They’re preparing for the future.

Unlike the record companies. The labels and the artists berated not only the techies, but their own customers, demanding that everybody jet back to the past. When people drove cars and the rest of the world was not going electric.

Clayton Christensen wrote the blueprint in “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” You disrupt yourself, before somebody disrupts you.

And I could criticize our President for being ignorant and not getting it, but this is not a political issue, this is pure business, and GM wants to survive.

The labels survived, but only because of their catalogs. They wielded them to extract power in the future, then again, the center of power has shifted to the live side. Think about it, which came first, performance or recording? You’re better off being a great performer than a great recording artist. In this mechanized society we’re looking for something honest, with edges, that breathes, that we can get hooked by, not something seamless and shiny without mistakes.

But automobiles are completely different. We want them to just WORK!

Which to a great degree they now do. They’re too sophisticated to work on at home. And with a little maintenance, you can get ten years and one hundred thousand plus miles out of them. Which was unheard of when the baby boomers were growing up. Before the days of minivans, before the days of four wheel drive, back when the only people who owned a truck were manual laborers.

But they’re not really trucks anymore. They’re really cars with truck-like bodies. Yes, yes, some rich geezers are buying glammed-up pickup trucks, but the real money is in what’s called an SUV, a sport utility vehicle, and there’s a dose of fashion involved, but really it’s about that utility, you can squeeze a lot more inside than you can with a car, and you sit up high.

As for that higher center of gravity…

In many cars electronics make it so it’s less of a safety issue.

As for gas mileage…the so-called SUVs get about as much as cars.

So this ship has sailed. The public has spoken. They want SUVs.

Just like they no longer wanted CDs.

You want to live in bizarro world, read the SoundScan Top Ten, where albums are boosted by ticket inclusion and the sale of physical product and downloads when the truth is anybody who’s a fan has given up on those formats. It’s all about streaming baby, and if you believe otherwise, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.

That’s right, some have to be dragged into the present. Others decide to sit the future out and be left forever behind. Ironically, those are the ones who scream loudest and should be ignored.

GM can see the looming crisis coming.

Not only does nobody want to buy a car, soon many won’t buy an automobile at all! You won’t need to own one. Never mind Uber, self-driving automobiles will show up when you need them. Insurance will be built-in, as will be fuel. And we’ll need a whole hell of a lot less of them.

Kinda like the Apple stock drop.

Huh?

People don’t need a new iPhone. If you read the papers, you’re always a few years behind. It’s all about stock going up and up. But to tell you the truth, my iPhone Xs Max is unnecessary. Its camera is a bit better, otherwise it’s a needless upgrade for most. So they don’t. Phones are now mature, like computers. But that did not stop the press from trumpeting Apple’s trillion dollar value. Apple’s got a product problem. Sure they can make some dough with services, but the company’s a one-trick pony, whereas Microsoft not only has software, but the cloud.

You’ve got to diversify, you’ve got to sleep with one eye open, you’ve got to contemplate the future.

It’s not like car companies can’t crash. Just look at 2008!

Meanwhile, plug-in hybrids are a concept that has passed, so Chevrolet is axing the Volt. The music business refuses to get alta kachers to stream, even though streaming saved their ass. Get those oldsters to subscribe to Spotify, or Apple or Amazon, it benefits the entire music business. But the labels don’t want to kill their cash cow. But Adobe went from boxes to subscriptions and their business went through the roof. The transition is always painful, but if you play it right, at the end you reap rewards.

Yes, people are gonna lose their jobs. But if the corporation dies, EVERYBODY loses their job.

And our myopic populace doesn’t realize that China and Europe have already gone green. The WSJ bitches about Tesla and electric car subsidies, meanwhile those selling gasoline automobiles will go bankrupt in the future, there will be no demand. Electrics have more torque and accelerate more quickly and are more efficient and pollute less. And yes, electricity has to be created to power them, but LESS! But you don’t want to deal in science, but emotion. Emotion is good for art, but not business. Like they say, WHAT’S THE BOTTOM LINE?

The bottom line is Mary Barra is preparing for not only Tesla, but BMW and Mercedes and Uber and… She’s doubling-down on electrics and driverless to win in the future, to EXIST in the future. As if Warner Brothers hadn’t refused to license Spotify in America for two years, allowing YouTube to become a streaming music powerhouse. You beat the alternatives to market, you don’t deny them or try to shut them down. Especially when the public wants them.

Those who prepare for the on demand, driverless future will win in the end.

Government is always hampered and gets it wrong. Because government doesn’t understand. The representatives know all about running for office, they know little about industry. They hold hearings to no effect. I’m not saying government is irrelevant and powerless, I’m just saying it categorically cannot see the future. Like the effects of Article 13 on the Internet.

Lyor is hated, but Article 13 is gonna hamper the net. Just listen to Seth Godin’s podcast below.

But Google is big and artists are warm and fuzzy and the past must be protected, even though it doesn’t square with the future.

How do you lose your business?

Very slowly, and then all at once.

That’s what happens in tech. That’s what could happen to Apple.

It certainly could happen to GM.

But GM is preparing, trying to turn the battleship.

Meanwhile, the President and the emotionalists are mad.

God, if these people are mad at you you must be doing something right!

Imagine a world with no Spotify, where you still had to pay up to twenty bucks to hear one good track on a CD so artists could get rich from recordings. We saw how that worked out, they called it Napster. And right now automobile giants are fighting over the future, but you don’t know this unless you’re paying attention. But ain’t that America, where the uninformed babble ignorantly about that which is beyond their pay grade. Where expertise is excoriated. Where being smart and experienced holds no value. Where a woman trying to save an industrial power is crapped upon for threatening the old boys’ world.

Seth Godin “All Rights Reserved” (start at 14:15 to hear about Article 13, or listen to the entire podcast to further understand the issues)

They got it right.

When so many get it so wrong.

Of course I’ve got complaints. First and foremost, those who were left out. Then again, those who pay for the writing of history control it. And the people involved did a mighty fine job. If you were there, you’ll resonate. If you weren’t, maybe now you’ll understand.

Most people believe the business was always here. That it arrived fully formed. As if there was no development. They lived through the tech tsunami… Then again, most people don’t remember when you had to be your own mechanic in order to compute. Now the devices just work. They didn’t. And there was no Genius Bar, you had to be your own genius.

And the people who built the rock and roll business were just that, geniuses.

Never number one in their class. Never the most popular. Always outsiders with a twinkle in their eye. Willing to take a risk, not knowing what was on the other side, but believing in their hearts…the journey was worth it.

It began with the Beatles.

Because before that national tours were not organized, and the caravans that existed were comprised of lineups of acts. The belief was that an hour plus show of one act would bore the attendees. But the attendees ate it up. Because music was everything, it delivered meaning, it was the only thing we had and we were glad.

So what this film does is give Frank Barsalona his due. He opens and closes the film but truly, his story should dominate, he built the touring circuit, he built the bands. The record companies and the radio stations think they did, but the truth is classic rock was built on the road, and you had to start somewhere, usually at the bottom of the bill, and Frank put you there, by trading much bigger horses. If you delivered, word spread, momentum built, you were on your way. The hit record was just the icing on the cake, oftentimes unforeseen, can you say FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE?

And the promoters were all young guys who gave up their path to join the circus. They were not playing it safe, not going into finance, not becoming a doctor or a lawyer as you did for insurance back then, but living on their wits.

And it was so fulfilling.

It’s hard for a young ‘un to understand what once was, even though many of the bands are still plying the boards. But if you watch this documentary, you’ll get it.

But will people see it?

It’s so hard to break a film these days, to break anything, that there’s a long lead-up of marketing to gain accolades and attention to get you to view it. But this is a documentary that should skip theatres and go directly to Netflix. After maybe screenings at legendary rock clubs, the ones that still survive. It needs to hide in plain sight so you discover it, so you watch it.

Sillerman rolled up the promoters more than two decades ago. Just as the internet hit, long before social media. Some in the business have only known Live Nation. And the one thing about Live Nation is they’re not promoters, there are hardly any promoters left. There are people who rent out halls and put tickets on sale, but few who actively work to get butts in the seats. It’s too hard, it’s just too much effort, and the people in charge work for the man and are too far from the epicenter and although they have little upward mobility, their jobs are safe.

Nothing was safe back in the day. Not the bands, the promoters or the labels. You were fighting for it all day long. And all night too. You worked 24/7 and you enjoyed it. Because you serviced the people, you allowed them to have a good time.

And although there are great songs and clips and pics, there are a couple of times when your skin tingles, like Ron Delsener setting up Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park and then hearing the duo sing “America.”

Now nobody drives cross-country. Everybody has the answers, nobody’s looking for anything, just promoting themselves. But way back when that was the ethos of the younger generation. We were searchers.

So I could walk you through from Delsener to Law to Magid to Belkin to Granat to Graham, but either you know the names or you don’t. Either this movie is second nature, or brand new.

But the most fascinating thing is said by Peter Rudge. Who mentions that he’s been through thirty or forty presidents of Columbia Records, but he’s still dealing with the same handful of promoters.

There’s an excitement, a rush when the lights go down.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in the front row or the upper deck.

You feel the surge of adrenaline. The speakers start to pump and you become euphoric. This is the place, this is where it’s happening, there’s nowhere you’d rather be.

If anything, I wish this film were longer. Maybe a ten part series. Kinda like a Ken Burns production, but not made by him, he sanitizes everything, takes it too seriously. But music always had a streak of irreverence. And this flick is only the tip of the iceberg. These stories need to be told.

And some of them I’ve heard differently, like how Graham lost the Stones.

But that’s rock and roll, it’s an oral tradition, you learn on the job, all the awards and certifications are b.s., there’s no school that can teach you. But if you were there, it was the most important thing to you.

And for many of us…

It still is.

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday November 27th, on Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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

Twitter: @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

The Luck Of The Draw

We’ve de-emphasized songwriting.

That used to be the holy grail, to write a song that encapsulated life, that’s why music was the most powerful artistic medium, its ability to nail exactly what we were feeling.

Last night I was listening to Seth Godin’s podcast about marketing. And Seth’s smart, but marketing is the penumbra, it’s the sell, not the essence.

And after that finished, I had an urge to hear Bonnie Raitt, the Queen of America before she slowly started to fade, because we all do, get older and get smaller in the rearview mirror until we’re ultimately unseeable and then gone. Some are remembered, maybe by accident, like Journey and Queen, as a result of usage of their numbers in screen endeavors, the rest just live on in the hearts of those who were there when it all went down.

Now I got on the Bonnie Raitt train back in ’72, with “Give It Up.” I played the second side, with “Too Long At The Fair” and “You Told Me Baby,” every day while I skipped lunch and slipped on my long underwear to go skiing at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl. And last night, I immediately heard a live take of Joel Zoss’s side-opener, the aforementioned “Too Long At The Fair,” nicked in the days of Napster, and then my iPhone switched to…

“One Part Be My Lover.”

People are complicated, inexplicable. You think you know them, and then they surprise and confound you. What was together is now broken, like my marriage.

They’re not forever, they’re just for today
One part be my lover, one part go away

That’s not what she said, but it is how she acted. She said I could never leave, that this would last, but then she wanted to push me away. And I ain’t no saint, but I like to obey the rules, but this was a game I’d never played before. And when she ultimately left, all I had was my music.

Not too much later she can’t meet his glance
You see her start pulling away
Over and over like fire and ice
One is color, one is grey

It’s when they’re pulling away that’s the worst. You grasp for thin air. You’re holding on to nothing. You’re standing on the edge of the cliff, and then they’re gone.

That was nearly thirty years ago. But some things you never forget, the experiences are emblazoned upon your brain, like the struggle thereafter.

Broke down and busted on the side of the road I felt alone, but when I listened to the title track of Bonnie’s “Luck Of The Draw” I felt connected.

These things we do to keep the flame burnin’
And write our fire in the sky
Another day to see the wheel turnin’
Another avenue to try

When Paul Brady wrote these lyrics it was the pre-internet era, everybody was not trying to get rich quick in Silicon Valley, rather the easiest place to go from zero to hero was Hollywood, although the odds were long with no safety net.

Tomorrow’s letter by the hall doorway
Could be the answer to your prayers

Now it’s an e-mail, not even a phone call. We wait for contact. Although the truth is today everybody’s selling, and those who sell best are those who create worst, because they’re two different skills. What we’ve got now is boasters, tireless self-promoters, where we used to have artists. But there’s no room for artists anymore, when it’s all about your gross and if you’re not topping the chart you’re irrelevant.

But it didn’t used to be that way.

But don’t blame Spotify.

Blame America. You just can’t make it as a bartender anymore. Your day job does not pay the bills. You can’t scrape by trying to be a musician or a songwriter, what if you have a health problem, what if your car breaks down, then everybody just runs right over you and tells you it’s your own damn fault, that you should have bought insurance and not gone down the road less taken.

And most people don’t have the courage to march into the darkness. But it’s their journeys we want to follow.

This is about more than money. More than splits. Everybody argues for what they’re entitled to, they just ignore what gets them to the party in the first place, excellence, testimony from the heart.