Kevin was one of my best friends. We saw a lot of shows in the Seattle area over the years. He was a wealth of knowledge about the business. I learned much. We did not hear from Kevin for a few days so I called the police to check on him. He had passed away. He had COPD and died from a cardiac incident according to the coroner. I and many others will miss him. Love you brother !

Rick Mercer, Jr.

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I worked with, “The Sutter-man” at M3 and then followed him to, “Tazmoe Music”!  You would be hard pressed to find another promotion man more passionate about music and the job of promoting it.  Simply, one of a kind and his passing hits me hard and leaves me riddled with guilt that I failed to keep in better contact with him.  You always think there’s never ending time and opportunity to keep in touch until it’s too late.  “The Sutter-man” will be missed.

Mark “Rad-man” Radway

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Sorry to hear about Kevin.

The Silencers owed him a debt of gratitude for his support in the USA.

Even when the American label company turned their backs on us, he didn’t. We so wanted to tour the States again to promote A Blues for Buddha, they never did forgive us for not going right back into the studio after the ’87 US tour, instead we toured Europe.

By the time we released the 2nd album in”89 they were over us and onto the next thing.

Thanks again for your kind words about our music, much appreciated.

All the best

Martin Hanlin

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Wounded, indeed.

I met Kevin in Houston, 1992, the 9th Annual KLOL Rock&Roll Auction….instant brother. You know exactly what I mean.

Like you, we talked every week for many years, then it eventually tapered off. That’s just life sometimes. Still, every couple months, Sutterman would call, ask about me, then proceed to tell me everything about HIM! Just part of his charm.

I’m only learning of his passing from your email, and I am crushed.

Thank you for such a passionate and poignant tribute to a wonderful soul.

RIP SUTTERMAN!

Gary Poole

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Thanks for honoring Kevin. He took on my band Visitor Jim and worked us to Triple A radio via his company Tazmoe. He was working Jack Johnson’s debut at the same time, guess which one blew up? But he always treated us with respect. If he liked your music and believed in you as a person, he’d work hard for you. Respect, Kevin

Jimmy Leslie

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Very sad news, Bob, I’m so sorry to hear this. I was the promotions coordinator at Chrysalis with Daniel and Kevin for a short time and interned at IRS before that when Kevin was there. Kevin was kind, fun to be around because I felt he knew so much, a hard worker, intense and smart, helpful when I was just starting out, and a super all-around music guy. I had so much respect for him, seeing him every day doing his job well at Chrysalis every day.

Difficult news.

Beth Winer

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I worked over the last 8-9 years on various projects with Kevin. Every phone call was over 30 mins. Likely an hour. He was one of a kind. We recommended each other often for projects. We liked working together. I remember his bike accident when he had an episode. That was scary but he Bounced back. We talked divorce and life  He always asked about my kids.

I don’t know the last time I talked to him. During the pandemic I know.
Damn. Really bummed to see this one today.

Life is short.
Melissa Dragich

_______________________________________

Oh my gosh! This was certainly not news I was expecting to hear when checking my phone a moment ago on Saturday night.

 

Kevin and I worked at I.R.S. Records together in the ’80s, on opposite coasts, and in nearly opposite disciplines (press – radio). But he couldn’t have been nicer and more helpful, always the extra mile, always the extra phone call…hell, if I needed anything at all, especially while 3,000 miles from home, Kevin was always there to tell me which subway to take, where the stage door was, what the best deli was…he even introduced me to a few key New York press people who became valuable contacts and friends.

 

Kevin introduced me to the word “geek.” He went one farther to coin the word “geekdom” The word seemed more disparaging in 1984 than it is in 2022 when its something of a compliment, tantamount to “maven.” No matter the context, I think of him every time the word comes up in daily dialogue.

 

Kevin and I worked a few projects as indies in the past decade or two. There are a lot of great Triple A promo specialists, but there was something special about Kevin — his passion, his drive, his caring, and, yes, his absolutely endearing geekdom.

Rest up, old soldier until we meet again.

Cary Baker

_______________________________________

Kevin was a good man.  He was always passionate about the music. We weren’t best friends, but we would talk often when I worked at Geffen after he moved to Seattle.
He always said good things about you.
Jim told me of his passing yesterday.

You spoke of him very fondly and beautiful.
Sorry you lost a good friend.
It is very sad.

Alan Oreman

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Remember Kevin from Buffalo when my gig would take me there to write up some band.  Nice guy.  Good times.  Sad side two.

Jonathan Gross

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He worked some singles for us, he was a good guy, sad to hear this.

Mister Zero

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Very sad. Too young. A very good record man. Very sad.

Bob Morellli

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That’s a great and nice thing you did on Kevin. He was a good guy and a music lover. You got it really right.  He was always a big defender of yours too as you know 🙂 You’re a good man for doing this. You don’t get to hear that often do you. .)

Thanks

Harry Levy

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Thank you for this.  I was worried that his passing would go unnoticed in these batsh@#t crazy times.

I met The Sutterman in 82. My passion has always been music [skiing was business for me] and over the years he introduced my to so many artists.  With Kevin I was able to dine with Ian Anderson [who was not in a great mood that eve], hung with Huey Lewis, Blue Rodeo and many others. His care packages came regularly and he turned me on to so much new music.

Kevin [and Glynnis] are the Godparents for our oldest.  We were tight for 40 years.  We had regular check in’s where as you know, you were a listener on those calls.

The music business is brutal and most of the time makes no sense – he lived through it all, the highs and too many lows.  At Christmas I would send him gift cards to Costco to feed his DVD addiction.  I could never repay him for the music he turned me on to – and yes I still listen to Was Not Was and Go West.

He loved his artists and passionately promoting them with anyone.  He made me feel like a music industry insider. Loved that guy (he still called me Dude!).

Stay safe.

Mike

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Very moving column about a former music biz compadre.
You portrayed Kevin’s vibe so well. (He was especially active with us when my brother and I ran the Triple A Summits in Boulder for Gavin up ‘til 2000.) Your piece stresses the deeeeeeep camaraderie of our biz, one I only partially found later in the publishing/literary set with editors, lit agents, writing clients…blah blah. Would have been IMPOSSIBLE to replicate something so priceless anyway.

You touched on the importance of creative career reinvention later on, which some talented passionate lifers like Kevin simply couldn’t achieve. You often say it’s every man for himself, and as gratifying and rewarding our fraternity was/is, many scale a deep chasm towards the end. Maybe that’s the price you pay when you do something you adore for a living…

Keith Zimmerman

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I can’t say I knew Kevin well – but I worked several of those small releases with him. I always enjoyed his love of the game and life. Loved that he called himself Sutterman. He was one of my tribe. I am so sorry to hear that he has passed.

Adam Lewis

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I’m so sad reading this. We spent a wonderful day with him, he drove us all around Seattle in his Acura. He spoke of his role cheering you on through your trials he was so gentle and caring. He won me over when we were driving through residential neighborhoods and he pointed and said “I love this house, it’s just so cute”

He was still angry about his wife leaving him but he then told the story of having the smoked salmon sent from some English rocker to his former father in law.

Wendy Morris

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Wow. Thanks for the memories and words.  I  hired him to do local in Buffalo a real music junkie- I remember the stories he would tell me about his relationship with Ian Anderson.  The above is the same as the below and the below is the above !  Eternal peace-crank it loud and have some of Ian’s salmon  for me!

Harvey Leeds

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Nice piece. I wish there was a fund  established years ago for industry vets like Kevin. I remember suggesting it  but no support then.. I do think “Music Cares” has something to help music vets, but I could be wrong.
I have helped some old record biz pals with “Go Fund Me”,
Thanx again for the good read

Stan Goman

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That’s a very sad story about Kevin. We spoke on the phone a few times, probably about those things you describe as ‘obscure indie records’ but he was a music guy. That’s what I liked about him. Always coming up with ideas and showing enthusiasm.

Then I got to go to Seattle for the first time, probably around 2007 or 08, and I looked him up and called. He asked where I was staying and said he’d come around and show me Seattle. Long story short, that’s exactly what we did. I watched Seattle from his car window and he showed me the sights and finally the cityscape from across the sound. Then he invited me back to his apartment to listen to some tunes and we watched DVDs and just soaked in great music. He was a big fan of David Gilmore live in concert at the time. We traded albums and then he dropped me back to my hotel.

I never forgot those few hours we spent together and one story in particular. Being an Aussie, as we were driving around I asked him how he felt about everyone in the US carrying guns. Its still bizarre to me that the sensible majority have never stood up to the power of the NRA in your weird country, where gun deaths per capita are higher than anywhere else in the world and yet people think they’re safer for actually carrying them. So I said to Kevin, what happens on the roads when the inevitable road rage occurs, do people actually brandish guns? And he said yeh, it was a problem, but he had a solution. As we drove along the highway he reached below his drivers seat and pulled out a massive gun and said, “well I’ve got a bigger one”. I looked in astonishment as he put it back away, more than bemused at this typical display of American bravado.

Kevin, was one of the good ones. VALE.

Rob Scott

The SourceSeeker

Noosa

Australia

He died.

Shortly after my ex-wife moved out, in the spring of ’89, I heard from two people, Daniel Glass and Kevin Sutter. This had nothing to do with my ex being gone, it was serendipitous, but both of these connections served me well over the years, got me through the nineties, which were hell. The fact that I got through them at all was a miracle. I was broke, my dad died, I had an horrific operation…if it weren’t for psychotherapy, I never would have made it through, I wouldn’t be here right now.

Ironically both Daniel and Kevin had worked together at Chrysalis, but Kevin had moved on to RCA, he was staying at Le Parc, where he always stayed thereafter, at least until his fortunes took a turn for the worse, and I believe we went out for sushi, some kind of meal, and then in the bowels of the building, in the parking garage, he slipped a cassette into the tape deck of his rental car and he played me the new Silencers album, “A Blues for Buddha.”

You probably don’t know that record, it was their first one that had the semi hit “Painted Moon,” but “A Blues for Buddha” is also spectacular, and it begins with the song “Answer Me,” which fades in like a pied piper coming over a hill and then lights into a groove and it’s undeniable.

Kevin turned me on to other records, I remember one by Slim Dunlap, but that was after he’d moved to Seattle to work with Jim McKeon.

You see Kevin was a promotion man. A salesman. He started off at CBS in Buffalo, after RCA he worked at East West, but then the major label gigs dried up. For a while there, radio promo people were making seven figures, not that Kevin was ever in that league, but even a regional guy did very well in those years, and they were mostly guys, but there have been spectacular female promotion people too.

And once you get the music business bug, you can’t let it go. It’s very hard to go straight. First you go independent, hoping it’s just an interim gig, before you land another major label job. Then you go to work for somebody else on a full time basis, an established indie, and then ultimately you work for yourself, on ever more minor records.

And this was in an era when there were still six major labels. And the casts changed on a regular basis. That’s not so true anymore, then again the labels don’t have the power they used to, they’re sharing it with the promoters.

So Jim McKeon was a radio guy who’d set up an indie shop in Seattle and Kevin moved there. The timing was right, he was just breaking up with his wife. He never got remarried, and neither did Glynnis. Actually, I never heard of another girlfriend. Glynnis called him for a while, from Arizona, where she had a relative, where she’d gone to get a gig in the airline business, but I haven’t gotten a report recently, that all dried up.

I got the impression that Glynnis’s family always thought Kevin wasn’t good enough for her. They’d met in Buffalo. Neither graduated from college. But Glynnis’s family was full of high achievers, her father was a doctor. And Kevin was arrested his first night at college.

It was somewhere in the Midwest, Memphis I recall, I can’t remember the name of the institution, but it was a wrong place wrong time kind of situation, and college did not stick.

As for Kevin’s background, he came from the Island. As in Long Island. And I remember his father was ill, from either a work accident or something from birth, and had passed, and Kevin was flying high in the music business…

And then he was not.

Kevin was doing well in Seattle. Ultimately McKeon left and Kevin ran the operation himself. He had a car, one of those early Acuras with that sloping rear end. And then a boat. And he insisted I come visit him. This I did. In the summer of ’93.

You see Kevin called me every week, not to pitch me, but to talk. In an era when my phone did not ring. He introduced me to his pal Jeff Laufer, who’d also worked at Chrysalis, and I fell in with Jeff’s family, they were very good to me.

But when my fortunes started to turn, upon the arrival of the new century, I…was ultimately too busy to talk to Kevin for an hour every week. And he did not have a computer at first. You may not remember those days, when everybody was not computer literate, but that was the case in the music business until about ten or twelve years ago, when computers were easier to use and there was no choice.

But then I heard that Kevin had a heart problem.

It’s a terrible story. Business had gone bad. Kevin had to sell his boat, and then his car, and then he let his health insurance lapse.

And that’s when it happens.

He went for help a little too late, but he made it through and was upbeat. Most of the time Kevin was upbeat.

And he was really into collecting physical product, especially DVDs, that was his idea of a good time, to pull up one of his DVDs and watch a movie. He continued to do that.

And he continued to be an indie promotion man. With ever more obscure indie records.

But last fall he called it quits. Or maybe it was the fall before, I’d have to look at my e-mail to be sure, and I don’t feel like doing that, it will wound me further. He said he was fed up, it was too hard, with too little money.

He moved from the city to the suburbs, and ultimately his mother died and I heard he was going to inherit some money, which I felt good about, he’d make it through.

But then when I wrote about not taking Social Security early, he immediately e-mailed me angry. He had to take Social Security. His accountant told him it was the only way he could make it through.

But Kevin continued to e-mail me. Especially when I wrote something political. You see Kevin was a dyed-in-the-wool left winger. A classic liberal. He was pissed off the way things were going and he was not afraid of saying so. And Kevin knew the story, he was not uninformed. It made me feel good to hear from him.

But I won’t hear from him anymore.

I remember Kevin was a couple of years younger than I am. He was tallish, slim, never overweight, and always alive, he was optimistic. But he could be intense, almost all promo people can be that way, especially when they feel a favor is not being repaid.

And now Kevin is gone.

The details? I don’t know them, I might never know them. I got a text from Jeff, he didn’t know them either, just that Kevin’s landlord called him, he’d found his number in Kevin’s desk. But probing deeper Jeff told me Kevin’s health had not been good, and Kevin insisted Jeff not ask him about it when he called.

So another member of the tribe is gone.

Kevin was a rock and roller through and through. Once he got bitten, he never went straight. He still got excited about new records.

People are complicated. Relationships are complicated. They go through changes. But you remember when someone has been good to you, and if you’re someone like me you keep repaying that debt, because they helped you make it through.

I don’t know why Kevin couldn’t make it through. Jeff said he’d been depressed. But he’s not the only one. Sell your soul for rock and roll and it can look very ugly at the end. Kevin’s not the only one, I know other record company employees who could never go straight, could never accept being on the outside, and lost a hell of a lot in the process.

So I’m off-kilter. Numb.

But life goes on.

It can end any day. Embrace it. If you don’t do it now, you’re just going to do it one year later as Warren Miller said, or maybe not at all.

And too many people care about unborn babies more than older people down on their luck. Kevin should have been living in Margaritaville or some other retirement village, with people just like himself, not alone.

But now he’s alone forever.

It’s a tragedy.

The first thing I do when I wake up every morning is take a pee. And this makes no sense to me. I mean I’ve already gotten up to take a leak multiple times during the night, it’s the scourge of the enlarged prostate, you’ll be familiar with it if you live long enough. And the funny thing is sometimes I’ve only peed forty five minutes before. You know, when you wake up but it’s still too early to get up and you ultimately lie in bed until the appointed time? How can I still have pee less than an hour later? I never wake up dry, I’m flummoxed.

After that I find some clothes. Although I’m cool with walking around the house naked, but that’s not Felice’s style. And I always debate what I’m going to wear, is it going to last the whole day long? I mean we had a cold streak here in L.A. last week, I broke out the heavy sweatpants and the long-sleeve t-shirts, but if it warms up during the day I might change to a short-sleeve t, and am I going to wear the same clothes later? And then I remember there’s a washer and dryer in the house, that I can wear as many clothes as I want and never freak out that the closet is bare, I can just fire up the machines. Yes, that’s my idea of living, of making it, when you have your own washer and dryer.

And then I get my phone. I do not keep it by my bed. Then I’d never get to sleep, I get e-mail all through the night. And you know you can’t resist that chime. And then there are the people who complain if you e-mail or text them after eleven, sometimes nine or ten, it’s a rule, you get old and you must go to bed earlier. Why would you want to wake up when it’s dark? Don’t these people know you can silence the ringer/chime? But oldsters are not tech-savvy. Now I’ll get e-mail from those who are. So this rule doesn’t apply to you, nothing is completely black and white, get over it.

And the first thing I do when I pick up my phone is look at the messages on the lock screen. I scroll through them, see if anything’s mega-important. And if there is, I open that message immediately, although for some reason I understand messages better on my computer than my phone, maybe because it’s all on one screen, I don’t have to scroll, end result being I sometimes get all heated up when the truth is I shouldn’t be, but I don’t know this until I fire up my computer and then…if there are no important messages, I start going to my sites.

There are too many of them. But usually I start with the “New York Times,” to see if the world blew up. And then it’s the “Washington Post.” And then I go to the “Los Angeles Times” and the “Wall Street Journal” and then I start scrolling my Twitter feed, which is in order of posting, I don’t believe in the algorithm, there’s no algorithm that replicates the needs and wants of a person.

Did I tell you I do all this on the pot?

Yes, that’s my secret space. And sometimes I don’t even have to go number two but I sit down anyway. And unless I have an obligation, I’m usually on the throne for about half an hour, catching up, before I go into the kitchen and read the newspapers, which are really yesterday’s news, some of which I’ve already seen.

And after scrolling through my Twitter feed, and I use an app with no ads, but I don’t want to tell you which one, because then they’ll eliminate it, I go back to the “New York Times,” to go beyond the headlines, to take the temperature of the country, to get up to speed.

And this morning, they already posted tomorrow’s Maureen Dowd column. She nailed it last week, but she usually doesn’t. She gets caught up in style and analogy and the ultimate result is blah. And then I see that Kara Swisher wrote about Elon Musk and Twitter. Okay, she’s got wider distribution than me, she’s gonna trump me, but despite a strong beginning, which Kara is famous for, the piece petered out, made no new points, gave no new insights, so I won that battle. Did I tell you I’m competitive? You probably are too, but the only person you tell is yourself.

And then I find this piece in the Business section entitled:

“How Jack Welch’s Reign at G.E. Gave Us Elon Musk’s Twitter Feed – The Onetime ‘manager of the century’ paved the way for C.E.O.s to moonlight as internet trolls.”: https://nyti.ms/386Y2Lr

Now I’m sick of reading about Jack Welch, because the truth is he cooked the books at G.E. and after he left the whole enterprise crumbled. Makes me crazy when these self-promoting crooks are lionized. But
‘internet troll’? That didn’t compute.

Yes, I’d forgotten how Welch supported Trump and was spewing lies about Obama online. But I do remember how his successors couldn’t salvage the company, selling one division after another, getting out of the lauded finance business to the point where the G.E. of yore is no longer going to exist.

But I’m reading this article and this is exactly what this guy is saying! No one could hit their projected targets for years without financial shenanigans. Welch used the finance unit to make the numbers right. Forget the underlying business, it was all about keeping Wall Street happy and getting paid, beaucoup bucks, Welch’s severance package was $417 million!

But then it got worse. The author started talking about how Welch’s proteges had gone on to ruin one company after another. Yes, it was a Welch acolyte who ran Boeing into not only the ground, but trouble. The same guy who operated out of St. Louis instead of Chicago where the previous Welch follower took the company for tax reasons.

Yes, this was the Welch paradigm. Cut costs, make the numbers look right and then pay yourself handsomely. And that’s the game being played today.

And then there was that article in the “Wall Street Journal.” I found this in the physical copy. Yes, you see things in the printed version you don’t see online. They’re there online, but you consume the news differently on a screen, you want the headlines, you don’t go that deep, after all you have no TIME!

“Mercedes-Benz’s Luxury Pitch Needs Tougher Road Testing – Consumers see the German car brand as more luxurious than investors do. Only smooth driving in stormy conditions can bridge the gap.”: https://on.wsj.com/39I8o4W

That article is behind a paywall, because only the headlines are available for free, if you want the complete news you’ve got to pay for it, and most people don’t want to, and therefore they’re subject to television, which tells you so much less under the pretense you’re being told more, and just gets its news from the “Times” anyway. But if you could read it you’d find out that…

People love their MBZ’s. The company is making big bucks. It’s just that the stock price does not reflect this. So the CEO’s solution? He’s gonna stop making cheaper cars and change the mix to focus on ever more expensive upscale luxury ones to improve the margins. You know, ones that start at a hundred thousand euros, which is a hundred and six thousand dollars, and you know the euro is tanking against the dollar, don’t you? It’s a good time to go to the EU, assuming you’ve already had Omicron and don’t venture too close to Ukraine.

This is completely contrary to the MBZ focus of decades. Yes, get people hooked on the brand because then they’ll keep on moving up the ladder. That’s the game in the car world, hook ’em and keep ’em. And if you lease it’s played even harder, they’re always trying to get you to re-up, and they’ll forgo physical damage and too many miles to get you behind the wheel of a brand new car. But this guy doesn’t care about the business, the brand, the cars, he only cares about the MONEY, Wall Street!

But this guy won’t be there too long anyway. The people who run these companies are rarely car guys, rarely experts in the field at any company, they’re financial engineers, satiating Wall Street. If the company suffers in the process? So be it, that’s ultimately somebody else’s problem.

Jack Welch is dead. Youngsters probably have no idea who he is. They probably stopped teaching his philosophy at business school, then again that’s a problem, people don’t want to get an MBA anymore, not in the same numbers.

You makes your money and you keep it! Doesn’t matter what happens thereafter. The story on Wall Street is how all the stockholders are voting against corporate pay packages, but that’s only symbolic, there are no teeth in that vote under the law.

And one can say Jack Welch is responsible for these insane executive pay packages. Yup, you’ve got to pay the new guy what his peers are getting, who get what they’re getting because some guy who worked at G.E. got overpaid to begin with!

But I’m just sitting by the side of the road observing all this.

You can’t criticize anybody who makes big bucks. That’s what outsiders don’t know about the music business. No one cares about the art, they only care about the money! The acts come and go, the suits remain. The decision is based on money, the exec’s pay, not the act’s pay. Of course there are exceptions, people give lip service to the opposite take, but don’t believe it, people say one thing and do another all day long.

As for the Jack Welch style, of cooking the books, EMI was famous for this, shipping product at the end of the year to make their numbers, so the execs got bonuses, and then the retailers ultimately returned the product, after the execs banked the cash. Guy Hands realized all this, tried to make it news, but the record biz is an inside game, so he was excised, after grossly overpaying for the assets to begin with, based on these cooked numbers. Quick, who was running Capitol, EMI’s flagship American label, when Hands bought EMI? You’ve got no idea, but be sure that person was paid seven figures per annum, at least.

And as opposed to wanting to put a stake in the heart of these business practices, the outsiders, the hoi polloi, just want to get in. That’s the goal of a “musician” today, to become a brand. They want that money!

And the GOP stripped the IRS, so your odds of getting audited are higher if you’re poor, which makes no sense whatsoever, and in truth there are not enough auditors to go over the returns anyway. So, you hire an expensive lawyer that cooks up a gray scheme and you’re never caught and if you are you blame it on the attorneys and accountants, disproving intent, so you don’t go to jail. As for payment? If there’s one at all, there’s a settlement.

Everything I said above is true. Tell yourself otherwise, listen to scuttlebutt, both on the TV and the computer, saying different, but that’s either intentional obfuscation or ignorance. If people found out how the game is really played, they’d be up in arms, totally pissed! Instead, they’re focused on a “stolen” election with no provable fraud whatsoever. And you’re surprised these business people skate?

That’s America folks. That’s the country you live in. Where who is lauded today is exposed thereafter, but the conveyor belt of news moves so fast the story is buried, or it was too long in the past to worry about, or the perp is now dead, and the big wheel keeps on turnin’, and then one day you find out you missed the gravy train or…

You realize it when you’re still playing the game, and you form a union. This is Amazon’s, Starbucks’ and the car companies’ worst nightmare. “You can’t form a union, it will affect our profits, it will affect our stock!” People are fungible, but the company must carry on. And first and foremost investors must get a return on their money.

And like the record company titans of yore, rather than give workers what they deserve, their royalties, they give them a Cadillac, or some other token that’s worth less than what they’re entitled to.

And if you expose all this, if you agitate for change, you’re excoriated, because no one wants to admit they’re a failure, or their career is stalled, they’ve been sold the American Dream, which George Carlin has labeled a nightmare, and he’s right.

But USA! USA! USA!

Make America Great Again?

These are the same leaders who ruined it for everybody but themselves. As for change, it must happen slowly, unless it benefits the rich, like tax cuts.

So these problems will only be resolved when people wake up.

But that’s too painful, which is why so many take drugs. I mean how could you work some of these jobs straight? And it’s Purdue Pharma and Wall Street who created this mess. Got the public hooked, after the prescriptions ran out they went to heroin, sold by Mexicans, which is now laced with fentanyl, which is killing our youth 24/7.

But it’s their fault, they must take personal responsibility.

Well when do these corporations take responsibility, the people making these decisions?

NEVER!

And brings Tesla down in the process.

By the time you read this, “The New York Times” documentary on Tesla will have launched on Hulu. But read here for the main takeaways:

“Company insiders rip Tesla’s stance on safety in hard-hitting Elon Musk doc”: https://lat.ms/3LyXbki

For months the story has been percolating in the press. How Elon Musk personally chose a self-driving system that everyone but he believe is substandard. This is one case in which the ancient, rearguard companies, may win in the end, by being cautious and thorough, which is hard for a tech company to be, at least one being launched and trying to build a customer base.

Conventional wisdom is all publicity is good publicity. But if you believe that, you’re still living in the twentieth century, because that’s not how it works these days. Today you can burn up right in front of our very eyes. Remember Charlie Sheen?

What a story that was, with many reveals, like the HIV infection. Now? Charlie Sheen lost his seven figure a week TV contract and has faded from public view. Turns out when the lens was focused upon him the public learned a lot of stuff it wished it hadn’t, people can’t look at Sheen the same way anymore, and generally speaking they don’t want to look at him at all.

Ditto Johnny Depp.

Don’t look through the eyes of the public. Look through the eyes of those who pay Depp’s bills, i.e. the movie studios. Depp is too high a risk, the business can exist just fine without him, just like the music business can exist just fine without Travis Scott.

One thing we can say about both Musk and Depp is despite being in the public eye, they’re completely out of touch with what the public thinks. This is what happens when you get too rich. The doors may open in front of you, but they close behind you, you lose your frame of reference. And when you think you know better, you’re just cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

Don’t forget that big media is still operating by twentieth century standards. Then again, it’s social media standards too… Whatever garners eyeballs is published/shown. If it bleeds, it leads. Hell, Don Henley even sang about this forty years ago in “Dirty Laundry.”

But that does not mean what they lead with is what the public is interested in.

That’s the big story, how everything is niche. Except for a very thin layer of people. We’ve got Trump, Elon, Kanye…even Biden isn’t as big. Hell, most people have no idea what Biden has done in office, they just hear the buzz that he hasn’t delivered and buy it. Proving, once again, that facts are fungible and the truth is irrelevant.

The big phrase in the music business used to be “world domination.” It started when the Police toured the entire world, places where no rock band had gone before, their manager and agent’s father had worked for the CIA, they were aware of the entire world and realized even if you don’t make much money on the actual show, just by going to these far-off countries dividends are paid in consumption in the future.

And then every band wanted to do this. So album cycles got longer and longer. Because it took years to tour the world and hoover up all that money. They put out single after single from the album, to keep the fire burning, and the record may have come out when you were in high school, but by time your favorite act released its follow-up, you could be married, even with kids!

But that’s done.

You see you have to focus on the bleeding edge.

And the bleeding edge tells us that you must employ the new tools and you must be in the marketplace almost always, not only with new material but social media posts. Oldsters hate this, but this is the job today, you’re more than just a singer/writer/player. Sure, you can hire a team to do this for you, but the truth is the public can feel the phoniness, they want honesty, if you didn’t write it it usually doesn’t resonate and people stop coming back, and you want and need people to come back.

But there are so many more offerings in the channel. Nothing is ubiquitous. The media reports these stories, believing most people care, but most people don’t. Rihanna had a baby? When was the last time she put out a record? In other words, all the big stories are not.

And I could go much deeper, but I’d mess with your preconceptions.

One of the biggest acts in the world doesn’t go clean, i.e. sell all the tickets. And if you parse the sales and streams the numbers are not too good either. But the media keeps pounding you with contrary information, purveyed by the artist’s label and team, so you think it’s true, and it’s not.

Free Britney. Well, we all learned something about the conservatorship game, but no one has been convinced Spears is not bats__t crazy. And most people don’t care about her, her activities, her music, nothing. She’s got a very vocal group of fans.

Even BTS. Amazing numbers, but the truth is their fans are zealots. There seems to be a moat around the band and its influence, if you’re on the other side you don’t know and don’t care and can’t be converted.

And there’s plenty of money in these giant niches. Hell, there’s plenty of money in small niches today, but if you have to appeal to everybody?

That’s a different game.

Don’t compare Tesla with a band. Tesla is a corporation with more money at stake than not only any artist, but any record label. It only works if everything in the food chain is aligned. Not only the supply chain and the cars themselves, but the consumers who Tesla depends upon to buy their automobiles and keep the virtuous circle going.

But if the public finds out that the circle is not so virtuous?

Tesla’s got a problem.

Don’t compare Elon Musk to Steve Jobs, Jobs died before the social media everybody knows everything culture really gained traction. We didn’t know what Jobs was doing minute by minute, he was not smoking a doobie on camera, as a matter of fact, Jobs was very private, he believed in secrecy, not only for himself but his company. You were on a need to know basis, and you only knew what he wanted you to.

This is how the blue bloods did it back in the day. Wore chinos and drove Country Squires and you didn’t realize they were rich, but they were. But unlike the rich of old, today’s people with uber-money didn’t inherit it, they earned it. And they believe they’re entitled to it, that they’re better than the rest of us, and we can feel it, we know it.

Let’s go back to Kanye. For all of the information, all of the news, the grosses for his album release parties, the truth is his audience is getting smaller and smaller. Like I said above, you can be niche and still appeal to enough people to make bank. As for his clothing and other enterprises… This guy is doing his best to undercut those too, which are sold on cool, because Kanye is out of touch and now we all know it, that he’s bipolar. Once you start threatening to kill your ex’s new boyfriend, that’s over the line for just about everybody, other than the small cadre of truly delusional.

As for Trump… The story isn’t that his endorsed candidates did so well in the primaries, but how many did not. Even “The Wall Street Journal” had a piece about that. You see the old institutions, the old Republicans, want to wrest control of the party back from Trump, not only because of his power, but because he, like Britney, is bats__t crazy. Sure, some people think he’s god, but fewer and fewer every day.

You see Trump has pushed the line too far. He’s gotten in trouble with the law. He’s only skating because elected officials were afraid of him and he was President, believe me, if it was anybody else they’d be locked up. And don’t forget, Roger Stone was.

So you have to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em. You have to take the temperature of your career 24/7. You’re the upstart hero, then you’re established and then you’re the object of hatred. Just look at the English music press if you want an example of the paradigm.

So Elon was one of the PayPal bros, and then there was Tesla and SpaceX and for those paying attention, and believe me it wasn’t everybody until very recently, they had hope. Here was one man making a difference. Doing it different, as Apple would say.

But then the light started to shine upon him.

He could never be wrong. He barked back at the press. And at first it looked admirable, standing up for his company, over mileage and other issues, but then it became evidence of his personality. A singular, unlikable one.

Have you ever met any of your heroes? I hope not, because they very rarely measure up to your expectations. Not only musicians, but politicians and corporate executives too. Their images are massaged for the public. And the truth is to make it to the top you’ve got to be cutthroat and ruthless and usually flawed, you need the success to make you whole, at least that’s what you believe. But the public doesn’t cotton to people like this. The public is looking for heroes, but not this type. Something more along the lines of Bernie Sanders, who believes in his mission of helping the underdog and can laugh at himself.

Once again, it doesn’t matter if you hate Bernie and everything he stands for, he’s only got to appeal to enough people to win. And really, his job depends on the people of the state of Vermont, not those outside the hinterlands.

So you can double-down and marginalize yourself. That’s what Tucker Carlson has done over at Fox. He had the patina of credibility, at least according to his acolytes, but now he too is seen as bats__t crazy. I mean taking Russia’s side? Supporting Orban in Hungary? And he could have taken responsibility for the “replacement theory” uttered by the Buffalo shooter, but he couldn’t even do that. I mean he could have weaseled, but also called for calm and change. But he didn’t, he just doubled-down on his beliefs appealing to his usual audience. You know if you got him in a room, with no mics, he wouldn’t spout this crap, after all Carlson called Hunter Biden to help him get his kid into Georgetown!

And now we know SpaceX paid $250,000 to settle a sexual harassment claim against Musk. Would this have come out if not for the Twitter shenanigans? No. People come out of the woodwork with stories, the media is looking for them, and voila, Musk looks bad.

But not only does Musk look bad, every company he’s aligned with looks bad.

Now SpaceX is kept alive by the government and corporations, but Tesla, Elon’s spearhead brand, is kept alive by the public. Are you gonna buy a Tesla now?

The drumbeat is getting louder.

Sure, Tesla has the best software, but no one says they have the best interiors, not for that amount of money. And fit and finish has been an issue from day one. To buy a Tesla you have to take a leap of faith, you want to not only be identified with the electric car/low pollution movement, you want to align yourself with a special brand that will rub off on you and your image.

And believe me, there are not enough right wingers to keep Tesla’s assembly line churning.

And then Musk comes out and says he’s switching political parties, he’s now a Republican and will vote such in the upcoming elections. Have you ever seen the head of another Fortune 500 company say who they’re voting for and then amplify it? That’s anathema, the goal is to appeal to everybody. This is the hot water Disney is now in. It wants to support the LGBTQ community and right wing Florida legislators at the same time. And the company is having a hard time doing it. Why? Because Bob Chapek is a weasel who didn’t know you get ahead of the controversy. You see Chapek was a background figure who’d never interacted with the press unlike his predecessor Bob Iger. You can’t only play defense, you’ve got to play offense too. And a corporation can move much faster than the government.

And the government is investigating Tesla crashes.

The Corvair? Ralph Nader killed it, Chevrolet had no choice but to stop making it.

The Ford Explorer? It reigned. But when the rollovers and fires happened… The paradigm shifted, people didn’t go back to buying the old Explorer, competitors burgeoned, with a new kind of product, an SUV body on a car frame, as opposed to a truck frame, which is how most SUVs you see out there are constructed today. They may look like a truck, but underneath they’re a car.

Never mind the Pinto.

Malcolm Gladwell says the Pinto was safe.

But Gladwell has been so wrong about so much that he’s lost his credibility, and his power over the marketplace. He put out an audio book on Paul Simon to crickets. He sold out to Lexus. He took the money and sacrificed his trustworthiness. He used to be on the side of the little person, now he’s talking down to us.

Yes, everyone was aware of “The Tipping Point,” but ask people what Gladwell’s last book was… Most have no idea. And the truth is Gladwell still has a good business, but he too is niche.

Elon Musk is not niche.

Elon Musk is pulling a Charlie Sheen. He’s crazed. He’s got the public’s attention and he doesn’t want to let go, he thrives on the spotlight. But when you’re in the spotlight forever people don’t like it, and they go looking for your flaws.

How many Musk bros are left?

One thing is for sure, their numbers are dwindling.

And now Tesla has competitors. Maybe not as good today, but they’re getting closer. And customer service is better elsewhere, especially with the luxury brands.

So beware of trying to be world dominant these days. You’ll be subject to the slings and arrows. You may think you’re a hero, but assuming anybody’s paying attention there will be a huge cadre of people trying to turn you into a zero.

Know that you’re probably always going to be niche, so play the game accordingly. When you try to reach everybody you won’t, and chances are you’ll alienate many.

The game has changed, and you must change with it.

You don’t want to be too famous. Especially if you’re a behind the scenes person anyway. Like the artist manager, or record company executive. Not everybody is showbiz, not everybody is a rock star, despite the press calling nerds who never went on a date who start tech companies so.

Don’t buy the hype. Musk is trying his best to pull out of the Twitter deal and his online activities have hurt Tesla.

Let that be a lesson to you.