Go to a gig and you’ll see a plethora of attendees filming the event.  Not only taking photos, but literally recording the gig.

Old acts want to employ a no-camera policy.  They want to ban the users.  Newbies tolerate it.  Why not EMBRACE the audience’s activity?

Why doesn’t every band have a page for audience uploads?  Pics AND clips?  Allowing the fans themselves to vote on which ones are the best, which ones are worth viewing?

Of course, you host on YouTube and you embed on the artist’s page.  If Google can sway L.A. to host its e-mail in the cloud, why can’t bands utilize the company’s free services to their advantage?  Flickr is a great resource too!

The point is we’ve got it all wrong.  We’re trying to tell the fans what to do, when they should be telling US what to do!

Did you read the story on Twitter in yesterday’s "New York Times"?  All its good ideas come from outside.  Like search, hash tags and referencing people by using the @ symbol.  The company decried some of these innovations, they didn’t even want messages to be called "tweets".  Then they realized they had it wrong, that they should be embracing third party innovation, not stifling it!

People want to share music.  Rather than trying to stop this, copyright owners should make it easier.  You want to e-mail someone the track?  Let the band’s site do it for you!  And if the person you send the music to clicks a button on the e-mail, saying he actually likes the new cut, you get points, allowing you better seats at the gig or some other swag.

What, do we think we’re going to prevent people from swapping music?  If you believe this, you must not have any USB keys, which even come in credit card-sized promotional form these days.  It’s not about stopping trading, but INCREASING trading!

Eventful has got it right.  An act should go where its fans want them to.

Fans want more access, not less.  Where is fan access to music business executives?  Ashton Kutcher and every musician known to man can tweet, but Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine can’t?  No wonder the business gets such a bad rap.  If it’s all about relationships, how about doing a spot of work, helping the cause?  Believe me, hiding behind Mitch Bainwol will pay no dividends.

Speaking of Twitter, people like to tweet about tracks.  Why not create a service easier than Blip, that allows people to hear what others tweet about?  I should be able to tweet about a track, and if you want to check it out, all you’ve got to do is click the link.  And I get the URL for the track from one central, easy to use database.  Plug the name into a Google-type search engine and you IMMEDIATELY get a bit.ly shortened url for someone to hear the entire thing.  This is better than radio promotion.  You’re getting people truly interested in the music checking it out right away.  They’re pulling it, you’re not pushing it.  And pull is where all the money is.  It’s just like  Google AdWords.  The people who click WANT TO BUY!

The fans want to hook up at the gig.  Can’t you make this easier?  A special meeting station, with free wi-fi for iPhones. Believe me, you can get a sponsor to cough up the free wi-fi.

We’ve got it all wrong.  We’ve been FIGHTING the customer instead of EMBRACING HIM!  So worried about losing money, being unable to sustain the nineties model, we’re closing the door to the future.  The more you can get people excited about music, the more you can increase their access, the more money you ultimately make.

Sure, Twitter itself may not yet be profitable, but the tweets are evanescent.  Music is not.  Get someone hooked on an act, and they’ll go see them live, buy merch, buy the music, whether it be the track outright or listening on a paid streaming service.

For over a decade, the technology’s been more interesting than the music.  Because music has been putting up barriers, refusing to play in the new world.  This makes no sense.  Instead of telling people how to use the music, let them tell US!

Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers

Have you seen "U23D"?  You should!  Can’t think of a better concert film.  But the vibe is even better.  Shot in South America, in soccer stadiums, you get the feeling of danger, of being outside the law, of being in a nation built by rock and roll.

That’s how it felt last night.

If one person had yelled FIRE, many would have been trampled.  You not only had to wait in line to get into the gate, you had to wait in line to enter the tunnel to your seat. And when you got there, the sea of humanity was both inspiring and frightening.  All colors, not every age.  Even though the Black Eyed Peas opened, the younger, bump your hips in the club to get laid and the barely pubescent I want to be like Fergie crowd was not in attendance.  This was the last bastion of the population that believed rock and roll could truly save your life.  A bunch of baby boomers, but really fortysomethings.  They caught on with "Boy", and "Joshua Tree" was the soundtrack to their college years.

So why did U2 begin with the new album?

The Claw is far from impressive in real life.  After all the hype, it seemed like something created on a whim as opposed to a military operation conceived and erected by the greatest minds in the business.

Let me be clear.  It was the Claw itself that was the problem.  What was beneath it, the stage, the ring, the video screen, the rotating ramps, they were MESMERIZING!

But the music was not.

Until "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For".

I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

Tell someone under twenty one that you sat at home with the TV on all day, waiting to see your favorite video, and they’ll look at you dumbfounded.  We live in an on demand world.  There may be community online, but it’s inherently niche.  Whereas everyone with ears, everyone who grew up with the Beatles and younger was addicted to MTV.

And sure, there were notable transcendent moments, breakthroughs that changed the business forever.

First came the Duran Duran videos.  A fortune spent on them, the band became a household world.

U2 came next.  With "Sunday Bloody Sunday" from Red Rocks.  If the air had been clear, would the video have been as classic?  To see Bono run around with that flag, in the mist, was to believe that rock and roll could triumph.

Michael Jackson danced his way into America’s heart.

But there was a parallel story.  It was great that MTV became a big tent, but rock and roll did not die.  We had U2 marching the streets of Las Vegas, singing "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For".  An exquisite concoction of electric and acoustic elements, who can forget Edge walking amongst the neon lights strumming his guitar?  This was the joy, the triumph, the power that allows Bono to talk to heads of state.  U2 led an army of listeners, all based upon these records, these tracks.  They believed that via music we could have a better life, a better world.

Is this still possible?

Music is not leading the way.  Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin are bigger rock stars than anybody on the hit parade.  Still, U2 soldiers on.  And we follow, because we want to believe.

That’s what last night was.  A celebration of who we used to be.  With the hope that we could still be something more.

But the new album has not connected with fans.  Most people in attendance seemed to be clueless.   Instead of physical writhing, when U2 hit the stage to a slew of new tunes, the audience stood stock still.  I was grooving during "Magnificent", I love that track, but with a million copies of "No Line On  The Horizon" sold in the U.S., how many of this 100,000 in attendance had bought it?

We live in an attention economy.  And U2 fucked up.  They didn’t get their audience’s attention.  The album should have come free with the ticket.  Doesn’t matter if you make new music, you’re a has-been in the eye of the public if your new tracks don’t catch on.

So, last night the set progressed in fits and starts.

And, picking and choosing from almost every era of the band as opposed to just playing greatest hits, the audience never completely caught fire.

Let’s be clear.  They were playing to 100,000.  Manipulating that many is difficult.  Is Bono up to the task?  Absolutely!  But when Paul McCartney wants to work in new material, he starts off with "Drive My Car", he gets heads exploding first.

Don’t get the wrong idea.  There were peaks.  "Mysterious Ways".  And the ultimate crowd triumph was "Where The Streets Have No Name".  But the rising hands, the unity of the audience during that number, the feeling that you were part of one large, writhing ocean, was absent for most of the rest of the show.

But you could see just fine.  Bono was in fine voice.  And when the ramps swung around seemingly with a mind of their own, your jaw dropped.  And when the video screen expanded, dropped, you said to yourself I’VE SEEN NOTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE!

But it still comes down to the music.

I LOVED hearing "Until The End Of The World".  "Achtung Baby" is my favorite U2 album.

"Get On Your Boots" had a different feel live.  Less experimental, more straight ahead rock.  But if you didn’t love it already, you wouldn’t be closed.

And we had the recent hit "Vertigo", but we wanted to hear "Pride (In The Name Of Love)".  "New Year’s Day".  Maybe even "I Will Follow".  Last night should not have been an exhibition demonstrating that U2 is still relevant, it should have been a celebration of their career, a restatement of the bond between band and audience, a few more classics and no one would have gone out for a beer, everybody would have sung along, there would have been momentum, the whole Rose Bowl would have levitated.

They’ve got a chance.  They can use innovative new ways to get the new music to the live audience.  They can restructure the set so there are fewer dead spots, so the audience is riveted, along for the ride the whole time.  Playing a stadium is different from doing your act in an arena.  Even with 20,000, you can have everybody in the palm of your hand.  But once you start singing to forty or fifty thousand plus, you’ve got to throw out the old rules, you’re working with a different paradigm.  In other words, the stage was not enough.  It all depended upon the music.

But when the music was right…

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

Live rock and roll, when done right, strips away your regular life, school, work, even relationships.  The band is on stage, you’re in the audience, and the music hovers between you, an oil, a lubricant, that allows a certain freedom, a movement that you heretofore did not know you possessed.  You’re standing, moving like Gumby, not caring what others think of your moves, even if you’re as bad a dancer as Elaine on "Seinfeld".

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I was looking for transcendence.

We can’t get it from sold out politicians.

We can’t get it from tools of the corporate music trade like the Black Eyed Peas.

We depend on a certain breed of artist, not beholden to anyone but themselves. Either so poor or so rich that they just don’t care.

I want Bono to lead us out of the wilderness.  I want to tell you that I saw God last night.

I saw God at the Fillmore East, when the Who performed "Tommy" from start to finish.

I saw God at Flipper’s roller disco, when Prince performed "Dirty Mind".

I saw God at the Sports Arena in 1992, when U2 toured "Achtung Baby" indoors.  The visual assault, with lights in Trabants, with TV screens blasting more information than our brains could process, set the stage for the music.  It was a band on stage.  They were a cohesive unit.  Too many times last night, band members were almost furlongs away from each other.  Playing to a last row that they just couldn’t seem to reach emotionally.

Good attempt.

Imperfect execution.

I want to believe.

Make me a believer.

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a band’s stage is more important than their music?

The U2 tour opened across the pond, and has been slowly working its way west across America.  Tonight it lands in Pasadena, California.  And if you think the most important story in the Los Angeles Basin is the proposed football stadium, or gang warfare, or anything with substance, you’d be wrong.  Because the entire mainstream media has been hoodwinked by Paul McGuinness and Live Nation.  The biggest story in L.A. this weekend is the U2 concert.

Fewer than 100,000 of the nearly 13 million residents will attend, but the hype would have you believe that every resident is focused, that U2’s show is akin to last fall’s Presidential election.

And the story is not the music.  Who gives a shit about music?  The story is the STAGE!

Having finally popped for one of those new-fangled HD screens, my trusty cathode-ray Sony having finally bit the dust, I fire up the thing at every opportunity, trying to get my money’s worth.  Figuring, based on my cable bill, it costs about twenty five dollars every time I hit the on button, trying to lower my cost, however irrational that may seem, on Friday I found myself watching the local news, which is now like viewing a high school production.  Did you know that Jennifer is dating Adam?  Yup, you can check them out at tonight’s dance!  After the football game!

Really, the news when I turned in was high school football.  Not a game, but a tragedy.  Which I’ll mercifully refrain from detailing here.  But then, these two besuited anchors, who despite their cheeriness looked like they both needed a good fuck, to shock them into reality, started waxing rhapsodic about the U2 show.

Yup, there are only 20,000 parking spaces.  Take the train, take the bus, take a helicopter.  LEAVE NOW!

Actually, they’re promoting tailgating.  Get there around noon, to be sure you don’t miss a note.  Wait a second, they have football games at the Rose Bowl all the time, they sell out and the whole county doesn’t take a massive shit.  Why, if U2 is there, is it such a crisis?

Credit Colonel Parker.  That’s what Arthur Fogel and Paul McGuinness have built here.  A massive story that an unquestioning press is buying hook, line and sinker.  It’s almost balloon-boy redux.  Hell, like little Falcon said, THEY’RE DOING IT FOR THE SHOW!

And the linch-pin is the stage.

It gets a full page in today’s L.A. "Times".  In color.

A paper so thin it almost floats away, with a pop critic that lives in Alabama is devoting an entire page to the inner-workings of U2’s stage set.  This is like dedicating a full page to the "Hannah Montana" TV set.

But it’s pretty impressive.  It’s 170 feet tall.  Modeled after the inane Theme restaurant at LAX that no one ever goes to.  You see the picture and you…want to go.

We’ve been trained that everything is national.  That there are no more local stories.  But whereas no one cared about the national roll-out for U2’s latest album, this city by city unveiling of their traveling show is making headlines.  It’s like the circus has come to town.

In today’s "New York Times", there are album reviews?  Why would I read them?  Like I’m going to trust these critics?  Like online isn’t the bible here?

In other words, the U2 camp is savvy enough to know that music is no longer the selling point.  You’ve got to deliver spectacle.  Bigger and better.

And since, unlike Madonna, they don’t want to prostitute the music, don’t want to dance and employ changing sets, they’re utilizing the old concept of the Fillmore East light show and pumping it up with STEROIDS!

How many ways is this tour wrong?

After touring all summer, it is still not in profit.

The carbon footprint supersedes a whole field of cattle, never mind jets and cities.

It’s inefficient.

But it has achieved its goal.

Which is getting people to pay attention.

The missteps with U2 this year have been legion.  When people were paying attention, at awards shows, the band played the lame "Get On Your Boots".

And taking the money instead of the hype, playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates instead of the Yankees, U2 made a deal with BlackBerry as opposed to Apple.

But they got it right with the live show.  They’ve accomplished the one thing integral to success in today’s music business, getting everybody to pay attention.

Not enough people listen to the radio.  No one watches MTV for music.  Writing on records is too voluminous to follow.

But everybody seem to be interested in their stage set.

News organizations focus on the new and novel.  People don’t want to be left out.  And fans, aware of previous extravaganzas, don’t want to miss out on this one time event either.

So, even though the TV station said falsely that the gig had sold out in four hours, at the same time other news outlets were stating that the band hoped to fill the Rose Bowl and set a new attendance record, the goal has been accomplished.

You’ve got to spend money to make money.  By laying out so much dough, erecting something so fantastic, U2 has managed to focus every community it plays in upon them.

But what do they do next?  Take over Manhattan?  Play on the moon?

U2 360 tour: Stadium in the round

We’re fucked.

I was standing in the back of the Palladium, all jazzed up, when I realized something.  Almost this ENTIRE SHOW was on hard drive!

Let me paint a picture.  Although we could get a spot in the parking lot no problem, the hall was pretty full.  People were lining up to pay for balloon hats.  Maybe that was the first indicator, that this evening was not about music, but having a good time.

It was an interesting amalgamation of people.  Gays, straights, thin, fat, not extremely young, but only a handful of baby boomers.  It was Friday night, and they were out to have a good time.

Which Mika provided.

One of the best shows I’ve ever seen, one of the best concerts ever, was David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.  Employing strobe lights before they became de rigueur, Ziggy entered the stage in his spacesuit, Mick Ronson struck his guitar and we were MESMERIZED!

Mika’s show began with a presentation.  The band members, dressed as normal folk, sat on a couch facing a big screen.  Where a denizen of Mission Control spoke of losing an astronaut. The curtain rose, the "players" took their designated places and lumbering in from the back came a tall thin man in a spacesuit.  MIKA!

It was a dramatic entrance.  He took off his helmet, stripped off his suit, and he was standing there in his underwear!  A bit of cheekiness goes a long way.  But rather than start to sing, Mika left the stage as the music played.  He returned in a sleek white suit.  The energy was palpable. The audience had their cell phones raised, people were bopping up and down, a good time was being had by all.

And then, to follow up the opener, Mika played his most famous song, "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)".  He brought out corpulent dancers in day-glo outfits.  It was a celebration.  But something was curious.  Mika was singing when he was not.

Didn’t matter if he held the mic up to his face.  He was singing anyway!  The backup vocals, they were pure and pristine!  The keyboards played even though no one had his hands on any keys.

Oh, these moments were not always glaring and obvious.  But when Mika spoke to the audience during "Blame It On The Girls", there was a consistent disco beat that was utterly perfect, done so well, with such power, that I don’t think Kenny Aronoff could have duplicated it live.  The drummer was hitting stuff, but the cymbal barely moved, and no kick drum sounds like that live.

It was like listening to a record.

Mika would move his head away from the mic, but his vocal would remain perfect.  But when he spoke, there was distortion, a distinct lack of clarity.  That’s what live sounds like.  Most of the time tonight, it was Memorex.

I’ve been to so many shows, and I’ve never heard sound like this.  So perfect, it doesn’t sound like the record, it IS the record!

I’m not saying everybody’s mic was turned off, that no one was plugged in.  But I don’t think Jeff Pevar could get that acoustic guitar sound live.  And, who are all these Mikas doing the backup vocals if he’s singing the lead?

They were miming along to the hard drive.  I never heard a single mistake.  Even Jeff Beck admits he makes mistakes, hits a clam now and again.  But not Mika!  Not Mika’s band!

The vibe was good.  Very English.  Irreverent.  Fun.

But how much fun is it going out to hear a record?

Then again, aren’t these the same people frequenting those clubs, those discos on Hollywood Boulevard where you bump bodies to studio creations?  They don’t feature live bands.  The audience doesn’t EXPECT LIVE!

So I’m not saying everybody at the show tonight should have had a bad time.

I’m just saying it resembled nothing I’ve ever experienced, nothing that turns me on about live music.

Live music, when done right, is life itself.  Messy, with warts.  You try to get it right, but no one’s life is perfection.  You battle the mistakes.

There’s no ideal beauty.  Even though actresses all plump their lips in pursuit of an elusive ideal. Hell, remake yourself until you lose your identity, like Jennifer Grey or Leeza Gibbons.  What turns us on are your imperfections!

But I didn’t hear one imperfection tonight.

I walked out.

I just couldn’t take it.

It would be like taking off all your clothes, getting under the covers and finding a mannequin, or a porno magazine, when you expected a real person there.

I haven’t left a gig in the middle since 1969.  And no, Don Henley, it was not in California.  It was in Boston.  Some weird iteration of Manfred Mann’s band.  It was awful.

Mika wasn’t awful tonight.  He just wasn’t really there.  You could see him, but what you paid for, you didn’t get.  Live music.

YouTube is riddled with clips of Britney dancing, not moving her lips while perfect singing is playing through the speakers.  Janet Jackson and Madonna do the same thing.

They’re selling show.  They’re selling a good time.

But I got into it for the music.

I really like Mika’s records.  Did I expect the live show to sound just like them?

NO!

That would be like expecting "Live At Leeds" to sound like "Tommy".

Live is its own unique thing.

But tonight wasn’t unique.  It was just like every other night, just like the recording.  It WAS the recording!

So, first we’ve got CDs.  Which sound so bad, they kill acoustic music, warm music, almost overnight.  Hell, bass-laden hip-hop is one of the few genres that even SOUNDS GOOD on a CD.

Then we’ve got Milli Vanilli.

And then, after everybody complains, we’ve got live music for a minute on the VMAs, and then live music on television disappears.

You lip-synch the National Anthem.  You don’t risk at the Super Bowl.

You’ve got to get it right.  So people will be impressed.  So they’ll overpay to see you in concert.

I saw better playing in Nashville in a bar than you see at most major shows.  I felt it.  Music isn’t dead, but the business is trying to kill it.  You might think Ashlee Simpson doing a hoedown when the tape breaks on SNL is long in the past, but that mainstream game is not completely dead, unlike Ms. Simpson’s career.

Having tweeted what I said above from the Mika show before I left, Perez Hilton responded on Twitter thusly:

@Lefsetz You sure know a lot about bullshit – you’re full of it! Mika is amazing!!!! A true talent! Look at this audience – they are LOVING!

I guess that’s why Perez’s tour failed.  He thought it was about the trappings, about everything but the music.

I don’t know what brought these people to the Palladium tonight.  But I do know the future of the music business is authenticity.  About being able to play.  About being honest.  And forthright.

Entertainment is one thing.  Hell, is’t that what reality TV is, entertainment?

But music, when done right, is not evanescent.  It’s the foremost, most formidable medium.  It touches you like nothing other than another human being.

As that old seer said, we’ve got to get back to the garden.

Honestly, there are a ton of people who already have.  They’ve given up on this faux show.  If it’s not real, they’re not interested.  And radio and SoundScan mean less than ever before.  They’re not truly mainstream, they’re the sideshow.

Whoa.

I genuinely like Mika’s music.  But, after tonight, I’m no longer a fan.

Stars might be interesting, but we revere true talent.  In the music game that always meant you could sing and play.  If you’re faking it on stage, why in hell should we believe?