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

This is American television at its best. 

Watching reminded me of “thirtysomething,” a show made by people who were not pandering, who did their best to reflect real life, who respected the audience, whose main goal was to get it right.

American TV is produced, bright. But too often there are compromises. Big stars who can’t transcend their identity, who never meld with the role, assuming they can act to begin with, that they’re not just a pretty face. Then there’s the happy ending. Or the vivid loss. Everything is supersized. Focus-grouped. You don’t want to take any risk, you don’t want to offend anybody, you want to get the largest audience possible while keeping a modicum of respectability so the industry, and your peers, will acknowledge you, even though what you’ve ultimately produced is forgettable.

There’s something about the look of “The Bear.” I’m not a cinematographer, but I remember working with one who was legendary for getting it “fast and flat.” You didn’t have to wait around, he captured the images, but you were never wowed by the pictures. Not that you’re exactly wowed by the images in “The Bear,” but somehow it all seems real, and immediate, there’s no scrim between you and the actors, you actually feel involved. It’s visceral. And in some way transcendent. This is the art we’re looking for, that removes us from our everyday world and sets us in a better place and not only entertains us, but feeds our brains too, makes us think.

Now let’s not forget that TV isn’t the way it used to be. We’ve all got giant flat screens. It’s not like the tube days, where you felt like you were peeking at something, today it’s all right there. And you can get a really good set for not that much money. And if you’re willing to spend more you can get an OLED set that allows you to watch in 4k… Can I say that at times “The Bear” seems more real than real? That you don’t even see this detail in real life, the pores, the skin of people?

And the people are somehow regular. Tina is like someone you know, a good heart but don’t cross her. A tough exterior waiting to melt, but only at the right point. Before that she’s standoffish.

And Syd… She acts and you don’t see her acting. She seems real, evidences a personality without even speaking.

And Fak. A good time bozo just drifting through life, making no headway, but you can count on him.

And then there’s the utterly astounding Oliver Platt. Who has settled into his features, who now seems like a wholly real person.

And Ebon Moss-Bachrach… He’s playing a variation on the role he played in “Girls,” he’s the kind of guy, who believes he is always right, but is often wrong, who is high-strung, who pisses you off, but you have history.

And Jeremy Allen White as “Carmy”…

I don’t know this guy, I never watched “Shameless,” but he’s intense and committed and you really believe he’s the character, who is driven yet emotionally lost, who needs to get it right, who has climbed the mountain to the top and is trying to do it again, who believes in respecting everybody to get them to be their best selves. Chef!

You see life is small. We’re constantly told it’s big, but it’s not. Sure, there are celebrities, but most people carve out their own little niche, they intersect with a society, they’re not generating a lot of attention, but it’s important to them to be a member of the group, garner respect, and put a dent in the universe, however small.

And Natalie… If it weren’t for blood, she’d have nothing to do with these people. She’s conflicted, not sure whether to be in or out. She’s a professional in the business world, but that’s not how a restaurant is run, and this bugs her.

And Syd’s father… How come parents specialize in saying the wrong thing? They want to protect us, but at the same time they don’t cheer us in our dreams, assuming they’re out of the prescribed verticals. They rain on your parade. But they’re your parents. You’ve got to talk to them, but you don’t want to, you hold back your interior thoughts, you don’t want them squashed.

So everybody’s got a story. In truth, it’s a lot of oddballs thrown together. There is no hurdle, no test necessary for qualification. Everybody fell into it, and here they are. Is this serious business or just a living? And restaurants…

That was a big story a few months ago, how the numbers don’t work, how it takes so much time and effort to prepare these meals, at Noma and other high end spots. In other words, you don’t do it to get rich. But you have to be rich to go to a lot of these places.

Not really, assuming you can get a reservation.

And that’s another change in the last half-century. People no longer live in split-levels, they want more room than the cookie cutter houses provide. And they expect good grub at the airport and the arena, which used to specialize in hot dogs and popcorn, none of it good. And when you see these meals in the show…man, they look delectable.

It’s about getting it right. On a relatively small stage. It’s important to the people involved, it’s not that important to everybody else, but that’s fine.

And then there’s the old girlfriend…

We’re only four episodes in, so I can’t tell you exactly how this plays out, but when Carmy and she meet each other in the grocery store, it’s like Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne,” they’ve got so much history. Which they’ve buried, and now it’s all come back to the surface, can they cope with it?

Yes, we watched four episodes tonight.

I could debate the drip versus drop distribution model, but the bottom line is the public likes the drop, of the entire season, and what we’ve learned in the twenty first century is you fail to deliver for the audience at your peril. Give people what they want, or there is trouble. People love to binge, love to marinate. I certainly do. To watch two hours of “The Bear” was the highlight of my day. I know I can watch more tomorrow, I’m looking forward to it. When shows are dripped out episode by episode, week by week, it’s unfulfilling, you can’t remember what happens from week to week, it’s not the same artistic experience.

Then again, streaming TV is becoming more middlebrow, got to get those eyeballs, got to keep people subscribing.

Which is why I end up watching the foreign shows, because they shoot higher.

But “The Bear” is right there with them, at the same level, but different. Foreign shows don’t look like this, they don’t feel like this, “The Bear” is positively American, it’s the essence of the entertainment we used to deliver that conquered the world. That’s the power of a great show, that’s the power of a great song. But the irony is in both shows and songs, America is getting trounced by the foreigners. It’s the foreign language acts that are triumphing. I mean how big is Bad Bunny? He taps into something that the usual suspects can’t, and the people can feel it.

Being alive is so complicated, and there are so few answers. When Marcus cooks with the chef in Copenhagen and they discuss their families and their pasts, how they got from there to here… Man, that’s everyday life, meeting people and connecting, as human beings, not as a business transaction. We’re all searching for understanding, commitment, the feeling that another human being knows us and gets us. That’s universal.

And so is “The Bear.”

Check it out.