It’s the best thing that ever happened to the college!

This is what the mainstream media does not understand, that it’s hard to get attention, nearly impossible. We all labor in backwaters, waiting for the sun to shine upon us, while those holdovers from the old school believe they still matter and can impart truth and steer the culture.

WRONG!

In a world where alternative facts rule, and everybody has their own news source, the most difficult task is to reach critical mass.

Middlebury College has finally reached critical mass.

I don’t really care what went on there, they don’t write, they don’t call, they’re not looking for me because I’m not rich. That’s the dirty little secret of non-profit organizations, they’re always looking for cash, and those with it sit on boards and steer the institutions and the rest of us shout opinions in the dark. I graduated decades ago, it’s a line item on my resume that no one looks at, I’m not on LinkedIn, I’m sick of the endless networking of today’s generation, it’s a bigger sport than football, working the connections, kissing butt to get a new job, and to tell you the truth no one on the west coast even asks me where I went to school, they assume it was a state institution if I attended at all, but now when I utter my alma mater’s name…

Some people will know what I’m talking about.

Make note of that, SOME people. Because despite all the attention the Charles Murray fracas has yielded, most people still do not care.

Fascinating, isn’t it? That they’re churning out news 24/7 that we don’t care about, because we’re so busy in our niches, that’s what the internet has afforded us, the ability to wallow in that which we care about as opposed to being dictated to by those who believe they know and are better than us.

To protest in Middlebury, Vermont is like breaking your act in the Northwest Territories. There aren’t enough people to matter, to get traction.

But with this newfangled internet, getting longer in the tooth every day, word can spread about inanities and…

You can become famous overnight.

Now Middlebury is not a band, it was founded in 1800, it will survive, and let that be a lesson to you, that attention strikes last, long after the fact, when  you’re already established and worth talking about. Middlebury will soldier on just like aged boomers will attend concerts by the remnants of Yes to hear “Roundabout,” the only difference is those who never heard Yes, never went to Exeter and never applied to Middlebury, are now in the loop, well, at least some of them.

Let’s see, prior to this…

Middlebury was famous for that line in “American Graffiti,” where the teacher said he left after a year because it was too competitive.

And in “The First Wives Club,” the protagonist went to Middlebury.

But in the pre-internet era, there was no virality.

And now there’s tons of it.

The liberal elite won’t let a right winger speak. The Republicans are loving this!

And the administration, they’re blaming it on outside agitators, talk about taking a page from Trump himself.

And the new college president is taking names, like the Dean Wormer in “Animal House,” when everybody knows few will pay, then again, unlike in the seventies, they’ve got film, er, tape, er, video.

So did you see that Rachel Maddow beats Tucker Carlson?

Because individuals matter. It’s less about the ethos and perspective than the deliver of the b.s., turns out people liked to watch Megyn Kelly.

And Colbert beats Fallon.

And my point is everything you know is wrong. But I learned that back in the seventies, when records still mattered and the Firesign Theatre was cutting edge.

You see our society has become complacent, there are no big thinkers, no leaders, just a bunch of blowhards from the old school and youngsters seeking followers.

Then again, the youngsters aren’t as bad as their parents, who post on Facebook because it’s permanent, they can list their social CV, whereas youngsters realize your rep precedes you, they love the evanescence of Snapchat. You’re either cool or you’re not, you’re either famous or you’re not.

So now Middlebury College is famous.

For what, doesn’t matter.

Come on, sing two Taylor Swift songs, I dare you. But you know her name and what she looks like and who’s she’s dated.

As for all those other acts shoved down our throat, we’re ignoring them.

Because we’re immune to publicity, just like ads.

But news, real things that happened, we eat them up!

We all want to be in the know. Even though we know so little. In a disconnected world where we all have different reference points it’s key to be able to talk about the topics of the day.

But what the mainstream doesn’t realize is the spin has changed.

We no longer live in a gotcha economy. It’s about resonating with your core audience. Trump says heinous stuff and his acolytes love him! Who even cares if it’s true, it FEELS true!

And the media and those who want to be featured in it haven’t fathomed the change, that facts are less important than feelings. Come on, in a world where everything is digitized, zeros and ones, we yearn for the soft edges of the liberal arts economy.

That’s right, science builds the roads.

But the liberal artists inhabit them, make them interesting.

And that’s what Middlebury College does, teach you how to think. There’s no practical track, no business, no nursing, no nothing other than pure academics. And if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t go there, because the description is right, it’s an upper class haven of coddled teenagers, but now I’ve got a feather in my cap, I’m on the radar screen, my inbox is filling up with people wanting my opinion on the situation at my alma mater. I was just sitting here, in my underwear, and suddenly the spotlight was upon me!

Because I was in the game, I revealed where I went to college, it permeated the landscape over decades, so when the opportunity came…

Be ready to seize your opportunity. But know in today’s economy you’ve got to pay your dues and wait, otherwise you’ll be a flash in the pan.

And know getting your name recognized is more important than the content. Your fans will love that you got the accolades and the others can now dig deep, into the bread crumbs you’ve left over decades online.

Charles Murray is a wanker who said some heinous things and is held up as a deep thinker by the right wing elite which wants you to believe that the problem is you instead of them. Is he entitled to speak, of course. Then again, his appearance was foisted upon the campus by a tiny minority seeking to override the wishes of the vast majority. Sound like our politics to you? It’d be like featuring Avicii at a Garth Brooks show. Florida Georgia Line opening for Rihanna. The sponsors wanted to stick it in the eye of the liberals, hoping for an altercation like this. And they think they’ve won…

But they don’t realize most people just don’t care, life is too hard, they’re trying to make ends meet or find Fentanyl after their Oxy script ran out. But ain’t that America, where no one delves deep into the real problems.

Who’s going to stop applying to Middlebury now? Certainly not the people who think they’ve got a better chance of getting into one of American’s finest institutions of higher education. As for Harvard, they just dismantled their investment team, after it yielded poor results, and money always triumphs, but no one other than alumni and the rich care about that, because they’d rather talk about gender politics.

You’ve got a gay uncle, you’re trans and want to go to the bathroom. The only people who care are the same ones offended by this Middlebury situation and they don’t realize sunlight is the best disinfectant and they’ll lose in the end.

So, Laurie Patton, Middlebury’s President, should shrug and bite back, just like Trump. Stop being a wimp like a Democrat, realize Middlebury’s winning and say so. They’re a hotbed of politicism. They’ve got a student body that cares so much. This is a teaching moment. Put a positive spin upon it instead of falling on your sword like a good liberal. Come on, Bill O’Reilly is constantly in scrapes and he always emerges victorious, by realizing in today’s society people are out to get you and if you don’t defend yourself, you lose.

Most people don’t even know who Charles Murray is. But now they know what Middlebury College is. Nothing they did otherwise penetrated. Felix Rohatyn saved New York, did anybody care he went to Middlebury?

It’s a whole new world baby, and the media and the institutions are out of touch, they’re playing by old rules. Apologies are out, outrageousness is in. There’s gonna be an accounting after the great consolidation coming in the future, but now is the time to make your bones, to gain traction, or be left behind…

Middlebury College is now the most famous liberal arts school in the nation. Far outstripping Williams and Amherst, its main competitors.

This is the time for a victory lap. When a tiny college becomes world news it’s like…

Ed Sheeran breaking out of nowhere to become the biggest act in the world.

But he didn’t start yesterday. And he was abused for his lion tattoo.

And he or she who is not dodging stones does not matter. If you’re not being attacked, no one cares enough about you. But when they do…

YOU RULE!

There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed

“In My Life”
The Beatles

Nowhere’s off the grid anymore. Well, maybe if you go to some remote spot with latrines you may not be able to get a cell signal, but otherwise, you’re networked everywhere and we’re never going back.

But it didn’t used to be this way.

I set off west in September 1974 with two boxes of Maxell cassettes with my favorite albums imprinted upon them and a TripTik, an old AAA flippable map that they constructed just for you. I had no cellphone, no credit card, just a bunch of Travelers Cheques. As for checking in with my parents, that was something I did every week or two, calling collect from some godforsaken payphone, reporting what had happened but just happy to connect with someone I knew, because I was out alone on the tundra, in search of something better and more fulfilling.

I ended up in Little Cottonwood Canyon, with the best snow in the world.

And that place attracted its own acolytes.

And we were thick as thieves in the seventies, but our friendships blew apart as time went by. That’s the way it goes, the people you know best you never see at all anymore.

But I saw Mini on Friday.

That’s a nickname, when everybody had one. When Andrew was Andy and David was Dave and I was O.C., I’ll tell you what that means someday.

So I’d been skiing at Sun Valley twice before. Once in ’75, another time in ’76.

In ’75 I met my parents there. Not when planned, I first turned back, there was just too much snow. And when I finally went again days later it was one of the worst white knuckle drives of my life, in between Pocatello and Twin Falls I was afraid to take my hands off the wheel, literally, that’s why I know Loggins & Messina’s “Mother Lode” by heart, it was in the Blaupunkt, it kept repeating as the storm blew and…there was no radio whatsoever, no satellite, no nothing. I was on my own baby.

But we’re all in it together now.

And Sun Valley is intoxicating. Because it’s so far away. And the mountain is so steep. And in the spring of ’76 I went up there again, with the aforementioned Mini and Mike Bossard, I had mononucleosis, but I did not know that yet. So I begged off driving, and I always drove. And it turned out Bossard’s Camaro held less than Mini’s VW, so we went in the green bug. And these road trips…you get to know people so well. Mini was sleeping in the backseat, I bonded with Mike as we rolled on down the highway.

So it was the Lange Cup and it snowed and it was a deep memory, one imprinted upon my brain, and the truth is the slopes remain the same but the experience is different.

Because of the high speed lifts.

Because of my age.

I told Mini I’d meet him outside the ski shop, on the Warm Springs side.

Have you ever reconnected with someone from the past? An old girlfriend maybe, a wife?

I have. A couple of decades back. We agreed to meet at Babalu on Montana, where we’d had dinner once before, when we were still together. It had been five years. She expected me to still be wearing my Guess jacket, I expected her to look exactly as she did before.

But she didn’t.

We don’t expect people to age. We don’t expect their bodies to change. We expect them to be exactly the same, and the irony is they are, on the inside, only the exterior changes.

You dream of an old love and you forget the bad parts, but not long after you reconnect they surface. You expect people to change, but they don’t.

And as I’m waiting for Mini to arrive, I’m getting anxious. Will he look the same?

I keep thinking someone is him, but as they get closer they do not say hi.

But then striding in my direction he was unmistakable.

How can there be 330 million people in America but each one is unique, you recognize each one immediately.

He was just the same, only his hair had gone gray and white and he was nearly 68.

I’m nearly 64.

And what do you do? Embrace, shake hands? Your connection is immediate, hand in glove, but there’s so much to catch up on.

In this case, twenty years.

Where do I begin? The failed relationships, the health issues, the career, the money?

The first thing Mini asked me was about my skis, how I liked them.

You see you pick up where you left off.

And the funny thing about connecting with old friends is they remember stuff you do not, and vice versa. My friend Steve in Taos, who I hadn’t seen in thirty years, started telling me stories about my dad.

Mini talked about where we stayed that weekend in Sun Valley so long ago.

I told him how we met.

And we’re exchanging information. The people we have in common and the people we think we have in common but realize we don’t.

And we skied.

Now I took a lot of classes at Middlebury, but what I did most was ski, at the Snow Bowl, and the funny thing is I use almost none of that classroom material, but I still hit the hill.

And it feels so natural.

It’s where I belong.

But it’s not exactly the same.

The slopes are groomed and the lifts run at two and a half times the speed and I had a glorious time there, hell, watch Tom’s drone footage:

Sun Valley, ID

Yes, he took his drone. I took my laptop, but I barely opened it.

We were a group of guys, in a house.

I guess I don’t know how to be a member of the group. I was there to ski, from bell to bell, they were there to hang.

And I had to see Mini and Marty and it was time spent away from the group and even though I reached out in iMessage, it was clear, I was on my way to excommunication.

So the very last day I decided to go into town with Stuart, who needed his boots customized, to marinate in the memories alone.

I was walking up and down Ketchum’s Main Street, remembering when I was there before, and it struck me…

It was so small.

I used to live in small towns, not like the one in the Mellencamp song, but isolated burgs far away, where everybody knows your name and everybody knows your business, which is so inhibiting.

Which is why I live in Los Angeles today. I’m just a number. And I like that. I walk down the street and no one knows who I am. Ambling back from the market last night in my sweatpants and four days of beard growth no one at the outdoor bar ogled me, took a photo, said hi, and that’s just the way I like it.

But there’s something refreshing about being in the mountains, far removed from everyday life.

But walking around Ketchum’s my iPhone was dinging and I was sending Jim photos of the new Limelight Hotel and Felice the snowpack and my body was in Idaho but my mind was in…

Los Angeles, the cloud?

I peeked into the Pioneer Saloon, remembered eating there with my parents, my father loving a good meal, but he’s been gone since the nineties.

I walked into the ski shops but now you can see all that merchandise online. Shopping used to be an adventure, everywhere you went it was different, but now it’s done virtually, and it’s all the same.

But when Stuart was done we took a drive through the mountains, which were spectacular and I wondered… Who exactly was I, what was I supposed to do?

And that’s when I realized I was a writer. I couldn’t follow Stuart and Phil’s footsteps on Wall Street. Couldn’t run the family business like Tom. Couldn’t wrestle with contracts like Dan. Couldn’t start a clothing company like Joel. Couldn’t be everybody’s best friend like Marc. But I could put my feelings down and hope that others could relate.

You ride the pony and you wake up one day and you realize you’re too old to turn back, too old to make a left turn, you are who you are.

And that’s positively creepy. You were full of dreams in your teens, wide-eyed in your twenties. But then calcification set in and now your direction is set in stone.

So now I’m back in L.A. and I want to be back in Sun Valley.

One thing’s for sure, you’re never where you want to be.

But as long as you want to be somewhere. As long as you have desires. As long as you dream of a better tomorrow.

You’re alive.

Moon over Sun Valley:

Moon over Sun Valley pic.twitter.com/YyjxZ3dmQk

— Bob Lefsetz (@Lefsetz) March 13, 2017

New speaker, Marcie Allen of MAC Presents, the queen of sponsorship.

The funny thing is we don’t see eye to eye, I’m all about keeping the corporations at bay and she’s about creating the best relationships with them so there should be some sparks, although I’m always willing to learn, we do live in a new world and…

You can Google Marcie and find reams of information.

Or you can just hit this story from two days ago that’ll fill you in on the details:

Cracking The Glass Ceiling; Clever CEO Marcie Allen Creates Endless Opportunity With Her Company; MAC Presents

Conference link: Music Media Summit

E-mail jim@liveworksevents.com if you’ve got any questions.

It’s about the event.

For how long have we heard it’s about the new record, the hit, that they are the engine of all that follows.

Maybe with Top Forty, but in the rest of the music sphere…

Lady Gaga had one of the stiffest follow-up albums of all time, even rivaling Peter Frampton’s “I’m In You,” but now she’s gonna sell out stadiums, how can this be?

She can’t seem to write a hit to save her life. But she was on the Super Bowl and the Grammys, never mind two years with Tony Bennett, and she’s seen as a star and is doing business accordingly.

Now if you’re playing the hit game, if you occupy the Spotify Top 50, it’s a different world. So many of the popsters live and die by the hit. Without it, they’re nothing. Especially if their tracks are part of the combine, made by the producers du jour. But if you’re more self-contained, if you’re doing something a bit different, the music is still important, it’s what seals the deal, gives you your audience, but to sustain it’s less about having hits and satiating those who haven’t cared previously as opposed to staying in the public eye. The old days of disappearing between album cycles, of being mysterious, those are done. Today you humanize yourself and stay in the game. As for recordings, they should be dripped and dribbled out, to keep fans satiated, but to get them coming to your show…

You’ve got to be on TV and online and…

Kinda like John Mayer. He’s on Snapchat, masquerading as Hank Knutley on Kimmel, you see him around, you think of him as a friend, like someone on a sitcom, as opposed to the distant musical titans of yore.

So you go where the eyeballs are. Unless your credibility is at stake. You take chances, mistakes are forgotten overnight, you play with whomever asks, you make YouTube videos, you weigh in on popular culture and more, and when it comes time to monetize…

You’re top of mind.

For far too long the industry has been playing a radio game. Wherein the charts are all that matter. Getting on the airwaves, reaching mass. But the dirty little secret is music is now all niche. Think about satiating your niche, not those distantly interested. Every act today is a big niche, from Taylor Swift to Beyonce to Metallica. All that press about Ed Sheeran? Most people have not listened to his new album and will not, they don’t care, in today’s overloaded society you have a hard time keeping up on what you do care about.

Forget the radio, forget the charts, forget sitting at home afraid you’re not gonna get it right. Get into the swim. Sure, hire a PR agent to spread the story if it’s worth telling, but really you’re looking for your fans to talk about what you do, and it all happens online, and online becomes so two-dimensional that people yearn to interact live.

We’re wiping the classic acts off the map. As well as their handlers and the record company people who sustained them and were inured to the old ways. Younger people are infiltrating the business who are willing to take chances, to start with a blank slate.

Your act can get started on NPR, like Alabama Shakes, a press story if there ever was one.

Or “CBS Sunday Morning”…

The former gets other scribes paying attention and the latter is a victory lap for those who care.

But both are event-like.

Think about what you can do that’s new and different that will generate a story, that will live on YouTube, that will endear yourself to your fans. It’s much more important than working with indie promo and slaving over adds and chart position, neither of which resonate with the public. Come on, if you’re listening to terrestrial radio you’re the most out of it person extant, you probably can’t afford a concert ticket. Better for an act to appear on Howard Stern or a hit podcast or some place online with traction.

Once again, the old metrics do not apply.

Sales are good, but they tell only part of the story.

Streams are important, especially if they continue to grow.

But even more important is your identity, propped up by the music. You’re a musician, act like one, do your act, that’s what you do, not make hit records.

The Last DJ?

He already left the building. Tom Petty can sell tickets without him.

And so can you.