MAGGIE KANG

They gave her the key to the city, which she definitely deserves. An immigrant from Seoul, you know her as the Oscar-winning force behind “KPop Demon Hunters.” She said she wanted to make the characters stupid. And that she tries to be the funniest person in the room. And when asked how to add a female character to a script she said they should just flip a male character to a woman. Maggie wanted to get all her Korean influences into the movie, which took seven years to complete. This is the type of person changing the world, this is the type of person who cannot be replaced by AI.

DERYCK WHIBLEY

You know him as the frontman for Sum 41. A pipsqueak punk. But he’s a veritable intellectual. Analyzing his life and the life of a musician and faith and fear and courage… He separated out all the issues. He was a deeper thinker than most college graduates. Reminded me of the old days, when rockers would be interviewed in “Rolling Stone” because they had something to say, not because they had something to promote…the interview might not even have been aligned with a release. These rockers opined and readers like me ate it up. These were our heroes, these were our leaders. It wasn’t about raw adulation, it was about thinking and responding.

JULIAN BUNETTA

We talked all about writing hit songs and… One thing he agreed with me on is the best stuff comes in a flash, a bolt of inspiration, and you need to get it down right away and most of these great songs are completed quickly. As for only wanting to give your song to an artist if it’s going to be the single… In the old days, an album track was worth as much as the hit on a CD, and paid accordingly. But in these pick and choose days, if writers have what they believe to be a hit song, many hold it back for a hit artist who will use it for a single, that’s where the bread is, an album track just ain’t worth much. And I was discussing this with Julian and he said you never know what a hit is anymore. That the audience decides. He talked about a household name act where the fans picked a ballad first, which a record company never would have. It’s not only the gatekeepers who have been eliminated, but those at the source, the label itself, no longer have the power of yore. You can’t push a record to the top. You need the audience to start it.

MARY RAMOS

She’s a music supervisor who did “Pulp Fiction” and other Tarantino movies and so many others. She was a bundle of energy, she evidenced a lot of personality, you could see that she’d be fun to have around, to hang with, and that’s a main criterion for any gig, you’ve got to fit in, hopefully add to, be a friend…nobody wants to work with a jerk. But even more, Mary reminded me of Annie Hall… The way she pulled back in the middle of a statement, laughed, smiled…it was nearly uncanny.

TRUMP

He not only lives in the minds of Americans, but Canadians too. Hang long enough and he and the political situation in the U.S. come up. People keep asking me about the 2028 election. I tell them that Trump and the Republicans are never going to let a Democrat win. That there are only five to seven states that matter and if you strike enough people from the voter rolls and put up other hurdles…a Democrat has no chance. Those in D.C. and the media still believe in the system, young people do not, and they’re the ones who ultimately force change.

NORTH BAY

That was a new one on me. I mean I know Mississauga and Hamilton, but people keep telling me they come from places I’ve never heard of. Not that North Bay is at the absolute limits, but it is three and a half hours from Toronto. As hip as Canada is, there’s definitely a feeling that they live behind a great wall that is hard to jump over to make it in the United States. To be big in Canada is like being big in your high school, but to be big in Hollywood… Oh, don’t tell me about all the Canadian superstars, that’s not my point. I’m talking about an outlook, a mentality. Canadians don’t feel entitled, they know it takes a lot of work to break through.

WALKING

Nobody walks in L.A., isn’t that what Missing Persons said? But that was when there was a hip alternative music scene commenting on the mainstream by being truthful and irreverent and therefore connecting with those on the cutting edge, who led change. I’ve walked more in Toronto than I did all last year in L.A. I guess this is a feature of most cities, but Toronto is not down and dirty like so many south of the border.

From Oklahoma to Nashville to the Eagles!

Apple: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/vince-gill-332862906?app=listen

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast?ref_=dmm_acq_mrn_d_ds_rh_z_p454-cr2031330-c

It’s an entertainment platform.

All those hours you spend watching television? The younger generations spend that time on TikTok. Only in many cases, TikTok is better than television, because it’s more real, more human, you can relate to it better. Which is maybe why the cast of and comments about “Love on the Spectrum” are all over the service.

Don’t look at TikTok through the lens of Facebook. Facebook is a sharing platform, an informational platform, that’s where you go to tell your story and to find out about others.

And don’t look at TikTok through the lens of the original static image Instagram, which was a bragging platform, a place where you created FOMO.

No, TikTok is something completely different. And if you castigate TikTok you’re missing out.

Then again, most people I know bitching about TikTok have never been on the service.

And then there are those who do sign up and are flummoxed. Because the platform doesn’t immediately serve up what they’re interested in, and only what they’re interested in. TikTok is a cornucopia of stuff, and the amazing thing is that after a modicum of usage it serves up clips about topics that you didn’t even know you had interest in, but you do.

So there’s the element of surprise, of the new. It’s human nature to want to experience the different, the fringe, it’s titillating and stimulating. This is unlike your regular life, which is endless repetition, the same people and the same stories.

On streaming TV… Most of it is dreck. There are some great shows, but most of it is not shooting for greatness, or it misses the target. So you dedicate all this time and are pissed off that you did.

Or you can’t find a good show.

There’s endless fare on TikTok. And if you don’t like something, you can instantly scroll to something new. You are in control, that’s the essence of modern life, but nowhere is it as bite-sized as it is on TikTok. Yes, you can choose your streaming TV show, but you can’t change the plot in the middle. And if you really like something and want more…you can’t have it, the show has a limited number of episodes. But the topic you’re interested in on TikTok, there’s an endless slew of clips on the service.

So if you’re a user, TikTok is addictive because it’s so damn good.

And unlike the Marvel movies and the rest of the theatrical crap, its all based in humanity, made by humans, with plot, emotion, the entire kit and kaboodle. Where else can you get right down to the real nitty-gritty?

And actors… They’re playing a role, whereas on TikTok, the people ARE the role. Or they’re experts in a field with more knowledge than reporters. Reporters gather the story, TikTok creators ARE the story!

As for creators…

There is no middleman and there is no filter. If you want to make it in traditional show business, good luck. Unless you know someone, the odds of your project getting greenlit are infinitesimal. And traditional Hollywood outlets abhor risk. They put money first, they don’t want to take a chance, whereas TikTok is all about chances.

So you have this blank canvas.

Even better, the means of production are in your hand, and they’re absolutely FREE! Everybody has a smartphone, you create and edit the clips right on it! Sure, you can spend more time shooting and editing on your computer, but oftentimes it’s the rawness of TikTok clips that infects people.

So, if you see TikTok as a promotional tool, you’re missing the point, you’re not going to be successful.

No, you have to see TikTok as a CREATIVE tool.

If you just want to post tour dates and other information… There are much better sites to do this on. And this is not what the audience is looking for, the audience wants to be entertained!

So you’ve got to be creative. You’ve got to see your clips on the level of your music.

Then again, the essence of TikTok is missing from so much modern music, which is why TikTok stars in many cases are more popular and even richer. TikTok clips are not made by committee. And if something doesn’t work, the cost of production is only your time, there’s no opportunity cost, so you can try something different the very next day, the very next HOUR! It’s a creator’s dream!

As for creators using music in their clips… It’s not about the music, it’s about what the creators do with it! It’s like a movie with a soundtrack. The music is just the soundtrack to their clip.

So if you want to play the game you must dedicate time, be creative yourself. Do something that draws attention, you cannot rest on your laurels. No one is interested in what you’re famous for, they don’t want to know what you did yesterday, but what you did TODAY! If you don’t have a constant flow of material on TikTok, don’t even start. The audience expects it. They want to know you, they want to get closer to you. It’s a personal medium, if you’re not willing to reveal your warts, don’t start. Traditional entertainers always saw themselves as being above the riff-raff. Now if you don’t get down in the pit as an equal member of the audience, people make fun of you, they have contempt for you, they REJECT YOU! Humanity, honest, credibility, these are all the elements of a successful TikTok clip. These are not elements in most music, which is why music does not drive the culture. Not that there aren’t outliers, like Noah Kahan. Who does not have the best voice, but he’s singing about his inner life, his troubles, and that’s what people relate to!

As for all the anti-TikTok screeds in the adult press…

Well, first and foremost, the issue of China and data collection is now moot.

As for being anti-smartphone… I’ll make it very simple, I’m going to remove your television from your house. Or your computer. Most people would be twiddling their thumbs, not knowing what to do with their time. TikTok serves an identical purpose for its audience. To tell people to put down the phone, to not even have a phone, is a nonstarter.

Of course there is bullying on the phone, all kinds of negative b.s. that the media focuses on. But there’s so much good. The raw connection with so many people.

But I don’t want to stray from my main point. If you’re anti-TikTok, you’re like the parents who hated the Beatles. You’re dating yourself. You’re not better than the youngsters, you’re out of the loop, irrelevant.

Because TikTok is where it is happening.

I could tell you more, but you’ve just got to get ON!

If I get one more anti-TikTok e-mail, if I read one more anti-TikTok screed in the news…

Let me put it a different way. Video games come without instructions, there is no manual, players just figure the game out. That’s the culture today, has been for quite a while. It’s all instinctive…how to explore, find dead ends and then your ultimate direction. You’ve got to burn time to get to the destination. But when you get there, it’s so fulfilling!

At this point nothing can compete with TikTok, not movies, television or music. Because in almost all cases they’re missing the basic human/creative element, they’ve gone through a sieve, they’re not direct from the creator to the user.

TikTok is a breakthrough, it’s been going on for years, and the mainstream has completely missed it. When kids spend hours on TikTok it’s because it’s so damn GOOD! Think about that. It’s entertainment. Vivid, stimulating. Are you wasting time watching TV, even reading a book? In most cases, books are a backwater. A club of genre fiction or highfalutin’ literature that often falls on its face. But TikTok, EVERYBODY is on. That’s everybody under 35. You’re competing with the entire world, which forces you to be ever better.

And it’s not like traditional platforms, in that the spoils do not automatically go to the established players. On TikTok a nobody, making their first clip, can be pushed in front of people by the system. You can go viral just that easily.

I could go on, but it’s kind of like politics, either you’re on TikTok or you’re not, and those who are not cannot be convinced to partake.

But they should.

The only thing I knew about Toronto was the Maple Leafs. (And why is it the “Leafs” instead of the “Leaves,” I could never figure that out.)

You see they played the Rangers on Saturday night on channel 9. Not that I was a big hockey fan, but there wasn’t much else on TV at that time, and I lived for sports. We knew so many sports, especially from Jim McKay and the “Wide World of Sports” on ABC.

But my true endearment to the Maple Leafs came via my home hockey set.

You’ve got to know there were two competing styles… One involving a puck, the other involving a ball. The one with the puck allowed you to move the players back and forth, but the action was slow, whereas the one with the ball…the players were stationary and the game was even faster than the real one. You could wind up and send the ball all the way from one end of the ice into the other team’s goal. And the two teams were the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs. And the Canadiens were in red and the Maple Leafs wore blue jerseys and at the time blue was my favorite color so that’s probably why I liked them more.

Now with the expansion of the league, and the ascension of the Bruins and the Islanders…hockey’s visibility was raised. But at this point there were only six teams in the league and seemingly every player was Canadian. The Great White North. I couldn’t have picked out Toronto on a map, I was actually caught off guard when I learned that it was closer to Buffalo than Burlington. Not so far north as to have the frigid weather Americans think permeates the northern nation.

And I still can’t tell you why Toronto is the epicenter of the country, it’s probably got something to do with shipping and the Great Lakes, but Toronto is cosmopolitan and…

A city.

I called up an Uber and it was there in two minutes. In L.A. one never comes that fast, especially in the hills. There are people walking on the street and it was raining and COLD! Like in the forties. A temperature very rarely seen in Southern California, where it is definitely spring, I could feel the weather change definitively on my birthday.

So I’m here for Departure, the new incarnation of Canadian Music Week run by Randy Lennox. And I woke up at the crack of dawn, by my standards, never mind the time change, to interview Kevin “Chief” Baruk.

Funny about the music business, when you get to the core, where the action is, I’m utterly fascinated. It’s different from being a fan of the act, it’s about the nuts and bolts, the movement behind the scenes, and don’t forget music doesn’t require a degree, there’s no natural hierarchy, you rise and fall on your own deeds, the most successful people are entrepreneurs.

So Chief (a guy in the studio called everybody that name, like “chef” in “The Bear,” and it stuck to Kevin) went on the road with Nickelback for more than a year before the hit. Do I need to remind you?

And that was the entrée to Nashville. You see Chief’s longtime buddy Joey Moi had the idea of bringing the Nickelback sound to country. Needless to say, Nash Vegas wasn’t buying it, but then Moi employed the Nickelback formula with Jake Owen and Chief ran the management arm of Big Loud, and first came Florida Georgia Line and then Morgan Wallen and then Seth England decided he didn’t want to be in the management business anymore, after FGL looked at new managers and ultimately Chief spoke with Michael Rapino who told him he’d back him in a new venture and you can see the resulting enterprise here:

https://www.thecoreentertainment.com

Core built Bailey Zimmerman from scratch. A friend of Chief’s found him on TikTok, an old friend Chief hadn’t spoken with in fifteen years who was not in the business and…

Now Chief is the manager of Nickelback.

He says that everybody in Nashville loves Nickelback, and he put them on fifteen country festivals, they just played Stagecoach, where they killed. I know, you don’t believe it, you’re still a hater, but that doesn’t matter, because Nickelback doesn’t need you, they’ve got a mailing list of 750,000…that’s who pays the bills, and there are younger fans who aren’t being reminded, they’re finding out about the band two decades later, it’s new to them.

As for social media… Nickelback was not on it, not to any degree. Chief said it’s not about manipulation, trying to goose a project into virality, you just have to make music available and then the fans pick it up or they don’t. It always comes down to the fans.

And there were many more details and I wish it was a podcast because you would have dug it and learned stuff, but…

Then I sat in the audience and listened to Kevin Lyman, Warped is back! Backed by Insomniac. But the most fascinating gems from Kevin were the little things, minor, but ultimately major. Like the billing… Kevin did research, discovered that most people only read the top two lines of a festival bill, so he decided to list the acts alphabetically.

And once he got going, Kevin got wound up, he became passionate, he couldn’t stop talking, he was excited. And that’s the difference between the music business and the straight world. That passion, that excitement, without it you are not successful and if you manage to get a gig you don’t last. And music is one of the last fields where you still make it up as you go, there’s not much of a blueprint. You have an idea and then try to bring it to fruition.

Kevin also talked about the charitable component…this is important to younger fans, and also needing to police the acts themselves, from checking for underage groupies to keeping the performers from being strung out. He’s camp counselor, best friend and majordomo all at the same time, it’s a hands-on operation.

And then I went to the Four Seasons for lunch with this guy I met on a cruise to Japan and his buddy who’s kind of the Charlie Rose of Canada and… We were having a jolly old time shooting the sh*t and then his secondee invitee Rosie arrived. She said she was a fan of musicals. But really, she’d been a Canadian Supreme Court Justice! There’s mandatory retirement at 75, and now she teaches law at Harvard and NYU and by time I finished getting her story I felt inadequate, you can read about her here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_Abella

And everybody always talks about the money, but it’s the people you meet that is the main exponent of success. The conversations. They’re so stimulating, you learn so much…

And now I’m off to the Live Music Awards…