JAMES TAYLOR

Well, can we call 10,000 a night a disappointment?

Well, if capacity is 20,000.

This is a classic JT summer tour.  I mean how many times have you seen it? 
As the man gets ever-blander.  With too many backup singers and a focus on
sweet singing instead of meaning.

Tickets ain’t stratospheric.  This ain’t Sting, reaching into your wallet,
STEALING the cash, winking as if he’s going to engage you in tantric sex after
the gig.  Before service charge(s), tickets are under seventy bucks.

I don’t think if you lower the price you get more attendees.

No, there’s been a shift in the marketplace.  Baby boomers have money, but
they want ACCESS!  They want to be up close and personal.  JT should be playing
living rooms charging $1,500 a ticket.

Or small halls.  At even a hundred bucks a ticket.

Everybody who’s going to see JT has been to an arena show, maybe even a
festival.  They know what it is to be far away.  They know what it is to use
binoculars.  To re-experience this in their fifties makes them feel inadequate, that
they’re just not rich enough.  They’ve got a 4,500 square foot house and a
foreign automobile, they’re paying forty grand for their kid to go to a private
college and they’re sitting in the nosebleed section?

Actually, in this case it’s not even nosebleed.  It’s WAY BACK!  At the shed.

This is why the shed is dead. 

There’s no mania for JT.  You might want to relive your memories, but you
don’t HAVE TO!  Certainly not THIS YEAR!  And you know James will be back next
year, or the year after.  And, you know you can always get a ticket.

We’re seeing a dying industry.  There’s a thin veil of superstars propping up
the business.  That people will go to see just to say they were there.  Like
the Stones and U2.  But you’re not going to sleep with your secretary by
coming into the office and saying you went to see James Taylor last night. 
Actually, you’re too embarrassed to even say so.  It’s a private pleasure.

I’d like to say if JT cut a hit it would make a difference.  It’s just that
his audience would never hear it.  They don’t listen to music radio, they’re
completely out of it.

Maybe if he cut a standards record, like Rod Stewart.  Or a Motown album,
like Michael McDonald.  And went on the "Today Show", JT could sell out.  But
nah…JT made it on sincerity, and there’s no sincerity in those projects.

Bob Dylan wrote the book on this one.  Are you an artist or an entertainer. 
Artists slog through the wilderness, on a personal journey.  Sometimes the
audience catches up with them, sometimes not.  But artists garner respect. 
Entertainers divert your attention, give you relief from the boredom of life.  Then
again, on some level James Taylor is bored himself.  If he’s got nothing to
say, if he’s just playing the same damn music again and again, maybe he should
stay home.

ALLMAN BROTHERS

The flag-bearers of blues-influenced jam band music have been superseded. 
What’s next, the reunion tour with  Dickie Betts?

Unlike James Taylor, the Allmans improvise.  It’s just that what they’re
improvising on is the same tunes you listened to thirty-odd years ago.  And you’ve
got to hang with twentysomethings, and feel dirty while you’re doing it. 
You’re confused.  Exactly why are you going?  Is it worth it?  Or can you hang it
up and live on your memories?

The Allmans are doing half the business of JT.  3,000-7,000 a night.  Not
exactly club work, but think of the overhead.  Think of how disappointing this
must be, how difficult it is to get your dick hard to play, to deliver.

On one hand I think it’s over.  Then again, the present-day kings of jam, the
Dave Matthews Band, after stumbling at a few gigs, are selling out
everywhere.  Doing 20,000 a night, sometimes more.  If only the Allmans could play with them, take a few decades off the age of their audience.

But shy of that, they’ve got to team up with another act.  Sometimes one plus
one is three, or even four.  Like with Def Leppard and Bryan Adams.  There’s
got to be an act the Allmans can tour with, to draw some eyeballs, to stop the
slide into irrelevance.

AVRIL LAVIGNE

She means something in Canada.  And overseas.  But in the U.S., she’s close
to toast.

I mean this girl ain’t doing any improvising.  How many times can you tour on
the same music?  How many times can prepubescent girls ask their parents to
see the same act?  I mean you can’t be over eighteen and see Avril, you risk
being arrested for child molestation.  I mean why else would you be there? 
Certainly not the music.

"Complicated" was a great track.  But that was YEARS AGO!  Don McLean can
tour forever on "American Pie", but at least he wrote that…

Avril’s good for about 4,000 a night.  Not terrible, but anybody who attends
knows this isn’t where it’s at, can smell the stink, and isn’t going back. 
This ain’t no building DMB ten years ago, or Frampton decades back, Avril peaked
at the beginning and it’s been downhill ever since.

I hope her handlers know what they’re doing.  Taking all the cash they can
before she’s over.  Because they’re doing her career no service.  Then again,
does Avril have a career?

STEVIE NICKS

The Howard Kaufman formula.  Tour the shit out of an act til nobody wants to
see them anymore.

You think her audience didn’t get enough of her on the Fleetwood Mac clean-up
tour?  With its endless legs to dwindling crowds at ridiculous prices?  I
mean Christine McVie didn’t participate, it was the Stevie and Lindsey show for
HOURS!  How much more do you need?

Just because Jimmy Buffett can sell out every gig, is bulletproof, that
doesn’t mean every act fits this formula.  Jimmy’s sui generis.  You feel like if
you met him in a bar you could get down and party.  Whereas you don’t want to
party with Stevie and Steven Tyler.  They’re NOT everymen, they’re STARS!  But
if you can see them whenever you want, they’re stars no more.  You stop paying
attention, you stop looking.

This is pure unadulterated greed.  Could it be that Stevie Nicks has so
little home life that she can’t see that she’s seen as a joke out on the road?

And bringing along Vanessa Carlson is like Alfalfa bringing along Stymie. 
Someone young and IRRELEVANT!

This tour pulls in in the neighborhood of 3,500 to 7,000 (and that’s a RARE
great night).

Don’t tell me that’s good business.  Especially when sometimes that’s twenty
five percent of capacity.  If you leave the mania out of rock all you’ve got
is business.  And if business were that sexy everybody wouldn’t want to be a
rock star.

EMINEM, 50 CENT, et al

Eminem’s so cold, he can refrigerate a room.  Unless he develops a sense of
humor about himself, or hands the musical reins to Dre, he’s done.  Well,
fading out.  People think his last album is irrelevant.  It sold heavily during the
fourth quarter Christmas rush, now you probably can’t even remember the
single.

At the end of the day it’s about music, and Eminem’s facility is with words. 
Maybe he should write a book, or dictate one.  Judith Regan, Ms. Bottomfisher
under the cloak of being a Vassar highbrow, are you READING?

And Fitty…

I don’t want to say too much shit for fear he’ll shoot me.  If this is the
biggest act in the business, we’re in serious trouble.  Let him sell his
records, let him swagger and boast, but can’t there be somebody BIGGER? 
Someone who can make records and tour that we believe in?

This tour is doing around 10,000-12,000 a night.  WITH Lil’ John included. 
That’s not empty, but the price per gig wasn’t based on THIS number, but
something MUCH higher.

Hip-hop is a recorded medium.  It’s good in a club, but you don’t want to see
it performed.  Live, it’s about musicianship.  Oh, no, I got it wrong, it’s
about SPECTACLE!  We want Madonna, Britney!  God, a rap spectacle…who cares? 
Not nobody, but far from everybody.

CONCLUSION

It appears those in charge of the live business are just as dumb and out of
it as those running the major labels.  They think somehow they’re not at fault.
That it’s the PUBLIC!

No, the public is hip.

The public wants:

1. A clear, final price.  Which is REASONABLE, which allows them to afford
   more than one gig a season.
2. Smaller venues.
3. People who can play.
4. To feel like they’re at an event, not a barn-raising for some wealthy
   entertainer who’s already got three residences.

What this business needs is capital investment.  New theatres.

But only AEG seems to realize this.  Clear Channel is so busy picking up the
pieces that they don’t realize the system is broken.  Drop the price of lawn
tickets all you want, nobody WANTS to sit on the lawn.

Until everybody gets a lot less greedy, people will continue to stay away.

As far as grooming new acts to replace the aging dinosaurs…  That’s not how
it worked.  Acts developed themselves.  Through relentless touring and
endless product.  You couldn’t predict what would blow up.  And, the further you
went out there creatively, the larger your audience, assuming you meant it.  See
Tull’s "Thick As A Brick" for instruction.

Unfortunately, Kurt Cobain died for our sins.  He believed you didn’t take
limos, it had to be punk.  He was a star, you could believe in him.  Dave
Grohl’s no star.  He’s a guy you drink with.  Someone who will treat you nice.  Did
you have any thought WHATSOEVER that Jimmy Page would treat you nice?  No. 
But you wanted to get closer to his flame.  Because he was following his own
path, he had something you didn’t have, that you didn’t see every day,
musical genius.