Live by the hit, die by the hit.

That’s why you don’t want to be a pop star.

Used to be it was a reasonable trade. Everybody in the world knew your name and you could tour forever on even one hit.

Not anymore. Now you can have a hit and not be able to sell any tickets. But even worse is the hype machine, although still extant, no longer reaches many people. So you can be in “People,” be on TV, be exposed in all the traditional media and the public doesn’t even shrug, because it is not paying attention to these outlets and is completely unaware of what you’re doing.

Back in the last century, if you were on TV constantly, and you gave the public what it wanted, odds are you’d have a modicum of success. Katy Perry was on television every week, and after a couple of stiff records decided to give the audience the girl power anthems she’d built her name on.

But everybody rejected it. I haven’t seen backlash this big…EVER!

This is what happens when you live in a bubble.

In the old days, the labels controlled the narrative. Not any longer, today the public controls the narrative, and fans are watching every move, and it all happens online, so looky-loos will come across opinions…that’s right, on social media you get opinions, not raw hype. This is what many acts don’t understand about social media, if you don’t have an opinion, if you don’t have an edge, you won’t get any traction.

Meanwhile, scores of acts that have never had a pop hit are doing prodigious business on the road. Their fans own them and support them. They feel invested. As soon as it is perceived you’re a tool of the machine, that you’re being forced down someone’s throat, you’re toast. Maybe, just maybe, if you have a track so good… But in this era of me-too, and I’m talking about sound, not sexual abuse, the idea of a revolutionary sound…never comes into play. And the traditional avenue of exposure, i.e. terrestrial radio, doesn’t want anything new and different, it doesn’t want to upset the apple cart, it doesn’t want to risk a tune-out.

So… The world is bifurcated, between pop and the rest of music. But all we ever read about in industry press is pop. It’s easily quantified. Are you on the chart or not, as if recordings ruled the roost when they do not, today it’s all about live.

So who are the Katy Perry fans?

A certain demo of women. No longer young, not in the active group participating on social media. And that’s how you drive a hit, on social media. Most Katy Perry fans are out of the loop. And there are a limited number of them. Perry could not say no, she appeared everywhere, she stood for nothing so much as…stardom. And that’s not enough.

Today to sustain you must have an identity, that you curate. You have to be “on brand,” you have to be able to say no. You have to look at your career through your hard core fans’ perspective.

And the thing about fans is that they’re active. They’ll tell everybody they know about you. Trey Anastasio just had an interview in “Rolling Stone.” So the Phishheads are e-mailing me. As if I didn’t see it to begin with. As if I’m really that interested in what Trey has to say, sorry.

To tell you the truth I’m not interested in what most musicians have to say, because it no longer moves the needle. They don’t stand for anything.

Ironically, Perry stood for Democrats. She was in the mix during the last presidential cycle. If she’d stood up today, spoken her truth, said Biden should stay or step down it actually would have helped her. Because she would risk alienating part of her audience. If you’re not willing to risk losing fans, you’re not going to create strong bonds with the fans you’ve got, never mind new ones.

And we’ve been told for eons that press doesn’t matter.

Well, not the minion press. Not the brain dead press. Not the me-too press. Certainly not the traditional music and movie press.

Do you think I don’t know you’re publishing a story about this or that person because they’ve got new product, an album or a movie? It’s not like they’ve got something special to say, they’re just selling, there’s no there there. Best to do your hype when you’ve got nothing to sell. Then it looks more genuine. And the songs are there to be streamed every day of the year. You’re building an identity, not selling product. An identity, personality, lasts, you trade on it, whereas what you did on the chart yesterday no longer matters.

So there’s a whole cabal out to get those who cross the lines.

We’ve seen this in media re Biden. It was started in the “New York Times,” the media is doing the elected officials’ job, and looking good in the process. If some people hate what the “Times” has been saying, it’s doing it right. Which is to call it as it sees it, not to pledge fealty to any tribe, but to be independent. As a result, the paper has power.

As do those not just reciting pablum, tools of the label, who are pushing back.

But the bottom line is give the people what they want at your peril. It looks easy. You go back to the garden…

But the public has moved on.

This is a conundrum. Because you keep hearing from fans and your handlers and your label to go back to your golden era, but we’re not going back to horses and buggies, EVs are here to stay, and I’m fine with you making America greater than it is today, but it ain’t gonna look anything like it did back in the fifties, the era you’re fantasizing about. We only move forward, we never move back. You only gain traction in the future by pushing your own artistry.

Sure, there’s a business in going on the road and playing your hits. Assuming you created them before the internet killed the old paradigm about twenty years ago. I hope you like the money, because in many cases it’s soul-deadening. You’ve taken yourself out of the game, I thought you were a musician!

And don’t tell me no one wants the new stuff. No one wants ANY new stuff, because there’s so much new stuff out there (never mind the old stuff!) That’s the modern world, if you’re shooting for the moon you’re missing the point. Everything is happening online, grass roots. And if you only want to play new music do it in a small venue and make the public aware. There’s a business in that, but not an arena or stadium business.

But if you were on MTV, if you even had a hit in the first decade of this century, you think the public is waiting with bated breath for your new work. But this is patently untrue. In the old days, there was a limited amount of product, your tunes got a modicum of exposure no matter how good or bad they were, people would check them out. But today they don’t. Come on, the big number one hit is Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” you could even call it “The Song of the Summer,” an outdated concept if there ever was one. Not my summer. Not your summer. Just the summer of the circle jerk publicity machine that needs to feed the pipeline. And if you think “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is going to become legendary and have the legs of “Summer in the City,” you believe in magic.

So Katy Perry completely miscalculated. She’ll ultimately lick her wounds and climb back into the hole she came out of. This is what J.Lo did, this is what all the pop stars of yore do when they’re confronted with the fact that the game has changed. But if she was smart, Perry would release new music almost instantly. That was more raw, not made with legendary producers. Then again, can she make the music alone?

It all comes down to talent. Artistry. We’re back to the basics. Because there’s just too much junk, too much low grade stuff trying to fill the pop pipeline. Odds are you’re going to fail. But especially if you build up the hype, if you’ve got us waiting to see what you’re going to do.

It’s complicated. And Nancy Meyers can’t have a hit in the theatre anymore.

The game has changed. The public bites back. This is the world we now live in. Don’t be true to your school, but yourself. That’s the essence of artistry, the individual. Who is Katy Perry? Damned if I know!

They are no longer selling danger.

They’re selling rock and roll. A lost art. If you want to experience it in its original form, go to see the Stones.

What I’m saying is the emphasis is misplaced. It’s on Mick Jagger’s dancing, his onstage antics. The bottom line is this is necessary when you play in the vast stadiums the Stones appear in.

Have you ever been to SoFi? One of the most bizarre experiences in the sports stadium stratosphere.

Actually, my favorite moment came after the show. When I walked into an elevator and was promptly escorted out, as I was told THIS IS RESERVED FOR MR. KROENKE! It only went from field level up one flight. I’d actually ridden it earlier in the evening. The show had finished about fifteen minutes before, but it was a no-go.

Now logic defies SoFi. If I wasn’t escorted to field level, I never would have made it, it was a labyrinth of escalators and corridors and stairs…

Even better was when I tried to get to Level 4 from the bowels of the stadium.

You can’t get there from here. Literally. you ride the escalator and it goes from Level 3 to Level 5. Turns out you’ve go to take an elevator to get to Level 4, but after waiting interminably, I got escorted again, otherwise I never would have made it.

But this has nothing to do with the show. Other than to say that SoFi is vast. Sans frontman antics it would be hard to get the audience involved. But Mick did. And the band did.

I don’t want to take sides, but the heart of the band is Keith Richards. Strumming his guitar, mostly in the background.

Actually, that was the highlight of the evening. Before the Linda Lindas took the stage, Keith’s guitar tech Pierre gave me a tour of his guitars. There’s one locked case after another. Because the band has rehearsed seventy songs, and you never quite know what they’ll play. The Gibsons all have six strings, the rest mostly have five. And we were looking at each one in its slot in the case and then Pierre extracted…

The axe from “Honky Tonk Woman.” The exact one from the track. I tingled then and I’m tingling now. This is rock and roll history. A direct connection from what once was to what now still is.

And then Andrew Watt came along and we joshed and jousted, he gave me sh*t for dissing him, being friendly all the while, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said. When I take a big swing at someone I usually do. But one thing was for sure, Andrew was reading. And Pierre told me at the first session for “Hackney Diamonds” Watt insisted on playing the bass… A bridge from then to now.

And speaking of “Hackney Diamonds,” “Angry” was far superior live. It breathed, there was more space, something that is hard to achieve in a recording. Sure, Jagger was still out front, but there was air between him and the rest of the instruments Saturday night, and it made “Angry” a classic, which was surprising.

What was also surprising was the band hit the ground running.

Now if you’ve ever seen the Stones, you know they start out rough, it takes them a while to find their groove. I was shocked that they were together from note one. Very professional.

But the reason this is hard is the Stones are a blast from the past. They’re doing it the way they’ve always done. Naturally. Sans the hard drives and offstage players trying to imitate the records, delivering a professional appearance and sound that not only all their contemporaries employ, but especially the young ‘uns. What you’ve got here is 1965. You remember buying a guitar in the wake of the Beatles breaking. You played in the basement with your buddies. And that’s what the Stones do, only on a much higher level.

Sure, it’s not the Marquee, but it’s not that far removed. Jagger’s movements are expanded, as is the band, with two backup singers and two horn players, along with two keyboard players. But if you close your eyes it could be…1965!

But the difference between the Stones and their British Invasion contemporaries is not only did they soldier on, they continued to have hits, in the seventies and eighties, and their tracks still had an impact thereafter. Actually, I sing 1989’s “Mixed Emotions” in my head more than I do the earlier stuff… You’re not the only one, with mixed emotions. Sure, we broke up. Maybe you pulled the trigger, but I was unsure too and…

They didn’t play “Mixed Emotions” Saturday night.

They started with… “Start Me Up.” Firing on all cylinders, as stated above.

Then back to the sixties with “Get Off of My Cloud.”

But then came “Tumbling Dice.” The single from “Exile on Main Street” that did not go to number one, that was the lead-in for the ’72 tour. The first in America after “Sticky Fingers” allowed the Stones to declare themselves “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” Not only was “Sticky Fingers” fantastic, all their contemporaries had given up, or fallen by the wayside, and here were the Stones delivering what we wanted and didn’t know we needed.

Not that the band played “Brown Sugar,” supposedly that’s been banished. And that line about the Puerto Rican girls dyin’ to meet you…that was not heard in “Miss You,” but…

Prior to the recent tours, the best, was ’75, the one where the band was revealed after the petals of the silver flower unfolded. When I saw the show at the Forum that tune was when the band finally locked in, when they were finally together, in the groove, I was closed on “Tumbling Dice” that night, and thereafter have loved it. And the band performed it just as well on Saturday.

Then came the surprise of “Angry.”

And I knew they were going to play “Heartbreaker,” the fan’s choice from “Goat’s Head Soup,” my favorite on the album. How were they going to get the intro right? Well, they didn’t. They didn’t even try. It was an approximation. Rather than use a tape, they approximated it with keyboard and then guitar and it made the song more special.

But then came “Fool to Cry.” Which was not my favorite song from “Black and Blue,” recorded with different guitarists after Mick Taylor left the band. There are two great tracks on that uneven album. One no one ever talks about, “Hand of Fate,” the other “Memory Motel,” a classic that only gained popular traction with the duet with Dave Matthews on a live album years later. But “Fool to Cry,” the album’s single? I never got that. And it was a big risk to slow the show down and do this number with falsetto. But the Stones are always about big risks. And Jagger pulled it off. Which is hard in a room this big.

“Monkey Man” didn’t have Nicky Hopkins’s piano, but it had energy nonetheless.

But the surprise I was warned about by Pierre. You see Keith gave up smoking two years ago and his voice has improved, he told me I’d hear it in the performance. I was positively stunned. The frog of yesteryear was replaced with a smooth voice with range. “You Got the Silver,” played acoustically with Ronnie Wood, was a revelation, in that Keith sang it effortlessly, as he did thereafter with “Little T & A” and “Before They Make Me Run.”

Oh, before that they did “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in a slowed-down manner. Which emphasized the lyrics, Jagger was fantastic singing about the Chelsea Drugstore, the words were clear and meaningful, but the budding freight train of the recording was nowhere to be found.

Then again, Pierre told me Keith had to keep it interesting for himself. To especially notice Keith’s guitar work on “Satisfaction,” he played it a bit different from the record, he had to keep himself inspired.

And that was another interesting thing. Although there’s a ton of money involved, the show didn’t have the feel of a dash for cash. It was like there was nowhere these cats would rather be, this is what they do, it wasn’t about brand extensions, but the music, the camaraderie, the power of a band.

In truth, the show wasn’t as together in the late middle, but then the powerhouse closers built to the point where there was no doubt that this was the Rolling Stones. Especially “Gimmie Shelter,” whose gravitas and danger is hard to replicate live. But Chanel Haynes channeled her inner Tina to deliver a knife to the heart that was different from Merry Clayton’s, but powerful, and extended. When she and Mick duetted…you realized no one else could pull this off.

But generally speaking there was no danger. That’s gone. The bad boys of yore…are bad no longer.

I didn’t see a tattoo in evidence. The Stones were comfortable in their own bodies. They weren’t competing with anybody else. In fact, music has moved on, but they have stayed the same, which makes the experience more meaningful, and more powerful.

Not that there was not humor. Mick didn’t speak much, but when he talked about getting to the venue…how he was going to take the 405, but ended up going the 101 to the 5 to the 10 and it took him two and a half hours…everybody in attendance knew exactly what he was talking about.

Now your mother was warned not to let you date a Rolling Stone. Then they were doing drugs in a basement in France. The band was dark. And dirty. And led a jet set lifestyle when many Americans hadn’t even flown.

But everybody flies today. Look at the shorts and flip-flops on the plane.

And you’ve got billionaires flaunting their wealth. If you don’t have a private plane, you’re nearly laughable, certainly not a member of the club.

And all the musicians are sucking up to those with money, trying to revel in the largesse.

And there are these acts that play stadiums, but their reach is nothing compared to the Stones. How many shows can you go to and know every song (other than maybe from the new album, but that’s just the point, nothing today has the ubiquity of yore).

Rap recovered the danger of rock, but ultimately that became a cartoon. And how many people want to get shot and go to jail anyway? It’s one thing to do drugs, it’s quite another to fear for your life.

But in truth, no one can be dangerous anymore because the wall between the public and the performer has been torn down. We know everything about you, mystery is history. That paradigm is kaput. Which is why someone like Noah Kahan can triumph, revealing and owning his inner failings…Noah ends up relatable, whereas Mick and Keith never were.

And how much longer are Mick and Keith going to do this?

Until they can’t anymore.

When is the last tour? It’ll be like Rod Argent of the Zombies, who just had a stroke and retired from the road, we won’t foresee it. The Stones are the bridge between the Delta Blues and today, and those bluesmen kept on picking until they passed.

But not to audiences as big as the Stones.

All these years later, the recordings are just a framework. It’s all about the show. And I could tell you there’s nothing to see here, that it’s all been done before, that if you went to a Stones show in the past you don’t have to go again, but I’d be lying.

There was not a single person in SoFi who could complain they didn’t get their money’s worth. They came to see the Stones and they got more.

Sure, there were hi-def screens, but one could argue the production hasn’t meant less in decades. It was really about the band. The Stones were not winning you over with dance routines and pyrotechnics, but solely the music. They were playing. Sure, they might have been in a football stadium, but the roots were in the club. Where it’s more about energy than sound. Where you feel a part of the performance.

What the Stones are delivering you can’t get anywhere else. No one else is flying without a net. No one else is doing what they’ve always did. Jagger still has his voice, astoundingly. Ronnie does not replicate the solos from the albums. And Keith…well, he’s Keith, the smiling pirate who faced down the devil and won.

This is rock and roll.

Try sometime, you just mind find…

You get what you need.

Tune in Saturday July 13th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

https://t.ly/lBaRk

1

This is a really good TV show.

But it’s on BritBox.

I know, I know, you’re sick of having to subscribe to another streaming platform, and I am too, but I was running out of blue chip shows.

As you know, I won’t watch week to week. Therefore I won’t pay for Apple TV+. And the interesting thing is when the series ends, I usually don’t go back and sign up to watch it straight through. I noticed this happening with movies a few years back. I’d make a notation to stream it when it came to television, but when it was finally available, I just couldn’t create the inner oomph to partake. And my point here is never, NEVER hold back anything from the audience today. You might think you’re winning, you might think you’re building water cooler buzz, but the joke is on you. If you don’t make something readily available, the masses will just move right past it, you’ll miss the target and not even know it.

Kinda like the Hawk Tuah girl. Are we going to be talking about her a year from now? Three months from now? Strike when the iron is hot. You think everybody is paying attention, everybody is hungry for your product, when in truth most people are just shrugging if they are even aware of it.

But there are a limited number of good series out there.

This is what purveyors will never acknowledge. That most of what they’re selling is mediocre, in a world of plenty. And if someone finds something good, they’ll tell everybody they know about it. And oftentimes it’s the left field that even the purveyor did not see as a hit that succeeds. Like “Squid Game.” And “Tiger King.” (Forget the backlash against the latter, the bottom line is these people were so whacked, you couldn’t stop watching them.)

As for “Blue Lights”…

It’s a BBC production, so if you live in the U.K. you’re probably aware of it.

And if you’re in some country other than the U.S. it might be available on a service you’re already paying for, channels are different in Canada, and Australia, and…

But in the U.S. you have to pay extra for it. Which even though it’s de minimis, $8.99 for two seasons, twelve one hour episodes, a deal when you compare it to going to a two hour movie, it’s hard to get people over the transom, so I don’t expect “Blue Lights” to be the talk of America.

Then again, how much do people know about Belfast? The Troubles?

I’ve been there. Pretty amazing.

But “Blue Lights” is set in the present. And it’s all about emergency services patrolling the landscape, trying to put out fires, both metaphorical and physical. Where half the people hate the peelers. (They’re called that after Sir Robert Peel, who formed the first modern police force in London in 1829, and that’s also why cops in Britain are called “Bobbies,” get it?)

There are certain areas where the peelers are afraid to go. The residents don’t need no stinkin’ police people, they’re the enemy, and not only will they not cooperate, they’ll fight back, with sticks and stones and bones might be broken.

2

I know, I know, you’ve seen enough cop shows. And I must say, “Blue Lights” is not a revelation. And it is not as good as “Spiral,” the pinnacle of the genre, but compared to what’s on American television, what the algorithm serves up, it’s far superior.

You see you’ve got peelers on probation. Are they going to make it? Are they going to stay on the street or move higher up?

And all policing is about compromise, bending the rules. To what degree do you go along to get along and to what degree do you stand your ground?

And this isn’t the weathered male police force of 1970s New York. Half of the peelers are women. Can women and men work alongside each other with no sexual tension? That’s a question that’s asked here.

And so many underlying issues. What’s it like to be biracial where everybody is not? Can you lift up a community or is it basically Chinatown? Should you take the law into your own hands? Does it always come down to intimidation and raw force?

All these questions and more are asked.

You can watch the typical TV fare, but if you want something deeper, I recommend “Blue Lights.”

And now that I’m paying for BritBox for a month, I’m looking for another show on the channel.