https://spoti.fi/3WuSBK3

Set-up is history.

This is what the movie industry does not understand.

The studios and the usual suspect artists want theatrical releases, because of the attendant marketing. So when these flicks hit streaming services everybody is aware of them.

And that marketing is uber-expensive. Tens of millions of dollars. To promote a film that in most cases does uber-poorly at the box office. The execs and the creators are still lost in the twentieth century, as if we were all home watching Thursday night Must-See-TV, being spoon-fed film advertisements that will inspire us to rush out and see the movie blindly the coming weekend.

But we’re not blind anymore. Critics don’t matter, but the wisdom of the crowd does. Such that by Friday afternoon you can tell whether a film is a hit or not. Once RottenTomatoes ratings appear, the future box office of the film is predicted. Assuming there is any box office. Unless it’s a sequel or a superhero movie, good luck.

And it’s similar in the music business. You release an advance single to create awareness. You prime the public…

To have the exact same experience the movie business does. By the middle of Friday afternoon, the future of the major product is sealed. Word is out, all over the internet, as to whether the project is worth your time or not.

First and foremost, the set-up of yore was based on precepts that no longer apply. Radio is no longer king and sales are nearly nonexistent. It’s about consumption. Does the audience listen over a period of time, racking up streams? First week numbers don’t mean much, all they do is impress the fellow members of the old school network, like the newspaper.

And there’s the creation of anticipation. News stories in advance, bringing the pot to a boil on Friday and… This is not how it works anymore. There’s too much in the channel and no one cares, except the hard core.

Zach Bryan released a live album on Christmas Day. Used to be there wasn’t even any new product in January, never mind over the holiday. Van Halen’s “1984” came out on January 1st of that year and owned the airwaves for a month, there was no competition. The labels had focused on Christmas…

But just like the rest of the world, music is now a 24/7 business. Whether someone listens Christmas week or in the dead of January it makes no difference, but it does matter if people listen!

Now the flaw in most acts’ thinking is believing people care. That there’s a ready audience out there for their music. There’s not. Everybody’s got too much music, they don’t need yours. You’ve got to think small, and see if the story grows.

I’m not saying NPR and “CBS Sunday Morning” and even SNL are going to hurt you, but they really don’t mean much. It’s all about targeted advertising/marketing today, that’s why the online data is so valuable. Most people don’t care and never will. How do you reach those who do?

Ultimately it comes down to the music, and the credibility, who the act is.

Forget the cartoons you see on the pop chart. They come and go. What about the bread and butter artists who are building careers, who are going to play music forever? That’s where the focus should be.

And it hasn’t been there for a very long time. Because labels are inured to the set-up, the system. They massage the product until they believe people will care, with more songwriters and features and mixes, and then they spend money, just like the movie studios, as if this will guarantee success…it won’t.

In other words, we’re returning to the days of yore. True A&R. Nothing is easy. How can you find an act that sells itself?

First and foremost you can believe in Zach Bryan. He’s got credibility, he’s his own man, he’s not beholden to the system. And so far he’s not selling out, there’s no tie-in with the Fortune 500, no brand building with perfume, etc.

In other words, if you want to make money in the music business today, you’ve got to start small, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul. You’ve got to have patience, as an act and as a purveyor. If you want it all now, not only are you doing it wrong, you probably won’t be a success.

And once you gain traction like Zach Bryan, you superserve your audience. He constantly releases new product, which is what fans want most. Especially today, people are not fans of the scene, they’re fans of the act. And the fan bases might not even intersect. You may like BTS or Taylor Swift or Zach Bryan and nobody else. And nobody else cares about what you’re into.

So this live album was recorded on November 3rd, at Red Rocks, America’s second most famous outdoor venue (after the Hollywood Bowl). It snowed. But it was an experience, if you were there…memories are made of this.

But the project was released in less than two months. Everything moves fast these days. If you’re spending time getting it right, you’re wasting time.

And the live album was a surprise. There was no set-up, it was just dropped. And the fans and ultimately the media spread the word.

As for employing “Ticketmaster” in the moniker…

I won’t get into the politics, but Ticketmaster is in trouble. Because it coasted too long, didn’t work on its image, obviously didn’t spend enough on its software. It’s a bad look. The tech companies didn’t used to have lobbyists in D.C., they didn’t even advertise. But when you become big enough, you have to play the game, at least a little bit.

Ticketmaster is always playing defense. And I could delineate the truth, but that’s the company’s job. As a result of the recent brouhaha there might be change.

Anyway, like Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” you can only use “Ticketmaster” in the name of your album once. No one cared about the acts that asked fans to name their own price after Radiohead, and no one will care about the acts that use “Ticketmaster” in the name of their album subsequently.

In other words, just like in tech, Zach Bryan has a first mover advantage. You’ve got to be nimble today, you’ve got to take chances.

But really it only comes down to the fans.

If you listen to the live album you’ll be stunned by the rabidity of the audience. They’re constantly singing the words. They’re in it with Zach. This is not some show at the summer shed by an act that had hits years ago, or even a pop act with a few that made the chart recently. This is PASSION! People want to belong. They want to be able to own something. They want something to believe in. For far too long we’ve had to believe in tech companies and bros because the musical acts were such nincompoops, tools of the machine. But not Zach Bryan.

I wouldn’t expect a year to go by before Zach puts out new music. Maybe not even a few months. You can’t overload the system, because there is no system, everybody is cottage industry, making it up as they go.

Also, the audience is so hungry, that if they find something they like, that’s great, they embrace it. That’s the story of not only Zach Bryan, but Morgan Wallen. Most offerings are so mediocre, so overhyped, so emotionally hollow that people are stunned when something delivers, and they tell everybody they know about it. And listen to the tracks ad infinitum.

But it does come down to the material. Zach’s tunes are catchy, there are changes, whereas they’re lacking in the hit parade. And he says he wants to create honest country music. What a concept!

It doesn’t matter if you hate Zach Bryan and his music, it doesn’t matter if you never even listen to him. All of us being in it together, judging each other’s taste? That’s positively old school. It only matters if the fans like the music, that’s it.

Can you create something so good that when it’s over the listener needs to play it again? That’s today’s litmus test. You can try to force something on the public, but the odds of it connecting are miniscule.

Watch this space.

“Stay True”: https://amzn.to/3WrXy6n

Part of me wants to tell you to read this book, and another wants to give a caveat.

If you’ve read my favorite book, “Anna Karenina,” you know it is peppered with political diatribes. Some people skip right over those. And if you do you miss little plot. “Stay True” is a bit different. It is peppered with philosophy and other highfalutin’ academic analysis that might fog your brain. But this philosophy does relate directly to the plot, and unlike “Anna Karenina,” “Stay True” is not much of a commitment, it’s only 198 pages.

And the reason I recommend “Stay True” is Hua Hsu is a music fan. He’s in his mid-forties, so his peak era was in the early to mid nineties. And he’s a perfect example of that era, the last in which rock ruled. Hsu reveres the bands, they inform his whole life. But he also embodies the rock and roll ethos, he does not want to be a member of the club. He’s the other. And he dresses accordingly. He’s not the life of the party, if he even goes to the party. And he hasn’t been laid. In other words, he’s hip but not mainstream. The music world has completely flipped in the twenty first century. Those who make it are extroverts, who might have been popular in high school. It’s all about conforming, as opposed to thinking for yourself. It’s about the group, not the individual.

But really, “Stay True” is not about today, but yesterday, so let’s set the scene.

Hua is the son of Taiwanese immigrants. They came to America for the opportunity, to better themselves. And interestingly, while they were over here, all the action turned out to be over there, and Hua’s father moves back to Taiwan, but Hua and his mother live in Cupertino, until the mother moves back to Taiwan too.

And a lot of the book is concerned with being Asian, being a minority, trying to fit in, wanting to be included. Hua’s born in America, but he feels he’s different. And for college, Hua goes to Berkeley, where 40% of the students are Asian. However some are more assimilated than others.

So besides the music, what makes “Stay True” great is the discussion of college. There are 8,000 students in Hua’s class, so there is anonymity, unlike where I went to college, where the class was 450. And…

This is what’s hard to square for me, the college experience. Hua talks about all this extracurricular reading, we didn’t have time for that at Middlebury, and I had no desire to go any deeper into academic theory. I remember this philosophy class I had the first semester, with Mr. Andrews, nearly dead, one of the most boring classes I’ve ever had. I did well, but I never took another philosophy class. They didn’t teach anything I was interested in at Middlebury College. And the only reason I went to college was because it was expected. And the reason I went to Middlebury is because it’s beautiful, coed, in Vermont and has its own ski area. The latter being the most important.

As the years wore on I switched from English to Art History, and I studied less and was less satisfied and ultimately graduated, but I’m not sure exactly what the difference is, the age, the institution…because on an academic level I cannot relate to Hua. He cares. I used to laugh at the people who took the subjects seriously. These were the people who were grinds, who were just replicating their high school experience because…because that’s what you did! Most of what I learned at Middlebury was outside the classroom, the people were very different from those I grew up with, 45% prep school graduates, few Jews, and all smart. The conversation was interesting and stimulating, that’s what I miss. And I learned how to analyze. When I think about Middlebury I remember the first week of school, when the anthropology teacher told us we were never going to discuss the reading in class, if we couldn’t understand the books we had bigger problems. And in law school all we talked about was the reading.

Now I’m too deep into my own experience, when I’m really talking about Hua’s.

Hua ended up an academic. He got his doctorate at Harvard. He’s a professor at Bard and he’s on staff at “The New Yorker,” America’s most esteemed journal which Tom Wolfe legendarily excoriated. Unfortunately, Wolfe was right. “The New Yorker” is a club, with a style, and even though I’ve subscribed for decades one thing I know is true, these are not my people. My people threw off the constraints. Bucked the system. Refused to be a cog in the machine. That’s why rock was so fascinating, they made it up as they went along. Groucho Marx said he didn’t want to be a member of any group that would have him. Elon Musk is a perfect example, he’s got rough edges, he couldn’t work for the company, he can only run the company, answering only to himself. Most of the legendary envelope-pushers are the same way. The most powerful people in the music industry couldn’t work anywhere else, they’d get fired. As for your heroes… If you ever got to meet them you’d be stunned. In many cases they’re narcissistic, and they can barely even engage socially.

Hua is a fan. And that’s one thing we can all relate to. Believing in rock stars and creating an identity similar, yet different. You want to stand out, but usually you’re not even noticed.

Now in truth “Stay True” is all about a specific event, which is delineated in each and every review of the book. I’m not going to detail it, I’ll let you be surprised, just like Hua was.

But what we’ve got in “Stay True” is the story of Hua’s college experience, his views on politics, love, academics… And he’s not easily swayed from his positions. And he has a zine… Hua’s college experience could not be replicated today. They talk about making a movie, but Hua says finding someone with a camera is a big hurdle. Today everybody has a camera!

So, “The New York Times” said “Stay True” was one of the ten best books of the year. And sans all the philosophy, I doubt they would have felt the same way. But truly it was the plot, the story, the experiences and what Hua felt about them that rang true for me. You won’t care about the academics and philosophy, you’ll care about the crushes, the friendships…

Hua writes in a very direct style. Except for the philosophy, it’s highly readable. And Hua is ultimately very much like you and me.

I’ll give you one quote…

“I found confident people suspicious.”

This rings a bell with me. How could these people be so self-assured? I certainly was not, and still am not.

For those guys who only read nonfiction… This is your book. It’s not giving any advice, but there’s tons of insight.

And I’m not saying women won’t like “Stay True”…

You’ll have a hard time putting it down. You won’t finish it and forget it.

But there will be some slow sections that you might find boring. Not extensive, but they’re there.

You’ve been forewarned.

But still, you’d be missing something if you didn’t read “Stay True.” Really, you should. This is so many of our stories’. We’re more similar than different.

Two thumbs up!

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3WYl0bx

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3YP95OX

“My life’s a mess, I wait for you to pass

I stand here at the bar, I hold an empty glass”

That’s when you know something is truly wrong, when you no longer go to the bar for conviviality, but the escape.

My father owned a liquor store, Bay Package, right off the Turnpike in one of Bridgeport’s worst neighborhood. He and my mother had a drink every night, but although my sister Jill had parties where the stash was sampled, I only drank at Passover.

And then came marijuana.

It was illegal you know. Just like it took time for people to switch sides, to be against the war, it took time for people to smoke dope. And by time I graduated from high school, drinking was pooh-poohed, it was all about drugs. But when I was a freshman in college Vermont gave all rights to eighteen year olds, not only voting, but drinking, and we partook. We hung at the Alibi, down by Otter Creek, where beer was a quarter and the vibe was malt shop, it was one of the best things about Middlebury.

Our classic rockers were thinking people. They had something to say. They told us what they experienced so we could identify. Loneliness is cured by music, when done right. When the people making it are not the cheerleader or captain of the football team, when they’re not being foisted upon us by their parents at an ungodly young age. You see rock is an independent pursuit. The other. Today you become a brand and part of the fabric, the continuum of techies and billionaires, they’re all the same people. But they didn’t used to be. Musicians were singular. Structure was abhorred. Get up when you want to, do the drugs you want to, have frequent premarital sex, not only throwing caution to the wind, but abandoning institutions. That’s the problem with the Grammys, they’re an institution. Rock was all about blowing up the institutions, searching for truth in a new way. Being the other and going down the road less taken.

If you don’t know the first Pete Townshend solo album, “Who Came First,” you should. For “Pure and Easy” if nothing else. And certainly “Nothing Is Everything (Let’s See Action).”

After that came “Rough Mix,” with Ronnie Lane, with the exquisite “Street in the City.”

But most people consider, or think, 1980’s “Empty Glass” is Pete’s solo debut.

The Who were essentially played out. There were a couple of Warner Brothers albums yet to be released, but the decade had changed, MTV was nascent. You heard “Eminence Front” on the radio, but Townshend would trash the band members and Keith Moon was dead and Pete was invested in his solo career, doing it all himself, singing all the songs, forgetting Roger, with no battles, all from his head onto the tape, and it was tape, which is ever so much more difficult to employ.

And by this point, 1980, a year before MTV, radio, AOR radio, was king. You needed a single. It wasn’t like ten years before, where the album was enough, you had to introduce the public to the sound. And “Rough Boys” burst out of the radio and got people to buy the album…and then there were people to whom the single was irrelevant, deep fans, who needed to hear what Pete Townshend had to say in its entirety, from the get-go.

And the best song on “Empty Glass” is in the middle of the second side. “A Little Is Enough” is one of the absolute best tracks Pete has ever done.

But then comes the title track.

“Why was I born today

Life is useless like Ecclesiastes say”

Alienation… A core building block of classic rock. These were not people who went to college first, it was not on their horizon, they knew they were different and they didn’t care, although they wanted to show that they were worthwhile, and boy did they.

“I stand with my guitar

All I need is a mirror

Then I’m a star”

And unleashed from the institutions they could question the system, be depressed. We loved rock because it was 360. The musicians were gods. That’s why there were groupies.

Alcohol’s a funny thing. Smoke dope and recede, fall out, go to sleep. But alcohol? It revs you up before it depresses you. Alcohol is about possibilities, hopefully the best night of your life. Your inhibitions fade away, you think you’re your best self. And then it gets the better of you. Because you keep chasing that peak experience and it’s oh-so-rare.

I’m not talking about casual drinkers, I’m talking about people who get drunk, who sometimes can’t remember what happened the night before, never mind where their car is parked.

And ultimately it gets sad.

And you find you’re that guy at the bar.

But then comes the change.

“Don’t worry, smile and dance

You just can’t work life out

Don’t let down moods entrance you

Take the wine and shout”

You want to be high all the time, positive, but that’s not how life works, you can’t have the peaks without the valleys, but when you have those peaks everything comes clear, it’s just about the moment, now, the experience, live it. Life doesn’t make sense. And the older you get the more you realize this. It’s all b.s. and no one will be remembered. If you’re doing anything to impress others stop right now, they really don’t care, it’s only about you. And this requires you to create your own precepts, your own boundaries, rock set us free, put us on the path, rode shotgun on the journey.

So Pete’s down in the dumps, depressed, having poured down too many drinks. And then he feels his power, the power of a rock star, the belief he can climb any mountain, beat any challenge, conquer the world. He ultimately reaches a point of equilibrium, he’s thrown off the shackles, he can see clearly now, he’s in the moment, he’s smiling, and then…

“My life’s a mess I wait for you to pass

I stand here at the bar, I hold an empty glass”

Of the Moody Blues…

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/justin-hayward/id1316200737?i=1000590974474

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/243358e2-ed1c-4726-b325-fb2052f67ec4/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-justin-hayward

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/justin-hayward-210209025