This is what we’ve been waiting for!  Finally, months after approval, the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger has paid dividends.  Now, if you’re a Ticketmaster customer you’ve just received an e-mail offering you $25 in Live Nation cash when you join the Zagat Wine Club.  Whoopie! Now I’m gonna be so high when ordering tickets I won’t be able to complete my order, or will make a mistake and end up in the Ticketmaster customer care backwater, spending hours just trying to get a refund.

Buy a concert ticket and regret it?  Just try to get your money back.

But the reason I’m writing is I’ve been inundated with e-mail about this.  The page I’m linking you to does not do the e-mail justice, wherein the Live Nation cash offer is so prominent.  And the point of my story is that we no longer live in the dark ages, make a faux pas in the Internet era and suddenly EVERYBODY knows about it!

The opposite is when you make great music, word spreads just as fast.  That’s the new Web experience.  Heinous and ultimate, the two opposites, are all anybody cares about.  Mediocre?  Merely good?  Who’s got time for that!  Which is why when your music is less than stellar you get no traction.  The days of a limited radio world, where a promo man can get airplay on a lame label priority and make headway are done.  No one’s got the time.

It’s like Rapino and Azoff have to get MBAs, or at least learn about brand management.  Hell, Irving’s so good at protecting his acts, you’d think he’d protect TM/LN’s brand.  But no.  Tony Hsieh gets tons of publicity for allowing Zappos customer service reps to be heroes, and Ticketmaster is the most hated entity on earth.  And, please be aware, Zappos does not sell on price, it’s not a discount outfit, its shoes are expensive, but people flock to the site because of the service.  Isn’t this the future music business model?  Where we offer goods at a fair price, but treat you fairly?

As for Live Nation, the concert promotion end of the entity, what exactly does the company stand for?  If you went to a Bill Graham concert to be treated well, do you go to a Live Nation show to raise the company’s stock?  Live Nation doesn’t give back, it only takes.  Instead of ripping us off with service charges, it should be donating some of the exorbitant fees it charges to charity, then again, those fees represent its profit, along with beer and wine and parking.

Yup, that’s how screwed up the concert business is.  You complain about the service fees?  Those are the main revenue generator for Live Nation!  Which helped create this situation by overpaying for acts to fill its buildings to create cash flow and give the illusion that promoting rock concerts is a profitable business that deserves Wall Street investment.

But it doesn’t.  Only investors who can afford overpriced tickets don’t realize that the model is broken.  That first and foremost, there must be demand.  And that requires multiple acts that can do sell out business.  But there are few of those, because it’s hard to reach critical mass in today’s market and too many wannabes are just that, having watched "American Idol" and read Perez Hilton, they’re focused on fame, not music, and unwilling to pay their dues for years in order to get a toehold, which may never pay off.

There will be a healthy concert business once again.  When the acts functioning outside the system, who aren’t about the immediate splash, but the long term return, finally mature and pay dividends.

But that’s not now.

Now, it’s every man for himself.  Every fat cat in the music industry trying to protect the old model, where he’s overpaid and the acts are secondary.

Meanwhile, the public is scratching its head and saying HUH?

Zagat and music, I see the connection.  They’re both about selling out.  Zagat was family-run, focused on delivering a great product, however limited, and now it’s a company trying to increase its footprint, damn the mission, just like Live Nation. 

Presently Zagat is off the market, but you can credit the 2008 stock market crash for that: Zagat Family Is Putting Guide Empire on Market

If Live Nation wants to prosper, it not only has to protect and ultimately buff its image, it’s got to treat customers right.  Instead, its stewards are turning it into a laughingstock.

"Enjoy 12 great wines for JUST $69.99 – plus $25 in Concert Cash FREE""Enjoy 12 great wines for JUST $69.99 – plus $25 in Concert Cash FREE"

I exercise good judgment.

I don’t do drugs, I didn’t drop out of college and I wear my seatbelt from the moment I fire up my car until it’s safely parked.

As a result, I’m often left out and ridiculed.

That guy who did mushrooms, who talks about seeing God?

That wasn’t me.  Taking chances is not my forte.  If everything isn’t copacetic, up to snuff, I’m out.  Which occasionally makes me the party-pooper and sometimes leaves me labeled as no-fun.  But my anxiety kicks up, I hear my father’s voice in my head and I say no go, no fucking way.

Chris rented a van.  It’s a Mercedes, and if you want to have an accident, that’s the vehicle to be in.  But it fits nine passengers and we’re eleven.  No one else seems to care.  But I keep thinking about overloading and an accident without seatbelts and every time I contemplate traveling in the van my anxiety kicks up, wondering why we don’t have two cars, before I insist on sitting on the end and buckling my seatbelt, I want to give myself a fighting chance.

But nobody else seems to mind.  Isn’t that how it always happens.  You’re having a grand old time and then someone dives head first into shallow water and becomes a paraplegic.  Or you’re rear-ended after removing your headrests and suddenly you’re wearing a dog collar.  Or you’re playing around, riding on the trunk of a car, and you fall off, hit your head and die.

That actually happened.  Just before my adolescence.  When two teenagers were goofing around in the next neighborhood over, riding on the bumper of a VW and one fell off.  The rest, as they say, is history.

And then there was that kid when my sister was in second grade, who fell through the ice.  We debated where it happened.  Whether it was the stream at the end of our street or the lake two miles away, every kid had an opinion, but I couldn’t get the image out of my head.  Of a much older kid, when you’re five and they’re seven it makes all the difference, breaking through, struggling, unable to get back to the place where he fell in, scratching along the underside of the ice, panicking.

I fell through the ice once.

But the water was only a foot deep.

But I got trapped in the mud and couldn’t get myself out.  It was on a Boy Scout weekend.  Yes, they preach safety in Scouts, but that’s where all the weird things happen.  My buddy ran for reinforcements as I felt abandoned before they returned with planks and rescued me.

Whew!

Dumb, I know.  I don’t think I ever told my dad.  Or, I did, but I didn’t paint the story quite the same way, I emphasized the depth of the water, not the distance to the shore, which however short, was impossible to bridge under my own strength.

My dad.  He had a hard life.  His brother was run over in the driveway.

Whenever he was backing up, my father would insist on quiet and a clear runway.  If you were in the way, if you weren’t in the way, but on the driveway, he yelled, demanding you vacate the asphalt.  We grimaced, but my father insisted on safety first.

And I’m his son.

I’m supposed to be at Amnesia.  Grooving to Roger Sanchez.  We went to dinner at Ovum and were returning to the hotel to drop off part of our crew before the rest of us revelers went to the club.

I wanted to go to the club, but I didn’t.  I wanted to experience the giant venue, but I was strangely tired, like I’d run into a brick wall, or been hit over the head.

And we leave the main drag for the highway leading inland.  I’m holding on to the seatbelt, head against the door, almost dozing, wondering if I’m gonna make it into the wee hours at the venue when suddenly there’s a shout, and Chris slams on the brakes and…

I was worried we were going to hit the car in front of us.

But that wasn’t really the issue, that wasn’t really why Gregg had exclaimed.  It was what was happening on the other side of this tiny road with no room for error, none of the built-in margins enforced in America.

There was a car.  Flipped over.  Completely.

And to our right, another.

And a group in a Volvo station wagon had stopped.  And people in the van are saying to call for help.  But what’s that number in Ibiza again?

We soldiered on.

But I couldn’t get the image inside the overturned car out of my head.  Sure, they could be strapped in, safe, waiting for the jaws of death to extract them.

Or, the Grim Reaper could have come to pay a visit.

And we’re bouncing down a dirt road.  Lined by trees on each side.  Thin, but thick enough to halt a wayward vehicle in its tracks.  And I got that vibe, that I was pushing my luck, that once in a lifetime experiences are not that important if you’ve got no life.

I gave the partygoers the name to use at the door.  I couldn’t contemplate retracing our steps, back to this wreck which certainly couldn’t be cleaned up in the interim.

I decided to call it a night.

Good night.

Sleep tight.

Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

I’m schlepping around Madrid, riding the underground in pursuit of the Reina Sofia, and when we finally arrive we find out we’ve gotten bad information, the museum is closed.

That’s the frustration of travel where you don’t know the language.  You can’t drill down and get accurate information.  You make mistakes. Kind of like the U.S. in Afghanistan.

Confronting our choices, we decided to venture up to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, where we sat down at the outdoor cafe and ordered a late lunch.  That’s where I read Frank Rich’s article.

Mobile phones in Europe are a conundrum.  You can buy a SIM card and make cheap calls, but then you don’t get your e-mail.  So, you change your plan to use your BlackBerry, swearing you’ll keep the dollar a minute calls to a minimum, and then find out you’ve got no Internet access because in this one area, the U.S. is superior.  Yes, you can get 3G on Verizon almost anywhere in the country, but in Europe, I was stymied, a phone call to tech support told me I had to downgrade to 2G for access, thank god this proffered solution worked.

So I’m functioning on GPRS, on EDGE to those familiar with the first iteration of the iPhone, and as my connection struggles like a dialup modem in the days of yore, I eventually download all of Frank Rich’s column.

Yes, that Frank Rich.  The reviled theatre critic who has reinvented himself as political seer by being different from the rest of the talking heads.  The household names get on TV and shout at other, amplifying their positions, but offering no insight.  Mr. Rich is all about the analysis, like an umpire at a tennis match giving his take a week after the contest, having had time to think about it.  He’s required reading, not only for me, but so many others, despite the lack of a marketing campaign.  You see, excellence surfaces.

And I’m reading Mr. Rich’s column on the tiny screen and I find out "Rolling Stone" has brought down McChrystal.

Huh?  What is it, 1972?

Mr. Rich goes on to say that everybody in the mainstream media is busy making friends, playing for access, and won’t ask the hard questions, or won’t publish the answers, they want to go to dinner with the household names.  Reading the column gets one excited, like there’s hope for the rest of us, not only the left wingers but even the Tea Party, that somehow the man on the street can have meaning, can influence the outcome.

"Rolling Stone".  Isn’t that the magazine that survived the excision of its fold but not its transition to glossy?  If you want to know about music, don’t bother, "Rolling Stone" is lost, not sure whether to be "Mojo" or "Q", focus on the ancient or the new and evanescent, and therefore resides in a no-man’s land that is ignored by so many.

So what does RS do?

Go where the action is, and do a bang-up job.

Matt Taibbi.  He was the turning point.  Labeling Goldman Sachs "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity".

The mainstream was giving Wall Street a pass.  Saying it wasn’t the bankers’ fault.  Mr. Taibbi was having none of that.  Financial reform? Send a check to Matt Taibbi and "Rolling Stone", not your local Congressman.

And now comes Michael Hastings’ depiction of General McChrystal.

Don’t stop with Frank Rich, don’t focus on the backlash, go straight to the source, read the "Rolling Stone" article.  It’s like hearing a great record.

McChrystal is three-dimensional.  More of a rock star than Katy Perry or any of the other nitwits.  He doesn’t care if you went to MIT or have blue hair, he’s focused on results.  GaGa?  Who gives a shit what you’re wearing, it’s all about the music (and we did you see you fall at Heathrow, who could walk in those ridiculous boots: Lady Gaga Falls Hard).  But McChrystal is flawed.  And his judgment is skewed.  Even though he’s famous for getting his hands dirty, for going into the field, he’s so conflicted, so fearful of reprimands that he’s crippling his own mission, requiring soldiers to function with one hand tied behind their backs.

This story’s got no filter.  It’s like a movie, albeit real.  Drop the outsider into the heat of battle and get a report.  One that the government won’t give you, one that those back in New York don’t know and would be afraid to tell if they did.

Suddenly, "Rolling Stone" is more powerful than the "New York Times", certainly Fox News, which does almost no reporting itself.  Suddenly, the talking heads on TV are a joke.  Because "Rolling Stone" followed the ethos of rock and roll, which is to question authority and refuse to follow the sheep.

You wonder why today’s acts can’t sell a ticket?  Because they’re just like the television talking heads, playing a game, providing entertainment, not a truly visceral experience.  Once upon a time, rock mattered.  Now it’s a marketing front.

And the record labels are fighting an unwinnable war.  Saying if we just eviscerate P2P trading all the problems will be solved, happy days will be here again.  That’s denying the infinite choices of not only music, but entertainment itself.  What they want is a land where radio and TV rule and music is expensive.  In what world is that possible?  Maybe in the twentieth century, but not today.

And Live Nation believes if it just overpays for talent, it can get people into the building and sell them overpriced beer and tchotchkes, after ripping them off for service fees and parking.  But this only works if the main attraction truly shines.  We never liked the dinging for dollars in the past, we just endured it to have access to the talent.  We don’t want to see these phonies anymore.

"Rolling Stone" has rehabilitated itself.  And it did it through writing, its core mission, not via financial restructuring or a new marketing plan.

The music business will thrive again when the focus is on music.

But fat cats don’t like that, it’s unpredictable and hard to control.

But now the means of production and distribution are in the hands of the proletariat.  It might be incomprehensible at the moment, but we’re in an amazing era.  One in which musicians are on the road to triumph.  Labels say you need their money, promoters say you need their buildings, but if you’ve got the music, everybody lines up to feed at your trough, the public, the promoters and the labels, in that order. There’s a direct connection between performer and audience.  The middleman is oftentimes superfluous, he’s never had less power.

You can have 10,000 Twitter followers, sign throngs up to an unwanted e-mail blast, but nothing has the power of a great song, created from your personal mind-set, evidencing a vision of what’s going on that’s unsullied by commercialism, any desire to play the game.  Don’t you see, the game is for losers!  Winners play by their own rules.  Which is why we loved the Beatles and the Stones and Pink Floyd and everybody else now touring on fumes.  We wanted to remember, but now we’re eager to forget.  Because after the selling out, the getting in bed with the Fortune 500, the essence, what attracted us to begin with, has been lost.

Gentlemen (and ladies!), start your engines!  Practice your instruments!  Fire up your computers!  Lay down something so special we can’t help but want it.  Doesn’t matter if it’s on CD or MP3, vinyl or USB stick.  Doesn’t matter if you’ve got to pay for it or you can get it for free.  What matters is it contains truth.

Frank Rich

"Rolling Stone"

I just got up.

It’s 4 PM.

Guess that’s what happens when you eat dinner at midnight, get to the club at two and drive home as the sun starts to come up.

I’ll admit, I’ve been jet-lagged.  Could take a pill, many swear by Ambien.  But my psychiatrist flipped when I brought it up.  Said it wakes you up so suddenly that it freaks you right out!  So, nay.  But that means for days after arriving in Europe, I sleep for a few hours, and am then up for a few hours, contemplating every scenario in my life.  I get new insights, am bizarred by remembrances and ultimately wake up after falling back asleep with barely a memory of the interlude, other than the fact that I’m tired and running on empty.

Last night we went to a fashion show…  Supposed to start at ten, eleven was more like it.  The designer was Swiss, the models looked like they hadn’t eaten this year and the whole thing was so boring it made me question all those runway pictures I’m subjected to in the press. Really, you left home for this?  REALLY?

And then the aforementioned dinner…

And after having not eaten since breakfast, which was yogurt and fruit back in Madrid, and having had copious amounts of Pellegrino, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

Which I found outdoors.  There were many doors.  Kind of like that scene in "Help", but with more entrances.  And then a communal sink.  With a communal towel.

Now I don’t consider myself a prude, but we’re all germophobes these days, I’m not using the same stinking towel as everybody else.  I resorted to Kleenex.

Little did I know that I’d be confronted with the same scene at Pacha.

Yup, we drove into town long past midnight, and entered a party that was already jumping. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with today’s music scene, a lack of participation.  Social networking is the rage, but go to an overpriced show and it’s more like Broadway than Facebook.  You see some nitwit dancing in front of a set or some old sot with a faded reputation acting in a revival. Whereas at the club, it’s a mass of writhing flesh, everybody’s energized, bumping into their neighbors, popping up and down, fists in the air.

Even Ginny, Felice’s mother.

I mean some in our party tried to beg off.  They’d had enough.  They wanted to quit after dinner. But not this octogenarian.  She’s up and boogieing to Swedish House Mafia.  Not gyrating as quickly and thoroughly as the dancers perched on platforms, grinding like on "Where The Action Is", only sexier, but movin’ and a groovin’ like the rest of the crowd.

And as the set built, there was a sudden silence.  Then…

I want it all.

I want it all.

I want it all.

AND I WANT IT NOW!

Everybody, thrusting their arms in the air, repeating…the QUEEN SONG?

Yup.  Freddie Mercury would have fit in perfectly at Pacha.  There was that weird tension between campy and cool, gay and straight, the world outside the venue just didn’t matter, like in the days of yore.

And there was smoke and lasers and writhing naked girls on an extended stripper pole.

And then Tinie Tempah came out and engaged the assembled multitude like they were at the World Cup, cheering for their favorite team.

And I went to the bathroom.

Whoa!

Doors to the left of me, doors to the right, here I am…stuck in the middle with YOU?

Yes, on the right are girls who could have been featured on the runway hours before.  Tall, skinny, wearing sheaths, hanging out like…you do in the lounge that’s affixed to high end female bathrooms that males envy, but never enter.

I got that sudden flush…  I MUST HAVE GONE INTO THE WRONG ROOM!  These women are going to excoriate me!

But no one said a word.

I hightailed it to the other doors.

Where women were too.

And in between, was an extended sink.

There was no difference.

Now I went to college in the seventies.  When the breakthrough was coed dorms.  Boys and girls next door to each other in the residence hall, with bathrooms for each sex on the opposing end of the building.  Hell, in a need for speed, we’d pee in the other sex’s commode. I thought I was uninhibited.

But not last night.

I eventually chose a door.

And then it’s time to wash up.

I’m standing next to these girls and…

I notice they’re speaking a foreign language.  These are not the harpies of high school. They’re not judging me.  Rather, we’re all in it together!  They might be dressed up, but the men are wearing t-shirts, it’s about being moved by the music as opposed to looking like GaGa.

I relaxed.  I put my hands under the spigot.

But I was not about to use the communal towel!