{"id":3205,"date":"2010-08-01T06:23:45","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T14:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3205"},"modified":"2010-08-01T06:30:09","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T14:30:09","slug":"photo-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2010\/08\/01\/photo-of-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Photo Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hot Summer, Cold Economy, Weak Concert Sales<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You should have seen it in the physical newspaper.\u00c2\u00a0 Atop the second page of the Arts section.\u00c2\u00a0 Talk about not happening…<\/p>\n

It’s fun to go to the show of the new and developing artist and find empty seats during the midst of a thrilling set.\u00c2\u00a0 Your heart palpitates, you get the distinct feeling you’re at the birth of something great.\u00c2\u00a0 But when the act is already known and you’re surrounded by empty seats, when you can stroll right down and sit in the very first row, it’s sad.\u00c2\u00a0 So sad, you feel sorry for the performers.\u00c2\u00a0 That they’re past their peak.<\/p>\n

And you never go again.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just too depressing.<\/p>\n

Unless years later, they play a club, and you go for the intimate experience, hoping and praying they’ve still got it, even though most times they don’t, it’s pure nostalgia.<\/p>\n

What happened to the concert business?\u00c2\u00a0 Did it forget what it was all about?<\/p>\n

Cool.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what music was.\u00c2\u00a0 And believe me, some dude walking around in a sandwich board advertising $10 seats for Maroon 5 ain’t cool.\u00c2\u00a0 "Tonight Only!"? God, talk about hucksterism, what next, is Live Nation gonna bring Billy Mays back from the dead to shill tickets on TV?\u00c2\u00a0 But at least Mr. Mays was fascinating. That beard, that intensity, that belief, even if you had no desire to buy the products he hawked, you couldn’t stop watching.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s easy to stop watching today’s musical acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Oftentimes, they’re talentless, the creation of producers, and they’re so whored out to the Fortune 500 that you can’t believe in their tunes or their persona anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean how did we get to here?\u00c2\u00a0 From Bob Dylan drawing a line between us and them and the performers becoming them?<\/p>\n

Maybe we blame Michael Cohl.\u00c2\u00a0 For buying that Stones tour back in ’89.\u00c2\u00a0 He made it look like national tours were the way to go, pay the act a pile of money and then scalp your own tickets, do whatever it takes to make a profit.\u00c2\u00a0 But the Stones went clean.\u00c2\u00a0 It only works if the draw is such that every ticket will move no problem.<\/p>\n

Used to be you played the venue that fit the size of your act.\u00c2\u00a0 The goal was to sell out, leave people outside the building wanting to get in.\u00c2\u00a0 Now Live Nation owns sheds and implores you to play there even if it’s not right, even if you can’t sell the tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 And they pay you nationally, outbidding AEG so they can get you in their venue.<\/p>\n

Now what?\u00c2\u00a0 Now that the formula is no longer working?<\/p>\n

The guarantees have to come down.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to go to percentage deals.\u00c2\u00a0 Acts have to share in the upside and the pain.<\/p>\n

And if they won’t, they’ve got to play to empty seats.\u00c2\u00a0 Talk about a career-killer. Like there could be another Lilith Tour?<\/p>\n

And everybody remarks how the discount tickets are training people to wait.<\/p>\n

And all we hear from the usual suspects, not only Irving and Rapino, but Randy Phillips, is that everything is fine.\u00c2\u00a0 That would imply that these problems are anomalous, but that’s untrue, the problems run deep, mainstream music just isn’t cool enough.<\/p>\n

Dance music is cool.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why Electric Daisy was so profitable.\u00c2\u00a0 And the fact that it was cheap.\u00c2\u00a0 You had to be there.\u00c2\u00a0 Be at the Lilith Fair?\u00c2\u00a0 No, that’s creepy.<\/p>\n

Acts need to underplay the market.\u00c2\u00a0 Tickets have to be inexpensive.\u00c2\u00a0 Paperless must rule, so that only true fans get in.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, you could start rehabilitating the market overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 As for cool acts…<\/p>\n

No, everybody’s greedy, the acts too.\u00c2\u00a0 They want more money.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s the money that’s screwed up the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is a calling, if you’re not willing to play for free, you’re not any good, you’re never gonna make it, it’s just too hard.\u00c2\u00a0 But seeing the manufactured overnight success stories, today’s wannabes want it all right now.\u00c2\u00a0 And concert promotion is not about music, but money.\u00c2\u00a0 Otherwise, why would Randy Phillips be telling us how great Justin Bieber is<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody knows Bieber sucks, that he’s a kiddie phenomenon akin to Tiffany and New Kids On The Block, but Randy says he’s great because he’s selling tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 Hogwash. \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Used to be the public was clueless and the artists spoke the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s just the opposite.\u00c2\u00a0 The public knows the score and the artists are clueless and the businessmen are full of shit.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a way to run a business?<\/p>\n

(The photo of the day is the lower one, showing the empty seats, click on it to blow it up.\u00c2\u00a0 But, also blow up the one above, showing sandwich man…yup, like the guy who hangs out in a costume at Westwood and Olympic and implores us to go to the local Subway…that’s how fulfilling a Maroon 5 show will be, whereas it used to be a concert was the experience of a lifetime, but that was back when the bands took risks, when the show wasn’t on hard drive, when it wasn’t about dancing and production and everything but the music.)<\/p>\n

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Hot Summer, Cold Economy, Weak Concert Sales You should have seen it in the physical newspaper.\u00c2\u00a0 Atop the second page of the Arts section.\u00c2\u00a0 Talk about not happening… It’s fun to go to the show of the new and developing artist and find empty seats during the midst of a thrilling set.\u00c2\u00a0 Your heart palpitates, […]<\/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-3205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-PH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205","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=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3208,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions\/3208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}