Is everything disposable? Does everything have a lifespan?

Seemingly every day a song gets stuck in my head, I wake up singing it to myself. And usually I can’t figure out what started it. Two days ago it was the Hollies’ “Carrie Anne.” Today it’s Leo Sayer’s “Living in a Fantasy.” You probably know the former. Although when it was a hit you probably couldn’t name a single member of the group and could not have foreseen that Graham Nash would exit, move to California, and become one third of a supergroup whose music is still resonating. As for “Living in a Fantasy,” I doubt you know it. And if you’re under thirty, you probably don’t know either.

I wish I’d written an article in today’s “New York Times” entitled:

“Baseball Is Dying. The Government Should Take It Over.”: https://nyti.ms/3LHkhpi

Before you libertarians get your knickers in a twist, I don’t agree baseball should be nationalized, and I don’t really think the writer does either, but the statistics he delineates make it clear, like the Grammys, baseball is in a death spiral.

First there’s the TV ratings:

“Attendance at games has declined steadily since 2008 and viewership figures are almost hilariously bleak. An ordinary national prime-time M.L.B. broadcast, such as ESPN’s ‘Sunday Night Baseball,’ attracts some 1.5 million pairs of eyes each week, which is to say, roughly the number that are likely to be watching a heavily censored version of ‘Goodfellas’ on a basic cable movie channel in the same time slot.

Even the World Series attracts smaller audiences than the average ‘Thursday Night Football’ broadcast, the dregs of the National Football League’s weekly schedule. In 1975, the World Series had an average of 36 million viewers per game; in 2021, it barely attracted 12 million per game.”

And then there’s the economics:

“Casual observers may assume that despite this lack of popularity, baseball is still somehow insanely valuable. This is an illusion. Major League Baseball generated around $11 billion in revenue in 2019, but this figure does not accurately reflect the demand for its product. The astronomical salaries that continue to be enjoyed by the sport’s stars (if that is the mot juste) are a result not of the game’s nonexistent popularity but of the economics of cable television providers, who bundle regional sports networks alongside dozens of other channels so that anyone with cable TV is buying baseball whether he likes it or not.”

Yes, baseball is being propped up by a dying television paradigm that is not only on its way to being superseded, it is being superseded as I write this.

Basic cable is in its death throes. The old bundle model is history. Paying for so much you don’t want. Today you pay for what you do want, subscriptions to the streaming giants like Netflix and Disney+, and if you really care about the rearguard you get an antenna for network TV or buy an ever-increasingly expensive skinny internet bundle from the likes of Google and Sling. And the younger generation sees no need for either, just like they see no need for a landline.

Things change, and those dedicated to them refuse to acknowledge this.

Both the Grammys and the MLB are going to be SOL when the TV payments crash. But both luxuriate in the present glory, as if it is forever. And believe me, they’ll bitch when the cheese is moved, just like all the musicians when the old label paradigm collapsed with the advent of the internet. Players are still mourning the days of the major label keeping scores of acts alive, whether they were successful or not. Those days are through, the economics have changed.

Now the amount of ink about the MLB lockout was voluminous, as it was for the Grammy telecast. This publicity makes it seem like these are universal attractions everyone follows with bated breath.

“Culturally, too, the game is increasingly irrelevant. The average age of a person watching a baseball game on television is 57, and one shudders to think what the comparable figure is for radio broadcasts. Typical American 10-year-olds are as likely to recognize Jorge Soler, who was named the most valuable player of last year’s World Series, as they are their local congressional representative.”

And: 

“In some parts of the country, participation in Little League has decreased by nearly 50 percent in the past decade and a half.”

In other words, everything the boomers hold dear is fading in the rearview mirror. Everything that looked to be forever, bedrock, turns out not to be.

There’s a generation gap. Which is hard for boomers to fathom, since they were the original ones who separated from their parents, and they insist they’ll be hip until they die. They think since their kids call them every day on the cellphone, or text them, that they know what is going on. But they don’t. Ask a boomer about the metaverse, crypto and NFTs and if they know what they are, they’ll say how they’re irrelevant junk, doomed to failure. But they are not. They may not look like they do today, just like Facebook eclipsed MySpace, but the underlying concept is valid, just like concerts in virtual worlds like Roblox are burgeoning.

Which brings us back to the music. Turns out very little of the classic rock canon is going to last. The Beatles, yes. But maybe not even the Rolling Stones. The work of the great songwriters, like Carole King…she, herself, may not be remembered, but her songs will.

Which brings us to today’s music. Today there is a tsunami of product in every category. That’s one of the things hurting mass, the concept is passé, everybody is in their own niche. Last night I heard Loverboy’s “Workin’ for the Weekend” over the grocery store PA. What are the odds today’s music will play that role. “Working for the Weekend” is classic, it’s forty years old, which of today’s tracks will be universal in forty years? Almost none.

But institutions keep acting like the paradigm of the past is forever, while they continue to drop, one by one, just like the musicians of yore.

Did you see that Bobby Rydell died? That was a different era, music was entertainment, disposable, made for kids. Then the Beatles came along and wiped all those old acts from the map, suddenly music was taken seriously. If you’re taking today’s music seriously you have no sense of history and no sense of context. There are a lot of things more primary than music, like the war in Ukraine and politics, things that everybody has heard of and has an opinion on, whereas most of today’s hit music has been heard by only a minority of the population.

There is revenue in small, but the money is always in big, in scale. But don’t expect the people promoted through the ranks at record labels to understand this, and it’s such an insider club that outsiders are reluctant to participate, they can make more money much easier in other fields.

Which brings us back to Leo Sayer.

Roger Daltrey’s first solo album was comprised of covers of his tunes, written with David Courtney, who almost no readers know. But there were two tracks that Courtney wrote with Adam Faith. That was a selling point, Adam Faith’s involvement in “Daltrey.” I bet you boomers on this side of the pond might still recognize the name, but the credits have been lost to history.

It took a while for Leo Sayer to break in America. And it only happened when he broadened his sound, added humor, connected with the dance craze taking over the country. “Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)” was all over AM radio in 1974. Then again, anybody who truly loved music was listening to FM, almost exclusively. Ditto with 1976’s “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.” Nobody listening to FM rock wanted to dance, at least not in platform shoes and a leisure suit, but that track went to number one in 1976. It was a moment in time, that quickly faded. But I remembered “One Man Band” and “Giving it all Away,” so when I saw 1980’s “Living in a Fantasy” in the promo bin, for either $1.99 or $2.49, I’d have to find the record, the sticker is still on it, promos weren’t shrink-wrapped, I bought it. There was actually a hit on the record, a cover of Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison’s “More Than I Can Say,” but it didn’t drive album sales, because AM was about singles, FM was about albums, and AM play didn’t sell albums.

But that’s not what I remember about the “Living in a Fantasy” album. No, it’s two songs, “Where Did we Go Wrong,” and the title tune.

“You, you are my reason to live

You make me shine with all the love that you give

And when I think of you I keep driftin’ away

Little by little I love you more every day”

And those might sound like bland, relatively predictable lyrics, but the acoustic guitar and emotional delivery add gravitas. But then comes the magic bridge:

“I lay in bed but I just can’t sleep

I close my eyes and you’re all that I see

I can’t believe that it’s happening to me”

Bridge? Some of today’s hit records only have one chord, and believe me, they’re not “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

But Leo Sayer was not only a songwriter, in this case with the lost to the sands of time Alan Tarney, he was also a singer.

A singer is not someone with perfect pipes, although they might possess them, no, a singer is someone who can sell a song, someone who can wring the emotion in the lyrics, convince you that they mean what they’re singing.

And the piece-de-resistance of “Living in a Fantasy” is the final section, a whole new melody, a heightened emotion, you can feel the desire in the words:

“Oh, you’re too much, too soon, too strong

But I want drown in your touch

Don’t keep me floating too long”

We’ve all felt this, it’s the essence of being in love. A magic feeling that cannot be replicated anywhere else, something you live for. It fades, but the memory keeps the relationship going, however there are those addicted to it and keep bouncing from person to person, in love with being in love.

It’s all there, in one song.

And I’ve spent much of my life living in a fantasy. Less now, today I’m much more integrated in society, credit the internet and a ton of psychotherapy. But I have not lost the ability to slip back into that old mode, all it takes is a song, not any song, only specific ones. They take me away, to a better place.

That’s the essence of music, any music. And it’s the upbeat songs that get us moving, but it’s the contemplative serious ones that change our lives, that help us keep going.

I could square this with today’s world, what’s been gained and lost in the years. But to a degree it’s a fool’s errand, it makes oldsters feel good but youngsters don’t care, and it’s their world now.

And as we age will these stars of yore tour our condo communities?

Probably, at least those still alive. We boomers are fading into the sunset, you age and you realize it, and if you’re fighting it you’re delusional, it’s the nature of life. Aging is freedom, you let go of so much b.s., and you also gain perspective, not that anybody wants to hear what you have to say, you’re just moving down the conveyor belt of life and to those just beginning everything is brand new, they don’t care about history, and then they slip down the line themselves.

But we didn’t think this would happen.

We lived through something, that is being lost to the sands of time. Everybody says it’s still the same, that the music is just as good, means the same to listeners, but that is patently untrue, that’s just a way to rationalize their continued existence in this business. They’re living in a fantasy.

But so am I.

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

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3LM4JAy

Edgar Winter calls in to talk about his new tribute album “Brother Johnny.”

Tune in today, April 5th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive

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Were terrible.

“Grammys Viewership Edges Out Last Year’s Record Low With Minor Gain”: https://bit.ly/3r3zw3V

And that’s putting a positive spin on it.

The story of the last two plus decades in the record business has been disruption. But the Grammy organization keeps on doing the same damn thing and expecting different results. A woman was brought in to run the place and the criticism was she wanted change too fast…if that doesn’t sound like a bunch of old men afraid of their cheese being moved I don’t know what does.

The record labels tried to hold back the future with lawsuits, while they extolled the quality of CDs. Then they said track sales were the future, halting the slide in revenue as a result of Steve Jobs’s proactive measure. And then Daniel Ek came along and saved the industry. Apple was famously against streaming and bought Beats to try and solve their problem, even though Beats Music was not of competitive quality and the software had to be rewritten and the execs had to be furloughed.

And at this late date there are people who want to resist all of the above. They want streaming halted when it saved the business! Someone always loses and someone always wins when change happens. The key is to get on board, to get ahead of change and ride the wave. Yelling at people to bring back the past never works.

So CBS thought it was inviolate. As did all the established Hollywood companies. Even the public resisted Netflix streaming. But Reed Hastings saw the future and executed and not only did the public play into his hand, but so did Hollywood. The studios didn’t wake up for years! They loved the license fees Netflix paid. And now they’ve all started streaming services, but Netflix has first mover advantage and is now the undisputed champion. Sure, the studios have their libraries, and that’s important, but Netflix has poured billions of dollars into new production, which drives the television industry as well as the music industry. Just like the rearguard labels wield their catalogs to make profitable deals with anybody in the tech space. If anything, these old companies want to hold back the future, but it comes anyway.

But there are legacy deals, like the one CBS has with the Grammys. And so inured to the CBS cash the Grammys are not preparing for the future whatsoever. Who is going to rescue the Grammys? Certainly not Harvey Mason Jr., who’s part of the club. Only outsiders can clean house and jet the organization into the future, but outsiders are not allowed to play in the entertainment industry, the established players do their best to keep them out. It’s a club and you’re not in it. And who would want to work with these wankers anyway, especially after the Deborah Dugan debacle.

Awards shows are dead. Come up with something different. I could give and have given multiple ideas, but the Grammy organization doesn’t listen.

As for the under 10 million people who saw this show…

We live in a country of 340 million. Less than 5% tuned into this show. Think about it, if you were a concert promoter and the act was booked in a stadium and they sold the number of tickets they would have in a theatre, would you book them again? As for the act, no one likes to play to empty seats. They lie and pull down the show and try to reinvent themselves, come up with something better. What does the Grammys come up with? More nominees! In some of these categories you can win the trophy with far less than half the vote, a quarter of the vote, are these the real winners anyway?

Which brings us to the bullseye. Most people don’t want the acts the Grammys, the recording industry, are purveying. Hell, Spotify told you, the rate of catalog streams is going up and up, which means the old music is more palatable than the new. Music used to drive the culture, now it’s a sideshow most people shrug their shoulders at and don’t bother to participate in. The business is moribund, being driven right off the cliff. Radio was disrupted by on demand online. And now even streaming services are being disrupted by TikTok. Notice nobody in the music industry came up with TikTok. Someone could have bought musical.ly, but it took the Chinese to purchase it and blow it up. The music industry has historically been anti use by the public. But the world has changed, remix culture is here.

And then there’s the dreaded variety show format with commercials. This is kind of like when they blast heavy metal as punishment in prisons. To watch the show is torture. Turns out almost nobody wants to.

So the recording industry pats its back and evidences that it’s completely out of touch. Last night’s Grammys were a disaster. The ship is heading right for the iceberg and they keep on partying. Believe me, if someone owned the Grammys heads would roll, but everybody’s sucking at the tit of the nonprofit organization and they want no change.

Historically it’s been a new musical sound that’s disrupted the old one. But that hasn’t happened in two decades. Maybe the labels have to be more proactive, more creative. Turns out most people don’t want what they’re selling. There’s a much bigger business trapped inside but no one sitting at the controls has any idea how to tap it. Music is a street business. And it’s all about the money. Which means the only smart people involved are hustlers, and outsiders are denigrated. That’s the criticism of Daniel Ek, he doesn’t play an instrument, he’s never made a record, he doesn’t understand…but that’s why he does understand! He started with a fresh slate, wiped off the detritus and built Spotify from the ground up. I’d tell you how hard it was but you won’t believe it, the same way you won’t believe vaccines work for Covid.

So what is gonna happen here?

NOTHING!

Clayton Christensen said the innovation starts cheap and imperfect but then gets better and trumps the established players. So his advice is to disrupt yourself. That that’s your only hope, otherwise someone will disrupt you. The VMAs disrupted the Grammys because MTV knew it was irrelevant who won, they were creating a show to be watched, and there was a spirit of irreverence as opposed to gravitas. Someone needs to throw the proverbial bomb into the Grammy building, metaphorical, of course. But in truth outsiders will create their own game with its own mores and triumph. It’ll look like it happened overnight, but one thing is for sure is it will happen, it’s just a matter of when. The Grammys need to disrupt themselves, they need new blood, and by that I don’t mean musicians with credits, but people familiar with how to change organizations. Nothing is forever, you either change or die.

The Grammys are on their way to death. 

The producer can only do so much.

At least the Grammys are smart enough to get an outsider, as opposed to the Oscars, which constantly use someone from their industry with ties to the past and no skill putting on a TV show. But Ben Winston can’t control the voting.

Everyone agrees that last night’s Grammy telecast was a vast improvement over those of the previous decade plus. First and foremost it was decided to wipe the detritus of the past and focus on the new. But that just made it more confusing for the aged Grammy viewers unfamiliar with the acts and their music, as for the youngsters, who in hell could sit through all those commercials? I guess they’re going to run this paradigm into the ground. In a world where you can do your best to never see a TV commercial to watch the Grammys in real time is torture.

Not that I watched much.

I wasn’t going to watch any at all. But my friends had it on and I watched forty minutes, a good chunk of which was commercials, and the final ten minutes, wanting to say good night to said friends.

And I won’t give a whole review of the show, the little I saw or that which I read about, because I really don’t care. There’s a whole publicity industry built around these awards shows and I’d like to know who eats up this information. Hype does not pay the dividends it used to. And as far as reviews, if you saw it you don’t need to read about it, and those who didn’t see it don’t care.

As for a memorable moment, I haven’t heard about one yet.

But what gets me to put fingers to keyboard is the Jon Batiste victory for Album of the Year. It undercuts all credibility for the Grammys. The dude gave a great speech, talking about how competition in the arts is not a factor, but reaching those who need the music is, however…HOW IN THE HELL DID THIS GUY WIN?

It’s not like the Oscars, lauding a good picture that no one has seen. It’s out of touch members voting for their personal preferences, screw the rest of the world. And I wouldn’t care, except the Grammys keep telling us how hip and on point they are, in bed with the labels to put on a happening TV show and then…

Yes, are the big Grammy awards for popular music, or are they an inside baseball affair for the voters?

Have you heard Batiste’s album? I doubt it, it barely made a dent on the charts, and two songs have nine million streams on Spotify, but six of them don’t even break seven figures (which is a million, for the math challenged). And don’t think a million streams is much, a Top 50 song can easily do a million streams A DAY!

But it’s hard for oldsters to comprehend the new metrics. A million used to be a lot. A million albums, wow, you’re platinum! But the metric has changed from sales to plays and those who’ve lost in the process, because their music is not listened to that much, can’t stop complaining. It is commerce, not art. It is a business, it’s not a charity. And if you don’t put up the numbers you make less. However, in today’s internet world there are many possible streams of revenue, but chances are if you have low streams you have little business elsewhere. Why does everybody continue to believe they deserve to be monetarily successful in the arts? Study the bands from the heyday of the classic rock era, in many cases they didn’t give up their day jobs until after their first tour after their album was a hit. But today, if you decide you’re an artist, you believe you deserve to be able to make a living by only playing your music. Insane. Then again, in today’s world no one can handle the truth. In a world where truth is fungible anyway. Conventional wisdom is Spotify is the devil stealing from artists and Ticketmaster keeps all the fees and the artists have been screwed. Today it’s all about emotions, feel, and that does not mean truth, no way, and it’s not only in music.

So, by awarding Jon Batiste the big trophy, the Grammys have undercut their credibility.

Credibility. That used to be key before it all became about money. Yes, Reagan legitimized greed, the boomers sold out and ever since it’s been about the gross. And the oldsters in control of the levers of power keep telling us young people don’t care about sponsorships or endorsements when the truth is they just want their percentage thereof. Credibility as a concept never dies, it’s just that few people embrace it. We are looking for credibility, especially in the arts, where honesty prevails, a cousin of credibility. Sans credibility you’ve got disposability, like so much of today’s music, just like the Grammy telecast itself. One great credible thing can survive the ages, trump a ton of hype and endorsement, but it’s hard to deliver honesty from the heart and stand up to the man, the system.

The system. I saw Harvey Mason Jr.’s speech. At least they pre-taped it, so there would be no faux pas. And the roundup of musicians saying they were the Academy was well done. But then you give the big award to Jon Batiste? It makes me think the Academy is made up of the people testifying who’ve never made it, and probably never will. The Motion Picture Academy is exclusive, not anybody can join, they still haven’t let Rob Schneider in. But the majority of the Recording Academy is people who’ve never had a hit, who’ve never had commercial success, and that’s fine, but should they be voting for consumer-facing awards?

Of course not.

The public is led to believe these are the best records out there. They know there are vagaries in the system, but when something totally left field wins a big award, they scratch their heads and move on.

Which is exactly what is happening to the baby boomers. Once again, give Ben Winston credit for breaking with the classic rock past. But the business is still run by boomers, and they’ve got to go. Gen-X’ers too. Everybody who remembers music before the internet is tied to a paradigm that no longer exists. Metrics that no longer make sense.

Which comes down to the Grammy telecast itself. A variety show? Network TV will air anything that garners eyeballs, and they gave up on variety shows decades ago. Yes, we used to huddle around “Ed Sullivan” on Sunday nights, but that was just to see the Beatles, it was an interminable wait to get to the musical acts, and although we can remember Topo Gigio, we would have rather just seen the five minutes we were interested in. Which is what we have today, hallelujah!

But those on the selling side hate this. Listen to my album! Yeah, back when music was scarce and albums expensive you’d get free product and take a chance. But in today’s overwhelming world you’ve got to deserve the time, you’ve got to weasel your way into the brain of the consumer and that’s the hardest thing to do. But somehow in music we should lay down our defenses, give time to those who call themselves “artists.”

And now I realize I’m going off the rails. But I keep getting e-mail saying I should support artists, that I should be positive. There’s a whole industry for that, which will beef up your false hopes. End result? NOTHING! It’s like giving a kid a trophy for competing. You don’t expect to see that kid in the big leagues, he finds another line of work, only a very few can make it to the show. Ever been involved in athletics? You’re always fearful of the cut. Your name is not on the list. Even in the NFL. But in music everybody should play?

I guess they do, because these are the people voting for the Grammy awards. The public is smarter than that. The public can see through the ruse. The public knows to ignore the Grammy anointments, because one false move can undercut the credibility of the entire operation.

I’ll close with a story told to me by Tony Wilson, a name well-known in Britain but not in America. Tony was an Oxbridge educated man who was a TV presenter and a record company ruler. He was the majordomo of Factory Records, in Manchester, the epicenter of dance music. They even made a movie about him, “24 Hour Party People,” watch it, it’s very good.

But forget the bio. Before he got involved in the music scene, not long after school, Tony was the weekend news presenter for ITV. Tony says that a researcher gave him inaccurate football scores, whatever the case, Tony went on TV and delivered inaccurate sports scores. The next morning his boss came in and was this close to firing him, and after giving Tony another opportunity he said “If we can’t get it right on the sports scores, people won’t trust us on the big issues.”

Bingo. That’s what the Album of the Year award to Jon Batiste represents.

Case closed.

(However, the Grammys will self-congratulate and nothing will change. Old boy networks never die, they just fade into the sunset until no one can see them anymore.)