This is a non-story. Troupes of holograms will not be gracing the stages of amphitheatres, it was a one time stunt, which paid dividends for Snoop and Dre, expect it to be trotted out to diminishing returns in the future, like 3-D movies, but if you think holograms are where live entertainment is going, you probably believe Radiohead’s name your own price paradigm is here to stay.

Credit Dre for accomplishing his goal, getting everybody to pay attention to an icon who’s been soft on the charts. It’s a perfect set-up for his next single. It wowed those in attendance and word ricocheted around the Internet instantly.

And then the mainstream media weighed in.

You know the media, they’ve got to fill up the news hole every day. Especially television, which does no reporting, unless it involves a car chase or a bake sale. But newspapers are now almost as bad. In a truly 24/7 news cycle, papers are lost. They used to set the agenda, now they’re constantly behind the curve.

So they send out neophytes to trump up a story that is not one.

Maybe we’re interested in how much the hologram of Tupac cost, we’re a bit intrigued by how they did it. But to extrapolate to the point where digital images will now go on tour is to deny the past decade wherein we learned live is everything. In a canned, digital society, people want something real, something tangible. Sure, too many Top Forty stars and aging divas sing to tape, if they sing at all, but at least they react to the crowd, we go to see how they look, have they gained weight, have they gotten plastic surgery, and I’ll argue this paradigm is fading…

Dre’s use of a digital Tupac is no different from the morphing effect in Michael Jackson’s "Black Or White" video. Michael was the first to use it, he could afford it, and within mere moments, it was tired and passe. If anything, morphing is something individuals do online, with their images and YouTube clips. It’s cheap technology that pros have abandoned.

You can get people to pay attention.

But then what?

Dre triumphed at Coachella. But can he have a hit record? Can he re-enter the public consciousness?

Hell, I’ll argue that Dre is behind the times. Instead of trying to get it right, instead of continuing to polish a single track into oblivion, Dre should get with the modern paradigm and release a ton of stuff, whenever he gets the urge, and he’ll be back in the public consciousness and who knows, one of his tracks might break through, he’s certainly talented enough.

That’s the story here. Is Dre Madonna, a recording has-been who can only play his greatest hits live, or can he mean something once again?

And there are subplots. Isn’t it amazing that twenty years ago, this music was dangerous. Warner got rid of Interscope and when Jimmy and Ted’s company went to Universal, there was a new behemoth in town, Warner never recovered.

Snoop used to wear a bulletproof vest.

Now he’s a dad who coaches football.

As for Tupac himself… Those rap wars, were they worth it? Did we really have to lose both Tupac and Biggie? And what if they were white, would the crimes really have gone unsolved?

If you think holograms are the future of live entertainment, you’re probably still waiting for more 3-D programming on your TV, you’re listening to your music in quad, you just don’t know that some things are fads and others last.

You didn’t get the public predicting a touring hologram future. The tweets were hipper than that. Talking about a slew of new Tupac albums… The public has a sense of humor, it’s got insight, it’s far in front of the media.

We’re in control.

Believe it.

P.S. If Dre morphed into a deejay, he could dominate instantly. Half those deejays mix in hits anyway, why not get the progenitor involved, the guy who created the sound? Furthermore, this would bring an African-American element into electronic music, a genre that’s presently far too white. That’s what we need in electronic music, more soul. And Dre could deliver it.

That’s not music!

You were wrong on rap, are you gonna be left out of the loop one more time?

Don’t be like Geffen Records, which famously thought rap was a fad and then went out of business (the label with that name today is a contractual obligation, it resembles not a whit the Aerosmith/Guns ‘N Roses/Tesla/Quarterflash label of yore).

Everybody missed it.

The promoters, the labels, it’s like 1964 all over again. The old farts declaring the Beatles are tripe. But look back at the record books, almost nothing before the Beatles survived, it was a revolution!

That’s what this electronic music thing is.

By saying you don’t get it, you’re labeling yourself ignorant.

Not only do you have to open your mind, you’ve got to understand, like living organisms, electronic music evolves. If you think what you’re hearing today is going to be the same tomorrow, then you tar all rap with that Puffy/Diddy remake of "Every Breath You Take". Sure, some electronic is lowest common denominator, but it’s not all!

As for the lack of…

Wouldn’t you say rap lacks a lot of these same things? And it’s had more than a twenty year run so far. We kept waiting for it to fade away, but it hasn’t. Maybe because rock became so calcified, so corporate, so paint by numbers that anybody who hadn’t lived through its heyday rejected it and embraced the new sound.

This is a business controlled by oldsters.

Sure, Justin Bieber and Willow Smith may have hits, but without the old men, they’re nowhere.

Electronic music burgeoned without the participation of any of these cynical bottom-feeders. It was all about the music, because at first there was no money. And when the money arrived, it came from none of the usual suspects. Not from recordings, not from radio, not from behemoth promoters but live shows promoted by newbies, lifers in the game. Isn’t it interesting that electronic went live long before the rest of the industry? Isn’t that today’s mantra, that it’s all about the gig? It’s been about the gig in electronic for decades!

And electronic musicians know it’s all about the show. You can’t be boring, you’ve got to get the people in the palm of your hand and take them on a trip. Passivity is for pussies.

Now I’m gonna tell you a story. My friend Mike Caren, who’s good enough to still have an A&R job in this meshuggeneh industry, told me his two year old can use an iPad. Then Mike said when his two year old grows up, he’s not going to pick up a guitar, he’s gonna make electronic music.

Think about that!

Those whiners trying out for TV singing shows, they’re behind the curve, they’re lowest common denominator, they’re all about the fame, they’re nothing about music. But read up on Deadmau5. He spent years in his bedroom, concocting. Are you gonna condemn him because he doesn’t play a guitar?

Sure, there’s good electronic music and bad. Cheese and excellence. Just like in pop, rock, even classical, to the degree anybody cares anymore.

You’ve got to broaden your horizons, you’ve got to open your mind. You can continue to be like Kodak, heading towards bankruptcy, or you can choose to be Instagram, knowing that the world is a blank slate upon which you draw.

Kodak was constrained by its box.

Hell, isn’t that what Top Forty radio is, a box? You’ve got to do it their way or you can’t get on. Who wants to be beholden to something as rigid and ancient as radio?

In a world with few rules, you’ve got to create your own paradigm.

And that’s what these electronic musicians have done.

And the public is flocking to them in droves. Not because there was a big publicity campaign, not because the stuff was jammed down their throats, but because it’s infectious, the music makes you move, it’s fun to go to the show, you don’t want to be left out!

I thought I was going to be crushed at the David Guetta show.

And I wasn’t even in the tent.

Happened to me once before, decades back, at a Chambers Brothers show in Boston Common. My feet left the ground, I was being held up by bodies, somehow I squirmed my way to the right and was ejected from the scrum.

And I’ve never forgotten it.

On Saturday I saw too many bands giving good performances of mediocre material, and one band with great material that was so long in the tooth it was creepy, and an acoustic act that was as out of place as a Muslim at a Bar Mitzvah. But on my way to the Sahara tent I encountered Kasabian. They reaffirmed my optimism. They were good.

You can tell when an act has that little something extra.

But minutes before Kasabian left the stage, the swarm started to move. That’s what it was, like endless gnats moving to the Sahara tent.

I moved too, but got so frightened of being caught in the mass of bodies that I stayed outside the tent, where I was still being bumped into and twirled like a top. Guetta eventually featured Usher, but by that time I was gone. The patrons kept streaming in, I wanted out.

And then there was that Canadian singer, with a bunch of extra players on stage. She was charismatic, merging with her guitar, but once again, the material was disappointing.

And then I saw Bon Iver.

To say this guy and his band were great would be an understatement, they were TRANSCENDENT!

Incredibly well-rehearsed.

But most importantly, they sounded completely different from every other act on the bill. They were a party of one. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

In a sea of mediocrity, excellence stands out.

Oh, what the hell, let me start naming names.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. If she doesn’t get your willy moving, you’re gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) The sound was impeccable, the solos were good, and the material was so damn mediocre that she could close nobody, applause was minimal. And when AWOLNATION started up on the main stage, I gave up. That’s one of the problems at Coachella, sound bleed. It’s a war of who can turn up their amps louder. And if you think this is appealing, you’re deaf.

How about tUnE-yArDs? Great on paper, decent on YouTube and so out there live that almost no one clapped. We were all shaking our heads. I couldn’t find one person she impressed.

The aforementioned AWOLNATION was loud and that’s it. The less said the better.

Kaiser Chiefs were in the wrong location, maybe the wrong era. In the bright California sunshine, their music didn’t penetrate. I loved hearing "I Predict A Riot", but the audience was near somnambulant.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds…

Who gives a shit.

Smart guy, good guitar player, sub-mediocre voice. The more you listen, the more you miss Liam. I know Liam’s insane, but that doesn’t mean he’s not necessary.

Buzzcocks?

Noise.

And with so much more noise coming from every other stage, the cacophony made me want to move on, which I did.

Laura Marling?

Why don’t you whip out your guitar at the baseball game? She was so out of place, so overwhelmed by sound bleed as to be irrelevant.

Squeeze?

Positively creepy. I’d hate to be an over-the-hill rock band. People remember your hits, want to hear nothing new and you play to an ever-dwindling audience, unable to give up because you were someone once. It hurts, I know. I loved hearing "Tempted", but the first part of the show was material I never need to hear again, and if you think they were good, you still believe your grandma is a hottie.

Shins?

I’ll admit they were decent, but I never got in front of the stage. You’ve got to eat sometime, and go to the car for more clothes.

Feist?

I wanted to love her. Up close and personal her complexion was less than perfect, she can really wail on the guitar, she closed me, she’s a rock star, but the longer I stood there the more the material washed off of me. She had everything but the hits.

And I’d like to explain what made Kasabian so damn good, but you know music, it’s like pornography, you know greatness when you see it.

And I didn’t think David Guetta was great. But there was no denying he had the audience in the palm of his hand.

As for the headliner, Radiohead… They made a crucial mistake. Trying to be unique, they refused to use the giant video screens on each side of the stage. Instead, we were subjected to their own tiny floating screens over the stage. Very cool. Excellent in theatres. But if you’re playing to tens of thousands, it just doesn’t translate. The problem with Radiohead? You just couldn’t see them!

And they were so boring at first, they lost fifteen or twenty percent of their audience, they just drifted off to Kaskade.

As did I.

The Sahara tent was full. There were incredible pink effects. There was an energy absent from the Radiohead show.

Oh, I went back to see Thom Yorke, et al. They played a few numbers I was familiar with. But really, they’re a band for fans only. If you’re not one, you’re not gonna be closed.

Which brings us back to Bon Iver…

Talk about overhyped! Every hipster in America is testifying about him.

Furthermore, the press fawns.

But he was everything we’re looking for, completely special without trying too hard.

He looks like a guy from your math class. His chest is not ripped and his hair is getting thin. But boy could he wring ethereal effects from his guitar.

And there was brass and backup vocals and the end result was an aural tapestry you couldn’t help but weave yourself into. What Justin Vernon was selling you can’t get at the movies, you can’t read in a book, it’s the essence of music.

Sure, he’s got a nontraditional voice. But so does Neil Young.

And Neil’s a good comparison. Because both he and Mr. Vernon go their own way, obey their own muse, are unaffected by both trends and media feedback.

Once upon a time, in the era of classic rock, the superstars sounded nothing alike.

But today, everybody fits into a slot. You rarely hear something new. And if you do, it’s not infectious.

But Bon Iver was.

And I realize Bon Iver is not EDM ("electronic dance music" for the uninitiated). But if you want to survive the deejay onslaught, that’s what you’ve got to be, different, unique, special.

Forget the TV competition shows. That’s like watching Little League.

Forget Top Forty radio. That’s old men doing it without emotion for the bucks. Breaking rules is anathema.

If you’re not willing to risk everything, without complaint, if you’re not willing to go your own way, you’re just not gonna make it, not in today’s market.

Come on Grace Potter, write one irresistible song! We don’t want to sleep with airheads, not more than once!

Feist…stop being so precious!

Noel Gallagher… Either form a band with Axl Rose or get back together with your brother, otherwise we just don’t care.

We live in an era where all that matters is excellence. And this is especially true at a festival like Coachella. When put next to great, good just fades away, we’re not interested.

If you can’t blow people away, if you’re not the cat’s meow, you’re better off avoiding the festival, you’re just gonna look small and irrelevant.

But if you can wring a magic sound from your instrument, if you can make us believe this moment is all that matters, if you can make the rest of the world fall away, getting us to concentrate only on you…

Then we’re all ears.

The revolution wasn’t televised, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, electronic dance music RULES!

So I’m standing in the Mojave tent watching Dawes and Lisa comes up, leans in my ear, and says "YOU’VE GOT TO SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE NEXT TENT OVER, YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT."

Yes, there are five stages at Coachella. The main one, called the "Coachella Stage", the one you’ve seen in all the photographs, next to it another outdoor stage, monikered "Outdoor Stage", and then, side by side, three tents, "Gobi", "Mojave" and "Sahara". Not that they’re really tents, not something you’d sleep in for the summer, but giant pavilions, open-sided edifices with high roofs. And as a result, sound bleeds from one to another. If you make soft music, avoid Coachella, you’ll get drowned out.

But if you come to the festival, if you want to know what’s truly happening, you can spend your entire visit at the Sahara tent, that’s where the deejays hold court and the little boys and girls twirl and dance and are mesmerized to the point of ecstasy.

I’d love to tell you the story of Gary Clark, Jr. I saw the man at a private show in Hollywood two months back. Overworked by the label, I just didn’t get it. But Mr. Clark ruled in the Gobi tent, where the audience could feel the energy and experience a guitarslinger for maybe the very first time. He broke his career wide open. That can happen at Coachella, where the rules of radio are thrown out the door, you experience the smorgasbord of music and are open to being closed.

But most acts didn’t close these kids.

And it is kids.

You see Coachella has become a rite of passage. Thank god their parents didn’t come with them. The girls were wearing bikinis even though it was fifty degrees with sporadic raindrops. The boys were wearing costumes, everything from space helmets to raccoon hats. They came to see and be seen. And to dance to the music.

It’s a different culture. The baby boomers are about winning, becoming a shining star, dominating. Gen-X’ers are just pissed they didn’t get to sip at the trough, the boomers ruined it for them.

And Gen-Y and the Millennials are nothing like their forebears. They want to be a member of the group, they want to PARTICIPATE!

This is a radical change. It’s less about being on stage and being a star than being with your homies in the audience having fun. That whole concept of us vs. them, performer vs. audience, that has ruled for decades is toast. Now the performers and the audience are all in it together. And the mainstream music business just doesn’t understand.

If I ran Coachella, I’d eliminate the old acts. And the new too. Everyone with a guitar, everyone with a band. Because most people just don’t care.

Supposedly the Black Keys are one of the hottest bands in America. But they were smoked by Swedish House Mafia. It was no contest.

I’m not saying the Keys were bad. In fact, they were very good.

But most people just didn’t care.

But forty minutes after they were done, when it was fifty two degrees and still raining, Swedish House Mafia took the main stage, the Coachella stage, and blasted a sound that united the masses.

Yes, for the first time all day, there was a crowd, covering the entire field. A sea of humanity, a swarm jumping, writhing, dancing, all the way back.

This is how it works. About thirty percent of the way back from the main stage there’s a sound booth. And until the Black Keys played, not a single act could fill past this point. Jimmy Cliff KILLED! If you ever saw "The Harder They Come", you’d be thrilled. He hit the stage to the brass notes of "You Can Get It If You Really Want", it was magical. But almost no one cared. Applause was minimal. As was attendance.

But when Swedish House Mafia took the stage, you were reminded of a rally in Nazi Germany or the U.S.S.R. You know, you’ve seen the pictures, endless people and massive power, scary to those not there. And electronic dance music is scary to the old guard. We were busy debating it in the AEG trailer all night long. Could it fill an arena on a Monday night. What venues, what price.

But what’s fascinating is these deejays are not prima donnas. They’ll do arenas one night, stadiums another, and clubs and theaters thereafter. It’s all about the music, it’s all about the sound.

So I finish watching Dawes play to a limited audience and then Lisa starts telling me the story. That in the middle of the set her eye caught people RUNNING to the Sahara tent. I pulled out my guide as we walked there. Madeon was spinning.

I guarantee you ninety plus percent of my audience has no idea who this guy is. I certainly didn’t.

But the kids did.

Not because of television, not because of radio, but because of the Internet.

And word wasn’t spread by some faux social media specialist. There was no "campaign". Madeon is owned by the people.

He’s a seventeen year old French kid. Paul Tollett had to get his parents’ permission for him to come.

And you couldn’t even get in the Sahara tent. You could barely get near it. But you could see the lights, you could hear the music, it was infectious.

This week Kraftwerk is playing at the Modern. I saw the band during their "Computer World" tour. At the Santa Monica Civic. Long before many of you were even born. In the very early eighties.

It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. And it was all electronic.

Swedish House Mafia is all electronic. They were revealed on stage and the place went NUTS!

And so did I.

I felt the energy, the pulse, the adrenaline that a great show delivers. That the pop acts and the oldsters so often don’t. The three guys are up there like a parody of an SNL skit but it worked.

That’s what you’ve got to know, this electronic music works. It’s owned by the kids. And it’s got nothing to do with what came before, record companies are irrelevant. Hell, Swedish House Mafia is headlining Coachella AND THEY’VE NEVER PUT OUT A PROPER ALBUM!

Think about that. You’re sitting at home crafting ten tunes to make you feel good. To make you believe you’re a musician.

No, a musician plays music. It’s just that simple. And recordings have become secondary to live because it’s all about the experience, that’s what the younger generation treasures.

You should have been there last night. Or in the Sahara tent all day long, it was always full.

It’s a new music business.

And it’s THRILLING!