Tune in today, June 8th, to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz
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Saturday, 8 June 2024
Friday, 7 June 2024
Owen Elliot-Kugell-This Week's Podcast
Owen Elliot-Kugell has a new book about her mother, "My Mama Cass: A Memoir."
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/owen-elliot-kugell/id1316200737?i=1000658032740
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1sl8xK4R5cKJgPohii0SDL?si=dF9R0qzFQZyfyUYS0WW70w
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/0bacfeba-fa5c-4c7a-9a48-66e39e459eb6/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-owen-elliot-kugell
iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/owen-elliot-kugell-183178037/?cmp=web_share&embed=true
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-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/owen-elliot-kugell/id1316200737?i=1000658032740
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1sl8xK4R5cKJgPohii0SDL?si=dF9R0qzFQZyfyUYS0WW70w
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/0bacfeba-fa5c-4c7a-9a48-66e39e459eb6/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-owen-elliot-kugell
iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/owen-elliot-kugell-183178037/?cmp=web_share&embed=true
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The Reunion
"This is the last day of our acquaintance"
Sinead O'Connor
I wasn't going to come. Too many bad memories. But for the first time Canadian Music Week was Monday to Wednesday instead of Thursday to Saturday, so theoretically I could come. So we were on the chairlift and my buddy John put it to me, after a year of discussion, was I going to our Middlebury reunion or not. And I told him only if he picked me up in Toronto and drove me to Vermont. And he said...DONE!
So here I am.
We left T.O. so early, for me anyway, that we encountered traffic in a part of town that I didn't even know existed. There are all these skyscrapers, north of the city, or maybe it's east, in the middle of nowhere. I mean you leave the city center and the skyline disappears...and then it reappears! Strange.
And then there was rain. You know, the kind that the windshield wipers can't keep up with.
But we stayed on the highway to Kingston, and ultimately crossed the St. Lawrence River into the good old U.S.A. and...I was stunned how wide the river was at that point. As for the customs officer...you'd think we were international gunrunners. He looked at our licenses and deeming them insufficient asked us for our passports. So I got out of the car, to get to my computer bag, where said passport resides, I delivered it to the gentleman and then he declared...GET BACK IN THE CAR!
Okay, officer. I retreat and become subservient in the face of authority of this type, John fights back. But he held his tongue, until we got to the tollbooth, whereupon he remarked to the tattooed guy in the hoodie how the border officer was having a bad day...but the guy was too entranced in his boredom to give an adequate reply.
And from there it was surface roads all the way to Middlebury.
And we had lunch in Massena. Not Jim, I saw no Loggins, but after Yelping for the best spot in town, we walked into what turned out to be a bar and the four townies gave us a look like we were in trouble, and there was no food until dinner.
So they sent us to another place just like it, with older regulars at the bar, and I got chicken wings from our server Kim. Who had about as much attitude as the drinkers. But John told her we were going to our reunion, and she started to wax rhapsodic about her high school reunion, how they had five classes and a party and...
The thing about these rural towns is they look so enticing until you actually move there. And then you ask yourself what the hell you're doing there.
So eventually we cross the bridge over Lake Champlain and we're approaching the campus and I get wistful. This is my roots, part of my heart is still here, this is Vermont.
Lush, green, beautiful. So different from L.A. I didn't expect to be so moved, to be so affected.
And then we got to the President's house for the reception and...
There was no one there.
But she ultimately came out of the house and got into her Ioniq 5 and asked us if we were there for the reception. Yes, and...didn't we get the e-mail?
NO ONE GOT THE E-MAIL!
This is the difference between business and academia.
Well, the reception had been moved to Ross, because it was going to rain.
Oh, we knew where that was, the SDUs, the "Social Dining Units," which opened our freshman year. So we drove over there, and what used to be our regular dining place was now the international building.
So that was confusing. But I pulled out my maps app, and Apple, now my guider of choice, said they'd moved Ross...YOU CAN'T DO THAT! You can't take the name from one building and put it on another, but they did.
And when we drove to the new Ross, looking for a parking spot, we were approached by a nice gray-haired lady who told us she was coming back from the class picture.
Now wait just a minute... That was supposed to be at 6:15. But because of the rain they'd moved it up to 4:15. Have you ever heard of such a thing, moving something up, with no notice?
And I don't care about being in the picture, but I wanted to be in this one to right a wrong. You see for the senior yearbook, if you didn't like your initial photo, you could have it reshot. Which I did. But the end result was... I wasn't in the yearbook at all! I still have nightmares wherein I need to show my diploma and the college denies I was ever there. But if I was in this picture...
And I looked at the name tag of this nice woman and when I saw her moniker, I got a jolt.
She was the best-looking woman in "New Faces," the original Facebook, wherein they had all the pics of the freshman class. The guys in the dorm salivated over her. I don't think she ever knew.
So we saunter on over to Forest Hall, to registration, and after we get our name tags, which you've got to wear to get food or into any event, we go back to the sidewalk and encounter two girls, er, women, and first you look at the purse, er, the nametag, and then you know them and...
It's all these years later, and the woman I'm talking to is cute. And nice. And I'm trying to square her with the person I remember and then...
Greg comes along, who I've maintained contact with, he wrote about me for the alumni magazine, and even in the internet era, I didn't get a single response, and we had a good conversation, and then we went to the new Ross...
And saw all the white-haired people standing up, sitting down, conversing, and I got the urge to run.
We walked through the door and I immediately saw someone I didn't want to talk to. This self-satisfied guy who probably doesn't even remember my name. It's a small college, you know everybody in your class, but you don't really.
How am I going to get out of this?
And I start casing the joint...
And I don't know a single person. How can this be?
Now I'm frightened, so I follow John to the bar, and we stand at a table, and I hang on for dear life.
I'm surveying the landscape and...who are these people? I felt like such an outsider.
But Bruce came up and we talked skiing. After all, the college had its own ski area. That's one of the main reasons I went there, and I guess it was the right place, since that's one thing I still do.
But the food was all the way on the other side of the hall, I'd have to run the gauntlet to get there, but ultimately I braved it.
And once again, I didn't recognize anybody. This was not L.A., where a few courageous people let their hair go gray. But these people... Their hair had gone beyond gray, it was white, they were old, and then I wondered, HOW DO I LOOK? I must look as old as they do. And it depressed me.
Ultimately someone got up and gave a boring speech and this reinforced I was at the wrong place. But it was even worse when the aforementioned college President took the stand and started quoting statistics, how great the place was and...
I tuned out. Who cared, there was not going to be a test. Everybody was taking it so seriously, clapping, and it reminded me of nothing so much as...
Being there. This is one of the reasons I hated the place. Everybody took it so seriously, studied hard, as if by doing so they'd win in life. And I'm thinking of Irving Azoff and David Geffen who never graduated. I'm thinking of the person I was in the private jet with last week who never even bothered with college, telling me he was a bad student, but now manages household name bands.
This is not my place.
And I'm surveying the landscape, now with everybody seated. And I see must to avoids and people I now recognize and would love to catch up with, but how do I do this? I'm not even sure they'd remember me.
But I'd love to hear their story.
So I got Soupy's. Who had that name because, of course, in elementary school, there were two Sues. And she was Sue P...and the name stuck. And we bonded over attitude and history, even though we were far from friends back then, and I felt more connected.
And then Dana came by. He lived on the first floor. Of course I remembered him, he remembered my name. And the funny thing is he's the same guy, same laugh, same laughing attitude, and catching up with him was good.
This was what I was looking for. I wanted to talk to each and every person in attendance, spend time with them and find out what happened in all the intervening years. But they weren't approaching me, and I didn't have the chutzpah, the wherewithal, to go up to them and say...you might not remember me, but what happened in your life?
But I wanted to.
And everybody's so different from home. It's not how they look, but who they are. They want to talk about the books that they've read. It's east coast, but also Middlebury. It's an intellectual environment so different from California, at least my California, Los Angeles, where the most important thing is how you look, and maybe what car you drive, and that's just phony enough for me.
And then there's the anonymity of the big city. No one knows your name and no one cares. Which I love, it's very different from a rural area.
And a number of my classmates have moved back to the area. And I understand the draw, the pull of Vermont, but to go to a smaller society...I've been there, I've done that, I don't want to be judged.
And after we exited, or should I say escaped...
I felt relieved, but also disappointed. Was this the way it was going to be? Was I ever going to get to talk to all these people, most of whom were retired, gladly? They'd peaked, they'd done it for decades, it took me forever to hit my prime, and I'm still working.
And now I have this hunger to connect. But I'm not sure it will ever happen.
Man is this weird.
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Sinead O'Connor
I wasn't going to come. Too many bad memories. But for the first time Canadian Music Week was Monday to Wednesday instead of Thursday to Saturday, so theoretically I could come. So we were on the chairlift and my buddy John put it to me, after a year of discussion, was I going to our Middlebury reunion or not. And I told him only if he picked me up in Toronto and drove me to Vermont. And he said...DONE!
So here I am.
We left T.O. so early, for me anyway, that we encountered traffic in a part of town that I didn't even know existed. There are all these skyscrapers, north of the city, or maybe it's east, in the middle of nowhere. I mean you leave the city center and the skyline disappears...and then it reappears! Strange.
And then there was rain. You know, the kind that the windshield wipers can't keep up with.
But we stayed on the highway to Kingston, and ultimately crossed the St. Lawrence River into the good old U.S.A. and...I was stunned how wide the river was at that point. As for the customs officer...you'd think we were international gunrunners. He looked at our licenses and deeming them insufficient asked us for our passports. So I got out of the car, to get to my computer bag, where said passport resides, I delivered it to the gentleman and then he declared...GET BACK IN THE CAR!
Okay, officer. I retreat and become subservient in the face of authority of this type, John fights back. But he held his tongue, until we got to the tollbooth, whereupon he remarked to the tattooed guy in the hoodie how the border officer was having a bad day...but the guy was too entranced in his boredom to give an adequate reply.
And from there it was surface roads all the way to Middlebury.
And we had lunch in Massena. Not Jim, I saw no Loggins, but after Yelping for the best spot in town, we walked into what turned out to be a bar and the four townies gave us a look like we were in trouble, and there was no food until dinner.
So they sent us to another place just like it, with older regulars at the bar, and I got chicken wings from our server Kim. Who had about as much attitude as the drinkers. But John told her we were going to our reunion, and she started to wax rhapsodic about her high school reunion, how they had five classes and a party and...
The thing about these rural towns is they look so enticing until you actually move there. And then you ask yourself what the hell you're doing there.
So eventually we cross the bridge over Lake Champlain and we're approaching the campus and I get wistful. This is my roots, part of my heart is still here, this is Vermont.
Lush, green, beautiful. So different from L.A. I didn't expect to be so moved, to be so affected.
And then we got to the President's house for the reception and...
There was no one there.
But she ultimately came out of the house and got into her Ioniq 5 and asked us if we were there for the reception. Yes, and...didn't we get the e-mail?
NO ONE GOT THE E-MAIL!
This is the difference between business and academia.
Well, the reception had been moved to Ross, because it was going to rain.
Oh, we knew where that was, the SDUs, the "Social Dining Units," which opened our freshman year. So we drove over there, and what used to be our regular dining place was now the international building.
So that was confusing. But I pulled out my maps app, and Apple, now my guider of choice, said they'd moved Ross...YOU CAN'T DO THAT! You can't take the name from one building and put it on another, but they did.
And when we drove to the new Ross, looking for a parking spot, we were approached by a nice gray-haired lady who told us she was coming back from the class picture.
Now wait just a minute... That was supposed to be at 6:15. But because of the rain they'd moved it up to 4:15. Have you ever heard of such a thing, moving something up, with no notice?
And I don't care about being in the picture, but I wanted to be in this one to right a wrong. You see for the senior yearbook, if you didn't like your initial photo, you could have it reshot. Which I did. But the end result was... I wasn't in the yearbook at all! I still have nightmares wherein I need to show my diploma and the college denies I was ever there. But if I was in this picture...
And I looked at the name tag of this nice woman and when I saw her moniker, I got a jolt.
She was the best-looking woman in "New Faces," the original Facebook, wherein they had all the pics of the freshman class. The guys in the dorm salivated over her. I don't think she ever knew.
So we saunter on over to Forest Hall, to registration, and after we get our name tags, which you've got to wear to get food or into any event, we go back to the sidewalk and encounter two girls, er, women, and first you look at the purse, er, the nametag, and then you know them and...
It's all these years later, and the woman I'm talking to is cute. And nice. And I'm trying to square her with the person I remember and then...
Greg comes along, who I've maintained contact with, he wrote about me for the alumni magazine, and even in the internet era, I didn't get a single response, and we had a good conversation, and then we went to the new Ross...
And saw all the white-haired people standing up, sitting down, conversing, and I got the urge to run.
We walked through the door and I immediately saw someone I didn't want to talk to. This self-satisfied guy who probably doesn't even remember my name. It's a small college, you know everybody in your class, but you don't really.
How am I going to get out of this?
And I start casing the joint...
And I don't know a single person. How can this be?
Now I'm frightened, so I follow John to the bar, and we stand at a table, and I hang on for dear life.
I'm surveying the landscape and...who are these people? I felt like such an outsider.
But Bruce came up and we talked skiing. After all, the college had its own ski area. That's one of the main reasons I went there, and I guess it was the right place, since that's one thing I still do.
But the food was all the way on the other side of the hall, I'd have to run the gauntlet to get there, but ultimately I braved it.
And once again, I didn't recognize anybody. This was not L.A., where a few courageous people let their hair go gray. But these people... Their hair had gone beyond gray, it was white, they were old, and then I wondered, HOW DO I LOOK? I must look as old as they do. And it depressed me.
Ultimately someone got up and gave a boring speech and this reinforced I was at the wrong place. But it was even worse when the aforementioned college President took the stand and started quoting statistics, how great the place was and...
I tuned out. Who cared, there was not going to be a test. Everybody was taking it so seriously, clapping, and it reminded me of nothing so much as...
Being there. This is one of the reasons I hated the place. Everybody took it so seriously, studied hard, as if by doing so they'd win in life. And I'm thinking of Irving Azoff and David Geffen who never graduated. I'm thinking of the person I was in the private jet with last week who never even bothered with college, telling me he was a bad student, but now manages household name bands.
This is not my place.
And I'm surveying the landscape, now with everybody seated. And I see must to avoids and people I now recognize and would love to catch up with, but how do I do this? I'm not even sure they'd remember me.
But I'd love to hear their story.
So I got Soupy's. Who had that name because, of course, in elementary school, there were two Sues. And she was Sue P...and the name stuck. And we bonded over attitude and history, even though we were far from friends back then, and I felt more connected.
And then Dana came by. He lived on the first floor. Of course I remembered him, he remembered my name. And the funny thing is he's the same guy, same laugh, same laughing attitude, and catching up with him was good.
This was what I was looking for. I wanted to talk to each and every person in attendance, spend time with them and find out what happened in all the intervening years. But they weren't approaching me, and I didn't have the chutzpah, the wherewithal, to go up to them and say...you might not remember me, but what happened in your life?
But I wanted to.
And everybody's so different from home. It's not how they look, but who they are. They want to talk about the books that they've read. It's east coast, but also Middlebury. It's an intellectual environment so different from California, at least my California, Los Angeles, where the most important thing is how you look, and maybe what car you drive, and that's just phony enough for me.
And then there's the anonymity of the big city. No one knows your name and no one cares. Which I love, it's very different from a rural area.
And a number of my classmates have moved back to the area. And I understand the draw, the pull of Vermont, but to go to a smaller society...I've been there, I've done that, I don't want to be judged.
And after we exited, or should I say escaped...
I felt relieved, but also disappointed. Was this the way it was going to be? Was I ever going to get to talk to all these people, most of whom were retired, gladly? They'd peaked, they'd done it for decades, it took me forever to hit my prime, and I'm still working.
And now I have this hunger to connect. But I'm not sure it will ever happen.
Man is this weird.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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Wednesday, 5 June 2024
Canadian Music Week Report
The best thing I saw was a demonstration of Steve Stewart's Songhub: https://songhub.co Yes, the manager of Stone Temple Pilots has solved some of the biggest issues in royalties, data and creation by starting from the bottom up, with the songwriters as opposed to the publishers, who embrace change at about the speed of the labels, which is not fast.
Songhub allows songwriters to collaborate. And it stores your files. And you put the split right into the software. This has been necessary, but no one outside the business has done it because they didn't see the big bucks, Songhub is something that only someone from the inside could create. A home run. Check it out.
As for the attendees...
There's a blue chip assortment of speakers. Really, I'm impressed. But the audience hasn't changed much. Wannabes trying to get ahead.
Rock and roll rule #1... THERE ARE NO RULES! If you're looking for someone to tell you how to do it, you're already lost. You can go to a conference to learn the landscape, the basics, but the household names invented their jobs, they'd be successful at whatever they did. Music business college is a rip-off. It'll teach you how to be a middle manager, until you lose your job. Never ever forget that to succeed in the music business you have to attach yourself to talent. Unless you're attached to talent you're going to get squeezed out, or not rise high.
As for the talent, with so much in the landscape, do we need you? Would you be sitting at home dreaming up a new search engine? Then why do you think people are clamoring for your me-too music, which has no basic utility.
First, create it. If there's no reaction, forget it. Don't blame the audience. Change or be broke.
Second, once you have traction, don't look for someone to grow you, GROW YOURSELF! If you do so, you'll be inundated with people who want to work with you. The labels no longer build anything from scratch. So unless you have a CV, a history, fans...no one will be interested anyway. It no longer matters how good your music is, but whether people react to it. Let me put it a better way, you can create something great and nothing can happen. Nada. If you build it, they will not come. Not only do you have to light the fire, you have to tend it, add logs to keep it burning, have it glow so much that you get people's attention. Don't look to the Beatles or Taylor Swift for a pathway, those avenues are closed off. The Beatles hit in the sixties and Swift broke when country radio was still strong and she crossed over to Top Forty TEN YEARS AGO, when that format, when terrestrial radio still mattered. The active audience doesn't listen to terrestrial radio at all, forget the disinformation campaign from the industry.
Think about where you go online. And if you don't go anywhere...the joke is on you. If you're not fluent in YouTube and Instagram and TikTok you're not going to make it. Consider them the record stores of yore, of the FIFTIES! Yes, when you could go into a booth and spin a record and decide whether you wanted to buy it. SINGLE records. You need that one track that catches people instantly, if you don't have it, don't expect any traction until you do.
And if you have expertise in the business, that does not make you a good artist. We're short on revolutionary artists, not revolutionary businessmen. It all comes from the art. We're one superstar away from the entire landscape changing. Focus there.
And I ain't gonna give you false hope. Ed Bicknell talked about Dire Straits doing 240 dates a year. You have no idea how punishing that is unless you've done it. To make it in music requires all your money, time and effort, period. If you don't want it more than anything, if you're not willing to roll the dice on yourself, if you're not willing to forgo the perks of adulthood, stop and GET OUT!
Ed interviewed Bill Silva. And got Bill to talk about the financial ups and downs of his concert promotion career. Entrepreneurs walk a fine line between bankruptcy and success. And it's more about relationships than how smart or rich you are.
Last night at the awards show Kingfish played, and immediately everyone in the audience was nodding their head along to the music. Instantly. Kingfish set a groove, and the people fell into it. I'd like to tell you the song was as good as the playing, but the playing...
It was basic. No synths, no hard drives. No different from half a century ago, from the bluesmen before that. Kingfish is in a long tradition of blues players who lit up the world until the plot was lost and hair bands dashed for cash and hip-hop took over.
Kingfish's blues is made for a live performance. Because it is live. Kingfish squeezes out the notes and grimaces and you feel it.
As for the Pursuit of Happiness celebrating Jake Gold's induction into the Hall of Fame... That too was revelatory. This was the noise that addicted us, and it was a noise. From the garage, from the basement. Todd Rundgren cleaned up the sound for wax, but live...it reminded me of Cheap Trick, noisy and to the point. Funny how the roots of rock and roll are right in our face.
And today it's all about the software. If you're arguing about distribution and/or payments, you'd better be a superstar, otherwise I don't want to hear it. Your focus is wrong. There's not enough money on the recording side if you get a de minimis number of streams, and there's never going to be. Music is so far advanced, it's light years beyond TV, we've figured it out, all the music in one place for a low price. The pipes are there, all they need is software, i.e. the music.
You don't only have to feel the music, you've got to have something to say, you've got to have influences. And although music itself is important, so are movies and books and the internet...to be a great artist you must be fluent in the CULTURE! Which no one under fifteen is. I don't want to hear that you've been doing it since you were five. God, those people are all over social media, and they're quite good, but they have nothing to SAY!
And nothing has really changed. The audience needs entertainment, is hungry for entertainment. Your job is to create something as good as "Reindeer Games," a hit around the world, done by a newbie. I don't care whether you like it or hate it, you can discuss "Reindeer Games," have an opinion on it. We're looking for the same thing in music, but you're not providing it.
Or to quote Don Henley...
Let's just say we haven't that spirit here since 1999. Never have so many had so little to say.
I'm trying to scare you, jolt you alive, be the antidote to your friends and family. I want to be the army drill sergeant in a world where no one making music is fit for the army, they're that different, that outside the mainstream.
We want truth, honesty. We want a beacon. We want to go down a new road. Can you take us there?
Then we'll be right alongside you.
Songhub allows songwriters to collaborate. And it stores your files. And you put the split right into the software. This has been necessary, but no one outside the business has done it because they didn't see the big bucks, Songhub is something that only someone from the inside could create. A home run. Check it out.
As for the attendees...
There's a blue chip assortment of speakers. Really, I'm impressed. But the audience hasn't changed much. Wannabes trying to get ahead.
Rock and roll rule #1... THERE ARE NO RULES! If you're looking for someone to tell you how to do it, you're already lost. You can go to a conference to learn the landscape, the basics, but the household names invented their jobs, they'd be successful at whatever they did. Music business college is a rip-off. It'll teach you how to be a middle manager, until you lose your job. Never ever forget that to succeed in the music business you have to attach yourself to talent. Unless you're attached to talent you're going to get squeezed out, or not rise high.
As for the talent, with so much in the landscape, do we need you? Would you be sitting at home dreaming up a new search engine? Then why do you think people are clamoring for your me-too music, which has no basic utility.
First, create it. If there's no reaction, forget it. Don't blame the audience. Change or be broke.
Second, once you have traction, don't look for someone to grow you, GROW YOURSELF! If you do so, you'll be inundated with people who want to work with you. The labels no longer build anything from scratch. So unless you have a CV, a history, fans...no one will be interested anyway. It no longer matters how good your music is, but whether people react to it. Let me put it a better way, you can create something great and nothing can happen. Nada. If you build it, they will not come. Not only do you have to light the fire, you have to tend it, add logs to keep it burning, have it glow so much that you get people's attention. Don't look to the Beatles or Taylor Swift for a pathway, those avenues are closed off. The Beatles hit in the sixties and Swift broke when country radio was still strong and she crossed over to Top Forty TEN YEARS AGO, when that format, when terrestrial radio still mattered. The active audience doesn't listen to terrestrial radio at all, forget the disinformation campaign from the industry.
Think about where you go online. And if you don't go anywhere...the joke is on you. If you're not fluent in YouTube and Instagram and TikTok you're not going to make it. Consider them the record stores of yore, of the FIFTIES! Yes, when you could go into a booth and spin a record and decide whether you wanted to buy it. SINGLE records. You need that one track that catches people instantly, if you don't have it, don't expect any traction until you do.
And if you have expertise in the business, that does not make you a good artist. We're short on revolutionary artists, not revolutionary businessmen. It all comes from the art. We're one superstar away from the entire landscape changing. Focus there.
And I ain't gonna give you false hope. Ed Bicknell talked about Dire Straits doing 240 dates a year. You have no idea how punishing that is unless you've done it. To make it in music requires all your money, time and effort, period. If you don't want it more than anything, if you're not willing to roll the dice on yourself, if you're not willing to forgo the perks of adulthood, stop and GET OUT!
Ed interviewed Bill Silva. And got Bill to talk about the financial ups and downs of his concert promotion career. Entrepreneurs walk a fine line between bankruptcy and success. And it's more about relationships than how smart or rich you are.
Last night at the awards show Kingfish played, and immediately everyone in the audience was nodding their head along to the music. Instantly. Kingfish set a groove, and the people fell into it. I'd like to tell you the song was as good as the playing, but the playing...
It was basic. No synths, no hard drives. No different from half a century ago, from the bluesmen before that. Kingfish is in a long tradition of blues players who lit up the world until the plot was lost and hair bands dashed for cash and hip-hop took over.
Kingfish's blues is made for a live performance. Because it is live. Kingfish squeezes out the notes and grimaces and you feel it.
As for the Pursuit of Happiness celebrating Jake Gold's induction into the Hall of Fame... That too was revelatory. This was the noise that addicted us, and it was a noise. From the garage, from the basement. Todd Rundgren cleaned up the sound for wax, but live...it reminded me of Cheap Trick, noisy and to the point. Funny how the roots of rock and roll are right in our face.
And today it's all about the software. If you're arguing about distribution and/or payments, you'd better be a superstar, otherwise I don't want to hear it. Your focus is wrong. There's not enough money on the recording side if you get a de minimis number of streams, and there's never going to be. Music is so far advanced, it's light years beyond TV, we've figured it out, all the music in one place for a low price. The pipes are there, all they need is software, i.e. the music.
You don't only have to feel the music, you've got to have something to say, you've got to have influences. And although music itself is important, so are movies and books and the internet...to be a great artist you must be fluent in the CULTURE! Which no one under fifteen is. I don't want to hear that you've been doing it since you were five. God, those people are all over social media, and they're quite good, but they have nothing to SAY!
And nothing has really changed. The audience needs entertainment, is hungry for entertainment. Your job is to create something as good as "Reindeer Games," a hit around the world, done by a newbie. I don't care whether you like it or hate it, you can discuss "Reindeer Games," have an opinion on it. We're looking for the same thing in music, but you're not providing it.
Or to quote Don Henley...
Let's just say we haven't that spirit here since 1999. Never have so many had so little to say.
I'm trying to scare you, jolt you alive, be the antidote to your friends and family. I want to be the army drill sergeant in a world where no one making music is fit for the army, they're that different, that outside the mainstream.
We want truth, honesty. We want a beacon. We want to go down a new road. Can you take us there?
Then we'll be right alongside you.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Monday, 3 June 2024
J.Lo Cancels
And not a single person believes it's for personal reasons.
You can't lie in the internet age...BECAUSE THE INFORMATION IS OUT THERE FOR EVERYBODY TO SEE! Just go online and see the screenshots of seas of blue dots on the Ticketmaster pages. Oh, you don't know because you don't care? NEITHER DOES ANYBODY ELSE!
J.Lo can't sing. Music was a brand extension, from an era when you could convert success in one vertical into another. Good luck having success in any vertical today. Which is why the major labels can't even break an act, especially when talent grows online via the personal efforts of influencers. The starmaking machinery... Man, that's broken.
So J.Lo and her handlers are delusional. They think she has fans. Who are desirous of overpaying to see her. This is a great demonstration of the government's misunderstanding, make that LACK OF UNDERSTANDING, of the concert market. It's supply and demand, baby, and if people don't want to go, they don't. No one has a gun to their head forcing them to buy a J.Lo ticket. But when more people than tickets want to see a hot act somehow it's the system's fault. This is how the government loses credibility. Don't overreach in the information age.
Then again, 20% of the population believes Biden is responsible for the evisceration of abortion rights. Are they just plain stupid, or are they exposed to "news" that is so biased and incorrect that they don't know the truth, or is there so much misinformation out there that they're just confused. Go on X/Twitter, it's become a cesspool of misinformation. Scroll for a while and you start to question your own beliefs, that is the power of misinformation.
And why should J.Lo tell the truth when Trump does not. Maybe if you lived in the right wing bubble you thought his press conference the other day evidenced truth, but the "New York Times" went point by point, popping the bubble, and other news outlets, TV channels, cut away because not only did they believe it was propaganda, it was billed as a press conference and no questions were allowed.
And if the President lies, why shouldn't some measly entertainer? I mean politics is more important than entertainment, right?
No. The people feel powerless in politics. Not only two expired men running for the highest office, but a sold out, do nothing Congress. And therefore they've taken their shots at J.Lo.
Anybody could have seen this coming. Except for J.Lo and her handlers still living in the last century.
J.Lo was built by artifice and we now live in an era of authenticity. Yes, if you want to succeed and stay you've got to be selling authenticity, credibility. You've got Noah Kahan testifying as to his mental health, Zach Bryan singing straight from the heart, and doofuses from the past, from the monoculture, from the MTV era, believe that nothing has changed, when nothing could be further from the truth.
People don't even respect movie stars anymore. They're empty vessels, they're ACTORS! There's no truth there. Musicians are the ultimate spewers of truth, when done right, music comes straight from the heart. But no one believes the written by committee tunes of J.Lo come straight from anywhere other than the cash register.
As for Taylor Swift...like her, hate her, ignore her, but no one is questioning that her songs are testimony about her life. Even BTS broke based on revealing honesty.
This was my point about Kate Hudson's music career. That dog doesn't hunt anymore. Her music is good in an era where it has to be great to break through the noise. And she looks like an interloper in music. A dash for cash. She needed to reposition herself along the lines of Taylor Momsen, come from the bottom up in music, build a career fan by fan and stay at it. Music can't seem to be a lark, it's got to be a COMMITMENT!
And then there's the Black Keys. Their frontman is not warm, you can't identify with him, he's not brooding in a Thom Yorke way, but in a get off my lawn way. Very talented, but he needs hits to fill arenas. Succeed once and you can tour forever. But it might be in clubs, or people's houses. Your success will sustain if your career is built without hits, like with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, because there are no casual fans. The looky-loos fill out the big halls for so many performers. And then they move on to the next act when it is hot. How many hard core music fans does J.Lo even have? She was selling fashion, in videos, stardom, in an era when competition was nowhere near as fierce as today, when relationships and cash went a whole hell of a lot further than they do today.
So what we do know is the post-pandemic concert boom is over. If you build it, they may not come. This does not mean that concerts are not a unique experience in an era where experiences are everything, just that the consumer is more discerning, and thinks twice before throwing down inordinate amounts of cash, especially to see someone who can't really sing anyway.
And they've canceled 40 festivals in the U.K.
No one needs to go to a show, NO ONE! Especially in an era where music can be listened to for free and streaming television shows oftentimes have more gravitas than what is on stage. You have to be hot, you have to have that je ne sais quoi that makes people want to come. They've got to believe the experience will change their life, it just won't be an excuse for the performer to buy another house.
Even worse than the cancellation of J.Lo's tour is the mainstream news articles talking about the fan backlash. Nobody cares. We don't need a deep dive analysis of a has-been. She was cruisin' for a bruisin', asking for constant attention and respect when there was no reason to give it to her, of course this is going to come back and haunt her. It was just a matter of when.
That's what makes entertainment so fascinating. You can go from zero to hero, from the bottom to the top, nearly instantly. This is not the same in other high-paying verticals. Want to be a doctor? You've got to study for umpteen years. Want to be a hit artist? Record something on your laptop and upload it to Spotify. And then complain you're not a star.
No one would complain that they're a high school dropout yet no one sees them as a doctor. But in entertainment? You make it up as you go.
So, we've got all this misinformation. That streaming doesn't pay upcoming talent when in the old days that same "talent" would be working at Walmart. You're not entitled to be a successful, highly-paid artist, just like J.Lo is not entitled to sell out arenas. People have to like you, want to pay attention to you, lay down their cash for you, and that's a harder lift than ever before in this era of plethora.
But if you read the news, you'd think that Spotify is the devil. Not its competitors, just Spotify. Because Daniel Ek, who changed the landscape, who rescued the labels, is now a billionaire. Whereas Apple and Amazon are faceless, just me-too music companies built by enterprises famous for something else. But Ek? He's putting acts out of business. He doesn't pay. And he's a billionaire to boot. There must be someone at fault here, there must be a rip-off involved.
Just like with Ticketmaster. It must be Ticketmaster's fault that prices are high. As for the fees, they all go to the company, don't you know? And anybody could sell tickets better than Ticketmaster. None of this is true, but it's accepted knowledge not only in the public, but the news and the government.
God, ignore the criticism today. Assuming you have faith in yourself, know what you're doing. If I listened to feedback, I wouldn't be able to write a thing. And more misinformation crosses my transom than ever before. I've got all these authorities spewing hatred and inaccuracies at me because the truth doesn't feel good, it doesn't match their emotions. Placate these people at your peril.
Then again, look how far Trump has gotten telling lies, giving the people what they want.
But if we went by the popular vote instead of the Electoral College, Trump wouldn't have a chance, nowhere close. The rules are saving him.
There are no rules in rock and roll. And that's exactly the point. The spoils go to those who break down barriers, who do something new. The aforementioned Zach Bryan isn't selling dancing and production like J.Lo. That was great in the MTV era, now the audience has moved on, wants something different.
The ball keeps moving, the game keeps changing, and those in power and the media hate this, they expect things to stay the same, when the internet has come along and turned over every table, changed everything.
And what is mainstream media's position?
THE SMARTPHONE MUST DIE!
Yes, get off your phone, shut it down, go back to the way it used to be. You know, when you couldn't call up an Uber, when you had no idea what temperature it was, when you couldn't take notes instantly... I could go on and on, but the media won't hear it. The same media that expect us to be interested in the music of the has-been known as J.Lo.
Hell, what you did yesterday means less than ever before. Just ask Justin Timberlake, he might have brought sexy back, but now people think he's an old dad with nothing to say who they don't need to pay attention to. Used to be Timberlake could sell out arenas himself, now he's planning to go back on the road with NSYNC.
Once again, you don't care. And that's just the point. You've got a feed, personalized to you, on your smartphone. It's what you're interested in 24/7. And you're faulted for this. You should pay attention to the mainstream, you should get with the program, you should do it the old way so the old players can maintain their lifestyles.
WHY?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
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-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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You can't lie in the internet age...BECAUSE THE INFORMATION IS OUT THERE FOR EVERYBODY TO SEE! Just go online and see the screenshots of seas of blue dots on the Ticketmaster pages. Oh, you don't know because you don't care? NEITHER DOES ANYBODY ELSE!
J.Lo can't sing. Music was a brand extension, from an era when you could convert success in one vertical into another. Good luck having success in any vertical today. Which is why the major labels can't even break an act, especially when talent grows online via the personal efforts of influencers. The starmaking machinery... Man, that's broken.
So J.Lo and her handlers are delusional. They think she has fans. Who are desirous of overpaying to see her. This is a great demonstration of the government's misunderstanding, make that LACK OF UNDERSTANDING, of the concert market. It's supply and demand, baby, and if people don't want to go, they don't. No one has a gun to their head forcing them to buy a J.Lo ticket. But when more people than tickets want to see a hot act somehow it's the system's fault. This is how the government loses credibility. Don't overreach in the information age.
Then again, 20% of the population believes Biden is responsible for the evisceration of abortion rights. Are they just plain stupid, or are they exposed to "news" that is so biased and incorrect that they don't know the truth, or is there so much misinformation out there that they're just confused. Go on X/Twitter, it's become a cesspool of misinformation. Scroll for a while and you start to question your own beliefs, that is the power of misinformation.
And why should J.Lo tell the truth when Trump does not. Maybe if you lived in the right wing bubble you thought his press conference the other day evidenced truth, but the "New York Times" went point by point, popping the bubble, and other news outlets, TV channels, cut away because not only did they believe it was propaganda, it was billed as a press conference and no questions were allowed.
And if the President lies, why shouldn't some measly entertainer? I mean politics is more important than entertainment, right?
No. The people feel powerless in politics. Not only two expired men running for the highest office, but a sold out, do nothing Congress. And therefore they've taken their shots at J.Lo.
Anybody could have seen this coming. Except for J.Lo and her handlers still living in the last century.
J.Lo was built by artifice and we now live in an era of authenticity. Yes, if you want to succeed and stay you've got to be selling authenticity, credibility. You've got Noah Kahan testifying as to his mental health, Zach Bryan singing straight from the heart, and doofuses from the past, from the monoculture, from the MTV era, believe that nothing has changed, when nothing could be further from the truth.
People don't even respect movie stars anymore. They're empty vessels, they're ACTORS! There's no truth there. Musicians are the ultimate spewers of truth, when done right, music comes straight from the heart. But no one believes the written by committee tunes of J.Lo come straight from anywhere other than the cash register.
As for Taylor Swift...like her, hate her, ignore her, but no one is questioning that her songs are testimony about her life. Even BTS broke based on revealing honesty.
This was my point about Kate Hudson's music career. That dog doesn't hunt anymore. Her music is good in an era where it has to be great to break through the noise. And she looks like an interloper in music. A dash for cash. She needed to reposition herself along the lines of Taylor Momsen, come from the bottom up in music, build a career fan by fan and stay at it. Music can't seem to be a lark, it's got to be a COMMITMENT!
And then there's the Black Keys. Their frontman is not warm, you can't identify with him, he's not brooding in a Thom Yorke way, but in a get off my lawn way. Very talented, but he needs hits to fill arenas. Succeed once and you can tour forever. But it might be in clubs, or people's houses. Your success will sustain if your career is built without hits, like with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, because there are no casual fans. The looky-loos fill out the big halls for so many performers. And then they move on to the next act when it is hot. How many hard core music fans does J.Lo even have? She was selling fashion, in videos, stardom, in an era when competition was nowhere near as fierce as today, when relationships and cash went a whole hell of a lot further than they do today.
So what we do know is the post-pandemic concert boom is over. If you build it, they may not come. This does not mean that concerts are not a unique experience in an era where experiences are everything, just that the consumer is more discerning, and thinks twice before throwing down inordinate amounts of cash, especially to see someone who can't really sing anyway.
And they've canceled 40 festivals in the U.K.
No one needs to go to a show, NO ONE! Especially in an era where music can be listened to for free and streaming television shows oftentimes have more gravitas than what is on stage. You have to be hot, you have to have that je ne sais quoi that makes people want to come. They've got to believe the experience will change their life, it just won't be an excuse for the performer to buy another house.
Even worse than the cancellation of J.Lo's tour is the mainstream news articles talking about the fan backlash. Nobody cares. We don't need a deep dive analysis of a has-been. She was cruisin' for a bruisin', asking for constant attention and respect when there was no reason to give it to her, of course this is going to come back and haunt her. It was just a matter of when.
That's what makes entertainment so fascinating. You can go from zero to hero, from the bottom to the top, nearly instantly. This is not the same in other high-paying verticals. Want to be a doctor? You've got to study for umpteen years. Want to be a hit artist? Record something on your laptop and upload it to Spotify. And then complain you're not a star.
No one would complain that they're a high school dropout yet no one sees them as a doctor. But in entertainment? You make it up as you go.
So, we've got all this misinformation. That streaming doesn't pay upcoming talent when in the old days that same "talent" would be working at Walmart. You're not entitled to be a successful, highly-paid artist, just like J.Lo is not entitled to sell out arenas. People have to like you, want to pay attention to you, lay down their cash for you, and that's a harder lift than ever before in this era of plethora.
But if you read the news, you'd think that Spotify is the devil. Not its competitors, just Spotify. Because Daniel Ek, who changed the landscape, who rescued the labels, is now a billionaire. Whereas Apple and Amazon are faceless, just me-too music companies built by enterprises famous for something else. But Ek? He's putting acts out of business. He doesn't pay. And he's a billionaire to boot. There must be someone at fault here, there must be a rip-off involved.
Just like with Ticketmaster. It must be Ticketmaster's fault that prices are high. As for the fees, they all go to the company, don't you know? And anybody could sell tickets better than Ticketmaster. None of this is true, but it's accepted knowledge not only in the public, but the news and the government.
God, ignore the criticism today. Assuming you have faith in yourself, know what you're doing. If I listened to feedback, I wouldn't be able to write a thing. And more misinformation crosses my transom than ever before. I've got all these authorities spewing hatred and inaccuracies at me because the truth doesn't feel good, it doesn't match their emotions. Placate these people at your peril.
Then again, look how far Trump has gotten telling lies, giving the people what they want.
But if we went by the popular vote instead of the Electoral College, Trump wouldn't have a chance, nowhere close. The rules are saving him.
There are no rules in rock and roll. And that's exactly the point. The spoils go to those who break down barriers, who do something new. The aforementioned Zach Bryan isn't selling dancing and production like J.Lo. That was great in the MTV era, now the audience has moved on, wants something different.
The ball keeps moving, the game keeps changing, and those in power and the media hate this, they expect things to stay the same, when the internet has come along and turned over every table, changed everything.
And what is mainstream media's position?
THE SMARTPHONE MUST DIE!
Yes, get off your phone, shut it down, go back to the way it used to be. You know, when you couldn't call up an Uber, when you had no idea what temperature it was, when you couldn't take notes instantly... I could go on and on, but the media won't hear it. The same media that expect us to be interested in the music of the has-been known as J.Lo.
Hell, what you did yesterday means less than ever before. Just ask Justin Timberlake, he might have brought sexy back, but now people think he's an old dad with nothing to say who they don't need to pay attention to. Used to be Timberlake could sell out arenas himself, now he's planning to go back on the road with NSYNC.
Once again, you don't care. And that's just the point. You've got a feed, personalized to you, on your smartphone. It's what you're interested in 24/7. And you're faulted for this. You should pay attention to the mainstream, you should get with the program, you should do it the old way so the old players can maintain their lifestyles.
WHY?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
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