Speaker 1: Welcome to another edition of the Bob Left Sets podcast
Speaker 1: on tune in. Happy New Year. We took a short
Speaker 1: break for the holidays, but we're back and I'm really excited.
Speaker 1: I'm humbled by the initial response of the podcast, and
Speaker 1: I've been able to line up some excellent guests in
Speaker 1: future episodes. I can't wait to share those and hear
Speaker 1: the podcast evolve. I think you're in for a treat,
Speaker 1: so be sure to subscribe, leave reviews, Tell your friend's
Speaker 1: gonna be a big year. This episode, I want to
Speaker 1: go back a bit so you can learn a bit
Speaker 1: more about me. In my inaugural episode, I had my
Speaker 1: good friend John Boyle from Insomniac interview me so listeners
Speaker 1: could learn a little bit about my background. If you
Speaker 1: haven't heard episode one, I strongly recommend you go back
Speaker 1: and check it out. John and I could talk for hours,
Speaker 1: and we did. For the sake of time, my producers
Speaker 1: recommended we split up our conversation into two episodes. However,
Speaker 1: in this spirit of my letter, I don't want to
Speaker 1: leave anything on the cutting room floor, So picking up
Speaker 1: where we left off, here's the rest of my conversation
Speaker 1: with John. I want to make the point John that
Speaker 1: first and foremost is about perseverance. It's like you talk
Speaker 1: about skiing. I would go ski if it was ten below,
Speaker 1: if it was raining out, when no one else would go.
Speaker 1: That's how I became such a good skier. I was
Speaker 1: skiing at the Middlebury College snowball, and I knew I
Speaker 1: was better than everybody else. But I didn't expect to
Speaker 1: go to utahm be world class. But it was because
Speaker 1: I would go every day no matter what. But speaking
Speaker 1: of the writing, it's funny how there's you know, little
Speaker 1: things that affect you that you don't realize at the time.
Speaker 1: When I was a senior in high school and I
Speaker 1: went to a regular public high school, but the teacher
Speaker 1: had a sabbatical and he came back and he made
Speaker 1: us right for five minutes every morning, and if we
Speaker 1: didn't have a new idea, we had to write the
Speaker 1: last three words of what we had written. In addition,
Speaker 1: my mother made me take typing okay, which ended up
Speaker 1: being a beneficial thing such that no one else writes
Speaker 1: the way I do. What I mean by that is,
Speaker 1: and I just read. I just read the new Jennifer
Speaker 1: Egan book, Manhattan Beach, and she says, oh, I write
Speaker 1: a terrible first draft and I rewrite it. And you
Speaker 1: read about writers all the time they say, oh, it's
Speaker 1: about rewriting. I don't do it that way at all.
Speaker 1: I wait till the mood strikes me all over the
Speaker 1: gun to my head. I could write no problem, you know,
Speaker 1: Craiker record really loud and it comes out. I view
Speaker 1: it like action painting, like Jackson Pollock. And I've learned
Speaker 1: because I've been doing a long time. If I change
Speaker 1: it at all, I fuck it up. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: reread everything twice, sometimes three times, but never less than twice,
Speaker 1: and I'll find, you know, obvious mistakes, a tense or spelling.
Speaker 1: But I don't change anything else because I realized I
Speaker 1: wasn't in the exact same mood I was when I
Speaker 1: was laying it down. So the key is to have
Speaker 1: this role element. Now, if you go back to some
Speaker 1: of the greatest records of all time, they were, you know,
Speaker 1: famously Keith Richards, The Rift to Satisfaction came to him
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. He had a tape recorder,
Speaker 1: sang it to the tape recorder, and then they cut
Speaker 1: it the next day. Some of the greatest records of
Speaker 1: all time have been cut in fifteen minutes. I think
Speaker 1: so much of today is over labored. People are looking.
Speaker 1: You know, great writing is a little bit like music.
Speaker 1: What I say about music is the most anybody can
Speaker 1: say is it had a good beat and that could
Speaker 1: dance to it. You put a five year old in
Speaker 1: front of the TV and watches the TV program, they
Speaker 1: can say, oh, the characters I didn't like. The plot
Speaker 1: was unbelievable. But unless you like are highly trained musician,
Speaker 1: which nobody in the music business is, you can't analyze
Speaker 1: on that level. It's about an impact. It's about the zest.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of poorly recorded songs, but they hit
Speaker 1: you that way. So I've continued to do it, continued
Speaker 1: to do it. By the same token, I do have
Speaker 1: a passion for it. It's a strange world we live in.
Speaker 1: Because I grew up and when there was a middle
Speaker 1: class environment. I mean, this is really a big theory
Speaker 1: of mine. Okay, today we live in a world of
Speaker 1: halves and have nots. And it's also in the music business.
Speaker 1: There are people making a lot of money. If you
Speaker 1: were you know, one of the top acts in the
Speaker 1: music business and adjusted dollars, you're making more money than
Speaker 1: anybody ever made in the history of the music business.
Speaker 1: But if you're not at that level, certainly, if you're
Speaker 1: at the lower level, you're starving. In a way it
Speaker 1: used to be can get a record deal, you can
Speaker 1: live off the label for a while. That doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: But people know how hard life is. So I talked
Speaker 1: about when I graduated from college and I was a
Speaker 1: ski bump. Nobody does that anymore because they know if
Speaker 1: you don't immediately try to get a job and get
Speaker 1: a career started, you're already falling behind. So what we
Speaker 1: have in the music business, and people hate me when
Speaker 1: I say this, is it's people primarily by the lower
Speaker 1: class under privilege. I'm not saying these people are not
Speaker 1: rawling intelligent, but the people who are highly educated, they
Speaker 1: don't want to take the risk. It's a really long
Speaker 1: shot making music. Okay, they'll say, you can even all
Speaker 1: the time. Well, I'm gonna do this for two years
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna go graduate school if it doesn't
Speaker 1: work out. No, you have to be willing to do
Speaker 1: it for forty years. Okay, But the differences in the sixties,
Speaker 1: all the music was made by middle class people. No
Speaker 1: one ever wanted their kid to be an artist, but
Speaker 1: there were always people who went down that path. I
Speaker 1: remember being at the public high school. They're always guys
Speaker 1: who were a little cool, girls who were beautiful, but
Speaker 1: they were in their own category. They didn't hang with
Speaker 1: the rest of us. They became musicians, they became artists,
Speaker 1: and then when they hit the crux point, like the
Speaker 1: Jefferson airplane, they had middle class values. They wrote a song,
Speaker 1: you know, up against the wall, motherfucker, okay from We
Speaker 1: Can Be Together from Volunteers. Nobody will do that anymore.
Speaker 1: They're afraid to rock the boat. Oh I'm an alienate
Speaker 1: part of my audience. Oh I won't get on the radio,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Oh I want to get sponsors. It's not
Speaker 1: even the same mentality. So it's worked to our detriment.
Speaker 1: So my point being, as I said, here you go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a writer. I have a lot of perks the
Speaker 1: average person doesn't have. Yeah, you go on the private jet.
Speaker 1: There's nothing bad you can say about it. It may
Speaker 1: cost thirty dollars, but it's great. I can go to
Speaker 1: any event I want to. I hear if I write
Speaker 1: about any famous person in the world. I hear from them,
Speaker 1: but I don't have a you know, a figure bank account,
Speaker 1: never mind a seven figure bank account. So these choices
Speaker 1: you make, you know, you still believe you want to
Speaker 1: get that. But it used to be we were all
Speaker 1: in it together. Okay, A musician was as rich as
Speaker 1: anybody in America. That's no longer the case, and musicians
Speaker 1: are no longer the the cultural architects. Absolutely, music doesn't people.
Speaker 1: What I hate about the music business is their mantras
Speaker 1: that people believe in. Oh, if you talk about today's
Speaker 1: music not being as good as the old music, they say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just because you're old. No, if you go back
Speaker 1: to the sixties and seventies, it drove the culture, okay,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't mean as much. Doesn't mean there's not
Speaker 1: good music out there. Okay, there aren't good records, but
Speaker 1: it is a different scene. These are people, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the acts themselves. They get holding a plastic
Speaker 1: surgery to get a hair transplants. They want to look young.
Speaker 1: They want to look like the audience, even though the audience,
Speaker 1: uh to a lot of these old acts looks old.
Speaker 1: No music was all we had we had television and music,
Speaker 1: we didn't have the internet. You know, they talk about
Speaker 1: people practicing. Dwayne Alman even took his guitar to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Today people want to be famous like two weeks after
Speaker 1: they get an instrument, if they can even play an instrument.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's let's talk a little bit. We've
Speaker 1: we've talked about your history, right and your experience in
Speaker 1: your past and where I think you've become incredibly relevant.
Speaker 1: Although you were I think you're very relevant early on,
Speaker 1: but I think maybe in the last ten to twelve
Speaker 1: years as technology is involved, and you've really taken a
Speaker 1: strong voice in technology and how how this has played
Speaker 1: on it. Music is a canary in the coal mine.
Speaker 1: It's the harbinger for digital disruption. For nothing else, a
Speaker 1: song is a small file. Amazingly, we worked it out
Speaker 1: in the music business. We have Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Title,
Speaker 1: Apple Music. You can get everything you want for one
Speaker 1: low price. It is essentially killed piracy. As Michaelijah used
Speaker 1: to say, ten percent, people will never pay forget that
Speaker 1: ten percent. The key in streaming is it's an on
Speaker 1: demand element. We're never going on beyond on demand. You
Speaker 1: don't have to own anything. It's there when you want.
Speaker 1: All these other industries have not caught up. If you
Speaker 1: look at television, Disney is not going to have their
Speaker 1: own standalone app. I mean, I'm paying ten nine Netflix,
Speaker 1: I'm paying Amazon with Prime how many? I mean it's
Speaker 1: like being pecked to peck to tatty. Right. I don't
Speaker 1: pay for Hulu because it's like enough already. It's like
Speaker 1: being pecked to death by ducks. Where music you can
Speaker 1: get everything at one low price. But so called web
Speaker 1: two point oh was all this social media? Okay, so
Speaker 1: that was my space. What people don't understand and is
Speaker 1: a lot of these things are fats. The most famous
Speaker 1: the music business is Turntable FM, which was huge for
Speaker 1: about three weeks. Seth Goldstein exactly. We've know him from
Speaker 1: the electronic music world. So when you hear people going
Speaker 1: on about Snapchat and musically or whatever and you feel
Speaker 1: out of it, don't feel bad. The younger generation is
Speaker 1: always going to have their new hula hoop. What we
Speaker 1: know from all of these social media sites is you're
Speaker 1: never going to lose touch with anybody you ever met.
Speaker 1: It used to be you can move to California leave
Speaker 1: all the people on the East coast behind. You can communicate.
Speaker 1: The scariest thing now is what you know. We had
Speaker 1: ten years in internet, probably from the year let's call
Speaker 1: two thousand to two thousand ten or twelve, where it
Speaker 1: was all about gadgets. The first gadget was the iPod.
Speaker 1: It is now about software. You might want to get
Speaker 1: a new phone. It really doesn't do anything radically different
Speaker 1: from what or old phone did. In addition, we see consolidation.
Speaker 1: This is right in front of our faces, okay, such
Speaker 1: that if your Snapchat and you don't sell out to
Speaker 1: the behemoth, they're gonna imitate you the Snapchat of the
Speaker 1: same as for Snapchat stories that are Instagram stories. So
Speaker 1: it's about Facebook. Facebook didn't buy What'sapp and Instagram, it
Speaker 1: would be on the way down. But now it's about
Speaker 1: the power of those things. The story is about the
Speaker 1: elections and the Russians, but that is not really the story.
Speaker 1: There's an excellent article Borreen down interview jarn Lanier in
Speaker 1: the New York Times, and he started talking about Facebook
Speaker 1: has an algorithm. We don't know what it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Russians bought it right exactly. They determine what everybody
Speaker 1: sees on their page. So I write a certain amount
Speaker 1: about politics, which is a little bit about banging your
Speaker 1: head against the wall. The people who react, they are
Speaker 1: reciting facts from sites I am unaware of. Not only
Speaker 1: is there Bright Bart and Fox It Fox is only
Speaker 1: powerful with the old sters. There are all these SPEs
Speaker 1: such that we cannot communicate on the same information. I
Speaker 1: even saw Billy Corgan today going on about record labels
Speaker 1: stealing from the artists. What do we know. They just
Speaker 1: Spotify negotiat a slightly lower rate. They did pay seventy
Speaker 1: pc of their income to right Soldiers. Now it's a
Speaker 1: little bit less than that. And it's like ten points
Speaker 1: go to publishers, which is a song on the rest
Speaker 1: goes to the label. They pay that out. There's no
Speaker 1: subterfuge whatsoever in the remaining Yes, the label owns the
Speaker 1: percentages and interest, and we can argue whether that's good
Speaker 1: or bad. Okay, such that if you put your song
Speaker 1: up on Spotify by yourself your chance of wrapping. You're
Speaker 1: making a fortune. But if you have a deal with
Speaker 1: the label where they pay you ten cents on the dollar,
Speaker 1: it's bad. But my point being that the acts are ignorant.
Speaker 1: They don't know what's going on. We are still funny
Speaker 1: and the public as they were into every day I
Speaker 1: get the email, well, I'm not gonna sign up for streaming.
Speaker 1: What if I'm gonna sell range? They don't know. You
Speaker 1: can sing thousands of tracks to the device such that
Speaker 1: if you're on the top of amount Everest and you
Speaker 1: have jewics, you can listen. This is a good thing.
Speaker 1: For the first time ever, the music business is ahead
Speaker 1: of the public. So music business is ahead of these
Speaker 1: other things. But Facebook has too much power. And the
Speaker 1: interesting thing I'm thinking about today, Okay, does this apply
Speaker 1: to the music business. There's a whole culture in hip hop,
Speaker 1: But do we have it such that certain acts are
Speaker 1: known and certain acts are not known just as a
Speaker 1: result of social media limitations? Well that was a lot, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean Spotify, you posted about Sony's earnings. The labels
Speaker 1: seem to feel, uh that there's a renaissance coming, and
Speaker 1: by the way, I kind of think there is no
Speaker 1: The renaissance is happening. Starting eighteen months ago, revenue started
Speaker 1: to go up in there, all attributable streaming. When people
Speaker 1: email me, streaming is the death of the music business.
Speaker 1: It's exact. It's the saver of the music. When you
Speaker 1: see people email or post what they're terrible. Payments are
Speaker 1: pent of the time. It's false. They're confusing publishing as
Speaker 1: a post to recorded revenue. They don't say what percentage
Speaker 1: of a song they have, They don't talk about the labor,
Speaker 1: they don't talk about any of that stuff. So when
Speaker 1: you see the statistics I just explained, Spotify pays the
Speaker 1: vast majority of their revenue directly to rights soldiers. Okay,
Speaker 1: when the right soldiers say revenue is going up, what
Speaker 1: do you think is going on? You think there's a mystery. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you are an act and you used to live
Speaker 1: on selling CDs. An example I use here is that
Speaker 1: being until Tuesday, Amy ma'am, she was a critics darling
Speaker 1: her luxury, which no, after this, you may hate me.
Speaker 1: So she had a deal such that I remember in
Speaker 1: the early seventies they was talking about their five thousand
Speaker 1: records a year and how terrible that was. There's too
Speaker 1: much products. But if you could get over to the
Speaker 1: hurdle and you could get a record deal, they would
Speaker 1: make you famous and they would hopefully get you on
Speaker 1: the radio. It was a club. That club has been
Speaker 1: broken open such that the people like Amy Man who
Speaker 1: had one hit with till Tuesday but really didn't have
Speaker 1: another hit, they had an advantage of the publicity. Okay,
Speaker 1: those people's sales have been dramatically decreased as a result.
Speaker 1: People don't buy a CD, they go to streaming. Turns
Speaker 1: out they were not as big as everybody thought. The
Speaker 1: fact that everybody is listening to Post Malone or listening
Speaker 1: to old Gaga tracks or the Weekend, it's not my fault.
Speaker 1: The point is they don't want to listen to you.
Speaker 1: I got an email the other day about Fleetwood Mac,
Speaker 1: and it was fascinating to me because I checked these
Speaker 1: things pretty closely. You go to a lot of classic
Speaker 1: acts and the number of stream they have is diminimous.
Speaker 1: It may barely break a million or two million. You
Speaker 1: go to Fleetwood Back it's triple digit, millions hundred plus
Speaker 1: because they're fucking great. But as I say, exactly so,
Speaker 1: the point is where it gets out. How come the
Speaker 1: way my fifteen year old daughter is streaming Fleetwood Mac exactly?
Speaker 1: So the point is if it's good and they know
Speaker 1: it will rise above the problem is most people you're
Speaker 1: not good enough. You're competing against the history of music
Speaker 1: of all time. You send me your metal record. I
Speaker 1: can listen to led Zeppa, which was originally called metal
Speaker 1: any day of the week. I don't have to listen
Speaker 1: to your record. Are we gonna talk about Sure, go
Speaker 1: for it. I'm kidding, Actually we will. So in light
Speaker 1: of everything that's going on and the opening up so
Speaker 1: Spotify streaming, it's opened up the world outside of China, right,
Speaker 1: China house the wall, okay, but India, Asia right, So
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of think major labels are really important. Again, Oh,
Speaker 1: you got multiple things going on there. Let's sorry about
Speaker 1: the world. Sitting with Steve Stout and he was saying,
Speaker 1: hip hop is the sound of the world. It's no
Speaker 1: question about that, no question. But he said, anybody on
Speaker 1: any street corner can make it. Okay, And it didn't
Speaker 1: used to be, but now every country has its own
Speaker 1: hip hop scene. The other thing was the paradigm of
Speaker 1: worldwide domination was established with Miles Copeling in the police.
Speaker 1: Father was in the c i A. They've been to
Speaker 1: all these places. They took the police there. Now you
Speaker 1: could have a worldwide hit just being on Spotify Desposito
Speaker 1: okay as example. Now, the other thing the Desposito is
Speaker 1: there is a version with Justin Bieber is involved, but
Speaker 1: basically it's in Spanish. Okay. All the things that everybody
Speaker 1: ever thought about are blown out. If you have a
Speaker 1: great track, it can succeed, and it can succeed around
Speaker 1: the world. But what does the major label give you
Speaker 1: give to a bank not as good as it used to,
Speaker 1: and it gives you promotional capabilities only in a very
Speaker 1: narrow thing. They're good for hip hop, even pop music. Recently,
Speaker 1: Katie Perry has failed in that field. To even Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift has failed in that field. So if you have
Speaker 1: the world's greatest band but it doesn't fit in that genre,
Speaker 1: they don't want to sign it now, they don't want
Speaker 1: anything to do with it. So you're on your own.
Speaker 1: So what the label has is the power to blow
Speaker 1: it up in traditional media, which is print, which bleeds
Speaker 1: onto online, TV and radio. Never underestimate all three of those,
Speaker 1: but all three of those are declining in power. Now.
Speaker 1: You can't compete with the major label because what's keeping
Speaker 1: the major label alive is their catalogs, especially on streaming services. Catalog, right,
Speaker 1: is your old material which they own, and they're never
Speaker 1: paying another dollar and just reaping money. The greatest example
Speaker 1: on this is movie business. Karralco was the most successful
Speaker 1: independent company of all time. They had the Rambo movies, etcetera.
Speaker 1: They went out of business because they didn't have the
Speaker 1: catalogs to carry them through. Now, to explain history of
Speaker 1: the music business, which no one really wants to know anymore,
Speaker 1: there was an act Bobby Womack, and a few decades
Speaker 1: back he had an album on Beverly Glenn Records that
Speaker 1: was a million seller, right, that's what it was called.
Speaker 1: People would sit here and say, wow, he must have
Speaker 1: made a fortune. The success of the record put the
Speaker 1: label out of business because the old model was you
Speaker 1: shipped to retailers and you get paid at best six
Speaker 1: months hence usually twelve months. Hence they continue to order
Speaker 1: product as you have a hit record. So in theory,
Speaker 1: you're saying, it's costing me a dollar to produce this record,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make money, but when that record falls off,
Speaker 1: they don't pay you. This is why when you read
Speaker 1: in media that retailers blow up and how much money
Speaker 1: the labels are own, they're always behind the only reason
Speaker 1: they get paid at all is they have a continue
Speaker 1: in you as flow of product, whereas in streaming it's
Speaker 1: not that way. Everybody gets paid. This is very important
Speaker 1: if you're starting independently. So if you are part of
Speaker 1: the hip hop scene, this is the deal with Chance,
Speaker 1: who did it without a label. So let's talking to
Speaker 1: Daniel Glass. He's talking about the hip hop people. The
Speaker 1: standard amongst a lot of labels, now not the majors,
Speaker 1: but is fifty split. So the hip hop people come
Speaker 1: they want because they think they can do it themselves.
Speaker 1: We can argue whether they can. So the major labels
Speaker 1: will never go away. They are necessary, but there are
Speaker 1: opportunities elsewhere. But don't forget the major labels have to
Speaker 1: go through a transition. If you go to a major
Speaker 1: label office, now there's one or two people making an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of money and then everybody else is a
Speaker 1: worker be underpaid. So no one with the brain is
Speaker 1: going to work there because there's no upward mobility. But
Speaker 1: eventually the younger generation is going to get in, and
Speaker 1: what do we know, it's not like old hippies. They
Speaker 1: like money, but they're big believers in transparency. So the
Speaker 1: new model will be more equitable. I mean CD baby,
Speaker 1: they they distribute songs to Spotify and all the other services,
Speaker 1: and they do still sell c ds. They pay you
Speaker 1: every two weeks. How come the major labels pay you
Speaker 1: every six months. That can't go on. By the way,
Speaker 1: have you seen a major label statement like a royalty statement?
Speaker 1: I mean it's a disaster. Well, not to mention the
Speaker 1: fact it's argued over twenty to forty hours by two
Speaker 1: high priced lawyers and they allow some low level royalty
Speaker 1: employee to make the statement in the label's favorite But
Speaker 1: there's no transparency, like even on the streaming income, you
Speaker 1: don't know who's coming like, you have no no trans exactly.
Speaker 1: But that will change because the outsiders, the Indians, forced
Speaker 1: them to. So give me an example of another full
Speaker 1: on indie artist that has gone big besides Chance the rapper.
Speaker 1: We have to look forward, not back. The barrier to
Speaker 1: entry is incredibly low. You and me can make a
Speaker 1: record right here, right now and get it on Spotify
Speaker 1: to borrow. Okay, anybody can make music downside of that
Speaker 1: is very hard to get noticed. But what we've seen
Speaker 1: because you can just go in the desktop version of Spotify.
Speaker 1: If you hover your mouse over the three lines of
Speaker 1: an album, you'll tell you how many plays it has. Also,
Speaker 1: you go to the US stop fifty, you'll tell you
Speaker 1: how many players. All of those tracks are hip hop.
Speaker 1: They all come from a culture. You do not need
Speaker 1: the major label to become part of that culture. You
Speaker 1: only need the major label to blow you up further. So,
Speaker 1: where there's culture, I don't really think you necessarily need
Speaker 1: a major label or you need a fairer deal from
Speaker 1: the major label. How many ocs have hits? Are are
Speaker 1: getting tractions that aren't associated with the major label? Okay?
Speaker 1: What we have now? By the way, I don't mean
Speaker 1: it sounds like the old it's a it's a good question.
Speaker 1: The answer is obvious. No one of the Statue of Chance.
Speaker 1: But Frank Ocean he had those two albums. You can
Speaker 1: argue there that he did it. But we're in this
Speaker 1: huge transition where all the money is coming from streaming.
Speaker 1: It's transparent and they pay and it's growing. Right. The
Speaker 1: other traditional things which are murkier, radio and television other
Speaker 1: than SNL, any television appearance doesn't mean anything anymore. All
Speaker 1: the traditional tools the majors come with are not really
Speaker 1: beneficial at this particular point to many artists. So it's
Speaker 1: about what's on the come. The major levels have incredible strength,
Speaker 1: but their black holes. They're gonna have to be more transparent,
Speaker 1: more fair. Are they still doing um, three sixty deals?
Speaker 1: They are still doing three sixty deals. But you know
Speaker 1: this is this is one of the problems of the
Speaker 1: music business. And this is not secret information anymore. Why
Speaker 1: it works in music business, it's all about leverage. If
Speaker 1: you come in with certain number of views on YouTube whatever,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, you can write any deal you want.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing. It's not like you know in
Speaker 1: the Muppet movie. You know, right a the industry a
Speaker 1: standard contract for a cermit in the Muppets. So this
Speaker 1: is one of the problems in music. That is one
Speaker 1: of the good things about chances. How do we blow
Speaker 1: it up? How do we make it different? Okay, by
Speaker 1: the same token, there are a lot of things are inexplicable.
Speaker 1: I want to see this act Glass Animals. They sold
Speaker 1: out the shrine. Everybody knew every word. You check every
Speaker 1: chart you got going, you see nothing. Nothing. So you say,
Speaker 1: you know, I talked to some people. They say, well,
Speaker 1: it's festival appearances, but so far the undercard to coach
Speaker 1: hell that nobody ever breaks through, So we don't have
Speaker 1: the answers to so much. There never istually been so
Speaker 1: much information where we don't really know what's going on,
Speaker 1: all right, So you just bring up Glass Animals. You
Speaker 1: wrote about an act that I like a lot, Gretivan Fleet.
Speaker 1: I went saw him at the Tube door. They're fucking great.
Speaker 1: I don't think they have a song, but if they
Speaker 1: had a Welcome to the Jungle or smells like Team Spirit,
Speaker 1: could there be a movement there? What do you think?
Speaker 1: I mean, what what is the state of rock? And
Speaker 1: you like this band? I know you like. Let's go
Speaker 1: back one step to Sam Smith with Barnett, who's head
Speaker 1: of Capitol Records, and he was saying this is too
Speaker 1: much for the record came out. He said, if this
Speaker 1: record is successful, it will open up new avenues for
Speaker 1: other artists to go through. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: absolutely true, but what do we know. The biggest act
Speaker 1: in the world is Adele and she doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: any of these acts, so it shows that there is
Speaker 1: demand for something other than hip hop as far as
Speaker 1: rock goes. What is interesting about Greta Van Fleet. For
Speaker 1: those of you who have not listened, it sounds like
Speaker 1: a total Zeppelin ripple, So you will laugh at first,
Speaker 1: but especially the two middle tracks, you will say, wait,
Speaker 1: they're good songs. They which every other Zeppelin rip off
Speaker 1: they can play, but they don't have good songs. So
Speaker 1: if you sit here and you are cynical, you say terrible.
Speaker 1: But then if you think, wait a second, if you
Speaker 1: look at all the English bands, we revere, they were
Speaker 1: all listening to old blues records and jumping off of that.
Speaker 1: So for somebody twenty years old today to be listening
Speaker 1: to a forty seven year old record, which is what
Speaker 1: LEDs actually forty eight years the initial led Zepplin record,
Speaker 1: what's different about that? And reconstituting it. So if you
Speaker 1: ask me, I will say, rock is dead? Why is
Speaker 1: rock dead? Has become too South referential. I remember when
Speaker 1: Black Sabbath came out, and that was as far as
Speaker 1: anybody thought you could go. If you want to listen
Speaker 1: to what is called metal at this point in times,
Speaker 1: it is so far out there. The average person is
Speaker 1: never gonna be like ho. So you have a Dell.
Speaker 1: A Dell's got a great voice with songs you can
Speaker 1: sing to. How come no one's repeating that formula that
Speaker 1: we have what Sam Smith is a little exactly Sam
Speaker 1: Smith's a little bit. So does that show a great opening?
Speaker 1: As far as rock and roll we have the rock
Speaker 1: and roll is the biggest sound today. If you really
Speaker 1: want to think, as Tom the Deer Departed Tom Petty said,
Speaker 1: and he said it negatively. Country music is a rock
Speaker 1: and roll of the seventies. I'm watching the c M
Speaker 1: a s And the opening number, uh, Keith Urban comes
Speaker 1: out and starts to whale Well, and you go wow.
Speaker 1: If you listen to one of my favorites was like
Speaker 1: Keith Thurban Stupid Girl. And if you think country sucks,
Speaker 1: listen to this Stupid Boy, the original Stupid Girl that
Speaker 1: it was rewritten by him. Stupid Boy. He does like
Speaker 1: a three minute solo at the end. It's like straight
Speaker 1: out in nineteen seventy two, and it's great. So there's
Speaker 1: hope for that sound. But there are too many sounds
Speaker 1: that are too far off the mainstream or the core.
Speaker 1: And I think we have to to quote Joni Mitchell,
Speaker 1: get back to the garden. Well, you know when I
Speaker 1: went to the Gratis show. What I noticed is in
Speaker 1: the front there were a lot of really young girls
Speaker 1: and that's a great sign, right And the rest of
Speaker 1: the audience, we're a bunch of dudes in their thirties
Speaker 1: and forties. I saw the same thing. But what I
Speaker 1: would say is different is if you know your radio format,
Speaker 1: and many people don't. The only format that matters is
Speaker 1: Top forty, which presently is is hip hop with mostly pop.
Speaker 1: There's Hot a C which is a softer version that matters,
Speaker 1: but it really doesn't. Then there are these other formats
Speaker 1: Urban Urban is really a Top forty at this point,
Speaker 1: Triple A. It's forty exactly triple uh A Americana all
Speaker 1: that ship they have a tripe. It doesn't matter. But
Speaker 1: the reason I'm saying the chart for rock is called
Speaker 1: active Rock Highway Tune which was number one by Greta
Speaker 1: van Fleet for weeks didn't break two million streams on
Speaker 1: on Spotify. And also it's the rockers or anti streaming
Speaker 1: the audience. More country people stream van rockers. They have
Speaker 1: to get with the programs, so everybody's gotta get on
Speaker 1: the format first and foremost that Canna rock band, whether
Speaker 1: it's Greta or any other rock band, can they write
Speaker 1: a song that will have the We haven't had an
Speaker 1: impactful rock song since Welcome to the Jungle and smells
Speaker 1: like teen Spirit, and that happened within a two year period.
Speaker 1: Unless you want to call Atlantis Morris set rock. You
Speaker 1: ought to know all those tracks. But your point is
Speaker 1: well taken. But the other point is those were great records.
Speaker 1: There used to be ridiculous. There used to be tower
Speaker 1: records on Westwood Boulevard. The main tower was on Sun Said.
Speaker 1: I remember being there one time in because if you
Speaker 1: lived in l A, you were hearing the hype about
Speaker 1: guns and roses for years. I'm there, there's a record
Speaker 1: playing over the sound system. So while this is a
Speaker 1: great record, only twice in my life that in Genesis,
Speaker 1: Wind and Weathering that I ever buy the record that
Speaker 1: was on the in house system. So the best track
Speaker 1: of the first decade of the century in my ballpark
Speaker 1: is narls Barkley Crazy you only eat here at once?
Speaker 1: I cannot mention you know what about time funk you up?
Speaker 1: Problem with that is to me, it's too much of
Speaker 1: a rip off. It's too much of a Marvin I
Speaker 1: don't wanna get the legality. I don't think it's copyright infringement,
Speaker 1: but it's so it's so reminiscent of that. I'm just
Speaker 1: not a new top. By the same token, there's certainly
Speaker 1: country the Brothers Osborne stay a little longer. You listen
Speaker 1: to the second half where they're really wailing in the
Speaker 1: extended version. I listened to that again and again. But
Speaker 1: there aren't enough great records. Al right, commercial radio terrestrial
Speaker 1: radio terrestrial right right, you know, the data still says
Speaker 1: that it's the number one form of discovery. Fuck the statistics.
Speaker 1: The statistics are manipulated so the people who paid for
Speaker 1: them will feel good. Okay, anybody will tell you. Research
Speaker 1: will tell you where you've been as opposed to where
Speaker 1: you're going. And if you read all these reports, which
Speaker 1: they do, they always say the younger generation is not unique.
Speaker 1: There's an overall volume. Your generation is not listening. This
Speaker 1: does not square with the times I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: this a lot. Relative to automated cars. Okay, because we
Speaker 1: now have light rail in Los Angeles, I don't take
Speaker 1: the light rail that frequently for varying reasons, because it's
Speaker 1: not on demand. It's like the movies. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of movies that I would like
Speaker 1: to see. It doesn't start when I get there. Okay.
Speaker 1: So when you have UM on your Internet or your
Speaker 1: own iPhone or whatever, you can listen to what you
Speaker 1: want when you want. Now, if radio or culture role
Speaker 1: like it was fifty years ago, where there was personalities
Speaker 1: and they actually chose the record to be one thing.
Speaker 1: But these are playlisted by one guy for the whole country.
Speaker 1: It's so phony. No one can listen to a torrestrial radio.
Speaker 1: So the younger generation, it's how you're gonna keep them
Speaker 1: down on the farm after they've seem PERI you know,
Speaker 1: it's an music isn't on to me. And I'll give
Speaker 1: you a classic example. Beginning of this century. Everybody's bitching,
Speaker 1: even justin timber Lake on the v M A s
Speaker 1: MTV has gotta play more videos. Tom Freston was head
Speaker 1: of the music television at that time. I said, Tom,
Speaker 1: what about this. He goes, We're never gonna play videos again.
Speaker 1: Video is an on the man item on the internet.
Speaker 1: He was right. Music is an on demand item. You
Speaker 1: want to listen to Howard Stern, that's great. Radio to
Speaker 1: rest to satellite is different because there's so many channels.
Speaker 1: You can push the buttons and there are no commercials.
Speaker 1: But what about all the middle class people and poor
Speaker 1: people driving to work every day. This is the same
Speaker 1: thing people talk about flyover people, the assholes in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and New York saying, oh, the flyover people. You've
Speaker 1: been to Iowa. They got they got a hundred mega
Speaker 1: bit down the internet. They got the same hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty channels. There is sophisticated as you and me. So
Speaker 1: if we want to really because everything is gradual. Everything
Speaker 1: is gradual until it falls off a cliff. So when
Speaker 1: people tell you, hey, it's not coming yet, okay, I
Speaker 1: use the example of digital photography. We heard for ten
Speaker 1: years that digital was going to replace film. Never happened that.
Speaker 1: In one year, everybody got rid of their film cameras
Speaker 1: and it was digitalument exactly. So it is the same thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying terrestrial radio is gonna be over tomorrow. Yes,
Speaker 1: we have to get to the point with internet and cars. Okay,
Speaker 1: other than Audi and BMW, Internet and cars is not
Speaker 1: really here now, not to mention that we haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to five G, etcetera, etcetera. So some things have to change.
Speaker 1: I would say the big argument for radio is it's
Speaker 1: not about music turning into something else. Hi, everyone, Bob
Speaker 1: left Sets here. I just wanted to take a moment
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening to my podcast. My goal
Speaker 1: is to make your life more interesting and exciting. I
Speaker 1: want to give you information and entertain you simultaneously. If
Speaker 1: you have any interest in music, technology or pop culture,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to sign up. So search left Sets
Speaker 1: on your tune in app or where you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: As my father would say, that's l you like Edward,
Speaker 1: FF like Frank, s like Sam? You like Edward? Do
Speaker 1: you like Tom's? You like Zebra? I have to spell
Speaker 1: that every time I call a doctor or make a
Speaker 1: reservation and go down the rabbit hole with me. Alright,
Speaker 1: So I want to move on to another subject, the
Speaker 1: age old argument of uh, content versus distribution. We've had
Speaker 1: this conversation before. What's very interesting right now? As you
Speaker 1: have Netflix? Um, I think Apple just signed Jennifer Jennifer
Speaker 1: Aniston Jennifer Aniston massive, right, and you got Hulu? Okay, wait, WHOA,
Speaker 1: let's separate the issues. I want to talk broadly. You go,
Speaker 1: we just say y'all know. I try to ask Bob
Speaker 1: a question and he just takes it over. So, okay.
Speaker 1: People have said for years content is king. That is
Speaker 1: absolutely fucking wrong. I hammer this again and again. If
Speaker 1: you read me, you want okay, Really, distribution is king.
Speaker 1: It is very simple. If you make the best record
Speaker 1: of all time and no one can hear it, what
Speaker 1: difference does it make. It's a person who gets it
Speaker 1: to the end listener who is king. What do we
Speaker 1: know in the music business. We have these streaming services.
Speaker 1: I believe one will end up with the market past
Speaker 1: right now. I've been on Spotify. I wouldn't say that's
Speaker 1: the finest number two Amazon? Really? What about Apple? Apple's
Speaker 1: problem is they've already marketed to everybody they have the
Speaker 1: credit card of so where are they going to get
Speaker 1: new sub titles? These are will continue to be success
Speaker 1: full in France, at least for a while. But Amazon,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of stealth stuff. Okay, if you
Speaker 1: have Amazon Prime and an Echo, you can listen to
Speaker 1: music without paying an additional fee. They will tell you
Speaker 1: if you ask for something that they cannot give you,
Speaker 1: they will tell you, hey, for three you can get
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. You can get all the tracks
Speaker 1: on your Echo. You can also pay more. You can
Speaker 1: get all your tracks everywhere. So they are marketing to
Speaker 1: a hundred million people constantly. Well, and you're you're a
Speaker 1: big proponent of this because you have the system, you
Speaker 1: have the new Sona system with UM Well, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, you you know this is people have been talking
Speaker 1: all along about their kids are in the car, and
Speaker 1: they start the kids in the car start talking about
Speaker 1: telling the car what to do via Alexa. I literally
Speaker 1: have this in my house. Last Wednesday night, I told
Speaker 1: the TV to turn off. I didn't even I don't
Speaker 1: have it plugged in another smart thing. But I have
Speaker 1: everything else in my house voice controlled. And you get
Speaker 1: to the point you expect everything to be voice controlled.
Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you, for some reason, I had
Speaker 1: Spotify hooked up to my Alexa and I switched the
Speaker 1: default to Amazon. I was messing with it yesterday. Didn't
Speaker 1: get one song wrong. Once you experience voice control, you
Speaker 1: will never go back. So distribution, you believe wins over content.
Speaker 1: But if you're talking in television, don't forget. If you
Speaker 1: go back to earlier in our conversation, one of the
Speaker 1: flaws we have is in the music business. We figured
Speaker 1: out there's no content difference between Amazon, Apple Spotify. It's
Speaker 1: all the same content. There's a little number of Spotify sessions,
Speaker 1: but exclusives are completely gone. In television, they always think
Speaker 1: they're different. Okay, same thing in the movies. So what
Speaker 1: happened was Netflix got all the content and they built
Speaker 1: their service. Then they started with original content. Now everybody
Speaker 1: wants to compete with them, hence the Apple deal. Okay,
Speaker 1: but before you get there, let's talk with Disney. Disney
Speaker 1: wants to have their own independent app. Okay, I want
Speaker 1: to pay an additional ten dollars a month. What am
Speaker 1: I getting? If you follow the news, they were thinking
Speaker 1: about buying twenty century Fox just to add to the content,
Speaker 1: So I get the Disney channel where the ratings are
Speaker 1: going down, just like a nickelodeon Fox Sports. Well, right now,
Speaker 1: let's just talk what they have right now. Okay. If
Speaker 1: they have Disney and they're talking about ESPN being a
Speaker 1: standalone thing, people don't want to pay separately for everything. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Netflix has already established a beach head. These are
Speaker 1: Internet rules either not entertainment rules. Intertent rules are there's
Speaker 1: a first mover advantage as long as you continue to innovate.
Speaker 1: So if you look at the iPod, etcetera. The iPods
Speaker 1: advantage was FireWire transfer, which was high speed transfer and
Speaker 1: a better interface that was open to everybody was in
Speaker 1: the marketplace before. They did not pick up on it.
Speaker 1: My Space had a terrible interface. Okay, they could have
Speaker 1: fixed that. They did. Facebook came in. Facebook is constantly innovating.
Speaker 1: Spotify is constantly innovating. They're not resting on their laurels.
Speaker 1: Netflix is constantly innovating. So to compete with them, you
Speaker 1: have to start from brown zero. You have to have content,
Speaker 1: you have to be better. That's a huge hurdle decline.
Speaker 1: So if you look at Amazon, Amazon's problem. Amazon is
Speaker 1: now switching up their TV offering to try to have
Speaker 1: a Game of Thrones. That is not their problem. Their
Speaker 1: problem primarily is no one knows what Amazon streaming is,
Speaker 1: even if they're paying for it. You know, Transparent wins
Speaker 1: all the awards. Not even a million people watch Transparent.
Speaker 1: I think it happens to be a great show. You
Speaker 1: get so many other things. It's like the Apple streaming app. Okay,
Speaker 1: to figure out what my library is and what streaming
Speaker 1: is is way too difficult. This is Clayton Christians in
Speaker 1: the innovator's dilemma. What you do is you disrupt yourself.
Speaker 1: You start the new business across the street, and then
Speaker 1: at some point shift everybody into the new business, and
Speaker 1: you forget about the old by trying to appeal to
Speaker 1: the old. Simultaneously, you hurt yourself by trying to appeal
Speaker 1: to the people are buying tracks. There should be two apps.
Speaker 1: You have iTunes listen to your tracks. Then there's Apple
Speaker 1: Music streaming oldly. All right, So out of all of
Speaker 1: this technology wise, who do you think wins? Okay, let's
Speaker 1: be very clear. Most people believe there are four players.
Speaker 1: The guy far Hid mons you in the Times close
Speaker 1: their five players. He includes Microsoft. Amazon has one retail.
Speaker 1: No one can compete Walmart. In the paper today, they're
Speaker 1: gonna make the products more expensive online than they are
Speaker 1: in the store. Who the funk wants to go to
Speaker 1: the store if you have Amazon Prime, Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: ask me about the ecological and the element whatever. I
Speaker 1: want to go to the store. Don't forget I've been
Speaker 1: living a long time. Frequently when you go to the store,
Speaker 1: they don't even have the product, So you've wasted a trip.
Speaker 1: Amazon owns, right Amazon, and then no one knows what's
Speaker 1: going on. Know what you want, what you're you know
Speaker 1: what you're looking for, right? So I mean I had
Speaker 1: to go. I was getting calling oscarpy, I had to
Speaker 1: go get broth and jello. You're in the you're in
Speaker 1: the grocery store where you're gonna find that happened to
Speaker 1: be outside my normal neighborhood. How am I gonna find
Speaker 1: that stuff? It's easier to order it online. So in
Speaker 1: terms of retail, that's another thing. We said Amazon's gonna
Speaker 1: crush physical retail for fifteen years. It's only been in
Speaker 1: the last twelve months that this has literally started to happen.
Speaker 1: So that's Amazon. I am not a big believer in Apple.
Speaker 1: I own a zillion Apple devices. I've been on Apple
Speaker 1: since eighties six. Unlike movies and television, there's no catalog
Speaker 1: in tech, it's what have you done for me? Lately?
Speaker 1: Apple has a huge advantage. They have people locked into
Speaker 1: their ecosystem. All the devices work together. But when we
Speaker 1: go to the next thing, whatever it may be, and
Speaker 1: there is going to be the next thing beyond the phone, okay,
Speaker 1: will they be the leader? First of all, they're not
Speaker 1: the leader in numbers. This is one of the things
Speaker 1: that makes me crazy. I hear this all the time.
Speaker 1: It's like with the Taylor Swift album. They talk about
Speaker 1: the money. Oh, we're in the first week of Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift cell. She's gonna sell the album. It's about longevity.
Speaker 1: There's a new number one every week. If the songs
Speaker 1: are not continuing to play on streaming services, it means
Speaker 1: you're already done. So. Yes, the iPhone makes all the
Speaker 1: profits in the handset business today, but Android trumpet in
Speaker 1: terms of usership. By the way, my iPhone is all
Speaker 1: sucked up right now. There's a lot of stuff that's
Speaker 1: sucked up on my iPhone now that it doesn't go
Speaker 1: back from landscape to portrait and everybody emails, oh you
Speaker 1: locked it. Believe me, I'm not that stupid. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of little stuff that didn't used to be screwed up.
Speaker 1: I'm not about to jump to Android, okay, But it's
Speaker 1: about the power of the individual. I was reading the
Speaker 1: New York Times today about a woman who tracks the
Speaker 1: power of social media in terms of little verticals. She
Speaker 1: ended up being hired by the Senate to inform them
Speaker 1: how to ask questions to Google, etcetera. One person can
Speaker 1: make a difference. Who is that person in Apple? He
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. That was the power of Steve Jobs. So
Speaker 1: that is Apple. Google has shown their hit to ship
Speaker 1: ratio is terrible. Okay, they had the glass, they fucked
Speaker 1: up whatever. So when people tell me, it's like, ok glass, Okay,
Speaker 1: so Google tell me I can't even hear that without laughing. Okay,
Speaker 1: people tell me, first of all, who's gonna wear them?
Speaker 1: The nerds at Google didn't realize they look terrible. And
Speaker 1: then if you just saw Snapchat wrote off a huge
Speaker 1: amount of money for Snapchat glasses. So it's just like
Speaker 1: when A O L. When MSN network came in, they
Speaker 1: didn't beat a O L. Okay, I don't necessarily think
Speaker 1: Google is gonna come in. Facebook is very sharp and
Speaker 1: they're not afraid to spend money. So in that hierarchy,
Speaker 1: you know, I put Amazon above Facebook and Google. Facebook
Speaker 1: and Google are very strong. Alright, let's move into something
Speaker 1: a little more serious. Our world it's pretty fucked up, right. Um,
Speaker 1: you've been you've been pretty outspoken about this. You were
Speaker 1: very involved in the sixties and seventies. We got some
Speaker 1: crazy ship going on. Right now, Let's start from the began.
Speaker 1: Let's look from the Democratic perspective. This is what I
Speaker 1: love about Bob. I can never finish my question. Tell
Speaker 1: me if you know you can interrupt me. No, actually
Speaker 1: I I only asked my questions that you can interrupt me.
Speaker 1: Just the problem with the Democrats is they used the
Speaker 1: old Bill Clinton concept of triangulating. If you we've already
Speaker 1: established if you were researching, it will tell you where
Speaker 1: you've been. If Bernie had started a year earlier, he
Speaker 1: would be president today. What Bernie did was speak English.
Speaker 1: I remember after one of his uh victory speeches in
Speaker 1: the primary season that a Republican commentator he goes, if
Speaker 1: I weren't a Republican, I would vote for Bernie. They
Speaker 1: did not realize what a pear. We live in a
Speaker 1: different world. I don't want to talk about that, but
Speaker 1: I can tell you about myself talking to Debbie Wasson
Speaker 1: and Stults. She was in the pocket for Hillary. Forget Russia,
Speaker 1: forget all that crap. If the Democrats want to win,
Speaker 1: they have to speak English, we have to find a candidate, etcetera.
Speaker 1: That's a huge development. The next thing is jerrymandering. Okay,
Speaker 1: jerrymandering is a huge problem. Then to go into Jerry
Speaker 1: Springer said on Howard Stern, I'm a big believer liberals
Speaker 1: always win in the end. We have gay marriage, we
Speaker 1: have all these things. So in the long term, what
Speaker 1: the Democrats and the Republicans failed to see is many
Speaker 1: people have been left behind. It is not only the
Speaker 1: blue collar worker. It is a so called middle class.
Speaker 1: If you're an educated person and you're not a financier
Speaker 1: or a techie, good chance you're struggling yourself. Okay. Now
Speaker 1: we have highly educated city dwellers who have no sympathy
Speaker 1: for the downtron and say, oh, they're doing dope, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So there's contempt on the left for so many people.
Speaker 1: Do you think those people don't read it as far
Speaker 1: as it is on the right, it's a party controlled
Speaker 1: by rich people, the Koch brothers. They've literally been running
Speaker 1: on social issues and appealing to people of disadvantages. So
Speaker 1: it's not all the social issues okay, of course. But
Speaker 1: the more interesting thing now is what is the landscape.
Speaker 1: Andrew Sullivan, I think he's a blowhard, but he was
Speaker 1: a gay Republican. It first hard to believe. He wrote
Speaker 1: an article New York Magazine about a month. It was endless.
Speaker 1: You can't read it, but the concept it was good.
Speaker 1: We live in a tribal nation, doesn't matter what you say.
Speaker 1: Person is on one side or Malcolm Gladwell ship right
Speaker 1: here right. So then the other thing is you cannot
Speaker 1: convince somebody with facts. You can show them the facts
Speaker 1: I've had, they cannot switch size. So we have a
Speaker 1: disinformation society. The best news source in America, probably the world,
Speaker 1: is the New York Time Times. I can sit here
Speaker 1: and point to you flaws with the New York Times. Okay,
Speaker 1: they have bureaus everywhere more than anybody else. The New
Speaker 1: York Times. The right wing has completely neuter the New
Speaker 1: York Times, even though they get their agenda from the
Speaker 1: New York Times. If you bring it up, they say
Speaker 1: fake news. Okay, even though we know Fox is biased
Speaker 1: such that we cannot agree on the facts. So if
Speaker 1: you get someone on the left like myself ranting and
Speaker 1: raving about the right beliefs, we are not moving the
Speaker 1: ball at all. So the ball has to be moved
Speaker 1: outside the limelight. We're almost in a Mr Smith goes
Speaker 1: to Washington Arrow. We need somebody really pure. I really
Speaker 1: don't believe Mark Cuban will be elected because I believe
Speaker 1: just what we have in Minnesota where we had Uh
Speaker 1: the wrestler as governor, people see this is a professional job,
Speaker 1: irrelevant of whatever businessman's beliefs are exactly, So I don't
Speaker 1: believe we're gonna have another celebrity. But is a lot
Speaker 1: of contempt for Washington. We need honest people who are
Speaker 1: literally proffering solutions for other people. But we live in
Speaker 1: a country where nobody wants to sacrifice. No one can
Speaker 1: lose their job, So the Liberals are bad on this.
Speaker 1: Liberals come up with a lot of stuff that is
Speaker 1: just worship. Bring manufacturing back to America, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: bring manufacturing back when you want to pay two thousand
Speaker 1: You want to pay two thousand dollars for a flat screen?
Speaker 1: I was at somebody's house the other day. They said,
Speaker 1: we have a TV outside, So what do you do
Speaker 1: when it rains? If it gets funked up up by
Speaker 1: a new one? For Twitter and thirty six dollars. My
Speaker 1: wife works for a big apparel company, and like it's
Speaker 1: like if they had to manufacture their goods here. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be possible not to mention the fact that I
Speaker 1: was just reading about some of these companies go down
Speaker 1: because fast fashion used to be bought clothes, expensive clothes.
Speaker 1: Last time people buy t shirts an old Navy for
Speaker 1: seven dollars, where for a few times throw them away.
Speaker 1: They're not going back to that. The good paying jobs
Speaker 1: that we thought there were are not coming back. There's
Speaker 1: nothing we can do about it, right, all right, so
Speaker 1: did Russia medal? Of course, I don't believe we should
Speaker 1: run the election again. I just believe we have to.
Speaker 1: We realize that Facebook et cetera not Benige, and how
Speaker 1: are we gonna go into this thing, and how we're
Speaker 1: gonna solve this problem of being influenced by these sites?
Speaker 1: So um Vegas. I can't believe it. It's like we're
Speaker 1: gonna write a newspaper. Okay, Vegas is a terrible situation.
Speaker 1: If I ran the world, there would be no guns. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can understand. I can understand bose and arrows for hunting,
Speaker 1: and I on some level I seem like maybe we
Speaker 1: should make an exclusion for that. But if you read
Speaker 1: the New York times once again quitting it again. The
Speaker 1: number of mass deaths correlates with a number of guns
Speaker 1: in the population. That reduced the number of guns of
Speaker 1: population to Australia, there were fewer deaths. Okay, we this
Speaker 1: is the same thing. Everybody is afraid of the n
Speaker 1: r A. Okay, most people are guns only the politicians
Speaker 1: are exactly well. True. So therefore we have a very
Speaker 1: vocal subgroup and it's making people afraid. We have to
Speaker 1: address this ft the source. We have to get rid
Speaker 1: of the guns themselves. Most of the guns are used
Speaker 1: in domestic disputes. This is terrible. I can tell you
Speaker 1: if I had a gun in the house, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of times in my life I would have
Speaker 1: committed suicide with so much pain, but there was no
Speaker 1: gun in the house. So there should not be guns
Speaker 1: in the house. We should, I know. All the right
Speaker 1: wings say, hey, you know one of the reason gun
Speaker 1: sales are down now is because of the Democrats not
Speaker 1: in office. They're saying, hey, we should They're they're gonna
Speaker 1: come take our guns. They should take your guns. What
Speaker 1: the funk you need the gun for? Do you think
Speaker 1: what happened in Vegas is going to change. And I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I'm in the inner circle, right, I'm asking you, do
Speaker 1: you think what happened in Vegas is going to change
Speaker 1: our business? Because if you look at Manchester in Vegas,
Speaker 1: both of the explosions or the firings was from outside
Speaker 1: the perimeter. Okay, what is the responsibility of the Staples Center?
Speaker 1: Are they responsible to Santa Monica? They had that guy
Speaker 1: who wrote a book and he was on Howard Journey Nights,
Speaker 1: the Fox Consultan who shot ben Leyden been bin Laden.
Speaker 1: You can shoot people from two miles away. Now that
Speaker 1: is not the promoter's responsibility. Promoter certainly should secure the building,
Speaker 1: should do his best to secure the perimeter. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's a super Bowl, it's everything else, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's any other matters. But look at look at the situations.
Speaker 1: I remember all the hijackings we had on airplanes since
Speaker 1: they have and they're pretty heinous, all these screenings. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, there's no more here hijackings. So it works.
Speaker 1: So if we get rid of the guns, there won't
Speaker 1: be a problem. Do you think that the big concert
Speaker 1: promoter should take a bigger stance against um anti gun, Yes,
Speaker 1: because they're the ones who're gonna get hurt. This is
Speaker 1: like the NFL, the right wing paper of record, Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, which I certainly get read every day. They
Speaker 1: said the kneeling did not affect the NFL viewership whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So they said, the people in the Red States want
Speaker 1: to watch football, they watch. If you're a fan of
Speaker 1: a country art you're a fan of Jason Aldan, and
Speaker 1: I tell you Live Nation is against guns. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna go to the show, forget about. Of course you're
Speaker 1: gonna go to the show. So it would be great.
Speaker 1: But the problem is there's no external force forcing these
Speaker 1: companies to do it. Live Nation is a public company.
Speaker 1: They're worried about their stock price. A g is not.
Speaker 1: But yes, they have to take responsibility because what do
Speaker 1: we know, it's going to happen again. But isn't it
Speaker 1: interesting that the country music business has kind of started
Speaker 1: to shift a little bit in terms of what well,
Speaker 1: I mean a few artists have come out against I mean,
Speaker 1: by the way the country music business was like, it's
Speaker 1: like gun Central, right. Well, literally, the n r A
Speaker 1: was sponsoring acts and still does to this date. I
Speaker 1: think that we have some you know, we have some
Speaker 1: outliers who say, hey, like guitarists in one of the
Speaker 1: bands from the Root ninety one festival or whatever, the
Speaker 1: one in Vegas, whatever it's called, saying now I'm for
Speaker 1: gun control. The fact that a couple of country acts
Speaker 1: are against country. The vast majority of them in the
Speaker 1: audience is pro guns. And I'm a country music fan.
Speaker 1: But that's just a fact. Would you ever hesitate to
Speaker 1: go to a in light of this? Would you ever
Speaker 1: hesitate to go to another show? Hesitate is a good word,
Speaker 1: because the week before the Country festival in Vegas, there
Speaker 1: was the Life Is Beautiful festival, and I came very
Speaker 1: close to going. And the shooter at Vegas. It's cased
Speaker 1: that out. So I don't think it would prevent me
Speaker 1: from going, but I certainly believe I might be anxious.
Speaker 1: Now what this goes back to your early question, I'm
Speaker 1: playing putting faith in live nation in ag to protect me.
Speaker 1: If you look at and these are friends of mine,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this, if we look at hard
Speaker 1: summer where these people are dying, it begs the question
Speaker 1: people might die in electronic music festivals. But how good
Speaker 1: was preparation? How good was your emergency services, etcetera. The promoter,
Speaker 1: you know, Live Nation just reported record profits. They do
Speaker 1: have a responsibility, but what it's not black and white.
Speaker 1: It's not absolutely clear what they should do. Maybe you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the first thing is you turn in your gun,
Speaker 1: you get to go three free concerts. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I can tell you definitively like both companies,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm in the inner circle, right, like everybody
Speaker 1: does everything they can, right, there's always more you can
Speaker 1: do when you have people as there's there's nothing more
Speaker 1: you could do in Vegas, Like how could you prevent Vegas?
Speaker 1: This is not my business to prevent it. And then
Speaker 1: you're right, I'm not sure the promoter can prevent it.
Speaker 1: Nobody can. But the only thing that bothered me about
Speaker 1: Vegas is it was business as usual very soon after
Speaker 1: it happened. And I also think this is contempt. If
Speaker 1: it had been a classical music concert, or it had
Speaker 1: been classic rock, we'd still be hearing it because it
Speaker 1: was country artists. Media everything is a media problem. The
Speaker 1: media problem is people are against guns, but you now
Speaker 1: have a podcast. I just this is just maybe you
Speaker 1: can make a big deal. This is just like politics,
Speaker 1: it is not about bloviating. It is about doing the
Speaker 1: hard work, doing the best to secure the perimeter of
Speaker 1: a show, but also starting initiatives. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: a concert is the number one place, but we're turning
Speaker 1: into the UK where terrorism we were immune, we're terrorism
Speaker 1: is de rigor. We're going into uncharted terroristory. I can
Speaker 1: guarantee you that both companies are doing everything they can.
Speaker 1: Are you fucking kidding me? No? I don't think this
Speaker 1: is their number one thing. The nature of the music
Speaker 1: business is to cut corners. No, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: that's what the music business does. If you're a promoter,
Speaker 1: we both know other than on festivals, the lion's share
Speaker 1: of the money goes to the acts, so ten percent
Speaker 1: or less goes to the promoter. I'm gonna tell the
Speaker 1: promoter to pay for this, to pay for that, no,
Speaker 1: bob Um. I can tell you that both companies do
Speaker 1: everything they can to minimize this. I am saying I
Speaker 1: don't want to single out these companies when you deal
Speaker 1: with public corporations. I don't want to sound like a
Speaker 1: tinfoil guy, Okay, But as I say, I do not
Speaker 1: believe they're busy wasting a lot of money. Do they
Speaker 1: have a task force hiring security specialists from outside the thing?
Speaker 1: Are they profiling ticket I want to see Kat Stevens
Speaker 1: because the answer to all the above is yes. So
Speaker 1: I went to see Kat Stevens and the manager said
Speaker 1: they literally researched every attendee their background because of the
Speaker 1: Muslim problem. Live Nation and a G are not researching
Speaker 1: every attendee at every show. I'm not saying I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that when you say they're doing everything they can,
Speaker 1: and this might be they might be doing above and
Speaker 1: beyond job. But there's always more you can do. No more,
Speaker 1: no more serious stuff, more fun stuff. Okay, who is
Speaker 1: your favorite band in the world? I thought you can
Speaker 1: ask a different question the best shows I ever went to?
Speaker 1: But I have three at three in this genre. So
Speaker 1: favorite band, favorite show. He's the most important band in
Speaker 1: the world. Okay, let wait, wait the shows. The three
Speaker 1: best shows I ever saw were The Who Doing Tommy
Speaker 1: at the Fillmore East. I saw it at the Universally
Speaker 1: Amphi Theater. But though this is in n Tommy Tommy
Speaker 1: was fresh and you couldn't believe Keith would have looked
Speaker 1: like two drummers, Prince doing Dirty Mind at Flippers Roller Disco.
Speaker 1: For those who don't remember, Reagan was shot and they
Speaker 1: delay the Academy Awards by one day, and the day
Speaker 1: they had it that was the day of the Prince show.
Speaker 1: There were fewer than a hundred people there. He did
Speaker 1: the whole show, flopping on the bed. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Then you too, Octung Baby indoors. They ultimately played the stadiums.
Speaker 1: I saw that, but indoors with Zoo TV, with the
Speaker 1: trabants and everything. Those are the three best shows I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. And he's your favorite band of all time?
Speaker 1: I literally suppled, Come on, I don't know. I would
Speaker 1: not say Zeppelin. I mean I would go with my
Speaker 1: early band. I'm a huge Jan and Dean favorite. I'm
Speaker 1: a huge Beach Boys fan. Otherwise I wouldn't live in
Speaker 1: l A. I'm a huge Joni Mitchell fan, a C
Speaker 1: d C. Back in Black. There's no better record, and
Speaker 1: none of their records are that good. So that's your
Speaker 1: favorite album of all time? No, no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: some of these albums are so overplayed that you can bear.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's a history with all of these albums.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, what is the best Beatles record?
Speaker 1: This is it's a whole a mother thing. You know,
Speaker 1: for a long time mine was. You know, people shoot
Speaker 1: on and now, but sergeant question, it's like, I literally
Speaker 1: I want you to answer the question. Literally can't answer.
Speaker 1: I just literally don't have an answer. I can put
Speaker 1: something out of my ask but too many records, favorite
Speaker 1: band of all time? No, I've followed you forever. Um,
Speaker 1: we've done friends forever. Your writing has changed, really it has.
Speaker 1: Tell me how it's changed. Well, you used to be um.
Speaker 1: Things used to be a lot more personal. Okay, on,
Speaker 1: without putting forth examples, I just want to ask you, like,
Speaker 1: how do you feel your writing house one question at
Speaker 1: one time. Let's talk about the personal. I love writing
Speaker 1: about the personal, and I would rather write about the
Speaker 1: personal than maybe maybe let me let me, let me
Speaker 1: go on about this, because you you hit on a
Speaker 1: key thing. I reached a certain level of ubiquity fame
Speaker 1: where if I write about anybody, they read it. So
Speaker 1: I wrote out about asking a girl for a dance
Speaker 1: at a bar Mitzvah party, and I heard from the woman.
Speaker 1: This is forty years later. Fifty years later, she lives
Speaker 1: in Boston. What else is like politics right now? Right?
Speaker 1: But she But then I was walking in the mountains
Speaker 1: just this week and I had, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have the unlimited plan with Verizon, and you've gotta be
Speaker 1: on Verizon no matter what anybody says. The connections are better,
Speaker 1: and especially SKI you get LT all over veil, whereas
Speaker 1: T Mobile and a T T you can get the text.
Speaker 1: I mean, I called the hospital. I thought a friend
Speaker 1: of might be injured. I never heard back. It's very
Speaker 1: important that that the connection comes in and Vail Verizon
Speaker 1: is the best connection. It is the most expensive anyway.
Speaker 1: But they just went to an unlimited plan. I don't
Speaker 1: I haven't gone to unlimited plants. I don't watch much video.
Speaker 1: But they have carry over such that I had some
Speaker 1: data carry over. So I said, I'm gonna use some
Speaker 1: of these music services us to pull out things while
Speaker 1: I'm hiking. And it's amazing going to hike. It burned
Speaker 1: up like two and a half gigs worth of data.
Speaker 1: And I'm going through things that come to my mind,
Speaker 1: and I think of the great Robbie Robertson song Broken Arrow. Okay,
Speaker 1: and I remembered how I got into it. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you the backstory, which I was unclear. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you some details I was not gonna put
Speaker 1: in a walkthrough. And by the way, this is the
Speaker 1: best part of the interview. Here we go, bobus. So,
Speaker 1: I was married and there's a lot of stories there,
Speaker 1: but it started to take a negative turn, and the
Speaker 1: woman I was married to was starting She grew up
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica, where I grew up in Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: she started to reconnect with some of the people she
Speaker 1: lived with in Santa Monica, and she reconnected with some
Speaker 1: people in Mill Valley and we she let's go up there,
Speaker 1: and I did, so we drove up. It was kind
Speaker 1: of okay. Now, it's like six or seven hours. These
Speaker 1: couple were very nice, and the next day we walked
Speaker 1: through Mill Valley and my girlfriend was my wife at
Speaker 1: that time, was really distant. I remember watching um the
Speaker 1: Traveling Wilberries on their TV. It just about the guy
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about the Traveling Wilberries. Two bedroom house.
Speaker 1: He and his wife were one bedroom, and they're two
Speaker 1: young twins under the age of five or in the
Speaker 1: other and I remember having sex with my ex wife
Speaker 1: on the other living room floor, so it made me
Speaker 1: feel like, hey, things are good again. Then we went
Speaker 1: to stay in you in San Francisco for a night
Speaker 1: before we drove home. After staying with this couple for
Speaker 1: two nights. What she was very non responsive and where
Speaker 1: do you want to go in San Francisco? Remember when
Speaker 1: I think it's called the Imaginarium or something like that,
Speaker 1: EXPLORATORI um. I went with her, and she was really distant.
Speaker 1: Where you want to stay? And we stayed here in
Speaker 1: the hotel was really distant, okay? And we left San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that early after staying the night. I assumed that
Speaker 1: she would drive something, but she wouldn't drive, and she
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk to me. And you're driving down the five
Speaker 1: and it's really creepy. And that Robbie Robertson album was new,
Speaker 1: and I heard Broken Arrow and it resonated. Okay, and
Speaker 1: I kept she was She's so distant. I just played
Speaker 1: it again and again and again. That's how I get
Speaker 1: into the track. Now I could have written I was
Speaker 1: thinking about writing about that. The problem is all my
Speaker 1: inspiration comes late at night, and I had to do
Speaker 1: something early in the morning that night and you can't
Speaker 1: sleep after writing. I would not have included the sex
Speaker 1: on the floor, okay, because people people can't handle it.
Speaker 1: I used to write about that, he used to That's
Speaker 1: that's kind of what I was then. I was talking
Speaker 1: about something with my uh this woman I lived within
Speaker 1: law school, and she's emailed me a number of times.
Speaker 1: It's like, you sit there and I hate to admit it.
Speaker 1: I'm inherently inhibited. It's I'm trying to get back into
Speaker 1: that zone. It's I was thinking about it just yesterday.
Speaker 1: When you no one's paying attention, you can do whatever
Speaker 1: you want. It's like, I went to this affair last night,
Speaker 1: and if I didn't have to get up early for
Speaker 1: this other appointment this morning, I might have written about
Speaker 1: it last night. Now I'm not exactly in the groove
Speaker 1: in the old days, I have written about it anyway,
Speaker 1: But I don't want to write and get ship. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is so important, let me expand it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Go Bob. I'm a great writer with people. The reason
Speaker 1: what I was doing in the music business for a year,
Speaker 1: nobody was doing anything like that. You invented this ship.
Speaker 1: But in the last few years. There's some people who
Speaker 1: do it, and there's some people with some decent insight,
Speaker 1: but they can't write for ship now. They can't write
Speaker 1: for ship. They're all about breaking stories, right, and so
Speaker 1: you read it even when it's analysis this you go,
Speaker 1: I just can't finish it. So first and foremost what
Speaker 1: I write has to be readable, okay, but well and enjoyable. Okay.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to say you have to. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to your eyes, don't it. You can't glaze over.
Speaker 1: What we have in society today is we have don't
Speaker 1: forget we have the Internet. We have we have newspapers
Speaker 1: and magazines. This woman, I know you used to write
Speaker 1: for the Wall Street Journal. They literally right the space. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't want to write the space. In addition writing
Speaker 1: for the phone with most people read this stuff on
Speaker 1: the phone now when you wrote for the computer, okay,
Speaker 1: people read more now on the phone. If it doesn't
Speaker 1: grab you right away, people, this is really fascinating. This
Speaker 1: is I can I'm like in the eye of the hurricane.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting this out and it's funny. I went to
Speaker 1: the City of Hope dinner. I wrote about um jay
Speaker 1: Z ticket sales. I didn't get such a big response.
Speaker 1: I went to the City Hope dinner two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Everybody want to talk about every promoter. I said, if
Speaker 1: I didn't come here, I wouldn't know. It's just like
Speaker 1: talking to you about this. So people right, books, Okay,
Speaker 1: The publishing business a very small business. They funked up
Speaker 1: and they killed the kindle. The kindle was about a
Speaker 1: lower barrier to entry. It was just like music in
Speaker 1: that there's no packaging costs, there's no returns. Okay, But
Speaker 1: they were so fearful books being cheap that they raised
Speaker 1: the prices and kept the physical book business going. So
Speaker 1: they cut off their nose despite their face. They kept
Speaker 1: their business small because we all know everybody's gonna eventually
Speaker 1: read digitally, but it's a small circle of educated people
Speaker 1: who believe that it should be rewriting. I read some
Speaker 1: of these books like this, Jennifer Egan. She's a nice person.
Speaker 1: This book is hard to read. It's got some good wisdom,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to read. So I sit at home
Speaker 1: and feel inadequate, and I feel in him, and I granted.
Speaker 1: As I was telling Jason Flow the other days, talk
Speaker 1: about these bands. Something I write. Listen, I reach more
Speaker 1: people than most of the bands I write about, but
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. I reach more people than people
Speaker 1: write novels, by a great thing. But I am inhibited.
Speaker 1: I would like to reach more people, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to be now that there's so many voices out there.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you listen, this has been very This has
Speaker 1: been the highlight for me. Yes, I would like to
Speaker 1: do more of that. But you write it, and you know,
Speaker 1: I wrote about getting my colonoscopy and people are tweeting.
Speaker 1: People are tweeting and they say, oh, I can't read
Speaker 1: that one based on the head, you know, but the header, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I've written a lot of stuff like that about
Speaker 1: getting dental work whatever, and my audience likes it, but
Speaker 1: there are people who can't handle it. And I'm I'm
Speaker 1: coming a long way, but I still have to get
Speaker 1: back to what I used to be. Well I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think, um, I think you have come a long way. Um,
Speaker 1: I think we're probably near the end of this all. Wait,
Speaker 1: just before we go any more questions about the writing, Well, no, uh,
Speaker 1: A couple of comments for you, okay, um one um uh,
Speaker 1: thank you for inviting me to be your You're my
Speaker 1: best interviewers, so I figured we start with you, and
Speaker 1: and I really do love you. And I'm sorry that
Speaker 1: our first encounter with me calling of me the annoying
Speaker 1: ball guy, and then you guy, really and then you
Speaker 1: really impressed me skiing um. You've you've done a couple
Speaker 1: of ride ofs about me, um which have really made
Speaker 1: a big difference in my career. And and I appreciate
Speaker 1: it that well, you know, as you know, whenever I
Speaker 1: say this doesn't work. But if you're a Todd Rundgren fan,
Speaker 1: and Todd Rungman belongs on the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame for both for those people who don't know
Speaker 1: he did, he produced the engineered the band Stage Fright.
Speaker 1: He produced Uh Grand Funk rail Roads were an American band,
Speaker 1: which is the best thing they ever did. They did
Speaker 1: a lot of crap shit, And he produced a lot
Speaker 1: of other great records. And he also made records and
Speaker 1: I understand what we do. He didn't want to repeat
Speaker 1: his successful records, but his breakthrough record, which was his
Speaker 1: third album, and it's great, although I think the second
Speaker 1: album is better than UH Run The Ballot of Todd
Speaker 1: rung in the first three sides are like McCartney's first
Speaker 1: solo album, where he plays all the instruments. Fourth side
Speaker 1: is a band side, and he goes at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the fourth side, he goes, we're changing the name
Speaker 1: of the album to send money. Just send money. And
Speaker 1: I always say that, you know, because I get a
Speaker 1: lot of perks, I could always use more money. So
Speaker 1: that's okay, And it's hard to believe people tell me
Speaker 1: I make a big difference. You know, I'm out of
Speaker 1: the loop, but I'm glad that I could help you.
Speaker 1: You've you've been a good friend and um, and we've
Speaker 1: been friends for twenty one years. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And the last thing, as I just want to remind you,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what year it was, but it was
Speaker 1: my favorite moment and ever with you. As we were
Speaker 1: on a plane, I think we're flying back from Aspen
Speaker 1: and and it was They're star in the Southern sky.
Speaker 1: I'm the whole plane fucking saying, well, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I've read somebody doing that. It was fucking magic, wasn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But okay, getting it. I saw I saw John at
Speaker 1: this classic West at Dodger Stadium over the summer, okay,
Speaker 1: and it was fired up. It was the reconstituted Eagles.
Speaker 1: So the first people was the Deobey Brothers. I happened
Speaker 1: to be a huge Deobey Brothers family because of that
Speaker 1: month in Mammoth the guy played the Captain and me
Speaker 1: and uh to lou Street and as a result, and
Speaker 1: I hear from those guys and I love them. And
Speaker 1: then the middle band was Journey, which they went off
Speaker 1: on a tangier too busy. Neil shown he was too
Speaker 1: busy being a rock god. And then the Eagles come
Speaker 1: out crushed and they come out to Seven Bridges Road.
Speaker 1: It's like one of those moments where you're like, this
Speaker 1: is exactly did you think about the plane road? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is exactly where it should be right now. What
Speaker 1: could be better than being here right now with perfect harmonies?
Speaker 1: What people don't understand when you what does he Crosby
Speaker 1: stills in Nash of the Old Days. It was just
Speaker 1: like the Woodstock movies. The harmonies were bad. So the
Speaker 1: fact that the Eagles can do it perfectly for those mean.
Speaker 1: Don Henley is a genius, but he is a difficult guy.
Speaker 1: But you know, you're hating some guy with an amazing
Speaker 1: amount of talent. If you can go see the Eagles
Speaker 1: and you get a chance. I know Glenn Fries dead,
Speaker 1: but they are literally better than they ever were. I
Speaker 1: I agree. And the funny thing about that plane, right
Speaker 1: is I think you and I started singing it, and
Speaker 1: then the whole fucking plane started singing it, and that
Speaker 1: was like that was part of one of the Aspen rituals.
Speaker 1: So right, but but just continuing before about that before
Speaker 1: we close it. It's like these songs that are in
Speaker 1: our DNA. But the other thing about it is, um,
Speaker 1: that's a difference between yesterday and today. Yes, people, but
Speaker 1: we all, we all knew these songs. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: off at a tangent because I want to tell a story.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm hanging with Al Cooper at the Guitar Center
Speaker 1: where they have a Guitar Center Hall of Fame and
Speaker 1: they put your finger, your handprints in whatever. And I
Speaker 1: know Al pretty well and we're talking for those who
Speaker 1: don't know. Al Cooper had a label called Sounds of
Speaker 1: the South and he produced the first I forget it
Speaker 1: was three, but certainly the first two. Leonard Skinner albums.
Speaker 1: First Skinnered album has Freebird. It came out at the
Speaker 1: end of set of seventy three and uh. A week later,
Speaker 1: Ronnie van Zandt calls him. They were living in Jacksonville.
Speaker 1: All's in Atlanta. So we got a new song. We
Speaker 1: want to come up and cut it. It was sweet
Speaker 1: Home Alabama. Okay. So they come up and cut Sweet
Speaker 1: Home Alabama and it doesn't come out for a year.
Speaker 1: And I'd say, al did you know? And he said
Speaker 1: it was sweet Home Alabama. I literally remember the first
Speaker 1: time I heard it. I was driving west to go
Speaker 1: from my ski bum life and I was avoiding the
Speaker 1: traffic going on the circle in St. Louis and it
Speaker 1: came on the stage. You go, what the funk is this? Okay?
Speaker 1: And that's the power of a great record. And all
Speaker 1: of this is based on hearing those great records like
Speaker 1: Seven Bridges Road. And even though people that's a great
Speaker 1: thing about today. There's so much music in today that
Speaker 1: being a hipster not only even counts. Some of these
Speaker 1: records are great, are known as great because they truly
Speaker 1: were that great, and it's great to share those records
Speaker 1: with you. Until next time. John, Hey, this is Bob
Speaker 1: left Sex. I want to thank you for your time.
Speaker 1: Much like the Left Sets Letter, I want to hear
Speaker 1: from you. You can email me at Bob at left
Speaker 1: sets dot com and let me know what you think.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your comments. Be sure to subscribe on tune in,
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