I always wonder if someone looks at a songwriter and thinks that he should just be all cleaned up and pretty like them guys that sing the songs, and still be able to write the songs. And it’s just not possible. You've got to live 'em in order to write about 'em. | | | | Nightclubbing: Roddy Ricch at the 9:30 Club, Washington, D.C., Jan. 28, 2020.
(Kyle Gustafson/Washington Post/Getty Images) | | | | | | “I always wonder if someone looks at a songwriter and thinks that he should just be all cleaned up and pretty like them guys that sing the songs, and still be able to write the songs. And it’s just not possible. You've got to live 'em in order to write about 'em.”
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| | rantnrave:// "The reshaping," ex-WME music head MARC GEIGER said three months ago, "is gonna be bigger than people think." He was talking with BOB LEFSETZ about the devastated live music industry, and Geiger, who had stepped down from the agency only weeks earlier, was saying there was a good chance the concert business wouldn't fully return until 2022. It was, at the time, a shocking prediction. But in the months since, the idea of another barren year of live music has worked its way from possible to plausible to somewhere in the region of probable. Permanent venue closings have become commonplace. And on Wednesday Geiger returned, via a newsmaking story in the New York Times, to nominate himself as the reshaper. He's raised $75 million for a new venture, SAVELIVE, through which he's negotiating to rescue small venues across the US by buying them. A lot of them. His goal: to purchase at least 51 percent equity in dozens of clubs, enough "to create a network effect. To be a long-term backer, helper, grower of these businesses, and enjoy the wins." That would be a fundamental shift for a militantly independent sector that's been dominated by locally and regionally operated clubs and other small rooms. Geiger, who co-founded SaveLive with another WME veteran, JOHN FOGELMAN, envisions venues joining together under the SaveLive banner to get better deals in, for example, ticketing and sponsorships. The Times' BEN SISARIO suggested the result might be "a mom-and-pop version of LIVE NATION or AEG." An anonymous business manager told Rolling Stone's SAMANTHA HISSONG, "It sounds like the HOUSE OF BLUES business model." All of those comparisons will, and in fact did, ring alarm bells in the indie music community. "Geiger's solution on some level scares me," indie booking agent FRANK RILEY told the Times. But it also, he said, "does save the platforms on which things grow and where artists are sustained." For now, details are somewhat scant and questions are plenty. Among them: Are venues better off continuing to fight, through the NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION, for government assistance rather than selling out? Will Congress ever come through with that assistance? What are the alternatives? (On the same day, a new philanthropic org, the LIVE MUSIC SOCIETY, announced grants of $10k to $50k to 20 venues including the HOTEL CAFÉ in Los Angeles, the JAZZ SHOWCASE in Chicago and—this one's personal to me—JONATHAN'S in Ogunquit, Me. Another round of grants will follow early next year.) Would they be trading in one existential threat (to their future) for another (to their character)? What would it mean for booking policies and for artists? Why does SaveLive need 51 percent equity as opposed to, say, 49? Geiger, a lifelong music fan who co-founded LOLLAPALOOZA, says he wants to be a true partner to every venue that takes his deal. He told Rolling Stone he'll offer a variety of equity options, and he told the Times he has no interest in flipping any clubs. "The best thrill in our business is when an artist is breaking," he said. "It doesn’t get any better than that"... By the way, can we please stop defining small venues as "feeder" clubs for theaters and arenas? They do, obviously, provide a start for plenty of artists who go on to bigger rooms but they are also an end in themselves. The vast majority of artists who perform in small rooms will never play big rooms and that's OK, and it doesn't diminish what they do in the clubs. For lots of music fans, and for quite a few artists, nothing will ever surpass the experience of a great night in a 100-cap room, when RED ROCKS or MADISON SQUARE GARDEN or Las Vegas is the furthest thing from anybody's mind. For them, that *is* live music... This also happened Wednesday: Minneapolis' CITY PAGES, one of the last great alt-weekly newspapers and a crucial outlet for music and other arts coverage, is going out of business. Another devastating loss that's not necessarily unrelated to the rest of today's rant... BILLY JOE SHAVER was one of those songwriters you sometimes hear about who wrote hits all by himself, and though nearly every one was about his own hardscrabble, hard-luck life, it was invariably other people who had the hits, including but not limited to WAYLON JENNINGS, whose career-making album HONKY TONK HEROES was written almost entirely by Shaver. JOHNNY CASH, WILLIE NELSON and KRIS KRISTOFFERSON were among the other beneficiaries of Shaver's very real outlaw life, and though it's weird he's the only name mentioned here who isn't in the COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME, it also makes a kind of sense. "My timing was always just off a hair,” he once said. "I guess that’s what Kris meant when he said, ‘If life was a television show, Billy Joe Shaver would be on at 4 a.m.'" RIP... (Speaking of Willie Nelson, OMG this KAREN O and Willie cover of "UNDER PRESSURE")... RIP also STAN KESLER, LOU PALLO, BOB GIBSON, CHRIS HUGGETT and SHAWN SCRUGGS. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| Many small venues where artists get their start are in peril. Marc Geiger, a longtime music executive, is starting a venture he hopes lives up to its name: SaveLive. | | |
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| Rock the Vote began as a rebuke to the PMRC, and coupled with MTV became a political force. How it changed elections and hopes to do the same Nov. 3. | | |
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| He's been a cotton picker and a roughneck, a screwup and a scoundrel. He’s hit the bottle, hit rock bottom, and been born again. He married the same woman three times, mounted multiple comebacks, survived a heart attack onstage and the deaths of nearly everyone he’s ever loved. All of which explains why he’s one of the greatest songwriters in the world. | | |
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| Melissa Kasule explores the changing face of pop music, speaking to POC artists and fans to consider how the industry has centred whiteness. | | |
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| Richard Akingbehin looks back on a site whose 3,705,212 posts chronicle the evolution of dubstep. | | |
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| Arrival Artists -- the new agency formed by agents Ali Hedrick, Erik Selz, John Bongiorno, Karl Morse and Ethan Berlin, along with COO Matt Yasecko -- was announced to the public on Oct. 20, but it had been brewing for months. | | |
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| The outlandish rapper has reinvented himself as a pop-punk star with the year’s biggest guitar record. And, he says, we have his girlfriend Megan Fox to thank | | |
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| A consummate DJ set can keep a club churning long past bedtime; the right music can push runners beyond their physical limitations. | | |
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| Spotify posts a wider-than-expected loss as demand for music and podcasts from the likes of Joe Rogan and Michelle Obama fail to offset a drop in ad revenue. | | |
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| BTS stans built the trolling blueprint for 4chan types, and they’ve proven they can disrupt it. | | |
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| Royalty Exchange auctions off artists' residual payments to investors. For many, the cash influx helps launch their next creative venture. | | |
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| Report finds that Black, Asian and minority ethnic employees account for fewer than 20% of executive roles, with women making up about 40%. | | |
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| The Houston psychedelic rockers are a fixture on listeners’ turntables. | | |
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| The veteran rockers battled personal demons and the death of their beloved Malcolm Young to kick 2020 into touch -- the rock'n'roll way. | | |
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| I want to zoom out beyond company-specific discussions, and instead highlight three major themes not just in how big-tech music strategies are constructed, but also when and why their execution falls short. | | |
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| Latin Grammy winner Claudia Brant on her career, modern songwriting, and the prospects for young writers today. | | |
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| The R&B superstar assembled some frequent collaborators --- including Skrillex - for a six-song quarantine concert. | | |
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| Streaming numbers have unexpectedly skyrocketed for the country genre, which had long lagged behind other genres, as a new generation of stars breaks through. | | |
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| Is a new type of 'livestream specialist' artist developing? And a 'livestream-first' fan? | | |
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| "Looking To Get Lost" brings us into the worlds of American roots music legends such as Johnny Cash, Bill Monroe, Chuck Berry, Doc Pomus, Tammy Wynette and Merle Haggard. But equally fascinating are Guralnick’s portraits of those who deserve the same status, but through chance or self-sabotage, never quite achieved it. | | |
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| | | | | | | "Just like the songs I leave behind me / I'm gonna live forever now." |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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