Bob had only heard of Zach Bryan when you wrote the first article about his LA performance and upon your recommendation bought American heartbreak and holy s..t my 8 year old daughter knows most of the words to almost every song. She asks about the backstory for each song, sings along and I can't wait to take her to see him. Then he releases the live show and wow - you're spot on about the audience knowing every word - who doesn't like his lyrics?
Hal Kempson
________________________________________
I have never listened to Zach Bryan before. I knew he was becoming a big deal in the country world. Listened to the record because of all the hype/conversation/news (and a week off where I can actually just check something out). WOW. What a great record. Some rad songs here, and a loud crowd for a live record. Was just way better than I expected.
Seems rare when a record is getting this kind of media attention that it actually is a great record underneath it. Hope a lot of people discover him for it.
Stephen Chilton
________________________________________
Seems like you and Obama are the only people talking about Zach Bryan. I don't get this. He missed pretty much every major list. Why don't critics love him as much as the people clearly do. His music obviously resonates with folks in a very real way. What is everyone else missing?--
John N. Hamilton
________________________________________
I've been a fan for 3 years. Watching the growth of ZB is something you will only witness once in a lifetime. So raw. So real. He is a once in a lifetime artist.
Thanks,
Dan Sheehan
________________________________________
It really hurts to see Zach and his rhetoric lately knowing how many promoters have emotionally invested time into his career the last 18 months only to feel like like we have a knife in our back. It hurts even more to see him tweeting about "Twitter fingers" when he's yet to entertain any in-person conversations with Ticketmaster on the issue. Instead he's chosen to weaponize his fans on issues they are uneducated in. Much like Taylor's master ownership debacle with Scooter
Look and see whose name is on most of the paychecks he will receive in 2023, that's all I'm saying….
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Friday 30 December 2022
Thursday 29 December 2022
Taj Mahal-This Week's Podcast
The one and only! Taj is serving as the NYU/Americana Artist-in-Residence for 2022-23. Intelligent, feisty and as sharp as ever, Taj tells us about growing up, his adventures with major labels and independents, and how he has sustained his career all these years. Revered by his compatriots, this is a chance to experience the magic of the man himself!
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/taj-mahal-106560723/
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/taj-mahal/id1316200737?i=1000591575128
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sBvYyq51ZQXZGYiXobCLL?si=xf7uw5c3TIGN6UWlqojvLw
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/41488d9c-5825-43d6-bb2c-3a6c05c0955c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-taj-mahal
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/taj-mahal-210354406
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-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/taj-mahal-106560723/
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/taj-mahal/id1316200737?i=1000591575128
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sBvYyq51ZQXZGYiXobCLL?si=xf7uw5c3TIGN6UWlqojvLw
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/41488d9c-5825-43d6-bb2c-3a6c05c0955c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-taj-mahal
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/taj-mahal-210354406
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Tuesday 27 December 2022
All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster
https://spoti.fi/3WuSBK3
Set-up is history.
This is what the movie industry does not understand.
The studios and the usual suspect artists want theatrical releases, because of the attendant marketing. So when these flicks hit streaming services everybody is aware of them.
And that marketing is uber-expensive. Tens of millions of dollars. To promote a film that in most cases does uber-poorly at the box office. The execs and the creators are still lost in the twentieth century, as if we were all home watching Thursday night Must-See-TV, being spoon-fed film advertisements that will inspire us to rush out and see the movie blindly the coming weekend.
But we're not blind anymore. Critics don't matter, but the wisdom of the crowd does. Such that by Friday afternoon you can tell whether a film is a hit or not. Once RottenTomatoes ratings appear, the future box office of the film is predicted. Assuming there is any box office. Unless it's a sequel or a superhero movie, good luck.
And it's similar in the music business. You release an advance single to create awareness. You prime the public...
To have the exact same experience the movie business does. By the middle of Friday afternoon, the future of the major product is sealed. Word is out, all over the internet, as to whether the project is worth your time or not.
First and foremost, the set-up of yore was based on precepts that no longer apply. Radio is no longer king and sales are nearly nonexistent. It's about consumption. Does the audience listen over a period of time, racking up streams? First week numbers don't mean much, all they do is impress the fellow members of the old school network, like the newspaper.
And there's the creation of anticipation. News stories in advance, bringing the pot to a boil on Friday and... This is not how it works anymore. There's too much in the channel and no one cares, except the hard core.
Zach Bryan released a live album on Christmas Day. Used to be there wasn't even any new product in January, never mind over the holiday. Van Halen's "1984" came out on January 1st of that year and owned the airwaves for a month, there was no competition. The labels had focused on Christmas...
But just like the rest of the world, music is now a 24/7 business. Whether someone listens Christmas week or in the dead of January it makes no difference, but it does matter if people listen!
Now the flaw in most acts' thinking is believing people care. That there's a ready audience out there for their music. There's not. Everybody's got too much music, they don't need yours. You've got to think small, and see if the story grows.
I'm not saying NPR and "CBS Sunday Morning" and even SNL are going to hurt you, but they really don't mean much. It's all about targeted advertising/marketing today, that's why the online data is so valuable. Most people don't care and never will. How do you reach those who do?
Ultimately it comes down to the music, and the credibility, who the act is.
Forget the cartoons you see on the pop chart. They come and go. What about the bread and butter artists who are building careers, who are going to play music forever? That's where the focus should be.
And it hasn't been there for a very long time. Because labels are inured to the set-up, the system. They massage the product until they believe people will care, with more songwriters and features and mixes, and then they spend money, just like the movie studios, as if this will guarantee success...it won't.
In other words, we're returning to the days of yore. True A&R. Nothing is easy. How can you find an act that sells itself?
First and foremost you can believe in Zach Bryan. He's got credibility, he's his own man, he's not beholden to the system. And so far he's not selling out, there's no tie-in with the Fortune 500, no brand building with perfume, etc.
In other words, if you want to make money in the music business today, you've got to start small, you've got to be in it for the long haul. You've got to have patience, as an act and as a purveyor. If you want it all now, not only are you doing it wrong, you probably won't be a success.
And once you gain traction like Zach Bryan, you superserve your audience. He constantly releases new product, which is what fans want most. Especially today, people are not fans of the scene, they're fans of the act. And the fan bases might not even intersect. You may like BTS or Taylor Swift or Zach Bryan and nobody else. And nobody else cares about what you're into.
So this live album was recorded on November 3rd, at Red Rocks, America's second most famous outdoor venue (after the Hollywood Bowl). It snowed. But it was an experience, if you were there...memories are made of this.
But the project was released in less than two months. Everything moves fast these days. If you're spending time getting it right, you're wasting time.
And the live album was a surprise. There was no set-up, it was just dropped. And the fans and ultimately the media spread the word.
As for employing "Ticketmaster" in the moniker...
I won't get into the politics, but Ticketmaster is in trouble. Because it coasted too long, didn't work on its image, obviously didn't spend enough on its software. It's a bad look. The tech companies didn't used to have lobbyists in D.C., they didn't even advertise. But when you become big enough, you have to play the game, at least a little bit.
Ticketmaster is always playing defense. And I could delineate the truth, but that's the company's job. As a result of the recent brouhaha there might be change.
Anyway, like Radiohead's "In Rainbows," you can only use "Ticketmaster" in the name of your album once. No one cared about the acts that asked fans to name their own price after Radiohead, and no one will care about the acts that use "Ticketmaster" in the name of their album subsequently.
In other words, just like in tech, Zach Bryan has a first mover advantage. You've got to be nimble today, you've got to take chances.
But really it only comes down to the fans.
If you listen to the live album you'll be stunned by the rabidity of the audience. They're constantly singing the words. They're in it with Zach. This is not some show at the summer shed by an act that had hits years ago, or even a pop act with a few that made the chart recently. This is PASSION! People want to belong. They want to be able to own something. They want something to believe in. For far too long we've had to believe in tech companies and bros because the musical acts were such nincompoops, tools of the machine. But not Zach Bryan.
I wouldn't expect a year to go by before Zach puts out new music. Maybe not even a few months. You can't overload the system, because there is no system, everybody is cottage industry, making it up as they go.
Also, the audience is so hungry, that if they find something they like, that's great, they embrace it. That's the story of not only Zach Bryan, but Morgan Wallen. Most offerings are so mediocre, so overhyped, so emotionally hollow that people are stunned when something delivers, and they tell everybody they know about it. And listen to the tracks ad infinitum.
But it does come down to the material. Zach's tunes are catchy, there are changes, whereas they're lacking in the hit parade. And he says he wants to create honest country music. What a concept!
It doesn't matter if you hate Zach Bryan and his music, it doesn't matter if you never even listen to him. All of us being in it together, judging each other's taste? That's positively old school. It only matters if the fans like the music, that's it.
Can you create something so good that when it's over the listener needs to play it again? That's today's litmus test. You can try to force something on the public, but the odds of it connecting are miniscule.
Watch this space.
--
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Set-up is history.
This is what the movie industry does not understand.
The studios and the usual suspect artists want theatrical releases, because of the attendant marketing. So when these flicks hit streaming services everybody is aware of them.
And that marketing is uber-expensive. Tens of millions of dollars. To promote a film that in most cases does uber-poorly at the box office. The execs and the creators are still lost in the twentieth century, as if we were all home watching Thursday night Must-See-TV, being spoon-fed film advertisements that will inspire us to rush out and see the movie blindly the coming weekend.
But we're not blind anymore. Critics don't matter, but the wisdom of the crowd does. Such that by Friday afternoon you can tell whether a film is a hit or not. Once RottenTomatoes ratings appear, the future box office of the film is predicted. Assuming there is any box office. Unless it's a sequel or a superhero movie, good luck.
And it's similar in the music business. You release an advance single to create awareness. You prime the public...
To have the exact same experience the movie business does. By the middle of Friday afternoon, the future of the major product is sealed. Word is out, all over the internet, as to whether the project is worth your time or not.
First and foremost, the set-up of yore was based on precepts that no longer apply. Radio is no longer king and sales are nearly nonexistent. It's about consumption. Does the audience listen over a period of time, racking up streams? First week numbers don't mean much, all they do is impress the fellow members of the old school network, like the newspaper.
And there's the creation of anticipation. News stories in advance, bringing the pot to a boil on Friday and... This is not how it works anymore. There's too much in the channel and no one cares, except the hard core.
Zach Bryan released a live album on Christmas Day. Used to be there wasn't even any new product in January, never mind over the holiday. Van Halen's "1984" came out on January 1st of that year and owned the airwaves for a month, there was no competition. The labels had focused on Christmas...
But just like the rest of the world, music is now a 24/7 business. Whether someone listens Christmas week or in the dead of January it makes no difference, but it does matter if people listen!
Now the flaw in most acts' thinking is believing people care. That there's a ready audience out there for their music. There's not. Everybody's got too much music, they don't need yours. You've got to think small, and see if the story grows.
I'm not saying NPR and "CBS Sunday Morning" and even SNL are going to hurt you, but they really don't mean much. It's all about targeted advertising/marketing today, that's why the online data is so valuable. Most people don't care and never will. How do you reach those who do?
Ultimately it comes down to the music, and the credibility, who the act is.
Forget the cartoons you see on the pop chart. They come and go. What about the bread and butter artists who are building careers, who are going to play music forever? That's where the focus should be.
And it hasn't been there for a very long time. Because labels are inured to the set-up, the system. They massage the product until they believe people will care, with more songwriters and features and mixes, and then they spend money, just like the movie studios, as if this will guarantee success...it won't.
In other words, we're returning to the days of yore. True A&R. Nothing is easy. How can you find an act that sells itself?
First and foremost you can believe in Zach Bryan. He's got credibility, he's his own man, he's not beholden to the system. And so far he's not selling out, there's no tie-in with the Fortune 500, no brand building with perfume, etc.
In other words, if you want to make money in the music business today, you've got to start small, you've got to be in it for the long haul. You've got to have patience, as an act and as a purveyor. If you want it all now, not only are you doing it wrong, you probably won't be a success.
And once you gain traction like Zach Bryan, you superserve your audience. He constantly releases new product, which is what fans want most. Especially today, people are not fans of the scene, they're fans of the act. And the fan bases might not even intersect. You may like BTS or Taylor Swift or Zach Bryan and nobody else. And nobody else cares about what you're into.
So this live album was recorded on November 3rd, at Red Rocks, America's second most famous outdoor venue (after the Hollywood Bowl). It snowed. But it was an experience, if you were there...memories are made of this.
But the project was released in less than two months. Everything moves fast these days. If you're spending time getting it right, you're wasting time.
And the live album was a surprise. There was no set-up, it was just dropped. And the fans and ultimately the media spread the word.
As for employing "Ticketmaster" in the moniker...
I won't get into the politics, but Ticketmaster is in trouble. Because it coasted too long, didn't work on its image, obviously didn't spend enough on its software. It's a bad look. The tech companies didn't used to have lobbyists in D.C., they didn't even advertise. But when you become big enough, you have to play the game, at least a little bit.
Ticketmaster is always playing defense. And I could delineate the truth, but that's the company's job. As a result of the recent brouhaha there might be change.
Anyway, like Radiohead's "In Rainbows," you can only use "Ticketmaster" in the name of your album once. No one cared about the acts that asked fans to name their own price after Radiohead, and no one will care about the acts that use "Ticketmaster" in the name of their album subsequently.
In other words, just like in tech, Zach Bryan has a first mover advantage. You've got to be nimble today, you've got to take chances.
But really it only comes down to the fans.
If you listen to the live album you'll be stunned by the rabidity of the audience. They're constantly singing the words. They're in it with Zach. This is not some show at the summer shed by an act that had hits years ago, or even a pop act with a few that made the chart recently. This is PASSION! People want to belong. They want to be able to own something. They want something to believe in. For far too long we've had to believe in tech companies and bros because the musical acts were such nincompoops, tools of the machine. But not Zach Bryan.
I wouldn't expect a year to go by before Zach puts out new music. Maybe not even a few months. You can't overload the system, because there is no system, everybody is cottage industry, making it up as they go.
Also, the audience is so hungry, that if they find something they like, that's great, they embrace it. That's the story of not only Zach Bryan, but Morgan Wallen. Most offerings are so mediocre, so overhyped, so emotionally hollow that people are stunned when something delivers, and they tell everybody they know about it. And listen to the tracks ad infinitum.
But it does come down to the material. Zach's tunes are catchy, there are changes, whereas they're lacking in the hit parade. And he says he wants to create honest country music. What a concept!
It doesn't matter if you hate Zach Bryan and his music, it doesn't matter if you never even listen to him. All of us being in it together, judging each other's taste? That's positively old school. It only matters if the fans like the music, that's it.
Can you create something so good that when it's over the listener needs to play it again? That's today's litmus test. You can try to force something on the public, but the odds of it connecting are miniscule.
Watch this space.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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--
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Monday 26 December 2022
The Hua Hsu Book
"Stay True": https://amzn.to/3WrXy6n
Part of me wants to tell you to read this book, and another wants to give a caveat.
If you've read my favorite book, "Anna Karenina," you know it is peppered with political diatribes. Some people skip right over those. And if you do you miss little plot. "Stay True" is a bit different. It is peppered with philosophy and other highfalutin' academic analysis that might fog your brain. But this philosophy does relate directly to the plot, and unlike "Anna Karenina," "Stay True" is not much of a commitment, it's only 198 pages.
And the reason I recommend "Stay True" is Hua Hsu is a music fan. He's in his mid-forties, so his peak era was in the early to mid nineties. And he's a perfect example of that era, the last in which rock ruled. Hsu reveres the bands, they inform his whole life. But he also embodies the rock and roll ethos, he does not want to be a member of the club. He's the other. And he dresses accordingly. He's not the life of the party, if he even goes to the party. And he hasn't been laid. In other words, he's hip but not mainstream. The music world has completely flipped in the twenty first century. Those who make it are extroverts, who might have been popular in high school. It's all about conforming, as opposed to thinking for yourself. It's about the group, not the individual.
But really, "Stay True" is not about today, but yesterday, so let's set the scene.
Hua is the son of Taiwanese immigrants. They came to America for the opportunity, to better themselves. And interestingly, while they were over here, all the action turned out to be over there, and Hua's father moves back to Taiwan, but Hua and his mother live in Cupertino, until the mother moves back to Taiwan too.
And a lot of the book is concerned with being Asian, being a minority, trying to fit in, wanting to be included. Hua's born in America, but he feels he's different. And for college, Hua goes to Berkeley, where 40% of the students are Asian. However some are more assimilated than others.
So besides the music, what makes "Stay True" great is the discussion of college. There are 8,000 students in Hua's class, so there is anonymity, unlike where I went to college, where the class was 450. And...
This is what's hard to square for me, the college experience. Hua talks about all this extracurricular reading, we didn't have time for that at Middlebury, and I had no desire to go any deeper into academic theory. I remember this philosophy class I had the first semester, with Mr. Andrews, nearly dead, one of the most boring classes I've ever had. I did well, but I never took another philosophy class. They didn't teach anything I was interested in at Middlebury College. And the only reason I went to college was because it was expected. And the reason I went to Middlebury is because it's beautiful, coed, in Vermont and has its own ski area. The latter being the most important.
As the years wore on I switched from English to Art History, and I studied less and was less satisfied and ultimately graduated, but I'm not sure exactly what the difference is, the age, the institution...because on an academic level I cannot relate to Hua. He cares. I used to laugh at the people who took the subjects seriously. These were the people who were grinds, who were just replicating their high school experience because...because that's what you did! Most of what I learned at Middlebury was outside the classroom, the people were very different from those I grew up with, 45% prep school graduates, few Jews, and all smart. The conversation was interesting and stimulating, that's what I miss. And I learned how to analyze. When I think about Middlebury I remember the first week of school, when the anthropology teacher told us we were never going to discuss the reading in class, if we couldn't understand the books we had bigger problems. And in law school all we talked about was the reading.
Now I'm too deep into my own experience, when I'm really talking about Hua's.
Hua ended up an academic. He got his doctorate at Harvard. He's a professor at Bard and he's on staff at "The New Yorker," America's most esteemed journal which Tom Wolfe legendarily excoriated. Unfortunately, Wolfe was right. "The New Yorker" is a club, with a style, and even though I've subscribed for decades one thing I know is true, these are not my people. My people threw off the constraints. Bucked the system. Refused to be a cog in the machine. That's why rock was so fascinating, they made it up as they went along. Woody Allen, now a pariah, but once a god, said he didn't want to be a member of any group that would have him. Elon Musk is a perfect example, he's got rough edges, he couldn't work for the company, he can only run the company, answering only to himself. Most of the legendary envelope-pushers are the same way. The most powerful people in the music industry couldn't work anywhere else, they'd get fired. As for your heroes... If you ever got to meet them you'd be stunned. In many cases they're narcissistic, and they can barely even engage socially.
Hua is a fan. And that's one thing we can all relate to. Believing in rock stars and creating an identity similar, yet different. You want to stand out, but usually you're not even noticed.
Now in truth "Stay True" is all about a specific event, which is delineated in each and every review of the book. I'm not going to detail it, I'll let you be surprised, just like Hua was.
But what we've got in "Stay True" is the story of Hua's college experience, his views on politics, love, academics... And he's not easily swayed from his positions. And he has a zine... Hua's college experience could not be replicated today. They talk about making a movie, but Hua says finding someone with a camera is a big hurdle. Today everybody has a camera!
So, "The New York Times" said "Stay True" was one of the ten best books of the year. And sans all the philosophy, I doubt they would have felt the same way. But truly it was the plot, the story, the experiences and what Hua felt about them that rang true for me. You won't care about the academics and philosophy, you'll care about the crushes, the friendships...
Hua writes in a very direct style. Except for the philosophy, it's highly readable. And Hua is ultimately very much like you and me.
I'll give you one quote...
"I found confident people suspicious."
This rings a bell with me. How could these people be so self-assured? I certainly was not, and still am not.
For those guys who only read nonfiction... This is your book. It's not giving any advice, but there's tons of insight.
And I'm not saying women won't like "Stay True"...
You'll have a hard time putting it down. You won't finish it and forget it.
But there will be some slow sections that you might find boring. Not extensive, but they're there.
You've been forewarned.
But still, you'd be missing something if you didn't read "Stay True." Really, you should. This is so many of our stories'. We're more similar than different.
Two thumbs up!
Part of me wants to tell you to read this book, and another wants to give a caveat.
If you've read my favorite book, "Anna Karenina," you know it is peppered with political diatribes. Some people skip right over those. And if you do you miss little plot. "Stay True" is a bit different. It is peppered with philosophy and other highfalutin' academic analysis that might fog your brain. But this philosophy does relate directly to the plot, and unlike "Anna Karenina," "Stay True" is not much of a commitment, it's only 198 pages.
And the reason I recommend "Stay True" is Hua Hsu is a music fan. He's in his mid-forties, so his peak era was in the early to mid nineties. And he's a perfect example of that era, the last in which rock ruled. Hsu reveres the bands, they inform his whole life. But he also embodies the rock and roll ethos, he does not want to be a member of the club. He's the other. And he dresses accordingly. He's not the life of the party, if he even goes to the party. And he hasn't been laid. In other words, he's hip but not mainstream. The music world has completely flipped in the twenty first century. Those who make it are extroverts, who might have been popular in high school. It's all about conforming, as opposed to thinking for yourself. It's about the group, not the individual.
But really, "Stay True" is not about today, but yesterday, so let's set the scene.
Hua is the son of Taiwanese immigrants. They came to America for the opportunity, to better themselves. And interestingly, while they were over here, all the action turned out to be over there, and Hua's father moves back to Taiwan, but Hua and his mother live in Cupertino, until the mother moves back to Taiwan too.
And a lot of the book is concerned with being Asian, being a minority, trying to fit in, wanting to be included. Hua's born in America, but he feels he's different. And for college, Hua goes to Berkeley, where 40% of the students are Asian. However some are more assimilated than others.
So besides the music, what makes "Stay True" great is the discussion of college. There are 8,000 students in Hua's class, so there is anonymity, unlike where I went to college, where the class was 450. And...
This is what's hard to square for me, the college experience. Hua talks about all this extracurricular reading, we didn't have time for that at Middlebury, and I had no desire to go any deeper into academic theory. I remember this philosophy class I had the first semester, with Mr. Andrews, nearly dead, one of the most boring classes I've ever had. I did well, but I never took another philosophy class. They didn't teach anything I was interested in at Middlebury College. And the only reason I went to college was because it was expected. And the reason I went to Middlebury is because it's beautiful, coed, in Vermont and has its own ski area. The latter being the most important.
As the years wore on I switched from English to Art History, and I studied less and was less satisfied and ultimately graduated, but I'm not sure exactly what the difference is, the age, the institution...because on an academic level I cannot relate to Hua. He cares. I used to laugh at the people who took the subjects seriously. These were the people who were grinds, who were just replicating their high school experience because...because that's what you did! Most of what I learned at Middlebury was outside the classroom, the people were very different from those I grew up with, 45% prep school graduates, few Jews, and all smart. The conversation was interesting and stimulating, that's what I miss. And I learned how to analyze. When I think about Middlebury I remember the first week of school, when the anthropology teacher told us we were never going to discuss the reading in class, if we couldn't understand the books we had bigger problems. And in law school all we talked about was the reading.
Now I'm too deep into my own experience, when I'm really talking about Hua's.
Hua ended up an academic. He got his doctorate at Harvard. He's a professor at Bard and he's on staff at "The New Yorker," America's most esteemed journal which Tom Wolfe legendarily excoriated. Unfortunately, Wolfe was right. "The New Yorker" is a club, with a style, and even though I've subscribed for decades one thing I know is true, these are not my people. My people threw off the constraints. Bucked the system. Refused to be a cog in the machine. That's why rock was so fascinating, they made it up as they went along. Woody Allen, now a pariah, but once a god, said he didn't want to be a member of any group that would have him. Elon Musk is a perfect example, he's got rough edges, he couldn't work for the company, he can only run the company, answering only to himself. Most of the legendary envelope-pushers are the same way. The most powerful people in the music industry couldn't work anywhere else, they'd get fired. As for your heroes... If you ever got to meet them you'd be stunned. In many cases they're narcissistic, and they can barely even engage socially.
Hua is a fan. And that's one thing we can all relate to. Believing in rock stars and creating an identity similar, yet different. You want to stand out, but usually you're not even noticed.
Now in truth "Stay True" is all about a specific event, which is delineated in each and every review of the book. I'm not going to detail it, I'll let you be surprised, just like Hua was.
But what we've got in "Stay True" is the story of Hua's college experience, his views on politics, love, academics... And he's not easily swayed from his positions. And he has a zine... Hua's college experience could not be replicated today. They talk about making a movie, but Hua says finding someone with a camera is a big hurdle. Today everybody has a camera!
So, "The New York Times" said "Stay True" was one of the ten best books of the year. And sans all the philosophy, I doubt they would have felt the same way. But truly it was the plot, the story, the experiences and what Hua felt about them that rang true for me. You won't care about the academics and philosophy, you'll care about the crushes, the friendships...
Hua writes in a very direct style. Except for the philosophy, it's highly readable. And Hua is ultimately very much like you and me.
I'll give you one quote...
"I found confident people suspicious."
This rings a bell with me. How could these people be so self-assured? I certainly was not, and still am not.
For those guys who only read nonfiction... This is your book. It's not giving any advice, but there's tons of insight.
And I'm not saying women won't like "Stay True"...
You'll have a hard time putting it down. You won't finish it and forget it.
But there will be some slow sections that you might find boring. Not extensive, but they're there.
You've been forewarned.
But still, you'd be missing something if you didn't read "Stay True." Really, you should. This is so many of our stories'. We're more similar than different.
Two thumbs up!
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