{"id":2176,"date":"2009-08-19T11:56:22","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T19:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2176"},"modified":"2009-08-19T11:56:22","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T19:56:22","slug":"young-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/19\/young-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"Young & Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Craig Ferguson 7\/21\/09<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The number one criticism I get is I’m old.<\/p>\n

I don’t only get it from the youth, who cry "OLD MAN" as a pejorative, as if having a wrinkle is akin to possessing a contagious disease that requires you to reside on an island, alone, with your same irrelevant type, I also get it from my peers, instructing me to like the work of pre-pubescents, to revere the money being made.<\/p>\n

I’m fifty six.\u00c2\u00a0 My birthday is April 22nd.\u00c2\u00a0 Send me a card next year.<\/p>\n

Sure, I look in the mirror and I appear different.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, I’m closer to the end than I am the beginning.\u00c2\u00a0 But not only am I older, I’m wiser.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve seen more. I’m aware of how much I don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not young and stupid.<\/p>\n

Case in point.\u00c2\u00a0 My criticism of Conan O’Brien’s "Tonight Show".\u00c2\u00a0 Those under forty came out in droves to tell me I just didn’t get it, that Conan speaks for their generation.\u00c2\u00a0 And what exactly is he saying?\u00c2\u00a0 That I watched a lot of Letterman and I’m schooled in adolescent hijinks?\u00c2\u00a0 We revere the progenitor.\u00c2\u00a0 Followers…not so much.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the raw creativity we applaud.\u00c2\u00a0 The taking of chances to erect something new.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the original SNL.\u00c2\u00a0 How did they come up with the Coneheads?\u00c2\u00a0 Samurai Whatever.\u00c2\u00a0 Mr. Mainway.\u00c2\u00a0 So they’re doing the news thirty three years later?\u00c2\u00a0 Could be good, but it will never equal what Chevy Chase did the first time through.<\/p>\n

This is the scourge of music.\u00c2\u00a0 Find a formula and repeat it.\u00c2\u00a0 But now we’re repeating it with ever younger players.\u00c2\u00a0 Soon we’ll have singing babies.\u00c2\u00a0 To capture the non-walking set, too uninformed other than to nod their heads when they hear something appealing so that their parents will buy product to keep them happy.\u00c2\u00a0 And these singing babies will perform for their audiences in Vegas seventy years later, bald and out of shape, singing the same damn nursery-rhymes over and over.<\/p>\n

Ever notice that the Clive Davis acts have no legs?\u00c2\u00a0 That the MTV-era acts draw little audience in most cases?\u00c2\u00a0 That by focusing on the momentary, the pretty, we’ve forsaken not only credibility, but long term viability?\u00c2\u00a0 There are no classic acts from the last three decades.\u00c2\u00a0 Except maybe Def Leppard, and that was built by someone positively steeped in the classic rock era, Mutt Lange.<\/p>\n

I knew Craig Ferguson as Mr. Wick.\u00c2\u00a0 The bumbling manager of the department store on the "Drew Carey Show".\u00c2\u00a0 Who knew he had any real talent?\u00c2\u00a0 I groaned when I heard he got the spot after Letterman on CBS.\u00c2\u00a0 But then I experienced the buzz.\u00c2\u00a0 People said you had to see him, because he didn’t do a traditional monologue, he came out and riffed.\u00c2\u00a0 And his riffs were about the truth.<\/p>\n

That’s what sells today, the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 No heaping pile of marketing dung can sell what we don’t want.\u00c2\u00a0 Perez Hilton can’t sell his tour and Live Nation can’t sell overpriced tickets to geezers doing the same show they’ve done for summers ad infinitum.\u00c2\u00a0 And this truth must be presented in a palatable way.\u00c2\u00a0 In an appealing style.\u00c2\u00a0 Mr. Ferguson is a performer, he is not a boring college professor reading from a script.<\/p>\n

The late night talk show format is calcified.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not only old, it’s the same as it’s been forever.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, with a twist.\u00c2\u00a0 Now everybody’s doing Letterman’s show, the one Merrill Markoe created almost three decades ago.\u00c2\u00a0 The focus is on humor, not substance.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll be stunned to know that Johnny Carson used to interview authors…and not only of comedy books!<\/p>\n

When we find something that resonates today, we tell everybody we know about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming it is available for viral use.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, if you don’t post your material online, you stifle its spread, its adoption by many.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to get hearts and minds.\u00c2\u00a0 The old paradigm is through.\u00c2\u00a0 Where we plunk down dollars for CDs to find out if the act is any good.\u00c2\u00a0 Convince us you’re good first, then we’ll decide whether we want to give you our money.<\/p>\n

Craig Ferguson is 47.\u00c2\u00a0 He could never get a record deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, who wants a record deal?\u00c2\u00a0 Talk to someone over thirty who hasn’t had previous success making music.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like they don’t even exist.\u00c2\u00a0 So, they lie about their age, get plastic surgery, try to appear young…and dumb.\u00c2\u00a0 This we revere?<\/p>\n

Until the latter half of the last century we revered the old.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d been around, they’d seen more.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe those times are returning.\u00c2\u00a0 Look at MTV’s ratings, no one wants to watch that crap.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, we talk about programming on cable, the networks are scrounging in the dirt.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming we watch television at all.\u00c2\u00a0 At least the younger generation knows you can surf and extract the relevant bits online, where the crowd sources what’s good.<\/p>\n

I did not see this Ferguson bit on television.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone I don’t know e-mailed me about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Craig doesn’t nail the Jonas Brothers until the very end.\u00c2\u00a0 But just because this religious cult plays real instruments and actually sings we’re supposed to see them as gods?\u00c2\u00a0 They’re barely better than high school talent show contestants.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d say no one will want to see them ten years from now, even five, but their audience has already declined.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re young and cute and Disney-approved, we don’t care about the opinions of old men who’ve seen this movie before, we’re making money!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh yeah? For how long?<\/p>\n

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