You just wanna know those peanut butter vibes

So, the Shrine is full. Well, in the corners of the upper deck there were a few spare seats. But the rest were filled by a demo born in the nineties, the late nineties, the crowd was in the neighborhood of 19 and 20, a bit older, AND EVERYONE KNEW THE RECORD BY HEART!

The band took the stage, sans canned tracks and production, and hands went into the air and a roar emanated from the assembled multitude. HOW DID THEY ALL KNOW?

Aren’t we supposed to be living in a hip-hop world? Check the statistics, by no measure are Glass Animals stars.

“Gooey” went to #26 on rock radio back in 2014.

“Life Itself” went to #21 in the same ghetto last year.

Their first album, 2014’s “Zaba,” peaked at #177 with a grand total of 136,000 sold.

“How To Be A Human Being,” released last year, made it to number 20.

And it’s not like they’re burning up the charts in the U.K. The first album went to #92, the second to #23.

“Gooey” has 97 million streams on Spotify, nothing to sneeze at, but there are acts with more plays who can’t sell anywhere near this number of tickets.

“Life Itself” is at 34 million.

But data seems irrelevant to those in attendance.

And who were they?

Not millennials. They don’t even remember Napster. They’re not burdened by history whatsoever. Scratch them and I’d say they like hip-hop too, but Glass Animals is closer to alternative, closer to the English music of the eighties than the urban sound of today.

But the band is a raging success.

And either you know it or you don’t.

I was the oldest attendant, by far. And the point is we’re experiencing a schism, between the old and the new. The boomers are seeing the classic acts, and the youngsters have completely disconnected. But if you were there tonight watching Glass Animals…

No way you could say they were bad.

Actually, what you’d say is…SAME AS IT EVER WAS!

Remember being young, knowing the album by heart and needing to see the band in concert?

That’s what it was like.

A swarm of bumping, bending bodies, entranced by the music.

You’d think it was the seventies.

But there was a different act on stage.

I still don’t know how they know. But they do.

We were debating this all night. Theories were posited. “Gooey” had a long time on the radio, then again, none of the tracks peaked. Maybe listeners found the band by looking at Related Artists on Spotify.

Now we used to have a whole level of bands like this. But we read about them in magazines, there were only a few thousand albums a year. But now there are triple digit thousands released a year, it’s a great morass, the history of music is at your fingertips, it’s a singles world, but these fans had gone deep and knew the band’s oeuvre completely.

Then again, music is portable. Once you’re interested it’s available 24/7. We had to go back to our dorm rooms.

So this show was definitely about the music, about the vibe, but the lead singer, Dave Bayley, is an AMAZING front man. Getting up on the furniture and twisting to the tunes like only a white boy can do with the music inside him, not soulfully, but as if he was beamed in from another universe.

He knelt, he climbed into the audience, but he wasn’t working too hard, he was not trying to convince us, he just seemed to be following his own muse, he got the party started, and we partied!

But this was not a festival gig, where it was about the audience. Everybody was bonding with the band. Looking at the stage, usually sans phones, they wanted to be in the trance.

It was so peculiar. Finding something fully-baked that most people are unaware of. Greta Van Fleet tops the Active Rock chart and only have 4.8 million streams of their biggest song, but with even less success on traditional metrics Glass Animals is selling more tickets. Sure, they’ve been around longer, but…

What is happening here?

These were not scenesters. These were college students. Taking a Thursday night off. They were not dressed to the nines. And at least half of the audience was women. Then again, the biracial guy behind me mouthed every single word. Sure, L.A. is multicultural and multiracial, but physically the groups are separated, yet they’re all here together at this alt-rock show?

I wanted you all to come and see. All you pooh-poohing today’s music. You would have gotten it, you would have been wowed.

It was refreshing. It was exciting.

For all the hype in the media, all the “stars” saying LOOK AT ME, there are still acts focusing on vision and execution who are not working it, not putting themselves in our faces 24/7, who are leading with their music.

And it’s not me-too.

Glass Animals doesn’t sound exactly like anything else out there. You can hear the roots, but how it’s put together…

I can’t take this place, I can’t take this place
I just wanna go where I can get some space

Isn’t that what music used to represent? An alternative, a refuge? Before it became about commerce, bucks? The music released you, set you free, made you feel all gooey inside, made you feel like someone else felt what you felt.

We felt it tonight at the Shrine.

P.S. On wax, “Gooey” is good, live it was transcendent. We’re used to bands unable to replicate their hits. But on the road Glass Animals has polished the track, it’s got an energy absent on the recording, the entire audience turned into Gumbys when this played.

P.P.S. The first encore was Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” Yup, that’s an oldie by this audience’s standards.

Truth be told
I’ve been here, I’ve done this all before

At the Fillmore East, at emporia where the bands were known by the attendees and seemingly nobody else, before AOR radio anointed hits and then MTV made them ubiquitous.

I’d say I told you so but you just gonna cry
You just wanna know those peanut butter vibes

YOU DO!

Richard told me it was an UNDERPLAY!

I sauntered into the Palladium expecting attendance to be sparse and the people who were there to be kids. But the place was packed and those in attendance were way past puberty, not that there was not screaming involved, but average age was 19 or 20, what was happening here, weren’t teen phenoms supposed to be time-stamped, to have their era and then be done, like the Cassidy brothers, Bobby Sherman and New Kids On The Block?

But no, Niall Horan has a #2 record, soon to be #1, how did this happen?

The audience is in control. That’s what Barnett told me. Used to be radio was the arbiter. But now the public gets a voice. Turns out they’re still into 1D. And those streaming numbers force the hand of radio and other old line gatekeepers.

Not that the starmaker machinery is not involved.

That’s what people don’t buy, the same ones paying attention to the press and the scuttlebutt. Saying major labels are over, you can make it on your own and streaming is the devil. Did you read today’s RIAA report? Revenue is up 17%! A far cry from the last decade when it was all doom and gloom, and paid on demand streaming is 43% of the total, far outnumbering downloads and physical.

The future’s so bright you gotta wear shades.

So Richard and Harry allowed Niall to make the record he wanted to. Which is a backlash against the overbearing label shenanigans the Mottola era inaugurated, never mind the reign of Clive Davis. The team was established and the record was recorded but they did argue about the single, which took 17 mixes to get right, because today it is all about the single, and if it’s not right you’re screwed.

And then Niall went around the world twice promoting himself and his new music. They told me he was good at it, remembered names, and I took this with a grain of salt until I was on the stairs after the show and he said “Hi Bob.” Hell, there are musicians I’ve known for decades who make like they don’t know me, ones I’ve written superlative stuff about, but this guy I met in passing as part of a group remembers me? I didn’t believe it. I thought he was prompted. But no, Niall just told me Richard had mentioned that I was gonna be there last night.

Whew!

People want to work with nice people. Talent isn’t enough.

And you work harder than a financial wizard, with a hell of a lot more jet lag. Niall shrugged when I queried whether he was burned out, he said he’d been around the globe seven times so far, hell, he just celebrated his 24th birthday in Japan! Staying up all night drinking until the English football came on.

When he’s not playing golf, that’s how he blows off steam. When he’s unavailable on the links.

And the label meshed with management and worked radio and the usual suspects, it’s a juggernaut, I tell you!

And now is where you pooh-pooh the whole damn thing, saying the music sucks, but the truth is Niall’s solo work is closer to Neil Young than Nas, and it ain’t just kiddie ditties, it’s more…rock and roll. With melody.

Yup, young people are gonna save this world. Everything old is new again. Niall loves the Eagles, and you may hate them, but the Eagles had superb songwriting skills, with melodies and choruses, and so does Niall. Not making a direct comparison, it’s just that what goes for rock today is oftentimes too self-referential, such a reaction to what once was that you can’t understand it unless you’re deep in the rabbit hole. Put on Niall’s new album at a dinner party and everybody will enjoy it. Songs with meaning you can sing along with, what a concept!

And right now Spotify is dominated by hip-hop. Because those were the early adopters. And as you can see the joke is on the pooh-poohers, because it’s streaming that’s driving revenue. Will other genres make an impact?

That’s an interesting question.

Hip-hop has culture, never underestimate the story.

But Niall has 1D story.

And those fans know every word and sing along.

And come in droves.

There’ll be a shed tour next year, but demand far outstrips that. But if you want credibility, you’ve got to act in a credible way.

Think about this, as you were glued to the past streaming won.

Now, youngsters not burdened by your baggage are gonna reinvent the business with the building blocks of your youth and succeed.

What’s the problem?

THERE IS NONE!

Mighty

It works!

Now I grew up in the dark ages. When music ruled the world, our idea of tech was a component stereo and nobody I knew applied to business school.

So today I drove today to Culver City to the Mighty offices. Well, “office,” in a loft above another startup, in the Helms Bakery area. If you had told me back in the seventies that one day Culver City would be hip, I’d have laughed, after I went to see a movie in Westwood, after watching tumbleweeds roll down the Third Street Promenade. And those locations might mean nothing to you, but the truth is all the action is happening in the cities, which is why the younger generation is here. San Francisco, Brooklyn, Los Angeles?

Well, Mighty has a CTO up north, but the business is based down here. And you might say you can be anywhere these days, and I’d agree with you, but only halfway. The truth is life is about people, and despite video-conferencing and all the modern communications techniques, there’s nothing like up close and personal.

So Anthony Mendelson, the majordomo of Mighty, is 33, he got his MBA at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, as did his compatriot, the other Anthony, Pu, and new hire Lachelle.

It’s always about your network. Just ask a musician. Know nobody and you’re nowhere.

So everybody had history. Anthony #1 worked at Google in ad tech. Where he met Rich. Lachelle worked at Unilever before business school. They all paid their dues. Which is quite a contrast to today’s music business where pre-teens without portfolio believe they should be household names overnight. And even if you break through, like Rebecca Black, with “Friday,” you’re usually thrown on the scrapheap shortly thereafter.

You see all the smart people are not in music. Where some baby boomer runs the label and you do the grunt work. Where there’s adherence to old paradigms, where radio rules. Just ask a label head, they pray at the altar of over-the-air, it’s insane.

So, where do the smart people go?

Tech.

And smart people are taking over the world. Doesn’t matter if Trump is President, if he’s elected by his lauded “uneducated,” you can’t mess with someone who’s gone to school and learned how to analyze, how to put the pieces together, which is the key these days, since you can look up all the facts online.

So, all the creativity is in tech. Which the musicians hate. As they replicate old, tired sounds and expect us to be interested.

So Anthony Mendelson had an idea. He got a team and raised some money and went on Kickstarter, where he asked for 300k and got nearly a million.

And that’s when the hard part started. Not only did they have to design and manufacture the product, they had to make a deal with Spotify!

That’s right, they broke the rules, something that’s anathema in today’s music business. They raised capital and sold the product on air.

They needed Spotify to say yes.

That took a long time. Negotiating.

And when the streaming giant put its thumb up, there were issues. Of compatibility between Spotify’s software and Mighty’s, which is why you cannot shuffle quite yet, although it’s coming along quickly.

As for voice control…

That’s in version 2, about a year off. Yup, the new product sells at the old price and the old product’s price is dropped, just like Apple.

Anyway, the clock is running. Kickstarter was back in 2/16. The product didn’t launch until 7/17, but the team said they’d give the cash back if they couldn’t launch.

Now you’d say iPods are history. You can use your Apple Watch. But a Mighty is much cheaper, at $85.99. And how did they come to that price? There’s a calculator you use. Why are these people so smart and everybody in the arts so dumb? It’d be one thing if the artists were just that, but scratch one and you’ll find they want to sell clothing, perfume, concentrate on everything but their own work, while the truth is these educated youngsters can run circles around them.

And the stunning thing is set-up was seamless. You download the app, go through the prompts, and voila!, it works, right out of the box. It’s glitchless, although the transfer of songs from Spotify is slow, and if you crank the music up to the max you’ll get some distortion, but…

We keep hearing about the downtrodden. People say they hate school. And I don’t want to sound like a Republican here, I believe in a safety net, maybe even a universal income, but if you want to have cash to buy these goodies, you’ve got to climb the ladder.

So, let that be a warning to you.

Now, back to the product.

You go through the prompts, and then you can synch playlists. You can’t shuffle the songs in those playlists, not yet, but you push a button and a voice comes on to tell you you’ve switched to the next playlist, its name is spoken.

And the rest is…intuitive. Forward and backward buttons, up and down volume buttons, and a pause/play button at the center.

And one other thing, it takes a while to power up. But for a 1.0 product, it’s pretty impressive.

But not as impressive as the team.

So, if you don’t want to carry your phone around. If you want to jog or ski or hike or… The Mighty is tiny and water resistant, and the next iteration will be waterproof, and on one hand you say the product is redundant, but the truth is your phone now costs a grand, is heavy and a specialized accessory…

Might be just the trick.

Check it out.

P.S. You don’t have to use Bluetooth headphones, although I can’t see why you wouldn’t. And the headphone jack is how you charge the Mighty, via a USB port.

P.S. Here’s the team:

The Mighty Team

P.P.S. And here’s the Crunchbase:

Crunchbase – Mighty Audio

That’s right, millennials are all about transparency, and when they take over the music business it will be to everybody’s advantage.

P.P.P.S. Next step is a series A, the initial round was from angel investors. That’s right, these people know how to do this, they learned this in school. And I’m not sure a school can teach you how to be an artist, I actually think schools can drum the inspiration out of you, but when it comes to business…

P.P.P.P.S. I just got this note from Anthony Mendelson:

“I’m glad that you’re up and running!

Re: audio quality, Mighty’s codec is similar to what you’d find in current iPhones. We allow users to adjust Spotify audio quality by navigating to the Connections tab (bottom left), clicking the Spotify logo at the top of the screen, then clicking Download Quality. High and Extreme sound better but reduce battery life. Users also want the ability to adjust EQ settings – we’re working on that right now.

Our next big software update will include shuffle mode and the ability for Mighty to wake itself up and update your playlists overnight, no manual effort required. Want to chat again before we make that release?

Thanks again for stopping by.”

Everyone just wants to talk television. Everywhere I go. They used to ask if you’d heard this or that, records and artists were top of mind, now we all just want to sit in front of the big screen.

And not go to the theatre.

I’d love to see Darren Aronofsky’s new pic. But if you think I’m gonna make an appointment you’re still watching Must See TV, now that Don Ohlmeyer is dead and Seinfeld is on Netflix. Things change. And whereas the sixties and seventies (maybe even the eighties!) were about music, the twenty first century is positively about television.

“The Sopranos” was the Beatles. And like that band, they can never get back together, because Tony/James Gandolfini, is dead. You think you want Led Zeppelin to get back together, but you really don’t. Oh, the kids will enjoy it, before they go back to their hip-hop, and the out of it oldsters who weren’t there the first time will go to crow and get a notch in their belt, but fans will be disappointed, because you can’t go back, you can never go back, you can’t marry your high school sweetheart after reconnecting on Facebook and you can’t run the mile like you used to and if you think you can, you’re delusional.

So we forage for things to watch.

Now I don’t sit in front of the screen much. Because we’re all time-challenged. The idea of flipping from channel to channel is anathema, and I don’t want to waste any precious moments, but if there’s something worth seeing…

It’s like going to the movies in the seventies.

Only in this case, the critics are irrelevant. Unless they’re aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes. How often have I opened the paper to find the latest Netflix show denigrated and then watched it and enjoyed it? But usually, it’s word of mouth.

You know the biggest word of mouth show?

“Black Mirror,” but I can’t say I loved the episode I watched. I’m planning to give it another try. When I finally finish “Breaking Bad,” now that I’ve caught up with “Broadchurch.”

That’s right, I didn’t catch “Breaking Bad” the first time through. Sling arrows all you want, but no one’s seen everything, even though there are many fewer shows than records.

But after “Broadchurch” I watched a Netflix show I highly recommend, this documentary “Heroin(e),” about the opioid crisis. Three women in West Virginia trying to make a difference. You’ll wonder about your life choice, chasing the buck, first and foremost it’s about meaning. And when you do your best to help other people, you’re fulfilled.

Now why is it that English shows are always better than American ones? With exceptions, of course, like the aforementioned “Sopranos.” Is it because everyone doesn’t have to be beautiful, because the productions are not over the top, because the stories are real?

All of that and more.

“Broadchurch” is a genre show. I.e. murder and trial. But it’s well-nuanced. And it’s ITV, not BBC, so there are fade-outs for commercials. But you watch it and you get hooked.

I want to be hooked. I want to go down the rabbit hole. I want to be taken away from this everyday life, the endless pings on my iPhone, I ironically want to live life by experiencing it through others.

Now my sister recommended this show. And when I started to mention it, after viewing a few episodes, I was stunned who had seen it. It’s like music in the sixties and early seventies, an alternative universe that gets little publicity, but drives the culture. Sure, you might see a review, but then it disappears.

And I prefer Netflix and Amazon. Because I don’t want to tune in every night to see Ken Burns’s documentary on Vietnam, I don’t want to even DVR it, I just want to dive in and go on a ride, episode after episode. Why has Hollywood got it so wrong? Dribbling out product. Refusing to make films day and date online. The record business learned, if you try and protect profits, play to the usual suspects, you’re dead. Labels played to Tower Records and then the chain went under. They played to radio and then Spotify broke records. No one I know goes to the movies, other than my mother and her aged cronies, who became addicted back in the thirties. You make your impact online, via streaming. And when your product finally comes to TV… HBO premiered “La La Land,” I’m not even gonna bother, that’s so last year.

Now the star of the second season of “Broadchurch” is Charlotte Rampling, yes the sexy ingenue I saw at a midnight screening of “The Night Porter” in Westwood. She’s on a comeback tear. And she’s had no plastic surgery.

And she’s more beautiful for it.

American actresses get nipped and tucked to appear young, to get gigs, and we can’t help but look at them and point out the deficiencies. Plastic surgery is a crapshoot, and the odds of winning are about those in Vegas, i.e. not good. But Rampling looks her age and has gravitas, she’s lived a life, she’s not chasing a dream, SHE’S LIVING THE DREAM!

Now on one hand I hate these whodunits. Because you’re hooked and there’s a twist.

But it’s life in the Dorset area that is so riveting. A small town in the U.K. where everybody knows each other and everybody is imperfect and the attorney wants a shag and the barristers, even women, wear wigs and…

Police don’t normally work to music. And the law is boring.

But life is fascinating.

Art, when done right, reflects life, it gives us insight into the human condition.

How can TV get it so right and music get it so wrong?