My favorite promoter is Don Strasburg.  He doesn’t care about the label, none of the traditional metrics L.A. insiders triangulate, he’s into artist development, the desire of people to see a band and the increase that results.  If you want to know who’s up and coming, or who is not truly dead, get ahold of Strasburg, like a great music exec he doesn’t have to think about the answers to these questions, his instincts, based on years of promoting shows, from his days at Colorado College forward, allow him to give an instant answer.  It’s a classic example of Malcolm Gladwell’s "Blink".  A true expert knows the answer right away, his training delivers the goods.

Which is one of the problems at major labels.  The training the executives have gotten there no longer squares with a changed music landscape, where record sales are a diminished part of the equation, and oftentimes don’t generate significant touring and merch revenues.  I’m speaking of the thirty and fortysomething execs, not the baby boomers who lived through the days of the Beatles, Zeppelin and Boston, the killing of rock by disco.  Rather those who believe U2’s "Joshua Tree" is the best album ever.  Who were addicted to MTV, but had favorite acts before the channel ever launched.

I can hang with the promoters of yore.  Too many are into the business deal, what is the gross.  Same deal with the agents.  Kind of like this article about the declining revenues at residency shows in Vegas:

No Gans, Celine or Elton — What Next, Las Vegas?

It’s an interesting debate, a discussion, supply and demand, ticket prices, economics…but it’s got very little to do with music.

One can go back to the early heyday of the Fillmores and say people went for the scene, but even though one wanted to be there, at the happening, the focus in the late sixties, especially the seventies, was on the music. That’s what I remember about going to a show.  I wanted to hear the SONGS!  I did not go to meet girls, I didn’t need a friend to accompany me to attend.  The concept of sitting in the dark listening to those songs I played in my living room positively thrilled me.  That’s what I believe the concert experience is.  But speaking with Strasburg, I wonder if the younger generation feels the same way.

Don says the youngsters are all about the good time.  Sure, the music is part of the attraction, but it’s about the hang.  Let me go to the show and connect, with the known and unknown.

You can expand this concept.  Top Forty music is not about the music, it’s not about sitting on the floor with the album cover and digesting the tracks.  Rather it’s about spinning the cuts at the club, they’re the grease that helps you get laid.  So are young ‘uns even looking for the same experience baby boomers cherished?

The younger generation’s got Facebook, they’re IM’ing and texting all the time.  Each kid in town knows every other kid, even if he or she goes to a completely different school.  It’s about a gang, a tribe of people all going to a location to hang.  Have things changed so much that whatever we had before was lost?

Think about the absence of chairs in venues.  You never stood at the show in the sixties, nor during most of the seventies either.  The Whisky had a pit right in front of the stage, but the rest of the club was filled with seats.  You sat down, maybe had a drink, and paid attention.  It was about the music, not rubbing shoulders with wannabe partners.

People might stand for the encore at the arena, at other hard seat venues, but mostly there was a respect for the sound.  A show wasn’t an extravaganza, unless that’s what the act was truly purveying.  Alice Cooper was all about theatre, but the other acts didn’t compete on this level.  If you went to see Clapton, the music was enough, no one expected anything more.  Now, big acts are afraid to tour without all the production, they believe the audience EXPECTS IT!

Two weeks ago, I saw the band O.A.R.  My friend Steve laughed when the singer said the next track was from their "new album".  Does anybody give a shit about the album anymore?  Does anybody give a shit about any of the tunes the band is playing, or is it more about being there, the vibe?

I don’t think O.A.R. could write a hit track, not even if Diane Warren and Desmond Child were locked up in the same room with them.  But it doesn’t make any difference, that’s not what they’re selling.

O.A.R. is selling tickets.

And Don Strasburg says tickets sales for younger acts are based on the experience on the other side of the stage, the good times not of the players, but the attendees.  This seems backwards to me.  I’ve gone to shows that have been one tenth full, but some were the best gigs I ever attended.  Could a youngster have the same experience today?  Is that experience even on his radar?

I write all this to illustrate the generation gap.  The classic acts are selling the tunes, but unfortunately, they haven’t written a good one in decades.  It’s all nostalgia, which is creepy.  Did you go see your parents’ acts in the sixties? Absolutely not.  So the electricity of a show, the feeling of a happening, is completely absent.

The younger acts are either chasing the elusive, little dividend paying Top Forty hit, or are selling the experience. So when you listen to the favorites of the jam bands and the alternative rockers and don’t hear anything resembling a hit song, you’re usually right.  It’s about the vibe, the attitude, the culture more than the song, the verse, chorus and riff.  We’ve got scenes, but few superstars.  Not only do we have no Cat Stevens, we’ve got no one resembling Peter Frampton.  Who could not only rock, and play, but sing songs that were catchy, that stuck to your bones AND your brain.

The industry can either lead or follow.  We can deliver what the audience expects, or reeducate people.  But you’re not going to get a lot of sympathy from the usual suspects.  The labels want something they can sell, instantly.  And the promoters want something that will sell tickets, instantly.  Used to be the label bought out clubs, provided tour support to get acts started, but that’s when FM radio play was key and you could break rather quickly on the combined effects of touring and airplay.  Now, developing an act takes incredible time.

So, O.A.R. is on the road for a decade, and no one over forty cares.

And major labels hype Top Forty wonders and no one over twenty five cares, and almost no one wants to see these "performers" live.

Oh, what a sad sad state we’re in.

That’s what Tommy Mottola did so well, following in the steps of legendary, antiquated, Clive Davis.  He created an IMAGE!  You didn’t sell who the person actually was, but who the audience wanted them to be!

Everyone was aspirational.  If only you could party with Mariah…  You had no idea she was a junk food junkie in real life, hell, you had no idea who she was, other than the girl with the voice prancing in the videos.

This Susan Boyle story is amazing.  A prepackaged video is released by Simon Cowell, fanning the flames of her obscurity to ubiquity story.  Unfortunately, it’s not true.  She’s been trying to make it for eons.  New videos keep surfacing of the way she was…

That’s today’s clip, Susan’s rendition of "The Way We Were". You’ll be stunned, she’s thin, almost fuckable.  As for her vocals?

Not quite as good as her version of "Cry Me A River" from 1999.

Nor as good as her take on "Killing Me Softly".

We can analyze the impact on the Susan Boyle juggernaut, but more interesting is the impact on those with more talent, who are not beneficiaries of train-wreck publicity/hysteria.

If you’re trying to remake someone, trying to project a perfect image, not long after you release your finished product, Awful Plastic Surgery will post the before pictures.  And then TMZ and Perez will pick up on them and spread them (hell, I found out about the "Way We Were" video on Mario Lavendeira’s site…he reaches the target demo, those interested in music, possibly better than ANYBODY!)

Eventually, your complete resume will end up online.

Not only where you went to school, but your summer camp pictures, videos of you in the talent show…  Your old love will unload your story on Facebook…

That’s the price for playing in the public eye.

But it’s even worse.  That’s the price for being a PERSON these days.  Unless you’re willing to live in a dark closet alone, your life is public property.  The only question is, does anybody other than a small circle of friends care?

Get injections for Trout Pout, word is on the street almost immediately.

Fuck up in concert because you can’t really sing and a homemade video revealing your screw-ups will be online the next day.  Have you been following the Britney mistakes?  She may be trying to rehabilitate her image in the straight press, but anybody who follows her online knows she’s looney-tunes.

Madonna falls off a horse and blames it on the paparazzi?

Truth outs.  Photographers were nowhere near the accident.

This is a SEA CHANGE in publicity/image-making.  In other words, you can no longer spin the public.  You can have friends in the press, but didn’t you hear that newspapers are dying?

So you have to ask yourself what you’re selling, and focus on THAT!

In the music world, we focus on music.  On one hand that sounds simple, on another REVOLUTIONARY!  Because it hasn’t been about music in oh-so-long, certainly not in the mainstream.

Looking good has just gotten demoted.

If you’re a product of handlers, the truth will out.  If you can’t sing a note and are auto-tuned, if you have ghost writers, you’d better be proud of this, because the public is going to know the truth soon.

So reveal the truth first.  It’s not about holding back, but delivering more info.  If you reveal all your warts on your site, people will soon ignore them, will stop playing a game of Gotcha! and focus on what you’re truly selling. Rather than holding information back, publicity reps need to focus on getting info OUT!

Susan Boyle’s publicity is mega, but those truly interested, outside of Britain, are a niche at best.

This week, the number one album is by Rick Ross, it sold a grand total of 157,544 copies.  Pretty stinky in a nation of 300 million.

But let me speak a language you’ll understand.  The vaunted Miley Cyrus?  The soundtrack of her supposed hit movie?  After five weeks in release, it’s got a cume of 658,835, and the movie’s already slipped to number 8, on its way to oblivion.

So all that publicity, it doesn’t deliver the success of yore.  There are no diamond sellers like in the nineties.  We all take a peek at the train-wreck, most of us move on.  Those that last have substance, they’re not creatures of some marketer’s dream.

We live in a changed world.

This is significant, on both sides of the equation.

1. Coran finally gets another hit act, it’s no longer DMB and the wannabes at Red Light.
2. A rock manager finally gets a big country act.

You might shit upon country, but that’s where the action is.  They’re singing songs.  Can you call that crap on Top Forty songs?  I’d call them RECORDS!  There are few melodies and too many drum machines.  Those cuts are made for bumping and grinding.  Country music is made for listening.

I’m with that "Newsweek" reporter, who marveled at all the references to kids

Murder On Music Row

Country used to have an edge.  My buddy Pete Anderson would love to bring it back.  But I’m thinking we’ve just got to move the needle a little bit, and suddenly we’ve got the rock business we used to have, the one that triumphed in the seventies.

Kenny Chesney may already be the number one American touring act.  But his last album stiffed.  We can argue all day long about its contents, but more interestingly, radio is no longer the country driver it used to be.  Country listeners have iPods, SiriusXM, online stations.  Are they really going to sit through all those fucking commercials on the terrestrial band?

I say no.

So this unshackles country music from its traditional backbone.  Suddenly, all those Music Row maestros become less powerful.  It was about playing ball with the majordomos, who controlled the gatekeepers.  But if the gatekeepers are declining in power, concomitantly, the labels mean less.  But there’s still a demand for country music.  Where is the audience going to go, RAP?

And with the decline of radio, there can be a broadening of the format.  Not every track has to be family-based with Christian values, suddenly, the field is more wide open.

But too many of the old players are stewed in their old juices, beholden to the old names and games.  But Coran Capshaw is not.

Coran knows infrastructure.  Not only did he build the Dave Matthews Band, he built MusicToday.  He’s got ATO.  He knows every aspect of the business inside and out.  And the business is now playing into his hand.  It’s about YOUR team, not influencing intermediaries.  It’s a direct connection between you and your fans.  The DMB does this best.  To have Coran and his team supervise fan ticket sales, ticket club doings for Tim, is a great step forward.  It’s not only direction with Coran, Red Light gets down in the pit and moves the ball.

But Coran’s never had another success.  He inherited Phish, but all the other acts he’s got with a name are has-beens.  Can Coran leverage Tim McGraw to a wider berth?

It’s all about touring.  Tim’s a superstar.  The old boy network is gone.  Suddenly, Nashville goes from backwater to mainstream (even though headquartered in Charlottesville!)  If they just took off the cowboy hats and lost the banjos they’d be closer to Lynyrd Skynyrd than Dolly Parton or George Jones.  When are the country acts going to go after their rightful audience, boomers who lived through the seventies and younger people who want melody!

Miranda Lambert’s "Gunpowder & Lead" is a better rock track than anything by the Hold Steady or TV On The Radio.

Keith Urban can play the guitar better than anybody in Nickelback.

Taylor Swift may be young, but she’s a better singer-songwriter than all those twentysomething waifs north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The future is in country, or something quite like it.

It’s not the final resting place for has-beens like Bon Jovi or wannabes like Jessica Simpson, but a phoenix ready to rise if it’s taken seriously, adds a bit of true cred, emphasizes electric guitars and is willing to have an edge.

Kid Rock figured it all out.

And now Coran’s got skin in the game.

It’ll be fun to watch!

U2 put out a single no one liked.  Radio rejected it, and so did casual listeners.  Only a small coterie of fans thought it was good.  What was the point?

U2 had an impression that we still live in a monoculture, that everybody’s paying attention to the game.  I GET IT!  You want to do something left field, so you can’t be pigeonholed.  You want to be known for risk-taking.  But who’s paying attention?

Very few.  I know you hate to admit this.  But EVERYBODY’S a niche today.  There are no mass cultural events other than the Super Bowl.  Citizens might like to go to Coachella or Bonnaroo, but most people are just fine missing them.  No one’s lying about attending the first Coachella, most people don’t even know what year it took place.

As for radio and the conventional "Billboard" chart…  You saw that nonexistent lineup for the Rick Ross signing.  Hysteria exists at most in the hearts of your fans, just play to your fans!

I played the new Dave Matthews Band album, "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King".  I won’t say I hated it, but I found it torture to listen to.  It sounded like Dave Matthews, it had all the elements except memorable material.

Then I hit track 7, "Spaceman", and every cut thereafter was really good.

Huh?

Who did the sequencing?  Who picked the single?

A non-fan who hears "Funny The Way", the track they’re promoting, is going to laugh.  Because it’s everything they hate about the DMB, there’s no risk.  But there’s risk in "Squirm", cut 8, and unlike "Get On Your Boots", it’s not bad.  Someone not enamored of the DMB could hear it and be drawn in.

In other words, what’s the purpose of the single?  To deliver something radio will play that won’t move the public?  Top Forty is for tracks, not credible, career artists.  So, you deliver something "in-your-face", obvious, radio doesn’t play it anyway and everybody but the hard core ignores it.

And if it’s truly about the hard core, how about the cut that’s going to reach them most, the one that will penetrate them and cement their belief?

"Alligator Pie (Cockadile)", cut 8, starts off like the soundtrack of "Deliverance", it’s got no place on terrestrial radio, but it gets your toe tapping more than "Funny The Way".

"Seven", ironically cut 10, has got a lick straight off of "Exile On Main Street".  It twists in between repetition of this riff, but the cut’s got a creativity closer to the Stones opus, something from side 3, than what’s conventionally aired on the radio.  "Seven" is what you play when you’re tanked up and raging, whether in the frat house in the early morning hours or at the gig.

"Time Bomb" has got that magical "Dreaming Tree" quality, like it was cut by a folkie living in a hut deep in the northern territories of Canada.  This is the kind of music that made me a DMB fan.

The quiet feel is replicated in the following, incredibly intimate, "Baby Blue".

In other words, the tracks hitting the conventional DMB notes rubbed me the wrong way.  I know that sound, when the band fires on all cylinders and the crowd erupts.  But that’s about party, fandom comes from the cuts that you play alone, in the middle of the night.

I realize DMB still has a major label contract.

But I think this album should have been an EP.  Four, maybe five tracks at most.  It would have been more digestible.  And I would have focused on the music that REACHES people.  The classic albums oftentimes weren’t successful out of the box, it was only when the collective universe all found out they were listening and united that the anointment took place.

I advocate releasing YOUR BEST track in advance.  Not the one that’s most workable in the media.  Are DMB fans paying attention to mainstream media?

Bono is playing to the grandstand, he needs worldly acclaim.

Dave Matthews is more humble, more understated, and it’s when he makes music befitting his identity that he’s most successful.