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Keira Knightley and Sarah Lancashire have bigger names.

But I can’t take my eyes off of Ben Whishaw in “Black Doves.”

Really, we wanted to watch “Silo,” but that’s week to week and isn’t ending until the middle of January. Apple is fumbling here, because no one survives without the youth and the youngsters want it all and they want it NOW! Which is why they’re on YouTube for streaming, and addicted to TikTok. To employ the old model is to abandon hope of snagging young people and their turbocharged word of mouth. Youngsters live online, and that’s why their choices dominate in culture, that’s why it’s hard to break musical acts that appeal to oldsters. This won’t last for long, as the boomers and Gen-X’ers die off. We thought the major labels were forever, but it turns out their power was based on an old construct, the domination of the few, and that’s not how it works anymore. Even the news business doesn’t get it. You may be following the lowering of salaries for TV news stars. When no one is watching, you can’t pay exorbitant salaries. The money is online and this is anathema to oldsters, who believe the smartphone is the devil.

So we pulled up “Black Doves” because Karen and Jake raved. That’s right, I didn’t get turned on to the show by the media, everything is bottom up today as opposed to top down. There’s an alternative network for news and information that far exceeds that of the mainstream. But since it can’t be easily categorized and distilled, it’s to a great degree ignored. That’s what the mainstream does. If it doesn’t understand something, assuming it’s even aware of it, it pooh-poohs it.

Think about this. The older someone gets the harder it is for you to change their preconceptions. They’ll tell you the new is trash. They don’t want to re-evaluate their underpinnings. But to survive and win in today’s society you must do this, everything you believe must be up for grabs. We live in a fluid society. As for politics… Now you understand why the general public has detached, now you understand why fewer people voted for Kamala than Joe. People no longer believe, they no longer have trust, in a world where RFK, Jr. wants to get rid of the polio vaccine. I mean you throw your arms up and get on with your life. Sure, there are true believers, but they are the minority, and the rest of us are sick of the tyranny of the minority so we’ve given up. Talk about a cynical society.

But it gets even worse. If I read one more story on the Taylor Swift Eras tour… This is what the mainstream does best, promote the already existing while it ignores the developing outside. And statistics mean less than soul. Swift waited until the tour was over to release the gross, an exact total of $2,077,618,725, as if art were sports and was quantifiable. Like when I put on a record I think of how much money the artist took in. Talk about getting so far from the garden.

What is there to believe in?

Netflix. Which knows you succeed today by diversifying your product portfolio so you can appeal to the entire public, which doesn’t want to consume the same thing, the exact OPPOSITE of what the major labels are doing.

So don’t tell me what happens in “Black Doves.” We’re only two episodes into the six total.

And somewhere along the line Keira Knightley aged. And I’m not referencing her looks, but the fact that she’s now a woman not a kid, is pushing forty, and this begs the question…HOW OLD AM I???

And Keira is good.

And Sarah Lancashire is never bad. But she’s more one note here, less the rounded role she played in “Happy Valley.”

But Ben Whishaw?

HE’S SPECTACULAR!

I’m watching “Black Doves” and wondering where I know this guy from.

And when we turned off the TV last night I went to Wikipedia and saw he was in “The Hour,” an English series about a current affairs TV show set in 1956. The tone, both in look and substance, was delicious. And not over the top like in U.S. productions.

And in “Black Doves”…

Whishaw’s performance is subtle. Which draws you to him. You not only look at him, but into him, you contemplate what’s in his brain. He can be quiet, thinking.

Whishaw looks kinda like a young Mick Jagger, as in you can’t really decided if he’s ugly or beautiful, maybe just a sexy beast.

And Whishaw as Sam… He’s got this high hair and beard, he’s scruffy, yet together.

His removed personality… You’re never quite sure what he’s thinking, what he’s going to say. He’s a bit of a mystery, which is intriguing, which draws you to him.

And Sam makes mistakes. Which is something the hero rarely does.

And he’s torn by thoughts of a past love.

He’s a hit man but he’s human. Not an assassin with a heart of gold, but someone who’s more than an automaton. There are emotions involved in killing.

Knightley and Lancashire are more two-dimensional. Whereas Whishaw is akin to a real person. You don’t know anyone quite like this, but you want to. Quiet, with charisma, an inner strength, even though he’s not a hunk.

I don’t know how he does it. They call it acting. It’s not just a pretty face, a model, who is now an actor.

And Whishaw has got a list of credits an arm’s length long. He was even in “Fargo,” but that’s American TV, and I never warmed up to the show.

And I’d like to say “Black Doves” is of the quality of “The Bureau,” which has now been remade as “The Agency” for those who can’t handle foreign productions, but Whishaw is a cut above.

Ben Whishaw is a star.

A star is not someone who has to convince you of this. A star is someone whose power emanates from within. Today everybody is so busy selling, so busy batting us over the head with their achievements, saying LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, that we’ve forgotten what stardom is.

Humphrey Bogart, that’s a star.

And I’m going back all those years because that’s when the formula was intact, when the public was truly intrigued.

And then movie stars were eclipsed by musicians and…

Now we know so much about these people but adore them so little.

It isn’t easy to articulate why Ben Whishaw is so great. It’s something you feel. And feeling is the essence of great art. We’ve abandoned that in search of attention and profits. Everybody wants to throw everything at the wall. Everything is massaged before it’s promoted, the edges rubbed off for mass consumption, like the paint-by-numbers, made by committee songs purveyed by the majors that succeed less and less.

The public doesn’t want them.

The public wants something more subtle, more meaningful.

Like Ben Whishaw.

Jesse Kirshbaum heads up the NUE Agency, which specializes in sponsorship. He reveals the details of these deals and more! 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jesse-kirshbaum/id1316200737?i=1000680126657

 

 

 

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/3f13afc6-b7bf-4df8-a39c-1ab0f86a720e/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-jesse-kirshbaum

Despite the hosannas at the end of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, the live business is going through a correction.

What exactly is the reason?

Well, let’s talk about the less than superstar level, those playing rooms with a capacity less than 5,000.

The acts have toured too much. This is what I heard over and over in Aspen. There is fatigue on the part of the customer. The act keeps going back to the well, trying to make bucks, and the audience is now saying ENOUGH! Sometimes you have to let things lay fallow, i.e. stay off the road, or go where you haven’t been before. To quote the cliché, how can we miss you when you never go away?

But before this downturn, we experienced the post-Covid boom. Not only did ticket prices go up, but so did costs. And not all the costs were fixed. You’ve got acts showing up with semis who never did before. Touring in buses when they used to travel in vans. All of this has contributed to the rising cost of tickets. Of course, certain fixed costs have gone up in price, it’s more expensive to tour than ever before, but we are at a point where acts are going to have to go backward, reduce costs in order to lower ticket prices so people will come.

A club promoter told me it’s hard to sell tickets when the big shows are launched months in advance. If someone just dropped a grand for two tickets to see a superstar… They might be tapped out. Or psychologically, they just can’t spend another dollar. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But let’s never forget, it’s the customer’s money, the customer’s choice. The business wants people to go out to small venues to see developing acts. That’s how you build careers. But with so many options for their money and time, and with no insurance that this developing act is worth the price, many just don’t go.

And at the club level… A promoter told me there are acts with agents that have never played a single live gig. But they do have an online following. The agents are scooping them up. And when they play live do people come? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. And, some of these new acts will show up with the aforementioned semi. Perspective can be way off.

So how do we fix the club business? Is it about taking money from the government or…maybe fans just don’t want to go. Or maybe the paradigm must shift. Be reinvented. It’s hard to get people to pay real dollars for that which is developing that they’re not convinced is great. But it’s even worse, the younger generations don’t drink, so in order to make the economics work, the owner/promoter must charge a higher ticket price.

This is the new normal. No one likes to retreat. But it may be necessary.

Never mind the acts that successfully skip steps. Who open for a superstar and then can sell tickets themselves. Is this how we’re going to develop and sell acts in the future or will there ultimately be fatigue? Open for Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter and you’re halfway there. You’ve been endorsed by the headliner and…

Does this work with men? Are women more passionate about music than men, does it speak to them in a different way?

I’m completely flummoxed by the success of Gracie Abrams. She’s now booked an arena tour. She doesn’t have the best voice and she doesn’t have great lyrics but one thing is for sure, she’s singing from the heart, and this is what the audience is reacting to. And, of course, she opened for Taylor Swift.

Meanwhile, the rockers purvey endless platitudes. Sure, the Active Rock acts have fans, but the word doesn’t spread. Then again, does word of mouth work differently with men and women? Conversation is different, read Deborah Tannen’s definitive work “You Just Don’t Understand” for illumination. Women are about inclusion, men are about pecking order. Women want to bring you into the club, they treat you as equal, whereas men might want to put you down for not being as hip as they are. Men might feel proud they are fans of an act and might not want you to follow them, they might want the act for themselves.

Meanwhile, country is all about story, personal experience. Some done at the absolute lowest level, but that’s the common denominator of country music. And this is what resonates with people today. Country music acts are just like you and me. But pop stars and rappers?

Used to be acts were built from the top down. Major labels invested and promoted. Primarily on radio, but also TV and print. Furthermore, indies couldn’t play on this level.

Now it’s the reverse. The public chooses which acts are successful. And are the public’s choices different from those of the A&R people and labels of yore and today? The public is unpredictable. So many experts told us that Trump was a sideshow and Harris should have it in the bag. But what was going on on the street was something different.

The music business evolves. And when it repeats, it does so with a twist.

But if you have the chops, opening for a superstar hasn’t meant this much since the heyday of Frank Barsalona.

Successful music has never been so unpredictable. And more stars are making more money than ever before. We’ve never had this many stadium and arena tours. But getting from nowhere to somewhere… That’s complicated. Audience engagement is elusive, even the new music by stars flops instantly.

People wanted to go for the past few years.

But now they don’t necessarily want to. Why?

This is the question of the day. You can wait for things to turn around, but they may never do so, and in the interim you’ll miss opportunities.

Gaming the system can work, but less than ever before. No one has all the answers. We can only put our ear to the ground and gain information and pivot. Change isn’t coming, it’s already here! And those who recognize it and adjust will emerge victorious.