In the late spring of 1971, I went to see Lee Michaels at the Fillmore East.\u00c2\u00a0 Primarily known for his one hit, "Do You Know What I Mean", prior to this Mr. Michaels was a combination blues player and thoughtful rocker.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m surprised his track "The War" got no airplay in light of the Iraq crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, there’s no draft.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, what hooked me was his track "What Now America".\u00c2\u00a0 Sans the flash of Katy Perry and the rappers what you got was a penetrating sensitivity.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s what made me a fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing "What Now America" pour out of a dorm room in Hepburn Hall during my freshman year at Middlebury made me buy the album it came from, "Barrel".\u00c2\u00a0 One of my favorites.\u00c2\u00a0 I had no choice but to purchase a ticket to see him live.<\/p>\n
But preceding him on the bill was a band I’d never heard the music of.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d seen their albums in stores, I’d loved Steve Marriott in the Small Faces, but I’d never heard a lick of Humble Pie music.\u00c2\u00a0 So I bought their latest album, "Rock On".\u00c2\u00a0 In anticipation of seeing them live.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to be familiar with the material!<\/p>\n
They didn’t even play the classic opening track, "Shine On".\u00c2\u00a0 But a few months later, their double album package recorded that weekend was released and "Rockin’ The Fillmore" made them stars.\u00c2\u00a0 Lee Michaels?\u00c2\u00a0 He switched labels and was ultimately forgotten.<\/p>\n
I bought Peter Frampton’s solo album, "Wind Of Change", because I loved his work on "Shine On" so much.\u00c2\u00a0 I still consider it his best, with the truly classic "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)".<\/p>\n
I was just reading Ron Asheton’s obituary in the L.A. "Times".\u00c2\u00a0 I bought "Raw Power", probably because "Creem" hyped it so.\u00c2\u00a0 But I was disappointed.\u00c2\u00a0 Awful mix.\u00c2\u00a0 I loved "Gimme Danger", but in my mind, despite the label switch to Columbia, they were still the band that played on that TV special years before, where Iggy spread his chest with peanut butter.\u00c2\u00a0 You see the Stooges were a live thing.<\/p>\n
That’s what resonated with me reading the obit.\u00c2\u00a0 No one wanted to buy Stooges records, but tons of people wanted to see the band live.<\/p>\n
How many attendees at the Madonna show bought "Hard Candy"?\u00c2\u00a0 Does every Eagles concertgoer own "Long Road Out Of Eden"?\u00c2\u00a0 As for Rihanna, sure her singles sell, but she can’t pack arenas.<\/p>\n
I’m thinking how there’s a split.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be you loved the music, had to own it and needed to see the band live.\u00c2\u00a0 Now there are groups that specialize in recordings and others that focus on live work.\u00c2\u00a0 The two are often not united in the fan’s mind.\u00c2\u00a0 In the Dead’s initial heyday, the early seventies, you had to own every record.\u00c2\u00a0 When they blew up again in the eighties, it was about the party, you didn’t need to own anything.<\/p>\n
The Beatles made their most legendary music after they’d retired from the live scene.\u00c2\u00a0 An album was not an excuse for a tour, the album was the end product.\u00c2\u00a0 Today an album is just an element in the overall marketing plan.\u00c2\u00a0 It sets up the spectacular tour!\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to have enough hits, enough familiar tracks, which may not even be owned by the public, to get people to go to the show.\u00c2\u00a0 The show just can’t be the music, because the music is not enough.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to provide a spectacle.\u00c2\u00a0 The show is akin to Broadway.\u00c2\u00a0 The music can’t stand alone.\u00c2\u00a0 Because that’s not enough for the customer.\u00c2\u00a0 The customer is looking for an experience!\u00c2\u00a0 Comparable to a movie, or a music video.<\/p>\n
Sure, people wanted to see the reunited Stooges because of their legacy.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe enhanced by the use of Iggy’s "Lust For Life" in a commercial.\u00c2\u00a0 But did you need to own "Lust For Life"?\u00c2\u00a0 Or was hearing it on TV enough?\u00c2\u00a0 Did you go to the show for the music or to cut a notch in your belt, to say you’d done it, the same way you ride the Matterhorn at Disneyland?<\/p>\n
Record companies have a problem.\u00c2\u00a0 The audience no longer sees the record and the tour as being united.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, look at the burgeoning festival scene…\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s going to buy all the records of the acts appearing in advance of seeing them?\u00c2\u00a0 Except for a few stars, you’re just grazing.\u00c2\u00a0 Having a good time.\u00c2\u00a0 And many of the bands won’t survive until the next season anyway.<\/p>\n
Then there are the records that can’t be played live.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, if performed, are mimed to hard drive.\u00c2\u00a0 The idea of being a band and playing your music on a stage is foreign to the mainstream.\u00c2\u00a0 I was stunned on New Year’s Eve to find the cover band could play memorable songs in a full-bodied way without backing tapes.\u00c2\u00a0 The idea that what you hear on the record is what you’re going to get live is a mindbender, you don’t expect it.<\/p>\n
In order to get the public excited about music, the makers and purveyors have to respect it.\u00c2\u00a0 It has to be great in its own right.\u00c2\u00a0 Going to the show can’t be about attending the party with your buds, but reliving the listening experience, with the live vibe.\u00c2\u00a0 There must be a unification between what you download and what you see.<\/p>\n
The Stooges reunion album sold 30,000 copies.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, most people don’t want new music by the dinosaurs, but many people don’t want new music by unknowns either.\u00c2\u00a0 In the seventies, we had Steely Dan, a band that only\u00c2\u00a0 made records, that stopped touring before they even cut "Rikki Don’t Lose That Number".\u00c2\u00a0 We didn’t mind, because the records were good enough, great, in fact.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where when Steely Dan ultimately went out live years later, fans wanted to see them.\u00c2\u00a0 But in the seventies, the records were enough, that was the culture.\u00c2\u00a0 The album was a statement.\u00c2\u00a0 And you went to the show not to hear the greatest hits, but to hear the album live.\u00c2\u00a0 And every year or two there was a new record, and you went to the gig because you didn’t want to miss out on your new favorites performed live.\u00c2\u00a0 You knew every lick.<\/p>\n
But in a month Bruce Springsteen is going to have to play classics at the Super Bowl.\u00c2\u00a0 Because few care about his new material.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s a live act now.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about memories, about raising your fist to "Born To Run".\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas thirty years ago, you wouldn’t go to the show without buying "The River" first, playing all four sides incessantly, so you’d be up to speed.<\/p>\n
People play video games incessantly today.\u00c2\u00a0 But music?\u00c2\u00a0 They sample at the buffet.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s casual.\u00c2\u00a0 And this is a problem.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the late spring of 1971, I went to see Lee Michaels at the Fillmore East.\u00c2\u00a0 Primarily known for his one hit, "Do You Know What I Mean", prior to this Mr. Michaels was a combination blues player and thoughtful rocker.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m surprised his track "The War" got no airplay in light of the Iraq […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-p6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1557,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions\/1557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}