Was in the process of destroying his career.
First there was that "Playboy" interview.
Then the "relationship" with Taylor Swift and the resulting bite-back song.
Then the firing of his long term manager for a newer au courant one responsible for hits, which Mayer so desperately desired, wanting to emulate the success of his younger girlfriend Katy Perry, and when no hits ensued he fired the new manager too.
Now John Mayer is 39. "Room For Squares" came out over 15 years ago. In today's here today gone today culture almost no one sustains. So how come he's suddenly so successful with a boffo arena tour?
It certainly had nothing to do with hits. There's a subtle shift in the music business, it's all going live. The chart is inane, not sure whether it's about sales or streams, and only a small subset of the population pays attention to the hits on both streaming services and Top Forty radio, and the rest...
Is a vast morass indecipherable unless you're deep into it.
Now it's about your fan base. You can employ publicity to try and make them aware, but if your goal is to convert new fans, you can't do it, only your fans can do it, by spreading the word online. Of course, hits make a difference, but unless you make beat-infused music you can't have one.
Concerts are burgeoning. It's a new golden age. In a digitized era people are looking for some honest truth. Which is probably why you should can the dancing and the hard drives and deliver humanity. That paradigm, of reproducing the video, evolved from a now passe era, that of MTV, when clips could cost a million bucks and become cultural touchstones. Today people watch videos on their phones in postage stamp-sized windows, it's about the music, not the image, and that's a good thing. And anybody with a smash video has seemed to lose traction thereafter. Can you say PSY, can you say Baauer? So when people go to the show they want to feel the buzz, the electricity, of a one of a kind event, not the exact same circus that's gonna play the next day in Pittsburgh.
Of course there are exceptions, successful touring spectacles.
But that brings us back to Mr. Mayer. His career was at a nadir and what did he do, play with the Grateful Dead!
Now there was a predecessor. One Bruce Hornsby. Who too had gigantic soft rock radio hits and then threw them over in a 180, venturing to where it was conventionally thought his audience did not tread. But this turned out to be untrue. Some fans remained and Bruce made a whole coterie of new ones, much more loyal than the old ones, the fans of Jerry, et al. Because, as established above, it's your fans who keep you alive, not the press, and no one is more loyal than a Deadhead.
And Mayer could always wail. So he goes on the road with Weir and crew and kills it. He single-handedly brings back the magic that once was, the shows even eclipsed those at Fare Thee Well, because it was about music and not nostalgia and it was akin to Derek Trucks reinvigorating the Allman Brothers but in this case Mayer was already a star. And refused to take a victory lap. The old Mayer would have hyped up his appearance, taken credit, in this case he was mostly silent, he let his axe do the talking, and boy did it.
So he could play with the Dead, his old career was moribund, right?
Wrong. Like a musician instead of a star Mayer decided to walk into the wilderness. Make music satisfying himself instead of searching for hits, go on an aural journey instead of playing the game. Instead of dropping an entire album and carpet-bombing the universe with publicity, he put out an EP, four songs, back in January, and another four tracks just yesterday. And there's nothing a fan wants more than new music, and in the modern world four at a time is just about right, easy to check out and digest.
And there was a winner on "The Search For Everything - Wave One," "Love On The Weekend," with that smooth sound that made John Mayer the darling of women everywhere.
But the revelation was the opening cut, "Moving On And Getting Over," where he was suddenly on the losing end. Having loved 'em and left 'em, prolonging his adolescence, it ended with Katy Perry and Mayer can't seem to get over it, he's depressed and vulnerable and ultimately RELATABLE!
"I'm one text away from being back again"
But he's not. It's over. He's alone and struggling.
It's personal. Which is what we're looking for.
And "Still Feel Like Your Man," the opening cut on "The Search For Everything - Wave Two," released yesterday, is more R&B than conventional Mayer. Reminds me of no one so much as Todd Rundgren, who embraced his Philly roots on an irregular basis, it was so refreshing, you could not put him in a box, and suddenly you can't put Mayer in a box either, he's EXPERIMENTING!
Wow, it isn't only Mayer's career that's been moribund, but music too. We've had the same pop sound with the fake drums for nearly two decades and the classic acts don't even bother to make new music and when they do it's substandard iterations of what they did before and suddenly the standard bearer for testing limits is John Mayer?
Now "Love On The Weekend" has 27 million plays on Spotify. Significant, but not stratospheric. Then again, only the pop hits can go nuclear on the service, hit triple digits, and there was some radio success, but the track was not a smash. It made it to number 5 on Hot Rock Songs, a dead format if there ever was one, and number 19 on Adult Top 40, a natural format for Mayer, but not a breakthrough, and on the Hot 100 it climbed all the way to number 53, which is kind of like not being on the chart at all.
Without this airplay the three other tracks on "Wave One" don't have as much traction, but one has nearly ten million streams and one just over five million, which is quite healthy. In other words, Mayer is getting support.
But he's detached from the game. Sure, he was on "Ellen" the other day, but in reality he's now in the John Mayer business, being a musician not a star, and it's working for him!
It's possible he'll have another hit, but it doesn't seem to matter. He's gone from being two-dimensional to three, from pretty boy to musician. He's continuing, testing limits and making new music when most of his contemporaries are oldies acts playing to dwindling audiences on double and triple bills.
It wasn't headed this way. John Mayer's career was headed for the dumper, down, down, down. But he took risks, refused to play it the way everybody told him to, and it worked!
And it can work for you too. If you play to your fans instead of the media. The system needs fodder, to chew up and spit out. It's a thrill to have a hit, but the focus is less on music than it is on the penumbra. But if you can garner an audience that loves you first and foremost for your tunes instead of your celebrity, they'll follow you anywhere. Arguably, your celebrity works against you. Mayer's vulnerability on these new tracks illustrates he's just like you and me, he still hurts, we all still hurt.
And we all still want to feel good.
So we go to the show to hear the songs we know and the ones we don't and dance in the aisle and smile and if you can deliver this experience you can sell every ticket in the building.
Like John Mayer.
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Saturday, 25 February 2017
Friday, 24 February 2017
The Gold Doubloons
I'm the kind of guy who doesn't want to stay in the hotel room. If I'm in a foreign country I want to be out and about, eating up the scenery, drinking up the difference, because it won't be long before I'm back home.
So after Stuart took me on the Van Morrison tour, I had him drop me at the Ulster Museum.
Like I said, I could live in a museum. I love to learn. I love to be taken away. I love to marinate in what once was.
Even though it was quarter to four and the museum closed at five.
But it turned out there was no admission fee and I was there to see the exhibit on the Troubles and I could probably cover that so I dove in.
But I was overloaded. That's the problem with travel, especially overseas, you're tired and your heart says carry on but your brain says no go and all the words run together and you're chalking up miles, but the experience is nearly worthless.
Furthermore, the Troubles exhibit wasn't linear. I want to start at the beginning and move forward. The only problem being sometimes you don't get to the end or you have to rush but you never really know what's important, or most important.
And after finishing the Troubles I climbed the stairs to discover...
An exhibit on the industrial revolution that had been so much better done at the Titanic Museum. More in depth with better commentary. Not all museums are created equal, and not all have descriptions that are decipherable.
So I wandered out into the atrium and ended up in a room about 1916, World War 1.
Have you been to the Imperial War Museum in London? Put it on your list, but after the Churchill War Rooms. Neither of them rate number one in the guidebooks, but both are at the toppermost in my world. The War Rooms were underground just barely and you learn so much about Churchill, a complicated gent who saved democracy, the gravitas is palpable. You wonder what the inhabitants did after the war. When their lives were no longer on the line. That's the conundrum, when you can die you never feel more alive. And it's not only adrenaline junkies who thrive on this.
As for the Imperial War Museum... They've got a V-2 rocket in the main hall, when you enter. You know, the kind that the Germans dropped on London.
And there's an incredible concentration camp exhibit, but in the bowels of the building there's a facsimile of trench warfare. We forget how combat has progressed yet stayed the same. As in there's so much new technology, airplanes became a factor in World War I, but the essence of warfare stays identical, senseless dying as generals try to obtain land.
And in the 1916 exhibit they had a machine gun. Which was used to mow down the enemy. I got scared just looking at it.
And when I exited the exhibit I entered the 1500s.
Now that seems a long time ago, five hundred years, half a century. But as I started to read I stopped, because it all seemed so modern.
You see we think everybody before us lived in the Dark Ages. But this is not true. They were positively up to date, the people after us are gonna laugh at our lifestyle. I remember marveling that my mother grew up without television (my father never watched the box), but I grew up without internet. And the concept of having a computer in one's palm seems so revolutionary. A hundred years from now? Not so much.
So I'm breezing along, thinking the museum's gonna close soon anyway, and I can get released after paying my dues, when I encounter a whole exhibit on the Spanish Armada.
Didn't we study that in the fifth grade?
To say I don't remember much...the truth is I don't remember anything at all. And when I got to the end and read why the British succeeded and the Spanish failed I was suddenly intrigued and went back to the beginning.
Spain had a veritable navy, 130 ships. How'd they pay for that, who manned them?
As for England... Their fleet wasn't as big and their ships were smaller and therefore more nimble, which turned out to be a huge advantage.
Now the reason they had this exhibit at the Ulster was because...
After being beaten, licking their wounds, what was left of the Armada decided to return to Spain with its tail between its legs via the North Atlantic, they sailed around Ireland and...
Disaster. The maps were bad...don't take Google and Waze for granted. Scurvy was rampant, they didn't know they needed vitamin C. And the boats were battered and the weather was horrible and...
Ships were blown ashore and 5,000 men died and...
History was coming alive.
But this was all maps and words, and after finishing them I went to the display cases.
Turns out they found a ship, in the last century. Kinda like the Titanic but with a lot less publicity. And what they excavated...
It wasn't like today, where only the poor and lower classes go into the military. The rich went too. And they brought their jewelry with them. If you were wealthy, you wore a gold chain around your neck.
They had two of them. Worn by the sailors nearly half a century ago. How cool is that?
But then I saw these quasi-round gold and silver disks. And the description told me...
These were gold and silver doubloons. That the rich took their money with them.
Which had my head spinning. They're on these barely maneuverable (manoeuvrable?) ships far from home dressed up like dandies and they're carrying their cash, which anybody could steal, status was everything, even on this ship long ago. And there was social stratification, he with the cash lived better.
And I'm thinking it's so long ago and so different.
But then I saw the outfit of someone from the same era, a peasant, the clothes were found in a bog that preserved them, and they were leather and looked like something out of "Robin Hood," although riven with patched holes and I realized...
They were just like you and me.
And then the voice came over the intercom telling me it was time to go, but...
I still can't get the image of the gold doubloons out of my head. Cash money, just sitting there.
The gold and silver doubloons: http://bit.ly/2ljzFws
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So after Stuart took me on the Van Morrison tour, I had him drop me at the Ulster Museum.
Like I said, I could live in a museum. I love to learn. I love to be taken away. I love to marinate in what once was.
Even though it was quarter to four and the museum closed at five.
But it turned out there was no admission fee and I was there to see the exhibit on the Troubles and I could probably cover that so I dove in.
But I was overloaded. That's the problem with travel, especially overseas, you're tired and your heart says carry on but your brain says no go and all the words run together and you're chalking up miles, but the experience is nearly worthless.
Furthermore, the Troubles exhibit wasn't linear. I want to start at the beginning and move forward. The only problem being sometimes you don't get to the end or you have to rush but you never really know what's important, or most important.
And after finishing the Troubles I climbed the stairs to discover...
An exhibit on the industrial revolution that had been so much better done at the Titanic Museum. More in depth with better commentary. Not all museums are created equal, and not all have descriptions that are decipherable.
So I wandered out into the atrium and ended up in a room about 1916, World War 1.
Have you been to the Imperial War Museum in London? Put it on your list, but after the Churchill War Rooms. Neither of them rate number one in the guidebooks, but both are at the toppermost in my world. The War Rooms were underground just barely and you learn so much about Churchill, a complicated gent who saved democracy, the gravitas is palpable. You wonder what the inhabitants did after the war. When their lives were no longer on the line. That's the conundrum, when you can die you never feel more alive. And it's not only adrenaline junkies who thrive on this.
As for the Imperial War Museum... They've got a V-2 rocket in the main hall, when you enter. You know, the kind that the Germans dropped on London.
And there's an incredible concentration camp exhibit, but in the bowels of the building there's a facsimile of trench warfare. We forget how combat has progressed yet stayed the same. As in there's so much new technology, airplanes became a factor in World War I, but the essence of warfare stays identical, senseless dying as generals try to obtain land.
And in the 1916 exhibit they had a machine gun. Which was used to mow down the enemy. I got scared just looking at it.
And when I exited the exhibit I entered the 1500s.
Now that seems a long time ago, five hundred years, half a century. But as I started to read I stopped, because it all seemed so modern.
You see we think everybody before us lived in the Dark Ages. But this is not true. They were positively up to date, the people after us are gonna laugh at our lifestyle. I remember marveling that my mother grew up without television (my father never watched the box), but I grew up without internet. And the concept of having a computer in one's palm seems so revolutionary. A hundred years from now? Not so much.
So I'm breezing along, thinking the museum's gonna close soon anyway, and I can get released after paying my dues, when I encounter a whole exhibit on the Spanish Armada.
Didn't we study that in the fifth grade?
To say I don't remember much...the truth is I don't remember anything at all. And when I got to the end and read why the British succeeded and the Spanish failed I was suddenly intrigued and went back to the beginning.
Spain had a veritable navy, 130 ships. How'd they pay for that, who manned them?
As for England... Their fleet wasn't as big and their ships were smaller and therefore more nimble, which turned out to be a huge advantage.
Now the reason they had this exhibit at the Ulster was because...
After being beaten, licking their wounds, what was left of the Armada decided to return to Spain with its tail between its legs via the North Atlantic, they sailed around Ireland and...
Disaster. The maps were bad...don't take Google and Waze for granted. Scurvy was rampant, they didn't know they needed vitamin C. And the boats were battered and the weather was horrible and...
Ships were blown ashore and 5,000 men died and...
History was coming alive.
But this was all maps and words, and after finishing them I went to the display cases.
Turns out they found a ship, in the last century. Kinda like the Titanic but with a lot less publicity. And what they excavated...
It wasn't like today, where only the poor and lower classes go into the military. The rich went too. And they brought their jewelry with them. If you were wealthy, you wore a gold chain around your neck.
They had two of them. Worn by the sailors nearly half a century ago. How cool is that?
But then I saw these quasi-round gold and silver disks. And the description told me...
These were gold and silver doubloons. That the rich took their money with them.
Which had my head spinning. They're on these barely maneuverable (manoeuvrable?) ships far from home dressed up like dandies and they're carrying their cash, which anybody could steal, status was everything, even on this ship long ago. And there was social stratification, he with the cash lived better.
And I'm thinking it's so long ago and so different.
But then I saw the outfit of someone from the same era, a peasant, the clothes were found in a bog that preserved them, and they were leather and looked like something out of "Robin Hood," although riven with patched holes and I realized...
They were just like you and me.
And then the voice came over the intercom telling me it was time to go, but...
I still can't get the image of the gold doubloons out of my head. Cash money, just sitting there.
The gold and silver doubloons: http://bit.ly/2ljzFws
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The Warren Buffett Documentary
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/becoming-warren-buffett?utm_source=phplist5751&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=The+Warren+Buffett+Documentary
They broke the mold.
You watch these documentaries so you can be like them, pick up little tips that will help you on the path to success. But watching this film you realize Buffett is the other, a sui generis businessman who in many ways is unique yet ultimately is no different from you and me.
As in we're people on the planet in America.
Oh, it could be much worse. We could live in a third world country. A war-torn nation. But we were lucky enough to be born in the U.S.A. with a modicum of opportunity and...
This is not about getting ahead, this is about living.
Used to be almost no one was rich and famous. It was kind of like being an astronaut, everybody knew their name but there were very few of them. But the internet has flipped the game and reality TV gives us the impression if we just want it bad enough, we can be known too. And if we cut corners, screw a few people over, we can become rich too. But most of us never do. Most of us are honest and forthright and would never cross anybody. We're offended that others do. We are like Warren Buffett.
So he grew up in Omaha. I've been there, a long time ago, on my way back from Philmont, in a bus, with 39 other Boy Scouts. And one thing was for sure, it was far away. You can get there by plane these days, something we could not afford, but really Omaha is now like everywhere else, except maybe New York and L.A. As in it's a backwater. Not as much as it used to be, cable TV and the aforementioned internet go everywhere, but the truth is most of us are cornpone outsiders doing our best to get along. There's a cadre of hipsters telling us they're better than we are, and a bunch of hucksters promoting themselves, while we sit on the sidelines and wonder where we're going.
Where are you going?
Warren imparts a number of lessons in this movie. And they're good ones. But the truth is you've got to make your own map, decide where you want to go. And in an ever more difficult world where money is everything, that's hard to do, especially since so many walks of life barely pay the bills. It's one thing to be poor and uneducated, it's quite another to be a college graduate and walk into the wilderness on a journey that no one is paying attention to that has no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Used to be that was a worthwhile excursion, but now it's seen as a waste.
But Buffett doesn't care about the rules. That's another thing about America, everybody's so worried about what others think of them. They're afraid to be unique. Berkshire Hathaway has no general counsel, doesn't speak to analysts and all we hear from public companies is what a pain in the ass it is to comply and report.
Maybe not, if you're in it for the long haul.
And speaking of the long haul, Warren's wife abandoned him. She just couldn't take it anymore. He was too removed. So you think money will solve all your problems but...
So you're watching this flick and finding it incredibly enjoyable. Because it's not what it appears. You know that without being so rich on one would care, and that they're gonna put Buffett on a pedestal and make you feel inadequate. But making money is just his work, and he's a nice loner with as many issues as you and me, maybe more.
So we've got the titans of industry, who flaunt their wealth, telling us they're better than we are. That's one thing that's irritating, all the rich people who act like they got tablets from God and know better when the truth is they don't.
And Warren was lucky he had an inspiring father, not all of us possess one.
But his first wife changed not only his politics, but his outlook on life in so many ways.
But you couldn't really change him. A guy who skipped a grade but then got C's when the family moved to D.C. and the teachers were terrible.
We're all looking for stimulation, we're all looking for excitement, it's just that Warren Buffett found his in money.
Find yours. And know that no one cares what you do and nobody will be remembered. We're all just regular Janes and Joes, nobody is that special, there are 24 hours in a day, how are you gonna kill them?
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They broke the mold.
You watch these documentaries so you can be like them, pick up little tips that will help you on the path to success. But watching this film you realize Buffett is the other, a sui generis businessman who in many ways is unique yet ultimately is no different from you and me.
As in we're people on the planet in America.
Oh, it could be much worse. We could live in a third world country. A war-torn nation. But we were lucky enough to be born in the U.S.A. with a modicum of opportunity and...
This is not about getting ahead, this is about living.
Used to be almost no one was rich and famous. It was kind of like being an astronaut, everybody knew their name but there were very few of them. But the internet has flipped the game and reality TV gives us the impression if we just want it bad enough, we can be known too. And if we cut corners, screw a few people over, we can become rich too. But most of us never do. Most of us are honest and forthright and would never cross anybody. We're offended that others do. We are like Warren Buffett.
So he grew up in Omaha. I've been there, a long time ago, on my way back from Philmont, in a bus, with 39 other Boy Scouts. And one thing was for sure, it was far away. You can get there by plane these days, something we could not afford, but really Omaha is now like everywhere else, except maybe New York and L.A. As in it's a backwater. Not as much as it used to be, cable TV and the aforementioned internet go everywhere, but the truth is most of us are cornpone outsiders doing our best to get along. There's a cadre of hipsters telling us they're better than we are, and a bunch of hucksters promoting themselves, while we sit on the sidelines and wonder where we're going.
Where are you going?
Warren imparts a number of lessons in this movie. And they're good ones. But the truth is you've got to make your own map, decide where you want to go. And in an ever more difficult world where money is everything, that's hard to do, especially since so many walks of life barely pay the bills. It's one thing to be poor and uneducated, it's quite another to be a college graduate and walk into the wilderness on a journey that no one is paying attention to that has no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Used to be that was a worthwhile excursion, but now it's seen as a waste.
But Buffett doesn't care about the rules. That's another thing about America, everybody's so worried about what others think of them. They're afraid to be unique. Berkshire Hathaway has no general counsel, doesn't speak to analysts and all we hear from public companies is what a pain in the ass it is to comply and report.
Maybe not, if you're in it for the long haul.
And speaking of the long haul, Warren's wife abandoned him. She just couldn't take it anymore. He was too removed. So you think money will solve all your problems but...
So you're watching this flick and finding it incredibly enjoyable. Because it's not what it appears. You know that without being so rich on one would care, and that they're gonna put Buffett on a pedestal and make you feel inadequate. But making money is just his work, and he's a nice loner with as many issues as you and me, maybe more.
So we've got the titans of industry, who flaunt their wealth, telling us they're better than we are. That's one thing that's irritating, all the rich people who act like they got tablets from God and know better when the truth is they don't.
And Warren was lucky he had an inspiring father, not all of us possess one.
But his first wife changed not only his politics, but his outlook on life in so many ways.
But you couldn't really change him. A guy who skipped a grade but then got C's when the family moved to D.C. and the teachers were terrible.
We're all looking for stimulation, we're all looking for excitement, it's just that Warren Buffett found his in money.
Find yours. And know that no one cares what you do and nobody will be remembered. We're all just regular Janes and Joes, nobody is that special, there are 24 hours in a day, how are you gonna kill them?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/?utm_source=phplist5751&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=The+Warren+Buffett+Documentary
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Thursday, 23 February 2017
Larry Wilmore On Bill Maher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDLflyQ8TA&list=PLABD1FBE909F66018&index=1&utm_source=phplist5750&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Larry+Wilmore+On+Bill+Maher
If Jimmy Carter is our best ex-President...
Larry Wilmore is our best ex-talk show host.
I'm a fan of Jon Stewart but I rarely watched the "Daily Show." However I'm addicted to John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight," wherein the British comedian speaks truth to power via research, a sharp contrast to the opinions bloviated on all the supposed hard news stations. I do believe these late night news/comedy programs have great influence. Sure, not everybody watches them, but we're all looking for gurus, we're all looking for explanations, and in a world where all the straight news outlets got it wrong and we've lost faith in the purveyors, why not believe in comedians who seem closer to you and me and are not busy cozying up to elected officials, thinking access is everything. Remember when musicians were outsiders? Now that role is being played by comedians. And never forget, it was a quip at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that got Trump to run. Nothing hurts more than a joke that hits home. The harder you laugh, the truer it is.
So, if Oliver could break out from the "Daily Show," couldn't Wilmore?
Can't say I watched him much, but he was too busy being funny.
He wasn't funny on Bill Maher's program.
Obama was too busy being Jackie Robinson, so fearful of being the angry black man that he didn't stand up and get intense when he should have. In light of the ascendance of Bernie Sanders and the election of Donald Trump we must now acknowledge we live in a new era where people can handle both the truth and edge. Of course, Trump trades in subterfuge, but his acolytes believe it, and despite committing one faux pas after another, touching the third rail again and again, he won.
If you watched last Friday's "Real Time" you saw that Wilmore was not champing at the bit. He waited for the holes and inserted well-reasoned truth in a show that's often too nice, as if we're all friends here and anybody living in Trump's America knows we are not, we are utterly divided.
It was like Wilmore was chucking a spear into a Girl Scout camp.
Oops, that's an Al Campanis moment. I can't put "spear" and a black man in the same sentence. But Trump proved I can. But the point is we're so busy trying not to offend that we rarely speak the truth.
Wilmore spoke the truth to Milo Yiannopolous.
Bill Maher is taking a victory lap, saying he was the catalyst for Milo's demise. I believe he's overstating the case. For Bill didn't challenge him the way...
Larry Wilmore did.
It's just that some people are stars and some people are not. And when someone fails publicly we believe they do not have it, that something extra that allows you to succeed on television. But the truth is Larry Wilmore was miscast, he was so busy trying to be late night funny on Comedy Central that he buried his essence, which is to be razor sharp, chucking that spear.
He uses the F-word and takes down Milo so efficiently all you can do is sit there and smile. End of story. Case closed.
One moment can turn you into a star.
It happened to Amy Schumer, roasting Charlie Sheen.
And it happened to Larry Wilmore Friday night.
I just finished reading "Norwegian By Night," by Derek B. Miller. Written in English but originally published in Norwegian, there's a lot of wisdom in this genre book, and none struck me more than the following:
"'I remember when Harry James hit that C note above high C at Carnegie Hall in 1938. It was Benny Goodman's orchestra. No one was sure if jazz deserved that level of respectability - if those musicians were serious enough to deserve Carnegie Hall. And then that one note. The city went wild.'"
There you have it. Your brilliance can shine and you can close somebody instantly.
I was closed by Larry Wilmore Friday night. He deserves another chance. He needs to be used properly. As the voice of wisdom and reason. We need someone serious who does not appear biased, who has no dog in the hunt, who can throw down lightning and stop us in our tracks with their veracity. Someone who can wow us and entertain us at the same time. Someone who can wait his turn, but can kill 'em when he gets the opportunity.
Furthermore, he looks just like my father, it's uncanny.
P.S. Be sure to hang in with this clip to 4:16, where Larry tells Milo to go...
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If Jimmy Carter is our best ex-President...
Larry Wilmore is our best ex-talk show host.
I'm a fan of Jon Stewart but I rarely watched the "Daily Show." However I'm addicted to John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight," wherein the British comedian speaks truth to power via research, a sharp contrast to the opinions bloviated on all the supposed hard news stations. I do believe these late night news/comedy programs have great influence. Sure, not everybody watches them, but we're all looking for gurus, we're all looking for explanations, and in a world where all the straight news outlets got it wrong and we've lost faith in the purveyors, why not believe in comedians who seem closer to you and me and are not busy cozying up to elected officials, thinking access is everything. Remember when musicians were outsiders? Now that role is being played by comedians. And never forget, it was a quip at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that got Trump to run. Nothing hurts more than a joke that hits home. The harder you laugh, the truer it is.
So, if Oliver could break out from the "Daily Show," couldn't Wilmore?
Can't say I watched him much, but he was too busy being funny.
He wasn't funny on Bill Maher's program.
Obama was too busy being Jackie Robinson, so fearful of being the angry black man that he didn't stand up and get intense when he should have. In light of the ascendance of Bernie Sanders and the election of Donald Trump we must now acknowledge we live in a new era where people can handle both the truth and edge. Of course, Trump trades in subterfuge, but his acolytes believe it, and despite committing one faux pas after another, touching the third rail again and again, he won.
If you watched last Friday's "Real Time" you saw that Wilmore was not champing at the bit. He waited for the holes and inserted well-reasoned truth in a show that's often too nice, as if we're all friends here and anybody living in Trump's America knows we are not, we are utterly divided.
It was like Wilmore was chucking a spear into a Girl Scout camp.
Oops, that's an Al Campanis moment. I can't put "spear" and a black man in the same sentence. But Trump proved I can. But the point is we're so busy trying not to offend that we rarely speak the truth.
Wilmore spoke the truth to Milo Yiannopolous.
Bill Maher is taking a victory lap, saying he was the catalyst for Milo's demise. I believe he's overstating the case. For Bill didn't challenge him the way...
Larry Wilmore did.
It's just that some people are stars and some people are not. And when someone fails publicly we believe they do not have it, that something extra that allows you to succeed on television. But the truth is Larry Wilmore was miscast, he was so busy trying to be late night funny on Comedy Central that he buried his essence, which is to be razor sharp, chucking that spear.
He uses the F-word and takes down Milo so efficiently all you can do is sit there and smile. End of story. Case closed.
One moment can turn you into a star.
It happened to Amy Schumer, roasting Charlie Sheen.
And it happened to Larry Wilmore Friday night.
I just finished reading "Norwegian By Night," by Derek B. Miller. Written in English but originally published in Norwegian, there's a lot of wisdom in this genre book, and none struck me more than the following:
"'I remember when Harry James hit that C note above high C at Carnegie Hall in 1938. It was Benny Goodman's orchestra. No one was sure if jazz deserved that level of respectability - if those musicians were serious enough to deserve Carnegie Hall. And then that one note. The city went wild.'"
There you have it. Your brilliance can shine and you can close somebody instantly.
I was closed by Larry Wilmore Friday night. He deserves another chance. He needs to be used properly. As the voice of wisdom and reason. We need someone serious who does not appear biased, who has no dog in the hunt, who can throw down lightning and stop us in our tracks with their veracity. Someone who can wow us and entertain us at the same time. Someone who can wait his turn, but can kill 'em when he gets the opportunity.
Furthermore, he looks just like my father, it's uncanny.
P.S. Be sure to hang in with this clip to 4:16, where Larry tells Milo to go...
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The Oscars
Who cares?
How did America's go-to awards show, the creme de la creme, lose touch with its audience?
Let's start with the movies themselves. Not only is the human touch that built Hollywood purveyed now on television, but the fantasy/superhero flicks that are made to play around the world are not honored by the Academy. It'd be like having a kid go to community college but attending graduation at Harvard, the disconnect is palpable.
But the media cannot stop trumpeting the story. You'd think the L.A. "Times" was on the studios' payroll. But this has been the narrative for the past fifteen years, the media controlled by baby boomers trumpets old paradigms while the youngsters disconnect and then the media itself loses control. It happened in politics and it's happening in culture. Yesterday the "Wall Street Journal" had a feature on the failure of NASCAR, TV ratings have nearly halved, they're down 45% in a decade. Wasn't rednecks driving around in a circle supposed to be the future of sports? But only half of 18 year olds now get a driver's license and it won't be long before no one drives themselves at all, but the wankers in Hollywood still think it's about acquiring status iron, busy tooting around in their Teslas telling us how green they are.
That's another disconnect. The stars used to be royalty we paid fealty to. Now they're two-dimensional icons we make fun of. And our country is so divided that when Meryl Streep weighs in on the state of our nation, half the country laughs and refutes her message. How did we get here?
This resembles nothing so much as the youthquake of the sixties, wherein parents lost touch with their children who ultimately took over the culture. And that was a good thing, the late sixties and seventies were not only a heyday for music, they were the last golden era in film, before it became about the blockbuster.
But the dirty little secret is there's not that much money in film anymore.
Quick, name the heads of the studios! Hell, can you even name the studios themselves?
I doubt it.
But you used to.
Used to be the studio chiefs were lords of Tinseltown. Today that honor goes to Evan Spiegel of Snapchat, whose IPO may be overvalued, but is gonna mint more millionaires than the movie business has in eons.
As for the agencies that fed off the studio system...
They too have detached. CAA and WME are deep into sports. There's just not that much money in filmed entertainment these days. Not that we're so sure about the monetization of YouTube, but we do know there's something fresh on the Google service that's missing from filmdom.
Remember when going to the movies was de rigueur?
Remember when you had to go in order to function in the culture, when films were the main topic of conversation amongst your peers?
Now people talk about television. But mostly they talk about themselves, on social media.
As for going to the theatre...
In an on demand culture who wants to show up at an appointed time and overpay to endure twenty minutes of commercials, talking and texting people and crying babies? Certainly not me.
Nobody has seen these flicks. This is like watching the World Series unaware of the teams. Where's the drama in that, when you've got no investment?
No wonder ratings keep sinking.
But people will tune in. To see the dresses, for the spectacle.
Because the truth is in today's Tower of Babel society we're looking for unification, we're looking to connect, be a member of the group. So, if we watch the show we can bitch about it with our friends, be part of the discussion, but this has nothing to do with the movies themselves.
And the show itself is so disconnected from reality that you've got to laugh. It's a mash note to an industry that's mired in the last century. Sure, there's nothing like going to see a great movie in a dark theatre, but how many of those are there?
Not many.
The vaunted "La La Land"... Some of the worst buzz on the planet. Rarely does it get a ringing endorsement from the hoi polloi, they shrug their shoulders and say it's o.k. as Hollywood continues to lose credibility. Because when your must-see is not, it's hard to get people out for the next flick.
And then there's the broken business model. Movies think they're different, that they're immune. But in an attention economy all the hype is front-loaded for the theatrical release, which few attend, and then months later the VOD and paid streaming releases occur. To tell you the truth, if I could pay and see it right away I'd be much more interested the movies, I'd check more out. Not only is the hype fresh and the desire stoked, it allows me to be part of the conversation, as stated above, it allows me to belong.
But no, that can't happen. You've got to save the business model. Theatres must be protected. EVERYTHING should be day and date, for the health of the industry itself. Steve Jobs moved music into the twenty first century and then Daniel Ek cemented the modern paradigm whereas movies have no solutions whatsoever. It's not only about the business model, but maintaining pricing, when the truth is most of these flicks are worthless anyway.
We're hungry for story, we're hungry for humanity, which Hollywood once specialized in. But the studios jumped the track, because there's not enough money in not only drama, but comedy. Nobody wants bunts, everybody wants home runs, but the end result is more strikeouts. Come on, look at the grosses on Monday, one flick wins and the rest lose, this is a business?
So I'm flabbergasted when I see endless stories about the host and the parties and the handicapping.
Yes, I cared...
IN THE SEVENTIES!
Used to be I went to a party and filled out my ballot, even in the eighties.
The last two years I've been on the road and missed all but ten minutes of each program and the truth is I didn't miss a thing. I felt no loss. There's no FOMO with the Oscars.
So, they'll continue to fade away. Because the Academy, the whole industry, does not understand the concept of disruption. Nor Clayton Christensen's theory that you've got to start with a clean sheet of paper, making little money, but then the new enterprise becomes good enough and all the cash ends up there.
Which is what YouTube and social media are all about.
Kids don't want to be actors on the big screen, they want to be stars on the handset. And they're very savvy. They know how much PewDiePie makes, and they see him in control of his own destiny as opposed to being bossed around by the man.
There's your generation gap right there.
Kids don't care about the Oscars. And this bodes poorly for the show. Kinda like Cadillac, which was eclipsed by not only Mercedes-Benz and BMW, but Lexus, never mind Lincoln, which can't convince anybody under fifty to buy one.
Sure, this is about the Oscars, but even more this is about our society!
We want it now at a cheap price. We want to participate. We want to share.
And the movie business delivers on none of those desires.
So when you're sitting at home watching HBO instead, when you turn on the TV the next day and see all the fawning on the morning shows, don't think you've been left out. It's they who are out of the picture, they who are out of the loop. They're the last bastions of a dying economy, hawking faded products.
The first decade of this century was about hardware, that's where the technological breakthroughs were evidenced.
Now it's about software.
What's happening on your mobile device is much more exciting, much more riveting than anything that's happening in the theatre.
You can see it.
But Hollywood and the media are blind.
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How did America's go-to awards show, the creme de la creme, lose touch with its audience?
Let's start with the movies themselves. Not only is the human touch that built Hollywood purveyed now on television, but the fantasy/superhero flicks that are made to play around the world are not honored by the Academy. It'd be like having a kid go to community college but attending graduation at Harvard, the disconnect is palpable.
But the media cannot stop trumpeting the story. You'd think the L.A. "Times" was on the studios' payroll. But this has been the narrative for the past fifteen years, the media controlled by baby boomers trumpets old paradigms while the youngsters disconnect and then the media itself loses control. It happened in politics and it's happening in culture. Yesterday the "Wall Street Journal" had a feature on the failure of NASCAR, TV ratings have nearly halved, they're down 45% in a decade. Wasn't rednecks driving around in a circle supposed to be the future of sports? But only half of 18 year olds now get a driver's license and it won't be long before no one drives themselves at all, but the wankers in Hollywood still think it's about acquiring status iron, busy tooting around in their Teslas telling us how green they are.
That's another disconnect. The stars used to be royalty we paid fealty to. Now they're two-dimensional icons we make fun of. And our country is so divided that when Meryl Streep weighs in on the state of our nation, half the country laughs and refutes her message. How did we get here?
This resembles nothing so much as the youthquake of the sixties, wherein parents lost touch with their children who ultimately took over the culture. And that was a good thing, the late sixties and seventies were not only a heyday for music, they were the last golden era in film, before it became about the blockbuster.
But the dirty little secret is there's not that much money in film anymore.
Quick, name the heads of the studios! Hell, can you even name the studios themselves?
I doubt it.
But you used to.
Used to be the studio chiefs were lords of Tinseltown. Today that honor goes to Evan Spiegel of Snapchat, whose IPO may be overvalued, but is gonna mint more millionaires than the movie business has in eons.
As for the agencies that fed off the studio system...
They too have detached. CAA and WME are deep into sports. There's just not that much money in filmed entertainment these days. Not that we're so sure about the monetization of YouTube, but we do know there's something fresh on the Google service that's missing from filmdom.
Remember when going to the movies was de rigueur?
Remember when you had to go in order to function in the culture, when films were the main topic of conversation amongst your peers?
Now people talk about television. But mostly they talk about themselves, on social media.
As for going to the theatre...
In an on demand culture who wants to show up at an appointed time and overpay to endure twenty minutes of commercials, talking and texting people and crying babies? Certainly not me.
Nobody has seen these flicks. This is like watching the World Series unaware of the teams. Where's the drama in that, when you've got no investment?
No wonder ratings keep sinking.
But people will tune in. To see the dresses, for the spectacle.
Because the truth is in today's Tower of Babel society we're looking for unification, we're looking to connect, be a member of the group. So, if we watch the show we can bitch about it with our friends, be part of the discussion, but this has nothing to do with the movies themselves.
And the show itself is so disconnected from reality that you've got to laugh. It's a mash note to an industry that's mired in the last century. Sure, there's nothing like going to see a great movie in a dark theatre, but how many of those are there?
Not many.
The vaunted "La La Land"... Some of the worst buzz on the planet. Rarely does it get a ringing endorsement from the hoi polloi, they shrug their shoulders and say it's o.k. as Hollywood continues to lose credibility. Because when your must-see is not, it's hard to get people out for the next flick.
And then there's the broken business model. Movies think they're different, that they're immune. But in an attention economy all the hype is front-loaded for the theatrical release, which few attend, and then months later the VOD and paid streaming releases occur. To tell you the truth, if I could pay and see it right away I'd be much more interested the movies, I'd check more out. Not only is the hype fresh and the desire stoked, it allows me to be part of the conversation, as stated above, it allows me to belong.
But no, that can't happen. You've got to save the business model. Theatres must be protected. EVERYTHING should be day and date, for the health of the industry itself. Steve Jobs moved music into the twenty first century and then Daniel Ek cemented the modern paradigm whereas movies have no solutions whatsoever. It's not only about the business model, but maintaining pricing, when the truth is most of these flicks are worthless anyway.
We're hungry for story, we're hungry for humanity, which Hollywood once specialized in. But the studios jumped the track, because there's not enough money in not only drama, but comedy. Nobody wants bunts, everybody wants home runs, but the end result is more strikeouts. Come on, look at the grosses on Monday, one flick wins and the rest lose, this is a business?
So I'm flabbergasted when I see endless stories about the host and the parties and the handicapping.
Yes, I cared...
IN THE SEVENTIES!
Used to be I went to a party and filled out my ballot, even in the eighties.
The last two years I've been on the road and missed all but ten minutes of each program and the truth is I didn't miss a thing. I felt no loss. There's no FOMO with the Oscars.
So, they'll continue to fade away. Because the Academy, the whole industry, does not understand the concept of disruption. Nor Clayton Christensen's theory that you've got to start with a clean sheet of paper, making little money, but then the new enterprise becomes good enough and all the cash ends up there.
Which is what YouTube and social media are all about.
Kids don't want to be actors on the big screen, they want to be stars on the handset. And they're very savvy. They know how much PewDiePie makes, and they see him in control of his own destiny as opposed to being bossed around by the man.
There's your generation gap right there.
Kids don't care about the Oscars. And this bodes poorly for the show. Kinda like Cadillac, which was eclipsed by not only Mercedes-Benz and BMW, but Lexus, never mind Lincoln, which can't convince anybody under fifty to buy one.
Sure, this is about the Oscars, but even more this is about our society!
We want it now at a cheap price. We want to participate. We want to share.
And the movie business delivers on none of those desires.
So when you're sitting at home watching HBO instead, when you turn on the TV the next day and see all the fawning on the morning shows, don't think you've been left out. It's they who are out of the picture, they who are out of the loop. They're the last bastions of a dying economy, hawking faded products.
The first decade of this century was about hardware, that's where the technological breakthroughs were evidenced.
Now it's about software.
What's happening on your mobile device is much more exciting, much more riveting than anything that's happening in the theatre.
You can see it.
But Hollywood and the media are blind.
--
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Wednesday, 22 February 2017
Eddie and Felice
http://www.snappytv.com/tc/4006789?utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
My favorite Van Halen track is "And The Cradle Will Rock..."
It used to be "Runnin' With The Devil," but I got hooked on the remastered version of "And The Cradle Will Rock..." on 1996's "Best Of Volume 1." I drove around in my BMW with the Alpine changer in the drunk and the ADS speakers all around and cranked it up and it made me feel so good when I had more questions than answers. And the funny thing about Van Halen records is when you hear them you can't stop playing them, kind of like "Unchained." Which was featured in the CNN clip above, I had to pull it up in Spotify and now I can't turn it off.
"Change, nothing stays the same"
Ain't that the theme of the day.
But a great record, when done right, is FOREVER! Even if poorly recorded and heard through the speaker in the dashboard, when the magic is encapsulated on wax you can't resist it. Which is why classic rock maintains. But the Beatles were in the sixties, Zeppelin the seventies, but by time we hit the eighties, the rock saviour was...
Van Halen.
Which is kind of surprising. It's not like they were a secret, they played at the Starwood endlessly. Gene Simmons even cut a demo. But it wasn't until they got signed by Warner Brothers and got hooked up with Ted Templeman that they became a household word.
And never underestimate the cheekiness of David Lee Roth's lyrics. But what puts Van Halen over the top, makes them sensational, is Eddie Van Halen's guitarwork (and keyboards too, come on "Jump"!) And when Eddie wanted to donate 75 guitars to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, I felt the two worlds Felice and I grew up in, from "Moon River" to "Eruption," had finally come full circle and were complete.
So, when I was talking to producer Ben Bamsey in the green room at CNN before an appearance and he told me he wanted to feature musicians talking about charity I told him about Eddie and Felice.
It was the easiest pitch I ever made. Ben was all over it. And last night they did it.
And the funny thing is you think you know everything and then you learn something new. I didn't know that Eddie and Alex played on the boat over from Holland. And you see we want to know everything about our heroes, we want to fill in all the holes, for they are family members.
And when I'm on CNN I hear from some people tuned in.
But when they featured Eddie and the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, donations started to come in, the rock press covered it in droves, because that's the power of Eddie Van Halen, that's the power of music.
The thing about music is it's limitless, it allows you to express your innermost feelings, your angst, your happiness, your questions, your answers, you can do all that through your instrument.
And in a world where we're told what to do every damn day, who to be, to color inside the lines, that's positively a revelation.
Which is why the arts are so important. They set souls free.
But we live in a country where the bottom line now rules. Music is seen as expendable. But it's the most powerful force other than sex, just look at social media, it's ruled by players.
And I had no plans to write this, but when I clicked on "Unchained"...
The first thing I had to do was turn it up.
And then I thought how the guitar in the intro sounded like a sweet chainsaw.
And when Eddie started throwing off those notes at 1:49 and Dave was asked for a break I felt like my whole life wasn't wasted, dedicating it to this music.
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll.
And when I talk to Eddie and he still evidences the same intensity of yore, is still passionate about the sound, it gives me hope.
These are our leaders. Not the bloviators in D.C. Nor the billionaires eviscerating our jobs. But the musicians. With the power of their playing who transport us into the stratosphere, even though our rear ends are firmly planted, who set our minds free, who illustrate the possibilities, who give us hope.
"No, I don't ask for permission
This is my chance to fly
Maybe enough ain't enough for you
But it's my turn to try"
LET'S FLY!
http://www.mhopus.org?utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
"Unchained":
https://open.spotify.com/track/35q1B8x7zRsITx6SxcWK67?utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx86CxKYtg0&utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
P.S. The above CNN video plays best in Chrome or Firefox, but if you must watch it in Safari, read this: https://snappytv.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/213041406-Fix-for-SnappyTV-issues-in-Safari-macOS-?utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
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My favorite Van Halen track is "And The Cradle Will Rock..."
It used to be "Runnin' With The Devil," but I got hooked on the remastered version of "And The Cradle Will Rock..." on 1996's "Best Of Volume 1." I drove around in my BMW with the Alpine changer in the drunk and the ADS speakers all around and cranked it up and it made me feel so good when I had more questions than answers. And the funny thing about Van Halen records is when you hear them you can't stop playing them, kind of like "Unchained." Which was featured in the CNN clip above, I had to pull it up in Spotify and now I can't turn it off.
"Change, nothing stays the same"
Ain't that the theme of the day.
But a great record, when done right, is FOREVER! Even if poorly recorded and heard through the speaker in the dashboard, when the magic is encapsulated on wax you can't resist it. Which is why classic rock maintains. But the Beatles were in the sixties, Zeppelin the seventies, but by time we hit the eighties, the rock saviour was...
Van Halen.
Which is kind of surprising. It's not like they were a secret, they played at the Starwood endlessly. Gene Simmons even cut a demo. But it wasn't until they got signed by Warner Brothers and got hooked up with Ted Templeman that they became a household word.
And never underestimate the cheekiness of David Lee Roth's lyrics. But what puts Van Halen over the top, makes them sensational, is Eddie Van Halen's guitarwork (and keyboards too, come on "Jump"!) And when Eddie wanted to donate 75 guitars to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, I felt the two worlds Felice and I grew up in, from "Moon River" to "Eruption," had finally come full circle and were complete.
So, when I was talking to producer Ben Bamsey in the green room at CNN before an appearance and he told me he wanted to feature musicians talking about charity I told him about Eddie and Felice.
It was the easiest pitch I ever made. Ben was all over it. And last night they did it.
And the funny thing is you think you know everything and then you learn something new. I didn't know that Eddie and Alex played on the boat over from Holland. And you see we want to know everything about our heroes, we want to fill in all the holes, for they are family members.
And when I'm on CNN I hear from some people tuned in.
But when they featured Eddie and the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, donations started to come in, the rock press covered it in droves, because that's the power of Eddie Van Halen, that's the power of music.
The thing about music is it's limitless, it allows you to express your innermost feelings, your angst, your happiness, your questions, your answers, you can do all that through your instrument.
And in a world where we're told what to do every damn day, who to be, to color inside the lines, that's positively a revelation.
Which is why the arts are so important. They set souls free.
But we live in a country where the bottom line now rules. Music is seen as expendable. But it's the most powerful force other than sex, just look at social media, it's ruled by players.
And I had no plans to write this, but when I clicked on "Unchained"...
The first thing I had to do was turn it up.
And then I thought how the guitar in the intro sounded like a sweet chainsaw.
And when Eddie started throwing off those notes at 1:49 and Dave was asked for a break I felt like my whole life wasn't wasted, dedicating it to this music.
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll.
And when I talk to Eddie and he still evidences the same intensity of yore, is still passionate about the sound, it gives me hope.
These are our leaders. Not the bloviators in D.C. Nor the billionaires eviscerating our jobs. But the musicians. With the power of their playing who transport us into the stratosphere, even though our rear ends are firmly planted, who set our minds free, who illustrate the possibilities, who give us hope.
"No, I don't ask for permission
This is my chance to fly
Maybe enough ain't enough for you
But it's my turn to try"
LET'S FLY!
http://www.mhopus.org?utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
"Unchained":
https://open.spotify.com/track/35q1B8x7zRsITx6SxcWK67?utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx86CxKYtg0&utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
P.S. The above CNN video plays best in Chrome or Firefox, but if you must watch it in Safari, read this: https://snappytv.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/213041406-Fix-for-SnappyTV-issues-in-Safari-macOS-?utm_source=phplist5748&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Eddie+and+Felice
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Vail Buys Stowe
"Vail Resorts to buy Vermont's Stowe ski area for $50 million": http://dpo.st/2lasAhA
This is a story of disruption.
Ideas are everything, but execution is key. Rob Katz, Chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts, retweeted Guy Kawasaki's link to a story about this just a day before the deal closed:
"Sorry But Successful People Don't Care About Your Brilliant Idea": http://bit.ly/2m9xmAe
Ideas are a dime a dozen, but what are you doing about them?
Rob Katz worked for Apollo, in New York City, and then the twin towers fell and his wife said no mas, so they moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he sat on the board of Vail Resorts, an Apollo asset, which they picked up in the bankruptcy of its previous owner.
Then they gave Rob the executive reins.
Skiing is a moribund sport. Burgeoning in the heyday of the baby boomers, skier days have remained essentially constant for years. Now it's about market share.
But those running the resorts are old school, they're too deep in their vertical, they've got no vision.
Sound like the record business?
And the old paradigm had hit a wall. The old paradigm was make it on real estate, like the record industry made it on CDs. But the real estate market crashed back in '08 and hasn't fully recovered. There's little new construction in resorts.
So Rob Katz came up with a new plan. He was gonna make it on lift tickets.
And the key was volume.
Now mountains cannot be standardized, but services can. What Vail does is buy your resort, throw a ton of money at infrastructure and upgrade the experience. To the point where others can't compete. Because once you've ridden modern high speed lifts, slow ones are anathema.
But the linchpin of Vail's success has been the lowering of lift ticket prices.
Used to be a season pass was nearly 2k.
Now you can buy unlimited skiing at all Vail's properties for under a grand.
The Epic Pass started less than a decade ago at under $500. Now it's in the $800 ballpark. Because when you provide something people need, they'll endure price hikes.
This is what those in recorded music can't understand. That prices go up after people are hooked, and you make it up on volume.
Vail Resorts sold 650,000 passes this year. Eclipsing the number of all its competitors COMBINED!
So, after lowering the price for a season's pass, Katz went on a buying spree. Not only legendary resorts like Park City, but molehills in the midwest. And the biggest ski resort in Australia. Because...
If you can ski on the same pass for free out west, that's an incentive to buy one!
That's right, Your Afton Alps or Perisher pass, thousands of miles from Tahoe, Colorado or Utah, works at Vail's resorts in those other locations. It's a no-brainer.
And break even is less than five visits. So, if you're gonna make a trip to Vail or Breckenridge or Whistler, all Vail resorts, you might as well buy a season's pass, you'll save money, and if you want to take another trip during the season, where are you gonna go?
Because lift tickets are expensive. Over a hundred bucks at any resort of size.
But they're highest at Vail Resorts. $189 a day during peak season at Vail itself. Because Katz wants to incentivize you to buy the season's pass, he wants to lock you in.
And of course there are other revenue streams. There's food, and retail.
But the essence is lift tickets. Which get you to the mountain and get you to pay more for the extras, like ski school. Furthermore, you lock your money in before the season begins, so if it's a bad one...you take the risk and Vail Resorts survives.
Because the ski industry is littered with bankruptcies, weather can be fickle.
Now this sell low and make it up on volume theory was hiding in plain sight.
It's just that Rob Katz had education and experience where his competitors did not. They were operators. They couldn't see beyond their noses.
So what we've learned here is outsiders can triumph, because their perspective is different. This is what happened in the music business. If you're criticizing Daniel Ek, you're missing the point. He had a vision and executed it. That's what disruption is all about, that's what making money is all about. The usual suspects are usually too inured to the old ways.
And the other resorts hate Vail. And the denizens of the other resorts hate Vail too.
But Epic Pass buyers, season pass holders, LOVE Vail.
And no one is stepping up to compete. No one is rolling up ski areas and creating a competing offer. And now it's like the web, where one company gets 70% of the market and dominates, like Google, like Amazon.
So as you sit there at home know that you too can compete.
But it takes brains.
And the power of analysis.
This is what education is supposed to teach. You can look up the facts, but how do you put them together? Most people don't know. They read the book, but they don't analyze the concepts.
And everybody will say you're doing it wrong, that you'll fail.
But you soldier on despite the naysayers.
And of course there's risk, but you've learned from experience not to do it the wrong way. There was a previous roll-up in skiing, at the end of the last century, but Les Otten's American Skiing Company died as a result of too much debt and too much reliance on real estate, which Katz has avoided.
So even if you don't ski, this is the future. Of not only online, but brick and mortar too. Don't forget, McDonald's eviscerated the local burger shop and Wal-Mart wiped out downtowns and...
You may lament those interlopers. But they've been eclipsed by Shake Shack/Five Guys, i.e. upscale burgers, and Amazon. Because the wheel keeps turning, you're never safe resting on your laurels.
And I'm not sure what the future of skiing holds in an era of climate change.
But I do know smart people are going to continue to revolutionize industries while those presently in charge claim sour grapes.
Don't be one of those complaining.
Be one of those disrupting.
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This is a story of disruption.
Ideas are everything, but execution is key. Rob Katz, Chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts, retweeted Guy Kawasaki's link to a story about this just a day before the deal closed:
"Sorry But Successful People Don't Care About Your Brilliant Idea": http://bit.ly/2m9xmAe
Ideas are a dime a dozen, but what are you doing about them?
Rob Katz worked for Apollo, in New York City, and then the twin towers fell and his wife said no mas, so they moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he sat on the board of Vail Resorts, an Apollo asset, which they picked up in the bankruptcy of its previous owner.
Then they gave Rob the executive reins.
Skiing is a moribund sport. Burgeoning in the heyday of the baby boomers, skier days have remained essentially constant for years. Now it's about market share.
But those running the resorts are old school, they're too deep in their vertical, they've got no vision.
Sound like the record business?
And the old paradigm had hit a wall. The old paradigm was make it on real estate, like the record industry made it on CDs. But the real estate market crashed back in '08 and hasn't fully recovered. There's little new construction in resorts.
So Rob Katz came up with a new plan. He was gonna make it on lift tickets.
And the key was volume.
Now mountains cannot be standardized, but services can. What Vail does is buy your resort, throw a ton of money at infrastructure and upgrade the experience. To the point where others can't compete. Because once you've ridden modern high speed lifts, slow ones are anathema.
But the linchpin of Vail's success has been the lowering of lift ticket prices.
Used to be a season pass was nearly 2k.
Now you can buy unlimited skiing at all Vail's properties for under a grand.
The Epic Pass started less than a decade ago at under $500. Now it's in the $800 ballpark. Because when you provide something people need, they'll endure price hikes.
This is what those in recorded music can't understand. That prices go up after people are hooked, and you make it up on volume.
Vail Resorts sold 650,000 passes this year. Eclipsing the number of all its competitors COMBINED!
So, after lowering the price for a season's pass, Katz went on a buying spree. Not only legendary resorts like Park City, but molehills in the midwest. And the biggest ski resort in Australia. Because...
If you can ski on the same pass for free out west, that's an incentive to buy one!
That's right, Your Afton Alps or Perisher pass, thousands of miles from Tahoe, Colorado or Utah, works at Vail's resorts in those other locations. It's a no-brainer.
And break even is less than five visits. So, if you're gonna make a trip to Vail or Breckenridge or Whistler, all Vail resorts, you might as well buy a season's pass, you'll save money, and if you want to take another trip during the season, where are you gonna go?
Because lift tickets are expensive. Over a hundred bucks at any resort of size.
But they're highest at Vail Resorts. $189 a day during peak season at Vail itself. Because Katz wants to incentivize you to buy the season's pass, he wants to lock you in.
And of course there are other revenue streams. There's food, and retail.
But the essence is lift tickets. Which get you to the mountain and get you to pay more for the extras, like ski school. Furthermore, you lock your money in before the season begins, so if it's a bad one...you take the risk and Vail Resorts survives.
Because the ski industry is littered with bankruptcies, weather can be fickle.
Now this sell low and make it up on volume theory was hiding in plain sight.
It's just that Rob Katz had education and experience where his competitors did not. They were operators. They couldn't see beyond their noses.
So what we've learned here is outsiders can triumph, because their perspective is different. This is what happened in the music business. If you're criticizing Daniel Ek, you're missing the point. He had a vision and executed it. That's what disruption is all about, that's what making money is all about. The usual suspects are usually too inured to the old ways.
And the other resorts hate Vail. And the denizens of the other resorts hate Vail too.
But Epic Pass buyers, season pass holders, LOVE Vail.
And no one is stepping up to compete. No one is rolling up ski areas and creating a competing offer. And now it's like the web, where one company gets 70% of the market and dominates, like Google, like Amazon.
So as you sit there at home know that you too can compete.
But it takes brains.
And the power of analysis.
This is what education is supposed to teach. You can look up the facts, but how do you put them together? Most people don't know. They read the book, but they don't analyze the concepts.
And everybody will say you're doing it wrong, that you'll fail.
But you soldier on despite the naysayers.
And of course there's risk, but you've learned from experience not to do it the wrong way. There was a previous roll-up in skiing, at the end of the last century, but Les Otten's American Skiing Company died as a result of too much debt and too much reliance on real estate, which Katz has avoided.
So even if you don't ski, this is the future. Of not only online, but brick and mortar too. Don't forget, McDonald's eviscerated the local burger shop and Wal-Mart wiped out downtowns and...
You may lament those interlopers. But they've been eclipsed by Shake Shack/Five Guys, i.e. upscale burgers, and Amazon. Because the wheel keeps turning, you're never safe resting on your laurels.
And I'm not sure what the future of skiing holds in an era of climate change.
But I do know smart people are going to continue to revolutionize industries while those presently in charge claim sour grapes.
Don't be one of those complaining.
Be one of those disrupting.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
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Eric Church Cancels Tickets
"Eric Church's Manager Explains How He Cancelled 25,000 Tickets Held By Scalpers": http://bit.ly/2md8dRR
This is not about letting 25,000 fans in.
This is about letting fans and potential fans know that Eric Church is on their side, and we haven't had that spirit here since the MTV era, not in someone who can sell out arenas.
The acts are all about the money. They say they're about the music, give lip service to their fans (and God!), but the truth is they're eager to climb out of the trough of the nobody and into the land of the billionaire, go to charity balls and live the high life. When did music become about the economics as opposed to the tunes, when did it become about fame as opposed to the music, when did it become about subterfuge as opposed to honesty?
And the truth is not only can you not get a good ticket to a show at face value, by time the public on-sale happens fewer than a thousand tickets can be available. After the fan club and credit card pre-sales, the holdbacks, anybody who goes on a regular basis knows you don't wake up and click on Ticketmaster on Saturday morning in your underwear, that if you're complaining about not getting a ticket then you're an amateur.
To tell you the truth, dedicated concertgoers prefer StubHub. Because they can wait until the last minute, when they know they're free, and get a good ticket. People are willing to pay beaucoup bucks for that, as indicated by Church's $260 platinum tickets being sold for much more on resale sites. The problem isn't money, but ACCESS, AVAILABILITY, people just want to be inside, the cost is secondary.
But the game is rigged. All insiders know this. It's about extracting the most dollars as opposed to transparency. The acts hate the labels for false accountings? They should look at themselves regarding concert ticket sales. All the kickbacks, the credit card dollars...
Is this the future, Church's solution?
Each and every story about this mentions the cost involved, the labor. Nobody else is willing to put in the effort. And there you've got your modern music business right there. The acts don't want to spend a dime. That's why the major labels still exist, they're willing to open their wallets, managers are not. If it's hard, and it doesn't go straight to the bottom line, today's acts are out.
But Church is playing a long game. One wherein he knows it's about good will as opposed to upfront bucks. You want a career, right? You want to be able to do this forever, right? So why are you whoring yourself out to the corporations as opposed to your fans?
It's not that hard to break the paradigm. Hell, Church released his last album without pre-fanfare, the endless hype we all abhor, and shipped it initially to his fan club members. Forget what's in the grooves, this bonds listeners to you.
We all want people to believe in.
We used to believe in musicians.
But now they're seen as part of the endless rigged system.
When they used to be a voice for truth, justice and the American Way.
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This is not about letting 25,000 fans in.
This is about letting fans and potential fans know that Eric Church is on their side, and we haven't had that spirit here since the MTV era, not in someone who can sell out arenas.
The acts are all about the money. They say they're about the music, give lip service to their fans (and God!), but the truth is they're eager to climb out of the trough of the nobody and into the land of the billionaire, go to charity balls and live the high life. When did music become about the economics as opposed to the tunes, when did it become about fame as opposed to the music, when did it become about subterfuge as opposed to honesty?
And the truth is not only can you not get a good ticket to a show at face value, by time the public on-sale happens fewer than a thousand tickets can be available. After the fan club and credit card pre-sales, the holdbacks, anybody who goes on a regular basis knows you don't wake up and click on Ticketmaster on Saturday morning in your underwear, that if you're complaining about not getting a ticket then you're an amateur.
To tell you the truth, dedicated concertgoers prefer StubHub. Because they can wait until the last minute, when they know they're free, and get a good ticket. People are willing to pay beaucoup bucks for that, as indicated by Church's $260 platinum tickets being sold for much more on resale sites. The problem isn't money, but ACCESS, AVAILABILITY, people just want to be inside, the cost is secondary.
But the game is rigged. All insiders know this. It's about extracting the most dollars as opposed to transparency. The acts hate the labels for false accountings? They should look at themselves regarding concert ticket sales. All the kickbacks, the credit card dollars...
Is this the future, Church's solution?
Each and every story about this mentions the cost involved, the labor. Nobody else is willing to put in the effort. And there you've got your modern music business right there. The acts don't want to spend a dime. That's why the major labels still exist, they're willing to open their wallets, managers are not. If it's hard, and it doesn't go straight to the bottom line, today's acts are out.
But Church is playing a long game. One wherein he knows it's about good will as opposed to upfront bucks. You want a career, right? You want to be able to do this forever, right? So why are you whoring yourself out to the corporations as opposed to your fans?
It's not that hard to break the paradigm. Hell, Church released his last album without pre-fanfare, the endless hype we all abhor, and shipped it initially to his fan club members. Forget what's in the grooves, this bonds listeners to you.
We all want people to believe in.
We used to believe in musicians.
But now they're seen as part of the endless rigged system.
When they used to be a voice for truth, justice and the American Way.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
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Tuesday, 21 February 2017
Milo Yiannopoulos
Don't fly too close to the sun.
Milo Yiannopoulos was playing the fame game. And in that world, what you say is unimportant as long as they spell your name right. And to the media's credit they did. He's now famous, and toast.
This is what happens when your desire to be known exceeds the strength of your content. This is what has been happening in music for over a decade. You can make it at home, put it on streaming services tomorrow and then spam everybody and ask for attention.
But attention is our most precious commodity. We guard it and give it up sparingly. And if you demand our time we're critical. Milo thought we were in on the joke, but we're not.
This is not about free speech, this is not about campus protests. This is someone playing by the new rules who believes the old don't apply. Rise instantly and people are gonna be gunning for you. Especially the old straight media, which doesn't like its anointed path to progress messed with.
Then again, it was Milo who blew himself up. With his comments about thirteen year olds and sex. He wasn't ready for prime time. You can have a slew of Twitter followers, be the king or queen of social media, but when you try to cross over to the real world, beware.
Kind of like PewDiePie, who turned out to be featuring anti-Semitic content in his videos. Google and Disney ran from him immediately, because no one likes controversy. Look at Travis Kalanick... Having played his cards wrong with Trump, he jumped on the sexism at Uber controversy right away, said there would be investigation, appointed a "special prosecutor." Because in the big bad world of reality there are rules.
Taylor Swift got caught in this net. She self-promoted, hiring a photographer to shoot her July 4th party so she could look cool to fans and then Kim and Kanye took a swing at her, as did her old boyfriend Calvin Harris, and since then it's been radio silence. You see, Taylor Swift lives in a bubble, just like Milo and PewDiePie. They think their fans are with them, not knowing the rest of us abhor them and are aiming for them, waiting for that inevitable faux pas committed by someone who thinks their doody doesn't stink.
So let this be a lesson for you, be famous for your work, not the penumbra. For the essence, not the marketing. Because people hate ads, and they hate ads for yourself even more. The look at me culture has limits, get big enough and there will be a backlash.
But the problem with most famous people today is there's no there there. Milo Yiannopolous was not famous for his work, but outrageous comments made to get attention.
Will this same correction factor apply to President Trump, who believes if it comes out of his mouth it must be true?
But now that Trump is under the microscope it appears he watches cable news and tweets and talks with no further investigation, like a teenager, and those in the know keep crying foul.
You see it's hard to play out of your league. Because it's so hard to get to the top of anything and when you do arrive you don't like upstarts crashing the party.
So, what we're learning in the teens is society is not flat. Social mobility is just like economic mobility in these United States, i.e. not very fluid. Just because you've got a phone and some social media accounts that does not mean you deserve and can maintain fame. Better to dig down deep and do something worthy.
But that's so much harder to do.
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Milo Yiannopoulos was playing the fame game. And in that world, what you say is unimportant as long as they spell your name right. And to the media's credit they did. He's now famous, and toast.
This is what happens when your desire to be known exceeds the strength of your content. This is what has been happening in music for over a decade. You can make it at home, put it on streaming services tomorrow and then spam everybody and ask for attention.
But attention is our most precious commodity. We guard it and give it up sparingly. And if you demand our time we're critical. Milo thought we were in on the joke, but we're not.
This is not about free speech, this is not about campus protests. This is someone playing by the new rules who believes the old don't apply. Rise instantly and people are gonna be gunning for you. Especially the old straight media, which doesn't like its anointed path to progress messed with.
Then again, it was Milo who blew himself up. With his comments about thirteen year olds and sex. He wasn't ready for prime time. You can have a slew of Twitter followers, be the king or queen of social media, but when you try to cross over to the real world, beware.
Kind of like PewDiePie, who turned out to be featuring anti-Semitic content in his videos. Google and Disney ran from him immediately, because no one likes controversy. Look at Travis Kalanick... Having played his cards wrong with Trump, he jumped on the sexism at Uber controversy right away, said there would be investigation, appointed a "special prosecutor." Because in the big bad world of reality there are rules.
Taylor Swift got caught in this net. She self-promoted, hiring a photographer to shoot her July 4th party so she could look cool to fans and then Kim and Kanye took a swing at her, as did her old boyfriend Calvin Harris, and since then it's been radio silence. You see, Taylor Swift lives in a bubble, just like Milo and PewDiePie. They think their fans are with them, not knowing the rest of us abhor them and are aiming for them, waiting for that inevitable faux pas committed by someone who thinks their doody doesn't stink.
So let this be a lesson for you, be famous for your work, not the penumbra. For the essence, not the marketing. Because people hate ads, and they hate ads for yourself even more. The look at me culture has limits, get big enough and there will be a backlash.
But the problem with most famous people today is there's no there there. Milo Yiannopolous was not famous for his work, but outrageous comments made to get attention.
Will this same correction factor apply to President Trump, who believes if it comes out of his mouth it must be true?
But now that Trump is under the microscope it appears he watches cable news and tweets and talks with no further investigation, like a teenager, and those in the know keep crying foul.
You see it's hard to play out of your league. Because it's so hard to get to the top of anything and when you do arrive you don't like upstarts crashing the party.
So, what we're learning in the teens is society is not flat. Social mobility is just like economic mobility in these United States, i.e. not very fluid. Just because you've got a phone and some social media accounts that does not mean you deserve and can maintain fame. Better to dig down deep and do something worthy.
But that's so much harder to do.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/?utm_source=phplist5745&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Milo+Yiannopoulos
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Sunday, 19 February 2017
Last Night In Sweden
"'Last Night in Sweden'? Trump's Remark Baffles a Nation": http://nyti.ms/2l9ekIg
What else are we being told that is wrong? Especially that which is less important than national security.
Kinda like Facebook reporting false numbers re advertising. I know you hate ads, and so do I, but Madison Avenue is up in arms. Because if you can't trust Facebook...
You certainly cannot trust the "Wall Street Journal."
In case you haven't been paying attention, and who could, with so many stories flying around, the WSJ reporters pushed back against the editor, saying he was going soft on Trump. The editor blew back, but when reporting upon the shenanigans in Sweden, of which there were none, the WSJ did not make the link to the also Murdoch controlled Fox News, which other outlets did. You see Tucker Carlson interviewed a filmmaker who spread the Swedish falsehood, which is probably where Trump got it, which is scary on two levels, that the WSJ is self-editing and Trump believes everything he sees and reads, when they tell you in second grade not to.
But then we've got the Grammys. Am I the only one who was flummoxed by Beyonce's performance? I'm reading everywhere how stellar it was and how the Grammy organization is racist but is the truth no one in the media was willing to say it was self-indulgent and incomprehensible and having her introduced by her mother was a bridge too far? Never mind reading her thank yous off a gold card as if there was any doubt she'd win.
Not that the Grammy organization is not racist, I believe it is. It's too many old white men voting, but the truth is I don't care who wins a Grammy and you shouldn't either, the awards have been out of touch since their inception, but Neil Portnow denied there was a problem and that was it. Huh? How about an excavation of the voter rolls. But that can't happen, because the media is short-handed, what entertainment reporters who are left can only print press releases.
And then there's the strange case of Katy Perry's Grammy performance.
Compare the original with the auto-tuned version now sitting on the Grammy site:
http://uproxx.com/music/katy-perry-grammys-2017-performance/
https://www.grammy.com/videos/katy-perry-grammy-performance-chained-to-the-rhythm
Used to be you had to know how to sing, or suffer the consequences. But now no-talents who can't hold a tune are paraded as worthy superstars and you wonder why the older generation is flummoxed and kids today believe in themselves as opposed to the fakes.
It's our whole society that's fake.
It's just that the mainstream has gone show biz. And now everyone can see the duplicity.
And the truth is everyone's just getting the news they want and it doesn't matter if it's right somewhere else. The ring wing has denigrated the "New York Times" to the point of irrelevancy. It's been a thirty year plan.
Akin to the multi-year plans employed in the music industry.
You know why your indie band can't win, can't get heard over the pop noise? Because the usual suspect companies control the media and are force-feeding this crap to the public. Radio stations are beholden to major labels and there's no independence, no chances are taken.
So, if this weren't an issue of national security, no media outlet of significance would be questioning Trump's falsehoods. So think of what else you're exposed to that is also false.
When you read how big an act is, what the grosses are, should you believe them?
In many cases, no.
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What else are we being told that is wrong? Especially that which is less important than national security.
Kinda like Facebook reporting false numbers re advertising. I know you hate ads, and so do I, but Madison Avenue is up in arms. Because if you can't trust Facebook...
You certainly cannot trust the "Wall Street Journal."
In case you haven't been paying attention, and who could, with so many stories flying around, the WSJ reporters pushed back against the editor, saying he was going soft on Trump. The editor blew back, but when reporting upon the shenanigans in Sweden, of which there were none, the WSJ did not make the link to the also Murdoch controlled Fox News, which other outlets did. You see Tucker Carlson interviewed a filmmaker who spread the Swedish falsehood, which is probably where Trump got it, which is scary on two levels, that the WSJ is self-editing and Trump believes everything he sees and reads, when they tell you in second grade not to.
But then we've got the Grammys. Am I the only one who was flummoxed by Beyonce's performance? I'm reading everywhere how stellar it was and how the Grammy organization is racist but is the truth no one in the media was willing to say it was self-indulgent and incomprehensible and having her introduced by her mother was a bridge too far? Never mind reading her thank yous off a gold card as if there was any doubt she'd win.
Not that the Grammy organization is not racist, I believe it is. It's too many old white men voting, but the truth is I don't care who wins a Grammy and you shouldn't either, the awards have been out of touch since their inception, but Neil Portnow denied there was a problem and that was it. Huh? How about an excavation of the voter rolls. But that can't happen, because the media is short-handed, what entertainment reporters who are left can only print press releases.
And then there's the strange case of Katy Perry's Grammy performance.
Compare the original with the auto-tuned version now sitting on the Grammy site:
http://uproxx.com/music/katy-perry-grammys-2017-performance/
https://www.grammy.com/videos/katy-perry-grammy-performance-chained-to-the-rhythm
Used to be you had to know how to sing, or suffer the consequences. But now no-talents who can't hold a tune are paraded as worthy superstars and you wonder why the older generation is flummoxed and kids today believe in themselves as opposed to the fakes.
It's our whole society that's fake.
It's just that the mainstream has gone show biz. And now everyone can see the duplicity.
And the truth is everyone's just getting the news they want and it doesn't matter if it's right somewhere else. The ring wing has denigrated the "New York Times" to the point of irrelevancy. It's been a thirty year plan.
Akin to the multi-year plans employed in the music industry.
You know why your indie band can't win, can't get heard over the pop noise? Because the usual suspect companies control the media and are force-feeding this crap to the public. Radio stations are beholden to major labels and there's no independence, no chances are taken.
So, if this weren't an issue of national security, no media outlet of significance would be questioning Trump's falsehoods. So think of what else you're exposed to that is also false.
When you read how big an act is, what the grosses are, should you believe them?
In many cases, no.
--
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