Concert promoter for Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, the Lumineers…

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/louis-messina/id1316200737?i=1000642896616

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/7e512285-657f-4d1a-bb2d-82d7e29a095c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-louis-messina

“Coachella tickets went on sale on Friday, Jan. 19. And four days later, tickets for the festival’s first weekend are still up for grabs —  for the first time in a decade.”

“Coachella Festival sees slowest ticket sales in 10 years”: https://rb.gy/h2dbwd

This is not a Coachella story, this is a music business story. It’s a harbinger of what’s to come. In other words, we’re minting very few mass appeal stars, never mind superstars.

Don’t worry about Coachella. Ticket sales are slower, but the ducats will still sell. Yet what does this mean?

For years Coachella headliners were boomer and then Gen-X favorites. Hell, it started out as an alternative music festival. And then it was boosted by the Sahara Tent/EDM scene.

But Coachella evolved. It used to be a gathering of the tribe. Of all those dedicated to music, who lived for the music, who had to make a pilgrimage to the desert to experience the latest and the greatest, to be hip. But over the years it became a rite of passage for Los Angeles teenagers. A spring awakening affair. Come on, you’ve seen all the hype about the stars and their outfits. What you were going to wear, the selfies you were gonna shoot, became more important than the music on stage.

Which meant that Coachella could sell out before any headliners were announced.

But now…

I’ve got to give Paul Tollett credit. He moved into this century, the present. He knew who his audience was. He stopped appealing to oldsters and focused the lineup on the youngsters who really came to the festival.

But those youngsters changed. Now Mr. Beast is bigger than anybody on a Coachella stage. Influencers have a tighter bond with their audience than musical acts. And everybody is a star themselves, posting. They don’t need the physical environment, they’ve got an endless world online. This is akin to the decline of the movie business, other than event films why do you have to go to the theatre when it’s a better experience at home? Even worse, now the superhero movies are stalling. I mean how many times can you repeat the same formula?

You can take a train to Glastonbury. And the English music market is more cohesive anyway. People follow music like sports, they know who is number one, and they’re still minting new stars in the U.K., but most don’t cross over to the U.S.

But taking a train to Coachella?

No, Coachella is a commitment, an expensive commitment, you don’t go on a whim.

Which is an advantage that Lollapalooza in Chicago and Outside Lands in San Francisco have, but neither has the gravitas, the image or the gross of Coachella. That’s right, Coachella is the highest grossing event IN THE WORLD!

Once again, don’t worry about Coachella. They’ve got a ton of income streams and they’ll sell all the tickets anyway, whatever is left is going to move after the first weekend starts to play, if there is any inventory left. But what is the future?

Well, nothing lasts forever. Not that I think that Coachella will die. But usually it’s those involved who are the last to know before anything is over. The public mood shifts, it’s nearly imperceptible, and then it is. I mean let’s be clear, the Coachella experience is far from perfect. Even if you’re a VIP there are a ton of people there, you’re being elbowed. This is not Bottlerock, an exclusive, upscale, much smaller affair. Coachella is mass. So therefore it must have mass appeal.

But Doja Cat? Oh, she’s all over the media. This is the kind of act the press likes. That streams, that makes news. Tyler, The Creator? He’s been in the marketplace for years now, but he’s never been ubiquitous. And as many hosannas as Lana Del Rey receives, she is not a mass appeal artist. As in her cuts are not at the top of the Spotify Top 50.

But then there’s the undercard. Absolutely horrifying. Too many acts you don’t know and don’t care about. Usually there’s a tier of stars right under the headliners, but not at Coachella this year.

Peso Pluma on Friday? A star, but definitely not the crush of this audience. And then Lil Uzi Vert, who peaked a few years back. And then Justice? And it goes downhill from there.

And on Saturday you’ve got Blur, which never really broke in America and doesn’t appeal to the target audience of this festival, Blur skews older, like Gen-X older. And then there’s Ice Spice, the flavor of the moment, and from there, Gesaffelstein?

And on Sunday there’s J. Balvin. But then Jhené Aiko. Don’t read beyond there, even a sixteen year old won’t know most of the acts.

As for the special guest… No Doubt? How many hits did the act really have? Gwen Stefani is 54 years old. Sure, she’s been on a TV game show, but look at the demo, it’s old, like very old, like doesn’t even go to any shows at all old!

So, watcha gonna do?

Well, all of Coachella’s competitors are buying insurance. As in older acts. Whereas Coachella’s lineup is more of a statement, a sign of the future.

Well the future is going to be very few superstars and a lot of thin verticals.

Of course Taylor Swift could sell out Coachella with no one else on the bill, period. But Taylor Swift had her first hit in 2006, when the target audience still had CD players.

And Pink plays stadiums. But her first hit was back in 2000, before many Coachella attendees were even born!

And Def Leppard/Motley Crue/Journey in some combination can also sell out stadiums, but those were never Coachella acts, those acts never got respect from this audience.

As for Morgan Wallen?

He’s a country act. And he’s playing Stagecoach, the weekend after Coachella, the poor stepsister.

But look at that lineup!

Friday you’ve got Eric Church. And then Jelly Roll, Elle King, Dwight Yoakam…

And on Saturday you’ve got Miranda Lambert, Post Malone, Willie Nelson, Leon Bridges, Ernest…

And On Sunday you’ve got the aforementioned Wallen along with Hardy, Bailey Zimmerman and even the Beach Boys.

As for the No Doubt slot, you’ve got the constantly derided yet bigger fan favorite Nickelback as well as Diplo and Wiz Khalifa! And even Guy Fieri, who reaches more people in more demos on TV than Gwen Stefani!

Yes, there’s more action, more excitement in country music than hip-hop and pop. Because there’s more authenticity, and there’s still a controlled radio market. Expect the scene to fragment as terrestrial radio continues to fade, but unlike hard rockers, country fans stream their favorites.

That’s the story of the past year, country and Latin.

But all the news is about hip-hop and pop. But where are the new stars?

Of course there’s Zach Bryan, who at this point is a stadium act. But he too is really country, not a hard drive in sight, more authentic than what the pop and hip-hop acts are selling.

So just like the music industry said CDs were forever, that no one would want files, never mind streaming, these same wankers are saying we still live in a Top Forty world minting ubiquitous stars.

Well, Drake and the Weeknd could headline Coachella. But if you’re looking for universal hip-hop and pop stars, new ones, its slim pickings.

Maybe the entire music ecosystem has to adjust and give the people what they want. Maybe Stagecoach is two weekends.

But one thing is for sure, those who think they’re in control no longer are. They can promote these cartoons, who are akin to the superhero movies, and there’s an audience for them, but it’s far from everybody.

Now I became aware of this soft sales story last night. I got an e-mail about it, and then started Googling, there was only one story, the one linked to atop this screed. Ditto this morning. But now, just hours later, TMZ has gotten on the case. Ultimately just repeating the “SFGATE” story, but TMZ and its stories reach more people than the Top Forty pop and hip-hop wonders.

And now other outlets are picking it up.

So what we’re going to have is a negative public perception, irrelevant of any truth. Yes, there’s a trend here, but Coachella represents more than its lineup, those tickets will move.

But as we move into the future, as the classic acts retire, who is going to headline these festivals? The major labels can’t even break an act, never mind a superstar. And just because someone has streams that does not mean people are dying to see them perform live. And oftentimes the owners of these online hits have no live performance skills anyway.

But will there be an adjustment? This is the same music industry that stumbled blindly into the future and was decimated until a young techie from Sweden saved it. So don’t expect those in power to make any changes. They’re laying people off at Universal, it’s not like the fat cats are going to sacrifice any of their salary. Furthermore, the company is sitting on its catalog, which will pay dividends for decades and decades.

No, this is a fat and satisfied industry. You can build stars on the road, but recordings turn them into festival headliners. And if labels don’t take risks with new kinds of music, build worthwhile acts from close to scratch… Be ready for a course correction, the winds are blowing the business off its usual path and no one even recognizes it, they won’t until it affects their pocketbook, a day late and a dollar short, as per usual.

“TransElectric: My Life as a Cosmic Rock Star”: https://rb.gy/s679py

You might not know who Cidny Bullens is, but you should read his book.

Yet if you were a rock aficionado back in the seventies, and devoured all the information you could lay your hands on, of course you know who Cindy Bullens is, she’s the backup singer who toured with Elton John and was going to break big with her powerhouse rock vocals.

But she didn’t.

Mary Weiss died the other day, you know, of the Shangri-Las. “Leader of the Pack” is what you hear most these days, but I always preferred its predecessor, “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” It was a hit during the summer of ’64, it battled the Supremes’ first Top 40 crossover hit, “Where Did Our Love Go?,” for chart dominance. Both great cuts, at the time I preferred the Shangri-Las tune, although now my preference has flipped. In any event, back then I saw the acts as equals, but they didn’t turn out to be. The Shangri-Las stalled out, and the Supremes became icons. But I’ll never forget seeing Mary Weiss with her long blond hair and boots on TV. But Mary didn’t write the songs, and therefore she rode out her days as an administrator at an architecture firm. You see you’ve got to earn a living.

So Cindy Bullens is plucked out of obscurity by Elton John, she’s living the high life on the Starship, singing on stage and snorting coke all night. But then it ends. She makes an album for UA, which is soon gobbled up by EMI, and the record sinks like a stone, and then where is she?

I’ve never seen this arc better depicted. These household names, and they were that back then, have hits on the radio, we know who they are, what they look like, and then they descend into obscurity, most times with no cash. They work day jobs. You run into them. You can’t square it. What are you doing HERE? We think if you’re an icon once, you’re an icon forever. But that’s not the way it works.

So Cindy gets the rock and roll bug. She goes to see the Stones. She runs away to make it. It’s hard to convey to today’s youngsters the power of the sound back then, what it meant to us. It wasn’t music, it was everything…our culture. The rock stars eclipsed the sports stars we’d been devoted to previously on our transistor radios and we just couldn’t get enough of them.

So Cindy ends up in L.A. Well, after going to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. You only hear about the winners. But Cindy got no starring roles and decided to decamp to Los Angeles and work at a gas station until she could make it in  music.

And then she met Bob Crewe.

Now let’s be clear here, Cindy was pushy. She had chutzpah. She walked through closed doors. And it paid off for her. Would you be able to do the same? Read the book and ask yourself, because that’s what it takes to make it.

So, Cindy ends up meeting Bob Crewe and…

Bob Crewe has been almost completely forgotten. But he was a wunderkind. Who wrote and produced the Four Seasons hits with Bob Gaudio and worked with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and even made a hit with the otherwise laughable hairdresser Monti Rock III. But it wasn’t like today. Those behind the scenes weren’t lauded, but those in front of the camera. Today Crewe would be in the league of Max Martin, et al. Back then, especially after the Beatles launched and acts wrote their own material, most were unaware of him.

Crewe made it up as he went along. But he taught Desmond Child to start with a great title, like “You Give Love a Bad Name.” The song writes itself thereafter.

So Crewe is infatuated with Cindy who starts working for him and ingesting as many drugs as he does. She sings on the “Grease” soundtrack, is nominated for Grammys, and then scores the gig with Elton, who she tells off at the end, regretting it ever since, even though Elton seems to have forgiven her.

And then she falls in with Crewe’s brother Dan, who is also gay. And records are made and fail and then they get married. Which makes no sense, of course, because they’re both gay.

But is Cindy gay? She feels she’s a boy from her earliest years. And ultimately she transitions into a man and becomes Cidny.

Okay, this is where you tune out, you can’t take this. But this is a sincere portrayal of the angst, of the torture of feeling you’ve been born in the wrong body, that you’re the wrong sex. And it’s not from some unknown, but Cindy Bullens. I own that UA album (although I think I bought it as a cut-out).

So Cindy finds herself married to a gay guy who wants children. They move back east, and ultimately end up in Westport, Connecticut with two girls. So now Cindy’s head is spinning. She’s in a sexless marriage with her best friend, she’s over thirty and the music world, her passion, has passed her by. But then she tries. And deals with being away from her kids, who don’t understand.

But Cindy can’t understand. How she’s living as a Fairfield County housewife. She used to be a rock and roller. People think she’s a guy.

So she ends up recording more music but it fails commercially. She even signs with Danny Goldberg’s Artemis. If you’re out of the loop, reading the book you’d think her debut for the label was a giant hit, based on the media, the TV and radio and live dates… But believe me, it didn’t have huge impact. But it had more commercial impact than everything Cindy did thereafter.

And that first Artemis album is one Cindy cut with her own money, about the death of her young daughter from cancer.

And this is Cindy’s new career, connecting with the bereaved, those from Columbine. And more.

And ultimately Cindy throws in with Wendy Waldman and Deborah Holland and they become the Refugees and it’s all groovy.

Only it’s not. This is not the seventies anymore. You probably don’t know who the Refugees are either. They make albums, they play live, but you’re not seeing them in the Spotify Top 50. You see as the years went by the game changed, unless you’re Elton, a bona fide star, you’ve either gone straight or gone cottage industry, living off house concerts and merch sales. You might be able to eke out a living, but if you’re in it for the fame, you’re never going to get there.

And then Cindy transitions, into a trans man.

Okay, there are a plethora of music biographies, rarely written by the star themselves, sometimes, like Linda Ronstadt’s, not even revealing the dirt you buy these books for. They’re all the same, and almost always unsatisfying.

But not only have you never heard of Cidny Bullens, you certainly don’t know her book. But it’s a better read than almost all those star bios. But since Cidny is not a star herself, her book was published by the Chicago Review Press, sans the promotion clout of the big outfits, and its impact in society has been minimal. But it’s a fascinating read. And it’s more than music, more than rock and roll.

Here’s someone who was bitten by the bug, made it all the way to the show and then…well, not nothing, but definitely not the something he wanted.

You get into your sixties and seventies and this is who you are, there are no do-overs, and you can only correct course so much, ultimately all you can do is march forward. But you never really change, you’re the same person you always were, that’s what Cidny realizes when he reads his ancient diaries.

So what we’ve got here is a person. Who was tortured. On the inside! And could talk to nobody about it. Who felt she didn’t fit in, who wasn’t even sure who or what she was.

And all we hear is the anti-trans hype.

But I’ve got a trans nephew.

It’s not like these people are happy-go-lucky and change genders on a whim. And even when you feel comfortable in your new body you have to learn a whole new set of societal mores. A woman can coo over a baby in an airport, if a man does this it’s creepy.

Now in truth, ultimately everybody is forgotten, it’s all plowed under, it’s grist for the mill and then there are all new people with similar dreams who follow the same arc.

Cindy is touring with Elton John and then Cidny is training people at the local Y and fulfilling orders in a warehouse. You’ve got to eat. And you need socialization, to fend off the depression, if nothing else.

And I must admit, I’ve delineated many of the highlights here. But there’s so much more, what Cidny felt, what he is feeling. This is not VH1’s “Behind the Music.” This is someone laying down their pain so others can feel so not alone and still others can maybe understand.

Rock and roll is a cruel game. And nearly impossible to stay in. This is the story of someone who played and survived. But it wasn’t easy.

Like I said, you’ve probably never heard of “TransElectric,” but I’m telling you now you should read it. And it makes me want to see Cidny’s one man show. This is my generation. One that dreamt of everything and then tried to live out our dreams and it wasn’t always pretty. And we still wonder, we still have questions, how did we end up HERE?

Doesn’t matter that you don’t know who Cidny Bullens is. He talks about stuff you know, but even more Cidny testifies, does his best to convey and explain his life, and it’s been very complicated, and it hasn’t been easy.

I don’t write about every music book I read. Most don’t deserve your time.

But this one does.

This is not a harbinger of what’s to come, this is the last gasp of a dead paradigm.

In other words, record reviews are history.

We needed them. Because there was no way to hear most of the music. We needed guidance before we laid down our cold hard cash. And we got to the point where we trusted certain writers, or at least had the skinny on their viewpoint. And then there was the imprimatur of the publications themselves. “Rolling Stone” had gravitas. As for the magazine sporting that moniker today, it’s behind a paywall and is invested in clickbait headlines and they say it’s making money, but it’s lost all cultural relevance.

Cultural relevance? How do you achieve it?

Via word of mouth.

Which means it’s out of control. In other words, the usual suspects, the tastemakers, the gatekeepers, they’ve lost all power. And on one hand this is fine with the consumer, this has been an evolution since the mushrooming of the internet around the turn of the century. On the other, there’s no coherence, no way to make the public aware of great stuff, that they should know about.

This responsibility now lies with the distributors, although they’ve completely abdicated it. They think it’s all about personalization. But people could find the records they wanted to hear in the retail bins, but it was those featured on the endcaps, those that were played in the store, that mattered.

So Spotify, et al, have to promote one track a week. On the homepage. That everyone is exposed to. Maybe have a round robin. One week for Universal, one week for Sony, one week for Warner and one week for independents.

Or maybe it’s more than one record. Each of the above four gets to put forth and feature one track a week.

But ideally it would be less. Somewhere between one and three.

And they would be from different genres. This is not like the Top Forty radio of today, all hip-hop and pop. I’m speaking of something more akin to the FM radio of yore, when it was underground and free-form, when it was a cultural meeting place. The records will be featured because people should hear them, need to hear them, not because they will become instant smashes.

So I hear you now, saying you’re not interested in most records. Fine, but I know you’ve got the power of analysis, I know you like to talk about records, I know you like to trash the records you don’t like. But when you do this now you’re operating in a vacuum, it’s just you. But if we were all exposed to the same tracks…

Yes, kind of like a national book club, like Oprah, “Good Morning America,” “Read with Jenna.” However, it takes much less time to listen to a track than read a book. Not only would the chosen tracks get traction, i.e. listens, we could discuss them amongst ourselves. Worthy left field stuff could blow up.

The dirty little secret is the labels are unable to break new acts. Which are the lifeblood of the music economy. There are almost no bright spots. They keep trying to amplify social media stars to little effect. There needs to be an outside force.

This is not terrestrial radio. More people are going to the homepage of the streaming outlets than are listening to terrestrial radio. If you can find anyone under twenty five who still listens…I can’t.

So we need to whittle the chaos down. To comprehensible bites.

Now let’s be sure, the labels don’t want this, even though they need this. They’ll argue over who has more market share. They’ll say they’ve got so many worthy cuts. Maybe Spotify has to pick the track. But Spotify and the labels and the acts must be in cahoots, so that any success can be amplified.

As for Pitchfork… They say there’s not enough money in advertising. But if the site were so desirable it could be subscription-based. But it’s not that desirable. I prefer Metacritic to Pitchfork anyway. Amazon’s book recommendations used to be done by humans. But they found out that the algorithm sold more books. So they fired the human curators. But having said that, there’s still a bit of curation left, on the new and noteworthy book level. I’m talking about something like that. However, the spots can’t be bought, this can’t be advertising.

So Pitchfork started when alternative rock was…an alternative. Now everything is an alternative, nothing is a reaction to anything because there’s no context. You don’t care about what you don’t care about. But having said that, people have a strong desire to find new music, and they can’t seem to do this, it’s overwhelming.

And forget playlists… That’s passive and we’re talking active here. We want people to listen and comment, and discuss. Maybe even have a Netflix show once a week or once a month with the featured tracks/acts. This is not personal, but broad-based.

We need to bring the people together. And we do this by pointing them in a certain direction. They’re not going to pay for this information. And today it’s all about a very few, powerful sites. In music it’s Spotify, Amazon and Apple…with Deezer and Tidal and a few others as also-rans. That’s a lot of impressions, a lot of screen real estate, all in one place. Believe me, if everybody saw the same track posted on the homepage of any of these sites it would get people to listen.

Then again, it must be conveyed to the public that these tracks are based on their quality, that people need to listen to these acts, that they’re just not label priorities.

So some unknown reviewer giving their opinion on an album? Who cares about that. Which is why RottenTomatoes is more powerful than any single critic, it’s an average.

But watching an entire movie or series takes a ton of time, most people don’t do it. But to listen to a cut? That only takes a few minutes.

Maybe you get to vote, thumbs-up or thumbs-down. And there’s a playlist that also stays on the homepage of the tracks with the best rating.

This is not rocket science, this is about thoughts, innovation in a creative business. But today’s business is driven more by data than creativity. They’ve squeezed the soul right out of it. You need some wild thinkers. And the streaming platforms were built by techies, which is the wrong kind of innovation.

I’m talking here about taste, insight, having one’s finger on the pulse, knowing it when you hear it. Just like the FM jocks picked their favorite records, we need experts to decide what songs to feature/promote/hype.

But one thing is for sure, record review sites are not coming back, are not going to grow, because word of mouth from a trusted friend is much more powerful. You know where they’re coming from. And there’s no anointed critic who most people can agree on, they’re all faceless.

Music criticism is dead. If it comes back, it will look different.

But rather than try and resuscitate criticism, I’d like to build back the music itself. Think of the acts you found from the Warner Loss Leaders. There’s stuff you’d like if you just heard it. But now no one can listen to everything. And too many people promoting this act or that are bought and paid for, and therefore untrustworthy and ignored.

One can argue that the law would prevent collusion amongst the streaming services, choosing the same records. Then again, Springsteen was on the cover of both “Time” and “Newsweek,” there can be serendipity.

Then again, most people don’t subscribe to multiple services, so it’s just what they see on their service of choice.

And instead of printing the manipulated chart numbers, media outlets will print the songs featured this week.

We need to make it easier for the consumer. At the same time we’re telling them this music deserves respect, because it’s quality work.

We’ve got to stop lamenting the passage of the past and invest in the future.

There are multiple paths. The above is just one of them.