“Money talks and we’re the living proof

There ain’t no limit to what money can do”

“Money Talks”

The Kinks

The only reason Casey Wasserman hasn’t lost his gig as the head of the L.A. Olympics in 2028 is there’s no deep pocketed money involved. No single source with assets at risk. Unlike his talent agency. Which is majority-owned by Providence Equity Partners.

Don’t mess with money. Never ever.

The music business used to be one of scrappy entrepreneurs. But that changed nearly sixty years ago when Warner purchased Atlantic and Elektra. There’s been consolidation in the label sphere ever since. To the point where there are only three major labels left.

One is part of Sony.

Another is Warner…which hired Robert Kyncl to make the trains run on time and create growth. You see it’s a public company, a pure music play, and the numbers haven’t been good. Can Kyncl pull a rabbit out of the hat? So far he’s been unable to, despite all the gobbledygook about AI and new avenues of revenue. It’s basically a music company, and it depends on hits. And the truth is unlike in the past, there’s only a limited amount of recorded music revenue available. As in despite all the hoopla about physical product, the truth is that almost all of the income from recordings at the three majors comes from streams, and unlike physical product, there’s a finite amount of money to be generated. This is not like the era of physical product, where someone who hasn’t bought a record all year will suddenly purchase a Whitney Houston or Fleetwood Mac album… No, the three majors are fighting for slices of a defined pie… Sure, there are areas of growth, increasing the size of the pie, subscriptions in relatively undeveloped territories, but if you’re relying solely on revenue from consumption of recorded music…you’d better find another way to generate revenue.

Which is maybe a reason why Universal’s stock has taken a nosedive, down by double digits. Lucian Grainge might know music, but does he know money?

That’s why Michael Rapino is so successful over at Live Nation…he manages the investors, he does his best to keep the stock price up. Concerts may be sexy, but they’re subsidiary to the money!

AEG is different because it’s got one owner, it’s private. Like the music companies of yore…

But all the talent agencies took huge investments, allowing their top brass to experience huge paydays, but now what… Look at the shenanigans/changes at WME…it’s all driven by money as opposed to insight, the underlying assets.

As for Universal… The big story is activist investor Independent Franchise Partners has purchased a 3.01% interest in the stock… No one invests to lose money. People only invest to make money! They need a return on their cash. This is one of the reasons Merck lost control of Hipgnosis. When interest rates were low, the return on publishing assets looked good. But when the market recovered investors wanted a greater return on their money. Was Merck the guy to deliver this? No wonder Blackstone ended up owning the assets… They know better how to deliver a return… Talk is cheap, can you generate revenue, increase the asset value? That’s all that money cares about.

Which is why when you’re considering selling your publishing and/or royalty streams know that you might like the check, but have no illusion that you’re pulling one over on the purchaser. This is their business, money. If they can’t profit, they’re not going to make the deal. Turns out publishing only increases in value in the digital age. So you may have a pile of cash today, but in the long run the purchaser will end up with the revenue and the asset, in the long run they’ll end up with more money. This is their business, money, don’t think you can beat them at it.

This is what happens in a mature business. An influx of money which allows entrepreneurs to cash out and ultimate control by that money. This is not the rough and tumble music business of yore, where the guy with the gold chain around his neck is the final word when it comes to your career…no, that same guy today is wearing a three piece suit and thinking about the people he has to serve more than you.

Just like Live Nation… No individual act has the power of the sponsors. The acts are just the grease for the “flywheel.” Which is why Live Nation can pay so much/overpay for talent.

This myth of the all powerful entertainment executive is just that. It’s from the past. The people running these enterprises today are all sold out to the money. And if not yet, they will eventually. Money has superseded music in the music business. Which may sound counterintuitive, but it’s a fact. There are independent companies out there, and that’s where all the innovation lies, however they’re hobbled by the majors’ ownership of catalogs representing nearly the entire history of recorded music, giving them all the leverage in negotiations.

As for Casey Wasserman… He was no match for the money. Wasserman was gallivanting around, in the news, but he was no match for Providence, a nearly faceless enterprise, most people in Hollywood have no idea who runs the fund. Providence was not going to let its asset go to zero. Do you think Casey Wasserman wanted to sell his agency? Of course not, Providence made him do it. Because it wanted to protect the asset. Sans talent, there’s nothing left. Wasserman might have been a good front person, but everybody’s replaceable.

And expect Wasserman to be booted from the Olympic committee too. It’s just that politics works more slowly than money. But politics cares about money too, and the fear is that with Wasserman in charge, revenues will fall, so he’s got to go.

One could say Wasserman was too big for his britches. Or he didn’t know what he didn’t know. You don’t mess with money. And you keep your house clean. It’s one thing if you’re an act doing drugs, screwing up, the label which owns your contract might not like that, but it can survive without you. Then again, if you’re a superstar, they’re going to do everything to get you back on the right path. But if it’s the entire asset… Was Providence going to sit by and watch all the talent leave? No, it had to stanch the bleeding… Wasserman was expendable, not the talent agency.

So if you want to live the rock and roll lifestyle of yore, drinking and drugging, getting laid, being in TMZ, be my guest. But if you want to play at a higher level, where the money is, you’ve got to keep your house clean, especially in today’s world where there are cameras everywhere and so much information comes out. The Epstein files were just the straw that broke Wasserman’s back… It was the womanizing detailed in the “Daily Mail” article before that that truly ignited the fire, the Epstein files just turned it into a conflagration.

Mind your p’s and q’s if you want to survive at the top level.

And know that if you take the money…you’re serving the money, no matter what you think.

I love the internet. After listening to my “Back Where I Come From” playlist six or seven times in a row (I can do that, actually I love to do that, to find a song I like so much that I can play it ad infinitum, locking into a mental groove, just me and my music, making me happy) I decided to delve into Jimmy Buffett’s catalog. His best and most poignant song, albeit with a sense of humor, is ” A Pirate Looks at Forty,” but I was looking for something a bit more upbeat, so I played “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” And then Spotify presented me with a playlist, “Country Rock Classics.”

The problem with these classic playlists is there’s no discovery, you know the songs already, so I don’t find them fulfilling. HOWEVER, have you tried the Spotify AI playlist generating feature yet? It’s GENIUS! Far better than the curator constructed stuff and far better than the radio feature because you can put in acts or songs that no algorithm would think go together, never mind a curator believing the same person liked both. Like I put in Chris Stapleton and Luke Bryan, both of whom I adore, but the former is credible and the latter is seen as bro country and a bit of a sellout now that he’s a judge on “American Idol,” but the playlist generated…and it has to think for a while…turned me on to a song that I never knew about that you probably do which is great, “Wagon Wheel,” in this case by Darius Rucker. I said to myself, THIS IS A HIT! And then I did a bit of research and found out it already was! Multiple times! That Ketch Secor had added to a Bob Dylan chorus and… That’s what I discovered via Spotify’s AI generated playlist feature, it’s a breakthrough, no matter how you feel about AI, you should try it out.

ANYWAY, I’m looking at the tracks in the “Country Rock Classics” playlist and it starts with “Amie,” certainly a classic, but I wasn’t in the mood for that, so I scrolled down and that’s when I saw Poco’s “Heart of the Night.”

I knew it was from when Timothy B. was gone, not to mention Richie Furay, never mind Jim Messina, and… I started to wonder, did Rusty Young sing this song? I mean he was never a singer before, but I knew that he was the vocalist on one latter day Poco hit so…

I went to Wikipedia and found out it was Paul Cotton. But that was not the most interesting thing I learned. Turned out that when Timothy B. had exited for the Eagles, Cotton and Young auditioned for ABC as a duo, under the name “The Cotton-Young Band.” And having passed the audition they recorded the album “Legend” and the execs liked it so much that they canned the planned live album with Timothy B., a coda to Poco’s career, and decided to release this new project under the name Poco. Which turned two studio musicians, Steve Chapman and Charlie Harrison, into members of the new band.

I DIDN’T KNOW THAT!

Nor did I know that the sax was played by Phil Kenzie, since I never owned the album and therefore never read the credits. And I knew Kenzie played on that second Cretones album, but doing a bit of research on the chairlift I found out he was the one who played the sax on Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” and he was ENGLISH!

Now the amazing thing is after ten previous LPs, seven on Epic and three on ABC, after songs that were dorm room classics, heard on FM now and then, when all the original core members other than Young were gone, Poco had a HIT!

Believe me, it was a surprise.

“In the heart of the night

In the cool southern rain

There’s a full moon in sight

Shining down on the Pontchartrain”

I liked “Heart of the Night” from the first time I heard it, always made me smile when I heart it on the radio, driving in my car I’d turn it up.

And there are great changes, and that indelible sax solo, but I’ve got to say what made the song stand out for me was the use of “Pontchartrain,” how it was sung with emphasis, a word that you’d think could never be worked into a song. In an era when unless you’d been to New Orleans, chances were you didn’t know where or what it was… As for me, I knew it was a river or lake down there somewhere, but my vision was hazy, I didn’t make it to N.O. until this century.

So Paul Coton was recruited from the Illinois Speed Press to fill the hole Jim Messina left in Poco. And that was when the band went into the wilderness, they had hard core fans, the music was good (listen to the two CD package “The Forgotten Trail,” it will blow your mind), but listeners were dwindling.

And then came “Heart of the Night.”

I’m listening after reading that it was Paul Cotton on vocals, and that he’d written it, and then it occurs to me that Paul Cotton is dead, he doesn’t realize how much I’m enjoying listening to his song, that it has lasted.

Furthermore, Rusty Young has passed too. That made a bigger news splash, but the two of them and their latter-day Poco have not been embraced by the younger generations, at least not to my knowledge, and then…

I realize “Heart of the Night” was a hit in 1979! And that Cotton and Young basked in their breakthrough for forty years before they passed, both in 2021 (and that’s weird).

So maybe you remember or maybe you don’t, but one thing is for sure, the song remains, and it’s the same. And it evokes a feeling… Not one readily found in today’s music…the Spotify Top 50 is all flash, too often melodyless, and if you’re not streaming a ton of product you can’t afford to create a pristine recording on a par with “Heart of the Night.”

Still, there’s music that is not made for dancing, that is not background, just grease for everyday living. There are tracks that change your thinking, put you in a mood, make you reflect, think about life…

And that’s “Heart of the Night.”

Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel”:

Tune in Saturday February 21st 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

1

“Back where I come from

Where I’ll be when it’s said and done

I’m proud as anyone

That’s where I come from”

I come from the suburbs, in a world that glorifies the city. Those are my roots. There was enough paper for the mimeograph machine, you got your driver’s license when you were sixteen, you listened to late night FM radio…

We live in a world where people lie about their age, get plastic surgery to look different and rework stories so the loss is never their fault. But I’m a middle class Jewish suburbanite. We played Little League, swam at the JCC, went to battles of the bands… Maybe you can relate.

Then again, we all come from somewhere, and that’s what makes us interesting, our differences. Mac McAnally comes from nowhere Mississippi, not that far from Muscle Shoals, over the line in Alabama, but the roots of the small town are what made him who he is today. And he’s a humble guy, but we were talking backstage and he quoted Voltaire on humility…

So that’s why I had to go to this show. Which was billed as “Margaritas and Memories”…a tribute to Jimmy Buffett and Parrothood. I saw the ad in the “Vail Daily,” and I knew I could get a ticket, but it would cost me even more than that for an Uber back and forth. So I decided to check the set list. And when I saw “Back Where I Come From,” I knew I had to go, cost and convenience were irrelevant, I needed to hear this specific song, and it played in my head for days before the show. That’s the power of a great song.

Now most people know “Back Where I Come From” from its hit version by Kenny Chesney. And as good as that is, the take from his live album is positively stupendous, because it’s not studied, Kenny’s not trying to get it exactly right, make it perfect, it’s all about the emotion. And he allows the audience to sing lines, because his fans know this song by heart. But in Kenny’s version he’s “an old Tennessean,” whereas in Mac’s original, he’s “an old Mississippian”…yes, he makes that word work, he fits it in.

This is a hit, not what is on the radio, the track with the most Spotify streams, but the song embedded in your heart, that you can call up in an instant, sing in your head, something that rides shotgun in your life. We have favorites, and then we have songs that are on a tier above, and that’s where “That’s Where I Come From” resides for me.

2

My college buddy John ended up coming up from Denver, so an Uber was unnecessary, and we got to the venue about ninety minutes before the gig and talked to Mac, who had amazing road stories, involving everybody from Wayne Newton to Leon Redbone. This is the difference between the hitmakers in outfits singing to tape and the lifers…because it is a life, and as much as it runs on songs, what holds the whole enterprise together is the stories.

But eventually the show began.

Now you’ve got to know, the Vilar is supported by donors, usually fat cat retired people with white hair who believe in laying down their cash for the arts. But that does not mean they like everything presented. This crowd looked more like the one John Lennon implored to rattle their jewelry, but what became evident very soon was they were PARROTHEADS!

They talk about the Dead, but Jimmy Buffett had a parallel career in many verticals that generated dollars…there is even a Margaritaville retirement community. Because people want what Jimmy was selling. The beach life, good times, but it wasn’t all sunniness, there was some darkness, some basic truth, his image was three dimensional and in a world of phoniness people could relate. And years after Jimmy’s death there’s still a hunger for this music. On his deathbed Jimmy told Mac to keep the Coral Reefers alive, and that is what Mac’s doing.

3

So last night it was three members of the Coral Reefer Band: Mac and Scotty Emerick, who is also known for his work with, his writing of songs for Toby Keith, who like Jimmy is no longer with us, and percussionist Eric Darken.

And they started with “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” The opening song from the album of that name and also the opener on Jimmy’s first double live album, 1978’s “You Had to Be There,” wherein Jimmy changes the lyric to equate dragging his casted broken leg to pulling a trailer. “Son of a Son of a Sailor” is the LP that includes “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” which stunningly only made it to #32 on the Hot 100 but has longer legs than the songs that were above it on the chart.

Jimmy never really had another hit. Not one that the masses cottoned to. But amongst the faithful there was “Fins” and “Volcano” and…the audience knows them all, and Mac, et al, played a lot of them last night.

There was “Come Monday,” but also “Boat Drinks,” “Volcano” and from Jimmy’s last album, “Bubbles Up.”

But it wasn’t only Jimmy’s material, but Mac originals, and Toby Keith numbers Scotty was involved with and…

Stories.

Wayne Newton told Mac he was a comedian, he wanted him to open for him in Vegas. Mac turned him down, if for no other reason than he didn’t see himself as a comedian, but like a true southerner, Mac can tell a story. In a natural way. Like you’re sitting next to him at the bar, a few drinks in, everyone loose and telling tales of life.

My favorite was the one about Buffett stealing a cab from the front of the line in Boston, driving it to Logan, leaving it running, getting on the plane and ending up with no consequences.

But it was a family event. Not family entertainment, but a gathering of the tribe, the Parrotheads.

And I’m sitting there thinking how far this is from the Spotify Top 50. Which doesn’t contain anything even close to what Buffett was doing. A lot of the acts don’t even write their own material, or the songs are written by committee, and the tracks are polished by the usual suspects and all the art, all the humanity is squeezed out of them. The acts are a product. And the brand building begins on day one. Whereas with Jimmy, it came much later, on a whim, there was no rulebook, he just did what felt right and built an empire.

So what we had last night was a party, let’s call it a family reunion. And the patriarch was gone, but Mac had stood right by him on stage for decades, he knew how to deliver the magic.

And Mac didn’t come from the factory, he’s far from cookie cutter, he neither drinks nor smokes but that does not mean he is not loose, can’t let it fly, never mind play notes on not only his acoustic guitar, but his electric and the piano too.

And I’m sitting there pondering if this is akin to my parents’ generation, going to see the acts of their heyday when the youngsters didn’t care. But then I realized this was different. Jimmy wasn’t a crooner or a jazzer, but a product of his era, a child of the post-war era that was all about personal fulfillment, at the same time you were loving your brother. You didn’t jump through hoops to work at the company, you might have a college degree yet be working a minimum wage job, because life was more important than a career, and you were figuring out what felt right.

There’s a whole generation of us who experienced this, but somehow history has been rewritten, or completely forgotten.

When I grew up in the suburbs it was all about possibilities. You could choose your own direction, let your freak flag fly, and you always knew eventually you would find your people. Maybe you had to drive to the Rockies or the Gulf Coast to find them, but they were available…and you could afford to pick up and go see them.

And when you were driving, when you were traveling, you took your tunes along. Sure, by the seventies there were 8-tracks and cassettes, but there was no iPod, no iPhone, never mind Spotify. But we didn’t need a recording to enjoy our music. It was in our heads. It was laden with melody, you could sing it! And there was meaning too.

A lost era.

A lost art?

Not last night, it was right there… I’d say on stage, but really the audience was part of the show, for two hours we remembered what once was…and in this case still is. How many acts can you say that about? And conventional tribute acts are set in amber, they don the clothing, play the hits and there’s no culture evident.

But culture was right up front and personal last night.

And I know up in heaven Jimmy Buffett is laughing.

Who’da thunk?

Last night’s set list: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/mac-mcanally/2026/vilar-performing-arts-center-beaver-creek-co-7b4fe23c.html