My inbox is full of people saying I need to respect Bruce Springsteen, he’s an icon who is making an effort. Is anybody else doing this?

Yes, Billy Bragg, who has always been on this tip:

“City of Heroes”

But you’ve probably never heard the Billy Bragg song, because he’s not as famous as the Boss.

And many people may never hear either track, and that’s my point.

Listeners at home don’t think music is a professional business, they believe since they listen to music and go to concerts, they’re experts and could do the job of those in the industry.

DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO GET A RECORD HEARD?

The major labels, which gross billions, can’t break a new act. And these records are created over months, with multiple writers and mixers, they’re massaged to be hits, yet they still don’t connect.

Because they’re just not good enough. Maybe good, but not great. And today you’ve got to be great, and this pisses off bands and punters who bloviate all over the internet just like they do about high-priced tickets and their fees.

My inbox is also full of people bitching about the price of tickets to Harry Styles’s shows. Thank god he’s doing thirty in New York, or the odds of you seeing him would be close to nil. But still, people bitch. They can’t understand the basic economics. The ticket prices are high because that’s the value of the ticket, that’s what people will pay. Hit musicians are luxury goods, like Louis Vuitton and Birkin bags and…if you look at these items, examine them closely, and then look at the prices, it doesn’t add up. No way it cost anywhere near the price to make the item. But people are lining up to buy them, because the goods are good, and they want to signify their status. Is this any different from a show? You only go to see the great acts, and then you dine out on the story for at least a week…you tell the story of the show to all your friends, your coworkers, you were THERE! Most everybody else was not. Because there just weren’t enough tickets to go around.

There are not enough luxury goods to go around. It’s not a perfect analogy, but companies like Rolex limit goods in order to drive up the price! But concert tickets are inherently limited, because it’s human beings, there are only 365 days in a year, they can only play so many shows. To the point where people are lining up to pay to see avatars of ABBA, that’s how much people love the music.

So the dirty little secret is if the act doesn’t charge what the market will bear, the scalpers will…they’ll hoover up all the tickets and sell them at a high price, which people will pay, and the act will get none of this uplift.

As for the fees, without them there’s no show.

You can talk until you’re blue in the face and people can’t understand these concepts. They even have ridiculous hearings in D.C., politicians who can’t fix the nation grandstanding about a problem that doesn’t exist. We don’t see hearings about the prices of BMWs… They should come down! I’m a fan, I deserve one for 20k! LOL!

And some of these acts are so hot, with so much unfulfilled demand, that there are tribute acts doing boffo at the b.o. performing their songs. That’s how big the demand is.

And this demand is only created by hit songs. And very few acts have hit songs and so much demand that they can sell out arenas everywhere. As a matter of fact, even the vaunted Boss doesn’t go clean everywhere. Tickets go on sale, fans bitch about the prices, the coastal press picks up on this, but if if you want a ticket somewhere between New York and Los Angeles, oftentimes you can get one, even on the day of the show.

You want to go hear Bruce perform “Jungleland” and “Born to Run.” Would people be lining up to see him if the shows consisted only of music from his last couple of albums? OF COURSE NOT! That’s not what people want, they want the HITS!

So you’ve got to start with a hit. Everybody in the business knows that the demand is created by the music. Doesn’t matter how good the stage show is, who is playing on the record, when you drop the needle, do people freak out, are they touched in such a special way that they have to get out of their pajamas and run to the all night record store to buy what they just heard on the radio…that’s how Ahmet Ertegun described a hit.

Today we live in a world where music is at your fingertips, but the irony is there’s so much of it that it’s even harder to get noticed.

But the paradigm remains. Did you listen to “Streets of Minneapolis” ten times straight, as I’ve done with many hit records?

Forget that… Did you play it for your friends, your mother, and did they demand to hear it again?

That’s a hit, and that’s what you need to succeed in today’s uncontrolled marketplace where everything is available all the time, the history of recorded music.

Let me see… Do I want to listen to my cousin’s band ,which he keeps dunning me about, or Led Zeppelin? Every new band is now competing with Led Zeppelin.

In the old days, you either had to listen to the radio or buy it to hear it. It was a controlled market. No store, even Tower, stocked all the music, you could only buy what was available. As for the radio…it played very few records, and getting on a station was so powerful that every label had a complete team of promotion people, the head of which might made have made a million dollars, doing their best to get stations to play songs. Because if the station did, you had a start, that you could build upon. Stations have mass audiences and…

As heavy a lift as this was in the pre-internet days, it’s ten times harder today.

All day long people e-mail me their favorites, songs I just have to hear. How many are worth hearing? Almost none! I’m not arguing with the listener’s enjoyment, fine…the question is whether everybody else, the masses, are going to hear it and enjoy it.

That’s the big time music business, the masses. It’s not the high school auditorium, even your local club. Are millions going to hear the song and want to hear it again and again?

In today’s overcrowded marketplace it’s a nearly impossible achievement.

As for the Boss…

Leave all your emotions out. Bruce sold all his rights to Sony, the hundreds of millions of dollars involved was very well publicized. Is that what we revere Bruce for?

But even worse…

Someone sent me this clip…

“Dove Body Confident Sport (2025) | Born to Run by H.E.R.”

You sell your rights to the man, and the man has to get his money back. Just like people are angry that Tim Apple keeps kissing Trump’s butt, they can see that Bruce sold out here. Not that it completely undercuts the man and his music, but it does put a dent in his image.

Want a great protest song for today? Don Henley’s 1989 hit “The End of the Innocence.” The Eagles sell out everywhere, they’re performing 56 shows at the Sphere.

Think about that… There are approximately 18,000 seats available at the Sphere. The Eagles are going to play to approximately 1,008,000 people. Sure, some people will go more than once, but that’s incredible demand, and it’s based on the hits, which the Eagles play!

But this ain’t Olivia Newton-John. The Eagles wrote all their hits, except for a few by or with friends, they’re straight from the performers’ hearts into yours, unfiltered. And the band has never ever sold out. No advertisements, no sponsors, no “Hotel California” movie… And this MATTERS!

Don Henley is not warm and fuzzy, but you know he’s true to himself. And that’s part of the magic.

Furthermore, he’s so far from everyman…

But you HATE the Eagles. You love bands Eagles fans have never even heard of. Kudos. But you’re missing the point, it’s all about DEMAND! And that demand is created by HITS!

So how much demand has “Streets of Minneapolis” created, huh? Sure, everybody e-mailed you about it yesterday, but how many are going to e-mail you about it next week? Are you going to be listening to “Streets of Minneapolis” a month from now, a year from now? No. Of course some people will quibble with me, because that’s their role in life. But the bottom line is very simple, “Streets of Minneapolis” is not a hit. It’s a press story that will not move the needle.

We don’t need protest songs, we need HIT protest songs. Which means you’ve got to write a hit about a very specific subject, which is so difficult, but…

Most people agreed with me, that “Streets of Minneapolis” is substandard, just not good enough. But is this how far we’ve come, that we run on emotions instead of facts? Of course it’s great that Bruce weighed in, but that does not mean the song is a hit. Then again, Bruce hasn’t written a hit for decades. Sure, the landscape has changed, but very few aged acts can reach the brass ring once again. Can I say that you go to see Bruce as a nostalgia play? To remember when? Not only when you heard the records, but you were thin with hair?

Makes me crazy when people want to deny reality. Money talks, as the Kinks sang. Which is why Tim Cook keeps kissing Trump’s rear end.

So to make a difference, you’ve got to create a song that rains down money. Like the Weeknd or Lady Gaga or… You need hundreds of millions of streams. That’s the world we live in, how can you make your way into the Spotify Top 50? Because that’s the major leagues. Sure, there are minor leagues in clubs and theatres, but the big time, the acts who can sell more tickets than are available…

God, I can never stop quoting Jack Nicholson in that movie…

You can’t handle the truth, not too many people can. But the truth is obvious and always outs. ICE murdered Pretti. Pardon the pun, but in the parlance of music, it was a hit. A sound heard ’round the world that changed the world. Not every Republican has blinked, but many have. They had to excise Bovino and bring in Homan and…

If you want to have power, if you want to impact the world, you have to start with the facts, the truth, however uncomfortable that might be.

Otherwise you can sit at home spewing your opinions all day long but they won’t make a difference.

This is a game of power. Which starts with gaining the attention of the public. That’s the job.

And everybody in the music business knows it.

But people on the street, they just can’t accept it.

Start there.

Guitarist for Goose.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rick-mitarotonda/id1316200737?i=1000747165740

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/cac6e5b1-36ff-4db9-a619-9a2cfd7d590c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-rick-mitarotonda

The problem is it’s not that good a song.

Then again, neither was “We Are the World.”

My inbox is blowing up with missives about this new Springsteen number. And I applaud Bruce’s effort, but it’s no “Hungry Heart,” as in it’s not an instant, one listen banger. And what you need in the Spotify era is something that grabs you in fifteen seconds, or five, and “Streets of Minneapolis” does not… It’s no “Ohio,” with its fat guitar and anthemic lyrics, nor is it the equal of “Eve of Destruction,” wherein P.F. Sloan’s words and Barry McGuire’s emphatic delivery created a track that transcended the radio. Nor is it Sly’s “Everyday People,” never mind Bob’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist. That’s what’s wrong with today’s society, everybody’s paying fealty to their team to the point they’re myopic, can’t see the forest for the trees, and it’s not only Swifties and the BTS Army, it’s Trumpers and fans of the Boss too.

The biggest story today is Tesla’s numbers. Without an organized effort, running on sheer instinct and hate, the public has put a huge dent into the car company, to the point where sales are off significantly and BYD owns the volume crown. People want nothing to do with Musk, and they’re voting with their dollars. And we can take the same approach to Trump.

Now “We Are the World” is a dirgey, nearly dreadful composition that has a reasonable chorus, but it was a massive success. In a different era. When MTV could reach and dominate the world, and everybody was against starvation. Is everybody against Trump? No, but like a rock band of yore, the fanbase is growing and today Neil Young came down on Verizon and Apple for kissing Trump’s butt. That’s the kind of leadership we need, Neil has credibility, as for the Boss…

Like I said, I don’t want to get into a discussion of the Boss.

But it’s hard to write a catchy song on demand. If it was easy, acts would have dozens of hit records, and they don’t.

In the MTV era, marketing could trump quality. Not anymore. Today you’ve got to lead with quality.

So…

It’s very simple. It’s Grammy weekend, just like with “We Are the World” forty years ago, we’ve got to get all the nominees, the presenters, the stars of today, peopled with a few from yesteryear, into a studio to sing a song and… If someone can write an instant hit, great. But if not, we get everybody on a soundstage and they sing Edwin Starr’s “War,” with new lyrics.

“ICE

What is it good for?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!”

This song is such a slam dunk that Bruce has already covered it! It was an anti-Vietnam anthem. Just change the lyrics and…

You’ve got a background press story. The tale of the original song, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, originally performed by the Temptations. Starr and Whitfield and Strong are all deceased, their stories are ripe for the telling. By covering “War,” there is instant backstory.

As for the recording…

You’re part of the problem or part of the solution. The Boss can call up all of the stars and ask them whether they’re going to participate. Who’s going to say no to the Boss? And throw in Paul McCartney too. Trump does not only affect the U.S., hell, he’s sending ICE to the Olympics!

No excuses. Either you show up and sing or we tell everybody you wouldn’t commit. Force musicians to the forefront. Shame them if they won’t participate. And just like with any benefit concert or record, once the superstars are on board, the lemmings come out in droves, not wanting to be left out, wanting the publicity.

As for producers?

It’s a murderer’s row. Dr. Dre, Rick Rubin and Andrew Watt. All behind the console.

As for the backing track, the musicians… These players all have backstories. Or, if time is of the essence, you can use the E Street Band.

“Streets of Minneapolis” is a one day phenomenon. How do you make your effort last?

One, by having a guaranteed hit song. Two, via the penumbra, the story, the background of the song and the participants and the recording thereof and…

But how do you promote it? 

That’s the problem, it’s not like the days of yore.

So, every DSP has to be shamed into putting the song on its homepage, and keeping it there until…ICE leaves Minneapolis, or ICE removes its masks, or ICE is neutered completely, choose the limit.

As for Spotify… My inbox filled up with blowback about their ICE ads, this is an opportunity to make things right.

As for neutrality… Tim Cook isn’t neutral, nor is Mark Zuckerberg or the aforementioned Musk, but somehow music DSPs have to be? No, that’s about fear, pure and simple, they need to take a stand.

And then you’ve got the influencer army. A number at the studio recording, and then getting everybody to use the recording in their clips.

And instead of some lame kumbaya No Kings protest, we’re going to assemble singers at the same time in all the major cities of America. Everybody’s invited, from Boston to Honolulu. And at the same time, everybody is going to sing this new version of “War,” en masse.

And if Netflix can defend Chappelle regarding his anti-trans and antisemitic remarks, they can have the making of video on their homepage. Maybe make them pay for the privilege, or get every streamer onboard, from Prime to Disney+.

As far as keeping the story alive, like I said, “War” is a hit! It’s a record that never goes stale. This is a litmus test, just like with Jimmy Kimmel. Are radio stations too afraid to play this song for fear of retribution by the Trump regime?

It’s time to stand up.

Or don’t. But if you don’t, you’re on the wrong side of history. Keep defending ICE. Keep saying that Pretti was a domestic terrorist. Keep saying that Goode was asking for it. Keep denying the truth. Homey don’t play that no more, even elected Republicans are switching sides.

It’s time to get practical, enough with the virtue signaling, it’s time to make a difference.

The real way to make change is to affect the economy. Just get everybody to stop buying, as Scott Galloway said. Put a hurt on the GDP. The nation runs on discretionary income, the people have the power, not the billionaires.

It’s time to create our own bubble. Believe me, Fox News, the entire right wing blogosphere will not be able to resist talking about this song. And it’s not going to look good when seemingly every musical star is on the other side. As powerful as Hannity is, he’s no match for Bruno Mars or Lady Gaga.

So… This is easily doable.

But if it’s not done, let’s at least speak English, let’s play by the rules. In order for a song to make a difference in today’s world it must first and foremost be a one listen smash. Sans that, you’re dead in the water. Once you’ve got the smash, then you can talk about marketing. As for news? What is on the homepage today is forgotten tomorrow, you need to create something that sustains.

If you’re the kind of person who still can’t handle the fact that I said “Streets of Minneapolis” was meh, that it was no “Streets of Philadelphia,” which I heard once at a screening and couldn’t get it out of my head, even though an official release was weeks away, you’re part of the classic Democratic problem. Dems are so busy arguing amongst themselves that they can’t get organized and make a difference. We have to worry about all the minority groups, give them a say, not offend them, become paralyzed to the point of inaction, like the DNC and those in Congress.

But they work for us. And it’s time to show them where we’re at. We need to take action.

Music has power, you’ve just go to use it.

Spotify is laden with tracks that are not listened to. You don’t want to be one of those. And it’s the oldsters who are against streaming, who think it’s the devil. It’s the youngsters keeping music alive. We’ve got to get them  motivated by employing young acts. A few legends sprinkled in is fine, but…

Springsteen has already been neutered by the right. Been labeled. “Streets of Minneapolis” is only making those who are on his side feel good, it’s not moving the needle amongst those still loyal to Trump, it’s a press story. But a hit song made by people from the entire spectrum of music?

That’s a start.

And we’ve got to start somewhere.

You never know when the whole thing will tip.

It starts with numbers and organization. And nothing is as powerful as music. LET’S USE IT!

1

I finished this book Sunday night.

I started it Sunday morning.

I wasn’t hooked at first, but then I got into it and…

I was going to write about it yesterday, but I had two hour long phone calls and I’m still wound up after those. They were personal, not business. One the follow-up to my annual physical (you should get one, no matter what anybody says), the other about money, but… I’ve been wound tight ever since.

I know this is the life of most people. But it’s not the life of someone doing creative work. Someone in traditional business goes to the office, talks on the phone, answers e-mails, ultimately concludes and then does their best to decompress until they start all over again the following morning. But if you want to be creative…

I have my radio show on Saturday, and it takes at least a couple of hours to calm down from that, so by time I make it to Sunday, actually, for the rest of Saturday, I want to disconnect.

Now growing up in the sixties, the weekend was filled with activities. It was a roving party of family activities. It was almost like you lived in multiple houses…the parents were best friends and…

It doesn’t happen that way anymore. You can’t drop by unannounced. You might have seen that Sebastian Maniscalco bit:

People are afraid, they want to be safe. Furthermore, everybody’s in touch all the time, via the smartphone. And if you don’t respond right away, you’re seen as either a pariah or…maybe you’re ill.

So I feel kind of guilty laying low on the weekends. After all, this is when most people leave the house and participate. Then again, when I was in college, we used to say the weekends were for amateurs. The true believers, the true outcasts, knew that it was all about Thursday night, and Sunday and Monday were not bad either.

But as the years have gone by I find myself staying home more and more. And I’m wondering if it’s my age, or an aftereffect of the Covid lockdown, I wasn’t like this before, or it’s just me.

Like Bob Dyan once said, I’m not going to tell you my hopes and dreams, because you’ll laugh at me, you’ll think they’re far-fetched and grandiose. However…

I don’t want to waste any time. And I was thinking about this. In the seventies, I’d go to the movies, constantly. That’s where I connected. I was on the outside looking in. But now I’m on the inside, I can reach tens of thousands with the stroke of a key, and that feels so good. I don’t want to let that go. But to be readable, to do something great, I’ve got to be disconnected, which I know is a conundrum, I’ve got to disconnect to reconnect, but that’s the way it is.

So Saturday night, I finished reading this book “The Sisters.” I tried once before, not really hard, but I decided to give it one more go and I got hooked. What you’ve got here is a story set mostly in Sweden, with the main characters half-Swedish and half-Tunisian. “The Sisters” is not a short book, and it creates a whole world. You get invested in the characters, all of whom have different dreams. The Tunisian father who wanted to set the world on fire, but ended up working on the subway for years and years. The girl who is the life of the party but just can’t find her direction. Her sister who took a year off from college and found herself working for a decade in a job that was supposed to be temporary. The other sister who is too uptight to let loose, saving a dollar, making sure all i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. What we’ve got here is normal people. Normal life. No one is famous, yet the people are not downtrodden. And it’s a great antidote to America, where everybody’s on the road to the top or the road to ruin. But after finishing “The Sisters” after midnight, I just couldn’t get into “The Award.”

2

And I wasn’t doing such a great job of getting into it on Sunday either. You know how you can see the day slipping away? Knowing that you’ll regret the time you’ve burned? I decided to commit, I wouldn’t pick up the phone, and that’s when I got hooked.

“The Award” is not a difficult read. But unlike “The Sisters,” it does not center around everyman, rather a writer. They say to write what you know about, but if you’re a reader of fiction you might believe that writing is the number one profession in America, when so many people don’t even read books, never mind write one.

But the main character makes an amoral choice not long into the book and I winced. Because this character seemed otherwise reasonable, and I wouldn’t do this.

But then…

“The Award” ultimately turns into a thriller. Which I didn’t anticipate. And every aside, every throwaway from earlier in the book, comes back into play.

But the bottom line is “The Award” made me tense. Had me on edge. On some level I could see where it was going, on another it didn’t go quite that way.

And then reading for hours, getting up to go to the bathroom, I was inspired, I wanted to write about what was going on in Minneapolis.

That is how it works. You have to do something else to do the thing you want to. You get inspired, it hits you. This is when all the great work is done. As for writing sessions, cobbling songs together, there is great work achieved by those methods, but it’s the bolts of lightning that render the best stuff.

Actually, I saw this great Ray Bradbury video on TikTok. I certainly know who he is, I’ve got respect, but I’ve never read any of his books, science fiction is not my thing. But Ray said…

“Never went to college. Don’t believe in college for writers. I think it’s very dangerous. I think too many professors are too opinionated, and too snobbish, and too intellectual. And the intellect is a great danger to creativity. A terrible danger because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things instead of staying with your own basic truth, who you are, what you are, what you want to be. And I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for 25 years now which reads ‘Don’t think.’ You must never think at the typewriter, you must feel, and then your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. You collect up a lot of data, you do a lot of thinking away from your typewriter, but at the typewriter you should be living.”

@contemporary.blueprint

Ray Bradbury: Don’t Think, Feel ? Do your thinking away from the page.?? Write from your basic truth.?? When you’re stuck, stop explaining and start describing. Don’t let overthinking choke your work while you’re making it. Study, analyse, gather references — then, when you sit down, let the writing be a lived experience. Making should come from instinct, emotion, and what feels true in the moment. ——— #art #creativity #writing #literature

? original sound – The Contemporary Blueprint

Eureka, that’s it!

People talk about writing, how hard it is, how they like to have written as opposed to writing. How writing is really about rewriting. It’s all intellectualized, and that’s why it’s not transcendent.

Writing, whether it be a screed or a song, should be channeling. The rest of your life is practice, background…when you sit down to create you’ve got to be uninhibited and inspired.

School is about squeezing the creativity out of you, making you conform. Writers are born, not made. It’s a calling. You can learn how to do it, but you won’t be great if you weren’t born with the instinct, the passion.

As for MFAs… Some decent books come out of those programs, but they excise the inspiration, it’s all about the rewriting, as it is for the main character in “The Award.” Who has to question whether he is good enough, or whether he should give up.

He’s got a girlfriend who believes in him. But he ends up losing the plot. And there’s the legendary writer who lives beneath him who is a grade A a*shole, but no one says this out loud, for fear of being on the wrong team, never mind offending this legend.

As for the thrilling plot… Doesn’t have to be a writer, could be anybody. The choices you make… One false move that seemed irrelevant yesterday catches up with you tomorrow.

“The Award” is a ride. I think it’s the kind of book those on BookTok who brag they read a book a week like. This is not literature for the ages, this is plot. But it takes you away, not as well as “The Sisters” does, but there’s that tension.

And when it broke I wrote “More Minneapolis.” I was primed and didn’t even know it. I was completely disconnected from society, and then I reconnected instantly.

But now I’m pissed I can’t get enough distance, I’m caught up in the b.s. of the world, and when that is the case you can’t get into the space you need to to do great work. And there are no tricks, you’ve just got to wait it out. To calm down, for the inspiration to return.

But I’m booked solid going forward and I might never have the time to write about “The Award,” and I wanted to, but this does not have the tone I wanted to convey. Which is you’re just an average person, reading a book, looking for a break, and then it happens, you get hooked, you’re on the ride. You’re there alone, in your own bubble, but you know the writer is with you. And it’s different from a movie or TV series. But it’s akin to a great record. But today’s records are written first and foremost for commercial success, and that rarely works. You’ve got commerce, not art.

And we’re looking for art.

But we don’t want anybody to be an artist.

And most of those who say they’re artists are not.

But we’re still hungry, we’re still looking for that resonance.