Giving people what they want is commerce.

Doing what you want is art. But that does not mean everybody will be interested in what you do. But when you get art right, it’s forever, when you get commerce right, it’s evanescent. Think of all the legendary companies and products that have gone out of business/ceased to exist. But art…when done right, it lasts for the ages.

Artists don’t compromise, artists don’t do what’s expedient, artists don’t put the money first and won’t do just anything for the money (not that they don’t like to get paid).

Artists are born, not made, and people don’t like this. You can study forever, practice, and still not be an artist, even though you might call yourself one. Artistry is a sensibility, an otherness, a perspective, a need to express oneself.

And once again, just because you want to put it out there, that does not mean you’ll gain any attention.

Just because you can post to Spotify that does not mean you can get paid. If anything, fewer artists/acts can be ultra-successful today, because unlike in the past, the greatest of yesterday and the greatest of today are only a fingertip away online. Yes, if you’re a singer-songwriter and you don’t sing and write as well as Joni Mitchell…you’re never going to be as big as her, at least not for long.

Since art cannot be measured, non-artists default to numbers, qualifications, chart positions, touring income. But think of all the acts that did boffo at the b.o. who can’t get arrested today. Here today, gone tomorrow, isn’t that what they say?

And artists know what their specialty is, and they don’t stray from it, unless they’re having fun and letting their audience know this is the case. Which is why most brand extensions don’t ring true. Yes, you can sell clothing and perfume but are you really a designer? People might buy your products, but it undercuts whatever credibility you have, assuming you have any at all.

Sometimes the public embraces artistry out of the box. A good case would be Elton John’s “Your Song.” Then again, Elton had put out a previous solo album in the U.K. that meant nothing in America, never mind playing piano for acts before that. Chances are if you’re starting today you’re not going to be embraced tomorrow as an artist. Artists develop, they hone their chops, they figure out what works.

A true artist knows when they ring the bell.

Hacks don’t.

Ask someone who has a legendary cut… They knew it when they made it. It might not have gone to number one, but they knew it was phenomenal. And you can only create something phenomenal occasionally, no matter how hard you try. But you keep trying.

But business doesn’t like artistry, business likes insurance, guarantees. Which is why business insists that you work with others, they keep polishing the turd, thinking they know what is successful. But most of this work doesn’t hit and even if it does it’s forgotten. Sure, there can be artistry in collaboration, the push and pull of creation, but when the goal is commerciality and you get multiple people involved you lose the vision, and songwriting is all about the vision, and the chops.

But usually artistry takes a while to be embraced by the public. People don’t understand it, because it’s so different. They have to be exposed to it, it has to percolate in their brains.

And don’t let anybody tell you that the game trumps the art. People who will say today’s #1 is just as good as yesterday’s. That’s patently untrue.

All great art has an edge. It doesn’t go down easily, or if it does it engenders feelings that never go away. Art makes you feel something, it could be anger, it could be love, but it’s not mindless drivel, to be heard today and forgotten tomorrow.

But art, like I said above, is not easily quantified, nor is success predictable, so gatekeepers hate art. Which is why you get sequels in the movie business.

As for the public… It always wants the new and different and unpredictable. But the bar is extremely high, the work must resonate, and this is difficult to achieve, oftentimes you fail in your effort.

Think about all the acts that have hit records and then try to repeat the formula, make another record that sounds just like the last one. That almost never works, because even though people say they want something like what came before, they really don’t, they want something new and different.

Artists are leaders, ahead of the game. Commerce comes to them.

And artists constantly reinvent themselves. Sure, there’s business in going on the road and playing your greatest hits year after year, but that’s not artistry.

Sometimes edge/artistry is about shock. That worked for Frank Zappa and Alice Cooper. But right now, in the unfettered internet era, almost nothing is shocking, not even Rammstein.

Art causes a reaction, it oftentimes rubs people the wrong way.

But when artists get it right, fans need to tell everybody they know about it.

The lack of artistry not only killed the mainstream movie business, but network television. If you’re playing to everybody, you’re losing. Everybody is never going to agree. If you’re not hated, you’re not an artist. It goes with the territory.

You want to be pushing people’s buttons, you want to be challenging them, you want them eager to hear what you’re going to do next.

But it used to be in the pre-internet era that the world was small, and the artists coexisted alongside the hacks. They could be seen, they were in the landscape. To get a major label deal and distribution, never mind press and radio, was nearly impossible, it was only for a select few.

But now everybody can play, and everybody tells you to compromise, to give the public what it wants.

That might get you a look, but not a sustained one. If you hit overnight today, chances are you’re going to be forgotten tomorrow. Hell, most people don’t even know what is #1 these days. Despite the press banging them over the head with it. The press is about consensus, the press is last when it comes to artistry. Just like most news stories break somewhere online before they end up in the major media. Today you go straight to the people, the audience, they are the tastemakers, not the intermediaries, who are too invested in the system to understand breakthroughs.

And just because it is outside and championed by fans that does not make it art. That’s all tastemakers have got, their taste, and if they like what you do they have nothing. Which is why you oftentimes disagree with the critics. If something makes an impact and lasts forever, and is embraced by the public at large, there’s a good chance that it’s art. Back in the seventies all the rockers hated the Carpenters, now they love them. and one thing you’ve got to know about the Carpenters is they went against the grain. When everybody else was getting dirtier in their music and physical appearance, they were purveying clean and sweet.

Artists read an audience, but they don’t kowtow to the public.

As for Grammy Awards… They belong in the closet or the bathroom. Chances are if you’re boasting about your Grammys, you’re a hack.

Now, more than ever, we want artists.

But the system is built for commerce.

But the barrier to entry is nearly nonexistent, and therefore it’s hard to get noticed.

Artists always get noticed, even though it might take decades.

There are very few artists, even though so many people believe they are one.

And artistry is not enough to be successful. You have to have the desire, the perseverance, the ability to forgo almost everything…family, material wealth…in pursuit of your art.

True artists don’t complain about Spotify payments, about the cost of going on the road, they know it all works out in the end.

Assuming they stay true to their art, their vision and keep on keepin’ on. 

Someone should get fired for this, hopefully CEO Kirsten Lynch.

Vail is the most hated name in skiing, justifiably or unjustifiably. Rob Katz revolutionized the skiing business not quite twenty years ago. He flipped the script. Unlike previous ski conglomerates, Katz decided that Vail Resorts would make its money on skiing and its ancillaries as opposed to real estate. And the effort was wildly successful.

Skiing has never been cheaper.

This is kind of like Ticketmaster, the truth doesn’t seem to matter, even though you’ll see that M. Shadows finally spoke the truth here:

“Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows Unmasks Truth Behind ‘Dynamic’ Ticket Pricing: ‘Artists Love to Hide Behind Live Nation and Ticketmaster and Go, ‘Oh. We Had No Clue”’

https://shorturl.at/85Aug

In other words, the big corporation must be guilty, and an occasional bad story gets amplified as opposed to the truth.

Yes, you can walk up to the window during the holiday at Vail and pay in excess of $300 for a lift ticket, but if you buy before the first week of December deadline, you can get unlimited skiing at 42 ski areas around the world for about $1000. Talk about a deal… Break even is in four days. And there’s nothing like a season’s pass… If the weather is bad, you quit, you don’t have to eke out the value of a day pass.

But never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Furthermore, Vail invested heavily in the ski areas it purchased, most prominently in lift structure. Other than beginner lifts, every chair at Vail Mountain is now high-speed. And those lifts are very expensive with relatively short lifespans (approximately 30 years).

But now, when there’s a lift line it must be Vail’s fault. If you’re unhappy, it must be Vail’s fault.

Skiing is akin to surfing. In that there are always people who say you should have been here yesterday, that it was better. When Vail proposed replacing the slow triple chair with a high-speed quad in the original Back Bowls, the locals were up in arms, the powder was going to get skied out! But once the lift was installed, everybody was happy. And you may have seen the photos of endless lines for this new lift on a powder day. Forget that powder days are insane, Vail dealt with this problem by installing another high speed quad chairlift in the same area.

But all this doesn’t matter. Because in life it always come down to perception, not reality. And perception is that Vail is evil. It has homogenized the sport, it has ruined it.

Never mind that Alterra created the rival IKON pass with the same formula, albeit a tiny bit more expensive with fewer resorts, and restrictions at number of the legendary ones.

But Vail is Ticketmaster. Or UnitedHealthcare, the enemy, the root of all problems.

So how do you deal with this?

Not by being ignorant of perception.

The Park City ski patrol went on strike, for a few dollars more. They want $23 dollars an hour to open the area and keep it safe (a raise from $21).

That’s too much for Vail. Which believes if it raises wages for these patrollers, it will have to raise wages across the board.

And one might possibly understand it when it comes to the numbers, but not when it comes to the effect.

The ski patrol went on strike and most of Park City didn’t open and the vacations of thousands of people were ruined, over the Christmas holidays. You’re paying a grand a night for a hotel room, or maybe you’re staying in a fleabag hotel in Salt Lake City. You’ve come all this way and…

You can’t ski.

Or you can wait in an endless line for limited skiing.

If it were me, I’d never give Vail another dollar, I’d never vacation at one of their resorts again. I spent all this money and you F*CKED ME? Without people like me, without customers, YOU’VE GOT NO BUSINESS!

This makes me crazy, all these rich CEOs believe they live in a vacuum, they don’t acknowledge that if we don’t buy/use their products, there is no company.

So how do you solve this problem?

Well, you never ever should have let the ski patrol go on strike during the holiday. And, if they ever were going to go on strike, you needed to give the public advance warning. It’s not like this was a completely hidden issue if you were paying attention, but how many skiers pay attention to the minutiae of the ski business? Not many.

You pay the patrollers to work during the holiday, with the promise of negotiation thereafter. Furthermore, unionization/strikes have been bubbling up for the past few years, and the public is on the unions’ side. Look at Shawn Fain and the autoworkers. He’s a hero!

And Kirsten Lynch, paid millions a year, is a schlemiel.

Vail was already behind the 8-ball, and Lynch stuck a knife in the corporation’s heart. All in the name of money, but as a result the stock went down.

There is only one side to this story, and Vail needs to deliver a mea culpa immediately. You just don’t screw hard-paying customers this way, NEVER EVER!

If Lynch doesn’t lose her job, there’s no justice.

Those Ivy League college presidents lost their jobs as a result of their mishandling of the protests in the wake of October 7th.

You’ve got to send a message, you’ve got to set an example.

And the fact that Kirsten Lynch is a woman…SO WHAT? She’s the decider, she has to go!

And if Vail was smart, it would find a way to give reparations. This may be impossible to do in practice, but an effort should be made. Everybody who actually showed up on the hill should get a discount on next year’s Epic Pass. This won’t make everybody happy, but it’s an olive branch, and you can never make everybody happy.

Then again, are the lawsuits coming?

You want to cut them off at the pass. You want to control the situation, not let it control you.

This is not Vail’s first faux pas, there was the Stevens Pass fiasco just a few years ago… But the trend is going in the wrong direction. This is now international news, only because Vail corporate was too stupid to read the tea leaves.

Kirsten Lynch has got an MBA, begging the question what they teach in these programs. Is it Milton Friedman all the time, does no one think of customers?

This is an atrocious situation. You might as well have a tornado on my wedding day, or a typhoon on my honeymoon. But those are truly acts of God, this strike is not.

I already came to Park City. I planned, I was looking forward to it. This is not like other strikes where I can buy coffee somewhere else, or buy a different brand of car. I’m already invested AND YOU SCREWED ME!

Vail’s obliviousness is hurting the entire ski industry, making it look like an elite sport when as I said above, skiing has never been cheaper.

Good work Kirsten Lynch! It’s your fault, the buck stops with you, tender your resignation before the board fires you.

As for the patrollers…

All I know is that Park City MUST STAY OPEN! The complete ski area. Everything else is subsidiary to this.

Ain’t that obvious?

At least to everybody but Kirsten Lynch and Vail Resorts.

She performed this 91 times in preparation?

This is why music is the hottest art form, because when done right it breathes, it’s alive, it’s a different experience every night. Which is why the more you play to hard drive, the more you kill the essence. At the bigger venues, the stadiums, acts are afraid of getting it wrong, just like Nikki Glaser, and they’ve got it prerecorded with vocals sweetened and tons of production and maybe the brain dead audience has an experience to put in their trophy case, but it’s far from rock and roll.

But comedy is more cutting edge than today’s music. Used to be if you wanted truth, you watched “The Simpsons” or some other animated program. Only two-dimensional characters could be honest. But today comedy rules, that’s where the truth is, that’s where the bleeding edge is… Where Chappelle rides on the edge of cancellation and Seinfeld says colleges are too politically correct/woke to perform at. Bill Burr is more honest than Nikki Glaser…

I’m not saying that Glaser has not performed well at roasts, then again she’s filling the slot vacated by Amy Schumer, who performed the role much better, more believably. Glaser appears to be a sorority girl who stumbled into the wrong room and can’t believe she’s there, she’s not comfortable with herself, and it’s not endearing.

I know, I know, you can’t criticize a woman. Then again, in the era of Trump can you?

Let me see… When did women decide that lipstick should go above and beyond their lips? I mean we’re watching you in hi-def and it doesn’t look good.

And Glaser looks different and…

Most people are not watching at all.

The Golden Globes shouldn’t exist, it was run by a tiny cabal and the truth was exposed but the television property is just too valuable. To be the first awards show of the season?

But in truth the public doesn’t care about the movies, it’s all sequels and events. You can read today’s “New York Times” on the Oscars, I wonder who that’s for. These are the same people who believed Kamala was a shoo-in for victory. The public runs on streaming television and social media, then again seemingly every day in the “Times” there’s an anti-social media rant. Endless stories about disconnecting from the internet… Yeah, like we had telephone holidays in the last century, EXCEPT WE DIDN’T! Why do educated Democrats hate technology, they’re the ones who want to bring us back to the past, not Trump.

You can’t have an awards show of social media because it’s all Balkanized. Then again, so is music, but they continue to have their bogus awards shows as if we all pay attention to the same acts anymore. There are two trains running, one from the past, the left wing MAGA, that believes we live for the movies and the smartphone is the devil, and the other that believes just the opposite.

So, if you’re not a fan of mainstream media, you probably escaped the Nikki Glaser hype. She was everywhere recently, even more than Taylor Swift. And now she comes on and

Doesn’t exactly blow it, but kinda falls flat. Chris Rock operates without a net, and tonight Nikki Glaser was all net.

When you overthink art you screw it up. Too many cooks in the kitchen kill not only movies, but music. You may end up with a monetary success, but there’s no lasting value. Bring back the auteurs of the seventies.

In music, the auteurs are already back. There’s a parallel scene of acts who play live…you go to see them and it’s a visceral experience. It’s smaller venues, you have to be in the know to go. And they are not hit dependent, that’s not what you’re going for.

Once upon a time movie stars were icons. But now that all their warts have been revealed online, we know they’re just like you and me. We want something more, something to truly believe in.

Then again, if you can make it through a Nikki Glaser special, you’re better than me, enough with the scatological material… Hell, I can pull up porn in Google, this is no longer summer camp with dog-eared copies of “Playboy.”

So who are Nikki Glaser and the Golden Globes for?

It’s not like we don’t have options, we’ve got a plethora of them.

And I’m not a fan, but there’s more honesty despite the occasional insanity in a Joe Rogan podcast than there is in tonight’s show. With Rogan you never know exactly what you’re going to get. Tonight, we’re getting exactly what we thought we’d get, assuming we’re paying attention at all!

But you can’t sh*t on Hollywood anymore. Their hearts are in the right place, they give to charity, people love the movies… How out of touch can you be? Once again, this is why Trump won, people are sick and tired of an elite telling them that everything is the same and they should be happy. People want change, they want someone to listen to them.

And tonight Nikki Glaser was so busy listening to her out of touch inner circle that her vaunted monologue fell flat.

If you want me I’ll be in the bar. 

Tune in Saturday January 4th  to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz