evolving and changing. I am excited to see where it all is headed.
As I make my projects currently, I am fascinated that people made films ON actual strips of film. I never had the experience of cutting and pasting strips of film together. I'm glad I didn't have to do that on my first feature. It feels like an impossible concept to be honest. So many around me "love" films shot on film. I just want to be moved when I see a film. I want to be impacted and challenged and at times entertained. To see others hold onto certain ways in which the world worked at one point in time is... fascinating.
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From: David Benson
Subject: Re: Ray Thomas
A great remembrance, Bob.
I spent 1991-92 circling the globe on Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" tour twisting knobs on synths, pushing faders, and humping cases into Antanov-124 cargo planes in the snow. Summer 1993 I was hitting play on 16 tracks of multi-track ADAT and rehearsing pickup orchestras for the 25th anniversary tour of "Days of Future Passed." We played all the markets and did at least 5 shows a week. Good times.
I knew that catalog inside and out back in those days (and from playing said tracks in my formative high school dance gigs) but had completely forgotten about "Legend of a Mind." We used to joke about the "spinners" and "pseudo DeadHeads" who followed the band from gig to gig. Since "Legend" was the 15 min closer it was time for the freaks to come out. The energy rivaled anything I saw on the MJ tour.
Ray was so integral to the band and the sound/vibe. And I'm so happy to see the band still out there killing it. That is truly the "Legend" that continues.
dB
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Subject: Fuzz Mailbag: Burlison v Little
Bob,
Though your readers mentioned both Grady Little's 1961 fuzz on "Don't Worry", and Paul Burlison's distorted tone on the Rock and Roll Trio's 1956 "Train Kept a Rollin'" recording - none brought up something often suggested - that as the house guitarist, it's actually Grady heard on that "Train" solo. (Taking nothing away from the excellent Paul Burlison, if that is even true).
IMHO, the solo on the 1956 "Train" is the birth of garage rock.
Keep Up the Good Work,
eric chaikin
LA, CA
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Subject: Re: Mailbag
RE: Fuzztone
And let us not forget the first example of "phasing!" The first time I heard Toni Fisher's "The Big Hurt" on a car radio ( '55 Ford T-Bird) I thought I was losing my mind!
Mark Sebastian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlE6eHEENg4
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Subject: Re: Mailbag
Bob.....
I was Ike and Tina's agent/manager from 1972 to 1976. Ike and Tina started a big tour for ICM that I set up while in residence, and we were flying to Houston for the very first gig, Ike and I had been up for a week, I stayed home he beat her with his shoe on the plane, and next thing I know she calls and asks me for a plane ticket to Los Angeles, I told her if Ike found out I would have been history in the real sense..She thinks for a half second, and says ok I'll call Mike Stewart, at UA (United Artists the label). During his time looking for Tina, weeks and weeks and Kilo's went by and one of the stories he told me while we were waiting outside hoping to spot Tina at a very very famous Sax playe'rs house, was the real deal about the fuzz tone. He was driving to recording Rocket 88, the first Rock and Roll Record. They were with BB King who happened by as they were stuck on the side of the road close to the Studio. (I believe SUN Recording)..... they were changing a tire and all the equipment was rained on, when they got to the studio the amps/speakers were wet and walla you have a fuzz tone. WAY BEFORE ANYONE.. From his mouth to my ears. AND YOU KNOW IKE DIDN'T LIE.........heh heh. (Hey Bob, please clean up my grammar, I am very tired) PLEASE.
Dennis Rubenstein
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Subject: Re: News Updates
Re: Why I Love Spotify
I'm a bit late to the party... but I did a binge watch of Amazon Prime Show, "Transparent"... 4 seasons in 3 days!
Anyway, I love the music that was placed in the series..Most songs I'd never heard of...
Well, I fire up Spotify and type in Transparent... and voila! Every song, every episode in order! It gets better...
I'm a fan of "Black Mirror".... I go to Spotify...I type in Black Mirror.. and again... every song in every episode in
order...
I plan on buying the stock during their IPO... this is how much I believe..
Kindest Cheers,
Jeff Laufer
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Subject: Re: The Golden Globes
hey bob -
good morning and i thank you. as a golden globe nominee for my song "The Eye Of a Tiger" as best song after Rocky III i did attend all the shows. we won the people's choice and grammy (when it started to not matter). the big treat with the golden globes and the academy awards were the ladies. if i were an actor carrying the life long academy award nominee tag it may get me a couple of million more per film but i'm not.
i'm a rebel bob. do you really give s fuck when your song is at number one for 7 weeks and number 1 in 29 countries? fuck no! but it does open the gates to a musical world outside of the USA. and i went everywhere to play and learn.
the shows are boring. i wonder what the fuck they're even about these days. you can guess a place for those who haven't a clue what's going on the other side of sunset. he'll bob, they believe the valley is another planet. it is not cool to do anything in the valley.
cellophane wrapped looking faces and where did the guy we called keith urban go? every time i see him he looks stranger then the last.
they forgot the craft bob. the older cats who do huge box office numbers stay away. some, like sly stallone is always making action hero movies. bad ass movies we can all like and go see it not. but the folks go because the movies are entertainment.
so there you have it, entertainment at the box office and no political speeches on the tv as if they're running for office. but maybe that it bob. just maybe they all think they would do a better job running the country with one if their own at the helm.
that one failed big time this issue year. and since it's been a year can we just move on and deal with it...! enough with the hashtags!
frankie s
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Re: Brooks
I haven't worn them for over 20 years but I loved Brooks when I ran
track and cross country in high school. So much more support and
lighter than anything else. The Saucony Jazz was close but Brooks the
best. Thanks for the reminder. Can't wait to replace my workout shoes.
Ben Patterson
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Re: Brooks
Hell yeah, Bob! I've been a New Balance guy forever, but when my last pair blew up, I did my research and scooped up a pair of Brooks "Beast" runners. Ya see, I don't/can't run. I'm 6'4", 280, with feet as flat as pancakes. If I jog around the block once, my ankles are sprained for 2 weeks. But I do spend a good bit of time at the gym (and on the mountain) and those particular Brooks runners are made for big dudes with big, wide feet. They're the most comfy shoes I've ever owned. At least for shoes that I would leave the house in (and that's saying a lot, considering I took your recommendation on the Allbirds a while back. They're super comfy too, but too soft/not enough support for any actual activities).
Best,
Ike
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Re: Brooks
Ha!
I still have serious Achilles tendinosis although it's much bette than it was - the result of continued physical therapy and high end custom orthotics. Was wearing Sauconys but they stopped working for me. Went back to Future Track where all my shoes come from and she put me in a pair of Brooks. Fell in love with them, they're a whole other level of shoe. Have a couple of pairs now of course worn with my orthotics. I do Tai chi in them, gardening, other exercises, you name it. Alas not sexy, but I can walk, which is a far cry from where I was.
Love these shoes, had no idea there was anything about them, they just worked and see, to be well made.
Wendy Waldman
Xx
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Re: Brooks
I've been wearing brooks addiction for at least 12 years, maybe more. Recommended originally by that running store out in the valley. And I don't run! I wear them to work out and sometimes I do some short running. But I have wide feet which limits me to brooks and new balance. And the guy at the store strongly recommended brooks so I went with them and love them. I just hate the color scheme changes every year and this year's color was awful so I went with the black. Enjoy!!
Gene Salomon
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Go to Top to Top to buy sneakers. The best service Straight and direct. If you aren't happy bring them back.
2621 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90403
?(310) 829-7030?
Our trainer, Michael Mori, sent us there.
They sold me my Brooks. I have never worn a pair that felt so good.
Give them a try. I loved reading about what a great company Brooks is. I had no idea! Many thanks.
Chris Danes, MacTactics
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Re: Brooks
Brooks are dad-shoes. Now they are making a come-back. Love it.
Renée Schapiro
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Re: Brooks
I'm a marathon runner and I've worn Brooks for a decade. I love those things!
Gordon Chaffin
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Re: Brooks
Well, beware, because Brooks fucks with their models on a yearly basis as well. That said, the Addictions have been the most consistent running shoe for me in the past 8 years or so.
I've got major Achilles Tendon and heel spur issues owed to collapsing arches, have to wear custom orthotics, and my step is so sensitive to height and cushion that if the heel/stack height is just a fraction of an inch too low, or the shoe bed too cushiony in the heel, instant pain.
My podiatrist is a running enthusiast (her father literally wrote "The Runner's Repair Manual"), and even though conventional wisdom is to wear an orthotic with a neutral shoe, she always recommended Motion Control for me, and the Brooks Addiction in particular. I've tried the Beasts, I've gone for other MC shoes on sale from Saucony, NB and Asics, and always return to the Addictions.
But every year, the fit and feel changes ever-so-slightly. All these shoe companies have to fuck with the recipe, under the "new technologies" excuse. Remember when Howard bitched on-air about how Asics eliminated his favorite model? The head of Asics sent him new models. But, Howard had someone scour the internet to buy up any and all available pairs of the old model.
Rob Maurer
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Re: Brooks
I wore New Balance for 15 years, and I never found them to keep models in their catalog for more than a year or two. Even flagships like the 60x would evolve, sometimes radically. The only sneaker I can think of that's kept a consistent model in their lineup is Converse. Neither New Balance nor Brooks (which I switched to 7 or 8 years ago) does. The key to any shoe is to find one whose last matches your foot; once you know the last, you can find other shoes in a manufacturers line that use the same last, which gives you a good chance of finding a comfortable shoe. If you ask New Balance (or Brooks), they'll tell you the last of any shoe you have that you like, and they'll tell you what shoes they current make with the same last.
hyperbolium
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Re: Brooks
Yes indeed, Brooks Ghost!
Queenie Taylor
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Re: Brooks
As an avid wearer of New Balance and Adidas, I ironically purchased my first pair of Brooks just hours before your email came through! They ain't pretty, but they feel good! I am not a serious runner, though I work at KTLA and we have decided to enter the LA Marathon as a team in March. *Faints* I hope my new Brooks do well, because my Adidas were not up to the challenge of training. I'm sad I missed the deadline to be "endorsed" by Brooks!
Thanks,
Kison
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Re: Brooks
I run 3-4 times a week. I wore Saucony for my first marathon. Five years ago I tried Brooks because they felt comfortable. I would never buy a running shoe for looks/style. Within 30 days of owning Brooks I experienced horrible pain in my right foot. It was the dreaded planter fasciitis. It was the Brooks shoes. During my recovery I was attending a wedding anniversary party in Mexico. The gal sitting next to me was listening to me complain about PF. It turns out the same thing happened to her with Brooks shoes. I hear you on the marketing angle but I gave my Brooks away and waited 6 months to recover. No offense to Brooks but Saucony is my choice.
Richard King
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Re: Brooks
Have you ever tried on the Nike Monarchs?? It's one of the best selling shoes of all time. It's the quintessential 'Dad Shoe'. Super cheap, great walking shoe, not too stylish but still has a cult following. Check them out! https://www.nike.com/t/air-monarch-iv-extra-wide-mens-training-shoe-z8V44p
Dave Weisz - Nikehead
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Re: Brooks
Thanks for the shoutout Bob, we are going to build a great brand right in the middle of the run active lifestyle. Why? We get that runners run for themselves and we are not aspiring to be someone else like a star football player. The market is huge and global - watch this space!
BTW, great podcast with Tony Hawk!
Jim Weber
CEO Brooks
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From: Stephen Hazan Arnoff
Subject: Re: Harvey's Tune
Bob
Simply love your daily messages. Thank you. Thought you would enjoy this snapshot: Mr. Brooks teaches bass in Jerusalem.
http://twitter.com/Lefsetz/status/956729445074665472
Subject: Re: THE SECOND ACT OF ELLIOTT MURPHY
Hi Bob,
You are the only global network that matters! I wake up in Paris this morning and there's a heads up email from Norway label head Stig Slaattun telling me about your very insightful and generous piece on my film, then another from legendary Halifax club owner Mike Campbell, and one from the great John Oates down in Nashville, and Don Zakarin, famous music biz litigator who I once worked for, and from NY's Gary Borass of GB Records and so many more …
I learned much about myself in the making of THE SECOND ACT OF ELLIOTT MURPHY and then your fine essay put it into a larger context which I found very satisfying. The music business, that all-encompassing term that means everything and nothing, continues to fascinate, frustrate and facilitate the stuff dreams are made of. And nobody quits ...
Thank you for helping to shine a little light on my distant flame.
From Paris,
Elliott Murphy
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From: Ken Kragen
Subject: RE: The Product Is Not Enough
Bob: Good piece. Several similar things I have taught in my "Stardom Strategies for Musicians" at UCLA. Let me add some to what you've said and disagree with a bit of it as well.
First, you are totally correct that you can't sell anyone on anything if you don't first get their attention. However, to do that you need to 1) Have something unique or special to promote; 2) It has to have real substance to it. In other words it has to have something people will take action on if you get their attention; and 3) It has to be unexpected!! At that moment in my classes the UCLA Marching Band bursts through the doors in full uniform and playing like crazy. When they leave I say to the class, "Now I have your attention! But where is the Marching Band in everything you do? Where is your version of it? Where is your WOW factor?"
I then go on to teach them about my discovery of "The Magic of Threes" the fact that it takes at least 3 impressions in a concentrated period of time from different directions to get anyone's attention in the sea of noise we all now live in. Social Media can in fact be one of the directions but only one as it tends to be redundant to the recipient. Now if you are trying to get the attention of a single individual you can put just three things out there in a day or two or perhaps even a week targeted specifically to the individual. However, if you are reaching out to a large audience you need to put 6, 8, 10 things out there so the recipient receives at least three of them. Look at what the movie studios do to see how they surround you with every sort of thing from print to television to on line to even billboards.
This is not a "theory" from some academic tower. It's the stuff I actually did in my years managing superstar careers (Kenny Rogers, Lionel Richie, Travis Tritt, Trisha Yearwood and many, many others). It's based on analyzing my successes and failures and seeing what was done or not done in each case. For example, Lionel Richie closed the 1984 Olympics with the #1 song "All Night Long." Two billion or more people saw that spectacular performance and it didn't advance his career one bit. Why? Because there was nothing around it. No record release, no touring, minimal press, etc. Six months later he hosted the American Music Awards and that same night recorded the song he wrote "We Are The World" to raise money for world hunger. He was on the cover of TV Guide that week when it had the biggest circulation in the country and he did lots of press before and after the AMA. He won 6 AMA's that night and 3 Grammy's a few weeks later. And yet nowhere near the number of people saw Lionel on all those things as saw him close the Olympics. But people saw multiple things with Lionel in a concentrated period of time and his career soared.
One of the tricks to doing the above is finding a central event or piece of exposure to build around and moving other things up or back to be close to it. I've often used holidays to build things around with several record releases scheduled to be close to Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving or Christmas. The key is concentration around some central event.
One other thing. I disagree with you suggestion to lie because "everybody lies..." That's exactly the reason to not do it. You get attention by doing something unique or special, something unexpected. If everybody does it you can standout by doing the opposite! I teach my students that instead of lying they should "Get Caught Telling The Truth" and business will beat a path to their door. I built my career on that principal and I now have the United Nation's PEACE MEDAL and am a proud member of the Personal Managers Hall of Fame. Tell the truth because it works!
That's more than enough response for now.
Ken
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From: Holly Gleason
Subject: Re: The Product Is Not Enough
part of why tv -- late night, morning shows, even awards shows -- doesn't matter is this:
they're always playing "the new single," instead of what's going to connect with the viewers.
Midland? in NYC this week -- with TWO Grammy nominations. on non-country-skewing "Seth Myers"
They play the new single, to people who don't KNOW them, instead of the song that earned them TWO Grammy nods.
Uhm, hello? oh, and today was named Single of the Year in the Nashville Scene's annual Country/Americana Critics Poll
i predict no sales spike. because the new single is the safe follow-up, not the interesting new sound.
when I booked Kenny Chesney on "Conan" in 2002 -- because Letterman and Leno weren't having it,
i was able to get a guy nobody wanted on the hip show by promising Jim Pitt, "We won't do the single, we'll do the song that works for you."
It was "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems," the title track of the album where Kenny owned who he (and his audience) was.
Guess what? Sales spike. Ratings spike. A look at Kenny Chesney that wasn't more of the same...
AND they re-aired that episode 3 times. How do i know? All of a sudden, we'd see a sales spike. I'd call Jim, and yup, re-run.
In 1997, I believe, a songwriter named Matraca Berg won the CMA Song of the Year for "Strawberry Wine."
i'd started working on a CMA Awards performance for her in January, for a long sad ballad about aging called "Back When We Were Beautiful."
She stood on a bare stage with a piano player, a string quartet and a vulnerable, stunning song... and killed.
Vince Gill even called her "a poet" in his introduction.
Mat's label folded four or five weeks after the performance, but every time I was saw Walter Miller *after that night, he'd say the same thing:
"Les (Moonves) told me it was one of the five best music things he's ever seen on tv... and he says it again every time we talk about putting performances on shows."
You have to know the difference. You have to be able to tell what's a hit that's fun and will drive, versus ear candy or a ballad that matters versus a slow song someone thinks is important. AND you have to know what the audience will like. Often it's not what the people in power (promotion teams, the publisher or manager, even the artist) think. It's that asking yourself the hard questions that gets you there.
But, yes, marketing is important. Because people need to know why they care.
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From: jminiman
Subject: Re: The Grammys Are More Important Than Ever
You are dead on right with this one Bob.
The example that affected me personally was my wife watching Sturgill Simpson perform "All Around You", from his album, "A Sailor's Guide to Earth", on last year's broadcast. The album ended up winning the Grammy for Best Country Album. When my wife looked up his tour dates, we decided to travel to Austin for a vacation and combine it with seeing him play a sold out show at the Austin 360 Amphitheater this past September.
Once I saw him live he sold me. I've since purchased 2 T-shirt's and all three of his albums on vinyl because I WANT to support the guy so he will keep making music.
But all of that started with my wife seeing his performance on the Grammy's. Because country radio doesn't play him.
Jim Blaney
Nashville
PS. Here is a link to the YouTube of Sturgill busking live outside the Bridgestone Arena during the CMA's last October, where his Grammy winning record didn't even garner a nomination within the Country Music Industry. He initially did this on Facebook Live, and had his Grammy award in his guitar case.
https://youtu.be/-LrKYpAgT3s
____________________________________
From: steve poltz
Subject: Re: The Elliott Murphy Documentary
Hey Bob,
I love Elliott! I met him through my pal Mike Campbell who runs The Carleton in Halifax Nova Scotia. I shared an in the round session with Elliott at HUFF (Halifax Urban Folk Festival).
He was so kind and giving. We hit it off so I texted him when I was in Paris and it just so happened that he was receiving an award that day. It was Oct 1, 2012 and he was awarded The Medaille de Vermeil de Ville de Paris in a ceremony presided by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë for recognition of his career as a musician and author.
The Hotel de Ville was packed with press and fans. It was incredible to see how much he was loved. We met up the next day for coffee and he was still glowing.
I want to see this documentary but I don't see it being streamed anywhere. I don't even own a DVD player. Why isn't it available for streaming? I'd gladly pay.
Cheers,
Steve Poltz
____________________________________
From: Sean Kegelman
Subject: Re: The Elliott Murphy Documentary
This is one of the things that is so great about a global streaming platform like Spotify - an artist has access to a potential audience in over 60 countries and growing. This doesn't just benefit the top 100 or top 1000 artists, everyone one of the over of hundreds of thousands gets listeners from across the globe organically - this is without even ring picked up by recommendation engines like discover weekly, daily mix, etc.
hell, my kid who is a fledgling rapper with really only promotional awareness within his high school sphere in state, has quickly picked up listeners across dozens of countries in Latam, Europe and Asia.
P.S. Forgot disclosure - I work at Spotify.
____________________________________
Subject: Re: The Fall
Dear Bob,
I couldn't agree with you more about how great "The Fall" is.
A point of interest, if you're a guitar nerd, like myself, you will notice something interesting about the surnames of many of the shows characters, which makes me suspect that the The Fall's writer Allan Cubitt is a guitar nerd also.
Keep up the good work and get well soon.
Graham Gouldman
____________________________________
Subject: Re: The Fall
I've been subscribed to you since I was 17 (I'm 23). And I've just woken up to your review on The Fall, I acted in the second and third series. Made my day.
Tara Lee
X
____________________________________
From: Diarmaid Mac Aonghusa
Subject: Re: The Fall
"The war between Catholics and Protestants"
There was no religious war in Northern Ireland. There was a war between Irish Nationalists who wanted a united Ireland independent of the UK and the British. Those within Northern Ireland who wish to remain part of the UK are called "unionists". It always suited the British to allow people abroad - especially in the US - to think of the war in Northern Ireland as a religious one - those crazy Irish fighting over their god. They could then be seen as trying to sort the whole thing out. The truth, however, is quite different. It is true that, broadly speaking, those who wanted to stay with the UK were Protestants and those who wanted a united Ireland were Roman Catholics however that does not mean the battle was over religion. It's an important difference.
Regards
Diarmaid Mac Aonghusa (a lapsed Protestant in favour of a united Ireland)
Dublin, Ireland
____________________________________
Subject: Re: Recorded Versus Live
"Traditionally you make recordings, assemble enough of them where you can go on the road and repeat them."
Being older than you, I reserve the right to disagree. :) The goal of recording used to be to try and capture the magic of live performance, typically from an act that had been honing that performance for months on the road. Then the concept got flipped to trying to recreate what happened in the studio on stage. I think one reason classic records are considered "classics" is because they benefited from the filtering that happened on the road...you found out which songs worked, which didn't, and what specific elements wowed the crowds.
Craig Anderton
____________________________________
Subject: Re: Recorded Versus Live
Just listening to your Andrew Loog Oldham podcast and deep in the zone. Wonderful stuff.
It's all in the mix. In the UK we had the three pillars: record companies provided the venture capital and marketing, Radio 1 allowed people to hear the music and the NME (and Melody Maker et al) provided the story and the look. Without each part the system fell over, acts couldn't scale.
Great acts know they have to play all three. It's why I had the 'good hair, good shoes' policy at NME from 2002 onwards - it's pop, it's part of a bigger cultural conversation, and just rocking up with the tunes doesn't cut it. Andrew Oldham understood the relationship between pop music and pop fashion. You have to have something to say, you have to have a look that makes fans want to change their clothes. It happened to me with The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays in '89-91 and I wanted to inspire the next generation.
Each act will flex between radio and live and sales - the mix will be different and the tunes will always be king - but a story gives you longevity. With the death of the music press on both sides of the Atlantic that element had been dialled-down and it's sad. People want something to believe in, celebrated heroes (of any gender) that power pop culture forward to new, undiscovered places. It's the element that drives Disney's Marvel empire now, but we used to have it in pop. If Ziggy Stardust appeared today the character should be bigger then ever, I fear he'd actually get lost in the Spotify algorithm. We need new story-telling places to get people enthused.
Conor McNicholas
Editor, NME 2002-2009
____________________________________
Subject: Re: Marketing Is King
Bob, you're right about the whole paradigm being upended. I'm in the band The Sweet Remains, and except for some lone wolf DJs around the country (like Rosalie at KFOG), our music doesn't make it on the traditional platforms. We find our audience- or rather it finds us through streaming platforms. We just crossed 28 million plays on Spotify. We're not getting rich on those Spotify checks, but our music is getting to places we never would have. And we track where we're getting listens and tour there, whether that's Ann Arbor MI or Hamburg, Germany. We also made a feature film, loosely based on our experience in music, using our music as a core of the storytelling. That film premieres at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival next month.
The game has changed. But authenticity matters more than ever! And for a band like ours, there are new ways of connecting with people. But you still have to bring the goods at a live show!
-Rich Price (The Sweet Remains)
____________________________________
From: Kenneth Green
Subject: Re: Marketing Is King
Hi Bob,
Hope all is well. Writing in reference to "Once you hear an artist say he's not getting paid enough, know that he or she does not have good representatives, or is not good enough period." At the risk of taking this one sentence completely out of context and given that the latter excuse occurs more frequently than the former, here are the alternatives:
Once you hear an artist say he's not getting paid enough...
..know that the bass player has decided that years of playing bass (usually way too loudly) has equipped him sufficiently to manage the band.
...know that the artist has already started looking for new representation and you WILL hear about it through the grapevine.
...know that the lead singer has a girlfriend in the south, a girlfriend out west, and a wife in the north. Each one of whom needs the rent paid and the car fixed.
...know that each member of the band has at least 2 children for whom they feel guilt for not being there for them during the formative years. Better give them each $1K per month, even though they're both over 21 and fully capable of making it on their own. Hell, they've done it without the artist thus far.
...know that the artist's wife is quietly biding her time until her rich father dies. Then she'll cash in and move on. In the meantime, the artist cuts financial corners and sells out his or her integrity (Wait! Is that still a thing?) so to fund the wife's life in that too-big, too-expensive home near that pretentious country club. She's extra special by association, ya know.
...know that the artist continuously over-plays key markets in an attempt to wring every last cent from a dwindling audience that is still hanging on to those two songs that were written over twenty years ago.
(In reference to #6) ...know that, despite his or her better judgement and to save face, the artist's agent is now complicit just to keep the artist on the roster and/or use the artist as leverage for the up-and-coming acts. Hell, 10% of something is usually better than 10% of nothing.
...know that supporting a life on the road (at least in the early days, out of your own pocket), providing for beneficial deals on the artist's behalf in an industry of conniving, two-faced "professionals" with opposing agendas," creating opportunities out of thin air, answering the artist's call at 3am to listen to him or her bitch about the guitar tech/merch guy/ex-wife/et al, providing free psychological services when the artist has that next break-down, bailing out that dumb-ass drummer, firing the guitar player so that no one else in the band actually has to confront another human being, etc was never and will never be enough.
...know that, more often than not, you are working for someone who considers you and your role in their career to be an impediment to their creativity and artistic expression.
Don't get me wrong. This partial list comes from a place of masochistic love, not bitterness. I have plenty of meaningful, heart-warming observations to go along with this list (though, none to do with money). It is merely my tragicomical observation on an era where two dimes and a nickel are supposed to take the place of one dollar.
Saving the rest for the book.
Best,
Ken Green
____________________________________
From: Benjamin Rigby
Subject: Re: 61 Days In Church
Hi Bob.
Long time reader, first time reply-er. Being Eric's monitor technician on the road, I had the esteemed privilege of recording and mixing all of his performances this past tour.
When I was presented with this opportunity, I was immensely overwhelmed and exceedingly excited. Fast forward to 3 months later I was still locked away in the mixing room of my Nashville bachelor pad, a slave to my work. Without a doubt the most tedious, painstaking, (insert synonym for maddening) undertaking I've experienced.
Thanks for the feedback and a fair listen.
Ben R.
____________________________________
Subject: Re: Tony Hawk-This Week's Podcast
Dear Bob Lefsetz,
The Tony Hawk Foundation helped us lots of shares and a $5K grant to help us raise the $350K to build the Rusty Berrings Skatepark in memory of my beloved son Tyler.
Here's a clip from the local community cable CATV on the opening and back story..
https://youtu.be/0fs7JYUEhWw
I hope that you are doing well and that your health is good.
Best wishes,
Buddy
Buddy Kirschner
____________________________________
Subject: RE: Letterman On Netflix
One other point you don't notice in the US.
Netflix is GLOBAL. They are in every country that matters (except China), and nearly all of the ones that don't. They also carry local stuff you never see in the US, special to every market.
One reason Netflix is spending on their own stuff is so they have the rights and can show it globally, all day and date, without being tied down by studio region restrictions.
Spotify is very near global too.
Amazon Prime is only in a very few countries. People might see Donald Trump at Davos, but they won't see anything on Prime because it still isn't even in Switzerland.
Yes, I can watch the new Star Trek show here in Switzerland. It's on Netflix.
Mark Jeffrey
____________________________________
From: Kohl Harrington
Subject: Re: Letterman On Netflix
My first film "Pet Fooled" landed on Netflix.
I couldn't get accepted to any "film festival". I don't even think film festivals were watching my film. I created individual links and received no views on those links but denials from festivals anyway...
fuck that game.
To be eligible for the "awards game" was a minimum of $20,000. Who is going to the theater to watch movies though...especially a documentary?
I wanted Netflix. Screw the rest.
Netflix put my film in 82 languages and in an insane amount of languages. Luckily the dice rolled that way and Netflix picked up my film from my distribution company. I now get letters from all across the world in every language. Even Singapore! And I made the the film basically by myself.
Are people calling me and begging to give me money for my next film? No. But Netflix gave me clout and credibility. I can now call and get serious responses from people. I can now bust the pavement and raise money unlike before where people laughed in my face and said "ok kid..."
Everything is constantly evolving and changing. I am excited to see where it all is headed.
As I make my projects currently, I am fascinated that people made films ON actual strips of film. I never had the experience of cutting and pasting strips of film together. I'm glad I didn't have to do that on my first feature. It feels like an impossible concept to be honest. So many around me "love" films shot on film. I just want to be moved when I see a film. I want to be impacted and challenged and at times entertained. To see others hold onto certain ways in which the world worked at one point in time is... fascinating.
____________________________________
From: David Benson
Subject: Re: Ray Thomas
A great remembrance, Bob.
I spent 1991-92 circling the globe on Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" tour twisting knobs on synths, pushing faders, and humping cases into Antanov-124 cargo planes in the snow. Summer 1993 I was hitting play on 16 tracks of multi-track ADAT and rehearsing pickup orchestras for the 25th anniversary tour of "Days of Future Passed." We played all the markets and did at least 5 shows a week. Good times.
I knew that catalog inside and out back in those days (and from playing said tracks in my formative high school dance gigs) but had completely forgotten about "Legend of a Mind." We used to joke about the "spinners" and "pseudo DeadHeads" who followed the band from gig to gig. Since "Legend" was the 15 min closer it was time for the freaks to come out. The energy rivaled anything I saw on the MJ tour.
Ray was so integral to the band and the sound/vibe. And I'm so happy to see the band still out there killing it. That is truly the "Legend" that continues.
dB
____________________________________
Subject: Fuzz Mailbag: Burlison v Little
Bob,
Though your readers mentioned both Grady Little's 1961 fuzz on "Don't Worry", and Paul Burlison's distorted tone on the Rock and Roll Trio's 1956 "Train Kept a Rollin'" recording - none brought up something often suggested - that as the house guitarist, it's actually Grady heard on that "Train" solo. (Taking nothing away from the excellent Paul Burlison, if that is even true).
IMHO, the solo on the 1956 "Train" is the birth of garage rock.
Keep Up the Good Work,
eric chaikin
LA, CA
____________________________________
Subject: Re: Mailbag
RE: Fuzztone
And let us not forget the first example of "phasing!" The first time I heard Toni Fisher's "The Big Hurt" on a car radio ( '55 Ford T-Bird) I thought I was losing my mind!
Mark Sebastian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlE6eHEENg4
____________________________________
Subject: Re: Mailbag
Bob.....
I was Ike and Tina's agent/manager from 1972 to 1976. Ike and Tina started a big tour for ICM that I set up while in residence, and we were flying to Houston for the very first gig, Ike and I had been up for a week, I stayed home he beat her with his shoe on the plane, and next thing I know she calls and asks me for a plane ticket to Los Angeles, I told her if Ike found out I would have been history in the real sense..She thinks for a half second, and says ok I'll call Mike Stewart, at UA (United Artists the label). During his time looking for Tina, weeks and weeks and Kilo's went by and one of the stories he told me while we were waiting outside hoping to spot Tina at a very very famous Sax playe'rs house, was the real deal about the fuzz tone. He was driving to recording Rocket 88, the first Rock and Roll Record. They were with BB King who happened by as they were stuck on the side of the road close to the Studio. (I believe SUN Recording)..... they were changing a tire and all the equipment was rained on, when they got to the studio the amps/speakers were wet and walla you have a fuzz tone. WAY BEFORE ANYONE.. From his mouth to my ears. AND YOU KNOW IKE DIDN'T LIE.........heh heh. (Hey Bob, please clean up my grammar, I am very tired) PLEASE.
Dennis Rubenstein
____________________________________
Subject: Re: News Updates
Re: Why I Love Spotify
I'm a bit late to the party... but I did a binge watch of Amazon Prime Show, "Transparent"... 4 seasons in 3 days!
Anyway, I love the music that was placed in the series..Most songs I'd never heard of...
Well, I fire up Spotify and type in Transparent... and voila! Every song, every episode in order! It gets better...
I'm a fan of "Black Mirror".... I go to Spotify...I type in Black Mirror.. and again... every song in every episode in
order...
I plan on buying the stock during their IPO... this is how much I believe..
Kindest Cheers,
Jeff Laufer
____________________________________
Subject: Re: The Golden Globes
hey bob -
good morning and i thank you. as a golden globe nominee for my song "The Eye Of a Tiger" as best song after Rocky III i did attend all the shows. we won the people's choice and grammy (when it started to not matter). the big treat with the golden globes and the academy awards were the ladies. if i were an actor carrying the life long academy award nominee tag it may get me a couple of million more per film but i'm not.
i'm a rebel bob. do you really give s fuck when your song is at number one for 7 weeks and number 1 in 29 countries? fuck no! but it does open the gates to a musical world outside of the USA. and i went everywhere to play and learn.
the shows are boring. i wonder what the fuck they're even about these days. you can guess a place for those who haven't a clue what's going on the other side of sunset. he'll bob, they believe the valley is another planet. it is not cool to do anything in the valley.
cellophane wrapped looking faces and where did the guy we called keith urban go? every time i see him he looks stranger then the last.
they forgot the craft bob. the older cats who do huge box office numbers stay away. some, like sly stallone is always making action hero movies. bad ass movies we can all like and go see it not. but the folks go because the movies are entertainment.
so there you have it, entertainment at the box office and no political speeches on the tv as if they're running for office. but maybe that it bob. just maybe they all think they would do a better job running the country with one if their own at the helm.
that one failed big time this issue year. and since it's been a year can we just move on and deal with it...! enough with the hashtags!
frankie s
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
I haven't worn them for over 20 years but I loved Brooks when I ran
track and cross country in high school. So much more support and
lighter than anything else. The Saucony Jazz was close but Brooks the
best. Thanks for the reminder. Can't wait to replace my workout shoes.
Ben Patterson
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
Hell yeah, Bob! I've been a New Balance guy forever, but when my last pair blew up, I did my research and scooped up a pair of Brooks "Beast" runners. Ya see, I don't/can't run. I'm 6'4", 280, with feet as flat as pancakes. If I jog around the block once, my ankles are sprained for 2 weeks. But I do spend a good bit of time at the gym (and on the mountain) and those particular Brooks runners are made for big dudes with big, wide feet. They're the most comfy shoes I've ever owned. At least for shoes that I would leave the house in (and that's saying a lot, considering I took your recommendation on the Allbirds a while back. They're super comfy too, but too soft/not enough support for any actual activities).
Best,
Ike
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
Ha!
I still have serious Achilles tendinosis although it's much bette than it was - the result of continued physical therapy and high end custom orthotics. Was wearing Sauconys but they stopped working for me. Went back to Future Track where all my shoes come from and she put me in a pair of Brooks. Fell in love with them, they're a whole other level of shoe. Have a couple of pairs now of course worn with my orthotics. I do Tai chi in them, gardening, other exercises, you name it. Alas not sexy, but I can walk, which is a far cry from where I was.
Love these shoes, had no idea there was anything about them, they just worked and see, to be well made.
Wendy Waldman
Xx
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
I've been wearing brooks addiction for at least 12 years, maybe more. Recommended originally by that running store out in the valley. And I don't run! I wear them to work out and sometimes I do some short running. But I have wide feet which limits me to brooks and new balance. And the guy at the store strongly recommended brooks so I went with them and love them. I just hate the color scheme changes every year and this year's color was awful so I went with the black. Enjoy!!
Gene Salomon
____________________________________
Go to Top to Top to buy sneakers. The best service Straight and direct. If you aren't happy bring them back.
2621 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90403
?(310) 829-7030?
Our trainer, Michael Mori, sent us there.
They sold me my Brooks. I have never worn a pair that felt so good.
Give them a try. I loved reading about what a great company Brooks is. I had no idea! Many thanks.
Chris Danes, MacTactics
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
Brooks are dad-shoes. Now they are making a come-back. Love it.
Renée Schapiro
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
I'm a marathon runner and I've worn Brooks for a decade. I love those things!
Gordon Chaffin
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
Well, beware, because Brooks fucks with their models on a yearly basis as well. That said, the Addictions have been the most consistent running shoe for me in the past 8 years or so.
I've got major Achilles Tendon and heel spur issues owed to collapsing arches, have to wear custom orthotics, and my step is so sensitive to height and cushion that if the heel/stack height is just a fraction of an inch too low, or the shoe bed too cushiony in the heel, instant pain.
My podiatrist is a running enthusiast (her father literally wrote "The Runner's Repair Manual"), and even though conventional wisdom is to wear an orthotic with a neutral shoe, she always recommended Motion Control for me, and the Brooks Addiction in particular. I've tried the Beasts, I've gone for other MC shoes on sale from Saucony, NB and Asics, and always return to the Addictions.
But every year, the fit and feel changes ever-so-slightly. All these shoe companies have to fuck with the recipe, under the "new technologies" excuse. Remember when Howard bitched on-air about how Asics eliminated his favorite model? The head of Asics sent him new models. But, Howard had someone scour the internet to buy up any and all available pairs of the old model.
Rob Maurer
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
I wore New Balance for 15 years, and I never found them to keep models in their catalog for more than a year or two. Even flagships like the 60x would evolve, sometimes radically. The only sneaker I can think of that's kept a consistent model in their lineup is Converse. Neither New Balance nor Brooks (which I switched to 7 or 8 years ago) does. The key to any shoe is to find one whose last matches your foot; once you know the last, you can find other shoes in a manufacturers line that use the same last, which gives you a good chance of finding a comfortable shoe. If you ask New Balance (or Brooks), they'll tell you the last of any shoe you have that you like, and they'll tell you what shoes they current make with the same last.
hyperbolium
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
Yes indeed, Brooks Ghost!
Queenie Taylor
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
As an avid wearer of New Balance and Adidas, I ironically purchased my first pair of Brooks just hours before your email came through! They ain't pretty, but they feel good! I am not a serious runner, though I work at KTLA and we have decided to enter the LA Marathon as a team in March. *Faints* I hope my new Brooks do well, because my Adidas were not up to the challenge of training. I'm sad I missed the deadline to be "endorsed" by Brooks!
Thanks,
Kison
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
I run 3-4 times a week. I wore Saucony for my first marathon. Five years ago I tried Brooks because they felt comfortable. I would never buy a running shoe for looks/style. Within 30 days of owning Brooks I experienced horrible pain in my right foot. It was the dreaded planter fasciitis. It was the Brooks shoes. During my recovery I was attending a wedding anniversary party in Mexico. The gal sitting next to me was listening to me complain about PF. It turns out the same thing happened to her with Brooks shoes. I hear you on the marketing angle but I gave my Brooks away and waited 6 months to recover. No offense to Brooks but Saucony is my choice.
Richard King
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
Have you ever tried on the Nike Monarchs?? It's one of the best selling shoes of all time. It's the quintessential 'Dad Shoe'. Super cheap, great walking shoe, not too stylish but still has a cult following. Check them out! https://www.nike.com/t/air-monarch-iv-extra-wide-mens-training-shoe-z8V44p
Dave Weisz - Nikehead
____________________________________
Re: Brooks
Thanks for the shoutout Bob, we are going to build a great brand right in the middle of the run active lifestyle. Why? We get that runners run for themselves and we are not aspiring to be someone else like a star football player. The market is huge and global - watch this space!
BTW, great podcast with Tony Hawk!
Jim Weber
CEO Brooks
____________________________________
From: Stephen Hazan Arnoff
Subject: Re: Harvey's Tune
Bob
Simply love your daily messages. Thank you. Thought you would enjoy this snapshot: Mr. Brooks teaches bass in Jerusalem.
http://twitter.com/Lefsetz/status/956729445074665472
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The Product Is Not Enough
If you build it they will not come.
Your challenge is getting noticed.
So you may be sitting at home, in your beautiful house, with your beautiful wife, asking me...DIDN'T YOU SAY JUST THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE?
Yes, in the last decade. Things changed. Bob Dylan sang about that, but no one seems to realize the puck keeps moving, and media ain't hockey, the rules change too.
In a world where people are overwhelmed by content, they don't want to hear about yours. And the problem is great content gets cast aside as well as horrible content. You did the work and nothing is happening, what's up?
It's not your fault. You just have to find a way to run the gauntlet.
If you're a musician your greatest asset is your friends, your fellow musicians. You can trade favors and trade secrets. They've been there before you, they can recommend others, they can give you a leg up. How hip-hop has figured this all out and other genres have not is beyond me. Feature an up and comer on your track and suddenly they're known too. Great managers realize this. Used to be you let the agent and promoter decide on the opening act. Now you manage the act, give the headliner a piece of the action and build this new act underneath them. This is how Five Seconds Of Summer was built under One Direction and Hey Violet! under Five Seconds Of Summer. Opening for other acts in stadia and arenas pays dividends, because they get to SEE YOU!
Assuming you have a manager to put this all together.
You need a representative. Without one you can't get ahead.
If you're a live act, maybe you focus on an agent first. One who gets you gigs.
But you only sign with those who are passionate. Better to be with the second-tier rep who cares than the first-tier one who doesn't. It's gonna be a lot of work no matter who's involved, who is going to really do it, not give up when the going gets hard.
But once you've got your team, the hard work really begins.
First and foremost, you must be great where and whenever the rubber meets the road, you must deliver, but so many concepts pooh-poohed the last decade...are not so onerous today.
Credibility...
It only matters once you've flown above the fray. If you can only say no, you won't get ahead. Seemingly every classic rock band who said no said yes to endorsements/promotions before they hit it big, just check YouTube for the adverts. If no one knows who you are, it doesn't matter what you believe.
A story... Once you've got people's attention, you must have one. Willing to do anything to make it from a broken home is not one. You must evidence an identity, that's what the social networking era has taught us. But Instagram is lowest common denominator, it's just how you look, whereas an artist wins by evidencing how they THINK! And don't be afraid to offend, unless you've got a strong point of view, chances are the passionate early adopters will not, adopt you that is.
Meanwhile, you need a steady stream of product. In this fast-moving world you never want to abandon your hard core, satiate them as you continue to troll for new fans, otherwise they'll move on to something else.
Next comes streaming services. It's where it happens first, and where you find out if you win or lose. You must be with handlers who have relationships, who can get you on playlists, where the streaming companies can find out if you react. Radio is way down the line. If your handler/representative talks about radio first, abandon them, they're built for the past, not the future. Sure, radio can reach mass, but long after streaming services, it's for the least interested, you're looking for the hard core to make you happen and stay with you. Furthermore, many radio formats are nearly meaningless. You can be on AAA or Active Rock and be number one and play clubs, and that just sucks. You're a second-rate character in a third-rate world and life is too hard to end up in a backwater, you've got to shoot higher. You want to be on the Spotify Top 50. If you're not playing for all the marbles you're gonna get almost none, that's the world we live in. Set your sights high, better to fail in the center ring than succeed outside the building.
As for newspapers and TV...
The newspaper is for other business people, not to make fans. The goal there is to get others in the business of bartering, booking and selling talent interested. Which is why all press must not be standard who, what, why, where and when. There has to be an angle, without one no one is hooked. And statistics about how far you've already come. Everybody lies, you should too, entertainment is built on falsehood, either your project will succeed or be forgotten about.
And television is way overrated, there's just too much of it. Unless you get lucky and have the theme song for a hit cable drama that's played every week it's a long shot. As for appearing on late night shows, there's no buzz, a video at best.
And meanwhile you should be making them, YouTube is your friend. If you say otherwise none of the above applies, you've already made it.
Sure, the work is most important.
But that's when the job is just beginning.
There's endless product and ever more gatekeepers, how do you break through? Just putting your stuff up on the internet is not enough. Just spamming everybody you know is not enough. Building success is a job and a science unto itself.
Think about it.
P.S. Social networking is for satiating your fans, it's not where you break your career. Sure, there are exceptions, like Khaled, but just like with Radiohead's "In Rainbows" or PSY's "Gangnam Style" once people have seen the trick it can never be replicated. As for promotional stunts, rarely do they succeed, it's more about hard work.
Your challenge is getting noticed.
So you may be sitting at home, in your beautiful house, with your beautiful wife, asking me...DIDN'T YOU SAY JUST THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE?
Yes, in the last decade. Things changed. Bob Dylan sang about that, but no one seems to realize the puck keeps moving, and media ain't hockey, the rules change too.
In a world where people are overwhelmed by content, they don't want to hear about yours. And the problem is great content gets cast aside as well as horrible content. You did the work and nothing is happening, what's up?
It's not your fault. You just have to find a way to run the gauntlet.
If you're a musician your greatest asset is your friends, your fellow musicians. You can trade favors and trade secrets. They've been there before you, they can recommend others, they can give you a leg up. How hip-hop has figured this all out and other genres have not is beyond me. Feature an up and comer on your track and suddenly they're known too. Great managers realize this. Used to be you let the agent and promoter decide on the opening act. Now you manage the act, give the headliner a piece of the action and build this new act underneath them. This is how Five Seconds Of Summer was built under One Direction and Hey Violet! under Five Seconds Of Summer. Opening for other acts in stadia and arenas pays dividends, because they get to SEE YOU!
Assuming you have a manager to put this all together.
You need a representative. Without one you can't get ahead.
If you're a live act, maybe you focus on an agent first. One who gets you gigs.
But you only sign with those who are passionate. Better to be with the second-tier rep who cares than the first-tier one who doesn't. It's gonna be a lot of work no matter who's involved, who is going to really do it, not give up when the going gets hard.
But once you've got your team, the hard work really begins.
First and foremost, you must be great where and whenever the rubber meets the road, you must deliver, but so many concepts pooh-poohed the last decade...are not so onerous today.
Credibility...
It only matters once you've flown above the fray. If you can only say no, you won't get ahead. Seemingly every classic rock band who said no said yes to endorsements/promotions before they hit it big, just check YouTube for the adverts. If no one knows who you are, it doesn't matter what you believe.
A story... Once you've got people's attention, you must have one. Willing to do anything to make it from a broken home is not one. You must evidence an identity, that's what the social networking era has taught us. But Instagram is lowest common denominator, it's just how you look, whereas an artist wins by evidencing how they THINK! And don't be afraid to offend, unless you've got a strong point of view, chances are the passionate early adopters will not, adopt you that is.
Meanwhile, you need a steady stream of product. In this fast-moving world you never want to abandon your hard core, satiate them as you continue to troll for new fans, otherwise they'll move on to something else.
Next comes streaming services. It's where it happens first, and where you find out if you win or lose. You must be with handlers who have relationships, who can get you on playlists, where the streaming companies can find out if you react. Radio is way down the line. If your handler/representative talks about radio first, abandon them, they're built for the past, not the future. Sure, radio can reach mass, but long after streaming services, it's for the least interested, you're looking for the hard core to make you happen and stay with you. Furthermore, many radio formats are nearly meaningless. You can be on AAA or Active Rock and be number one and play clubs, and that just sucks. You're a second-rate character in a third-rate world and life is too hard to end up in a backwater, you've got to shoot higher. You want to be on the Spotify Top 50. If you're not playing for all the marbles you're gonna get almost none, that's the world we live in. Set your sights high, better to fail in the center ring than succeed outside the building.
As for newspapers and TV...
The newspaper is for other business people, not to make fans. The goal there is to get others in the business of bartering, booking and selling talent interested. Which is why all press must not be standard who, what, why, where and when. There has to be an angle, without one no one is hooked. And statistics about how far you've already come. Everybody lies, you should too, entertainment is built on falsehood, either your project will succeed or be forgotten about.
And television is way overrated, there's just too much of it. Unless you get lucky and have the theme song for a hit cable drama that's played every week it's a long shot. As for appearing on late night shows, there's no buzz, a video at best.
And meanwhile you should be making them, YouTube is your friend. If you say otherwise none of the above applies, you've already made it.
Sure, the work is most important.
But that's when the job is just beginning.
There's endless product and ever more gatekeepers, how do you break through? Just putting your stuff up on the internet is not enough. Just spamming everybody you know is not enough. Building success is a job and a science unto itself.
Think about it.
P.S. Social networking is for satiating your fans, it's not where you break your career. Sure, there are exceptions, like Khaled, but just like with Radiohead's "In Rainbows" or PSY's "Gangnam Style" once people have seen the trick it can never be replicated. As for promotional stunts, rarely do they succeed, it's more about hard work.
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The Grammys Are More Important Than Ever
Hanging with a bunch of douche bag insiders for a week?
WORTHLESS!
Performing on the telecast or winning one of the top four awards?
PRICELESS!
Welcome to 2018, where you just can't get your message out. There's too much noise. How are you going to cut through that clutter?
By appearing on the Grammy telecast.
Forget the declining numbers, forget the passage of the tweetstorm, don't confuse your career interests with those of television and advertising. Your goal is to get your act seen and your music heard.
And the barrier to entry is nonexistent. As long as you can motivate people. That's the hardest job today. How do you get people to click?
Don't confuse the Grammys with the Oscars, totally different animal. Despite all the press, the Oscars are passe, movies don't drive the culture, not even close. And you can't click and hit play and watch the movies instantly after the telecast, most are unavailable, except in theatres, you've got to pay, and people forget. Whereas music is all about instant gratification. And this is a good thing. With a barrier to entry so low, you can hook people and then... Think like a tech company, gain fans first, then figure out how to monetize them. Putting the music behind a paywall is anathema. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. How you gonna get them to come to the show and buy your merch if they've never heard your music? Sure, YouTube can pay more, but not everyone is gonna subscribe to a streaming service, thank god for the Spotify free tier, back in the radio days not everybody bought music and that's true today, although the value proposition is so good that over a hundred million people pay to subscribe.
Once again, you've got to get on the show. Which means you need a hit or a good manager or both. It's a negotiation. U2's new album is a complete stiff, but killing it on the telecast will help them sell tickets, their main driver. And despite you and me knowing that hip-hop drives the culture, many people tune out. But when they see rappers on the telecast...at least they'll know what the rest of us are talking about, they too can become part of the discussion, they might even become fans!
And the great thing about music on television is it sucks. Especially if it's loud and raucous. Which means you have to go to get the real experience. This is just an advertisement for the gig. And if you laugh, you're missing the point. Everybody on this show has an audience, and after their heroes appear, they're gonna talk about it endlessly, spreading the word.
And a nobody could become a star. That's what happened to Chris Stapleton. He appeared on the CMAs and overnight he was anointed, winning helped too, seemed like all of his brethren dug him.
This is what occurred with Bonnie Raitt thirty years ago. But thirty years have passed. It's about consumption, not purchase. We measure the after-effects differently. We want to know if people listen, if they've become FANS!
In the old days it was easy to keep up. A number one was known by everybody. Flip the radio dial and you could get an appraisal of the landscape in an hour. Watch MTV for an equal length of time and you knew what was going on. Now it's all a mishmash, a cornucopia of influences with none seeming to dominate. The Spotify Top 50 is very different from the Mediabase chart, but the reason record companies focus on radio is because of the same thing here, it's the easiest way to reach mass.
But radio is dying. Never ever listen to the prognosticators saying otherwise. They're all in the industry. Just ask anybody under twenty if they're listening. We live in an on demand culture and you stream not only at home, but in your automobile. Waiting for your favorite to come up is so twentieth century.
But we are human. We congregate, we want to be part of the mass. So we watch this show for various reasons. Insiders to rate and react, hipsters to judge, fans to swoon and outsiders to see what is going on. Get out of your bubble if you want to know the impact. We like rankings, we like coherence, we like to take the pulse of art and society.
So if you're not on the telecast and you're not up for one of the big awards, stay home, it's a meaningless circle jerk wherein you think you're important but you're not. If the big acts have a hard time getting universal traction, what are your odds? Oh, so you want to put "Grammy Winner" on your bio... Well, think of all the greats who never won. And the organization has historically gotten it wrong time and again.
But if Kendrick wins instead of Jay Z this year...
His fanbase is only gonna get bigger. Because if everybody's into it...
Maybe you should be too.
WORTHLESS!
Performing on the telecast or winning one of the top four awards?
PRICELESS!
Welcome to 2018, where you just can't get your message out. There's too much noise. How are you going to cut through that clutter?
By appearing on the Grammy telecast.
Forget the declining numbers, forget the passage of the tweetstorm, don't confuse your career interests with those of television and advertising. Your goal is to get your act seen and your music heard.
And the barrier to entry is nonexistent. As long as you can motivate people. That's the hardest job today. How do you get people to click?
Don't confuse the Grammys with the Oscars, totally different animal. Despite all the press, the Oscars are passe, movies don't drive the culture, not even close. And you can't click and hit play and watch the movies instantly after the telecast, most are unavailable, except in theatres, you've got to pay, and people forget. Whereas music is all about instant gratification. And this is a good thing. With a barrier to entry so low, you can hook people and then... Think like a tech company, gain fans first, then figure out how to monetize them. Putting the music behind a paywall is anathema. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. How you gonna get them to come to the show and buy your merch if they've never heard your music? Sure, YouTube can pay more, but not everyone is gonna subscribe to a streaming service, thank god for the Spotify free tier, back in the radio days not everybody bought music and that's true today, although the value proposition is so good that over a hundred million people pay to subscribe.
Once again, you've got to get on the show. Which means you need a hit or a good manager or both. It's a negotiation. U2's new album is a complete stiff, but killing it on the telecast will help them sell tickets, their main driver. And despite you and me knowing that hip-hop drives the culture, many people tune out. But when they see rappers on the telecast...at least they'll know what the rest of us are talking about, they too can become part of the discussion, they might even become fans!
And the great thing about music on television is it sucks. Especially if it's loud and raucous. Which means you have to go to get the real experience. This is just an advertisement for the gig. And if you laugh, you're missing the point. Everybody on this show has an audience, and after their heroes appear, they're gonna talk about it endlessly, spreading the word.
And a nobody could become a star. That's what happened to Chris Stapleton. He appeared on the CMAs and overnight he was anointed, winning helped too, seemed like all of his brethren dug him.
This is what occurred with Bonnie Raitt thirty years ago. But thirty years have passed. It's about consumption, not purchase. We measure the after-effects differently. We want to know if people listen, if they've become FANS!
In the old days it was easy to keep up. A number one was known by everybody. Flip the radio dial and you could get an appraisal of the landscape in an hour. Watch MTV for an equal length of time and you knew what was going on. Now it's all a mishmash, a cornucopia of influences with none seeming to dominate. The Spotify Top 50 is very different from the Mediabase chart, but the reason record companies focus on radio is because of the same thing here, it's the easiest way to reach mass.
But radio is dying. Never ever listen to the prognosticators saying otherwise. They're all in the industry. Just ask anybody under twenty if they're listening. We live in an on demand culture and you stream not only at home, but in your automobile. Waiting for your favorite to come up is so twentieth century.
But we are human. We congregate, we want to be part of the mass. So we watch this show for various reasons. Insiders to rate and react, hipsters to judge, fans to swoon and outsiders to see what is going on. Get out of your bubble if you want to know the impact. We like rankings, we like coherence, we like to take the pulse of art and society.
So if you're not on the telecast and you're not up for one of the big awards, stay home, it's a meaningless circle jerk wherein you think you're important but you're not. If the big acts have a hard time getting universal traction, what are your odds? Oh, so you want to put "Grammy Winner" on your bio... Well, think of all the greats who never won. And the organization has historically gotten it wrong time and again.
But if Kendrick wins instead of Jay Z this year...
His fanbase is only gonna get bigger. Because if everybody's into it...
Maybe you should be too.
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Wednesday 24 January 2018
The Elliott Murphy Documentary
He's not happy.
But that's the ethos of an artist, not a businessman.
And we've all become business people.
In the limited rock press, a fraction of what it is today, filled with press releases and the mass opinions of the great unwashed, Elliott Murphy got traction with his 1973 album "Aquashow."
But it was on Polydor. And therefore destined for the dustbin. Yes, it was a major label, yes, he had a record deal, but sometimes you play with one hand behind your back and you just can't break through.
And then your moment is passed.
Elliott switched labels, even put out music on Columbia. But the sound was changing, he was no longer the new thing, he drank and took drugs and finally put the whole thing to bed on his last promotional tour, he just could not be disappointed one more time.
So he went back to college. He was gonna become a lawyer.
Instead, he moved to France, and became a legend. Probably one most of you have never heard of.
But his fans keep him alive.
This all went down prior to the MTV era, never mind the social network era. Before that, you could only be so big. As big as you were during the AOR heyday of the seventies, it was nothing compared to the eighties when MTV penetrated the populace and everybody knew your name, when suddenly there was no time for non-stars like Elliott Murphy.
But that changed the paradigm. Money became ever so much more important, along with looks. To the point where the whole scene flipped over into pop, which was anathema before this. You didn't want to be lowest common denominator, you wanted to make a statement, you wanted the people to come to you, not vice versa.
But those days are through. Of course there are exceptions. But very few with success. You see today you can yell loudly and be heard, for a minute, before you're tuned out, but that does not mean anything you say is worth listening to.
So when everybody wants to make it in America, Elliott Murphy moves to France and has a hard time. His middle years. Too old to die young, yet too young to be a legend. He's working. And recording. And writing. Because this is what he does.
And he doesn't bitch.
If you can make it work, you soldier on.
Otherwise, you give up.
Some drink themselves to death, O.D. But you're faced with challenges and you make a choice. Sometimes you've got to give up. Sometimes that's the brave thing to do. Before you throw your life away. I know too many people who threw their lives away for rock and roll. They never finished school, they have no 401k. All they've got is their memories, and they wonder what happened to them. Back when a song was everything and a show was under ten bucks.
Elliott was buds with Bruce and Billy Joel, they're in this doc. But really, it's about Elliott. How he soldiered on when no one cared other than his fans.
He talks about playing for them instead of the execs.
Making records because he has something to say.
Wanting to write a new album right before the show, play it, and then discard it and do it all over again.
You'll learn more about being an artist, being a musician, having a career, in this documentary than you will in most every other rock doc, because it's not about the facts, but the emotions, the feelings, as all great art is.
Strangely you can't turn this show off. Because not only is it shot well, it's personable. You're right in Elliott's living room and mind. And the longer you stay tuned, you realize there's something there, not only the original single "Last Of The Rock Stars," but new material, like "On Elvis Presley's Birthday." He says it's his most famous song these days, but I'd never heard it. But as he sings/talks about driving around with his father on January 8th your mind starts to drift, you start thinking about your own father, about the times when the world was not so networked and you rattled around in your own brain. Hell, is social networking just a way for us to feel less lonely?
And the Europeans love the music without knowing the lyrics, without knowing the language.
But there's something in the music.
There is something in the music. To a great degree we've lost touch with. No one wanted to be a brand back then. They wanted to make a statement, they wanted to be heard. The trappings were just that, you were interested in the essence.
But then it all got co-opted, the big boys and the money. Just like the internet today. Does anybody really believe they can compete with the Big Four, who seem not to have our best interests at heart?
But, once again, that's commerce, not art, corporations, not people.
Art when done right evidences life. Makes you think about your existence. Makes you contemplate your place in the universe.
We need artists to not only make sense of it all, but to make it worth living.
Not all artists can be household names.
But that does not mean those on a lower plane have little to contribute.
Elliott Murphy has hung in there long enough, paid enough dues to now be considered legendary. As he says, he's on his victory lap. There was a pot of gold at the end of his rainbow, but it was chocolate, not cash.
You never know what you're gonna find, where you're gonna get, if you're an artist.
Elliott Murphy is an artist.
And that's why I can't stop paying attention.
Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel interviewed for
THE SECOND ACT OF ELLIOTT MURPHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQudLfTpNY
Trailer THE SECOND ACT OF ELLIOTT MURPHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBEpcWOJ_Ro
"On Elvis Presley's Birthday": http://spoti.fi/2DCXso2 or http://bit.ly/2nadfjl
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But that's the ethos of an artist, not a businessman.
And we've all become business people.
In the limited rock press, a fraction of what it is today, filled with press releases and the mass opinions of the great unwashed, Elliott Murphy got traction with his 1973 album "Aquashow."
But it was on Polydor. And therefore destined for the dustbin. Yes, it was a major label, yes, he had a record deal, but sometimes you play with one hand behind your back and you just can't break through.
And then your moment is passed.
Elliott switched labels, even put out music on Columbia. But the sound was changing, he was no longer the new thing, he drank and took drugs and finally put the whole thing to bed on his last promotional tour, he just could not be disappointed one more time.
So he went back to college. He was gonna become a lawyer.
Instead, he moved to France, and became a legend. Probably one most of you have never heard of.
But his fans keep him alive.
This all went down prior to the MTV era, never mind the social network era. Before that, you could only be so big. As big as you were during the AOR heyday of the seventies, it was nothing compared to the eighties when MTV penetrated the populace and everybody knew your name, when suddenly there was no time for non-stars like Elliott Murphy.
But that changed the paradigm. Money became ever so much more important, along with looks. To the point where the whole scene flipped over into pop, which was anathema before this. You didn't want to be lowest common denominator, you wanted to make a statement, you wanted the people to come to you, not vice versa.
But those days are through. Of course there are exceptions. But very few with success. You see today you can yell loudly and be heard, for a minute, before you're tuned out, but that does not mean anything you say is worth listening to.
So when everybody wants to make it in America, Elliott Murphy moves to France and has a hard time. His middle years. Too old to die young, yet too young to be a legend. He's working. And recording. And writing. Because this is what he does.
And he doesn't bitch.
If you can make it work, you soldier on.
Otherwise, you give up.
Some drink themselves to death, O.D. But you're faced with challenges and you make a choice. Sometimes you've got to give up. Sometimes that's the brave thing to do. Before you throw your life away. I know too many people who threw their lives away for rock and roll. They never finished school, they have no 401k. All they've got is their memories, and they wonder what happened to them. Back when a song was everything and a show was under ten bucks.
Elliott was buds with Bruce and Billy Joel, they're in this doc. But really, it's about Elliott. How he soldiered on when no one cared other than his fans.
He talks about playing for them instead of the execs.
Making records because he has something to say.
Wanting to write a new album right before the show, play it, and then discard it and do it all over again.
You'll learn more about being an artist, being a musician, having a career, in this documentary than you will in most every other rock doc, because it's not about the facts, but the emotions, the feelings, as all great art is.
Strangely you can't turn this show off. Because not only is it shot well, it's personable. You're right in Elliott's living room and mind. And the longer you stay tuned, you realize there's something there, not only the original single "Last Of The Rock Stars," but new material, like "On Elvis Presley's Birthday." He says it's his most famous song these days, but I'd never heard it. But as he sings/talks about driving around with his father on January 8th your mind starts to drift, you start thinking about your own father, about the times when the world was not so networked and you rattled around in your own brain. Hell, is social networking just a way for us to feel less lonely?
And the Europeans love the music without knowing the lyrics, without knowing the language.
But there's something in the music.
There is something in the music. To a great degree we've lost touch with. No one wanted to be a brand back then. They wanted to make a statement, they wanted to be heard. The trappings were just that, you were interested in the essence.
But then it all got co-opted, the big boys and the money. Just like the internet today. Does anybody really believe they can compete with the Big Four, who seem not to have our best interests at heart?
But, once again, that's commerce, not art, corporations, not people.
Art when done right evidences life. Makes you think about your existence. Makes you contemplate your place in the universe.
We need artists to not only make sense of it all, but to make it worth living.
Not all artists can be household names.
But that does not mean those on a lower plane have little to contribute.
Elliott Murphy has hung in there long enough, paid enough dues to now be considered legendary. As he says, he's on his victory lap. There was a pot of gold at the end of his rainbow, but it was chocolate, not cash.
You never know what you're gonna find, where you're gonna get, if you're an artist.
Elliott Murphy is an artist.
And that's why I can't stop paying attention.
Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel interviewed for
THE SECOND ACT OF ELLIOTT MURPHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQudLfTpNY
Trailer THE SECOND ACT OF ELLIOTT MURPHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBEpcWOJ_Ro
"On Elvis Presley's Birthday": http://spoti.fi/2DCXso2 or http://bit.ly/2nadfjl
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Tuesday 23 January 2018
Recorded Versus Live
Maybe we've got it all wrong. Maybe the record isn't the advertisement for the live show, but the live show is the advertisement for the record!
Think about this. It's only been a hundred years or so that we've had recorded music. But prior to that, for millennia, music triumphed.
And it wasn't until the late sixties when the album format burgeoned that there became so much money in recordings. Which ultimately went through the roof with CDs and the rocket ship of MTV. Suddenly, we were living in a monoculture and everybody was paying a high price for a plastic disc with only one good song.
And then the whole thing crashed. Credit the internet, credit Napster, and ever since everyone in the food chain has been complaining we just haven't made the revenue on recordings we once did.
But live business has gone through the roof.
Why?
Because of a culture change, because of a societal change, so much of what we consume became commodities, we all had the same items, which were relatively cheap, we were looking for something to separate ourselves from the pack, to stand out, and to communicate with others.
Ergo the live experience.
We haven't analyzed this, only basked in its payoff.
We think festivals are about headliners when the truth is they're gatherings of the masses akin to Woodstock. It's where you go to commune with others, in a world where you're often at home, in front of a screen.
And we've hit peak festival and many will survive, but not all.
And the idea of going out to the local bar to hear music is anathema. Who wants to hear that much bad stuff, especially when you can be titillated at home.
We've got endless cash to go see superstars in concert. But how do you become a superstar?
Traditionally you make recordings, assemble enough of them where you can go on the road and repeat them.
But it didn't used to be this way. It used to be you went to the show to see the act explore, to hear something different, unique. Prior to the MTV era when the public expected a production akin to the video.
And now...
The biggest act in the world is "Hamilton."
Its Soundscan number is almost equal to Taylor Swift's. Furthermore, it's got multiple companies on the road. It's basking in bucks. Why?
Because of its story, because of its uniqueness.
You can listen to the music at home, but it's nothing like being there. This isn't just songs, it's story, you're caught up in it, you can never get enough, assuming you can get tickets, you go again and again and again. WHY AREN'T WE MAKING MORE OF THIS?
Instead we're focused on hitmakers du jour, propped up by producers and topliners, music made by committee, and one educated Puerto Rican American is inspired by a biography and comes up with a musical by his lonesome which is staged in collaboration with others and all we can do is marvel at his genius, deservedly so. This is the magic that created classic rock, which blew up the business, and it's right in front of our very face!
This is not so different from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, touring every year to boffo at the b.o. The recordings are secondary.
We've figured out online monetization of recorded music, streaming won, yet we haven't analyzed the underlying product. While record companies are investing in tech startups, they are not investing in music, in creativity. Do you really think "Hamilton" can be the only one?
P.S. Phish gets its fans to come back multiple nights with surprise content. You feel if you don't go, you're missing out. Sure, it's all ultimately videoed and up on YouTube, but still you need to be there, to see what happens next.
P.P.S. Jazz and blues and even rock were built upon improvisation. Playing the hits note for note is passe. We need to train the audience to come to hear something new. It's not about the new track that sends you to the bathroom, but EXPLORATION! Believe me, no one went to the bathroom when Eric Clapton stretched out in Cream.
P.P.P.S. Record companies should be CONTENT companies. And the goal of their business should be to own rights which rain revenue in the future, and they're all not in recordings. Instead of having songwriting camps to create hits, they need to nurture talent to stretch out and do something new. Not only create musicals, but productions... Never forget that Genesis built a loyal audience on production, the hits came MUCH later. And Peter Gabriel hasn't had a hit in eons but he continues to sell out when he tours because his audience expects something DIFFERENT, not only production, but reworkings of legendary songs, with new players and instrumentation.
P.P.P.P.S. The recordings are just the beginning. Hearing them rendered note for note live is actually a lame experience. What can you add to make one plus one equal three?
P.P.P.P.P.S. Story is king. It's what created the album concept, it's what's making TV the prime creative outlet today. Why not inject story in music?
This is an almost two year old article and the numbers have only gotten better: "'Hamilton' Inc.: The Path to a Billion-Dollar Broadway Show": http://nyti.ms/2nLAvad
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Think about this. It's only been a hundred years or so that we've had recorded music. But prior to that, for millennia, music triumphed.
And it wasn't until the late sixties when the album format burgeoned that there became so much money in recordings. Which ultimately went through the roof with CDs and the rocket ship of MTV. Suddenly, we were living in a monoculture and everybody was paying a high price for a plastic disc with only one good song.
And then the whole thing crashed. Credit the internet, credit Napster, and ever since everyone in the food chain has been complaining we just haven't made the revenue on recordings we once did.
But live business has gone through the roof.
Why?
Because of a culture change, because of a societal change, so much of what we consume became commodities, we all had the same items, which were relatively cheap, we were looking for something to separate ourselves from the pack, to stand out, and to communicate with others.
Ergo the live experience.
We haven't analyzed this, only basked in its payoff.
We think festivals are about headliners when the truth is they're gatherings of the masses akin to Woodstock. It's where you go to commune with others, in a world where you're often at home, in front of a screen.
And we've hit peak festival and many will survive, but not all.
And the idea of going out to the local bar to hear music is anathema. Who wants to hear that much bad stuff, especially when you can be titillated at home.
We've got endless cash to go see superstars in concert. But how do you become a superstar?
Traditionally you make recordings, assemble enough of them where you can go on the road and repeat them.
But it didn't used to be this way. It used to be you went to the show to see the act explore, to hear something different, unique. Prior to the MTV era when the public expected a production akin to the video.
And now...
The biggest act in the world is "Hamilton."
Its Soundscan number is almost equal to Taylor Swift's. Furthermore, it's got multiple companies on the road. It's basking in bucks. Why?
Because of its story, because of its uniqueness.
You can listen to the music at home, but it's nothing like being there. This isn't just songs, it's story, you're caught up in it, you can never get enough, assuming you can get tickets, you go again and again and again. WHY AREN'T WE MAKING MORE OF THIS?
Instead we're focused on hitmakers du jour, propped up by producers and topliners, music made by committee, and one educated Puerto Rican American is inspired by a biography and comes up with a musical by his lonesome which is staged in collaboration with others and all we can do is marvel at his genius, deservedly so. This is the magic that created classic rock, which blew up the business, and it's right in front of our very face!
This is not so different from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, touring every year to boffo at the b.o. The recordings are secondary.
We've figured out online monetization of recorded music, streaming won, yet we haven't analyzed the underlying product. While record companies are investing in tech startups, they are not investing in music, in creativity. Do you really think "Hamilton" can be the only one?
P.S. Phish gets its fans to come back multiple nights with surprise content. You feel if you don't go, you're missing out. Sure, it's all ultimately videoed and up on YouTube, but still you need to be there, to see what happens next.
P.P.S. Jazz and blues and even rock were built upon improvisation. Playing the hits note for note is passe. We need to train the audience to come to hear something new. It's not about the new track that sends you to the bathroom, but EXPLORATION! Believe me, no one went to the bathroom when Eric Clapton stretched out in Cream.
P.P.P.S. Record companies should be CONTENT companies. And the goal of their business should be to own rights which rain revenue in the future, and they're all not in recordings. Instead of having songwriting camps to create hits, they need to nurture talent to stretch out and do something new. Not only create musicals, but productions... Never forget that Genesis built a loyal audience on production, the hits came MUCH later. And Peter Gabriel hasn't had a hit in eons but he continues to sell out when he tours because his audience expects something DIFFERENT, not only production, but reworkings of legendary songs, with new players and instrumentation.
P.P.P.P.S. The recordings are just the beginning. Hearing them rendered note for note live is actually a lame experience. What can you add to make one plus one equal three?
P.P.P.P.P.S. Story is king. It's what created the album concept, it's what's making TV the prime creative outlet today. Why not inject story in music?
This is an almost two year old article and the numbers have only gotten better: "'Hamilton' Inc.: The Path to a Billion-Dollar Broadway Show": http://nyti.ms/2nLAvad
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Andrew Loog Oldham-This Week's Podcast
How does a young fashionite lose his job after experiencing the first of numerous nervous breakdowns end up managing and producing the Rolling Stones?
By doing publicity for the Beatles and knowing a great band when he sees one (and tying up with a more experienced partner to add gravitas).
This was when Brian Jones was the spokesman. This was when the blues-revival was in full-form. This was before Mick and Keith started to write their own songs.
I'd say Andrew is self-invented, but even more he's self-educated. Education is overrated, it squeezes the creativity right out of you, assuming you've got the spark to begin with. Which Andrew does, along with a ton of intelligence and insight. That's what's impressed me most with the podcast interviewees so far...their intelligence. It's the way they put the words together, the way they can see things others cannot. Sure, listen to this podcast for the facts, but every once in a while Andrew drops wisdom that will drop your jaw.
He tells the story of getting Lennon and McCartney to let the Stones cut "I Wanna Be Your Man." He runs into them serendipitously after leaving a session freaking out there's no follow-up hit and they come to the studio and pretend to finish the song when the truth is they cut it with Ringo on vocals already. And Andrew said they didn't do it for the money, but to see their names on the record. That was the motivation back then, TO BE PART OF IT! You sat at home looking at your 45s, to see your name under the title...WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR??
Andrew was there. When "Satisfaction" was cut. The key is the acoustic guitars under Mick's vocal that were ultimately mixed way down.
So if you're interested in the Stones.
If you're interested in how someone goes from zero to hero.
Listen.
Listen to Andrew Loog Oldham on TuneIn
http://tun.in/tikfau
Apple Podcasts:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/id1316200737?mt=2&i=1000400505882
Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Ijrpbkgbdxmjxc3netk434lpsv4
Stitcher:
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/bob-lefsetz/andrew-loog-oldham-7
Overcast: https://overcast.fm/+LBr-He7UI
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By doing publicity for the Beatles and knowing a great band when he sees one (and tying up with a more experienced partner to add gravitas).
This was when Brian Jones was the spokesman. This was when the blues-revival was in full-form. This was before Mick and Keith started to write their own songs.
I'd say Andrew is self-invented, but even more he's self-educated. Education is overrated, it squeezes the creativity right out of you, assuming you've got the spark to begin with. Which Andrew does, along with a ton of intelligence and insight. That's what's impressed me most with the podcast interviewees so far...their intelligence. It's the way they put the words together, the way they can see things others cannot. Sure, listen to this podcast for the facts, but every once in a while Andrew drops wisdom that will drop your jaw.
He tells the story of getting Lennon and McCartney to let the Stones cut "I Wanna Be Your Man." He runs into them serendipitously after leaving a session freaking out there's no follow-up hit and they come to the studio and pretend to finish the song when the truth is they cut it with Ringo on vocals already. And Andrew said they didn't do it for the money, but to see their names on the record. That was the motivation back then, TO BE PART OF IT! You sat at home looking at your 45s, to see your name under the title...WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR??
Andrew was there. When "Satisfaction" was cut. The key is the acoustic guitars under Mick's vocal that were ultimately mixed way down.
So if you're interested in the Stones.
If you're interested in how someone goes from zero to hero.
Listen.
Listen to Andrew Loog Oldham on TuneIn
http://tun.in/tikfau
Apple Podcasts:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/id1316200737?mt=2&i=1000400505882
Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Ijrpbkgbdxmjxc3netk434lpsv4
Stitcher:
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/bob-lefsetz/andrew-loog-oldham-7
Overcast: https://overcast.fm/+LBr-He7UI
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Monday 22 January 2018
Brooks
You want to be sponsored. That's what separates the professionals from the amateurs, whether you're on the corporate team. And today brands are everything, musical acts come and go, but brands have a much longer lifespan. You align yourself with one and it takes a lot to shake you from it. Look at Elon Musk's Boring Company promotion. Before Xmas he tweeted that he was selling a limited number of hats, they went like wildfire, and now owners get perks, like tours of the company. These people are not only wearing their hats but talking about the company non-stop, how do you achieve this?
Certainly by creating quality products.
But innovative marketing primes the pump, it gooses the adoption, it makes you win.
I was a Nike guy forever, but then they discontinued my model. I switched to New Balance, which famously doesn't do this, only they do, the latest edition of my sneaker fit nothing like the previous iteration, of which I'd purchased three, I had to move on.
Research told me to go to Brooks.
I hadn't owned a pair of Brooks since the turn of the decade, from the seventies to the eighties, when their Varus Wedge was the talk of running, when Jim Fixx was still alive and the Vantage won all the tests.
And now research told me the Brooks Addiction was the state of the art. Nobody buys blind anymore, everybody goes to Amazon and Google, usually the former first, they don't want to take a risk, they want the best.
And the first pair I purchased were too small but I exchanged them for one half-size bigger, and voila! I had new sneakers.
But I still lamented the loss of my New Balances, I was just warming up to the brand, but it bugged me that they fell apart. And now the Brooks...DIDN'T!
But nobody I knew was wearing them, I didn't come out of the closet until...
This story in "Bloomberg Businessweek":
"Brooks Needs Runners Who Hate to Run": https://bloom.bg/2F5L5xT
If you get one magazine, and only one, it's got to be "Bloomberg Businessweek," I can't say this enough, it's one of the few magazines that's gotten better since the advertising crash. Hell, you could possibly cancel your subscription to the "Wall Street Journal" and still end up ahead. The "Journal" has made its articles ever-shorter, and the right wing Op-Ed pages are laughable, come on, don't you ever print the other viewpoint? Despite what the bloviators believe, the "New York Times" does. You'll learn more about the Kalanick/Uber story in this week's edition than you have in any newspaper. But it was this Brooks story that rang my bell.
Because I was wearing my shoes while I read it.
And it wasn't a puff piece, it delineated the history of the company and innovation.
You see Brooks was niche. It was for runners only. The elite ones, who competed. But moving down the food chain, the usual suspects won, like Nike, which Brooks eclipsed at the Boston Marathon. You see Brooks was utilitarian, it wasn't cool.
So they changed their designs.
And told their new audience they weren't runners. That's right, if you're not insulting anybody, if you're not drawing a line in the sand, you'll have no adherents. One of the worst things marketers can do is try and appeal to everybody. Then you've got no edge, no loops to be hooked. Furthermore, people pay attention to you when you take a stand.
But what Brooks was actually saying was most people weren't competitors, they were running, but casually, for fun, for exercise, and Brooks now wanted their business. And if you signed up, they'd send you a dollar and you'd be sponsored:
"Real track-and-field sponsorships are notoriously meager; a 2012 MarketWatch survey found that 80 percent of runners ranked in the top 10 for their events made less than $50,000 a year. Brooks's sponsorship stunt is roughly equivalent to adding one professional runner to its roster.) More than 60,000 people have signed up and subsequently peppered social media with tongue-in-cheek posts about their sponsorship deals. They share their 4-mile runs and 9-minute miles. Sometimes they'll use the #brooksendorsed or #brooksathlete hashtags on pictures of themselves wearing Brooks shoes (but often other companies' clothing). The Levitate has been popping up with increasing frequency on these sponsorees. A few weeks ago a woman in London used them to run on a treadmill while watching Netflix. A man in Maine went for a walk in them. 'They're so light,' gushed one new fan, Marisol Beck, 22, in Carlsbad, Calif., who took up running in 2016."
Brooks created a social media juggernaut nearly instantly. Sure, they designed some hip shoes, but even more they designed a hip way to get their message out, to bond buyers to them.
I was once sponsored by Smith ski goggles, my first sponsorship ever. I use Smith to this day. So much of what I buy I stick with. It gives me something to believe in in a land where humans are sold out hacks groveling for dollars. One of the things that bonded me to Apple was Steve Jobs, who had no fear of insulting people, who thought he had it right, was in search of excellence as opposed to expediency, the end result was the most valuable company in the world.
Who wouldn't admire that?
The naysayers.
But it's when they show up that you know you've made it. No one made fun of my Apple hat in the eighties and nineties, no one blew back, no one cared, but now I hear complaints about Apple every damn day, which makes me believe I'm on the right track, like with Brooks.
"Elon Musk says he's 'capping' production of Boring Company hats at 50,000 (that's $1 million worth)": http://cnb.cx/2ApDHh2
"Musk's Boring Co. invites 10 lucky hat buyers to tour LA tunnel and drive boring machine": http://bit.ly/2BkuxiM
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Certainly by creating quality products.
But innovative marketing primes the pump, it gooses the adoption, it makes you win.
I was a Nike guy forever, but then they discontinued my model. I switched to New Balance, which famously doesn't do this, only they do, the latest edition of my sneaker fit nothing like the previous iteration, of which I'd purchased three, I had to move on.
Research told me to go to Brooks.
I hadn't owned a pair of Brooks since the turn of the decade, from the seventies to the eighties, when their Varus Wedge was the talk of running, when Jim Fixx was still alive and the Vantage won all the tests.
And now research told me the Brooks Addiction was the state of the art. Nobody buys blind anymore, everybody goes to Amazon and Google, usually the former first, they don't want to take a risk, they want the best.
And the first pair I purchased were too small but I exchanged them for one half-size bigger, and voila! I had new sneakers.
But I still lamented the loss of my New Balances, I was just warming up to the brand, but it bugged me that they fell apart. And now the Brooks...DIDN'T!
But nobody I knew was wearing them, I didn't come out of the closet until...
This story in "Bloomberg Businessweek":
"Brooks Needs Runners Who Hate to Run": https://bloom.bg/2F5L5xT
If you get one magazine, and only one, it's got to be "Bloomberg Businessweek," I can't say this enough, it's one of the few magazines that's gotten better since the advertising crash. Hell, you could possibly cancel your subscription to the "Wall Street Journal" and still end up ahead. The "Journal" has made its articles ever-shorter, and the right wing Op-Ed pages are laughable, come on, don't you ever print the other viewpoint? Despite what the bloviators believe, the "New York Times" does. You'll learn more about the Kalanick/Uber story in this week's edition than you have in any newspaper. But it was this Brooks story that rang my bell.
Because I was wearing my shoes while I read it.
And it wasn't a puff piece, it delineated the history of the company and innovation.
You see Brooks was niche. It was for runners only. The elite ones, who competed. But moving down the food chain, the usual suspects won, like Nike, which Brooks eclipsed at the Boston Marathon. You see Brooks was utilitarian, it wasn't cool.
So they changed their designs.
And told their new audience they weren't runners. That's right, if you're not insulting anybody, if you're not drawing a line in the sand, you'll have no adherents. One of the worst things marketers can do is try and appeal to everybody. Then you've got no edge, no loops to be hooked. Furthermore, people pay attention to you when you take a stand.
But what Brooks was actually saying was most people weren't competitors, they were running, but casually, for fun, for exercise, and Brooks now wanted their business. And if you signed up, they'd send you a dollar and you'd be sponsored:
"Real track-and-field sponsorships are notoriously meager; a 2012 MarketWatch survey found that 80 percent of runners ranked in the top 10 for their events made less than $50,000 a year. Brooks's sponsorship stunt is roughly equivalent to adding one professional runner to its roster.) More than 60,000 people have signed up and subsequently peppered social media with tongue-in-cheek posts about their sponsorship deals. They share their 4-mile runs and 9-minute miles. Sometimes they'll use the #brooksendorsed or #brooksathlete hashtags on pictures of themselves wearing Brooks shoes (but often other companies' clothing). The Levitate has been popping up with increasing frequency on these sponsorees. A few weeks ago a woman in London used them to run on a treadmill while watching Netflix. A man in Maine went for a walk in them. 'They're so light,' gushed one new fan, Marisol Beck, 22, in Carlsbad, Calif., who took up running in 2016."
Brooks created a social media juggernaut nearly instantly. Sure, they designed some hip shoes, but even more they designed a hip way to get their message out, to bond buyers to them.
I was once sponsored by Smith ski goggles, my first sponsorship ever. I use Smith to this day. So much of what I buy I stick with. It gives me something to believe in in a land where humans are sold out hacks groveling for dollars. One of the things that bonded me to Apple was Steve Jobs, who had no fear of insulting people, who thought he had it right, was in search of excellence as opposed to expediency, the end result was the most valuable company in the world.
Who wouldn't admire that?
The naysayers.
But it's when they show up that you know you've made it. No one made fun of my Apple hat in the eighties and nineties, no one blew back, no one cared, but now I hear complaints about Apple every damn day, which makes me believe I'm on the right track, like with Brooks.
"Elon Musk says he's 'capping' production of Boring Company hats at 50,000 (that's $1 million worth)": http://cnb.cx/2ApDHh2
"Musk's Boring Co. invites 10 lucky hat buyers to tour LA tunnel and drive boring machine": http://bit.ly/2BkuxiM
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The Fall
https://www.netflix.com/title/70272726
Men are afraid women are going to laugh at them.
Women are afraid men are going to kill them.
I'm in the middle of an IVIG treatment. Three days in a row, for five hours. They send a nurse to the home who injects you with a steroid first, and then the IVIG, and since you've taken a Benadryl pill before it all begins, you're floating, unattached.
I forgot how much it wipes you out, fogs you out, yesterday I was useless. Today a bit better.
You see I went to the dermatologist last week and she told me I had a resistant strain of plasma. She did research after the blood test showed only a reduction of thirty antibodies. I can't remember if it was 280 to 250 or 250 to 220, but they should go down to zero, and that hasn't happened, ergo this next round of IVIG. She found some blisters along with new skin rips and said I'd need IVIG every month, but probably not a blood cleansing. Actually, the situation is a bit complicated, you see Anthem Blue Cross is cancelling my plan in California, because of Trump, he eviscerated the Affordable Care Act to the degree that Anthem got scared and decided not to take the risk, and if you question this, you're probably one of those people who believe your independent spirit will keep you from getting ill. Good luck with that. I've connected with an agent who says he can cover me starting March 1st, when Anthem Blue Cross coverage ends, but it's all pretty freaky, I've been paying my premiums in excess of twenty five years, four figures now, what did I do wrong?
You see we're all just cogs in the system. And the system will get you. Did you see that Tom Petty had emphysema? You think that smoking won't catch up with you, that you're immune?
So they're not absolutely sure what caused the pemphigus foliaceus, at this point they believe it's the result of being an Ashkenazi Jew, but they had me stop all medications to be sure it wasn't a drug interaction. And one of those was my Crestor. And without it I've got sky high cholesterol, it too is genetic, so my internist sent me to this specialized cardiologist. I'll tell you one thing, there's two tiers of medical care in America, the one you pay for and the one you don't. As in so many of the great doctors don't take insurance, and this one doesn't. Oh, they'll file, but you'll only get back twenty or thirty cents on the dollar.
And she ran these tests from labs I'd never heard of. In Baltimore, elsewhere, and she dug down to see exactly what was causing my problem. And she gave me an hour of her time, twice.
And I got her life story.
She's from Ireland. With an inattentive mother. She's got more degrees and fellowships than anybody I've ever seen, and she recommended this TV show.
I've been to Belfast. It was the second most fascinating place I've gone to.
The first was Bogota. Because with your life at risk and so few chances for financial advancement, everybody was so alive.
Tied with Belfast was maybe Tallinn, Estonia. Where the Soviet-era buildings delineated a dreary life we're unaccustomed to in America. And St. Petersburg. When you go to that church where they buried all the czars...you can feel history coursing through your veins.
And then Belfast.
We listen to U2, we hear all about Dublin. But it's in Belfast that the Troubles occurred. The war between Catholics and Christians, with the English meddling. And you may think it's over, but when you drive past the walls separating the religions, you can't believe stuff like this still exists.
I went to the Shankill.
They talk about the Shankill in this TV show.
You think the law will protect you. But Jimmy literally threatens the cops and they get scared and they leave. Kinda like rappers in America, but these guys are white. We think it's about color, but it's not.
And to tell you the truth, the first year of the series was imperfect. You might turn it off. But hang in there for the second, you'll be wowed.
That's television for you. They renew you and you double-down, you get better. In music it's one and done, a single and that's it, can you say LORDE? The fact that her completely stiff album was nominated for a Grammy tells me the committee was fearful it would be excoriated if a white woman wasn't included. That's how far we've come, excellence is irrelevant, Jay Z might win like Steely Dan, when we all know Kendrick deserves it.
And the war between the sexes is in evidence in this show.
You see it's all about Gillian Anderson's character. I had to look her up, why was she in this Irish show?
Turns out she grew up partly in the U.K.
And I've never watched the "X-Files," I know nothing about her. But now I get it. In "The Fall" she plays a femme fatale. Someone competent and brilliant and she drives the men wild. Furthermore, the only one who's got a fix on her is the serial killer.
That's right, this is a genre show.
But it's got more truth than most movies.
Movies are passe, they're too short. Isn't it funny that in music it's all about the single yet in television it's all about the series. But TV realizes you must have a theme and expand it, and not go on too long, at least if you're foreign. In America they milk it for bucks, overseas they just take as many episodes as it does to say what they have to, and then they're done, oftentimes leaving you wanting more.
To tell you the truth, I haven't watched the third season of six episodes yet. But we just finished the second, and I'm stunned.
Guys, you know these girls. The ones who are open, who wrap you around their finger, who let you in and then don't want to know you, they torture you. The police bigwig screwed her once, years ago, and can't get over it, it's messed up his marriage, never mind him. And Stella, Anderson's character, picks up men and women on sight and beds them, gives them a night of bliss, but that's all.
But she's screwed up from the core, she idolized her dad.
Is it them or us? You feel the connection, and then you can't get anymore and then you wonder what you did wrong, but maybe it's them?
This is exactly what the couples therapist told us, that I'm afraid of being laughed at.
It's worse than being put down by guys. You think you're making headway and then they turn on you. Or maybe you don't even start. Men are weak, except when they fake it and force you. And Stella's got their number too, you get caught up in your reverie and can't take no for an answer. Whew! There's a lot to unpack here, and that's why I'm writing about it.
Why is it the foreign shows are so much more real?
First and foremost they shoot higher. They want to get it right. Sure, some cable shows do this, but very little television that's not on HBO or its pay relatives, Showtime and Starz. When you see life on screen, when you can relate to it, that's when you're titillated, that's when you're hooked.
But everybody in America plays it safe, bunts instead of taking a risk.
They cast beautiful people with beautiful lifestyles and you can watch but you can't relate.
Yet Stella/Gillian is the only movie star here. Everybody else looks normal, everybody else has got a regular job, it's her beauty that plays into the script. How do we deal with the more attractive? It generates the desire and action of the serial killer and...the truth is we men have no idea who these women truly are, we're living in a land of two-dimensional fantasies. And "The Fall" nails this.
We are living in a golden age of television because of distribution. The multiple options, the desire to win in the end. Distributors fund shows and give creative people leeway because they want to triumph in an online world where only one entity does. TV distribution continues to believe in a multi-channel universe, but that's not the way it's gonna work out. We're gonna have behemoth winners, and maybe some small players, that's it. It's gonna look just like the Big Four, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, just you wait.
And then maybe the distributors will tighten their wallets, meddle with production, that's what happened with movies. The talent is no longer in control. The studios play it safe and almost no one goes, ticket prices went up and attendance went down, what's wrong with this picture?
A bad distribution model at an overinflated price.
Sure, you lose something watching at home, but you gain so much more. Not only a vast variety at a low price, but the absence of talking, texting and interruptions, and the ability to watch what you want when you want. We're going to day and date with film releases online, just like it took us over a decade to get to streaming/Spotify, you can't hold back the future, you can't hold back the public's desire.
And the funny thing is none of these shows are built on hype, advertising doesn't make them, it's all word of mouth. They're lying in wait on Netflix and maybe six months or a year or two later people insist you watch them and then you are a member of the club, it's like buying albums back in the sixties, you felt special, you felt included, there was a bond between you and the purveyors, they weren't playing to everybody, but just you.
Why won't people play to me. Music, the news, they're all appealing to a theoretical everyman, all in it for the money, there's never enough, even though they bitch all along. If only they'd drill down and release their humanity, focus inward instead of outward, they too would create work that percolated in the marketplace and ultimately triumphed.
But for now we've got television.
For now we've got "The Fall."
P.S. Just one more thing. Stella calls the wife of the killer stupid and incurious. How many relationships look good on the surface but are not. How many relationships lack deep dives into not only activities, but character. How many relationships are smooth sailing until they aren't, because one person isn't revealing their truth. Marriage is only the beginning. It's a long journey. Unless you apply yourself you're going to find out that you might reside under the same roof, but are living on different planets. People, so hard to know, but we can't live without them.
Men are afraid women are going to laugh at them.
Women are afraid men are going to kill them.
I'm in the middle of an IVIG treatment. Three days in a row, for five hours. They send a nurse to the home who injects you with a steroid first, and then the IVIG, and since you've taken a Benadryl pill before it all begins, you're floating, unattached.
I forgot how much it wipes you out, fogs you out, yesterday I was useless. Today a bit better.
You see I went to the dermatologist last week and she told me I had a resistant strain of plasma. She did research after the blood test showed only a reduction of thirty antibodies. I can't remember if it was 280 to 250 or 250 to 220, but they should go down to zero, and that hasn't happened, ergo this next round of IVIG. She found some blisters along with new skin rips and said I'd need IVIG every month, but probably not a blood cleansing. Actually, the situation is a bit complicated, you see Anthem Blue Cross is cancelling my plan in California, because of Trump, he eviscerated the Affordable Care Act to the degree that Anthem got scared and decided not to take the risk, and if you question this, you're probably one of those people who believe your independent spirit will keep you from getting ill. Good luck with that. I've connected with an agent who says he can cover me starting March 1st, when Anthem Blue Cross coverage ends, but it's all pretty freaky, I've been paying my premiums in excess of twenty five years, four figures now, what did I do wrong?
You see we're all just cogs in the system. And the system will get you. Did you see that Tom Petty had emphysema? You think that smoking won't catch up with you, that you're immune?
So they're not absolutely sure what caused the pemphigus foliaceus, at this point they believe it's the result of being an Ashkenazi Jew, but they had me stop all medications to be sure it wasn't a drug interaction. And one of those was my Crestor. And without it I've got sky high cholesterol, it too is genetic, so my internist sent me to this specialized cardiologist. I'll tell you one thing, there's two tiers of medical care in America, the one you pay for and the one you don't. As in so many of the great doctors don't take insurance, and this one doesn't. Oh, they'll file, but you'll only get back twenty or thirty cents on the dollar.
And she ran these tests from labs I'd never heard of. In Baltimore, elsewhere, and she dug down to see exactly what was causing my problem. And she gave me an hour of her time, twice.
And I got her life story.
She's from Ireland. With an inattentive mother. She's got more degrees and fellowships than anybody I've ever seen, and she recommended this TV show.
I've been to Belfast. It was the second most fascinating place I've gone to.
The first was Bogota. Because with your life at risk and so few chances for financial advancement, everybody was so alive.
Tied with Belfast was maybe Tallinn, Estonia. Where the Soviet-era buildings delineated a dreary life we're unaccustomed to in America. And St. Petersburg. When you go to that church where they buried all the czars...you can feel history coursing through your veins.
And then Belfast.
We listen to U2, we hear all about Dublin. But it's in Belfast that the Troubles occurred. The war between Catholics and Christians, with the English meddling. And you may think it's over, but when you drive past the walls separating the religions, you can't believe stuff like this still exists.
I went to the Shankill.
They talk about the Shankill in this TV show.
You think the law will protect you. But Jimmy literally threatens the cops and they get scared and they leave. Kinda like rappers in America, but these guys are white. We think it's about color, but it's not.
And to tell you the truth, the first year of the series was imperfect. You might turn it off. But hang in there for the second, you'll be wowed.
That's television for you. They renew you and you double-down, you get better. In music it's one and done, a single and that's it, can you say LORDE? The fact that her completely stiff album was nominated for a Grammy tells me the committee was fearful it would be excoriated if a white woman wasn't included. That's how far we've come, excellence is irrelevant, Jay Z might win like Steely Dan, when we all know Kendrick deserves it.
And the war between the sexes is in evidence in this show.
You see it's all about Gillian Anderson's character. I had to look her up, why was she in this Irish show?
Turns out she grew up partly in the U.K.
And I've never watched the "X-Files," I know nothing about her. But now I get it. In "The Fall" she plays a femme fatale. Someone competent and brilliant and she drives the men wild. Furthermore, the only one who's got a fix on her is the serial killer.
That's right, this is a genre show.
But it's got more truth than most movies.
Movies are passe, they're too short. Isn't it funny that in music it's all about the single yet in television it's all about the series. But TV realizes you must have a theme and expand it, and not go on too long, at least if you're foreign. In America they milk it for bucks, overseas they just take as many episodes as it does to say what they have to, and then they're done, oftentimes leaving you wanting more.
To tell you the truth, I haven't watched the third season of six episodes yet. But we just finished the second, and I'm stunned.
Guys, you know these girls. The ones who are open, who wrap you around their finger, who let you in and then don't want to know you, they torture you. The police bigwig screwed her once, years ago, and can't get over it, it's messed up his marriage, never mind him. And Stella, Anderson's character, picks up men and women on sight and beds them, gives them a night of bliss, but that's all.
But she's screwed up from the core, she idolized her dad.
Is it them or us? You feel the connection, and then you can't get anymore and then you wonder what you did wrong, but maybe it's them?
This is exactly what the couples therapist told us, that I'm afraid of being laughed at.
It's worse than being put down by guys. You think you're making headway and then they turn on you. Or maybe you don't even start. Men are weak, except when they fake it and force you. And Stella's got their number too, you get caught up in your reverie and can't take no for an answer. Whew! There's a lot to unpack here, and that's why I'm writing about it.
Why is it the foreign shows are so much more real?
First and foremost they shoot higher. They want to get it right. Sure, some cable shows do this, but very little television that's not on HBO or its pay relatives, Showtime and Starz. When you see life on screen, when you can relate to it, that's when you're titillated, that's when you're hooked.
But everybody in America plays it safe, bunts instead of taking a risk.
They cast beautiful people with beautiful lifestyles and you can watch but you can't relate.
Yet Stella/Gillian is the only movie star here. Everybody else looks normal, everybody else has got a regular job, it's her beauty that plays into the script. How do we deal with the more attractive? It generates the desire and action of the serial killer and...the truth is we men have no idea who these women truly are, we're living in a land of two-dimensional fantasies. And "The Fall" nails this.
We are living in a golden age of television because of distribution. The multiple options, the desire to win in the end. Distributors fund shows and give creative people leeway because they want to triumph in an online world where only one entity does. TV distribution continues to believe in a multi-channel universe, but that's not the way it's gonna work out. We're gonna have behemoth winners, and maybe some small players, that's it. It's gonna look just like the Big Four, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, just you wait.
And then maybe the distributors will tighten their wallets, meddle with production, that's what happened with movies. The talent is no longer in control. The studios play it safe and almost no one goes, ticket prices went up and attendance went down, what's wrong with this picture?
A bad distribution model at an overinflated price.
Sure, you lose something watching at home, but you gain so much more. Not only a vast variety at a low price, but the absence of talking, texting and interruptions, and the ability to watch what you want when you want. We're going to day and date with film releases online, just like it took us over a decade to get to streaming/Spotify, you can't hold back the future, you can't hold back the public's desire.
And the funny thing is none of these shows are built on hype, advertising doesn't make them, it's all word of mouth. They're lying in wait on Netflix and maybe six months or a year or two later people insist you watch them and then you are a member of the club, it's like buying albums back in the sixties, you felt special, you felt included, there was a bond between you and the purveyors, they weren't playing to everybody, but just you.
Why won't people play to me. Music, the news, they're all appealing to a theoretical everyman, all in it for the money, there's never enough, even though they bitch all along. If only they'd drill down and release their humanity, focus inward instead of outward, they too would create work that percolated in the marketplace and ultimately triumphed.
But for now we've got television.
For now we've got "The Fall."
P.S. Just one more thing. Stella calls the wife of the killer stupid and incurious. How many relationships look good on the surface but are not. How many relationships lack deep dives into not only activities, but character. How many relationships are smooth sailing until they aren't, because one person isn't revealing their truth. Marriage is only the beginning. It's a long journey. Unless you apply yourself you're going to find out that you might reside under the same roof, but are living on different planets. People, so hard to know, but we can't live without them.
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