Myself included.

This may seem obvious, but it’s a big change from even a few years ago. You see there’s so much in the pipeline, so much more happening.

And why is this important? Because people proffer themselves as experts and you listen to them 24/7.

Let’s talk about the jam band scene. Unless you’re in it, you don’t know about it. Are you familiar with the music of Goose? Have you even heard of the band? They’re the hottest new/burgeoning act in the jam band scene, but you won’t see them in the Spotify Top 50, none of the places where you traditionally went to find out what was happening.

Hitsdailydouble is radio-focused. Mostly stuff on major labels who will pay them to promote it. If you don’t fit that niche, and everything is a niche these days, you’re unaware.

But if you subscribe to “Relix,” and go to a few festivals, have friends in the scene, listen to SiriusXM’s Jam On, you know.

How do I know? Promoters. Promoters are the best source of information when it comes to what is truly happening these days. If you can sell tickets, that means you’ve got a fan base. And many acts with a fan base are rarely, if ever, featured in mainstream media.

And then there’s hip-hop. Listen to the end of my podcast with Joe Coscarelli. There’s a hip-hop scene in Milwaukee now, one in central California. I had no idea until he told me. Turns out that rappers are like the rockers of yore, but instead of playing clubs in their hometown, they’re in their bedrooms leasing beats, rapping over them, and putting them online.

As for online… Forget YouTube and TikTok, 60,000+ tracks are added to Spotify each and every day. Most of them are worthless, but not all of them. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Playlists might help, but they’re not the definitive statement.

And then there’s radio. Stations and high paid label promotion people will tell you how important it is in moving the needle, and then you can’t find someone who listens to terrestrial stations.

Yes, there’s disinformation along with misinformation.

What does this mean?

Trust yourself. Trust your experience. Forge your own path.

Zach Bryan is totally indie and then the biggest new act, certainly the biggest new act in country music. I wrote about him and I heard from many people who consider themselves clued-in who’d never heard of him, never mind listened to his music.

Rufus Du Soul plays the Hollywood Bowl? Once again, most people have never heard of the act.

You can be doing quite well and be relatively unknown, this is not the way it used to be.

In the pre-internet era, a pro in the music business knew every record. They may not have heard it, but they at least knew the backstory, what it sounded like. Today records go top ten that they’re completely unfamiliar with.

I could expand this into politics, and I will for a minute. He who speaks loudest, and it’s usually a he, is believed most, irrelevant of the veracity of their words. Institutions are not trusted. And if you confront the delusional with the facts, they won’t cop to the truth, no way. And believe me, politics is much more important than music.

Oftentimes a #1 position is manipulated. A show listed as sold out was in a scaled-down venue. So you not only need to know the landscape, but the tricks!

Never ever has music been more ripe for disruption than now. Everything’s on the table, there are almost no rules. And the pros oftentimes are as ignorant as the hoi polloi.

Music is a game of creativity. If you’re imitating others, you’ve already sacrificed. But if you follow your own muse and gain an audience, you can be successful, just don’t expect anybody but your fans to acknowledge this.

I won’t say no one knows anything, but no one knows everything. So take everything the self-appointed poohbahs say with a grain of salt. Check their qualifications. And if they start weighing in on everything…either their knowledge is very thin in many areas, or they’re lying outright.

The music business is one of intimidation. Everybody is a bully. They want to convince you you’re wrong and can’t make it. Don’t listen to them.

But don’t complain when you get no recognition either. Either what you’re doing is working or it’s not. It’s in your hands. If you’ve got no traction there’s something wrong with your music, your plan, your marketing, your social media campaign.

You start from scratch. And you build it from there. And if you’re young and plugged in chances are you’re more hip than the established players, who don’t want their vision clouded.

Kids were hip to TikTok way before the labels, the entire music industry. They pooh-poohed the progenitor, Musical.ly, and thought it was history when it rolled into what became TikTok and they couldn’t have been more wrong.

It’s chaos out there and you’ve got to establish your own roadmap.

There are experts. But you’ve got find them and test their knowledge to qualify them.

Instead of thinking there are fewer avenues of success, fewer successful genres, think just the opposite. There’s room for everybody today. And there’s room to change hearts and minds and make fans.

Once again, it’s not top-down, but bottom-up.

And many times those at the bottom are more in touch with the landscape than those at the top.

Don’t doubt yourself. Go forward.

But be prepared to slog hard.

And to learn.

“The Hard Way”: https://www.johnwaitefilm.com

Now that was depressing.

We believed in the dream…

But now the dream is over.

I own a a Babys album. It was always hard to believe in a group with that name, but “Isn’t It Time” is magical. To hear how that track came to be is disillusioning.

I normally don’t watch this stuff. It’s hagiography on a budget. Look that word up, you’ll think of it whenever you see these career retrospectives, even of legends. It’s all positive, it’s all up, up, up! Or if there is, god forbid, a down, there’s a renaissance, to a height just as high as ever.

What B.S.

But Solters told me this movie was different, that John was being honest. And since it’s Larry…

I gave it a chance.

Messed me up.

You see we believed in the rock and roll dream. It started in the sixties, with the Beatles. It was an alternative universe, a clean break from our parents’ generation. If you made it, you were as rich as anybody in the world, but lived by your own rules. We may not have reached that destination, but the fact others did made our lives complete. Yes, there was an alternative path.

And then I see a nearly seventy year old John Waite with long hair and a young blonde girlfriend with big boobs and I ask myself… Is this 1982 or 2022?

Ron Nevison cut his hair. He’s decided to own his age. But he’s a behind the scenes guy.

Richard Marx came later, his hair was never that long, and he looks up to date here, but when he talks about butchering the song he’s going to play live with Waite… I winced. Believe me, if it was gonna be that bad they wouldn’t have performed it. Meet a famous musician and you’ll find someone reluctant, worried about how they look, how they sound, their image.

But it’s all irrelevant in the age of social media. Artifice no longer works. Unless you take the Angelyne route and it’s only pictures and not only no voice, but no story. She may have been an enigma, but no one in the public eye is today.

But really, the change happened long ago.

You see in the sixties having long hair was a statement. And then the Allman Brothers, never mind the San Francisco acts before them, started to wear their street clothes on stage, illustrating the music was everything. But then the eighties came along and MTV burgeoned and the boys were wearing spandex, stage outfits, your look was important, and then Nirvana came along and killed that paradigm, with Pearl Jam rushing through the sieve, but while we rockers thought the music was on the way up, in truth hip-hop came along to crush it.

You see we’ve got perspective.

The 27 club, all those artists who died early. They’re frozen in time, they never aged. But getting old happens to the best of us, and it’s then you realize we’re all equal.

Oh, there are the billionaires, but even though they profess to love Springsteen and other acts, they’re not part of the club, no way. Steve Jobs was, he idolized Bob Dylan, he pushed the envelope, but the rest were nerd techies. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that it wasn’t and still isn’t rock and roll.

And today calling yourself a “nerd” is a badge of honor. Yeah, if these people ever encountered the nerds of old, out of step with no friends, pariahs, they wouldn’t embrace that moniker. Go on TikTok, see all the beautiful women claiming to be nerds, don’t believe it, you still can’t get laid.

We believed in the music because we certainly weren’t having any sex.

You see the rock and roll hard core, the true believers, were outsiders. They didn’t fit in anywhere else. Everything everybody else wanted, we did not. We didn’t want a house and a wife and a job and some kids, our number one desire was TO GET THE HELL OUT OF TOWN! To go somewhere where like-minded people lived, like Los Angeles.

Now there are like-minded people everywhere. And you can find them online, pretty quickly. But your club, no matter what brings you together, will never have the penetration and impact of John Waite. That’s what one MTV hit could do for you, make you a worldwide icon. He couldn’t leave the house, he employed a bodyguard.

But if you saw him in the grocery store today, you wouldn’t give a second look, you wouldn’t recognize him. Unless, maybe he was wearing rock and roll clothing, which makes you stand out, but you’re a period piece.

John Waite didn’t fit in. All those people working at Goldman Sachs and Apollo? THEY SPECIALIZE IN FITTING IN! How else can you do well enough in high school to get into Harvard? Believe me, a C average and 500s on your SATs doesn’t get you into Harvard, no matter who your daddy is.

But the rockers had no safety net. They journeyed into the wilderness.

And most didn’t make it.

And just like Maynard G. Krebs stuck on the island, instead of beatniks today we have rockers in skinny black jeans and leather jackets, who think they’re still cool not realizing we’re laughing at them behind their backs, I mean GROW UP!

Just as bad is the male rockers who dye their hair and get plastic surgery. We know how old you are, you’re asking us to suspend disbelief, why? The songs are ageless, but not you. Your music used to mean something, but now your identity is turning it into a joke, you’re not credible, no way, and back then credibility was EVERYTHING!

So come on, what is John Waite’s image? Pretty boy with a pretty voice, someone who gets along, a minor figure in rock and roll.

But that is not who he turns out to be. First and foremost, HE’S DIFFICULT! His girlfriend says he’s got no friends. This is a guy who prays at the altar of rock and roll and still believes, even though that paradigm is dead. He’s still making albums, I don’t know who is paying for them, but I didn’t even know they came out. He’s got a fan base that hangs on every word, buys every product, but that base is very small. I’ll make it simple, if you see an old rocker working a day job that means their career was not successful enough to sustain, because believe me, they’d rather be playing music.

And not only is Waite edgy, he’s honest. He takes down Bob Ezrin, even calls him a See You Next Tuesday (think about it, it comes from “Sex and the City.”)

And Ron Nevison… Wow, he admits he was working for the record company. If you think people are on your side, you’re gonna find out they’re not. But all these years later, you’re glad you had a hit. And John undercuts Ron’s story. John ultimately gains the upper hand by saying if Nevison was so bad, why’d he use him for the next album?

And keeping a band together is nearly impossible. John gets into a fistfight with the Babys’ guitarist, and then they’ve got to kick the player out of the band. Look at Michael Corby’s Wikipedia page, he’s never done anything significant in music since. But at least he’s still alive, whereas many squeezed out in the game of musical chairs are not, having drunk or drugged their way into oblivion.

And the Babys make all those albums for Chrysalis, they had million sellers, hits! And how much is John Waite making? $200 a week. When it’s all over, he’s got $6000. And he had to cough up his publishing to keep the band alive.

Credit Ron Stone. Who sees something and puts the pedal to the metal and breaks the Babys, after the original manager, Adrian Millar, falls by the wayside after demanding the band return from the U.S. as a pawn in his battle with Chrysalis, and they don’t. Stone spent $600,000 breaking the Babys, and it was all charged back to the band by the record company, as were the videos, the act has never gotten out of the red, been paid royalties, TO THIS DAY!

Yes, this is the old major label game the wannabes of today are lamenting is dead. There’s an illusion that if you got signed you were rich. But this movie delineates that you could be successful and still be nearly broke!

And Bad English is completely skipped over, other than the music. Maybe Waite feels the same way I do about the band, corporate rock, a band built in a boardroom, not out in the street. Like Audioslave. Good musicians in their original bands, but together it was ersatz.

Of course there are those who believe in both of those acts. And that’s just an illustration of the way it used to be, that core belief in the act by the fans.

But most fans never ever get to meet their heroes. If they did, they’d know a well-adjusted musician who is insightful, conversational and good to hang with barely exists. At least the stars. They sacrificed everything to make it, and that takes a special kind of person and it changes you. John Waite may have rough edges, but without them, without the desire to do it his way, Ron Stone says Waite never would have made it.

So you remember the eighties, right? The MTV era? When Reagan legitimized greed, baby boomers sold out and the bands were bigger than ever before? Their music reached EVERYBODY! And there’s that Don Henley story about being way off the grid, encountering native people and one points at him and says HOTEL CALIFORNIA!

That’s the reach of music. Very few acts are that ubiquitous, but those acts from the eighties… Come on, we all know the Culture Club hits, never mind those by the Police and Genesis, they were EVERYWHERE!

Nothing is everywhere anymore. Oh, you might see mainstream stories and ads, but the penetration is a fraction of those acts and songs from the pre-internet era. You couldn’t escape “Missing You.” This week’s number one on Spotify is Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s “Unholy.” I bet most people reading this have never even heard it. The industry is lauding this major success, and it hasn’t reached a fraction of the people that Herman’s Hermits did.

And the system is codified and calcified. The media that no one reads or sees and doesn’t care that they don’t. The network TV appearances that have about as much impact as broadcasting on social media from your basement, maybe even less. If you’re expecting the system to do something new, you don’t know the main goal of the system is to maintain its power. It’s about pushing down competitors, not changing in the wake of their success.

Everybody’s indie these days. There are a zillion musical genres and a zillion acts and almost all of the players are working, hard, for a living. Which is why if you want to be rich and famous, you get into branding, you sell out, you whore yourself out to Madison Avenue, Wall Street… How about all those celebrities who hawked crypto? They got paid, their fans went broke, there is no credibility. And what does this have to do with music? NOTHING!

And let’s be clear, John Waite is about the music.

He’s not first generation, he was inspired by the Beatles, just like me, just like so many of us. He drank the kool-aid and actually made it. Most did not. But he’s never ever going to have another hit. Kudos for still making new music, most of his contemporaries have given up.

And then he cries over his duet with Alison Krauss. I’ve never even heard their duet of “Missing You,” or if I have I’ve forgotten it. But to Waite, this is evidence he still counts, is still a musician, is still in the game.

You’ve got to give John Waite huge props for making this documentary. No one else has ever been this honest. And sure, he’s got some excuses, like the record company going out of business, but he’s got insight into that, he says EVERYBODY HAS GOT EXCUSES! Talk to an act that had a stiff record on a major label, they never say it wasn’t good enough, that it wasn’t in the grooves, they always blame somebody else.

But at least there was a line of demarcation between amateurs and professionals. Today, everybody plays.

And YouTube covers of “Missing You” are included and what went through my head most was REMEMBER WHEN THIS WAS A THING? People would e-mail me the work of their kids, or maybe something they stumbled on, wasn’t I impressed, wouldn’t I help spread the word? Now everybody knows these videos mean nothing. And to get any traction at all requires a ton more work, and probably the ability to write hits to begin with. The song, it does come down to the song, which is why Diane Warren, who wrote the big Bad English hit, is not only richer than everybody in this movie, but many people who are household name stars.

And just when you’re wincing, at the end, John is up on stage singing.

And suddenly, instantly, you’re brought back to then, when, that’s how powerful the songs were and still are. They were part of the fabric of our youth, our young adulthood. We didn’t talk about websites, we talked about records. We’d play music and do nothing else! Almost nobody does that these days, but that’s testimony to how powerful the sound was and how little else there was to do!

If you’re on your way up, if you’ve got the dream of becoming a musical star, YOU MUST WATCH THIS MOVIE! Because this is the truth. It’s disillusioning, and John Waite had more success than everybody but a special few. He dedicated his life to rock and roll. You want to see the whole arc, where he’s been, where he is now. It busted up his marriage and didn’t make him rich. Are you willing to forgo everything to have what he’s got?

I highly doubt it.

People don’t want to work that hard. And they’re not willing to give up much.

But once upon a time, so many did. No one talked about trying to make it for a year or two and then going to graduate school. No, most of the acts didn’t go to college, or didn’t graduate. They lived on their talent, wits and raw desire. But also you could live on little back then, today so many are scrambling just to put a roof over their head.

So ultimately, “The Hard Way” is less about John Waite and more about us. We get to see the man behind the curtain, we get to see how it all went down, and you never want to see how the magician does their trick, you think you do, but you really don’t. You just want to believe in the magic.

I miss it.

But it’s gone away.

I can’t bridge the distance, it’s heartbreak overload.

But it’s my life.

And it’s probably yours.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

Tune in tomorrow, Saturday October 22nd, 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

It’s all about your core audience.

I know you’ve heard this a zillion times, all that stuff about a thousand true fans, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Sure, first and foremost you need a fan base, but once you have one, IGNORE THE EXTERNAL, IT’S A WASTE OF TIME!

I know, you’re sitting at home wondering how you can be bigger, how your act can break. Maybe you hire a big PR agent, maybe you spam writers, maybe you hire an independent radio promo person, the key is to spread the word. NO!

I’m not saying radio airplay is worthless, but how many people are still listening to terrestrial radio? Only the most passive and laid back. Not the people who work at the station, they’re still passionate, but the old days of the active radio listener are history.

And playlisting… That doesn’t work either. Even if you get on the playlist, unless someone saves the track, Spotify doesn’t boost you, it drops you. And people skip and instead of getting frustrated, adjust your perspective.

Just satiate the core.

And the core always wants more.

Stay in contact, deliver on a regular basis, AND KNOW WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE!

It’s all about the data today, but the record labels are far behind. I’d fire most of the people there and hire data scientists. To find out exactly who is listening to the music, who is a fan. And then I would reach these people and incentivize them. Get them to meet the act, send them swag…

Don’t do a promotion where if the fan gets another person to… That paradigm is history, it’s been burned out over decades on the web. You know, if you get a new customer we give you a perk. I see that and I puke. You’re making me your sales agent? I love CLEAR, but I’m going to sell it to a friend so I get a bonus? What if they find out, they’ll feel ripped-off. No, I must feel so good about CLEAR that I tell people out of the goodness of my heart. If a fan wants to make money, they can be an influencer on social media. That’s not what we’re selling here, what we’re selling here is BELIEF! That’s the essence of a musical career. Which is why those without hits can oftentimes sell more tickets ten years out than those with hits, if the hitmakers can sell a ticket whatsoever. Sans belief, you’ve got nothing.

I’m not saying that press is bad, but I wouldn’t hunt for it, I wouldn’t try to make it happen. Because usually it’s one and done. And people don’t see it and they don’t take action. Like Scott Galloway in the “New York Times,” did you see that full page article? It was flattering, especially as a result of its raw existence. But I’ve yet to talk to anybody who’s seen it who doesn’t know Galloway already. The man got a full page in the physical newspaper! But most people read it online, where everything but the headline story is equal, and oftentimes ignored. So Galloway can feel good about this ink, but it’s not really going to move the needle.

And then there’s those playing the attention game. The tide has turned. Felice’s car got totalled, she needs to buy a new one, she’s just got one rule, NO TESLA! Because of Elon Musk.

And Kanye has become a joke and if you’re always in the news cycle today you’re an object of derision. What is wrong with you that you need all this attention?

And even worse is when we see you ripping off your fans. Making them buy multiple physical albums with different covers. Why? Sure, the hard core will do this, BTS fans will buy anything the band puts out, but the optics are terrible, even if it buys you the number one chart position for a week. And everybody in the business knows it’s just about streams, and they can see how your music truly performs. Stars always debut strongly, but how long does that last, does a track stick out, stay in the Spotify Top 50, the Top 10?

But you get all that publicity for a “Billboard” #1… But what exactly does it buy you? Network TV attention for a slot your audience will never ever see? And as far as incentivizing the looky-loos, the casual fans, to take action… At this point people don’t even bother to stream a track, they’re overloaded with input, they’ve done this too many times, they’ve streamed bad tracks they’re not interested in by “Billboard” #1s… As far as buying a ticket… Have you checked the price of tickets recently? Never mind the parking and the alcohol and… Nobody’s going to a show on a whim. And, if you’re interested in a show, there’s a plethora, one that matches your interests, why go to the show of the unknown?

So you need buzz. And the buzz is created by your core. If you’re gong to blow up and sustain it will be because the core spread the word. And if you’re truly great, it will spread like wildfire, because active fans are searching for greatness 24/7, they’re hungry for it, looking out for it. But there’s very, very, very little that is this great. Let me make it clear. If you play somebody your track and they don’t immediately ask you to play it again, it’s not good enough. Period. Harsh truth, but there you have it. Good is not good enough.

But let’s say you’re not that great, that’s fine, your fans will keep you alive, they’ll give you all their money. A quirk of life is people are drawn to and bond most with that which is not very successful, at first. They can own the act personally. Getting in on the ground floor is a badge of honor. And as long as you don’t push for more attention soon, and ignore the base, your fans will stick by you.

Think about it, there’s plenty of money in having hard core fans. They go to the show, they buy the merch…

And they’re the only ones who can spread the word.

Better to go out for a cheap ticket price than an overpriced one to pay for production. Because if the ticket is cheap, a fan can drag along a friend. People want to do this, there’s such satisfaction in turning someone else on to great music. But if your tickets are expensive, this can’t happen.

Ignore the headlines, they don’t reflect today’s reality. First and foremost, a lot of those acts are nowhere near as big as the hype, once again, the streaming numbers, readily accessible to all, tell the truth.

Everybody’s a journeyman/woman today. If you haven’t heard from a friend about an act whose music you’re unaware of, an act sans a hit, you don’t have friends.

I’ll give you a few examples. Do you know how many times people e-mail me about Larkin Poe? Even better, the Avett Brothers. Neither household names, but they have very strong, relatively large fan bases, their careers have not been built on the penumbra, the hype, but the essence, the music and the live performance. That’s today’s music business.

Don’t compromise your music, don’t make it like everybody else’s, because even if the track is catchy, you won’t make any fans, and you’ll be starting almost at zero the next time around. You want something with edges, something that will hook people.

This is the opposite of the MTV era, where the goal was world domination. Hell, there’s a good chance you’ll be successful and still considered underground, most people won’t know either you or your music. But I’ll tell you a dirty little secret, MOST PEOPLE HAVEN’T EVEN HEARD THE HITS! Or maybe the hit and nothing else from the album or by the act. It’s a false construct, the old dominating act known by everybody. Hell, there are acts people hate because they’ve seen their name too much, irrelevant of the music, which they might not have ever heard.

And in a world of seemingly unlimited choice, we are not corralled into listening to the same stuff, there is no center, whatsoever. There are just a zillion acts, some successful, most not.

And to be successful you must have a fan base. Do not try to jump the line, short circuit the process, appealing to the muckety-mucks to have a hit single. Start at the bottom. Get regular people to like your music. And if they don’t like it, start over. You’re not entitled to a life as a successful musician. No one is stopping you from making music, but if you want to be supported in your endeavor, people must not only like it, but want to be closer to it, get more of it.

Think small.