“Lily Allen Drops Most Arena Dates on U.S. Tour in Favor of Theater and Amphitheater Shows”: https://variety.com/2026/music/news/lily-allen-drops-arena-dates-tour-theaters-1236810991/

Just how many Lily Allen fans are there anyway?

What Lily Allen does best is publicity. She’s got the press in the palm of her hand. She’s not so outrageous that she’s dismissed, yet unlike so many unthinking pop stars she does not come across as pure vanilla. So…

This is what the press wants. Especially the English press. Clickbait.

Now Lily Allen put out an album delineating her relationship with David Harbour, who has a high profile is based on his appearance in “Stranger Things.” Therefore, there was inherent interest from both the public, because this is a smash of a TV show, and the media gossipmongers…

But what we’re selling here is music.

Now in truth, Allen has never broken big in the U.S. She does have a presence in the U.K., and unlike most of her contemporaries she has not hit and faded away, every few years she manages some kind of comeback.

Now if Mick Jagger made an album about his love life, naming names, or Keith Richards about his drug life, down and dirty and honest, believe me, the press would be all over it, and people would listen to the album to decode the clues.

Give Allen credit, she knows how to strike a chord with the public. So you get some looky-loos, people who will listen to the music and check it out, but how many hard core fans has Allen truly got?

This is not the seventies, concert tickets are not cheap. You don’t go on a whim. You go if you’re a hard core fan, unless the act is a superstar and you want to brag that you were in the building, part of the mania.

So with a personal album like “West End Girl,” the thinking public, those who want more than platitudes, pay attention and listen and go to the show as a badge of honor. Which they did, first time around.

But then…

There’s all this scuttlebutt about Allen’s show being only an hour and only the new album and her not talking to the audience and…

In truth, paying so much, people expect ninety minutes of music. But the truth also is that  the mania is over. The album came out nearly a year ago, it’s hard to keep a stunt like this going in the public eye. And it is a stunt. A calculated stunt. Which Allen does incredibly well. But in a world where you can shoot someone in the morning and by the next day it’s old news and the day after no one talks about it, you strike when the iron is hot, because the heat evaporates really quickly.

Now if you’re doing a greatest hits show it’s different.

But the truth is Allen doesn’t have any greatest hits in America, never mind people who want to hear them.

Now all those women, and it was mostly women, who went to the show on the first leg… They’ve been there, they’ve done that. To now go and see the same thing with 10,000 more people? That’s no longer an intimate experience, do you really want to spend all that cash? And you know exactly what she’s going to play and she’s already played it and you’ve already seen it.

So other than the hard core… Are there enough casual fans to support arena shows?

Well all we have to do is go to Spotify. Where we find that “West End Girl” has no track with triple digit millions in a world where household names who play said arenas have BILLIONS! “Pussy Palace”…you know she loved titling the song that…has 40 million streams. Four others break 20 million. All the rest have less. And let’s not forget, these are worldwide figures. Allen is a star in the U.K., and most of the streams were probably over there. But still…you’ve got this few streams and you expect to play arenas?

Who ever thought this was a good idea is the same person who thought putting Post Malone in stadiums this summer was a slam dunk.

Furthermore, for all the b.s. about overpriced tickets… Turns out, as insiders know, fans can just as easily choose not to go. Even worse, I don’t think this show is really price dependent, there just aren’t enough Lily Allen fans across the U.S. for her to play arenas.

I’m glad she was honest, didn’t come up with some cockamamie statement about health or costs or unions or… She owned that she couldn’t sell the big buildings. And in the scaled down venues she’s gonna play the fans will be satiated with this show. Which is fine.

But, once again, do not equate press with fandom. These two have diverged significantly in the past fifteen years. Press doesn’t reach most consumers and even if it does, readers shrug. Because they know it’s hype, part of a machine. They have their ear to the ground, they know what’s hot, they know if they want to go. In truth, the entertainment business is always one step behind the public. Movie studios thought that superhero movies were bulletproof. But all of a sudden, so many members of the public were burned out.

If you’ve got something hot, milk it right away, don’t delay. Because maintaining heat is nearly impossible in today’s world.

Now in the old days, the music meant enough that shows were not hit dependent. Today it’s about…today. Sell as many tickets as you can right now, when the public is focused, because there might not be tomorrow.

This is what happens when you live in the echo chamber, when you’re so far up your own ass that you’ve got no idea what is truly going on with public sentiment.

Ironically, I don’t think this will hurt Allen’s career a whit. Because she retains her identity, and there are a good number of people who are addicted to her antics and music.

Just not as many as she and her handlers and the media thought there were.

Ashish Hemrajani is founder and CEO of BookMyShow, India’s premier concert promotion company. This is a developing market with opportunity for all. If you want the skinny on touring in India, this is the place!

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ashish-hemrajani/id1316200737?i=1000777043580

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/776a6c56-86dc-454d-838d-deeb3f1b5fa2/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-ashish-hemrajani

It knocked the sh*t out of me. Literally.

As you might remember, after taking the steroid dosepak, I was supposed to return to UCLA hospital for a follow-up cystoscopy three months later.

Today was the day.

I haven’t pissed blood since. So I was optimistic there would be no problem, but you never know. The body is made to deteriorate, no one here gets out alive, something’s gonna get you.

Now no matter how calm you feel, you never get a good night’s sleep before procedures like this. Actually, I had a wild dream where this waiter in Vail sold me a jacket. It was $495. Really pretty cool. I was supposed to be having dinner with friends and family downstairs at Russell’s, which doesn’t even have a downstairs, but after sitting at the table silently I excused myself to go to the bathroom and when I was done, I took a seat at a two-top and this waiter came along and after sizing me up he left and returned with this jacket. Kinda hard to describe, it was fabric, not leather, something you’d wear at night, it had a lining, which was removable and…thinking about it afterward it reminded me of this Guess jacket I had back in the eighties.

Anyway… I find it nearly impossible to shop for clothes. I question my taste and the ultimate fit but this guy sized me up perfectly! So I was excited when he said we should go downstairs for jeans, but they didn’t have my size, and this guy wasn’t going to sell me anything that wasn’t exactly right. Turns out his name is Fred and really he runs a bookstore and he’s not going to be back at the restaurant until Tuesday, when new threads are delivered, so I’m making a mental note to dream about him a week from now.

The dream was a good diversion, you never know where this stuff comes from, what it means, and it kept me distracted while I showered and ate and then… I had to skedaddle for the hospital.

I’ve learned to check the map app first, you never know where the traffic might be, and I was routed on Sepulveda instead of the 405, and it was crowded at first but I got there in time and after checking in, I had to provide a urine sample.

I wondered if I had enough in me. This had occurred to me just before I left the house, and I tried to imbibe, but I just wasn’t thirsty. Really, I was standing in the bathroom with the plastic cup and I felt that I would be unable to deliver, wondering if I eked out a few drops whether it would be enough, but eventually I got a flow going and returned to the waiting room.

Where I didn’t have to wait long until I was called inside by the football expert.

I guess I always feel obligated to service people. I’m trying to work on this with my shrink. But I was stunned that this woman didn’t remember our prior conversation, unlike the guy I ran into the hall after I peed, who had sent his Tudor watch in for repair, I wanted to ask him how it was doing.

And after taking off my clothes, donning the robe but leaving it open in the back, the NFL expert came back in with another woman, and she told me how great this replacement was, and I casually said that I guess we’d talk about football another time.

This stopped her in her tracks. She lamented handing me off. Rather than leaving, she wanted to get into it. Who was my team and..? I read enough news to fake it, but I was just trying to make her feel comfortable, so I let her go for her replacement who told me she had four jobs.

You see I asked her what she did when she didn’t work. She told me she loved to work! I asked if this was for the money, but no…it was the work itself. As for the four jobs… The two in the middle had to do with working at a charitable organization and the fourth was being a mother, she said she had four kids. I immediately wondered about supervision and behavior. But when I asked her about this she said there was no problem, you could tell she ran her household with an iron fist.

And then she raised my gown, scrubbed my dick, placed it in a hole of fabric so it was akin to SNLs Dick in a Box, and I’m thinking how this is de rigueur, an unknown woman manhandling my penis. Well, she was gentle, and it wasn’t sexy and it wasn’t weird emotionally, but intellectually… You’d think they’d have a guy do this, but no…

And then another woman came in! To inject me with the lidocaine!

Yup, they fill up this big syringe and shoot it right up your dick. And if you think that’s painful… Well, let’s  just say it’s somewhere between uncomfortable and painful.

Meanwhile, we’re b.s.’ing…

And I’m thinking how this is my socialization. I don’t go to an office, I’m hearing from people all day long in e-mail and iMessage, but face to face?

That has fallen off since Covid, for everybody.

Then again, is this a problem, have I gotten too removed from society?

And I’m thinking about it… If I get together with someone from the music business, they’re going to sell me. It’s the nature of the game. They’re gonna promote what they’re involved in. The worst are the managers, but if they’re bothering to get together with you, they want something, it’s just another move on the giant chessboard.

And even if they’re not promoting, they’re building their network, it’s ultimately transactional. This is not like hanging with your buds from school.

I will say not everybody falls into this category. And the more successful people are the less this occurs, but…

I’m sitting there thinking about how I’m chatting it up with all these people. I asked this third woman what she liked to do when she wasn’t working and she immediately told me she loved to cook, that she’d gone to culinary school, but this paid better. After all, she was raising two kids…their father did not live in the house.

The kids were thirteen and eighteen and…

These conversations require navigation. You want to make sure you don’t come across as special, better than them, so the eighteen year old… I’m not going to ask if she’s going to college, because what if she isn’t? That would come across as judgment. So I asked this woman what her eighteen year old daughter did all day. And after hearing about a McJob and hanging with her buds, this nurse revealed her daughter was going to Pierce in the fall. (That’s a community college if you don’t live in L.A. Unlike where I’ve lived before, many start at the community college and then fly up to UCLA or Cal State Northridge or San Luis Obispo…)

And then she shoots the lidocaine up my dick, as we’re talking about all this, like this is an everyday occurrence, like we’re buds and this is not weird that she’s addressing my penis.

And then she leaves and tells me the doctor will be in soon.

Soon?

Time is going by and the second woman returns to check on me and I’m thinking of asking her to retrieve my phone. I’d heard the bell for a text. I was bored out of my mind and I was fearful of falling asleep.

But I felt if I’d waited this long…

And then the doctor arrived. Like a relief pitcher in the last innings. With a determined face, ready to address the problem. He was all business. There was no warmup, he immediately got the gun, pushed the tube up the canal and started shooting me up with water and retrieving urine…

Now the first time this was done, it was uber-painful. But that was a different doctor. The last time, with this guy, it was much more gentle. But this time???

He’s pumping out two giant tubes of urine. And it seems in order to do this he’s got to inject enough water to force it out and to say I’m uncomfortable is an understatement.

I mean I’m at almost a constant 9 on the pain scale. And every few seconds or so, he’s injecting me with more water.

And he’s not stopping, this is going on and on.

WHAT THE HELL IS HE LOOKING FOR!

WHAT THE HELL IS HE SEEING?

I’ve been around this block, when the M.D. spends a lot of time on the test, it’s almost never a good thing. They’re assessing the landscape and… I won’t say I’m quite worried, but what’s up?

I mean the doctor is staring at the monitor. Last time he turned it so I could play along. But this time, he’s concentrating…

And I’m wondering what’s going on as he keeps injecting water into me, like a knife to the groin. Can he not see what he’s looking for? Is it that hazy inside of me? Is that why he’s shooting me up with so much water as I’m starting to arch my back in pain?

Finally, after poking around inside me way longer than he did the last time, he doesn’t remove the catheter, but he does stop shooting in water, and tells me he doesn’t see any cancer.

WELL, THAT’S GOOD!

And then he pokes around a bit more and reiterates this point and then pulls out…

Now what?

Medical issues when you’re old are very different from when you’re young. They’re testing on a regular basis, you’re constantly going back, it’s like you’re a Formula 1 car and you must be kept in tip-top shape for the rest of the race, knowing that what seems tiny can be the difference between winning and losing, life and death.

But the M.D. is now getting it together to leave the room.

Wait! So when is the next cystoscopy, do I have to come again?

NO! I’m done!

I get a clean bill of health.

Then again, the doctor tells me that they’re going to test the urine that they extracted from me and something could show up, but he was saying that almost as an afterthought.

And I tell him I hope I don’t see him again.

And he tells me not here, i.e. the hospital.

And he exits.

And then woman number two, who is not a nurse, but is qualified to handle my dick, gives me all these paper towels… Well, maybe they weren’t paper, they were thick and… There’s a stack of wet ones and a stack of dry ones. She lays down a carpet of paper and tells me to squat and clean myself up and leave the detritus on the floor.

And I’m thinking this is like taking a crap in a European bathroom. Or maybe having a baby standing up.

And I’m washing and drying and my dick is hurting and…

I’ve got to go to the bathroom. All that water they shoot up you, it’s got to come out.

But no one comes back to ask how I’m doing, so I walk into the hall in my gown where I’m promptly stopped and…

This guy wants to know what I’m doing, I’m obviously breaking protocol. But I tell him I’ve got to pee and I scoot to the bathroom where I stand there and let free a stream of the most yellow urine you’ve ever seen.

And then return to my room, change my clothes and then…

Nothing.

I mean isn’t someone gonna come and lead me out?

Isn’t it breaking the rules to leave by myself?

But after waiting for a while I decide to poke my head into the hall, I’ve seen so many people, odds are one of them is going to be passing by and I can ask them.

But there’s no one there.

Eventually I stop someone new and put forth my dilemma, he tells me I can leave.

And then I head back to the bathroom. Where I sit on the throne and I start to crap.

Wait a minute, this makes no sense. I mean they didn’t go up that end!

But it’s continuing on a regular basis, intermittently. I can tell I’m not done, but I’m getting anxious about taking up space, using the bathroom. I feel like I’m doing something wrong, sitting there for ten plus minutes. That someone is going to knock on the door and tell me to get the hell out.

But then I’m thinking there aren’t quite a plethora of bathrooms in the Clark Urology Center, but there’s always a free one, so I sit there until…

Now the nature of this is you don’t leave pain-free. The tip of your dick… And you do have this urge to pee.

And when I get back home I take an immediate pee and then…

I get the urge to go #2 again. I mean I’m sitting on the toilet ultimately for about half an hour. And I’m still producing, however intermittently.

Eventually I get up, and I’m so wasted.

I mean I’ve had a lot of medical procedures. They can take a toll on your body. But this was minor when it comes to invasiveness and drugs, it was not surgery and other than the localized lidocaine, there was no anesthesia and…

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Unlike on the east coast sunny days in L.A. are usually cloud-free, as if we’re living in “The Truman Show” or something. And although it’s hot, it ain’t really humid and…

It’s f*cking great to be alive!

And for now, it’s clear sailing.

At least as it comes down to my bladder…

As for my regular leukemia checkup, that’s next week!

https://shorturl.at/F1xh8

I don’t want the Ellisons and Bari Weiss in charge of CNN, I don’t want Zaslav to get three-quarters of a billion in payment, but that does not mean this merger should be stopped.

Funny how those in Hollywood are freaking out over this merger, I didn’t hear them go ballistic when Disney purchased the assets of Fox. And the filmmaking division of Disney is such a minor part of the operation that the company no longer breaks out revenues separately.

But no one fears the future as much as those in the creative industries.

Tilly Norwood starring in a movie? Let me know how this is different from a Pixar production.

As for AI in music…enough with the freak-out, at this late date we’ve lived through digital disruption again and again in the past two and a half decades and the end result is after a period of turmoil, caused to a great degree by the major labels’ refusal to accept the future, suing not only distributors but their customers, the fans, to try and keep everybody in an overpriced CD for one good track world, revenues have returned as a result of streaming, sans all the costs of physical distribution.

As for the book business, they did a good job, along with the federal government’s antitrust division, in raising the price of e-books, going to the agency model, and the end result is not only have the sales of e-books been hampered, but the overall business is stagnant. Jeff Bezos was trying to build a business, growing the overall pot for books, and the publishers and writers didn’t want to give a techie power and ended up shooting themselves in the foot.

Then again, book publishing is a gnat on the ass of the music and movie industries.

So we had consolidation in the music business, Universal has in excess of a 30% share. More than Paramount would have after the merger. Turns out the major label game doesn’t have the power it once did. Which was based on distribution. Now anybody can get their music on streaming services essentially for free, competing with the big boys and girls. As a matter of fact, indie share keeps increasing! As for breaking new music… It’s not only the indies who are having trouble here, but the majors themselves. Actually, a good case can be made that the majors are only interested in moonshots, leaving so many genres to indies.

As far as you not getting paid what you feel you deserve, chances are you wouldn’t have been able to play at all in the old world, never mind getting a deal, but getting your music in a retail shop, and good luck getting paid as an indie if you did! You can now make the music on your laptop, essentially for free, and you can promote it online for free. This is a disaster? Then again, everybody believes they’re entitled to make a living in music. Furthermore, as a result of pure demand for a unique experience, concert ticket prices have gone into the stratosphere, far exceeding inflation. If you think you can set an artificially high price for concert tickets you’re uninformed, no one is forcing people to go, and people want to go so badly that they’ll pay a scalper much more than face value to attend. 

Has the landscape changed, are winners bigger and losers smaller? Absolutely, but this is not only in music. As a result of the flattening of distribution, the removal of friction, all music is available to all people at the same price in the same place and people gravitate to hits.

Now what will the music landscape look like in the future? We’re in a period of evolution, but one thing is for sure, by refusing to enter the future, the business only hurt itself.

As for AI…

Where’s Frank Zappa when you need him? AI labels are akin to PMRC labels, only the acts of yore are the censors of today. AI is a tool. Rightsholders should be paid for the ingestion of works, one could argue that they should be able to refuse the ingestion of works, but that ship seems to have already sailed. As for the result… Demos are cheap, pros love this. As for fully AI productions, so far none has been a hit. Oh, ignore the headlines about manipulated projects where the company buys a de minimis number of tracks and the song goes to number one at the iTunes Store. That’s like having the most productive horse at the Central Park Carriage Rides.

Then again, misinformation, as well as disinformation, is a greater force than ever. This is a problem, but this does not mean we should return all power to the usual suspects of yore.

As far as Bari Weiss at CBS… She installed Tony Dokoupil as anchor on the “CBS Evening News” and not only are ratings half of those on ABC, and nowhere close to those on NBC, they’re shrinking to boot! This is what happens when people are in over their heads, when amateurs gain power, they end up destroying what they’re in control of and leaving holes for new players. Can you say “60 Minutes”?

As for news… There are more places than ever to get it. Who even watches the network TV news? And CBS got rid of its radio news division… It’s shrinking, not growing. And if you tune in CNN you get constant arguments more than hard reporting of facts.

As for the movie business…

Despite the legacy press being fascinated with film, the big story in visual media today is the encroachment of YouTube in terms of viewing share. Even Netflix is freaked out.

But YouTube is not like the movie business and not like Netflix. As a matter of fact, YouTube tried to do this and failed, green-lighting big budget productions to crickets and abandoning the business. No, YouTube is about user-generated content. Which is not what theatrical movies are, and is not what big outlet streaming is, but the public is cottoning to it.

So the major challenge to movie theatres is not consolidation of studios, but the alternatives, both TV streaming and YouTube. Who says story needs to be produced for tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars when you can shoot an entire flick in 4k on your iPhone. And two of the biggest movie hits of the summer were made by young YouTubers!

So if there is consolidation of studios…

There are fewer places for people to work. The Ellisons say they’ll make 30 movies a year, but even if they don’t… Workers don’t understand, studios make what the market can hold. And theatre revenues keep going down. This is a declining business. Maybe it will survive for event pictures, but irrelevant of this merger theatres will close, there are just not enough desirable movies to keep them in business.

So what is going to happen in visual entertainment? Indies will soar and continue to eat up market share.

I mean look at Netflix itself. With no portfolio it became the biggest online streamer completely in plain sight. The studios were asleep, licensing their product as Netflix built a monolith. Should we sustain these studios at the expense of Netflix? I’m not in favor of that, and I’m sure you’re not either.

That’s what you get when you try to live in the past.

So maybe visual entertainment changes. Made by a plethora of indies on smaller budgets. Who says an actor or director should be entitled to so much per film? Look at recording budgets, they’ve fallen through the floor.

As for the canard that with one fewer studio prices to theatres will be leveraged… First, there are still four major studios left, one more than in the music business, and this is an industry that is based on customer desire. This is not milk or shoes. It all depends on hits. Raise the prices on mediocre films and what happens? NO ONE GOES!

Actually, these same people railing against this merger are the same ones who complain about RottenTomatoes… Talk about harming the consumer, they want everybody to spend their hard-earned bread to find out if a picture is good enough, wasting their time. You can research products on Amazon, all over the web, but movies are sacrosanct?

So what we’ve got here is a bunch of both above the line and below the line professionals in Hollywood who believe they’re entitled to continue to flourish at the same level of remuneration as they have in the past. Auto workers can lose their jobs, but not them. Why?

Opportunity is rampant.

Content is not king, distribution is. And on YouTube…DISTRIBUTION IS FREE! Where is the problem? You can build a new business using the new tools but that would require you to re-evaluate everything you know and get back into the trenches and do the hard work. This is almost laughable. Do I want everybody in Hollywood to be out of work? Of course not. But maintaining the old model would truly hurt the consumer.

Seems the smarter and richer you are, the more educated you are, unless you’re in tech, you’re railing against the future, wanting everything to stay the same. Yet these same people are bitching about Trump and the MAGA movement wanting to return to a fictitious past.

Where is it written that the cheese can’t be moved, no one can ever lose a dollar. That certainly ain’t America.

So when you leave emotion out, you’re left with the law.

Yes, the Trump administration has rubber-stamped mergers that needed more investigation, but that does not mean they’re wrong here.

Remember the Biden administration? They prevented Amazon from purchasing Roomba, the maker of iRobot… Yeah, that’ll show ’em, don’t let the Seattle behemoth become any bigger! But the end result is Roomba went bankrupt and now the computerized floor cleaning business is owned by the Chinese.

And then there was the blocking of the JetBlue/Spirit merger. Yup, American and United are too big already, let’s not let there be any more consolidation of power! End result? Spirit went bankrupt, out of business, and Jet Blue is struggling.

Why do Democrats always get it wrong on this stuff? They can see the issue, but not the future. If the Democrats had been in power, they would have prevented the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint…and the end result would have been Sprint going bankrupt!

But got to keep consolidation from happening…

Now creating a new telecom company would be a heavy lift. But making art and distributing it? God, the problem is that there’s now too much of this stuff! And the movie studios are always on the back foot, innovation comes from elsewhere.

As for the merged Paramount/Warner company controlling basic cable channels… They’re worth little and every day they’re worth less. What next, protecting the market for 78 RPM records?

The future cannot be stopped. And every operation that has tried to do this has ended up behind the 8-ball. Never mind those who were oblivious to the future, like Kodak. Huge market share and then…essentially nothing.

Not that I’m endorsing Trump’s killing of alternative energy and his elimination of electric car subsidies. 20% of new autos in Europe are electric. And China is eating the lunch of the European carmakers in their home territory, because they were busy banking profits rather than being nimble and investing in the future. Yes, you can buy an electric VW in China today, but it’s got fewer features and less efficient software. What’s the market demand for that?

Of course China subsidized battery and electric car development. But the U.S. used to be the leader on this, now funds for scientific discovery are being cut.

Clowns to the left of me.

Jokers to the right.

Here I am stuck in the middle with you.