Felice wanted to see the Jim Gaffigan bourbon special. She asked how we could watch it. I told her we could just pull up the YouTube app on the Roku!

Which we did.

Looked good, but not everything blown up to 65″ does. Are people surfing YouTube on their giant flat screen TVs? The news tells us they are…

But the news is completely out of touch.

So we just had a club panel here at Aspen Live. These were the sharpest people in attendance, because they live where the rubber meets the road. Anybody can promote a Taylor Swift show and sell out, and this is the case with a zillion arena acts. But at the club level? How do you know how to book and how do you get people to come?

That’s the challenge.

Brent Fedrizzi said that in many cases you were flying blind. You got a call from an agent, looked at the Spotify numbers…

And business is so bad because today’s kids are not drinking alcohol. Assuming they’re drinking at all! Used to be patrons were drawn to club shows by radio and print, often driven by the major labels. Steve Chilton said he never booked a major label act. Those companies are out of the artist development game. They don’t want to start at zero and build an act, they’d rather just find someone with online traction and make a deal.

So where does this leave the developing act, the one at the bottom, what gets people to come see them?

So I loved that Jim Gaffigan wasn’t doing the special for money. That’s something that still permeates the music business, no one wants to work if they don’t get paid. But a career is now an holistic, all-encompassing venture, it’s not only streaming numbers and ticket sales. What can you do to bond an audience to you? Gaffigan took a risk (although the costs were underwritten by the man, i.e. the corporation), he knew his focus on bourbon was too narrow for a major streamer. Oh, he could have made a deal, he’s that big and outlets want to be in business with him. But would it be good for the fan and his career? No.

So when Gaffigan was done, we decided to check out some of the comedic offerings on YouTube. I watch a lot of comedy on TikTok, I’ve heard some great routines, but what I was pulling up on YouTube was unknowns who were not quite good enough. And we’re all time-challenged. We want great. So we start a few more videos, even Gaffigan’s greatest hits, but nothing is truly clicking.

And then I click on this 800 Pound Gorilla multi-act clip which starts off with Matt Rife.

I didn’t even know who Rife was until a couple of years back a car salesman in Vermont, a woman, said she had to drive to Maine to see him. And that ain’t close. But that desire, when people have it there are no limits (and not only no limits to the distance traveled, but the money spent).

And then I started reading criticism of Rife. How he was young and trading on his good looks. I don’t know, I’m just giving you the scuttlebutt.

But since Rife was the starting act on this 800 Pound Gorilla clip, I decided to let it play.

So Rife is on stage, it’s a typical comedy club. Well, a bit bigger than many, it had a balcony.

So… He’s doing his routine, and then he goes into crowd work. Where he starts quizzing the audience. In this case he wants to know women’s red flags.

And a couple are coughed up and… Rife is good with the interaction, the blowback. He’ll let you speak, but he will comment, he might dig.

But what blew my mind was that he got into it with this woman, and the story ultimately went to a place where I laughed out loud, it was so hysterical. Just a real person in real life.

This is what comedy is selling. Is this what music is selling?

We don’t have the Tubes at the Roxy… We’ve got someone unseasoned who believes that standing up and playing is enough. Used to be you saw an act and they were so overwhelming that you had to tell everybody you knew about them and their show, had to drag your friends to the next show. Now the goal is to get big enough that you can play arenas with a ton of production. This is what MTV has wrought. Managers and acts say the audience expects it. I’m not so sure, all I know is these shows laden with production are closer to the Vegas of yore than the heart of rock and roll. It’s a spectacular, often timed to the instant, so the images and the pyro sync. Where is the humanity? Nonexistent.

But it was there in this Matt Rife clip.

Now if you see a great act in a club…they tell stories, they connect with the audience personally. That’s what bonds people to you, makes people want to come back. But that’s been lost.

But the problem is music is now competing with not only YouTube, but TikTok, and the way you build an audience on these platforms is by being clever… It’s an intellectual exercise. How can the person make a clip that will stimulate your heart or your brain or maybe both? All the old school people pooh-pooh TikTok. But everyone on the panel said that’s where acts get started today, that’s where the audience finds them. And this disconnect is not only in music… Oldsters can’t stop telling youngsters to put the phone down. They might as well tell addicts not to shoot heroin.

So what sells today is greatness, which is often based on innovation. And you can’t only get it in music.

So since I watched that video on YouTube on the Roku without signing in… I searched and searched but just could not find it again.

But I found a clip. Which is just a partial cut of Rife’s set.

So, with the foregoing buildup, this clip may not ring your bell. But I recommend you watch it anyway. You can take it from the very top, or start at 4:52, where Rife sets up the crowd work. And then watch. It builds…

It’s days later and I’m still thinking about it, writing about it. That’s what you need to break through with music. With any art form today.

This is what separates the legends from the fly-by-nights. The culture. The meaning. The depth. The touching of the audience’s soul…or maybe just making them laugh.

Think about it.

Tune in Saturday December 6th 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

Maybe if Ted Sarandos buys Trump a gold Bentley…

I don’t see how this gets approved.

Then again, if you’re predicting the future…it’s a fool’s errand, because Trump has become so UNPREDICTABLE!

It’s kind of like antisemitism… You know, they came for the Jews, and I did nothing because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

You’re not an illegal immigrant, so you shrug your shoulders. You don’t live in Venezuela and don’t run drugs, so you shrug your shoulders. You’re not a criminal, so when someone else is pardoned, you shrug your shoulders. Why should you think nothing is going to affect you, why do you think that the whims of a strongman won’t affect your everyday life?

I went to the grocery store yesterday. I bought an 8-pack of Caffeine Free Diet Coke minis, three bottles of Vitamin Water Zero and a small container of cashews… The bill? $40.86. But Trump says there’s no affordability crisis in America.

And today, the Trump Administration said that Europe should emulate the U.S. Elect right wing parties who will stifle migration and promote nationalism. But you don’t live in Europe…

But you do watch streaming television.

Should Netflix get HBO?

On the surface, it’s good for the consumer. Because then you get the best two streaming services for one low price! Don’t ask me how Amazon, Paramount and Peacock compete, because they can’t. We’ll see further consolidation and…

So in the race for subscribers, Netflix has dumbed-down its programming. Sure, HBO focuses on the highbrow, but if there’s no competition…how much highbrow do you need if the public can’t get it anywhere else? Amazon is going down-market intellectually, and Paramount and Peacock have always been slumming it.

But we’re told that the real competition is YouTube! With its own app on your television set/Roku and all that viewing time. But are these two entities really selling the same thing? And do we really want to give Google more power? Eliminating competition?

So they let Universal buy Capitol, after divestiture of certain assets. Was this good for the public, only three major recording companies, who control deals with DSPs? They can coast on their catalogs, they don’t even need to sign new music. And sure, the world has gone indie, so maybe this is okay, then again, there’s that leverage of the catalogs.

And after terrestrial radio consolidation…we have a vast wasteland. But who listens to broadcast radio anymore anyway?

The bottom line is does the future ensure that we need no antitrust enforcement because of ongoing evolution in the marketplace. Maybe the public loses in the short run, but it doesn’t matter in the end.

We could debate that all day long.

We could debate whether more major labels would sign more and different acts, be responsible for more innovation…or is there enough from the outside.

But the bottom line here is the Trump administration.

Skydance got to buy Paramount because Paramount’s CBS settled a bogus lawsuit with Trump and the Ellisons are supporters of the president.

Seemingly every corporate titan has sucked up to the president. For their bottom line. And if you don’t, it’s only a matter of time until you’re caught in the government’s crosshairs…

And this is the opposite of JFK’s the best and the brightest. With doofus Hegseth and RFK, Jr. putting our nation’s health at risk.

Who is steering the ship? A couple of behind the scenes players and the Heritage Foundation, whose leader refused to castigate Tucker Carlson’s interview of Nick Fuentes. As for the Federalist Society, right wing legal bedrock, it now is on the outs with Trump. As referenced above, what makes you think you’re protected, that you’re immune, that in the future you and your livelihood and lifestyle won’t be at risk because of the whims of the government?

The bottom line is we’re all in this together. This is what the public just can’t understand. It’s not us vs. them, it’s just us. We all pay high grocery prices. As for the lowering of fuel standards… It always amazes me when I see these giant SUVs on the road. Who is paying for the gas? People to whom the price doesn’t matter, because they’re so wealthy. The real issue in America isn’t red vs. blue, it’s income inequality. And too many are brainwashed by the proposition that the success of the rich will trickle down to the masses and we should let them operate unfettered, even though these benefits have never been seen.

Too many are snookered. You’ve got the language police on the left and the religious believers on the right, everybody in their corner with opinions on narrow issues that don’t affect the general population. Can we throw all that aside and get real? You can have an opinion all day long on trans women in female sports, but the bottom line is the number of athletes in question is so tiny they couldn’t even field a team!

We’ve got creeping authoritarianism right in front of our eyes, but the Hatfield and McCoys of America are fighting irrelevant battles ad infinitum.

The bottom line is no one knows if this merger will be approved. NO ONE! Probably not even Trump. He’ll make a decision when he has to, after the wooing period is over, after the parties have kissed the ring, or refused to do so.

Or maybe as a condition of the deal Trump is going to require Netflix to cough up 10% to the government, like Intel.

Hollywood has lost the plot. You’ve got movie directors testifying this merger is bad for films… It’s way beyond that, it’s the soul of America.

You can’t plan your future business roadmap because you don’t know how the government will react. Will there be tariffs, regulations…

As someone said to me yesterday, the woke left got so progressive that they drove the country into fascism…

It’s not only the woke left that has to wake up, but the Democratic party. But they refuse to. It comes down to you and me. We are in charge, this is our country, we just cannot shrug our shoulders as Netflix charges fifty bucks a month for less that we want to see. And sure, we’ll have options on YouTube…but who is going to spend a fortune to produce highbrow content on that service?

So we could discuss this merger through an antitrust lens, but that would be a waste of time. It’s just a matter of what Trump thinks and will ultimately do.

As for the reams of press about the details of what a merged Netflix/Warner will look like… This is just like the nation at large, everybody focusing on the wrong issues while ignoring the big picture.

And we’re told by the usual suspects to wait for the next election…

If you think free and fair elections are coming… You haven’t followed the scuttlebutt re voter rolls and so much more. Those in power don’t want to give up power. Period.

But it’s you, it’s us, we truly have the power. And we’ve been asleep. Or fighting amongst ourselves over irrelevant issues.

I don’t want to think about the government all day long and neither do you. And we didn’t used to. But the last decade…

It’s time for this to end, before they foreclose on the power of the public completely.

Hang with those from the other political side… You’d be surprised, you agree on almost everything. Can’t we agree that we want a country run by a democratic process with clear rules that benefit us all?

Because we don’t have that now and we’re all suffering.

And it’s only going to get worse.

Guitarist extraordinaire!

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tommy-emmanuel/id1316200737?i=1000739662023

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/f53d2cdc-6ed9-412a-abb1-abf7ded7aa0c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-tommy-emmanuel