Were selling culture.

We’re bombarded with stories talking about the Grateful Dead paradigm, how to be successful. Most focus on allowing fans to tape and share live recordings.

But the real story is the Dead created a culture. BY ACCIDENT!

It’s hard to create a new paradigm intentionally, it usually happens by accident. As a result of you following your inner turning fork and declining to do that which doesn’t feel right.

Now it’s possible to have hit records and then a culture, but usually it happens in reverse. It’s the little engine that could. You start from outside and you grow steadily and you may never cross over to the mainstream, but you end up with a big enterprise.

The best example of this today is BTS. They call it the BTS Army. Did they get turned on to the music via radio? Traditional marketing outlets? Was it a PR campaign? No, the internet broke BTS the same way it broke One Direction.

And BTS was ready. You might see it as fanciful KPop, dancing fools, but fans…each member of BTS has a backstory, you can have your favorite, you can become involved and invested in the act. Furthermore, you can find your tribe online. And part of being a member of the BTS Army is putting down those who are not members, who pooh-pooh the act, but the true satisfaction comes from being a member of the group, like-minded people who feel the same way who you can interact with online.

And culture is never instant. And it’s hazy until it ultimately comes into focus. It looks like nothing is there and all of a sudden there’s a monolith. Like KPop itself. We’ve been hearing it’s going to cross over to the U.S. for in excess of a decade. Seemed hard to believe, but then it did, ferociously. You’ve got to work at it and work at it to gain critical mass. Those looking for overnight success today…good luck having traction tomorrow, fans become dedicated over time via more music and more information. You might be able to sell out arenas on your first tour but never come close to that again in the future.

So the Dead did not have a great singer and didn’t play commercial music. They were the antithesis of the Airplane…and it’s funny how no one talks about the Airplane anymore. The Airplane had Grace Slick and “Somebody to Love,” but how many hard core fans did the band truly have?

The vocals were better in Quicksilver Messenger Service, but they did not have the live rep the Dead did.

Not only did Big Brother have Janis Joplin, its biggest success came with covers. But before she passed, Joplin’s career was on a downswing. Then again, it’s hard to be a woman in music, the media focuses on you, you can’t stay off the radar…how you look, what you say is reported, people form an opinion on you oftentimes without even hearing your  music.

It’s a Beautiful Day? Good vocals and more traditional song structure.

While other bands were champing at the bit for success, the Dead were going their own way. If you believe Joe Smith, who signed the band to Warner Brothers, he finally convinced them to make something commercial, i.e. “Workingman’s Dead.” Although he told me this more than once, I’m not sure I believe it. However, one thing is for sure, every Dead album before that was uncommercial. The songs were long and meandering and the rap was you had to hear the band live. So they cut a live album, “Live/Dead,” which got better reviews than anything previously released but was still a commercial stiff.

But if you were paying attention, and those who start a culture always are, there was a buzz about the band’s live performances, primarily in California, the Dead didn’t mean much in the east.

But ultimately Bill Graham threw down the gauntlet. Not only did he book the band at the Fillmore East, he promoted them in the program distributed to every attendee. The back page had a photograph of people standing at the show with the caption “2600 Happy People at the Grateful Dead.” 2600 was the capacity of the Fillmore East, as for the photograph, here it is:

Grateful Dead at Fillmore East, January 2, 1970

So you saw this picture and you felt LEFT OUT!

Furthermore, the ad was for shows beginning at midnight. When traditionally there were two shows a night, at 8 and 11:30. This was something different.

So Bill Graham helped. But you can never do it alone, you always have help, people who believe want to aid you in your journey, because there’s very few people you can believe in.

And then came “Workingman’s Dead.” Suddenly you heard “Uncle John’s Band” on the radio. But, the true breakthrough did not come until the fall of 1970, with “American Beauty,” that’s when all those interested in album rock, not those addicted to the Top 40, took notice.

And when you took notice of an act back in the day, you went to see them live.

And the nascent rock press told you the New Riders were going to open and the show was going to be long and you went and…

It was not a typical show. It was not exciting from beginning to end. People wandered around in a haze.

But the show built and built to a finale, you’d experienced something, and one thing was for sure, you couldn’t experience it anywhere else, especially as music was being consolidated, as songs were written to cross over from AM to FM. Which the Dead wanted to do, but were unsuccessful at.

And then they started their own record label. A horrible idea, but it endeared them to their fans, the band was doing it their own way, they were sticking it to the man, and they were hemorrhaging money doing it.

And this is an important point. There were very few record/publishing royalties, it was all about the money made on the road. And this was a big band with a big entourage and… Sure, they were different, but, once again, they were sustaining, they were not getting rich, nowhere near as wealthy as the FM rockers of the day.

And that’s when the shows and the taping became legendary.

So there were the original Deadheads. Most of them truly dead at this point. The ones in the picture on the inside of “Live/Dead.” They’re pushing eighty, if the drugs and low economic status haven’t gotten them already.

So really, it was about the Boomers.

But what put the Dead over the top was Gen-X, which came online during the days of MTV. The Dead were the antithesis. They were scruffy, they didn’t wear spandex, AND THEY DIDN’T HAVE ANY HITS! It wasn’t even about the recordings…which were not released that regularly. The thunder had been stolen from Gen-X, they lived in the wake of the Boomers, and as greed took over in the eighties, the Dead pointed in another direction, they were something to believe in.

And the road goes on forever.

So the point here is there was no plan. As well as a lot of bad decisions, like the aforesaid independent record company.

And the Dead did not play by commercial rules. And were unsuccessful as a result. Their albums were never juggernauts or big sellers. Oh, they tried, making “Terrapin Station” with Keith Olsen and “Shakedown Street” with Lowell George, but it didn’t work. So they kept on doing what they were doing, going on the road and improvising.

Of course eventually the Dead had an  MTV hit with “Touch of Grey,” but that was already 1987 and it was kind of a joke, a laugh, that this old band finally broke through.

So it was all an accident. Run on instinct and perseverance. And if you’re sitting at home trying to replicate it…

Are you willing to walk into the wilderness? Are you willing to experiment? Are you willing to starve?

Most people are not. But the Dead were rooted in the hippie culture of San Francisco, and by time that evaporated, they were finally on their way. The band was a product of its time.

Making music unlike anybody else. Slogging it out on the road endlessly before it broke through.

Now you can point to modern jam bands and say it’s the same thing, but it’s not. Sure, there are Phishheads, but Phish doesn’t penetrate the world outside its borders. You either adore Trey or have no idea who he is. And the rest of the jam bands…they may noodle, but that does not mean there’s a culture.

So if you want to replicate the Dead paradigm you’ve got to focus on culture, you’ve got to grow culture.

And you’ve got to nurture culture. Pour too much water on the plant and you drown it. People have to feel ownership. That they came to themselves. If something is overhyped, embraced by the mainstream early, culture is eviscerated.

Once again, it’s KPop that is doing the Dead better than any jam band, better than any other act out there. Because KPop focuses on the fan first. Not going on television and saying they love their fans, they owe it all to their fans, but superserving the people who care with endless information, even if no one else other than the hard core is paying attention! Even the Dead, they didn’t reach out, you had to come to them. As for philosophy, Jerry was labeled “Captain Trips” and would drop philosophy in periodic interviews and the band’s fans took it as guidance, because unlike seemingly everybody else, he was not caught up in the starmaker machinery behind the  popular song.

You don’t have to do it the Grateful Dead way. There are tons of successful acts who haven’t. But if you want to emulate the Dead, don’t look at the specific steps the band took, but rather focus on the end result, culture, how can you establish a culture?

You must have an identity. And share it and stay true to it. And put the fans first, not take sponsorships, endorse something just for the money. The benefit must be for the fan. And you can’t complain when others leapfrog you and have success. You have to stick to your guns, playing the long game. Knowing you can’t really have a plan anyway, you’ve just got to keep on truckin’.

Sound like an easy formula? 

NO!

So stop looking to the Dead for guidance unless you’re truly going to do it their way, as delineated above, playing without a net, which very few people are willing to do.

Doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

I remember growing up, going to the Yankee game, we told our friends we would be there, to look out for us on TV. To be on TV was the thrill of a lifetime. Just to be seen, never mind heard.

But today, being on television is no big deal. Hell, what is a television appearance even worth? You’re on a basic cable show, or a news show, and fewer than 100,000 people see you…furthermore, you’re competing with zillions of other messages.

That used to be the goal, to become rich and famous.

But we knew almost no one could reach the brass ring. The barrier to entry was just too high. But today, the barrier to entry is nonexistent, such that everybody’s trying to become rich and famous. And there’s only so much money to go around, as for fame… The Oxford dictionary definition is:

“the state of being known or talked about by many people, especially on account of notable achievements ”

1. Being known… Are you known if you have a Facebook page with attendant friends? Or a YouTube presence with viewers? Or an Instagram or TikTok feed? Known used to be being the president of your high school. There was a great gulf between that and being truly famous, on television, known by many. As for how many people know you… I point you to this story:

“Influencers are royalty at this college, and the turf war is vicious – The University of Miami has embraced influencer culture, but the dean had to break up a TikTok spat last month”

Free link: https://wapo.st/47VHXD2

What we’ve got here is a war between a micro-influencer with 24,000 followers and another who has ten times that amount. The former was pissed that she wasn’t on the cover of the school newspaper featuring the school’s biggest influencers. The woman with the larger count put her down for being upset and the kerfuffle…

That’s exactly what it was, a minor scuffle. Who even knew that influencers were such a big deal at the University of Miami? And if they are, they must be a big deal on scores of other campuses and…how do you keep score?

Micro-influencers can get paid by companies who want a cheap way to reach a target audience… Have you seen any of the sites of these people who get free gear? They think they’ve made it all the way to the top! They’ve arrived!

2. Notable achievements… Today, even people with hit records don’t have such notable achievements. Oftentimes they’re just the face of a production, and it’s rare for many of these people to have continued success.

So what is success? There are people bitching that they can’t get paid on 1,000 streams.

Everybody’s trying to be famous and fame has ben devalued!

But it’s even worse, fame used to imply a distance, a gulf between the famous and the hoi polloi. But in a world where even the president tweets, that’s no longer the case. The world has been flattened, everybody’s fair game. If you post we know who you really are, and if you don’t post we judge you negatively for it, and anybody who cares is out to reveal your warts online anyway.

So if you’re in it for fame…

That’s now a phony goal. It doesn’t mean much. And even if you are famous…to how many people, where? In a nation where many have never even heard of the number one act, never mind their music.

Fame is an empty construct.

As for rich… There are more ways to make money. And you might be making bank but still not be famous in terms of the old construct.

So, at the end of the day you can fool yourself, reach artificial goals and say you’re rich and famous or…

You can know those are antique measuring sticks.

Today it’s solely about you and your audience. Those outside your audience may be completely unaware of you. May never be aware of you. Your clip can go viral on TikTok…and not only do you never go viral again, most of those who saw said clip don’t become followers and don’t see and aren’t interested in what you do thereafter.

So you have to be satisfied just doing the work.

But that’s not enough for most people. They’re after that elusive goal.

Maybe they want to be Kim Kardashian…

But you can’t even do that anymore. The Kardashians became famous via a cable TV show. They leveraged that into business opportunities. But today, if the basic cable channel still exists, almost no one is watching it. You can’t become a Kardashian, the lane is closed. Just like Coldplay and the Dave Matthews Band became ubiquitous via VH1 airplay…there’s no outlet that everybody watches anymore, meaning more people are aware of and know the music of the old acts than the new, before the infrastructure of yore collapsed.

And it’s not only the players who abhor this, but the media, which likes things clear and coherent. What kind of world do we live in where the Top Ten isn’t representative of overall listening habits? Sure, the Top Ten might be listened to more than other songs, but in the aggregate, those other songs triumph.

So if you’re shooting for the moon…

Don’t.

There is no there there. There’s rarely any context. Look at social media, where there is no chart, everybody’s in it for themselves, building their own audience, and it rarely cross-pollinates.

Fame is no longer the goal. You want followers, you want superfans, but they may just be a tiny fraction of the overall populace. You’re famous in your niche, that’s it. And chances are you won’t grow from there…

Everybody’s trying to grow their fanbase. But in a world where you can pull the specific thing you want… Most people are not interested in what you’re doing, they’re interested in something else. And if you bland your product out, trying to reach more people, you’ll end up nowhere, because it’s the edges that hook people, that connect people.

So why are you in it? Why are you doing it?

Now in truth most people give up the dream, they get into their twenties, are sick of spinning their wheels and being broke and give up.

But the world is still clogged-up by the up and comers/newbies.

And you end up with those saying they’re famous but not rich…look at their follower counts!

And those with any followers at all who think they’re famous, complaining that they’re not rich.

And those who are truly rich and famous who think they dominate the culture but do not. I mean I’m at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony and people kept asking who some of the youngsters on stage paying tribute were. It’s easy to say those out of the loop are old…but maybe those new acts are just not that big…AND NEVER WILL BE! This is not a put-down of their talent, of the fact that they’ve got followers, but the concept that if you’re in “People” or on TV you’ve crossed a threshold and are now part of an insider club above the rest.

No, you’re just someone who had the benefit of some exposure. That most people didn’t see and those who did might shrug at…not even remembering your appearance soon after it ends.

Like at the University of Miami, seemingly everybody thinks they’re famous and entitled to the trappings/benefits thereof. God, talk to a retailer/restaurant…they’re constantly dunned for free items for the exposure of an influencer. And now most of the retailers/restaurants say no, because they know said exposure is meaningless.

So the metrics…

Are all personal. Do you have enough followers for you? Are you  making enough money for you? If you are, kudos. But don’t believe anyone else cares, or ever will.

It’s not a matter of everybody being famous for fifteen minutes, rather everybody is famous 24/7, and that begs the question…WHAT IS FAME WORTH?

In most cases, not much.

Rob Katz is Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of Vail Resorts.

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What kind of crazy f*cked up world do we live in where the most adventurous, most innovative album of the year is made by a Spanish artist singing in a multitude of foreign languages?

One in which everybody in music seems to be going in one direction, doing their best to distill their work to fit the precepts of their chosen genre, and everybody with a profile is afraid of going completely left field for fear of alienating their audience and never recovering.

Then again, how many of these people are truly artists? A lot of the rock and quiet music folks can’t even sing well, that used to be a main criterion of being a professional artist. And you can buy beats, get a ton of digital help such that you create something that might appear professional, but it is lacking the innovation, the nuance, the je ne sais quoi of great art. A left turn, a great leap forward, something that makes the listener question their attitudes and beliefs.

If you pull up “Lux” I doubt you’ll like it right away. You haven’t even heard anything like this before.

And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t going to listen, but Richard Griffiths, whom I trust implicitly when it comes to what is great, what is a hit, said:

“My big discovery this weekend has been Rosalia. Have you listened to her?

“I think she’s amazing!”

To say Rosalía’s is not in Richard’s wheelhouse is an understatement. This is the man who brought Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine to the public as the president of Epic Records. I know Richard likes prog, and he was the co-manager of One Direction, but Rosalía?

I knew who she was. I thought I’d seen her at an awards show. But to say I’d been paying close attention, knew her music, would be completely untrue.

So I’m in the back of a car Monday night, catching up on the “Washington Post,” and I come across this article:

“Rosalía made one of the year’s most demanding pop albums. Listen closely. The Spanish pop auteur’s sweeping new album is a test for shrinking digital attention spans.”

The first paragraph says:

“Let’s try to keep calm, because, for all of its ambition and grandeur, this new Rosalía album, ‘Lux,’ demands a sharpened mind more than a blown one. It’s an opaquely themed, scrupulously produced concept record in which the Spanish pop auteur sings about a handful of saints and martyrs in more than a dozen languages, backed by the unmitigated power of the London Symphony Orchestra — a stacking of lavish gestures that Rosalía hopes might help elongate our diminished online attention spans.”

Free link: https://wapo.st/4paOPU9

Now if that does not intrigue you…I guess you never lived through the seventies, which get a bad rap, but the first half of that decade was a fount of creativity and diversity. From Jethro Tull to Joni Mitchell to Led Zeppelin to David Ackles… I could go on, but my point is the acts didn’t feel a need to sound like those who had hits. As a matter of fact, when there became so much money involved that acts did try to game the system, we ended up with corporate rock, which along with formulaic disco killed the record business. The public could smell a rat.

So I pull up “Lux” on my phone and…

The opening cut, “Sexo, Violencia y Llantas,” sounds like an intro/overture, but definitely doesn’t sound like anything else, certainly nothing in the hit parade. The second track, “Reliquia,” is more easily digested, closer to conventional popular music, but it too goes off the rails as it proceeds, as if Taylor Swift suddenly dressed like Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music” and started singing operatically in the mountains.

And one thing is for sure, Rosalía can sing.

And the next day I wake up to this review of “Lux” in “The New York Times”: 

“Rosalía’s ‘Lux’ Is Operatic. But Is It Opera?”

The headline tells all in this case. The writer’s beat is classical music and opera, the article was not written by the usual pop reviewer, because after all what is this? A pop artist bending genres, testing limits… This guy, Joshua Barone, coughs up some kudos, but ends with some caveats, after all, are we really going to put a lowbrow pop artist in the canon of those who train and take music seriously?

But Rosalía studied at the Catalonia College of Music, she’s not someone who developed her chops solely by listening to Top Forty radio.

And roots go a long way, they’re a springboard for innovation, the basics. In the seventies, said roots were the cornucopia of successful records, which inspired others to deliver their own opuses.

So last night hiking I decided to listen to the entirety of “Lux.”

And it’s different, VERY different. Reminded me of John Cale’s “The Academy in Peril.” Yup, I bought that one. Cale returned to traditional rock with “Paris 1919,” but his first solo album, on Reprise, was instrumental and closer to classical than rock. I bought it. And played it not ad infinitum, but a number of times, to try and get it.

And I did the same thing with “Lux” last night.

Talk about a musical adventure. My head was spinning.

The second time through it started to make more sense. Will you get that far? I don’t think the average person will even listen, and if they do, they’ll stop pretty quickly.

Now in the seventies, an album like this would not be a major seller. But we live in the streaming era, where the barrier to entry is essentially nonexistent, meaning anybody can check out an album. And people are…

If you listen to the press. The hype over the weekend was that “Lux” became the most-streamed album by a Spanish speaking woman.

I hate this sh*t. It’s now like baseball statistics. Parsing the numbers to come up with irrelevant stats. And the funny thing is ultimately they don’t matter, it’s just a way of stroking the ego of the artist involved. However…

Some people are listening to “Lux.” “Berghain” is #18 and rising on the Spotify Global songs chart. And Rosalía is the #5 artist in the Spotify Daily Top Artists Global chart. As for the USA…of course Rosalía is not in the US Top 50 daily chart. Used to be that the USA was the market leader, in every way, the most music consumed, the most innovative acts, Europe was a backwater, when it came to international acts South America/Latin was not even kept in mind, but today… In an era where the tools of production are available to everybody and the gatekeepers are history…

Yes, state radio calcified European music. It didn’t play the outré stuff  so few made it. But today…

For me, “Lux” is the most exciting thing to happen in recorded music this year. Because we’ve got a successful artist pushing the envelope, not for the sake of outrage, to solely get attention, but in pursuit of their own personal creativity.

And Rosalía is thirty three, she’s been around for a while. A break from the barely-pubescent molded by major label committee. I mean if you were unknown and came to a label with this music, the three majors would want no part of you. But with a track record, Rosalía could pursue her own path.

Now the game is different in the streaming era. It’s not about the debut, the launch numbers, but longevity. How long will people continue to listen to “Lux”? I don’t know.

But Rosalía has put a stake in the ground, “Lux” is a beacon for all the supposed artists repeating themselves, putting out tripe, taking baby steps as they use the producers du jour to try and game the charts.

“Lux” is what we need.

Listen to it. You may find it difficult at first. But while you’re doing so, think about the person who created it. Just like with the hit music of yore, you’ll ask yourself HOW DID SHE COME UP WITH THIS?