{"id":2506,"date":"2009-12-30T18:26:03","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T02:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2506"},"modified":"2009-12-30T18:26:03","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T02:26:03","slug":"randy-phillips-responds-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/12\/30\/randy-phillips-responds-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Randy Phillips Responds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bob,\u00c2\u00a0 it has been a while since I felt compelled to respond to your often amusing blog.\u00c2\u00a0 Much of what you write today is an accurate observation of our industry, both live and recorded, however, I have to take issue with opinion when presented as fact.<\/p>\n

First of all,\u00c2\u00a0 I have seen Whitney recently and she looks healthy and totally connected to her career again.\u00c2\u00a0 For the record, AEG Live, the company I run, is not promoting the tour and I am responding to your published innuendo purely as a fan. <\/p>\n

Secondly,\u00c2\u00a0 if you listen to either satellite, internet or terrestrial radio, especially, the #1 music station in LA, KIIS-FM, and have not heard "Empire State of Mind", you must immediately get a hearing aid.\u00c2\u00a0 This song is magnificient and has virtually no burn factor in the heaviest rotation I have ever experienced on a radio station like KIIS.\u00c2\u00a0 For the record, AEG Live is proudly promoting Alicia’s tour and my competitor has Jay "locked" up for years, so with respect to this printed inaccuracy, I am both biased and neutral.<\/p>\n

Lastly,\u00c2\u00a0 those "anybody in the business" experts, or more accurately, schmucks, have either mis-information or no information when calling the Peas tour so early in the first quarter (to borrow a sports analogy).\u00c2\u00a0 We put up 33 shows across the U.S. in which half were close to sold-out in the pre-sale and the others ranged from fantastic (8K+ sold) to "good start" (6K+ sold) to worrisome in a few secondary\/tertiarary markets where the public on-sale was 4K or slightly less.\u00c2\u00a0 There are only 5 of those markets where $$$ are extremely tight and unemployment incredibly high.\u00c2\u00a0 I am happy to report that the "wraps" (tickets sold through on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis) have been strong.\u00c2\u00a0 We will end up doing between 85% – 100% of sellable capacity across the entire world tour.\u00c2\u00a0 Incidentally, our UK dates have been explosive as we head into our 4th to be sold-out O2 Arena. <\/p>\n

The truth is that I do not have to defend Whitney, Jay and Alicia, or the Peas.\u00c2\u00a0 Facts always trump fiction and results matter more than the negative banter of "haters" or misguided speculation.\u00c2\u00a0 I would like to continue to hold your blog in higher regard than, say, Hits Magazine!<\/p>\n

Happy New Year,<\/p>\n

Randy Phillips
President & CEO
AEG Live<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00c2\u00a0 So much for my damn vacation!<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob,\u00c2\u00a0 it has been a while since I felt compelled to respond to your often amusing blog.\u00c2\u00a0 Much of what you write today is an accurate observation of our industry, both live and recorded, however, I have to take issue with opinion when presented as fact. First of all,\u00c2\u00a0 I have seen Whitney recently and […]<\/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-2506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Eq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506","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=2506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2507,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions\/2507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}