I’m sick and tired of AEG and Live Nation controlling the touring business. And now, to collude on vaccine passports for live shows, that’s positively HEINOUS!

I mean talk about jumping the gun, Bonnaroo tickets went on sale yesterday, do these outfits really care about ticket buyers? I’d say not. If they did they’d wait until we’re all safe, but there’s no responsibility in America anymore, electric companies can overcharge Texans during a deep freeze and it’s tough noogies, WHERE IS THE GOVERNMENT!

I mean this is definitely antitrust, AEG and Live Nation coming together to set policy. Trump famously didn’t apply antitrust laws unless he was settling scores, and the truth is Jared and Ivanka got lifetime all access laminates for themselves and their kids on the way out, as a result of pardoning Lil Wayne, they can go to shows forever, talk about self-dealing.

Yes, just like Zuckerberg and Facebook, AEG and Live Nation were kissing Trump’s butt. Everyone knows Phil Anschutz is a Republican, he calls the shots over there, he got rid of Tim Leiweke, he doesn’t want anything in his way as he runs up the value of the enterprise so he can sell it. And the government moves so slowly, by time Biden’s gang gets up to speed shows will already be happening, it will be too late.

But what really bugs me about these new vaccine passports is their impingement on our freedom. I mean what if I’ve got a passport and I buy a ticket and I want to sell it, do I have the responsibility to find out whether the buyer is vaccinated? Rumors of a national database are rampant, but is it going to be searchable by the hoi polloi, or are we going to have to all be related to Governor Cuomo to get access? That’s what’s been wrong with the entertainment business from day one, nepotism, favors, you either know somebody or you don’t, either you’re sitting in the front for free or you’re back in the nosebleeds where you only know what song is being played after the show, when you look it up on setlist.fm.

So, here’s the story…

You’re gonna need a vaccine passport to go to a live show. Well, AEG and Live Nation’s anyway. And the truth is their tentacles are long. They own buildings and Live Nation’s Ticketmaster arm tickets seemingly every show in America, so…everyone’s gonna have to fall in line, forget being an independent, you’ve got to obey the edict of the big boys, talk about overstepping their boundaries.

So, you can only go to the show if you’ve gotten vaccinated. Rumor has it there will be an exception for country shows, but I don’t believe that, the liability is just too great. Country is an ever-growing slice of the concert business and if you require patrons to be vaccinated, ticket counts are gonna take a big hit. I think they should sign up Hank Williams, Jr. or some other right winger to get the shot and talk about it, maybe that will help, it’s a conundrum.

So, the vaccine passport is gonna be on your smartphone. But, get this, right now the app only works on iOS, not Android, they were talking all about this on Clubhouse last night, which also only works on iOS. So, if you want to go to a show this year, you’d better buy an iPhone, otherwise you’re SOL.

As for the information on said iPhone, Apple says there will be no central database, that they will not keep it on their servers, it will exist on your iPhone only. Yeah, like I believe that.

So, to go to a show it must be two weeks out from the last shot. And to goose sales for slow shows, Live Nation has established a relationship with Johnson & Johnson, the one shot company. If you buy a ticket to a show two to three weeks out, you qualify for a J&J shot.

But what about hip-hop shows? Right now Blacks and other people of color are under-vaccinated. But the truth is it’s the white wannabes who are populating these big arena shows, rappers have been laughing about this for eons.

So, you got the vaccine, you got the app, but the authorization, how you get your completed vaccine passport on your iPhone… It’s gonna be controlled by Ticketmaster and AXS! Ticketmaster’s platform is slow and clunky, no matter what they say, it’s built on spaghetti code, just like Windows. As for AXS…has anybody ever really used it? But, there is no truth to the story that they’re getting money from the government to do this, at least that’s what I’ve heard. But maybe it’s buried in the new infrastructure bill, if so, it’s got to pass before show season begins.

So, if you’ve got a vaccine passport, you can go to a show. If not, you can’t. The toxic twins, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott, are up in arms about this. They’re talking about a state law that bans the necessity for a passport in the Lone Star State. And I heard they’re pulling Ron DeSantis in too. These states are open for business, they don’t care if you die at a show, you took the risk, don’t ask the government to protect you.

But to satiate these naysayers, Michael Rapino has said he will sponsor a Proud Boys gig at Jerry Jones’s AT&T Stadium. The music will be provided by Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, the Proud Boys promise a stadium wide mosh pit, and if you injure a security guard, you get your money back.

The amazing thing is how little publicity this story has received. “Billboard” is child’s play, and “Rolling Stone” is behind a paywall and no one seems to know yet, but they will.

If you buy a platinum ticket, of course your vaccination is free, they come to your house to administer it. And, if you paid for the shot(s) previously, you’re reimbursed, got to keep those high flyin’, overpayin’ customers happy.

But I don’t see why they don’t require vaccination passports for food service and merch people… The little guy, always screwed in America, on the front lines serving the rich, income inequality’s a bitch.

And the acts themselves don’t have to be vaccinated either! Unless it’s a festival. Yes, we all know the acts call the shots in the live business, if you don’t pay them someone else will, so you’d better cater to their demands. But the promoters have the power at festivals. The loopholes in this plan are endless I tell you!

If capacity of the venue is under 500, a note from your doctor will get you inside, you don’t need a vaccine passport. Insane!

And this talk about letting social media stars in for free, since acts are now broken on TikTok and the like? That’s ridiculous. These “influencers” are already cleaning up at the trough of Madison Avenue, they need no more incentive to whore themselves out.

Also, Amazon is finally entering the ticketing sphere, since it’s got the number one e-commerce platform, both Live Nation and AXS have dedicated 10% of the tickets for every show to Bezos’s platform. I say if Amazon doesn’t unionize, they should pull back from this. But since Bezos is involved with Patrick Whitesell’s ex, Ari Emanuel has been trying to keep the flames down, they don’t want any blowback while they’re trying to go public, even though they’ve now aligned with a SPAC to do it (not Edgar Bronfman’s new one, no). And knowing WME, who knows, they might even try to sell NFTs to raise the money. But Geiger’s now gone, so so is the cutting edge innovation. Then again, seemingly all of Marc’s cutting edge projects fail. Heard of any independent venues taking his money?

This whole project has been mismanaged in my mind. Once again, there was no media coverage, we were just delivered the result. They did not call Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene for their input, but they might as well have, this vaccine passport system is ludicrous, it’s unfair, it sounds like it escaped from the MIT Media Lab, it couldn’t possibly be created by Marciano and Rapino, no way.

But this is the new world we live in. Everybody’s so amped up to go to a show that they’ll put up with any rules just to be able to hang with their buds and shoot selfies. You think it’s about the music? Half of these newfangled acts mime anyway!

As for the older acts… They’re not going out. The Stones, the Eagles, they’re still afraid of the virus. They might do streams in the interim, to keep the public hungry and attentive, but the prices they’re talking about…the Stones are gonna use flex pricing, for a STREAM?

I don’t know where the first show under this new rubric is gonna happen, but it’s definitely gonna be in a blue state, the red states have no money, except for that which they get disproportionately from the federal government, their constituents are all on Androids, never mind different iterations of the operating system, that’s one of the reasons creators launch on iOS first, you only need to write the app once. And, of course, everybody knows that’s where the money is, with the iPhone owners.

I’m apoplectic. These wankers, the aforementioned Marciano and Rapino, cooked this up without getting everybody’s take. Shouldn’t the indie acts have had input? They’ve already been screwed by Spotify, now they’ve got to kowtow to the biggies’ concert restrictions?

I can’t wait for Universal to finally go public and buy one of these outfits, so Lucian Grainge can get the trains to run on time, where they’re supposed to go. But can Universal afford to swallow Live Nation, with its $18.5 billion market cap? A better fit would be AEG, Phil’s got to wake up and realize he’s never going to get his number and he should make a deal soon, before Biden raises taxes, after all Paul Simon got the memo, on vacation with Bob Dylan in Tierra del Fuego, yes, a G650 can make it there without a stop, and the two stars have chipped in on one, their own private NetJet arrangement. As for the location… It’s just a jump to Antarctica, where no vaccine passports are required, since everybody wears a mask, or its equivalent, and bats may have passed Covid, but there’s no evidence the penguins have it.

This is IMPORTANT, since most acts make all their money from touring these days. Michael Rapino is the most powerful person in the music business, and now that he’s got Jay on board, it’s an unstoppable juggernaut. That’s right, while everybody was focusing on Spotify, it all became about live. This system just won’t work, it’s unfair, it must be changed before shows play. I mean really…maybe the Grammy organization, or even the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, can get involved and shed light on the whole affair, transparency is everything, right?

WRONG!

There’s nothing here.

Today it was announced that Apple invested $50 million in UnitedMasters. That’s like you or me going to 7-11 and buying a Twinkie. This is how the rich get richer, they invest in a zillion companies and if one becomes successful…

Same deal with Alphabet and Andreessen Horowitz. You want chump change, you want to hook us up with the players, give us access, give us opportunity with incredible upside? Why not!

But what do we actually have here?

UnitedMasters has been in business in excess of three years… What have they accomplished? NOTHING! How do we know this? Because if you have any success you tell everybody you know about it, you get your publicity team to spam news outlets and we’re all inundated with information we can live without that does not move the needle. But UnitedMasters? Not a peep!

So what do we really have here…

A glorified TuneCore and CDBaby, a way to get your music on to streaming services where it will likely go unheard, WHOO-HOO! Also, there’s a promise that you might get your music hooked up to an ad campaign, on a TV show… That paradigm has riddled the web for two decades now, give us your money and we’ll give you false hope. Then again, there’s a free tier on UnitedMasters, but that’s really only for the true amateur, someone who believes they’ll get no traction, otherwise why give up 10% instead of just paying a once a year fee of $59.99?

I’m sick of people giving hope to the wannabes, giving almost nothing in return other than a promise, a key to the lock of riches, which is rusty and doesn’t work anyway, you’re better off trying to 3D print your own.

That’s right, there’s no easy way to make it in music. There’s certainly no easy way to sustain.

Sure, you could get lucky. Have a clip on TikTok, or YouTube, even get on a playlist at Spotify. But then what? CRICKETS! You see it really does depend on talent, and not only that, but hard work and perseverance, and most people lack all three. But since the barrier to entrance is so damn low in music, people are climbing over it to clamor for attention and after spending money find out no one cares.

Used to be train-wreck publicity could work. But now people are constantly pulling these stunts on platforms all over the web, so if all you’ve got is a story, you’ve got nothing. Don’t get locked into the old game, thinking virality is just a click away and you’ll be in everybody’s hearts and minds forever after. That doesn’t even happen for the big boys and girls, that’s one of the reasons the Grammy ratings sucked, FEW CARE! If nobody cares about the supposed stars, trying to spam their way into our hearts, what are the odds for you? VERY LONG!

We don’t need UnitedMasters, we need one manager/company providing three to five great acts, ONE! That’s the way you beat the big companies, not with a smorgasbord of crap. One could say UnitedMasters is getting a first look, but if you happen to have any success, someone else will scoop you up, one of the majors, unless you want to go it alone.

Which is why we need the aforementioned innovative company/manager. Artists need help, from people, not platforms. Those willing to invest in new and different music, who are not inured to the old ways. Come on, sign to a major label and they’ll get you on radio, TV and in print, maybe sync a song or two to some TV show or commercial, and that’s IT! The same pre-internet paradigm they’ve been relying on forever. As for advertising, Netflix and its competitors don’t have it. The target market hates ads, why do you think that’s an in, a road to possible success?

It starts with the music. Ignore the penumbra. Today all the wannabes are business experts, complaining about streaming royalties when they’re getting none, because no one is listening to them. Where are the people focusing on music? And I’m gonna let you in on a little secret…if you release great music there are tons of ways to make money, sure, you could still be ripped off by a manager or label, but the cash will flow. Today there are more avenues of exploitation than ever before, but the inert, irrelevant news media keeps printing the story of supposedly inadequate streaming royalties. Let me ask you, if I declare myself a baseball player should the MLB start paying me? Case closed.

As for Apple… They know the score, they’re never going to invade the majors’ turf. And forget new music, the majors’ leverage is based on their catalog, which they own until the end of copyright. Apple needs the majors, they’re not going to cross them.

As for Andreessen Horowitz and Alphabet… These people are entertainment ignorant. They think it’s all about money when in truth it’s all about people. And not the people they know, who show up to work on time and deliver on a predetermined date, but free-spirited artists channeling God who will deliver when they’re inspired, and you’ve got to wait for it. Music companies are about marketing, not creation. If anything, you could say that when they get into creation they ruin it. Yes, it’s labels demanding hits that result in us having these tracks with twenty writers and features, which are remixed to death. They’re trying to buy insurance, and there’s no insurance in music, NONE!

Could Apple, Alphabet and Andreessen Horowitz ultimately make money on their investment? Sure, that’s why they call it an investment! Hey, want ten bucks for your lemonade stand? Send me an e-mail with a business plan, I might go for that.

Or maybe I’ll create a SPAC, like the bozo business wannabes. Do all these entertainment big swinging dicks, and they’re all male, really think Wall Street is so easy that they can just run in and scoop up money? While they’re at it, why don’t they say they should head engineering at a tech company! Why is it everybody in America believes they can do everything, when this is patently untrue.

As for Steve Stoute… He made his bones in advertising. Now he can pick and choose acts to fill slots. But the truth is, the companies want names, or they want to pay bupkes.

Then again, Jay Z laid off the moribund Tidal on Jack Dorsey.  And what did all the news reports say? THE MONEY WAS A DROP IN THE BUCKET! Maybe Steve will be able to unload UnitedMasters on a deep pocket mesmerized by the entertainment business, if so, more power to him. But this distribution paradigm is not new, and we are not living in the aughts, it’s no longer about tech innovation, BUT THE MUSIC ITSELF!

But that’s a lot harder to do, especially if you’re a business person.

Come on, how many songs are hits?

Scratch that, how many songs do you want to listen to? If I told you you had to listen to a complete Spotify playlist without a skip option you’d go insane, or turn it down and let it play in the background.

We all want just what we want exactly when we want it. And we don’t want most things. Including UnitedMasters.

I rest my case.

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/3ksc4jbb

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/2zrk2ju7

It’s a cross between Pure Prairie League, New Riders of the Purple Sage and the Grateful Dead.

It’s really all about the second Pure Prairie League album, with Craig Fuller’s vocals. At this point, “Falling In and Out of Love” and “Amie” are classics, but the album being released on RCA they didn’t get the attention they deserved upon release in 1972, and it wasn’t long thereafter that FM radio switched from a cornucopia of soft and loud to loud and homogenized and compromised, but you did hear these two every once in a while, and now they’re staples, at least on SiriusXM, people know them, more than did back then.

I’ll argue it’s all about the first New Riders album, in retrospect, it’s better than any Dead LP other than the “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty” twins, at least when the Dead dwelled in this country rock idiom.

As for that idiom, it was dominated by Jerry Garcia’s laid back plaintive vocals, Jerry wasn’t singing to dominate, but to get his message across, you held your hand to your ear, you wanted to listen…

And bask in the sound.

Today concerts are all about the fan experience. The music is nearly secondary. If you went with your friends and had a good time, that’s what counts most. And the truth is too often the music is rote, on hard drive, and the production is nearly as important as what comes out of the speakers.

But it didn’t used to be this way.

This was the San Francisco experience, the ballroom experience, getting together with like-minded people at the Fillmore and other ballrooms to immerse yourself in the sound and have the music wash over you and take you away, drifting to a place of happiness.

Like with Lord Huron’s “Mine Forever.”

It’s important to tell you that I discovered it via Jeff Pollack’s weekly e-mail, Jeff only includes five tracks, and although most I only want to hear once, if that, I check them all out, the longer playlists…it’s too much work.

And when I heard “Mine Forever,” I turned my head to see who it was. Lord Huron? I know the name, but the act has never done something that has stuck with me. Then again, when I went on Spotify it turned out their track “The Night We Met” had 714,393,145 streams…that’s almost a BILLION! Further research told me its success was driven by its inclusion on the soundtrack of “13 Reasons Why.” But, interestingly, it only has 197,238,628 views on YouTube, proving, once again, YouTube is not the home of active listeners, if you’re really into music you have a streaming subscription and you listen there, and it is all about listening, what goes in the ears as opposed to what you see.

So what appealed to me about “Mine Forever”?

To tell you the truth it was halfway through the song when it went on an instrumental adventure, this was the essence of the Grateful Dead, the song was just a setup, a jumping off point, to improvisation and exploration, a trip, which you rode shotgun on. Sure, there were other people at the show but its success depended upon you linking up to the music first, and with it in your ears you looked into the eyes of others also infected and began to transcend.

And transcendence is what it’s all about. Don’t forget, the late sixties were not that different from today, it was an era of turmoil. Then again, a lot of this music was made in the seventies, when we were licking our wounds, which is kind of like today, we’re wondering what comes next, who would have thought what came next way back when was a mercenary streak that ran throughout the boomer population, people became eager to sell out and make money, what will happen now that the Trump train has been temporarily stopped? Well, maybe first we’re gonna listen to music.

You’re never going to hear “Mine Forever” on Top 40 radio.

Then again, you never heard the Grateful Dead on Top 40 radio. All three bands, Pure Prairie League, the New Riders and the Dead were not made for Top 40 radio, their music wasn’t even made for radio at all, they bypassed that waystation and went directly into people’s hearts, if radio played ’em, great, but they depended upon the people, the culture, to spread the word.

So the truth is you want “Mine Forever” to envelop you. You want to play it on the big rig. You need the sound to penetrate every nook and cranny, squeeze out what was there before, replace it with a mood, an excursion you can only get from music.

“Mine Forever” is not a one listen smash, something you hear and believe will be ubiquitous, but you’ll want to hear it again, and again, to return to that mood, that feeling. And sometime you’ll be listening and someone else will feel the magic and they’ll be infected and eventually the word will spread.

And the truth is music, now more than ever, is not really about recordings.

We hear too much about recordings, when the truth is there’s been a sea change since Napster, music, more than ever, is live, which is kinda funny when more of the recordings have become robotic and fake, unlike life.

“Mine Forever” is made for the gig. You already know it, but you know the act will sustain it, it’s just a framework for exploration, and you’re eager to take the trip.

This is an alternative universe, this is the heartbeat of the music business, not what you see in the Spotify Top 50, we’re returning to the sixties, when it’s not about what’s popular on AM radio, what’s obvious, but something more underground on FM, something that demands a bit more, something that does not slide off your shoulders, but sticks with you.

Sometime this afternoon, when you’ve already worked long hours, when your body is tired, pull up “Mine Forever,” it will rejuvenate you…

And you’ll be thrilled this spirit is still alive, and it really didn’t die in 1969.

Tune in today, March 30th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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