“How Fox News (Yes, Fox News) Managed to Beat ‘The Tonight Show – Greg Gutfeld has installed his brand of insult conservatism as the institutional voice for the next generation of Fox News viewer. And it’s catching on.”: https://tinyurl.com/4z294r57

“‘Fallon? That guy fawns more than a herd of deer. And I heard Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah ran off to be obscure together.'”

Now that’s funny.

I remember when Marc Maron built his podcast into a monolith and was rewarded with a sitcom and nobody watched. The paradigm had changed and he didn’t know it. Maron actually got more visibility with a role on the Netflix show “GLOW.” Why is it that the oldsters and the Democrats are stuck in the past?

I was talking about Pee-wee Herman today. Remember he had that incident in the porn theatre and it killed his career? Wouldn’t today. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be hurt by it, at least not initially, but he wouldn’t be disqualified. Yes, he might not host a children’s show, but there would be plenty of opportunities. But Pee-wee felt shamed, and disappeared.

Did Sarah Palin feel shamed when her unmarried teenage daughter Bristol showed up at the Republican convention pregnant? Palin didn’t seem to blink an eye. Previously, this would have been a no-no, a no-go, but Palin just doubled-down. And when the election was lost, not only did she go for the bucks, but Bristol did too. You see they knew more about the modern media landscape than those who’d been in it for decades. You strike now, when you’re hot, you sell out, you take all the cash, because odds are you won’t be around in a few years, no one will care.

Kind of like “Jersey Shore.” The people on the initial “Survivor” thought they were really famous. By time “Jersey Shore” came around reality TV was a lark, hijinks for some fun, then you retreated to obscurity in Poughkeepsie.

Actually, that’s what kept MTV alive, at least for decades. It was ahead of the game. It was MTV which opened its awards show with Pee-wee after his faux pas. MTV canceled not only shows, but veejays. Sure, old people pooh-poohed, cried, went to the media, but it turned out the channel was right, it knew who its audience was, young people, it didn’t want to age and become irrelevant. Of course MTV ultimately did, because it did not have an internet strategy. Ditto with “Rolling Stone.” Just because you triumphed in the past doesn’t mean you’ll win in the future. You might even get a ride of multiple decades, but eventually everything changes, everything, and if you want to survive, you have to change too.

So David Letterman created today’s late night paradigm. And it continues to be repeated, forty years later.

First, why does the host need to sit behind a desk? That predated Dave, but come on, really? And the suits? The goal today is not to wear a suit, that’s the ethos of the techies, and these pretenders are all dressed up?

Actually, the desk started earlier, but the content…

Dave put on a comedy show. Whereas the talk shows that preceded it certainly had some comedy, but they were also informational. Today every guest is pre-screened for a funny story, it appears rehearsed. If you want reality, if you want to be touched, don’t go to late night television, and don’t go to popular music either, they no longer specialize in that.

I don’t want to talk about the politics of Gutfeld, that’s no excuse.

But I will say he’s been paying his dues for decades. And adjusting his act all the while. Putting in those hours, the legendary 10,000. Takes a long time to be good, for everybody. Oh, you can get lucky out of the box but most of those people don’t sustain.

So Gutfeld’s late night show is not like the networks’ late night shows. I know, because I hear it on SiriusXM. Sure, I get paid by them, but I ain’t never listening to terrestrial radio, my goal is to never listen to or watch a commercial, NEVER! My time is too valuable. And of course there are ads on “Gutfeld!,” but I then flip the channel. But my point here is I’m listening to a TV show. I almost never watch MSNBC or CNN, but I listen to them. Maybe that’s the paradigm for these late night hosts. Sure, they’re creating content for YouTube, but maybe it’s something closer to podcasts, long instead of short. It stuns me what a fan base Scott Galloway is building. He’s hip, he’s a rock star. He’s not on TV all the time, then again, his core audience never watches TV, and they think Galloway’s appearance on the flat screen is a victory, like seeing a rock act on TV in the sixties.

Galloway’s humorous bro act gets thin, but ultimately what Scott is selling is intelligence and analysis, very important in an era where even your next door neighbor plays the market. I’m much more interested in the market than what’s on late night talk shows. The market is more than entertainment. And we all know money changes everything.

But no one on late night has sold credibility, they’re all pranksters.

And “Gutfeld!” may be one of the biggest.

You see “Gutfeld” realizes first and foremost it’s entertainment, that’s what brings viewers in. Put the viewer first, not the advertiser, the advertiser comes second, ratings are everything. You don’t know what you’ll get with “Gutfeld!,” and there’s this air of irreverence. There’s no serious irreverence on late night TV, at least not since Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show.” And irreverence was a key element of the left wing sixties. Can you say “Abbie Hoffman”?

But the left is so worried about offending someone that it lives inside a box. Left wing creators are hamstrung, they’re going to offend somebody, they shy away. Best to go by your own inner tuning fork and suffer the consequences. Controversy is good. And the truth is oftentimes it’s a vocal minority that has a problem with you.

Sure, there are certain things that are unsayable…racist, antisemitic. But that leaves a lot of territory.

Hell, if you’re on TikTok, and you should be, you know that one of the biggest stars is George Carlin, he pops up all the time. Alan King doesn’t. Robert Klein doesn’t. The other comedians are dated and fading in the rearview mirror. But Carlin was taking an independent stance and calling them as he was seeing them. I mean Carlin’s routine about not voting…vote if it makes you feel good, but the owners of this country won’t relinquish any power…and in order to believe in the American dream you’ve got to be asleep… See, I remember what George said, and I don’t remember much of what was said yesterday, anywhere.

You first and foremost must have an identity. And know you’re playing to a core, if you’re trying to appeal to everybody you’ve immediately lost the plot.

So everything we knew about late night network talk shows… An aged audience that doesn’t move the needle. Remember when a late night musical appearance meant something? Maybe you don’t, that’s how long it’s been!

And why is it that Fox can reinvent itself but the rest of the competition cannot? Kinda like Netflix dropping all the episodes at once. Don’t talk to me about money and ratings, this is what the AUDIENCE wants. And the key is to keep them coming, subscribing, for years to come. Now that I have to pay for Apple TV+ I don’t. Because I can’t watch shows week to week. People tell me about shows, I check and they’re not done, and I don’t go. And then who cares. But I’d pay if I could watch complete shows all at once. Who is standing up for me?

Very few. At their peril.

Gutfeld has tapped into his audience. He knows who they are and what they want. Fox nurtured him and now he’s got the ten o’clock slot.

Oh, don’t tell me about Tucker Carlson, whose second Twitter video said the Ukrainians blew up the dam themselves. Meanwhile, the real news, forget the commentators, came out:

“Why the Evidence Suggests Russia Blew Up the Kakhovka Dam – A dam in Ukraine was designed to withstand almost any attack imaginable — from the outside. The evidence suggests Russia blew it up from within.”: https://tinyurl.com/3b7z6k4e

Don’t roll your eyes, don’t tell me about the “New York Times,” bottom line is the “Times” doesn’t care about you. But Fox News cares about the “Times.” The “Times” does the research nobody else does. Better than some bloviating commentator.

The “Times” knows who its audience is. Then again, when it plays to its audience even I wince. Like that story over the weekend about the writer switching from a smartphone to a flip-phone. There are people living in tents too, but the majority don’t. Stop this retro-tech stuff, makes you look out of touch.

But the bottom line is if you want to be popular today, you have to have an edge, an identity, and you have to stick to it. And you have to stop apologizing. And you have to take risks.

Kelly Clarkson put out a new album. The difference is it’s about…her divorce? I’d be more interested in a covers album reworking songs a la Joe Cocker. Or a hip-hop album. I mean WHO CARES?

A music industry sans clothes. Doing the same thing it has done for years. Play it up the middle. If you had an outside sound in the sixties and early seventies they were bending over backwards to sign you to a deal, because you never knew, and the audience was interested in new and different stuff. I’ll let you in on something, the audience is still interested in new and different stuff, but the major labels won’t sign you unless you prove your success first in an approved vertical.

And you wonder why music gets no respect.

SNL used to be hip, offended people, was an inside joke. But that was the seventies, and that’s almost fifty years ago and they’re still using the same damn format, I mean really?

And with “Gutfeld!” we learn once again that the thing people care about most, pay attention to, is the news. Stop telling us about brain-dead Americans, it’s now the American pastime, following the news, most especially politics. I don’t want to see skits, I want to see something that wrestles with the real issues.

Happens to me all the time. I’m hanging with a famous musician, a powerful promoter, and what do they want to talk about? POLITICS!

But we can’t say that, all we can say is the music is as good as it ever was.

Hogwash.

If you read this screed and talk about the viewpoints Gutfeld is espousing, you’ve missed the point. Gutfeld is playing to the believers, throwing it right down the middle, hard. Where are the Democrats throwing it right down the middle, with truth wrapped up in laughs?

Few and far between.

And last time I checked, the Republicans’ are eating the Democrats’ lunch. Disproportionate to their population. The minority is ruling because the Republicans have stirred up their constituents. The Democrats? Oh, they got rid of abortion, there’s nothing we can do, you’ve got to vote, we’re counting on you to vote. The same vote that George Carlin said was worthless?

Count most people out.

They don’t bother to vote because they don’t think it makes a difference. And this is not their fault, but that of the parties and candidates. But the candidates are so phony no one can believe in them. Now that Hillary Clinton has given up elective office she can speak some truth, she does, whereas when she was running she said her favorite book was the Bible. Did ANYBODY believe that?

No.

And you’ve got the problem right there.

People have to believe you believe. And are not beholden to the man. That you’re on their side and willing to take risks.

That’s the modern paradigm.

But the set in their ways oldsters refuse to own it, employ it. They’d rather just depend on what an out of touch, old wave mainstream media says. Only so many stories can fit in a newspaper, even a digital one. To be informed you have to canvass many sites, and most people do.

Come on, can we live in the twenty first century?

It appears not.

Except for a select few.

And they’re winning.

I just got off the phone with Ahmed Nimale, CEO and Co-Founder of KYD Labs. Know him? I doubt it. And neither did I, until I hosted a panel about ticketing at Canadian Music Week.

Ticketing. It’s a game few understand, and few want to understand. And ultimately this panel wasn’t about solving the ticketing problems everybody is concerned with, i.e. the fees, availability, prices, bots…but independent ticketing companies trying to build a business.

I’ve lived through this, for decades. Anybody who gains real traction is ultimately sold to one of the big kahunas, akin to how if you compete with Amazon and are any good, they buy you. It’s just not that interesting to me, because we don’t live in a vacuum. I remember meeting the majordomo of Songkick, back in the early days, I asked him how he was gong to make money. It was simple, he told me he was going to sell tickets. SELL TICKETS? Yes, the platform was a way to reach new customers and they could sell tickets. And how much would they pay Ticketmaster, et al, for these tickets? NOTHING! These outlets would be glad to work with Songkick, because of its ability to reach potential customers. This was a complete misunderstanding of the business, all the money is in selling the tickets, these companies are not just going to cough up inventory. And they didn’t.

What you’ve got is techies who see a problem and don’t understand the business. Like all those music distribution sites that launched back at the turn of the century. They just could not fathom that they needed licenses from the rights holders, on the rights holders’ terms. Didn’t matter how good the idea was, the question was how good was it for the company? Was it going to undercut its traditional business, was it going to generate revenue, was there going to be a large enough guarantee? Eventually the problem was solved by Daniel Ek, years after the problem arose, and despite all the complaints about Ek and Spotify, he dedicated untold time and money in making it happen. He might fly private now, but he didn’t back then. That’s what people don’t understand, one person can make a difference, change the world, but not in a vacuum. Ek realized he needed licenses to make it work, that was the hardest part, the tech was much easier.

So what I ended up doing on this CMW panel was asking about the specific companies, drilling down into the specifics. How much money was raised, how much spent. Those are the important details when starting a business, an idea is just the kernel, you need to make it pop. And you’ve got to be able to answer all these questions, And I don’t want to hear that your company is bootstrapped, because you don’t have enough money to make a difference, even if you may be able to make a small profit. I want someone dynamic, alive, who can answer all the questions.

And that was Ahmed Nimale. A man with experience in ticketing. He was impressive, and in reviewing my panel with others, I mentioned him, pointed him out.

And then he wanted to talk.

I never want to talk. Because you want to sell and I’m not buying. But I found this guy impressive, so I ended up with a free moment today and I decided to call, weeks after he first asked me to.

And he talked about TikTok marketing. THAT I’m interested in.

Did you catch that article the other day how they can’t prove the deleterious effects of TikTok?

“Everyone Says Social Media Is Bad for Teens. Proving It Is Another Thing. – Parents, scientists and the surgeon general are worried. But there isn’t even a shared definition of what social media is.”: https://tinyurl.com/2p9af9b8

It’s just like they used to say about rock and roll, the little girls understand. And the oldsters do not.

So Ahmed told me he had TikTok ticket marketing down.

So I asked him to tell me the story.

Well, he’d gone through a huge number of influencers, and found ones with reach that were in the proper wheelhouse. And he asked them how much they’d charge to create a clip, and in this example, the girls said $200. This is what he got:

https://tinyurl.com/4ynfzrxx

For his $200, Ahmed got in excess of 10,000 impressions.

And then he went to TikTok and bought ads, to put on these clips.

Now in this case, the end result was a wash, as much as he put in for ads is what he got back in ticket sales.

He said for $100, TikTok delivered 10,000 impressions. But it could be more, because the clip itself might go viral. There might end up being 100,000 impressions.

And then Ahmed told me he purchased a site. Well, a name. Well, a TikTokker. Ahmed combed the music influencers, found one with reach who needed money to blow himself up, paid the influencer a five figure sum and put him on salary.

So, to put a clip promoting shows on this site, that he owns, costs Ahmed nothing. But in one day, ONE DAY, a clip posted yesterday got 98,000 views. And Ahmed finds ads on this site deliver a return of 3x.

So…

The hardest thing to do today is get noticed. The “Wall Street Journal” has a story today about Taylor Swift possibly doing a billion dollars on her tour. No one really knows, because she’s not releasing grosses, she’s waiting for it to be over, wanting the publicity of a large number. That’s Taylor. But what’s also true about Taylor is never has someone this big reached so few.

The only analogous tour to Swift’s “Eras” is the Rolling Stones’ 1972 U.S. tour. There was the same amount of publicity. But in that case, everybody under thirty knew Stones songs, everybody had heard “Satisfaction,” and more. So youth culture was apoplectic, talk about the impossibility of getting a ticket.

And today there are acts that sell boatloads of tickets, but their music is unknown to most.

“Morgan Wallen Enters Adele Territory With 14th Week at No. 1- The country singer’s latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” has now notched more weeks atop the Billboard chart than any album in more than a decade.”: https://tinyurl.com/mrx7epfw

Since Adele?? That album “21” with “Rolling in the Deep”? Never mind “Rumour Has It” and “Set Fire to the Rain”? Man, you couldn’t escape Adele back then, everybody had heard an Adele song. But has everybody heard a Morgan Wallen song? NO WAY!

And Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” just spent its twelfth week at #1 on the Hot 100. Twelve weeks is amazing, but even more amazing is how many people don’t know the track. Imagine this in the eighties, Whitney Houston had a bunch of tracks you couldn’t escape, never mind so many others. That paradigm is gone.

But the publicity isn’t.

Never mind the myopia.

You see what they tell us is omnipresent and reaches everybody does not. From “Succession” to “Eras”… The news is skewed. And in truth the impact of this is more serious in straight news as opposed to music, but…

The hardest thing to do is to reach people. And Ahmed Nimale has figured out a way.

He says it takes six touchpoints to get someone to buy. He focuses on TikTok and Instagram. And he’s built the technology to be able to track it all, where someone saw the info and what ad they used to buy tickets.

In other words, what works.

I asked Ahmed if anybody else was doing what he was.

And when I pushed him he said maybe a couple of people, but his advantage was nailing tracking and attribution. He’d made a science of it, he’d cracked the code.

Seems to me that Ahmed is on the bleeding edge.

Then again, I don’t talk to everybody.

Then again, everybody is so full of shi*t. They say they can do it and can’t. Sometimes they’ve never even tried, they’re just looking for the cash, then they’ll figure it out. Bluster is king.

Now Ahmed is using this marketing to aid the entities using his ticketing platform. And he says he can employ the same strategy/technology to sell other things, merch, etc.

But I’m not that interested in these independent ticketing companies. Because it’s an inherently limited market, all the big venues are sewn up. And the dirty little secret is the contracts almost never expire. The venue signed up for five years, but has spent the money/needs money in three. Sure, the ticketing company will give them more money, in exchange for more years.

But the marketing…

The active ticket buyer, the youth, and not only the youth, are on TikTok, which mainstream media abhors, which gets pissed on constantly. I won’t sell TikTok, but I will say that that’s where everybody is, and they don’t care what you think.

But TikTok is a black hole, run by algorithm, and everybody sees different stuff, making it look too opaque to tackle.

But Ahmed says he’s figured out a way.

Pretty interesting to me.

https://newwestsymphony.org/#schedule

I went to hear Alex Ligertwood sing “Winning.”

I felt like I was on vacation. You take the 405 deep into the Valley, and then you go left onto the 118, so far that you end up in a different county. But pretty soon the landscape looks different, like in those westerns the boomers used to watch on television. I’m thinking I haven’t been this far out on the 118 since we were making movies in the eighties. And I haven’t been this far from home since the pandemic. Oh, I’ve left town, gone to Colorado, Utah, but as far as getting in my car and driving… No. Then again, you can’t go anywhere in Los Angeles anyway, because of the traffic. When I checked the map app the day before it said 46 minutes. For this show? But then I realized I oftentimes spend that much time in the car going to a show downtown. And by Saturday afternoon, it said only 35 minutes, and then 33, and I made it there faster than that, because on that stretch of road it’s hard to go less than 75, usually you’re at 80, I had to remember how to use the cruise control, it’d been years since I’d employed it.

Moorpark. For some reason I didn’t think it was quite this far. I mean you can’t live in Moorpark and work in L.A. But that does not mean people don’t do it. People do a lot of irrational things in Los Angeles, in the name of property ownership, in the name of peace and quiet.

So there’s a college out there. Right off the freeway, easy to find. And there were signs to park, but almost no cars in the lot. And I had no idea where the venue was. Turned out it was a field way atop campus, and when I realized this I went back and got my car so I could park in the closer area I had a pass for.

Before that, I’d gone to the porta-potty. I was surprised that at a college campus we didn’t have access to the real thing, but I was even more surprised that these porta-potties were brand new, I think I was the first person to piss in the one I was in!

And when I went to wash my hands… They had that pump dispenser for water, you know, where you step down and you get a modicum of H20, but after a splash I decided to just use the hand sanitizer instead, it requires no drying. But, while I was walking back to get my car, the sanitizer never evaporated. That’s when I realized it was soap. We’ve come a long way, baby, back to 2019, before the pandemic.

So what we had here was…

I’m not exactly sure.

They had food trucks, but only a couple, not a cornucopia. And alcohol, and then a natural bowl facing a portable stage. That was another reason I went back to my car, the weather app told me the temperature would drop into the fifties, and I needed to be prepared, I needed another layer. And even though I was baking under the sun, when it fell below the horizon it got chillier and chillier and thank god I had two layers and a hat.

Ferrone had told me to come. He talked about playing with an orchestra, how the members were so skilled. So what we ultimately had was an orchestra fronted by Jason Scheff, a long time Chicago lead vocalist, and his friends. As for the event…

There was no way they were making money here. It had to be sponsored by the symphony or the college, or both. And it was ill-conceived to boot. There were three layers of tickets, up close and personal with a seat at $150 (came with parking), $75 to sit on the grass in the walled garden, and $50 to sit behind the fence, not that far away, but not that close either.

And it was clear to me, this gig needed to be free. Then it would have been full. There are other ways to monetize a gig like this other than with too expensive tickets.

But what exactly was this gig? Some guy came out and talked about Summerfest, but then he talked about next year, it seemed it was two days, this weekend, and that was it. Not an auspicious debut financially, but you’ve got to start before you can get anywhere.

So I’m sitting there listening to Jason Scheff sing Chicago songs. And it reminded me of seeing Arnel Pineda front Journey, in that the audience now owned these songs, not the band. It was kind of ersatz at first, then Jason’s voice sounded just like Peter Cetera’s, but still…

Then they played “Saturday in the Park.”

This is where the orchestra shined. The sound was full, like the record. In a way you might not even hear if the real Chicago was on stage, then again the real Chicago hasn’t been on stage for eons, and it’s a different Chicago than the one that included Terry Kath anyway.

But now I was grooving, and so was everybody else. Even the eleven or twelve year old kid down front. Does everybody his age know these songs, the words by heart, or was he related to Scheff or somebody else?

And then Bill Champlin came out to sing his part on “Hard Habit to Break.”

Bill Champlin was in the Sons of Champlin, which never broke through, barely made a dent. However I knew one song that I loved, from the “Fillmore: Last Days” album, “Poppa Can Play.”

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/5n6rkm45

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/3vz2jk3r

That’s from a triple album set, the soundtrack to the movie, the closing of the Fillmore West. The most memorable cut is Santana’s version of Joe Zawinul’s “In a Silent Way,” that was the title track of the Miles Davis LP. Carlos is still here, but Joe and Miles are not, and I’m not sure many people even remember this composition, not that it was famous fifty years ago, but it made an impact, this was at the beginning of the fusion sound.

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/8vuzucy8

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/3bc9d7jh

And I’m thinking about Champlin’s career. How this denizen of San Francisco ended up in L.A. and ultimately a member of Chicago. Ultimately a journeyman, his contemporaries might have been household names, but it didn’t happen for him, and now he’s in his seventies… There are a bunch of these guys, they’ve dedicated their entire lives to the music, Bill even dropped out of school, was it worth it? Well, ultimately you have no choice, there are no do-overs.

So at first Bill’s mic is mixed too low, but then they bring it up and you can hear the characteristics of his vocals. And he’s not oversinging, he’s not hogging the spotlight, it was a master at work.

And then came Alex Ligertwood.

This guy’s about 5’3″ on a good day. And he looks like he hasn’t had a meal since 2020. He’s old and grizzled and even though he fronted Santana for more than a decade, what has he been living on? I mean this guy looked nearly dead. But he stepped up to the mic and…

He was playing to the last row, as if it was Live Aid or something, clapping, imploring, and then…

“One day I was on the ground

When I needed a hand

Then it couldn’t be found

I was so far down that I couldn’t get up

You know and one day I was one of life’s losers

Even my friends were my accusers

And in my head I lost before I begun”

It was jaw-dropping. The guy might have looked decrepit, but he hadn’t lost a step, his vocal was exactly like the 1981 record, Santana’s first hit single since the early, Greg Rolie days.

“I’m winning

I’M WINNING!”

He had us singing the words, pointing the mic at us, sans his vocal,

And damn if people didn’t know it. I certainly did, I bought that album just to hear that song.

And then came “Black Magic Woman”..

And I’m thinking how this is ersatz. Not the real Santana. And then I remind myself that really it’s a Peter Green Fleetwood Mac song, and as I’m listening…it’s better than the version on “Abraxas,” Alex sang it for all those years, he’s adding something to it.

Yes, it was a crack band. Not only Ferrone, but this guy Errol Cooney, Janet Jackson’s guitarist, and keyboardist Brandon Coleman, who plays with Alicia Keys.

Not that the show was dynamic. It was loose. It looked exactly like what it was, Jason Scheff and his friends.

And one of his friends is Steve Porcaro, so Steve comes out and they play “Human Nature,” which Porcaro co-wrote for Michael Jackson.

And then…

They were going to play a Toto song. Honestly, I thought it would be “Rosanna.” But it turned out to be the modern classic, “Africa.”

Now this is strange, “Africa” is the new “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Everybody knows it, it’s got a billion and a half streams on Spotify.

And the place goes nuts. Everybody comes down close, is dancing, hands in the air. That’s the power of “Africa,” astounding.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that Bill and Alex’s background vocals pushed the rendition over the top.

And speaking of Bill…

He comes out to do the number one Chicago song that he sang, “Look Away,” written by Diane Warren.

And now that he owns the mic for the whole song…

Wow, you can hear the character in his voice.

And unlike before, this dignified, well-coiffed guy in a sports jacket is playing a Fender. Cool. But then he starts to WAIL! I mean truly WAIL! And I’m sitting there thinking how guitar heroes are a thing of the past. And I’m thinking about where Champlin sits in the hierarchy and then I’m reminded, everybody’s got their own style, their own sound, and it’s not about comparison, but satiation, of both the player and audience.

And then there were a number of Chicago songs sung by Scheff that were an anticlimax, really, they needed to stop with Bill’s performance, and it’s over.

So what exactly did I experience?

Vail has a daily newspaper, the “Vail Daily.” And you’d be stunned how many events are taking place every day, never mind every week. A surprising amount of name talent, but also a lot of locals.

And this has made me aware of other markets, there’s much more entertainment in each place than there used to be.

And I’m thinking about the big shows. By my east coast perspective, Moorpark is Los Angeles. But if you grew up in Los Angeles, it might as well be San Francisco, it’s one step beyond. But right down the pike is the epicenter of live entertainment. Yes, there’s New York, London and L.A. And in truth, just like the label power is now concentrated in L.A., so is the promoter power, both Live Nation and AEG are here.

So you can see household names on a regular basis.

Then again, if you’re paying attention, Steve Ferrone is a household name, as is Porcaro and… If you’re a fan, you know all these cats, these are not the secondary players of Vail.

So what’s going through their heads?

As Ferrone told me, he loves to play, that’s what he digs most in life, with some other cats, whether it be on stage or in the studio, connecting, egging each other on.

And that’s what was happening here in this backwater. Unbeknownst to seemingly everybody.

This was not about starpower, but music. These guys had dedicated their entire life to music, and they were still on the road, keepin’ on.

Which is where I went, back to the 118.

And I listened to the news on Russia, I didn’t want to ruin the mood by listening to music.

And I’m thinking how dark it is.

And I’m thinking what a great big country it is, and all you’ve got to do is get in your car and drive.

I drove last night. Made me happy.

Tune in Saturday June 24th, 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