He’s President North America of AEG Presents. He started off as a fan, became a drummer, ran the concert program at UCSB and ended up working for Bill Graham Presents in SF and then LN in L.A. and now AEG.

So, if you want to know how to climb the ladder in the concert business…

All the money is on the road, but it’s the label people who are still venerated, which is kind of questionable. Rick’s been doing it for decades. He signs and steers tours as well as scouting for new venues. Not that he doesn’t have an entire team helping him out, but if you want to know what’s going on in the touring world today…

LISTEN!

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The Joke – Spotify

The Joke – YouTube

This rubbed me the wrong way the first time through.

The second I tolerated it.

The third I LOVED IT!

That’s the power of radio, that’s the power of repetition. But every time they play an oldie on the Spectrum I flip the switch, I know where to get that stuff, I’m hungry for the new, but too many of those on the Americana playlists on the streaming services are tune-outs, BUT NOT THIS!

And there’s the conundrum. People are making new music but most of the potential audience is not hearing it. Hell, although Brandi Carlile’s album just came out this month, this lead track, “The Joke,” has been out since November, with YouTube views far under a million. HOW CAN THIS BE?

Brandi is someone whose name has been bandied about for years. But that’s today’s market, either you make an immediate splash or you get down into the weeds and do your work, make fans one by one, waiting for the big break that may not ever come, even though you’re getting bigger. I mean are we ever going to hear “The Joke” on the Spotify Top 50, on Top Forty radio? Probably not. Top Forty is not what it once was, now it’s all hip-hop/urban, there’s very little pop. As for Spotify, that chart is what people are actually listening to, so it’s hard to get started if you’re not already famous or working in popular genres.

And the problem with Americana/AAA is the audience. Aged and insular. So proud of their acts that they don’t want to share them, and they don’t want to embrace new technologies. Believe me, the audience for “The Joke” is much wider than it’s gonna be, unless Brandi Carlile gets one of those TV moments, like Sugarland or Kellie Pickler. When all eyes are upon you and you deliver…

But most acts never get a chance, even though they’re already good.

Now I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this track was produced by Shooter Jennings and Dave Cobb, the Don Was of his generation, specializing in getting the essence of his acts on wax. Funny, we’ve become so inured to Svengali producers we’ve forgotten the greats don’t leave their fingerprints but allow their charges to shine.

So “The Joke” starts quiet, with piano and strings, the antithesis of today’s modern music, it’s alive, it breathes, it stretches out.

And Brandi’s not belting, she’s not a TV contestant, she’s servicing the song, not overpowering it.

And then there’s that change, too much of today’s music is repetitive beats. Brandi’s alternately climbing the song mountain and taking a detour and then…

Comes the big anthemic chorus, with its unexpected triumphant ending.

And then the strings and everybody else in the kitchen sink chimes in and you’re hooked.

And she starts singing again. With the drums starting to pound and you remember what music once was, this is like the seventies, someone taking the form but stretching it. This is not shoegazer music, one thing’s for sure, Brandi can SING! And like a Lowell George production the track breathes, there’s not too much on it.

Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them

Remember when music was the other, the refuge for those who just didn’t fit in, who couldn’t march in the preordained steps, who had a different vision, before we all became automatons marching to the dollar beat?

That’s what’s going on here.

This is music to wake up your inner power. Not some Katy Perry ditty.

And when the strings come back in and the song ramps up you feel powerful, you’re standing, conducting the band, a star in your mirror, feeling with this song in your ears you can conquer the world.

You might just.

ODESZA – Spotify

I heard them on the Sirius XM Spectrum. The vocalist was Leon Bridges. The song was entitled “Across The Room” and it was hooky and anthemic and I needed to hear it again. So I pulled it up on Spotify and did some research and learned that ODESZA had played Staples Center. HOW DID I NOT KNOW?

Last week I was talking to Chris Zarou, manager of Logic, he told me to promote the album they’d wrapped a bus in the album artwork and dropped in on fans across the country. I WAS UNAWARE! Even though I knew that George Thorogood criss-crossed the country to promote an album decades back.

Peter Paterno remarked that Metallica sold out stadiums across the world last summer and no one knew. Furthermore, their double album did good business. BUT NO ONE KNEW!

Welcome to the new world, where you’re in your own vertical and you may never break out. And this is so confounding for those of us who were brought up in the old world, where you climbed the ladder to world domination. But now it’s impossible to reach everybody, but you can do excellent business reaching just your core audience. After all, Logic is going on an arena tour. Then again, that’s the power of the single, “1-800-273-8255” was everywhere, and Rick Mueller says a single is now enough to sell tickets, you can listen to his story on tomorrow’s podcast.

But that Leon Bridges cut is from an ODESZA album, and stunningly, it’s playable throughout, with peaks, it reminds me of the mood of Air’s “Moon Safari” from twenty years back, an electronic-based LP that you can put on in the background and drift away, dobie gray.

“Across The Room” has got this languorous groove, with a simple melody, and then it explodes into “State Of Independence” majesty, whether it be the Donna Summer original or the Moodswings remake, I guess Quincy Jones was right about the influences, I only wish he’d refused to apologize, what kind of world do we live in where someone can’t speak their truth with impunity.

Then I was intrigued and wanted to hear the Regina Spektor cut, a woman whose name was on everybody’s lips a few years back and seems to have fallen off. But “Just A Memory” could bring her back.

But it was the cut after that which was my favorite, “Divide,” featuring Kelsey Bulkin… WHO?

I fired up the Google Machine and it turned out I had not missed the memo, she was not already famous, she had a career, but was just stepping to the mic with ODESZA, to create this song that sounded like it was being pulled by a Zamboni that was alternately waxing and stuttering.

How is this happening? How is this palatable, exquisite music sitting right alongside the hip-hop nation and getting so little attention even though so many know about it, after all ODESZA is second to closing at this year’s Coachella.

That’s the world we now live in, one in which greatness can be hiding in plain sight.

Thank god Howard Stern was on vacation, thank god I stumbled upon this.

But even more it rekindled my belief in music. This was not retreads, this was something new, not something just made in the mold of the old, and it was GOOD!

You take the building blocks and you try to push the envelope. And today you can be college students in Washington with laptops and start a career and make it to the zenith without the usual suspects.

And it’s not only rappers who are collaborating.

ODESZA will either float your boat or it won’t. If you’re a fan of Little Steven’s Underground Garage you might pooh-pooh it, wonder where the guitars are.

If you’re a fan of Lithium or Octane you’ll wonder where the edge is.

Then again, if you’re old enough you’ll remember when we could love different kinds of music, when we could love AC/DC and Joni Mitchell.

But ODESZA is neither. It’s certainly reminiscent of what came before, but it’s definitely brand new.

After you get hooked, put “A Moment Apart” on when hosting a party, it won’t be long before people ask WHAT’S THAT?

LIKE ME!

P.S. ODESZA’s “Corners Of The Earth” was featured in NBC’s promo for the Olympics:

2018 Winter Olympics – Corners of The Earth – ODESZA

P.P.S. ODESZA’s “Sun Models” (feat. Madelyn Grant) has 99,666,143 streams on Spotify. The tracks from “A Moment Apart” are all in seven digits.

Did I tell you about the time my father roller skated?

He was the least athletic man I knew. I threw better than he did at six years old. He came home with baseball gloves for him and me, kind of a toy one for my hand, but it wasn’t long before we switched and I had the adult glove and I was pitching into one of these devices that had a net and a rubber band and shot the ball back at you. This was about the same time they had automatic putting machines. You putted into a device akin to a dustpan and then it pushed the golf ball back to you. That was the technological revolution of the sixties. We listened to our records on vinyl and the breakthrough was transistors and the thought that we could take all of our music with us…was not even on our minds.

And we never roller skated growing up. Maybe because it wasn’t flat where we lived. Hilly compared to the traditional suburb, but not mountainous. And the roads were made from this newfangled concoction akin to the new math, something they used for about a decade and then abandoned, a combination of rocks, oil and sand that was mucky and sticky for days and then the top layer of rocks was pushed to the sides and the uneven surface was supposedly better for traction but it was hell for roller skates, never mind the skateboards that were fashionable for about a year around 1965.

And mostly we were ice skaters. Back when the lakes used to freeze over. Although I do remember going to a semi-outdoor rink, actually a rink with a roof, in Westport on the Post Road where they played records when you went in a circle, I distinctly remember hearing “96 Tears,” but mostly we went on the lake and the pond and we listened to the news to see if the ice was safe and it was often questionable/borderline and on the lake it was bumpy and on the ponds you could see the cracks and we were always worried about falling through but we ice skated, we never roller skated.

But we had those adjustable skates in the house, you know, the ones with heels and toes that you put over your shoes. I never remember using them, but I remember playing with them inside, I was fascinated by their adjustability, and the key. And I hated that Melanie song when it finally hit but by that time I was in college and roller skating was the furthest thing from my mind.

But they had an annual roller skating party at the Jewish Community Center, aka the JCC. In 1962 they built a new one, and a couple of years back, they tore down that one and replaced it with an old folks home and live long enough you realize nothing is forever, especially you.

But in the old JCC…the one in downtown Bridgeport, the one where we went to play basketball on Saturday night, once a year there was a roller skating party. Some company brought in skates and I wouldn’t participate, because my foot was small and I’d have to wear white skates. I know, I know, sounds ridiculous now, but when you’re that little these things are important, you want to be seen as a MAN! I’d sit and sulk on the sidelines, although the last year I eventually donned the white skates halfway through and had a good time but I was so busy trying not to fall that I don’t remember much else.

And then when the JCC moved uptown, into the new building, there were no more skating parties, we had to save the floor of the gym. Progress always comes with a cost, no one ever worried about the gym floor in the old building.

And by time the nineties rolled around I went to visit my younger sister in Minneapolis, the home of RollerBlades, and I tried them out. They were actually easier, with only one row of wheels, but in the seventies, there was a roller skating revival, it even made it into movies, and the epicenter was Venice Beach, but I never partook. I’d ride my bike down to the boardwalk and see the skaters in action, but it was not a casual endeavor but more of a cult, and I’m not a joiner by nature, I’m not beaming as a member of a group.

And like I told you, my dad was unathletic.

He told us he was on the high school tennis team, that he’d even won a letter, but when the tennis boom hit in the seventies and we got on the court and he was so terrible he finally admitted he was the manager, that’s how he’d gotten his letter.

But he could ski, and loved to. He took one lesson and was on the slopes for years. He eventually took a couple of privates at Bromley, but ultimately he forced his way down the mountain, in a modified snowplow/parallel system he was very proud of. But there was that one time in Aspen…

In case you don’t know, the most serious part is at the bottom of the hill, and my dad came over a ridge and lost control and wiped out an entire snow fence, put up for the annual race, and a course worker snidely yelled YOU JUST FINISHED THE ROCH CUP! My father thought this was hysterical and brought it up on a regular basis, he could laugh at himself. Funny, I just realized that. He took so much so seriously, but he had a wild sense of humor, he was constantly cracking jokes.

And then my older sister went to graduate school in Los Angeles and my family came out to visit and we went to the beach and they were renting skates.

Like I said, I always passed. Furthermore, I was now in my twenties without experience and I knew if you fell on skates, you got hurt, scraped by the concrete. But everybody else wanted to do it…

And at this point they had beige skates, unisex, they worked for everybody.

My father put down his credit card and we all started picking skates. But while I was trying to find the right size, when I’d finally found a pair and was lacing up, I looked up and my dad was skating in circles, he was doing tricks! Everything he’d told us about his youth had come true, he could really roller skate, like he’d been born on wheels, like it was the most natural thing ever. I’m worried I’m gonna fall on my ass and he’s striding down the boardwalk like he’s auditioning for a movie.

I can see my dad, with that shiteating grin on his face, oh, he always swore, the s-word was part of his everyday vocabulary, rolling down the boardwalk without a care in the world, believing the world was his oyster.

And at that moment…

It was.