No Gans, Celine or Elton — What Next, Las Vegas?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt’s an interesting debate, a discussion, supply and demand, ticket prices, economics…but it’s got very little to do with music.<\/p>\n
One can go back to the early heyday of the Fillmores and say people went for the scene, but even though one wanted to be there, at the happening, the focus in the late sixties, especially the seventies, was on the music. That’s what I remember about going to a show.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to hear the SONGS!\u00c2\u00a0 I did not go to meet girls, I didn’t need a friend to accompany me to attend.\u00c2\u00a0 The concept of sitting in the dark listening to those songs I played in my living room positively thrilled me.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what I believe the concert experience is.\u00c2\u00a0 But speaking with Strasburg, I wonder if the younger generation feels the same way.<\/p>\n
Don says the youngsters are all about the good time.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, the music is part of the attraction, but it’s about the hang.\u00c2\u00a0 Let me go to the show and connect, with the known and unknown.<\/p>\n
You can expand this concept.\u00c2\u00a0 Top Forty music is not about the music, it’s not about sitting on the floor with the album cover and digesting the tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather it’s about spinning the cuts at the club, they’re the grease that helps you get laid.\u00c2\u00a0 So are young ‘uns even looking for the same experience baby boomers cherished?<\/p>\n
The younger generation’s got Facebook, they’re IM’ing and texting all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Each kid in town knows every other kid, even if he or she goes to a completely different school.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about a gang, a tribe of people all going to a location to hang.\u00c2\u00a0 Have things changed so much that whatever we had before was lost?<\/p>\n
Think about the absence of chairs in venues.\u00c2\u00a0 You never stood at the show in the sixties, nor during most of the seventies either.\u00c2\u00a0 The Whisky had a pit right in front of the stage, but the rest of the club was filled with seats.\u00c2\u00a0 You sat down, maybe had a drink, and paid attention.\u00c2\u00a0 It was about the music, not rubbing shoulders with wannabe partners.<\/p>\n
People might stand for the encore at the arena, at other hard seat venues, but mostly there was a respect for the sound.\u00c2\u00a0 A show wasn’t an extravaganza, unless that’s what the act was truly purveying.\u00c2\u00a0 Alice Cooper was all about theatre, but the other acts didn’t compete on this level.\u00c2\u00a0 If you went to see Clapton, the music was enough, no one expected anything more.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, big acts are afraid to tour without all the production, they believe the audience EXPECTS IT!<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, I saw the band O.A.R.\u00c2\u00a0 My friend Steve laughed when the singer said the next track was from their "new album".\u00c2\u00a0 Does anybody give a shit about the album anymore?\u00c2\u00a0 Does anybody give a shit about any of the tunes the band is playing, or is it more about being there, the vibe?<\/p>\n
I don’t think O.A.R. could write a hit track, not even if Diane Warren and Desmond Child were locked up in the same room with them.\u00c2\u00a0 But it doesn’t make any difference, that’s not what they’re selling.<\/p>\n
O.A.R. is selling tickets.<\/p>\n
And Don Strasburg says tickets sales for younger acts are based on the experience on the other side of the stage, the good times not of the players, but the attendees.\u00c2\u00a0 This seems backwards to me.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve gone to shows that have been one tenth full, but some were the best gigs I ever attended.\u00c2\u00a0 Could a youngster have the same experience today?\u00c2\u00a0 Is that experience even on his radar?<\/p>\n
I write all this to illustrate the generation gap.\u00c2\u00a0 The classic acts are selling the tunes, but unfortunately, they haven’t written a good one in decades.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s all nostalgia, which is creepy.\u00c2\u00a0 Did you go see your parents’ acts in the sixties? Absolutely not.\u00c2\u00a0 So the electricity of a show, the feeling of a happening, is completely absent.<\/p>\n
The younger acts are either chasing the elusive, little dividend paying Top Forty hit, or are selling the experience. So when you listen to the favorites of the jam bands and the alternative rockers and don’t hear anything resembling a hit song, you’re usually right.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about the vibe, the attitude, the culture more than the song, the verse, chorus and riff.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got scenes, but few superstars.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only do we have no Cat Stevens, we’ve got no one resembling Peter Frampton.\u00c2\u00a0 Who could not only rock, and play, but sing songs that were catchy, that stuck to your bones AND your brain.<\/p>\n
The industry can either lead or follow.\u00c2\u00a0 We can deliver what the audience expects, or reeducate people.\u00c2\u00a0 But you’re not going to get a lot of sympathy from the usual suspects.\u00c2\u00a0 The labels want something they can sell, instantly.\u00c2\u00a0 And the promoters want something that will sell tickets, instantly.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be the label bought out clubs, provided tour support to get acts started, but that’s when FM radio play was key and you could break rather quickly on the combined effects of touring and airplay.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, developing an act takes incredible time.<\/p>\n
So, O.A.R. is on the road for a decade, and no one over forty cares.<\/p>\n
And major labels hype Top Forty wonders and no one over twenty five cares, and almost no one wants to see these "performers" live.<\/p>\n
Oh, what a sad sad state we’re in.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My favorite promoter is Don Strasburg.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t care about the label, none of the traditional metrics L.A. insiders triangulate, he’s into artist development, the desire of people to see a band and the increase that results.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to know who’s up and coming, or who is not truly dead, get ahold of […]<\/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":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-uQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912","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=1912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1913,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912\/revisions\/1913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}