We are looking for great.

I spent all day in the cancer ward at Cedars getting an infusion of IVIG for my pemphigus foliaceus. As the fourth doctor I saw in eighteen months who finally diagnosed it said… Don’t Google it.

In any event, IVIG cleans out the toxins from the blood so you itch less…

And there’s nothing like a pemphigus itch. Along with the sores. If you see me in the next few days and notice the spots on my bald pate…you’ll know what I mean.

Not that it’s contagious, but when it’s really bad, people are fearful of touching me.

But with treatment it’s under control. Well, continued treatment. Could go away, they don’t know, it hasn’t yet.

And the only thing that speaks to the underlying condition is the drug Rituxan. But you can’t get Rituxan until your B-cells have telomeres and mine didn’t so I got IVIG in November but now the B-cells  have a few, so I’m going to get Rituxan next week. Not that it works instantly. In addition, Rituxan wipes out your B-cells, which are what fight infection… But I’m left with T-cells, which it turns out the Covid vaccine works on…

And I was out to dinner a week ago with a household name musician and he told me he never got the flu vaccine, never mind the Covid vaccine. He didn’t think they worked. Well, let me just put it this way, when you’re on the medical edge, you’re willing to believe, you want to believe, you hope the drug works. It’s all fine when you’re healthy, but the human body is going to crap out on you sometime.

And they treat you like gold.

There’s a separate entrance at Cedars with valet parking. And the nurses! This is the medical treatment of your dreams. Since most people are coming in for cancer treatment, some on their last legs, they’re always nice, never brusque, will bring you blankets, snacks…

But still… The infusion itself takes 4 1/2 hours. But there’s the pre-game, with the Benadryl and the steroid…ensuring that you’re f*cked up the whole time and can’t accomplish anything. You’re not in a complete fog, but it’s hard to concentrate. Kinda like being on an airplane. Ever notice it’s harder to concentration on a jet? I think it’s the pressurization, or lack thereof (they don’t pressurize to sea level).

So you’re sitting there long enough that you get restless in your seat, even though it’s a recliner, you end up like a first grader, twisting and turning. But there is WiFi, so you bring your devices…

And I usually just end up surfing the net, wasting time.

But today, the third day, after doing a bit of research, I decided I was going to break the spell, I was going to watch a movie, and I pulled up “Civil War” on MAX.

There was scuttlebutt when this came out last year, there was discussion of the potential public response, but there wasn’t much of one, because almost nobody went to see it. Well, that’s untrue, it grossed $68+ million in the U.S. and $126 million worldwide, but no one I know talked to me about it, sent me an e-mail, and that means there’s a specialized audience and now that it’s streaming…

I was thinking it might have been better if the film had gone direct to streaming, so the publicity was timed with its availability to many as part of their subscription.

But the bottom line is this is not a great movie. Not what you think it’s going to be. It’s ultimately a road trip. The future battle between the states is just background. But I’m writing about the flick primarily to mention Jesse Plemons.

He’s only in the film briefly. But the way he talks, it’s so understated, to the degree he speaks at all. And this is striking in a world where everybody is in your face 24/7 saying LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME!

Now you’ve seen him before. Maybe in “Friday Night Lights,” which I haven’t seen, but I noticed him in the overrated, ultra-slow, “The Master,” and he delivered his role in this same hesitant fashion in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Not that Plemons cannot be more dynamic. He’s more alive in that “Black Mirror” episode “USS Callister,” which I tried to watch after “The Civil War,” but sci-fi is not my thing.

But Plemons.

And Kirsten Dunst, who turns out to be Plemons’s wife. She’s not an ingenue here, she’s mature, and wizened and brittle-edged, underplaying like her husband, and that was endearing too.

But Wagner Moura’s accent seemed phony from the get-go, and went in and out, and Cailee Spaeny as the young photographer was a two dimensional cliché, predictable to the point I winced. But Stephen McKinley Henderson…

He’s always great. You  may not know his name, but you’d recognize him on sight. And he was just in that Netflix series “The Madness”… God, I wish that was better. A fine ride, but ultimately just good network fare. What else would you expect from Peter Chernin who splashes his name before every episode, as if we care, seems self-congratulatory, positively narcissistic.

And when they finally took the needle out of my arm and I had to enter rush hour traffic it was just before six and…

I tuned in Rachel Maddow.

Same as it ever was. But I can still listen to that Talking Heads song, unlike Ms. Maddow. It’s still fresh. You should hear it in hi-res.

So Rachel is busy delineating the behavior of Trump and I’m sitting there thinking WE GET IT! And this strategy didn’t work for the Democrats, trying to label Trump as bad. You need an agenda, you need to look forward.

Actually, the thing that has stuck most with me this past week is from David Brooks…who once wrote that the most important thing in life was who you married, which I embraced, but then he went up and got a divorce. So your mileage may differ, but this is what he said in the “Times’:

“Many populists were ill equipped to even understand what was happening. In his classic book ‘The Age of Reform,’ Richard Hofstadter writes, ‘Populist thought showed an unusually strong tendency to account for relatively impersonal events in highly personal terms.’ In other words, they thought they could solve the disruptions of industrialization if only they could find the evil conspirators who were responsible for every ill. Their diagnoses were simple-minded, their rhetoric over the top; their proposals, Hofstadter noted, wandered ‘over the border between reality and impossibility.’ Sound familiar?”

And the reason Brooks can quote Hofstadter is because he’s a graduate of the University of Chicago, which has a reading-based curriculum. You read and analyze. We keep minting business graduates, but it’s those who study the liberal arts who truly have a handle on the world.

Brooks goes on to say:

“Here’s how America recovered: Populist indignation finally got professionalized. In the 20th century, members of the progressive movement took the problems the populists were rightly angry about and built the institutions that were required to address them effectively — like the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve. Populists had trouble thinking institutionally; the progressives, who were well trained, morally upright, self-disciplined, disgusted by corruption, intellectually rigorous (and sometimes priggish and arrogant) did not have that problem.”

Free link: https://rb.gy/k9v640

By pointing to Trump’s errors, Maddow is missing the point, which is why so many Democrats are demoralized. We KNOW what is going on, we just want to be led out of the wilderness, ENOUGH WITH THE COMPLAINING!

It’s like a classic rock band going on the road to play their ancient hits again and again and again. The reason people don’t want their new music is usually because it’s not as good as it was the first time around. Also you’ve got to change for the marketplace, today you just don’t drop an album and wait for your label to do press, you personally have to work it, and that’s too much of an effort.

But the young and hungry…

Then again, the Democrats are a Boomer and Gen-X-based party too often out of touch with today’s digital reality who think they know better and refuse to remove their hands from the wheel.

We need the new. We need solutions, not complaints. So we had a bump in the road, a big bump…but we can recover. Just like me and my treatment for pemphigus. It’s depressing sitting in the chair, but I won’t even think about it a few weeks down the line.

Then again, there are some people who are invested in being ill.

And credibility is key. If you’re doing it for your brand, you might get rich, but we’ll never truly believe in you.

And we need to believe.

“Billboard” Power 100: https://rb.gy/h098wm

These lists are complete B.S., but this is important, because this is the first time the tied to the label for their ads which they don’t buy “Billboard” has acknowledged the pendulum has swung, that today it’s all about the road as opposed to recordings.

For all the hate Ticketmaster gets, Live Nation PAYS THE ACTS! And if you’re big enough to make money from streaming, not only are you making boatloads more from the road, BUT YOU’RE GETTING A BETTER SPLIT!

Good luck getting even 50% of the net from a major. But if you make a deal with Live Nation…you’ll get ninety percent of the face value, sans fees. And a very few acts get even better deals than that!

The record companies were the most hated entities at the turn of the century because of Napster, but now it’s Ticketmaster. But if you’re on the inside, this is a very positive sign… Because this demonstrates HOW MUCH PEOPLE WANT TO GO TO THE SHOW! If you don’t want to go to the concert, it doesn’t matter what the fees are.

But I’m not going to get into a discussion of fees here, Ticketmaster is paid to take the heat for the acts.

But for all the fans who love the acts… They should realize that Live Nation and AEG and a few other touring entities keep them alive!

And it’s even better than that, have more than a modicum of success and you can get an overall tour deal. Which is essentially an advance. And unlike in publishing there’s no vig, never mind having to trust the publisher to account accurately and wait for the money to trickle in.

Is concert promotion a dirty business? OF COURSE! If promoters were 100% honest they’d go out of business. It’s a war between the promoters and the acts, but on big shows, as much as the promoter may make, the act makes tons more. And I’d rather settle a show than audit a label. You can get many more cents on the dollar! And you’ll get it right away!

Even better for acts… Used to be in the days of independent promoters, you’d give money back for a stiff show, you needed to keep that promoter in business so they’d take a chance next time. Live Nation is a public company, it’s not going out of business, almost nobody gives money back.

And unlike the label heads, Rapino doesn’t show up in suits, but in regular street clothes, like the audience. Rapino is relatable, you don’t feel like you’re getting f*cked every time you deal with him. I can’t say this about everybody else in the music business.

Meanwhile, Rapino is expanding while the labels are CONTRACTING! Isn’t that the story of Universal, getting rid of Capitol?

And touring has a seemingly infinite growth curve, whereas with recordings…there are only so many people in the world, and you get to the point where subscriptions stall, at least that’s what Wall Street thinks, which is why Universal’s stock took a hit last year.

It’s the promoter that does artist development. That will play an act regularly, and move them into bigger rooms if there’s demand.

The road is keeping the music business alive. But it’s a different world from recordings. Self-promoting Clive Davis made it look slick, about manufactured Top 40 hits, about supposed ears…even though so many of his acts have no legacy, can sell no tickets. And then Tommy Mottola came along and started wearing suits and the label execs acted like Wall Street titans, believing they were the talent, when they patently are not.

And the promoter doesn’t tell you what to do, what to play. That’s your choice, although it might ultimately affect the size of your payment.

And nothing creates a bond with an act like seeing them live.

But we continue to have to read the B.S. about the label execs, who are overpaid and living on catalog.

A promoter takes a risk nightly. Lose on too many shows and you’re out of business. If I want to know what is truly going on in the music sphere, I talk to a promoter. That’s where the rubber meets the road, what will the public pay for? And oftentimes it’s acts with anemic streaming numbers.

That’s the big story of developing acts on the road. They don’t sound anything like the Spotify Top 50. Rock is not dead live. Sure, a diva might be able to sell out an arena this time, but next time? And so many of these acts can tour nearly year round, year after year. You don’t hear them complaining about streaming numbers.

As for streaming numbers…

If you truly want to do a power list, after putting Rapino at #1, you’ve got to put Daniel Ek at #2, because just like Live Nation, Spotify PAYS THE ACTS! 84% of U.S. recording revenue comes from streaming, and has over 30% of the market, never mind the most active listeners.

Universal just re-upped with Spotify. That’s their major retailer. They need Spotify to keep them in business. And, once again, if you’re actually streamed, you can make a deal with a distribution company and keep almost all the money! But the public would rather complain.

But you don’t find people complaining about shows. They LOVE shows! Unlike so many of the tracks put up for streaming. Live is the new gatekeeper. That’s how you know if you’re truly in the music business, whether people will pay to see you. Sure, you can make the record on your laptop in your bedroom, but that does not mean anybody will show up at the venue.

America has it all wrong. People don’t know who to hate.

They don’t know they should hate the acts for fees, not Ticketmaster, and when it comes to compensation, the major labels are the bad actors here… First and foremost, THEY WON’T SIGN MUCH! Never have the offerings of the majors been more narrow.

The label execs get all the ink, the flash, but it’s the faceless promoter who is a lifer, getting it done.

If “Billboard” makes Rapino #1, does that mean the rest of the media will acknowledge this, that Michael is the most powerful person in the music business?

I HOPE SO!

578,000.

That’s how many people watch CNN during primetime.

If you had that number of streams on Spotify, you’d keep your day job. If you only got that number of views on YouTube or TikTok, you might call yourself an influencer, but you wouldn’t be that influential. But conventional wisdom is CNN is this monolith that must be abhorred by the left and denigrated by the right.

But it’s nearly irrelevant.

Wolf Blitzer… Does anybody under 35 know his name? Even Erin Burnett?

Yet CNN is considered a political powerhouse.

But it is not.

And therefore Mark Thompson is coming in to fix it. The same Mark Thompson who fixed the “New York Times” by expanding the brand into games, cooking…the Wirecutter, the Athletic… And now no other paper can compete. (And let’s be clear, for the NYT it isn’t truly about money, but influence, which it achieves by reinvesting in the product, i.e. reporting, and not paying its owners exorbitant salaries, like in entertainment…and never forget CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which is run by poor man David Zaslav…)

Now in truth the major labels have woken up two plus decades later. I wrote years ago that the majors needed to distribute all the records, just not the big ones. And this is what they’re finally doing. Sony bought AWAL, Universal is buying Downtown… And other than the indies in England no one is anxious about the latter. I can’t say that I’m thrilled either, but it is good business. Even though Universal had to pay $775 million for something it easily could have done for itself much cheaper.

Then again, the majors get less of a slice for the distribution of independent music than they do for their own. As for “flying up’ indies to the big label… The big label can’t do much for most indies today. David Gray owns his own records and distributes them as such.

Not that anybody is forcing someone to use Downtown’s CD Baby, but in truth these enterprises are always built to be sold, that’s the American way of business.

Speaking of the American way of business, are you following the Chinese AI story? For over a year we’ve heard that NVIDIA is an indomitable megaforce, here for the ages, you could retire on its stock. Well said stock took a double digit hit today, because the Chinese seem to be able to do almost as well with much cheaper chips. Turns out they can do it on their own.

And so can the acts.

So we’ve got CNN in the music business. The Weeknd, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar… The scuttlebutt is disproportionate to the market share.

That’s what Spotify has been telling us for years, that the market share of the hits is decreasing.

I’m not saying the aforementioned acts are not stars, but I am saying that despite the perception there are great swaths of the public who do not know and do not care about these acts’ music. But just like CNN, traditional media keeps talking about them.

The same traditional media the kids are not reading/partaking of.

Wasn’t this the story of the last election? The power of Joe Rogan and other podcasters as opposed to traditional media outlets? Kamala Harris was so busy smiling and blanding out on big media that she lost to edgy Donald Trump where the undecided and more active young voters were.

This is a sea change that the Democratic party still has not awoken to. I keep reading that NEXT TIME they’ll go on podcasts, play by the hosts’ rules. But next time is four years from now, and the landscape will be different.

But one thing is for sure, the audience has moved on from the hit acts, the major acts playing to everybody, reliant on the hype machine. The audience wants something more personal, more edgy, a cornucopia of acts many of whom see recordings primarily as promotional vehicles.

The story isn’t the stadium business of the biggies, but the overwhelming business of the acts in general below that level. We’re constantly told of acts playing Madison Square Garden whom most people have never even heard of. And granted, that’s just one market, but it’s not like they do bupkes in the territories.

In other words, the business has changed but perception has not. The stars have never been smaller, have never had less of a reach, but if you paid attention to traditional media and the label hype machine you wouldn’t know this.

This is not the MTV 80s, where everybody was tuned in and knew the same acts, where either you were on the channel or an also-ran, where those whose music was ill-fitted for the channel adjusted for it, as opposed to the reverse…can you say HAIRBANDS?

Today, unless you’re signed to a major label, and the majority of acts are not, you see no reason to compromise, change for the game, because YOU ARE THE GAME!

And it’s confounding if you’re a student of the game. You keep being told acts you consider lame are superstars and the great swath of other acts is unfathomable. There is no Top Forty bar, no cutoff, there aren’t even gatekeepers. You’re on your own both as an act and as a consumer. One can argue it’s the brain dead lemmings who are into the major acts, the true musos are into smaller acts, not because they’re smaller, but because they appeal to their senses.

Isn’t this the story of the internet, the niches, something different for everybody?

Why should it be different in music?

As big as Mr. Beast is, many people have never watched a single one of his videos, and he can still roll in dough. And even scarier, if you’re in the music business, Mr. Beast is bigger than most of the acts, because he plays by his own rules, he created his own lane, he’s beholden to his audience, not the system.

But we keep hearing people bitch about Spotify payments.

That’s antiquated thinking. Today it’s all about the software, not the systems. The systems are figured out in music, it’s a matter of what you’re going to put through the pipeline.

Like Steve Jobs used to say…he was making tools. Spotify, et al, are just tools… What are you going to do with them?

We keep hearing about playlisting, all the edges the majors have, when in truth the active music listener picks and chooses his music.

There’s the disinformation once again, the sideshow.

The truth is if you’re good, if you can draw an audience, you will grow.

Most acts are not that good, almost all of them are not that good.

But there are more good acts than are signed to major labels.

And if you’re good, people will tell everyone they know about you, that’s how rare good acts are.

Meanwhile, it’s like the seventies… The smaller acts have more hard core fans than the big ones. Well, to be clear, their fans are more dedicated. These acts are not reliant on hits, some haven’t had any hits at all, but they can sell out arenas, like Billy Strings.

The music business has already changed, but big time media has not gotten the memo.

Can the Democrats admit they lost?

Can they stop blaming the election of Trump on THOSE people, continue to refuse to accept any responsibility for his election?

I don’t want to talk to one more Democrat who wants to explain away perception. That really, most people are not woke, that trans… This never works, never mind living in a world where facts are secondary to feelings. Remember when Biden tried to convince the public that the economy was good, that didn’t work, you can’t explain away my shock at grocery store prices with a chart.

This election was a realignment…

You can no longer cancel someone for using the wrong pronouns. You can no longer assume trans women can compete in sports with biological women. You can no longer stake your claim on DEI. That ship has sailed. I’m not saying these are not important issues, they’re just not the MAIN issues. Instead of being fearful of offending someone, the Democrats have to unite the troops and march forward.

And so far they are doing nothing of the sort.

If you’d asked me on Sunday, I would have said I was cautiously optimistic. First and foremost, Trump’s got to live another four years, and his diet of McDonald’s isn’t helping his longevity. Also, I felt there was a chance there would be a solid reaction to Trump’s policies, bringing politics and our country to the center.

But right now, it looks like we’re in for another Viktor Orbán, the  Hungarian despot who is a hero to the right, which is quite strange for those of us who still believe in a free America, with checks and balances in government.

As for immigration… I’m for H-1B visas, too many talented technologists have not been able to remain in the U.S. and have taken their innovations elsewhere. It’s not a perfect system, but let’s focus on the positive, not the negative. Yet the fact is the majority of Americans are upset with illegal immigration and under Biden…more illegals (and we can now call them that again), crossed the border than ever before. How is that a winning strategy, when you can’t even enforce the laws?

And enough with the defense of Biden and Kamala. I’m angrier at them right now than I was when they lost in November. No mea culpas, no self-knowledge… Biden pronouncing in “USA Today” that he still thought he would have beaten Trump is as ludicrous as believing a 58 year old Mike Tyson could beat a 28 year old Jake Paul. Then again, every American thinks they can do everything, so why not? It’s one thing to have self-belief, it’s quite another to be delusional.

As for Kamala… Enough with the horsesh*t that she ran a perfect campaign. Stephen A. Smith had it right on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” last night. Watch it, Smith was a breath of fresh air, explaining why the Democrats lost. He had a better appreciation  of the landscape than anybody in the Democratic leadership.

And speaking of the Democratic leadership… WHERE ARE THEY?

Sure, the Dems are behind the 8-ball in D.C., but that never prevented the Republicans from bloviating. The last time we had that spirit in D.C. was with Anthony Weiner, who would take on any Republican, but then he blew himself up.

As for explainer-in-chief Pete Buttigieg… Sure, he knows the facts, but could he raise his damn voice, get emotional, rally the troops?

And forget MSNBC. I tuned in Rachel Maddow on Monday and it was the same as it ever was. Trump bad. Look what he did. Let me give you the history here. SO WHAT??? We know what is going on, who is going to lead us out of this?

This is what the music business used to do best. Put its focus and muscle behind an act and make that performer a star. That paradigm is history in music, but not in politics, which is a zero sum game, there are only so many elected officials.

Newsom blew himself up by going into the lion’s den. His debate on Fox with DeSantis… Just made Newsom look bad, if you can’t define the rules…

So, here we are.

Reporting coworkers re DEI? Sounds like the old USSR to me. That’s not going to get a thumbs-up from most Americans, who believe snitching is one of the worst offenses known to man.

Withdrawing from the Paris climate accords after L.A. just burned up and before that North Carolina flooded and just last week it snowed in New Orleans and Florida?

Withdrawing from the World Health Organization? Forget all the scuttlebutt regarding vaccines, most Americans believe in western science and want a leg up when they get sick. The optics are bad.

As is today’s firing of inspectors general. Loyalty is for sports, not for politics. We at least like a patina of independence, lip-service.

Trump is just doing what he said he’d do… But most people didn’t want all that. They just didn’t want Kamala. And the sooner Democrats accept this…

The Republicans own news television, news podcasts…they seem to own the entire world of communications, while Democrats are fearful of offending someone within their own party, afraid of committing a faux pas.

My inbox is full of the angry and disillusioned.

But too many still have contempt for those who voted for Trump. How in the hell did the Democrats become the party of the elite as opposed to the working man?

And the Democrats keep telling the working man they know better, and no one likes to hear that, ever!

Shawn Fain stood up to Detroit and won. He did not have the baggage of previous union leaders and also realized in a world of economic inequality “union” is no longer a bad word.

Meanwhile, you’ve got the tech elite…

Did you see Amazon pulled their warehouses from Quebec because of a union effort?

And when TikTok was down for a few hours…influencers went on Instagram Reels…TO HATE ON ZUCKERBERG!

Don’t sit on your hands and believe you’re powerless. Those who’ve gone where the wind has blown have no moral character, and that’s one thing the public is familiar with, and judges people on. Sure, Elon Musk may still be a hero to his bros on X, but everybody who’s grown up, who is on the left side of the political fence, thinks he’s a myopic guy on the spectrum who may know science but knows nothing about people.

There’s this perception that everybody agrees with what Trump is doing, but this is patently untrue.

And don’t expect a celebrity to make a difference. Because those who truly can will not go on record for fear of losing bucks. And movie stars no longer have cred, having been revealed as being two-dimensional, and when your songs are written by committee…how can I believe in you?

And Taylor Swift’s endorsement meant nothing, how could it, when she’s all about money and microaggressions. How many different versions of her album did she release? She had to rerecord her early albums for spite? This sounds more like Trump than someone on the other side of the political fence.

This battle can be fought, not by Oprah, but by someone steeped in politics who refuses to compromise.

As for Chuck Schumer… Chuck Milquetoast.

And Adam Schiff may have his heart in the right place, but he’s even wimpier than Schumer.

Where’s the show business, where’s the grandstanding?

We need someone to believe in, someone to lead us.

But the only people able to do this seem to be on social media, people like Mr. Beast, who all the know-better Democrats pooh-pooh.

And who isn’t confounded when the Village People play the inauguration, claiming that “Y.M.C.A” is not a gay anthem? What next, Melissa Etheridge telling Andy Cohen she’s straight?

There are so many disaffected citizens who the Democrats could appeal to if they were willing to take a risk and lead.

But they’re not.

And that’s just sad.

No, IT’S SCARY!