There were 216 million people in the United States in 1975. There are 347 million people in the United States today. So don’t compare the concert scene of yesteryear with the concert scene of today. There are over 50% more people! That’s why so many acts can sell out stadiums, which are not getting any bigger (as a matter of fact, a lot of baseball parks have gotten smaller!) You may not have heard of the act, but they can sell out Madison Square Garden!

There is a limited pool of dollars at streaming services. And not everyone can get paid. You can complain about this, be wistful for the days of yore, but in the days of yore most acts would not be able to play in the game at all. Recording was expensive, and distribution was closed and the truth is you have fewer barriers to entry today, but climbing the ladder to success is ever slower.

Movies come and go. When done right, records are forever. However, all the hype is frontloaded. Many of these highly-hyped albums fail in the marketplace, if for no other reason than expectations are so high. Unless you have the kind of music that many will cotton to, be wary of the overhype.

Nobody can press the button. There is no easy path to success. If the major labels can’t break an act, what are the odds that you can go to the top quickly? Essentially zero.

Don’t follow trends, they mean less than ever before. Be yourself. This is not the late seventies when disco ruled, nor the nineties or first decade of this century when we lived in a hip-hop nation. Everybody’s into different things. Chasing trends is a fool’s errand, if anything it short circuits your career, because true believers, upon whom you depend, will abandon you for selling out.

If you can’t say no to money, you have no credibility. Not every offer is good, not every offer is right.

We haven’t broken a worldwide superstar since Adele. And her latest album didn’t reach the number of people the previous one did. That paradigm is kaput. No one can reach everybody, don’t even try.

There’s an underground of hobbyists. Think about writing and performing music that they can play and sing.

Play the hits, but throw in some obscurities for hard core fans so they’ll keep coming back.

Speaking of hits… If you’re a heritage act, stop trying to have them. Then again, if you put out new music and it’s not a one listen smash, don’t even bother. If you’re a heritage act your audience is your fans, not the gatekeepers. Keep this in mind. What do your fans want to hear? This does not mean you cannot experiment, but be sure to let people know that’s what you’re doing, especially if you play this experimental music live.

Some fans are savvy, most are not, especially older ones. They go to the show to hear the hits. Having said that, there’s a huge business in acts that have no hits. These are the acts people like to champion. I hear more about Goose than most of the acts in the Spotify Top 50.

Don’t beg your fans. Give them opportunities, make them feel like insiders, but don’t treat them like Girl Scouts who have to sell cookies.

If you want to be taken seriously with your new music, you cannot get plastic surgery and act like you’re twenty five. It’s creepy. You have to mature.

If you can’t sell tickets without production then…your music isn’t that good and your fans are not that dedicated.

No one believes that any act is retiring anymore. Having said that, fans are not pissed when you go back on the road, because they’re such fans. We learned this with Motley Crue.

Age is no longer a deterrent. Unless, of course, you’re playing a young person’s game. Chris Stapleton is forty seven. He was unknown by most until he hit forty. He’s selling authenticity and maturity.

You can hate Morgan Wallen, everybody you know can hate him, and he can still sell out stadiums.

Failing is not the stain that it once was. As long as it’s an artistic experiment. If you play large venues at high ticket prices and can’t sell out, that’s going to hurt you.

Charge what the tickets are worth. That’s the only way the bots and scalpers can be beaten. Sure, there will be complaints. Then again, I can’t write a single thing without getting negative feedback. No one pays a fortune for a ticket and then complains it wasn’t worth it. They’re thrilled just to be in the building! You cannot let the tail wag the dog. Look at the price of food. Everything is expensive but concert tickets should be cheap? Dinner is a hundred and fifty bucks but a show should be less than a hundred? No one asks to buy a Mercedes-Benz for ten thousand bucks, why are concerts underpriced?

The press always gets it wrong when it comes to music. Because the people writing the articles are not regular music beat people and those who are on the beat are not the best and the brightest. Sorry, but it’s true!

It doesn’t matter what the critic has to say about your show, it matters what the fans have to say!

Sure, a lot of the acts act like nincompoops, but you’d be surprised how far intelligence will get you. David Crosby was a notorious a*shole, but he was taken seriously and quoted everywhere because he was a deep thinker.

Complaining will get you nowhere.

Either interact with your fans or don’t, don’t go online occasionally, that never works. Keep social media at arm’s length unless you’re going to participate multiple times weekly. And never have a team member post on social media, people can tell the difference, you’re fooling no one, it must be you or nobody!

Have a sense of humor. You may be aware of this story:

“Katy Perry dissed by fast-food giant Wendy’s after Blue Origin spacefllight: ‘Can we send her back.'”

https://pagesix.com/2025/04/15/celebrity-news/katy-perry-dissed-by-wendys-after-blue-origin-spaceflight/

The best thing is Wendy’s refused to apologize. Don’t get all up in arms if someone is making fun of you, everyone’s fair game these days, and it’s the price you pay for being famous. Best to make fun of yourself. If Bill Maher knew the game he’d do so re the Larry David blowback, but he’s busy defending himself, which makes him look like an outsider who believes he’s better than we are. I mean come off it.

What are you famous for? If you’re a musician, beware of blowback when you step out of your lane.

Stay out of the gossip columns, unless you’re Kim Kardashian or someone using music to build an empire that has nothing to do with music.

There’s not enough money in music to compete with the billionaires. But you can make them truly angry by pointing out their flaws. That’s the essence of art, speaking truth to power.

The more the lyrics sound like you, the more people can relate to them.

Leave the rough edges and mistakes in, this is what hooks people.

Only auto-tune if you can’t sing at all. It eliminates all the humanity from records.

Slick works for the Spotify Top 50, it doesn’t work for everybody else.

You have to commit a major faux pas to lose your fan base… Zach Bryan is still selling out stadiums despite the girlfriend story.

Get a manager who’ll work for you, who may not be the best manager extant.

If it’s on hard drive, you lose respect. Play completely live, don’t try to sound like the record, that’s for the Spotify Top 50, and that’s a lot of pressure. You don’t want people to remember where they were when they heard your song, you want them involved with the live show, and that only happens if it lives and breathes and there are mistakes.

If you’re not a great singer, it doesn’t matter how great your lyrics are, find someone else to sing your songs.

Bands are harder to keep together than ever before, because the money’s just not that good.

Managers, agents and record companies will work you to death. Say no before getting hooked on drugs to get through.

People don’t want to own music, we live in an on demand culture with access at our fingertips. Been collecting DVDs of movies recently?

You must have videos on YouTube. Sure, make a video for a recording, but people love live stuff more. If someone wants to go down the rabbit hole don’t put up a roadblock, allow them to go from clip to clip for hours.

You can’t game virality. The only way you can win is to be in the game all the time and hope that something catches the public’s eye/imagination.

Never put restrictions on your music. Let people do whatever they want with it. The Beatles will be remembered in fifty years, you won’t. Get down off your high horse and be thrilled anybody wants to spend the time with your tunes.

If you don’t write a lot of songs you’ll never have a hit. Not only is it a muscle, working breeds inspiration, it puts you in the right head spot.

Being able to play your instrument never goes out of style.

Nobody knows everything, the world is too vast. If someone tells you they do, ignore them.

Be a student of the game. Read Don Passman’s book and look at the charts and get a feel for what is going on.

If you’re not willing to be broke, don’t plan on being a musician.

You’ve got to give to get. If you want all the money, you’ll get very few opportunities.

Those with success have all the leverage.

Don’t complain that the game is stacked against you, that Spotify and Live Nation are the enemies, this just puts you in the loser camp with the rest of the naysayers, and no one really in this business will take you seriously.

People will take your money saying they can get you gigs, make you famous… If you’ve got to pay for the opportunity, say no.

You have to stay in the game to get lucky. No one ever knows what will be their big break and it’s rarely what they think it will be and it almost always comes later than you think it will.

https://www.abramorama.com/film/rondelsenerpresents

It’s hagiography, but…

Unlike most of these documentaries, this one was not made on the cheap. There’s tons of footage to go with the narrative, but…

You don’t learn a whole hell of a lot about Ron. He’s a hustler. That’s what we’re missing in today’s concert world. That was the music business from top to bottom prior to consolidation, a cabal of hustlers who wouldn’t fit in anywhere else. Now, it’s corporatized. And something has been lost.

I think Tom Ross puts it best at the end of the flick, when he talks about money now leading instead of music. Isn’t that the essence from top to bottom? One of the most amazing things about seeing the concerts of the sixties and seventies was that they played in small venues. Sure, Bill Graham folded the twenty six hundred seat Fillmore East, but… You see the bills, the acts he presented, and if you remember them at all many can still play arenas.

So…

There’s this gobbledygook about Ron Delsener being infatuated with Sol Hurok growing up, going to the show… Then again, those are Jewish roots. Very cultural. My parents took me to the symphony, there were unlimited funds for the arts. But then Ron works a connection to get in bed with the concert promoter at Forest Hills (THE BEATLES!), and then it all folds. He’s writing copy for advertising and then…

He comes up with the idea for concerts at Wollman Rink. Which either you know or you don’t. Either you’re a New Yorker or you’re not. Either you’re aware that shows were a buck (and then two, right?) and there were shows all summer.

You get to see Tina Turner in her prime, and even the Eagles. Everybody played there. And Ron made it work with sponsorship, first Rheingold and then Schaefer. Do you even know what those were? BEERS! You saw pics of Miss Rheingold in the subway…

The aforementioned Ross says Ron was the first to use sponsorship in the promotion of concerts, and I don’t know if this is true, but one thing is for sure, they were making it up as they went along.

And then you get concert promotion history. Not all of it, not Jerry Weintraub doing national tours and… But there is the story of Frank Barsalona, how he controls the talent and parcels it out according to territory, to keep rivals from poaching.

Barsalona puts the nix on Howard Stein for going outside his area… I always wondered what happened there. Barsalona gave all his acts to Delsener and that was it. Although Stein did write a book…

So Ron opens Carnegie Hall to rock in 1971, I went to that Elton John show. He puts Bowie in Carnegie on his first big tour, Ziggy Stardust, and he opens the Palladium and…

This is when those on the outside will feel left out. You see yes, it is a giant party, a giant hang, and either you’re in the club or you’re not. And in the seventies and eighties EVERYBODY wanted to be in the club. Hell, in the eighties there was a 24/7 music TV channel!

So it’s one household name after another, the Boss and Little Steven, Patty Smith and Lenny Kaye, and…your jaw will drop when you watch the footage of the famous Simon & Garfunkel concert in the park back in 1981… Because Paul looks so young, and today Art looks so old, and when they step up to the mic and sing “Mrs. Robinson”…

That was then and this is now.

Jon Bon Jovi says how you don’t even know your promoter today, it’s all done nationally.

And ultimately Ron sells to Sillerman, starting the ball rolling into what is now Live Nation, and then after getting his forty million, he ultimate retires (gets squeezed out?), but never gives up, Peter Shapiro gives lucid commentary.

However, the two most poignant insights are…

One, his wife lives in a separate apartment during the week. Ron knows she hates the apartment he loves, on a dead end street, but…there’s obviously more to the story. Ron’s daughter gives some insight into his personality…

Ron is working all the time.

His wife talks about burning out on going to the show… It’s exciting and then it isn’t.

And then Shapiro talks about Ron really being a loner.

Bingo, THAT’S IT!

He’s gladhanding, talking on the phone, being the straw that stirs the drink, but…who exactly is the person inside?

Oftentimes you see him alone at gigs, albeit enjoying the music, but does he need the action in order to keep himself sane, keep himself going, to avoid looking at who he really is, slowing down and looking inside?

That’s the movie I want to see… Who exactly is this guy.

And if you know these guys, and they’re mostly guys, they’re not like your next door neighbor. They think outside the box, they need success, they’re gamblers and they believe not only that they can open doors, but they can do things no one else has ever conceived of!

But you’re never out front. That’s someone else. You see John Lindsay and Ed Koch… You’re reminded how charismatic and good-looking Lindsay was, how Koch always asked people how he was doing (can you imagine Adams doing that today?), and Ron…he’s behind the scenes.

So, if you want to know concert history, this is a good place to start. However, we need a film with these production values that truly tells the story from soup to nuts.

And some of the footage is priceless. Pre-internet I would have said unavailable anywhere, but in the era of YouTube…it might be somewhere, but how do you find it? Well, it’s here.

The growing up story… It’s necessary, but there’s just not enough negative.

Life is full of ups and downs. Ron talks about winning at the Garden and making only ten to fifteen thousand bucks, and losing over two hundred grand on David Lee Roth’s solo show, but the emotional roller coaster, staying in the game, as much as this is a movie about Ron, I don’t think we really get to know Ron.

Other than he’s now old and his friends are dead and he lives in the past.

Then again, those days were magic, and gone, and they’re not making them anymore.

This was like tech, like app-mania. People sans portfolio came out of the woodwork to try and triumph. However, music is more visceral, more alive, more meaningful than tech.

Those were the days that were.

And they’re in this movie.

And for that reason alone, it’s worth watching.

What is their best album?

This is a live episode, call in with your take.

Tune in Saturday April 26th  to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

Netflix trailer:

I really wanted to write about “The Eastern Gate,” but at the end it disappointed me.

I love a visceral series. Something dark and edgy as opposed to bright and in your face. Something that draws you into its world and doesn’t let go.

And that’s how “The Eastern Gate” was in the beginning.

And it’s only six episodes long.

So what we’ve got here is a Polish spy show. You see there’s a strip of land keeping the Russians from Poland and if it’s compromised, so are they. Yes, this is a timely show, considering what is going on in Ukraine. People don’t realize how close these countries are. Like the next state over.

The star is Lena Góra as Ewa. Don’t worry, I haven’t heard of her either. But the way she quietly stares… You can see the meaning, on the other hand she’s like an automaton, trained by the government to do a job.

And “The Eastern Gate” is really pretty good, but it just doesn’t sustain at this level. However, the youthful idealism of Ewa’s nephew, the dedication to the cause of Ewa and the ultimate duplicity resonate. This show is made at a high level, it’s not popular dreck. It’s on MAX and you can check out the trailer here:

As for “The Diamond Heist”… It’s so new that it doesn’t have a RottenTomatoes rating yet. But there’s a lot of buzz, and it was in the Netflix Top Ten and…

Maybe you’re aware of it.

What we’ve got here is a documentary. But it plays like a movie, as in are these really the people? They’ve got the re-enactments of network news magazine shows, but…

You’re still riveted.

On one hand it’s cheesy, on another hand you’re focused, because you want to see how it plays out.

What causes someone to become a robber? How are you brought up, where do you turn?

Lee Wenham is the star. Is this actually the guy who participated in the plan? Yes, it is. Which is brain-wrenching. Then again, the robbery was twenty five years ago. Yes, that’s how distant the millennium was. There are people of age having babies who were born in this century. They’re on OnlyFans. And if that doesn’t make you feel old…

So in reality we’ve got a somewhat dry telling of the story, but it’s jazzed up with Guy Ritchie production styles. He’s not the director, just the executive producer, but the headline fonts, the juxtapositions, the brassiness, is straight of of his movies. And the music keeps it all humming, because on some level this is a sort of dry, straightforward story.

And some of the real people, like the reporter, seem straight out of “Inside Edition.” And even the cop from the Flying Squad… You almost don’t believe it’s him. Maybe that’s because usually they get an actor to punch up the character, someone much more attractive and dynamic… But both the reporter and the cop are actually pretty good-looking.

You’re constantly guessing, is this real or not?

And why haven’t I ever heard of this story?

And there are only three episodes, each less than hour, and if you start you have to watch until the very end, otherwise don’t even begin. Yes, you learn things…

But I wouldn’t trust one of these guys to be my partner. These are not the best and the brightest, the sharpest tools in the shed. But this is what they do, rob.

But the funny thing is the amount at stake is what a banker can make in a year, sometimes a multiple of that. That’s the world we live in, where there’s a great divide between the haves and have-nots. A banker would like the money, but he’d need more to fund his lifestyle, whereas these robbers want to retire on the spoils and live the good life.

This is not a satire like “Money Heist.” Then again, that’s fiction and this is real. But is it really real?

Once again, I wouldn’t put “The Diamond Heist” at the top of your list, then again, I’m constantly stunned at the crap people watch, and by those standards, it’s pretty good.

The whiz-bang elevates the story. And who isn’t interested in a good robbery?

And even more in a good spy story?

Then again, most spy stories are now cartoons, like James Bond. But there really are spies and there really are robbers. Here are two tales.