The Last Dinner Party At The Fonda

I was stunned.

If this was 1985, you'd already know their name, because they'd be all over MTV.

What we've got here is five English women and a male drummer who can play, sing and write songs with melodies and changes. Do you know how rare that is?

I didn't want to go. It's been hot as hell here in Los Angeles. It's hard to get a parking spot in Hollywood. I'm gonna have to sit there and feign interest for an hour and a half. But I already told myself I was going to be honest, I was not going to lie. Not that I ever do. But I would not be enthusiastic if I didn't feel it. I wasn't going to say the band was great. I was expecting some hard rock drivel played poorly more akin to Metallica than Def Leppard, boy was I surprised.

Yes, The Last Dinner Party is managed by Q Prime. I mean why are Cliff and Peter bothering. A new band, really? They're both in their seventies. Why don't they just count their money and go home.

Excitement... It's so rare these days. Stuff is good on paper. Genre-specific. Appealing to brain dead kids who the purveyors have no respect for. Meanwhile, the bands of yore sell out stadiums.

Can you pour some sugar on me?

Now don't ask me how people find out about bands like this these days. Used to be top-down marketing. You'd hire a stylist, a director with chops and make an expensive video launching the act to the masses. Everybody played the game, few acts made it through the Pittman sieve. But when they did...

Abbey Konowitch was the most powerful person in the music business. He decided whether you got airplay or not. And then the KROQ team, which migrated from Pasadena to NYC and could be seen on both sides of the camera. We all watched, we knew all the tunes, and then the CD came along and made the labels and their executives rich. Richer than they'd ever been before. I'm not saying that the acts were broke, now that they could tour around the world, but there was more money and more of it was kept by the labels and...

These are the days everybody yearns for.

Unless you're under the age of thirty, and then you have no frame of reference, you came of age in the internet era, where there was a plethora of music and it was every person for themselves.

But usually it's solo acts. Platforms for brand extension. Little money-makers. The music is just grease.

And then there are those who aren't built for the mainstream. The Active Rockers. Appealing to a hard core alienated audience. Glad that you don't get it, don't like it, and don't go. But it doesn't cross over. There's too much of an edge, too much bite, there might be changes, but the riffs overpower the melody, and there's a lot of shouting and less singing.

So what's a poor boy to do, who even wants to play in a rock and roll band?

It's girls. And you don't need to be a rock star to get laid. But so many of those boys are now incels. Ceding the territory to the well-adjusted, the women they want to be with. And their audience, half of the opposite sex.

I'd say it was around 50/50. Maybe 60/40, women to men. And the music was far from wimpy. But they knew the tunes and sang along.

And the lead singer stopped the performance to give aid to a woman overcome by the heat. Traditionally acts don't care, they don't want to stop the momentum.

But the band and the audience were one.

How did they know?

Believe me, this was not a Clive Davis act, this was not Whitney Houston.

Yes, Clive specialized in what we've got today. Drivel. Pretty faces singing pop songs written by others.

That is not The Last Dinner Party.

If you're authentic, people believe, they play your records and come to see you.

Cliff told me they could have played the Greek. 6,000 seats. HUH?

This is the modern world. Everything is spontaneous. Assuming it gets traction at all. You can't even push it if you want to. That's what the labels are looking for, a conflagration that brings the act from 0-60 overnight. An edge, a social media breakout. Whether they sign the act from TikTok or do their best to push it there.

Sometimes that works, but usually it doesn't. Because the audience is in control. There's no PD of the internet.

So what you need to do is hone your chops and play and...

Do you know how rare this is? Do you know how often people want me to get excited about people who can't sing? My inbox is inundated with acts who can't sing, people wondering why they're not superstars.

And now I'll get a rash of links from people believing that there's some golden ticket out there, that will bring them to the top of the heap. But that is untrue.

Some woman at Q Prime in the U.K. saw a video online, from some club, there's a guy who shoots videos of unknown bands there.

The Last Dinner Party, then just The Dinner Party, before another act claimed the name, had only a few gigs under their belt. Cliff and Peter saw the clip, flew to England and signed them. There were no socials, there was no data, only music.

And there was no bidding war, no one else was involved.

And then the band paid their dues, on the road, made an album with the producer of the Arctic Monkeys, on Island. The U.K. is different.

Cliff told me if I'd seen Def Leppard in their first fifty gigs...

But The Last Dinner Party is no longer rough, it's over the hump.

Really, I couldn't believe they were that tight, I haven't heard anything this seamless sans hard drives in eons.

And it doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what the "gatekeepers" think. Oh, you need to get on a Spotify playlist, that's the ticket!

No, you only have to be good. Then people find you.

But there's very little good out there. And when people find it they glom on to it, they believe in it.

Everybody wants to be a star. They want a shortcut, they figure if they're on a TV competition show...

It's all positively old school.

But there's a new girl in school. Actually, five. And the guitarist was playing in a pit orchestra before joining the band.

Don't bother to send me your opinion. It doesn't matter, I don't care.

Everybody focuses on the records, the charts. But it always comes down to live, whether you can sell tickets or not, whether the audience is dedicated, whether they care.

The Last Dinner Party is building an audience and you've never heard of them.

Welcome to the modern era.


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