The goals have changed, and you need to change accordingly.

Used to be Johnny Carson was a god. Forget that he’s already been forgotten, at best a distant memory in the minds of boomers and Gen-X’ers, but David Letterman is fading too. Don’t expect Netflix to continue to lay out the big bucks for his services, that paradigm is dead. The streaming outlets made gargantuan deals to draw attention, to give them status, they no longer need it, the companies are mature, they now live or die based on original hits. “Stranger Things” means much more to Netflix than David Letterman, just like “Ted Lasso” means much more to Apple TV+ than Oprah Winfrey, whom the Cupertino service just parted ways with.

Used to be hosting a late night TV show was the dream. Didn’t work so well for Conan O’Brien. He’s trying to reinvent himself as a podcaster, but in truth he’s been hobbled by late night TV, his talents could have been better employed elsewhere, he would have been better off pushing the envelope all by his lonesome than under the constriction of sitting behind a late night desk.

As for Jay Leno… He was on Bill Maher’s new podcast, where Bill frequently doesn’t let the guest speak, and Jay said he was at a friend’s house and this buddy told his fourteen year old son that Jay used to host “The Tonight Show” before Jimmy Fallon and the kid didn’t believe it.

So, if you’re a late night host, you get to be the face of the network. But that network is bleeding viewers. The only thing that’s no longer on demand is sports, and natural disasters. Otherwise, you watch it when you want to, and usually you don’t.

Then there’s the power of TikTok. It’s killing Facebook. Prognosticators are saying the social media giant is going to circle the drain. You can’t find one person who believes in their metaverse play other than Mark Zuckerberg, who didn’t come up with the idea for Facebook anyway, originality is not his forte. He just buys or competes. But now Instagram is cratering. There’s not enough there there, you keep seeing the same stuff over and over again. All the creators have gone to TikTok.

The appeal of TikTok is humanity. We are social people. We always want to know what other people are up to, we dream of interacting with them. And TikTok is far different from Instagram, what came before. Not being static, it’s hard to fake. It’s the most real social medium. And it’s the new haven of comedy.

For a while there it was Twitter, before everyone realized most people are not even on Twitter, they can’t comprehend it, how to use it, the service has a stink upon it, even though it’s vital for those addicted to the news, which is just about everybody these days.

Comedy didn’t work on Instagram, it moves, unlike the pictures of celebrities and other boasters.

But on TikTok… Like comedy, and the algorithm will serve up more. While Facebook was focusing on serving advertisers, TikTok was focused on users, delivering what they wanted. And they do! Sure, there’s a China problem, which needs to be addressed, but as a user, TikTok is the heartbeat of America, even though everyone is watching something different.

This is the problem that the mainstream continues to fail to acknowledge. We no longer live in a monoculture. Mass is a fantasy. Everything is niche. You can get the story everywhere online and still people are unaware of it. Come on, admit it, shows played in your hometown that you were unaware of, that you might have gone to, this never happened before.

So the old verticals, the old desires, just don’t mean that much anymore.

Sitcoms. Forget that they don’t make many. “Seinfeld” made every standup salivate for a show. But even if you get a show now, almost no one will see it. And today it’s not about casual fans, but dedicated fans. Casual fans may have the money, but they don’t have the time. There’s so much stuff I’m interested in, but there’s a limited amount I’ll do a deep dive on, that I’ll pay for.

So you don’t want to have a sitcom.

And now Trevor Noah says he doesn’t want a late night television show. It’s hindering his progress. Not only is it limiting his lifestyle, he’d like to travel more, see more, not be tied down with so much work, and he’d also like to explore his standup more. You may do a monologue on TV, but others write those jokes. But if you go on the road, interact with a live audience, you can hone a new act, you can feel more alive.

And it’s not only TV personalities, it’s music ones too.

Used to be the goal was to have a hit. There’s nothing wrong with achieving one today, even though it reaches many fewer people, but it’s not the anchor of a career it once was. That’s road work. You cement the relationship on the road. And as far as getting new fans, it’s the old fans who bring them. You just feed the diehards, not only live, but online. They can’t get enough of you. Don’t bother casting a wide net trying to entice newbies, it can’t be done, not at a significant level.

You can have a track in the Spotify Top 50, the Spotify Top 10, and you’ll get hosannas from the label, even a bit of mainstream ink, but that does not mean you can sell any tickets, that you’ll have a continuing stream of income. Because you’ve got no diehard fans! You’ve got to be around longer than that, you need a body of work.

As for being on the road… You can’t do it alone. First, you need a good team, a good manager and agent, and then you have to work with other acts, trade favors. That’s where hip-hop has it right, but now even that genre is fading:

“Hip-Hop Is the Hottest Music of the Streaming Era. Is It Now Cooling Down? – A dearth of new breakout rap stars and innovation in the genre has some music executives concerned about a slowdown”: https://on.wsj.com/3Rtq1p2

It’s so easy to play these days, but harder than ever to win. Not only are you competing with every other act, you’re competing with streaming music, video games AND the history of recorded music. Good luck! If you’re in it to get rich quick, stay out, go into tech.

We’re going through a wrenching transition. And it’s really about the death of the baby boomer paradigms. Who cares what the top ten is in any genre? Music, movies, TV… It’s all about what you want to see, and there are very few people whose recommendations you trust.

Just like Firesign Theatre said, everything you know is wrong. And if you’re not willing to re-evaluate… Being stuck in the past is a recipe for a quick death. It’s fine if you want to silo yourself off, take yourself out of the discussion, but if you want to play, comment intelligently, not only do you have to read the mainstream publications, you’ve got to surf the news all over, informing your own opinions. Be wary of blind spots. And if you’re watching TV news, you’re already behind.

Just like there are people who keep saying that electric cars aren’t the future. In June 2021, Mercedes-Benz said it was going all electric by 2039. Now it’s by 2030: https://on.wsj.com/3rn1TtL And Toyota is being castigated for being behind. Every other traditional manufacturer is on a sprint to electric, not only because of Tesla, but because of the Chinese! Used to be innovation came from the States, but that’s before we decided to go to war with ourselves and stop progress. God, the influx of immigrant technologists? Whose jobs were they taking? Now they’ve gone to Canada, stayed home in India… People in Silicon Valley know all this, but D.C. is behind the game, and the public is grossly misinformed.

So ask yourself if the target you’re shooting for still applies, or whether it’s an anachronism. Talk to people who are true digital natives, the ones born after the internet took hold, like the college students who are now born in the twenty first century. Sure, they might have a vinyl fetish, but not at the cost of a streaming music subscription. And they don’t have TV sets, never mind cable subscriptions.

It’s astounding to observe. For ten or twelve years the boomers loudly protested about the arrival of the future, all the changes it begat. You don’t even hear the oldsters bitching about streaming royalties, which they still don’t understand, anymore. The younger generations have accepted the new paradigms. Oldsters yelling is akin to Grandpa Simpson howling about how it was in his day, and the boomers think they’re so young that they won’t get the hearing aids they need. And if you can’t hear what’s going on, good luck knowing what’s going on.

So Trevor Noah has it right. And no amount of Carpool Karaoke can convince James Corden it’s worth sacrificing his stage and screen career. And it was a fad anyway, heard people talk about it recently?

Laying pipe to stick around… Very few people have the patience and commitment. But it’s what it’s all about today. And you forge your own path. Momentary success is just that. Might be a peak, but in isolation, a monadnock. You’re better off climbing every hill in New England than one 14k mountain in the Rockies. The initial glory may be less, but…

It takes a lot of effort to build a career. Expend it wisely.

Or they do…

Tune in tomorrow, Saturday October 1st, to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3UU1jkQ

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

1

“Dirty business down in coal creek”

COAL CREEK? Where was THAT?

The past is starting to blur, but I’m here to tell you the seventies were different from the sixties. The sixties were about testing the limits, pushing the envelope, the seventies were about licking our wounds, there was the back to the land movement. Yes, everybody lost faith in their ability to move the needle when it came to the government and the war and they retreated to the country. It was the opposite of today, where you go to the city for the action, fifty years ago people had had enough, they moved to Vermont, Oregon, upstate New York, long before the era of the internet and smartphones, even before cable, you were out in the boonies not only physically, but emotionally. And life was slower…

The soundtrack to this movement? The Grateful Dead.

The Gen-X’ers who came on board during the eighties, who are convinced they know the history because they’ve listened to all the tapes, don’t. You had to be there.

The Grateful Dead were not a hit band. And really, the only impact they had was in the San Francisco area. They got no radio play. Most people had no idea what their music sounded like, most believed it was heavy, a la Black Sabbath, Consider the moniker!

But then there was a concerted effort to push them on the east coast. Credit Bill Graham and the Fillmore East. They started with a full page photo on the back of the program, with a caption about 2,600 people being happy during the Dead’s show. All to promote the shows that began at midnight. They’d play…until they could play no more, until the sun came up, this was something new.

And then came “Workingman’s Dead” and everything changed. You’d hear “Uncle John’s Band” on FM radio, when you were hankering for more of those Crosby, Stills & Nash harmonies, we didn’t yet know the Dead’s vocals were never close to pristine in real life. Word started to spread. And then “American Beauty” was released fewer than four months later, in November, of 1970.

I feel the same way about “Ripple” as I do “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” if I hear it I’ll have an uncontrollable urge to hit someone. “American Beauty” was softer, even more accessible than “Workingman’s Dead.” But “Truckin'” was very radio-friendly, and it got played, and was continued to be played. Unfortunately, as it sustained we had to hear “Sugar Magnolia” and “Friend of the Devil” too.

“Workingman’s Dead” had its own “Truckin,'” also closing the LP, “Casey Jones.” But it also had “New Speedway Boogie,” the band’s story of Altamont, and “High Time” sounded like country, the real thing, not the stuff from Southern California. “Cumberland Blues” wasn’t sappy. “Black Peter” was the flip side of “High Time,” there was no bow to commerciality, it was this authenticity that allowed the Dead to swerve from an experimental electronic sound to something more understandable by the hoi polloi, and Pigpen’s “Easy Wind” was the connection to the first “Live/Dead,” where he was still primary instead of secondary, never mind gone.

So there started to be a groundswell. In cities, but really the word was spread on college campuses. It’s not like you could not get a ticket, but the venues were bigger, and people talked about them, the religion was beginning, and it was ultimately cemented by the three-disc “Europe ’72,” now if you were out of the loop…you were gonna stay out of the loop.

But while the band was ascending, they had an opening act, it was de rigueur, the show started with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. There was little info about its members, the main story was that Jerry Garcia had learned pedal steel and sat in with them. The New Riders were seen as an adjunct of the Dead, the fact that they ultimately recorded their own album and went their separate way was a surprise. They were part of a cohesive scene, now what?

2

It was all about the first album. Word was the fourth record, “The Adventures of Panama Red,” was a return to form, the title song ultimately became an FM standard, anything about dope ultimately did. But by that time I was gone. Many of us were gone. Because of what came in between.

“Powerglide.” I bought it. I didn’t need another version of “Hello Mary Lou,” never mind an almost seven minute version of “Willie and the Hand Jive.” Where was that originality of the first album? Back then every album was a statement, and if you failed, if you bunted, didn’t give it your all, it hurt your career.

The follow-up, “Gypsy Cowboy,” didn’t penetrate the radio sphere whatsoever. It was for those still hanging on, and there weren’t that many of those.

But that first album…

It started with “I Don’t Know You,” a perfect opener, a jaunty number that got you moving, it appealed to your emotions as opposed to your brain, it was not intellectual. And it made John “Marmaduke” Dawson a star. We thought he was just that blonde guy on stage playing with Jerry Garcia opening for the Dead. It was a lark. But “I Don’t Know You” demonstrated it was no lark, one could argue quite strongly that what the New Riders dropped was even more commercial, more radio and audience friendly, than what the Dead had released by this point.

“Glendale Train” was “American Beauty” adjacent, but somehow more credible. You didn’t feel like the New Riders were trying for a hit, they were just doing what they did. “Last Lonely Eagle” was closer to the Dead’s output, but it fit perfectly in that oeuvre, and in truth Marmaduke had a better, more consistent voice than Garcia or Weir.

“Henry” was another dope runner song. You heard it all the time. Dope has always been cool, even though it ultimately killed so many. You’d be surprised who never survived the sixties and seventies, even if they didn’t die, they missed the mainstream and never caught up.

Then there’s my favorite from the debut, one that I sing to myself all the time to this day, “Portland Woman.”

“I wanna get me a Portland woman

Portland women treat you right

Portland’s gonna be mine tonight”

This was back before cheap air travel. You might drive cross-country, looking for America, but Oregon was not at the top of the list, it wasn’t until Microsoft that people saw Seattle as a legitimate outpost, never mind hip.

So “Portland Woman” is wistful. It’s what he hasn’t got. And when I went to college, no one had. With only 1,800 students on campus it was like going to school with your brothers and sisters. That paradigm of leaving home and sowing your wild oats, having relationships, didn’t exist at Middlebury. You saw the same people every day, it was unavoidable, make a mistake and it would confront you until the end of your tenure.

Not that we realized this immediately. But by time the first New Riders album came out, we did, and the goal was to get out of town at every opportunity, looking for action we never found. And we’d drive south on Route 7 in John’s Catalina and when we got to Pittsford, we’d sing:

“Gonna meet me a Pittsford woman”

That was a joke. I don’t think I’ve ever even stopped in that one gas station town, but the memories are still vivid.

3

But there was one more track on that initial New Riders album, it finished the first side, at length, 8:19 in fact, and it was entitled “Dirty Business.”

“Dirty business, dirty business

Dirty business down in coal creek

Dirty business down in coal creek”

There was nothing fast about the song. It was a slow, lumbering number. Just like living in the country, which so many of us were now doing, or were talking about doing. It was about the working class, when they were still admired, before they were put down, seen as ignorant.

“Well I make two bucks a day

And that ain’t a healthy pay

My kids are just beginning to get sick…”

Life was hard.

They don’t make tracks like this in the streaming era. “Dirty Business” was an album cut, for those who bought the album, they weren’t going to cherry-pick tunes, it was too much of an effort to get up off the couch and move the needle, and you came to like the slow pace of “Dirty Business” anyway. “Dirty Business” is in my DNA, I don’t have to hear it to know it, I can never forget it. And today I heard it on Deep Tracks and…

It didn’t end.

I’d been pushing the buttons. I didn’t catch it from the top. And then I started to wonder…was this a live version? But it was too perfect. Immediate in sound and accurate singing and playing, no one sounds this perfect on a live recording. I’m studying the cut, listening for differences, and it was still playing when I got home. And then I fired up Amazon Music and found out…

There’s a brand new New Riders live album, entitled “Lyceum ’72,” that just came out last Friday. I fired it up to compare and…

It had that same immediate sound. Sure, it was just the tiniest bit different from the studio take, but it was just as satisfying, I’m still not absolutely sure which one I heard on SiriusXM.

But I’m listening to this new live version of “Dirty Business” and it’s stunning how it seems so alive, but Marmaduke is dead, has been for quite a while. There are still New Riders, but it was the Old Riders who truly comprised the band. And they were still alive on this recording.

4

You can’t write about the Grateful Dead. Because you don’t know enough for the aficionados. You might get a minor point wrong, and in any event you’re not entitled to an opinion. Yes, Dead superfans are akin to Trumpers. It’s anything but a big tent. If you weren’t there before, you can’t get in now. But I talk to these people and they weren’t even alive when “Workingman’s Dead” came out, never mind seeing the band. They’ll criticize my view of the New Riders. With some cockamamie story. Telling me how it really was.

But I was there. The New Riders weren’t even also-rans. They were a concoction of players who opened Grateful Dead shows. And then they put out an album every bit as successful as those of the Dead, if not even more so. And if you were around back then, you know the New Riders’ debut, you couldn’t escape it. It was perfect stoner music, and a bit less serious, a bit lighter than the Dead, with even catchier numbers, a mellow act that fit the ethos perfectly, this was the soundtrack of the back to the land movement. When you didn’t move fast and break things, you moved slow and there weren’t many things to break.

“There’s talk been goin’ ’round

How they’re gonna shut it down

If the man don’t come and fix things

Pretty quick”

It ain’t much different today. But back then the anger was more cerebral. It was not a one note life. We played our records and talked. Analyzed the issues. The music was not superfluous, it rode shotgun, there were no video games, TV was anathema, it was the musicians who were the leaders, on our side, not that of the corporations, the goal was not to be a brand, rather to speak your truth and make enough money to continue doing so.

Most people didn’t even own cassette players back then, 8-tracks were what was in cars, and they were bleeding edge. The home recording scene was years off. The Dead may have been recording their performances on Nagras, but it was years before tape trading became a big thing. All we had was the records. Which we played over and over again. The show was a pilgrimage, to commune with the seers. The Dead didn’t perform, they got on stage and played, and there’s a difference. Same deal with the New Riders of the Purple Sage.

It was dirty business. Everybody was getting ripped off. But they soldiered on, because it was about more than money.

It was the culture.

“Dirty Business” was part of the culture.

And if you listen to this live take you’ll get a glimpse of the way it used to be…

And never will be again.

Spotify playlist: https://spoti.fi/3RpIjb1

1

This was the last time.

Most people don’t understand touring is a business. A band just doesn’t decide to go on the road and then see what happens… They evaluate the offers from promoters, is it enough to cover expenses and make a profit?

You might have seen the Santigold story the other day, she just can’t make the numbers work:

“Santigold Cancels North America Tour Due to ‘Devastating’ Costs and ‘Flood’ of Artists on the Road”: https://bit.ly/3So3XNT

The headline says it all. Give Santigold props for being honest, almost nobody else is. They lie, and people believe it. Someone in the crew got Covid… Some other health or personal problem when the truth is they can’t sell enough tickets to make it work.

The 50th Anniversary Roxy Music tour has been notoriously soft. Forget insider gossip, it was even in the “Washington Post.” It’s hard to evaluate profit and loss, because promoter Live Nation has multiple streams of revenue, but one thing is for sure, the company won’t pay the band this much to go out again.

Furthermore, it’s unclear the band even wants to go out again. It’s not like they’re Styx, doing so every year. It’s once in a blue moon. The last time in America was 2003. The members of the band won’t even live long enough to tour again based on that interval!

Yes, everybody’s getting old.

But in truth, Bryan Ferry tours on a much more frequent basis. But if he adds in the other Roxy members, and they cite the 50th anniversary of the first album, will that be enough to entice people to come?

2

We’re old. The last time I encountered this at a show was almost twenty years ago, the aforementioned year of 2003, when I went to see Simon & Garfunkel at what then was called “Staples Center.” This was a different audience. This was the people who remembered the music from before the Beatles. Not only were they in their sixties, some were in their seventies, there was white hair!

Now the same thing applies to us, we’re those in our sixties and seventies, we’re the ones with white hair.

But what Roxy Music is selling is different from Simon & Garfunkel. Simon & Garfunkel sold songs. Relatively acoustic. Stuff you can play at home. Whereas Roxy Music is selling a sound that is impossible to replicate at home, and no one tries. It’s a series of textures, and the end result is sui generis, there’s nothing like them.

Furthermore, Roxy Music is out of tune with today’s concert world. Today, a show is a party. You go to hang with your brethren. You shoot selfies. Who cares if the music is on hard drive, there are sets to wow you and it’s about the whole experience. Whereas Roxy Music last night was a concert. You remember concerts, don’t you?

Well, unless you’re a boomer you probably don’t. Your parents took you first. To classical ones. You sat in your seat. The music was respected, it set your mind free. There was no talking. It was a religious experience.

That’s rare today.

So I’m standing out by the trailer where they’re dispensing the tickets and I start to see people I know, who I haven’t seen in a few years. Everybody looks older, myself included, I’m sure. That’s what three years does. Life may have stopped, but not aging. And you can tell yourself sixty is the new forty all day long, but your body does not know that. And at my  yearly physical the other day, my doctor told me once you hit 50 it’s open season, your susceptible to EVERYTHING! Yes, it’s a war of attrition.

And inside the Forum Club…

Let’s just say it’s the same as it ever was. For DECADES! The only difference is since Irving got involved, there’s a buffet of free food, and always a dessert table with a huge cake depicting the act du jour. This is not conventional rock and roll, where no one sacrifices a dollar. It lifts the experience.

But it’s the same damn room and it’s the same damn people, who were there in the eighties, nineties, the twenty first century…

And so many of them can’t work in the music business anymore. Touring people can be lifers, not record label people, unless you run the damn company. But this is all the people who used to be movers and shakers, used to feel good about themselves, that they could move the needle, make a difference. Now there’s little time left. And it’s not the same business anyway. Everything is a sideshow today, all the acts in the Spotify Top 50… Nothing reaches everybody like it did in the pre-internet era. Never mind sixties Top Forty, but MTV in the eighties? You were literally a household name. Music pushed the envelope. It was the bleeding edge art form. Not anymore.

And standing in the corner was Joe Elliott. If this had been the eighties, if this had even been the first decade of this century, there would have been hysteria. A bona fide rock star, in our presence! But now… He’s just another aged guy there to see a band that meant so much to him in his youth. This is not a criticism of Joe, it’s just pointing out our perspective has changed, the stars are not as big as they used to be, they’re not icons, they’re just people. If anything, it’s about the music.

And that’s what drew the audience last night.

3

Now if you review Roxy Music’s history in America, there were two peaks. “Love is the Drug” was all over FM rock radio back in the mid-seventies. And then “Avalon”…stiffed upon its release in 1982, but subsequently permeated the culture to become a classic. One of the true legendary albums of the era. If you haven’t made love to “Avalon”…

But all this is to point out that if you were in the building, if you paid for a ticket, you were a fan. You knew almost all the cuts. Because the only way you could hear them was if you owned the albums. This was hipster music. I.e. the fans were hipsters, on the bleeding edge, needing to be aware of and consume all the trends.

Roxy Music appeared in 1972. Ultimately, the single “Virginia Plain” was stripped into the American album, but in truth Roxy was a British thing. If you were paying attention, if you were a hipster, you knew how big they were in the U.K. They might have broken at the same time as Bowie, but they were radically different.

And the albums seemed to be made without the audience in mind. There were no compromises. You were either on the trip or you were not.

“For Your Pleasure” was even darker and less comprehensible than the debut. But the sound came completely together on the third LP, “Stranded.” It had the obligatory babe on the cover, but it was very consistent, you didn’t have to be a fan to like it, not that it made a commercial dent over here.

The big story about “Country Life” was the cover. Only the English version showed the women nearly naked.

And then came “Siren,” the album that contained “Love is the Drug,” and just when the act got some traction in the U.S., it broke up. Bryan Ferry had been making solo albums, but now he was fully solo.

And then the band got back together!

“Manifesto” had the delicious “Dance Away,” which was played on FM in Los Angeles. It was followed up by “Flesh + Blood,” which did not get as good reviews, even though it had more and higher peaks, like “Oh Yeah!” and “Over You,” but then two years later came “Avalon” and the band went its separate ways.

You either know all this or you don’t, you were a fan or you weren’t. And believe me, most people in the U.S. were not. You couldn’t afford every album, it’s not like today with all of the music on streaming services. You had to pick and choose. But if you picked, you knew.

And the people in attendance last night knew.

4

That was a significant difference. Starting in the mid-seventies and certainly the eighties, when bands had enough hits, casual fans would go to the show, to hear the monster tracks. They might own one album, but not all of them. Of course there were diehards in attendance, but last night everybody was a diehard.

And they were enraptured by the music.

You saw very few cell phones alive. And people were not constantly traipsing to the bathroom or the concession stand. They were there for the music and they weren’t going to miss a thing. They were standing on the floor, because once one person does everybody has to. But in the bowl, they were seated, as this music is best consumed.

So they opened with “Re-Make/Re-Model,” the opening track on the opening album. If you know the album… Otherwise you wouldn’t know it at all.

This being the Forum, the sound was excellent. Because the building has no sports teams, it’s only live performance.

And it being an art school troupe, there was video, but it was… Well, you’d have to see it to get it. Not all the pieces were aligned. It was an effect. Illustrating that this was not your regular show. The band was playing by its own rules.

But it all didn’t gel. I mean the band was together, but it was not transcendent, there was no liftoff.

“Out of the Blue” was better. But I was still observing, I was not integrated.

“Bogus Man” was a step back. Then again, it’s not even something you’d expect to be performed live. Talk about art rock… Inherently the audience is excluded.

But then came “The Main Thing.”

Now the funny thing about your favorite albums is your favorite track changes. It took years for me to become obsessed with “The Main Thing.” It wasn’t until over a decade later that I had to play it over and over. Which was now easy to do in the era of CDs. When “Avalon” came out we were still buying vinyl.

“The Main Thing” is not about the lyrics. It’s about the hypnotic groove, the sounds. It’s an aural trip. And it’s not like Bryan Ferry does not play it in his solo shows, but…

Bryan employs Chris Spedding, the legendary leather-clad lead guitarist, an icon himself. To tell you the truth, the fact that Roxy Music was reuniting was less important to me than the songs. But then…

PHIL MANZANERA WAILED!

The riff in the song was amplified, it became something new. A buzzsaw. Straight to the heart and brain. It could not be denied. I mean I’m a Manzanera fan, but he truly took the sound to another level. As did Andy Mackay, on oboe and saxophone. The two, along with original drummer Paul Thompson, took the whole performance to another level. They were not fungible, ultimately they’re irreplaceable, together they make up the Roxy Music sound. The individual parts are interesting, but the sum of them is something completely different.

And it wasn’t only them. There were thirteen people on stage. Talk about costs! They didn’t want one sound from the albums to be left out. This was a show made for millions. But millions of fans did not show up in the U.S.

5

“Ladytron” is the second song on the first album, the one with the smallest dent in the U.S. I purchased it at the Virgin store in London back in ’72 because I wanted what was hip, and I heard a song on the in-store system that confirmed my desire.

All to the point that this was a track a good portion of the audience did not know. But, if like me, you did… This was a transcendent moment. I’m nodding my head listening now. They don’t make this kind of music anymore, other than Roxy, they didn’t make this music then either! Rhythms, solos, exploration. This is what I went for, to marinate in what once was.

But before that I’d been wrestling, it was a mental crisis. I kept thinking if I’d paid for my ticket would it have been different. But was this just another show? Could I get myself back into that spirit from long ago, when the music was everything, when I went to the show to commune one on one with the band, when the rest of the people in attendance didn’t matter, whatsoever?

With “Ladytron” I started to return to that old time feeling, that old time love. But that was fifty years ago. Most of my life has now been lived. Back then it was all about possibility, now it’s about grabbing a hold of my life personally. I mean I’ve changed, but the music has not. I grew up, but the music did not. It’s a conundrum. What was once everything…is not as much anymore. It might have been bleeding edge once, but now…

It’s weird. It’s not a put-down, it’s just that I’ve risen in status, now they’re musicians not stars. They’ve dedicated their lives to that, and I’ve dedicated mine to…

Then came the first “Avalon” number, “While My Heart is Still Beating,” with an extended, ethereal intro. This was new, this was alive, it built on what was on the record, there was new magic to add to the old magic, I was surfing the astral plain.

Unfortunately, the song that made me realize I couldn’t miss the show, “Oh Yeah!,” missed a bit. Intimate, whimsical, yet serious…just didn’t work with this much production.

But it was followed by “If There is Something,” my favorite song from the debut, the one they were playing on the system in that Virgin store…

It’s 6:34, and it starts off almost carnivalesque, but then…it completely changes, and becomes something different, a little over a minute and a half in. This is where Andy Mackay starts to shine. It’s like someone was telling you a lighthearted story and then they leaned in, looked you in the eye and started spewing the greatest truths. You’re on a journey, solo, to god knows where, and when the number ends, it’s like you’ve been dropped off on an alien planet.

“In Every Dream Home a Heartache” is a tour-de-force, it is in Ferry’s solo shows, and it was last night. Once again, you have to be a hard core fan to know it. But if you are… This sensibility is what drew you to Roxy in the first place. Something singular, representing inner thought, anything but pablum, an exploration, a feature of what once was and is now gone. Inner thought, remember that?

Then back to “Avalon,” with “Tara,” the album’s closing track, an instrumental coda, something you’d never expect to hear live. This is the essence of “Avalon,” sensuous… Another Andy Mackay extravaganza.

6

But it was with “My Only Love,” from “Flesh + Blood,” that the show truly took off, when you had to close your eyes and revel in the sound, one you cannot get anywhere else.

It’s like suddenly the soundman got the mix exactly right, everybody on stage was firing on all cylinders and the balance was exactly right, it was magical, it both bonded you and set you free. WHEW!

And then came “To Turn You On,” the first song that emerged from “Avalon,” the one they played on the radio in L.A…

This was suddenly too much, an electric jolt went through my body. All my doubts, all my distance, disappeared. Who cared how many tickets the band sold, who cared if everybody knew the material or not, I certainly did, and how many times have I had sex to this? And how many hundreds of times have I listened to this in addition, it never gets old.

“Is it raining in New York

On Fifth Avenue”

The screens were no longer cut in a cubist fashion. There was one big image. Of the city. Yes, Roxy Music is city music. It’s for a fast-paced world, not a slow one. For thinking people, not mindless drifters. It’s for those who have jumped off the cliff and into the fast-flowing maelstrom of life.

“To Turn You On” is an apartment song. Somewhere behind the walls, maybe in a high-rise. It’s all taking place behind closed doors, but through this music you’re getting a glimpse.

Unfortunately it ended, I wanted to live in that space forever. The rest of the world melted away, it was just me and the music.

Now it’s clear the band is building, it’s that time in a show when the players are ascending to the peak. The songs you know by heart, that many people know by heart, the energy coming from the stage was palpable.

“Dance away the heartache

Dance away the tears

Dance away…”

But then the piece-de-resistance, MORE THAN THIS!

Yes, the opening track of “Avalon,” the one with the most streams, the one that is most well known.

“It was fun for a while…”

This was reflective back in ’82, even more so today! Life is constantly moving, constantly changing. What you think will continue will not. But you’ve still got your memories…

“More than this

You know there’s nothing’

Ain’t that the truth. It doesn’t get any better this. This is more than Bryan Ferry solo. It’s better than the rock acts of the past pounding the boards to make you move your feet, more than today’s dance extravaganzas, it hearkens back to an era where your favorite record took you on a journey and you didn’t care a whit what anybody else thought about it.

And then the title track, “Avalon.”

This is a hard sound to replicate live, something relatively quiet and intimate, this was what the act struggled with earlier in the set, but not now…

“Now the party’s over, I’m so tired

Then I see you coming, out of nowhere”

Bryan has loosened the tie of his tuxedo, the evening is nearly history, and then he sees her.

You understand, you know… Because the best things always happen when you least expect them. When you’re not paying attention, you’re caught off guard.

“Avalon…ooh”

Yes, those “oohs” were delivered so exquisitely by one of the backup singers that when she was done the audience couldn’t help but applaud in exaltation.

But there’s that dreamy sound, once again Andy Mackay adding more than you think he ever could.

7

So if you’ve got the album…

You can hear steps on the driveway, the opening and closing of the car door, the motor revving, and then…

“Late that night I parked my car

Staked my place in the singles bar”

That was a thing, before the apps, before millennials went out in groups.

“Boy meets girl where the beat goes on”

Bryan Ferry anyway, but he was our model, he gave us hope, with the music in our heads we were empowered.

“I say go, she says yes

Dim the lights, you can guess the rest”

Oh, we certainly can. We were old enough to know, we were old enough to be experienced. Roxy Music was not for teenagers, it was for those who were no longer wet behind the ears, who were navigating the world by themselves, trying to find their way, who were learning that love was the drug, in fact it was everything.

That was the peak, the apotheosis. Next were two numbers from “For Your Pleasure,” “Editions of You” and “Do the Strand.”

“There’s a new sensation

A fabulous creation”

That’s what Roxy Music was. That was its appeal, it was exotic. Either you were the type to go on an adventure, or you were a prisoner of the radio.

And then it was…

Done.

Now at some shows there’s one more number, one more encore.

Yes, you learn this when you check the set lists. I was waiting for it, hoping for it, but…

No matter how much they paid for a ticket, certain people need to leave to beat the traffic. Which I never understood. I know someone who missed Kirk Gibson’s home run that way. Why not have the complete experience?

But the other problem with an old audience is it’s not rabid, it won’t stand and clap forever, maybe if they’d done so a little longer the band would have come out and performed the cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” which Bryan Ferry has made his own.

But it was not to be. The band had worked the audience into a frenzy and then…

That was it.

8

Waiting for the Manzaneras in the Forum Club…

It was the usual suspects. Most people leave after the show. But there are the others, mostly faceless, who will stay until they close the doors. As if they’re hanging on to be part of rock and roll, still believing in the dream, even though at this point they’re crying in their beer, many of them alkies.

Yes, bars are for young people. And you don’t want to be the last one there. And you certainly don’t want to drive home after that, which you have to in L.A., there is no public transportation and good luck getting an Uber, I was canceled on three times last week before I finally got a ride, wasted nearly forty five minutes, and rides are no longer cheap. And yes, I use Uber generically, in fact it was Lyft, but I’ve had the same cancellation problem with Uber too. They say they’re going to pick you up and then they…don’t, it’s a driver’s market.

It was a bit creepy. These denizens of the night are no longer twenty or thirtysomething. You wished they had somewhere to go. But all they had left was this music. But that scene, with its leather and skinny jeans, is over and dead. History. And who knows, when we’re gone there could be a Roxy Music revival, but about the only thing we know is going to survive us is the Beatles, the rest is leaving with us.

We’re like our parents. Going to see people that would draw blank faces amongst today’s younger generation.

But this is not just music of our generation, it was much more than that. People say it’s the same as it ever was, but nothing could be further from the truth. Acts didn’t sell out to politicians and corporations, they begged and the performers said no, after all they were making so much dough, as much as anybody else in America, there were no billionaires, and billionaires are famous for their money, what they do is usually irrelevant, but with the musical acts of yore…it was just the opposite.

Ultimately Roxy Music is cerebral. Like I said, the music came alive on stage. Who knew the brilliance of Phil Manzanera and what he’d add, ditto Andy Mackay. It’s really about the records, when records were king, today it’s live performance, everything is about the show. For years Steely Dan didn’t tour at all, today they’d be broke. You make your bones, build your career, bond yourself to your fans and make your bread at the gig.

But Roxy Music needs no gig. The music transcends the gig. When you listen to “Avalon” you don’t even think a band is involved. It’s just a seamless creation that you take at face value. You don’t envision a studio, putting the pieces together, rather there’s just the finished product.

That was enough, we didn’t need more of that.

But we’d love more of this.

But we’re not going to get it, not going to happen. Either you were there last night or you were not. You can check New Music Friday but you will not find this sound, this magic. You’ll have to go back to the decades-old originals, from a bygone era. They’ve painted since the Renaissance, but we’ve never had another da Vinci, nor a Raphael or Michelangelo, never mind all at the same time. We lived through something special, that has never been repeated and may never be repeated, when your desire was to be a musician, so you could express yourself, and the audience had its ears open, attuned to the new and different.

Many of those acts can’t even perform, the members are dead. Others are a poor facsimile of what they once were. Others have members who hate each other too much, usually because of money. The rest? They’ve been on endless victory tours, final shows that were not, you could see them if you wanted to.

But not Roxy Music. Which are more akin to Halley’s Comet. They were here, but then they’re gone, not to return for a significant number of years. But Halley’s Comet burns on, humans do not. They have a finite life span. And if you miss them, it’s too late. If you missed Roxy Music live, you probably missed your last chance. And most people don’t care, but there are others…

We had fun for a while…