Mailbag

Re: ABG: Bio

Dear Bob,

I'm da widow. I've been collecting interviews and comments about Albert aiming for an oral history style book to give a bigger picture. So strange of John Simon and even Todd to not get how in love with his clients Albert was and how he loved the music. Of course Peter Yarrow really knew him. Geoff Muldaur (Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Geoff and Maria, Paul Butterfield's Better Days) states that with Albert you had the best record deal, tv appearances, good gigs. And he fought for you. Peter Hoffman privy to all contracts, lawsuits says the important thing is not what Albert made but what the artist made..

Simon sent me stuff to read prepublication and I tried to "correct" … like that he never had paperwork with Albert. John never had a management contract because he worked for the bands, paid I assume from the record companies. AND Albert did get him his own Warner's deal as John acknowledges.

Good call by ABG to put the schooled John with the guys in the band. I agree with you that the book is special because John describes the process. Fascinating. How a producer can be valuable, steer the project. Great stuff. And for me personally, after years of attacks from people who were not there and blame me! Albert and Robbie for "ripping Levon off." Whew, Jon Taplin and John Simon books take some weight off me.

Take care,

Sally Grossman

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From: AJ Wilk
Subject: 14 Year Old New York Kid Grammys Opinion

Hey Bob,

My name is AJ Wilk and I'm a 14 year old kid from New York who not only loves but lives music. Last year on spotify, I had streamed music for 23,000 minutes which is equivalent to just under 16 days straight. Music has been my biggest passion ever since my uncle, who works in the music industry, and my music-loving father got me into it at a very young age. For whatever it's worth I wanted to share my opinion on the other nights award show, hoping the views of me and my peers are heard. I hope to take after my uncle and work in the music industry just as he does, and I'd love nothing more than to help shape the future of it, but sitting down and watching the Grammys I was astonished at my own lack of interest. For a kid who has loved music his entire life, why was I so bored by it? How come I couldn't even sit through it?

The other night, as we do every year, my family and I sat down and got ready to watch the Grammys, excited to see who would take home the so-called biggest honors of the year in the music industry. But the 2019 Grammys, which is meant to be focused on this past year in music, was outdated and almost completely irrelevant to those even close to my age, the people influencing music the most right now. Let me just say, I don't really have any issue at all with the awards given, but rather the programs use of time and selection of artists . I think we can all agree, weather you like it or hate it, hip-hop/rap was the biggest genre in music this past year. Let me ask you this, Grammy producers, music executives, and whoever else cares enough about what the kids are listening to these days, who are you really trying to appeal to? Are the Grammys marketed towards the kids? The parents of the kids? The grandparents? Yes, I love Post Malone just as much as the next teen, but the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on stage with him? Everyone loves seeing their favorite artists perform, but watching shirtless Anthony Kiedis at the 2019 Grammys just feels wrong. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers are without a doubt a historic band, but were not up for any awards and had pretty much no reason to be there. While I love a good music collab, this one just made no sense to me and seemed pretty pointless. Also, while I am sure Dolly Parton is an amazing musician, and I completely respect everything she's done for music, the last #1 charting Dolly Parton song was in 1981. So giving the Dolly Parton lifetime achievement ceremony 10 and a half minutes was definitely excessive and lost my interest completely. Ask yourself again, who is this show meant to appeal to?

I can tell you from the personal experience of a 14 year old kid from New York with all of my closest friends being big music fans, I do not know one other kid who even bothered to watch. Seeing my favorite artists snubbed year after year, or more importantly blatantly disrespected or left out completely, means me and my friends won't at all care to watch next year. They're losing us. They are losing the young people they should be trying to appeal to, who are the future of their industry. It was a 3 hour and 40 minute show, and there were only 9 trophies handed out on air, and the performances were painfully outdated and only somewhat relevant to people watching under the age of 20.
Even when they got it right, they also get it wrong. What was all that with Drake? Easily one of the biggest artists of all time, Drake won the award for Best Rap Song with his "Gods Plan" which broke Spotify streaming records. In his speech he started to say "If there's people with regular jobs who are coming out in the rain, in the snow, spending their hard earned money to buy tickets to come to your shows, you don't need this right here I promise you, you already won". Right after saying this, he began to speak again but was immediately cut off. Why? You need to listen to these artists and what they're saying and instead of cutting them off, give them a platform to speak. What these artists are saying matters to us, and if music execs and Grammy producers want to stay relevant to this next generation, then it should matter to them too. If they don't let Drake share his opinion on their awards show, why should we care about their award show's opinion of who had the best album this year? Why should we still watch and value this show when the artists we value and their opinions are being disregarded and disrespected. Drake is right, if the Grammy producers, and anyone involved with them won't accept the fact that hip-hop/rap is a very legitimate genre and should be very well acknowledged at this show, for every year that it's still a globally huge genre as it now is, then they will lose us. Simple as that, if they want to stay relevant as a show and more importantly as a show who gives highly regarded awards, they need to give us the awards, performances and acknowledgement that these artists deserve.

I am not saying that there is no place for tributes and milestone celebrations, I just think there is a need for more relevant content in these shows in order to keep the younger generation caring. I completely agree with having some sort of way of bridging old and new. Music fans should know and understand where their culture evolved from, but in my opinion, you can't call it a 2019 award show, and then go on to have a Lifetime Achievement Ceremony, a 75th birthday celebration, an Aretha Franklin Tribute and a Motown Tribute, and then cut off Drake as he accepts an award for his work in the past year.

Speaking of tributes, where was a mention of XXXtentacion in the memoriam segment? He was an undoubtedly influential artist who was shot and killed in 2018 and was left out of the tributes at the 2019 Grammys. While I totally understand the controversy around him, are we going to act like he's the only artist to ever be accused of these kinds of things? Once again we have to ask ourselves, who is this show really for? What is this all about? The show not only had it's all-time low in ratings, but only 19.9 million people watched, compared to 40 million in 2012. The numbers don't lie, people are getting less and less interested in the Grammys. Why? Because they're no longer reflective of the industry. If you watched the Grammys this year with no prior knowledge of music or the industry in general, you would not have come away with an accurate picture of the state of the industry today. You definitely would not get a sense that hip-hop/rap is one of the most prominent genres. So if they're looking to get their ratings, views or just overall reputation up, I'd think about making sure that the 2020 award show is more reflective of the state of music this year, let artists voice their opinions, and be recognized as they should.

All in all, the thing the Grammys have to realize is that music is changing. The way we listen, distribute, share and produce, so many parts of this industry are evolving, and things like this show need to evolve along with it. They did make some positive changes. The actual awards were particularly accurate this year according to the Village Voice survey, many people agree with some of the awards they gave out. A rap song won Song of the Year and also Record of the Year (This is America - Childish Gambino) which are two awards a rap song has never won. This is truly a step in the right direction and shows that the Grammys know at least the general direction to go in. But I, for one, would like to see more change. If they had something like possibly a 'Junior Committee' or maybe even an entirely different show for someone like me, who is interested in more of the younger generation's music. I can see an opportunity here for the Grammys to innovate and do really great things, they'll just need to do a better job of reflecting what is actually going on in music. I can only speak for myself and what goes on in my 14 year old mind, but to me, the Grammys really missed the mark this year and I think we can really and truly build on what they are and make them so much better, and keep them relevant to my generation. Music is evolving, but that wasn't on display at the 2019 Grammy Awards.

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Subject: Re: The Grammy Ratings Will Tank

Bob-

I teach at a university contemporary music school. Bright talented kids, great program. On the Monday after the Grammys I asked my students how many of them watched the Grammys the night before. Out of a class of 16, zero watched the show. I asked them why? None of them have cable or a dish. They have Netflix.

There you have it. The traditional media is dead and these kids, who all want to be in the music business, know the Grammys don't matter. CBS doesn't matter and don't get me started on radio. If the brain trust of the music business has lost the college kids who live and breathe music, they've lost the war.

Geoff

Geoff Koch

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From: Mike Sherman
Subject: Re: Re-Linda Ronstadt's Live Album

Ok, ok. Maybe I was a bit harsh on the boomers. Reading my own words made me realize that. After all, my own parents are boomers and they gave me the well-rounded tastes I have now. They're also more plugged in than you'd think - they just have less time and bigger fish to fry.

But with the lack of opportunity, archaic office culture, poor pay, and rampant nepotism in this music industry, can you blame a guy for being fed up with the old guard? Anyone in my cohort knows the story well: a 20-something with a deep passion for music eagerly enters the music industry only to become jaded by the cynicism and abuse of their superiors. And who the hell told these people that $30k/year is doable in Los Angeles? Yes, yes, I know. Back in your day you made the same as an entry level grunt. But guess what, inflation is a thing. And we were promised a return on our education investment (which many of us are still paying for by the way). Where is it?

As music consumers, the boomers have the deepest pockets no doubt but I am starting to smell the end. Oldchella may have been the last gasp for these legacy acts. And those Linda Ronstadt numbers are just further proof.

Appreciate the column Bob! Looking forward to the next.

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Subject: Pledge Music - Continued

Hi Bob —

I've been holding our PledgeMusic story back in hopes it might resolve itself, but there appears to be no plan to make good coming from the company. I co-manage the artist Seth Walker who ran his new album's crowd-sourcing campaign through the service. Your email literally hit a few days after we had reached our goal, raising approximately $23,000. Obviously we were spooked by this news, but we made a decision to play it out with Pledge and hope for the best as they were already holding our money.

Our fulfillment of items to fans/pledgers was pre-arranged through Pledge to be handled by Bandwear with the cost of shipping and handling built into to the contribution level. We sent all of our vinyl, t-shirts, posters, original artwork, etc. to Bandwear to begin fulfilling orders. At that time, Bandwear informed us they couldn't ship because Pledge was delinquent on reimbursing them shipment costs. We raised this issue with PledgeMusic and they told us they would handle it directly with Bandwear. A few days later we heard back that shipping was green-lighted and items began being sent out. About a week passes and Bandwear tells us they've shipped approximately 70% of Seth's orders but Pledge never sent the money they were holding for our shipping costs. Thus Bandwear says they cannot continue fulfilling our items to pledgers until we pay them $2233 in outstanding shipping and handling costs that are due to them. So to add extra insult, we're being stuck with the shipping bill on funds PledgeMusic has already collected from our fans.

This past Friday, Seth's record 'Are You Open?' was released. He is an A-list artist—among the best songwriters and most soulful performers in the game—with close to two decades making music. He has a loyal and consistently growing fan-base, earning a working class living as a touring artist. That being said, the cost of recording a proper studio album and modestly marketing it in today's music industry would be impossible without the support of his fanbase on the front end of the process. Seth put everything on credit cards to get ahead of the game, knowing his audience would come through for him, which they did. Never in our worst nightmares did we ever expect that the company who pitched to assist him in this endeavor would go belly up on us.

Seth is now scrambling to borrow money to stay afloat personally and professionally, never mind trying desperately to not let this torpedo his album release campaign and tour. In the grand scheme, I know that $22.5K is not an insurmountable hole for an artist with Seth's fortitude and talent to climb out of, but it would certainly be a gut check for even those flush with cash. The story is to be continued.

Kevin Calabro
Calabro Music Media

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From: Ben Jackson-Cook
Subject: The Brits

Hi Bob,

I've been a subscriber to your emails for about a year now and I love them.

I'm a musical director and I'm emailing you because you haven't spoken about live vs miming performances that much. What's really tipped me over the edge is the Brits. How can a show celebrating UK music be so shit?

I've been involved with the show for 3 years now and every year we really have to push to have anything actually live. It's like everyone has forgotten what it means to create something in a moment in time. It's a complete con! How can some of the biggest artists in the world get away with it?

Striving for a perfect performance has left us with a load of bland shit. Everything is too safe. We created a performance last year that had absolutely no track, and was a re-arranged version of the original studio version. Following the event, all of the live performances were released on DSPs and ours had the best download + streaming figures out of all performances for the first 2 weeks, beating ?Ed Sheeran? and more! I really hope this is because we did a different arrangement and kept things live. The rush of creating something live makes a performance. The whole performance last year was very hard to get approved by The Brits themselves, and then the label. This year we are a part of another artists' show (one of the biggest artist in the world) and he specifically doesn't want anything live! Crazy!!

When an artists finally manages to get live elements into their performance all they want to do is make it sound exactly like the record! Surely the audience who've come to see it want a little extra right? They don't want to listen to the same thing they've been listening to on Spotify?

Labels and managers find it easier to talk in visual terms, so spending millions on the visual team and set makes more sense than spending more than an hour working out how to make something stand out musically, which makes me really sad.

I feel like I'm on my own in this fight for live performances. Thanks for inspiring me to have a good rant.

Ben,

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From: Jay Jay French
Subject: Re: Re-Maroon 5 & The Super Bowl

Bob

What Maroon 5 managed to do in 15 minutes was merge the embarrassment of Billy Squire's "Rock Me Tonite" video and beavis & butthead wearing the Winger T shirt, thus killing a total of 3 careers.

Putting aside the absolutely terrible and boring game, I'm afraid that Adam and the band won't survive the negative onslaught.

I met Adam once about 15 years ago and he told me that the first song he ever learned to play on guitar was ours-"I Wanna Rock". My 10 year old daughter was impressed!

I have watched the band over the years and accepted that they filled that space for straight commercial rock/pop. All fairly innocuous but I'm a sucker for a good pop hook and they certainly had lots of 'em.

Given that social media is as instantaneous as it is unforgiving, I just don't see a path back to any credibility (and many would chime in that they didn't have any to begin with) but I believe that Adam is sincere.

I'm not dancing on their grave but I will sit back and watch them try to recover....

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From: Craig Anderton
Subject: Re: Mailbag-White Room & More!

Bob...when I first heard Cream, it was at the Café a Go Go, which sat people in the hundreds, not thousands. Same for the Blues Project, with Al Kooper playing a Tubon, which inspired me to make electronic instruments. Hendrix? At the tiny Café Wha, before he was "Jimi Hendrix"...I met him because Randy Wolf/Cassidy (later Randy California, the lead guitarist in Spirit) said "you think I'm good? You should hear the guy I'm playing rhythm guitar for," and this was way before the Hendrix sessions for Electric Ladyland, when Chris Wood from Traffic opened the door at the Record Plant to let me in for the next session, and I was playing at Steve Paul's The Scene with Traffic sitting in the audience. Or opening for Procol Harum in Chicago, two weeks after the Democrat Convention riots, in Aaron Russo's KInetic Playground. (That was one powerful group, one of the best live acts ever...Gary Brooker had pipes that wouldn't quit, the rhythm section - BJ Thomas, drummer on the Rocky Horror Picture show soundtrack, and Chris Copping on bass - was solid as a rock, Robin Trower made his guitar cry, and Matthew Fisher took us to church with his Hammond.)

**Music was intimate back then.** Musicians were part of a movement, a brotherhood that included women (I could tell you Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell stories), not a label, not a web site, and most certainly, NOT a "brand." We played the same circuit as the Who one year, and every security guard along the circuit had a Keith Moon story. The audience was in on the secret. You could see Cream play and tell that Ginger Baker was the most awesome fucking drummer on the planet because you were seated tens of feet, not hundreds of yards, away from him and could see him sweat and feel the pulse of the double kick drums - not see him on some giant LED screen in a stadium.

What's going to save music isn't politics, isn't necessarily taking a stand, and isn't streaming. It's intimacy. Can you create that in an era when "bigger is better?" I don't know. I'd rather have 10,000 devoted fans/friends who say "hi" when they see me at NAMM shows, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and engage in conversations, than 100,000,000 anonymous streams on Spotify. You see, I too want intimacy.

Music isn't about the business, and isn't about the money. It's a language, and it's about communications with your fellow fragile human beings. The Music BUSINESS is about business and money. I have no use for the latter, but treasure the former as much as life itself.

Craig

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From: John Yunker
Subject: Re: The Apple/Facebook/Google Fracas

Hi Bob,

Well said. Speaking of Netflix, it currently supports 26 languages, having most recently added French (for Canada) and Indonesian.

I've been tracking the languages supported by global companies for more than 15 years (yes, a rather curious life's work) and the average number of languages supported by those organizations has more than doubled over the past fifteen years:

Here are some of the language leaders:

Google 100+
Facebook 100+
Toyota 51
Hyundai 49
Coca-Cola 48
Honda 48
Twitter 47
Nissan 46
NIVEA 46
Uber 46
Chevrolet 45

If you want to reach more than 90% of the world's Internet users, you need to support at least 40 languages. English is no longer the dominant online language.

Wikipedia, the world's largest crowdsourced website, supports more than 290 languages — proof that the people of the world want to see their languages supported. And proof that those who embrace the chaos of languages and cultures is poised to succeed globally.

And Google's secret weapon these days isn't so much search but its machine translate engine — Google Translate, which supports more than 100 languages and translates 100 billion words each day.

We've been "going global" since the days of the Silk Road. It's just that now more people see it and feel it than ever before. The internet may connect computers but language connects people.

Hope this is of interest. Keep up the great work…

John Yunker

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From: Alan Hamel
Subject: Re: The State Of Stardom/Suzanne Somers


I don't know about wisdom being in my wheel house. I think it's more about a basic foundation of common sense borne from a lifetime of constant rejection for which I am grateful.
But I thank You.

The day Suzanne was fired from Three's Company for asking for parity with the men with much lesser shows, what we learned later, was that Laverne & Shirley had renegotiated their deal earlier and gave ABC a major colonic.

ABC in its wisdom then decided to fire the number one female so no other woman would make the same request.
And it worked for 8 years until Roseanne who is fearless and knows her worth. Roseanne opened for Suzanne in Vegas in the 80's.
I'm presently working on a Suzanne/Roseanne double bill in Vegas.

When I came home after the non negotiation at ABC and told Suzanne she was out, she was devastated. She hadn't finished with her Chrissy character.

I promised her we would make this work for us

We started BRANDING Suzanne Somers. We didn't know what we were doing and Suzanne had no agent to work with.
That was 38 years ago.

Cut to today...
27 books, 14 NYT Bestsellers.
Las Vegas Female Entertainer of the Year.
Step by Step ran for 7 years.
A global lecture business.
27 years as 'Queen Of TV Shopping'
A business with over a thousand products that started in 1989 with our ThighMaster which has sold over 10 million units and continues selling in 120 countries.
Watch out for The ThighMaster Vibrato. Yes, it vibrates.

There's more, but You get it.
The other decision we made after 3's Company, was to Never guest star on TV.
Ex sitcom stars who segue into guest starring roles, lose their juice and disappear.
They return on "what ever happened to" shows.

Bottom line....
1. Health
2. Family
3. Our relationship. We are together 24/7 and have not spent a night apart in over 38 years.
4. Business
After the above, it's all bookkeeping.

Alan

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From: Neil Lasher
Subject: Re: Re-Ryan Adams

ALEXA Play "Stray Cat Blues"
By The Rolling Stones.

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