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.