I picked up the "L.A. Weekly" and found out the dinosaurs are back on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 And that now includes acts that had their heyday in the eighties, like Pat Benatar, not only REO Speedwagon and Donna Summer and…Al Green.<\/p>\n
None of these acts can sell a new record.\u00c2\u00a0 Not in quantity.\u00c2\u00a0 But they want to work, and people go to see them, however frequently in decreasing numbers.<\/p>\n
And what do we hear?\u00c2\u00a0 No one wants to hear the new music.<\/p>\n
First and foremost because they’re unfamiliar with it.\u00c2\u00a0 But what if they knew the new tunes?\u00c2\u00a0 Wouldn’t they care then?<\/p>\n
Of course.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming they were good.<\/p>\n
Yup, it’s time to take the dregs out of the gutter.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s time to give these old acts a chance.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s time to see if the audience is dead or alive.<\/p>\n
Because without new material, you’re certainly dead.\u00c2\u00a0 No matter how big your hit was, don’t you get sick of performing it every night, don’t you want to stretch out?<\/p>\n
Give Bob Dylan credit.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t give the audience what it wants.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only does he record new music, but he rearranges his past hits.\u00c2\u00a0 So when you go, it’s not nostalgia.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, it’s more about seeing who he’s working with, picking up on the groove.<\/p>\n
Then again, Dylan was always creative.\u00c2\u00a0 Not doing what people told him to do.\u00c2\u00a0 The rest of the old acts?<\/p>\n
The Doobies put out an album of new material ten years ago with some good tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Heard ’em?\u00c2\u00a0 Of course not.\u00c2\u00a0 Only true diehards are aware.<\/p>\n
Heart put out a reasonably high quality album that went straight to the dumper too.<\/p>\n
Cyndi Lauper’s on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you name a Lauper track that’s not two decades old?<\/p>\n
So what are all the old acts to do?<\/p>\n
BAND TOGETHER!<\/p>\n
Yes, it’s the opposite of their heyday.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the era of the NOW compilation.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why there should be a ten track compilation of the best new music by the best old bands.\u00c2\u00a0 Just one track apiece.\u00c2\u00a0 Hyped to high heaven.<\/p>\n
NO COVERS!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s cheating, that’s playing it safe.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to write one new hit tune.\u00c2\u00a0 Carole King, this is your chance, you’ve got the chops.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’d salivate over one great new JT song.\u00c2\u00a0 But all we’ve got is a vapid wasteland, as these aged performers feed the lifestyles of their handlers on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 I once had a famous manager tell me he’d be happy if the biggest band of the seventies DIDN’T make a new record.\u00c2\u00a0 He just wanted them to tour, tour, tour.\u00c2\u00a0 Which they did.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where they burned it out.<\/p>\n
So, we make one person king, the arbiter, who gets to pick the tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Make it Don Was, make it David Anderle, even John Kalodner. Someone with cred from back then.\u00c2\u00a0 Who gets paid.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not a charity project.<\/p>\n
And what do you do with the resulting record?<\/p>\n
Mmm…<\/p>\n
You could sell it at Wal-Mart.\u00c2\u00a0 Real cheap.\u00c2\u00a0 That paradigm’s about dead, but with this many blue chips at a cheap price…<\/p>\n
Or it could be put out by Live Nation.\u00c2\u00a0 You get a copy free with every pair of tickets you buy.<\/p>\n
Or just maybe, you get a relatively benign corporation to fund it.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s say Google.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe even Apple.\u00c2\u00a0 Get a different act in an iPod commercial for a week.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, for the next campaign, ten different acts over ten weeks.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe you even give away the songs on iTunes.<\/p>\n
Don’t get hung up on the short money.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is the LONG MONEY!\u00c2\u00a0 In terms of ticket sales and careers.<\/p>\n
And you know there’s got to be a PBS special, tied into the fund drive.<\/p>\n
There’s got to be MASSIVE marketing.\u00c2\u00a0 A song for ESPN.\u00c2\u00a0 Performances on the "Today Show".\u00c2\u00a0 Endless TV placements.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless the word gets out so every baby boomer is aware, the project fails.<\/p>\n
But it won’t fail.\u00c2\u00a0 Because really, people want new music.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming it’s good, and digestible.\u00c2\u00a0 And everybody else is on the same page, listening to the same damn album, so they can talk about it.<\/p>\n
And the following summer, another album, with another ten acts.<\/p>\n
Or maybe two a year.<\/p>\n
Maybe one a year is new material and the other is covers.<\/p>\n
This is a blue chip idea.\u00c2\u00a0 Guaranteed to pay dividends.\u00c2\u00a0 Short term dividends?\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe not.\u00c2\u00a0 So can you get Live Nation to get on board?\u00c2\u00a0 Interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 As for labels…most of these old acts don’t have deals anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 Which actually gives you freedom.<\/p>\n
How about a little creativity, how about a little chance, how about trumpeting the music instead of the grosses.<\/p>\n
Great ideas are a dime a dozen.\u00c2\u00a0 But execution is another thing.\u00c2\u00a0 You need a team on this full time.<\/p>\n
Are we going to say music is dead, that you’ve got to be under thirty to record and the end result must be made for a market and suck or are we going to give everybody with 10,000 hours a chance to prove themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 All these acts kill live.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why they can still tour.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s incentivize them to create great new music.\u00c2\u00a0 And believe me, the exposure is a great incentive.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re gonna record and someone’s gonna HEAR IT!<\/p>\n
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I picked up the "L.A. Weekly" and found out the dinosaurs are back on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 And that now includes acts that had their heyday in the eighties, like Pat Benatar, not only REO Speedwagon and Donna Summer and…Al Green. None of these acts can sell a new record.\u00c2\u00a0 Not in quantity.\u00c2\u00a0 But they want […]<\/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-2900","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\/s96vPs-idea","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900","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=2900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2901,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900\/revisions\/2901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}