If you know where to surf on the Web, you can find downloadable concerts.<\/p>\n
Conventional wisdom is young people don’t care.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe that’s only because they’ve never seen an act as vibrant as the J. Geils Band live.<\/p>\n
Before they shortened their name to "Geils".\u00c2\u00a0 Before they switched labels and started making MTV fodder.\u00c2\u00a0 Before they sold their souls and went extinct.<\/p>\n
It was a local thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothin’ but a party.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothin’ but a house party.<\/p>\n
But back in the early seventies, a party wasn’t enough.\u00c2\u00a0 You needed a record.\u00c2\u00a0 On wax, the J. Geils Band rarely triumphed. But live, they kicked ass.\u00c2\u00a0 Would the J. Geils Band be gigantic today?<\/p>\n
I was surfing my usual sites and I found a live recording of the J. Geils Band from April 25th in Detroit this year.\u00c2\u00a0 This I had to check out.<\/p>\n
I downloaded the cuts from the Who’s 1969 fall tour first.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I took all twenty four live cuts here.\u00c2\u00a0 From the second show that evening.\u00c2\u00a0 Which, according to the blurb, sold out in fifteen minutes.<\/p>\n
Is this true?\u00c2\u00a0 Who knows, Detroit was always a rockin’ town, a big J. Geils market, and there’s no label hype.\u00c2\u00a0 Meanwhile, who even knew that J. Geils was on tour?<\/p>\n
If you Google, you find a band site that hasn’t been updated in a decade.\u00c2\u00a0 Literally.<\/p>\n
Search a bit farther, and you can see they’re playing a casino on New Year’s Eve.\u00c2\u00a0 They opened a new House of Blues in Boston earlier in the year.\u00c2\u00a0 Funny how time makes those memories fade away.\u00c2\u00a0 Of how you hated each other, of how you disagreed.\u00c2\u00a0 But the good memories, the good times, they remain.\u00c2\u00a0 When it was all about the music.\u00c2\u00a0 Before money fucked the whole thing up.<\/p>\n
Now I know the big thing on Hollywood Boulevard these days is clubs.\u00c2\u00a0 You overpay for drinks to bump asses to records. Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 What would happen if the assembled multitude saw a great live band?<\/p>\n
I’m not talking about Phish.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not talking about the Dave Matthews Band.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not talking jam.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m talking sharkskin suits, I’m talking sunglasses, I’m talking R&B.\u00c2\u00a0 If you were a great R&B band today, could you make it?<\/p>\n
Used to be about the records.\u00c2\u00a0 You needed an album and hopefully a hit single in order to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’ve got a killer live show today, would that be enough?<\/p>\n
I think so!<\/p>\n
The energy is enough.<\/p>\n
This is the opposite of canned music.\u00c2\u00a0 This is pure power, pure sweat.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the kind of event you drag your friends to.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that prior to the Internet, it was hard to spread the word.\u00c2\u00a0 You had to rely on in-person conversation, the telephone, but today you can testify online and ZILLIONS can hear you.\u00c2\u00a0 And we’re all looking for something great.\u00c2\u00a0 And when we find it, we tell everyone we know.<\/p>\n
In other words, does the hit single NO LONGER MATTER?<\/p>\n
Let’s be clear.\u00c2\u00a0 A hit pays dividends.\u00c2\u00a0 But it won’t get hardly anybody to come see you live.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if you’ve got a string of them, people don’t consider Top Forty artists to be credible.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why you’re better off with one Michael Buble than anybody in the Top Ten.\u00c2\u00a0 People go to see Buble to hear a crooner.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s nailed this market.\u00c2\u00a0 How about R&B?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you think it can’t be replicated?<\/p>\n
You can’t get players who know more about technology than music.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to find people who live to listen, who don’t know html, but can transpose keys on their instruments on the fly.\u00c2\u00a0 People who know the history of music, not the history of Apple products.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, there’s nothing wrong with bleeding in a bit of technological know-how, it’s just that if this is done right, IT SELLS ITSELF, THE MUSIC COMES FIRST!<\/p>\n
People want to get closer.\u00c2\u00a0 A beautiful girl doesn’t have to advertise.\u00c2\u00a0 Boys flock around her.\u00c2\u00a0 She may be an airhead, there may be little substance, but true greatness draws people in.\u00c2\u00a0 And R&B is a proven genre.\u00c2\u00a0 Mix it in with a bit of rock and roll, and you’ve got the J. Geils Band.<\/p>\n
If J. Geils were starting today, they’d be monstrous.\u00c2\u00a0 Word would spread from campus to campus.\u00c2\u00a0 Their live business would be amazing.\u00c2\u00a0 And who’d care about the record business…you can’t make any real money selling records anymore anyway! And, this type of music doesn’t get any radio play.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s only idiots and casual music fans who listen to the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 The hard core is on a personal adventure, a quest to find something great.<\/p>\n
I’d love to tell you this show kills.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s just a bit off.\u00c2\u00a0 Could be the recording.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I can’t hear the organ enough, maybe J. Geils’ fills aren’t mixed up front.\u00c2\u00a0 But OH THE ENERGY!\u00c2\u00a0 You wouldn’t walk out, you’d move and groove.<\/p>\n
They’re dancing on the ceiling<\/span> <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you know where to surf on the Web, you can find downloadable concerts. Conventional wisdom is young people don’t care.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe that’s only because they’ve never seen an act as vibrant as the J. Geils Band live. Before they shortened their name to "Geils".\u00c2\u00a0 Before they switched labels and started making MTV fodder.\u00c2\u00a0 Before […]<\/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":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-C4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360","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=2360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
They’re dancing on the floor<\/span>
People everywhere comin’ through the door<\/span>
They know there’s a party goin’ on<\/span>
Do the dancin’ romance all night long<\/span>
I know it’s cold outside<\/span>
C’mon baby, I’ll keep you satisfied<\/span>
All you gotta do is move<\/span>
Every time you feel that groove<\/span>
It ain’t nothing but a party<\/span>
It ain’t nothing but a party<\/span>
It ain’t nothing but a party<\/span>
It ain’t nothing but a house party<\/span><\/p>\n