Bill told me they left a lot of money on the table.\u00c2\u00a0 That in most markets tickets were $30-$35.\u00c2\u00a0 The ducat I was holding had a price of $42.50, yet I was in the sixth row.\u00c2\u00a0 To see Jason Mraz at the Greek!<\/p>\n
Do I really care?<\/p>\n
I remember seeing him back at the Wiltern, the girls swooning as he sang his MTV hit, "The Remedy".\u00c2\u00a0 Which he played second Saturday night. People sang along exuberantly.\u00c2\u00a0 But where was Jason going to go from there?<\/p>\n
Can you believe Steely Dan’s "Peg"?\u00c2\u00a0 Only topped by a cover of Edwin Hawkins’ "Oh Happy Day"!<\/p>\n
How does this guy sell out the Greek?\u00c2\u00a0 With no one staying home, despite the lightning and the rain?<\/p>\n
CHARISMA!<\/p>\n
Some people have star power.\u00c2\u00a0 Most don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 But, if you do, you can build upon this base to entrance audiences, to build a career.<\/p>\n
That game of running singles up the chart?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the major labels do.\u00c2\u00a0 Real managers know it’s all about tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 How can you get people into the seats?\u00c2\u00a0 And keep them coming?<\/p>\n
The king is Jimmy Buffett.\u00c2\u00a0 He comes back to party with his fans every summer.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s had a modicum of hits, but they’re just the hanger, the framework for an extravaganza.\u00c2\u00a0 Where boomers come out, get tanked up and sing along.<\/p>\n
Jason Mraz is not very different.<\/p>\n
He spent evenings at open mics at a comedy club to hone his patter.\u00c2\u00a0 He involves the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Which responds with exuberance.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got the girls singing the boys’ parts, and the boys singing the girls’.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got us raising the roof with our hands, and saying goodbye with them at our asses.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s doing it with a conga player and a horn section.\u00c2\u00a0 There are no hard drives.\u00c2\u00a0 No choreography.\u00c2\u00a0 Just music.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a party.<\/p>\n
Right now Jason is riding a monster hit, "I’m Yours", which radio only went on after the audience demanded it.\u00c2\u00a0 In today’s media world, the institutions are always one step behind.\u00c2\u00a0 And that track’s bringing people to the gig, but Jason even did great business when his last album, "Mr. A-Z", was lost in the shuffle of the Elektra merger into Atlantic.<\/p>\n
He’s not without edges.\u00c2\u00a0 He went on record as being for gay marriage.\u00c2\u00a0 And Obama.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a relentless positivity that could even make me an optimist.<\/p>\n
If you want to survive in this business you’ve got to deliver a show, you’ve got to admit the audience owns you, that you’re lucky they come, that you’re privileged to be able to play music for a living.\u00c2\u00a0 Jason Mraz evidences all this.<\/p>\n
He’s infectious.\u00c2\u00a0 To go to the show is to be won over.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s to believe this business will survive just fine.\u00c2\u00a0 That it’s not only the dinosaurs who know how to win an audience.\u00c2\u00a0 And keep it.<\/p>\n
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Bill told me they left a lot of money on the table.\u00c2\u00a0 That in most markets tickets were $30-$35.\u00c2\u00a0 The ducat I was holding had a price of $42.50, yet I was in the sixth row.\u00c2\u00a0 To see Jason Mraz at the Greek! Do I really care? I remember seeing him back at the Wiltern, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-mK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}