who is Bob Lefsetz?

But I've got to warn you. There are SEA CUCUMBERS!

Oh, you wear reef shoes. But littered on the bottom of the ocean are these...well, CUCUMBERS! But they're alive. And squishy. And they urinate. And it's almost so gross you don't want to go in. You CERTAINLY don't want to step on one.

...

"Dvorak-style amalgam of ex-ATN writers taking the piss" is the FUNNIEST PHRASE I HAVE READ ALL DAY though i don't know why.

He also turns up on the Rhino podcast with hystronic tirades about The State Of Things and endless flashbacks to his life in the 70s when things were So Much Better. In short, he's one of the Ghost World record collectors only with an income.

You know what brings you back, again and again, to Bob Lefsetz? It's the PASSION. Oh, you can try to stay away. You can subscribe to a million other blogs. You can tell yourself that music's changed, or that you've changed, or that you don't understand anymore. But you know what? It's not that you've got older - it's that your generation has lost touch! They've SOLD OUT. And it's the KIDS on the INTERNET with thei iPods and their Blackberries who are reminding you why you got into this WHOLE CRAZY FUCKING BUSINESS IN THE FIRST PLACE. It's the MUSIC! Oh, you can tell yourself it isn't. BUT IT IS. And if you don't listen, you and every other exec LEECHING off the hindquarters of a MEMORY is going to BITE THE FUCKING DUST!

Heheh.
I unsubscribed offa the Lef'Letter again awhile ago.

Seriously though his blog is my fave industry read and has been for a while now.

omg somebody's gotta imagebomb this dude and his ridiculous opinions

Another thread on him. Also, Chuck mentioned and quoted a recent Lefsetz country music and Sirius radio thing on the Rolling Country thread.

His most recent column begins 'I was at the psychiatrist today...'. Magnificent. We are Lefsetz FANATICS at our house. Oh, you can laugh. But that's because you're HISTORY.

How about that T.I. diatribe...Is he right about touring rock bands having more sustained longevity than rappers or pop acts?

But I'll take T.I. over Rory Gallagher and many of the washed-up blooz-rockers and classic-rock dudes he loves.

Is he right about touring rock bands having more sustained longevity than rappers or pop acts?...YES

...he must have a lot of time on his hands and he reminds me of mixerman

Who's mixerman? I think Lefsetz is a retired music biz attorney.

One of his pet themes is that only individuals whom he says audiences perceive as 'real' will have lasting careers. He says this does not include American Idol performers and most rappers and pop acts.

Nelly Furtado Thursday 6/7/07 The WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY Gross: $316,400 4,992/4,992 (100% Ticket prices: $65.00/$45.00 That was her best gig. In Boston, she did 3,644 out of 6,500 (56.1%). In Sayreville, NJ, she did 1,165 out of 2,050 (56.8%). In Detroit, she did 1,761 out of 2,585 (68.1%). In Grand Prairie, TX, she did 2,375 out of 2,503 (94.9%). In other words, she did SHITTY! And these weren't big halls to begin with, positively small, THEATRES! Her album has sold 1,873,719 copies, it's still number 50 on the chart A YEAR LATER! In other words, record sales don't mean shit. Work with Timbaland all you want. Have a hit on Top Forty radio that fewer people are listening to every day. Most people are not paying attention. They don't think you're REAL! Real acts don't conspire with a multitude of people, the usual suspects, to create their of the moment music. No one's even going to REMEMBER her tracks half a decade from now. No one's even going to PLAY them! (Have you heard Eminem recently?) It's not about music being stolen, that's not the big story in the music business today. It's about the bifurcation in its soul. Touring used to reflect record sales. No longer is this the case. And the real acts, the lasting acts, can all do good live business. The public got the memo, the press has not. As for the major labels? If they want a taste of every piece of the pie they've got to be trustworthy, have the act's best interests at heart. Ain't that a laugh.

so bob thinks the PUBLIC wants REAL, but it's hard to notice that said public has responded to THE REAL BOB himself by leaving ZERO COMMENTS so far on his latest blog post. ZERO COMMENTS on the post before that. ZERO COMMENTS on his LAST FOUR POSTS, in fact. the one before that elicited ONE COMMENT. so maybe everyone's talking about him but NO ONE CARES. most people are not paying attention. in other words, capital-letter posts about THE REAL don't mean shit. on the other hand, matthew fluxblog, champion of the pop, the artificial, the unreal, got 14 COMMENTS on his most recent posts. and 20 COMMENTS on the one before that. and 12 comments for his thoughts on KELLY CLARKSON. take that, bob!

So who's READING these blogs? The Arizona girl you met at UCLA you secretly wanted to fuck? NO! That aging A&R rep with the combover whose ass you wanted to kick cos he thought he was DOWN with the kids? NO-ONE who CARES about MUSIC reads BLOGS! They're too busy LIVING! And what do they want as their soundtrack to life? Music about LOVE - love gained, love lost, love refrigerated briefly prior to baking. LOVE is what keeps us coming back to music. NOT blogs. NOT UCLA postgrad programs. NOT even Arizona girls. And especially not Matthew fucking PERPETUA.

Who's mixerman?

http://www.mixerman.net/diaries_main.php

With just a few changes to the word lists, Lefsetz could pass for a SubGenius spewbot.

ctrl-f HITS not found

Bob always quotes 2 types of e-mail responses he gets (as many folks receive his stuff via e-mail rather than looking at his site)--from retired or current folks in the biz, or from ordinary folks who tell him how much they love 'real' music and then proceed to enthuse about the most bland middlebrow rock. The tone in both types of responses are often pretty amusing.

But I'll take T.I. over Rory Gallagher

Any sane person would. (Which says it all.)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=laBpl0TPaNg

I never heard of this guy until yesterday, but his old timer shtick is kind of entertaining, I read it hearing the voice of Bob "The Kid Stays In The Picture" Evans, and then think of the Martin Landau character from Entourage.

Subscribed a couple of weeks ago after someone mentioned him on the Radiohead thread, I tried, but I just don't get it, unsubscribed again.

Random thoughts that go nowhere, boasting about scoring a tour jacket from a 70's Clapton tour, comments from people who apparently do get what he means, irrelevant grumpy old man stuff, nothing I want to read about several times a day.

Am I missing something or is that it?

His rants against the music biz, while largely predictable at this point, are often entertaining reading. Same goes for his stories of his life and his nostalgia.

omg somebody's gotta imagebomb this dude and his ridiculous opinions

Article on Lefsetz in the Washington Post

The fact that he is "one of the music industry's most influential analysts" speaks volumes. If you pretend you're reading an Onion editorial his pieces are entertaining though.

When I worked at Rhino, I'd hear stories about Bob's refusals to edit his histrionic rants. Consequently, most 'casts were 90 percent wall-bouncing froth over Spirit's Dr. Sardonicus and tear-soaked Aspen weekends in '75 when MUSIC and LOVE were REAL and YOUNG, 10 percent contributions from actual Rhino employees.

He's like Lsetz, the Dean of Music Analysis.

Oh not that guy again. There was also this interesting take on Feist.

ugh.

he reminds me of ben gazzara as jackie treehorn: "we used to have a little thing called production values... FEELINGS..."

That and the Onion editorial comment both made me roffle.

howard_beale.jpg

I kinda like reading his rants as SubGenius devival art but the guy can't be bothered to put the full text of his posts in his RSS feed so screw it.

LOL at his anti-Ticketmaster rant. Welcome to 1994 Bob!

oh man is he ever happy about the new Tom Petty

Mudcrutch vs. Tin Machine

I'm officially starting the trend of calling them The Crutch.

dudes don't harsh The Crutch

dude, The Crutch killed it last nite at the cow palace

Pure seventies. Pure magic.

dude the crutch don't know any other way to rock.

Pure seventies. Pure magic.

this was totally my favorite line

Kind of sums it all up, doesn't it?

White Room

by Bob Lefsetz

The sixties were different. They were light, and dark, and nothing in between. Today we live in the gray. In the onslaught of media, nothing sticks out, nothing is in relief, we're all hiding in our bunkers, trying to figure it all out. But, in the sixties, we ventured out, we wanted to experience IT ALL!

In the sixties there was context. It wasn't like today, where without a major hype campaign nobody knows the story. We only had three TV networks. "Rolling Stone" didn't come on the scene until the end of the decade. There were limited media outlets, and we paid attention. The big breakthrough was FM underground radio, and you were lucky if you had an outlet in your community, where you could hear Cream.

Cream was something you heard about from your friends. You went over to somebody's house and they played you "Sunshine Of Your Love". Pete Townshend eventually sang about one note, pure and easy, playing so free, but really it was one RIFF that people lined up behind. And that riff, the one that got it all started, was the one from "Sunshine Of Your Love".

Listen to "Sunshine Of Your Love" today, you'll be STUNNED how little is on the record. God, it sounds like there were NO overdubs, just a power trio laying it down. Still, it wasn't just the notes Clapton was playing, it was the SOUND of those notes. There was a RICHNESS in this hard rock, a SWEETNESS! This wasn't music for boys only, this was music for EVERYBODY with genitals. It had such a weird effect on you, hearing this sound, you felt it in different parts of your body, your brain, your lower abdomen and your groin. Right after the set-up, after the richness, there's this bit of distortion in the guitar, you feel like you're in it for the long haul, to climax, four minutes hence.

Hearing "Sunshine Of Your Love" you had to buy "Disraeli Gears". And that's when you discovered it, the essence, opening side two.

Today the label picks the track, and what's left of radio takes instruction, it's all a CAMPAIGN, which you're AWARE OF! But listening to FM back then was like listening to XM today. Your relationship is with the DEEJAY! Not his voice, not his inane rap like on Sirius, but his CHOICES! That's why we love people, because of who they ARE! And when you heard "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" on the radio your life was made, the same way when Mike Marrone plays some obscure cut that only I thought I knew it makes my day.

One can argue quite strongly the first Cream album is the best. The sound isn't as good as "Disraeli Gears", but overall the songs are BETTER!

But after "Disraeli Gears", the songs got worse. Except for the unexpected "Badge", NOTHING was the caliber of what came before. Still, there was a huge hit on "Wheels Of Fire", a simple song, but one with a monster riff so exquisite that we were touched once again. It was just the SOUND of Clapton's guitar, it sounded like he was WEEPING! But then Ginger hit the drum, and Jack sang richly. Yes, as great as Clapton was, Jack's vocals were a key element of the band.

The dude who made available the MP3s of the Royal Albert Hall show left three out, the last three numbers of the concert. He hopped to, posted them on the site, and I just downloaded them, and heard "White Room".

I don't understand flying around the world to see a band. That's not what rock and roll is about. Rock and roll is about scraping up every dollar you've got, eating the equivalent of dog food just so you can AFFORD to go to the gig. The gig isn't an afterthought, ONE thing you can acquire, experience, but the ONLY thing!

While we were experiencing flower power in the U.S., the Brits were experiencing rain. The music from across the pond was different from ours. It wasn't sunny, it was dark. Made in the U.K., it was America's dark underbelly. It coexisted with Monkees hits. It was necessary, for balance.

Flying across the pond forty years later has NO darkness. Unless you saved up every last dollar you had and slept on the street in order to go.

And, going was SO much different then. You went ALL THE TIME! Because the tickets were CHEAP! Under five bucks. The concert experience wasn't about preferred parking and alcohol, it was about the MUSIC!

And that music can be heard in Cream's rendition of "White Room" on May 5th.

Eric gets that unique guitar sound. But really, it's Ginger's drums. You can hear the FEROCITY!

And then, on top of it all, in comes Jack.

Oh, he's singing along, all those words you remember. And then you hear it...

"I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves"

I'm waiting for this place to return. Where business trumps art. Where creativity is revered over music. Where the messiah returns.

Religious zealots think the messiah is going to come from heaven. Down to save us.

But I don't believe that. I don't believe in a higher power. I believe in people. Their ability to triumph, do the right thing, against incredible odds.

Here, just before the show is over, almost two hours into it, having deliv ered upon expectations, Cream FINALLY throws off the limitations and just RIPS! THIS is music-making. When you're no longer going by the rehearsal, when you're just WINGING IT! When you stop concentrating on being together, do your own thing and it all FALLS INTO PLACE!

And a little over halfway through the number, Eric finally takes center stage, he finally WAILS! Not in the way he has for the past thirty years, but the way he did with John Mayall, as a SIDEMAN! In the tradition of great bluesmen, he's taking his LICKS! He's just part of the club.

And all these years later, it's still a championship team.

How many of his letters start out with something about the sixties or the classic era being "different"?

Lefzetz meets Pitchfork, world implodes.

kinda burying the lede on this new one fact checking cuz...Bob is angry because Bad Company isn't on the Rolling Stone list & he spends the last third of the letter doing his dimestore Jim Ladd at midnight thing with it

Everybody wants to write this era and this music off. They just want to talk about punk. But that came after. And it wasn’t a response to Bad Company or Aerosmith, neither was ever labeled corporate rock.

I could go on, Bad Company certainly did.

"Feel Like Talkin' Crap"

kinda burying the lede on this new one fact checking cuz

haha that would have required me to keep reading

Goddammit, is this asshole gonna ruin Bad Company for me?

definitively yes

how dare he

"Rock Steady" had a groove, in the pocket, raw rock and roll. But Ron Wood's barely listenable pedestrian "I've Got My Own Album to Do" is #48 on "Rolling Stone"'s list.

this is a direct attack on one of the greatest threads in the history of this board. he must realize this means war

What the fuck list is he talking about?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-albums-1974-1235138526/

He's also mad that NY Dolls second album In Too Much Too Soon is at 8. He says its "mediocre"

I went into that list specifically looking for Miles Davis's Get Up With It, Santana's Lotus, and Yes's Relayer. Davis was at #31, the other two were absent.

Sure, those are good, but how do they stack up against the first Kiss album?

Well, something good came out of it — I spent last night putting together a list of 50 great jazz albums from 1974, which will run on Burning Ambulance before the end of the year (obviously).

Is it rockist to rate Bad Company over Neil, or is it something worse?

it's 100 percent fine to rate bad company over neil! it's just weird to be a 70something lifelong industry insider and classic rock fan and never to have met a single person who likes on the beach.

like, you'd think at some point in his life he rode a ski lift at vail with a neil fan. or that one of the 10 million '70s rock dudes he's had on his podcast has mentioned it. or that he actually reads the mojos and rolling stones that the mailman brings to his house every month.

the thing he's right about is that Young's work has accrued critical consensus over time, it's just that he doesn't put it that way, because he does not know how. but he's right about this -- all those Neil Young records were The Nice Price back in the day, and cut-outs were plentiful, they were not popular records. In the US "Beach" peaked at 16 and it didn't have a single that cracked the top 50. Young didn't tour the record, he went out with CSNY. what Bob doesn't understand is that the way something is received in the moment matters less than how it continues to exist over time. Our Bob does not understand dynamic tension, for him every moment congeals into an image of itself as soon as it passes, and he thinks that because he focuses so intensely on those moments, he's getting a good view of them, but they are distorted by his assumptions, which solidified the moment they were made.

Harvest is the fourth studio album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young [...] It was the best-selling album of 1972 in the United States.[5]

yeah monster album no doubt. but on the beach stalled at 16, tonight's the night at 25, zuma the same, he didn't see the top 10 again until comes a time. harvest was an album people who only had a single crate full of lp's had. all those ones I name were staples of the cut-out bin.

you could say that On the Beach "stalled" or you could say that it was certified gold. i'm sure the first few Bad Company records sold better than like Zuma but i don't think it's fair to say he wasn't a hugely successful artist in this era

He's also mad that NY Dolls second album In Too Much Too Soon is at 8. He says its "mediocre"

― curmudgeon, Thursday, November 21, 2024 9:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

stopped clock right here

Neil Young to Bob Lefsetz: "You're no better than me, for what you've shown".

Bob Lefsetz to Neil Young: "You're all just pissin' in the wind".

"...unlike Bad Company"

He's also mad that NY Dolls second album In Too Much Too Soon is at 8. He says its "mediocre"

― curmudgeon, Thursday, November 21, 2024 9:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

stopped clock right here

― budo jeru, Friday, November 22, 2024 7:57 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

shots fired

Surely we can all agree that the worst album on the Rolling Stone list is Late For the Sky?

On the Beach was also unavailable for many years.

xpost With the Eagles sitting right at the start?

Babylon / 9
Stranded in the Jungle / 8
Who Are the Mystery Girls? / 10
(There's Gonna Be A) Showdown / 7
It's Too Late / can't lie this one just has vanished from my memory. bet it's good tho
Puss 'n' Boots 10
Chatterbox 8
Bad Detective ok I used to love this one but the lol Chinatown shit has aged v badly. no rating
Don't Start Me Talkin' 11, 12, ascended temple of rock level
Human Being 10

Lefsetz follow-up email excerpt Sunday:

People can't read.

My inbox is inundated with people who believe I suggested someone shoot Michael Rapino.

I wrote:

"Will someone shoot Michael Rapino?"

Do you see the question mark at the end?

IT'S A QUESTION! Not a suggestion.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Lefsetz earlier Sunday email titled Michael Rapino excerpt:

Will someone shoot him?

I can't think of a more hated company than Ticketmaster. And if you look up Rapino's compensation...

Not that anyone died from being unable to get a concert ticket, but we have an entire nation of pissed-off customers.

And if Rapino were to die, it would be the acts Live Nation promotes that would be responsible. And the agents and managers who represent them.

The fees were developed as a way to create a pool of revenue that the acts couldn't commission. No fees, no profits, and every business needs to make profits to stay in business.

But what about the poor acts playing clubs, posting on Spotify to nearly zero acclaim. They've got to blame someone for their lack of financial success. And the target is on the back of Ticketmaster. The fees on a club show ticket can be as high as the face price. And both the acts and the customers are bitching about this. The acts believe they're entitled to get out of the van, get a bus or stay in hotels...and live at least a fraction of the life of superstars. Aren't they in the business too?

And fans quite rightly can't fathom the fact that fees are astronomical on smaller shows.

But the truth is just because you call yourself a musician does not mean you're entitled to be rich. No one complains in sports when they can't make it in the NBA or MLB. They have to face the fact that they're just not good enough, or have aged out. But in music!

And you can't say this because you're pissing on someone's dreams. What world do we live in where we need to support everyone who makes music? Where everyone who posts on Spotify is entitled to leave their day job?

But without these fees, there is no show. There are costs. Acts and customers are irrational. But this irrationality has a price.

Hatred of everyone on the business side of the equation.

Bob Lefsetz... welcome to the resistance

He still doesn't get it

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

Don't you see the question mark!

he certainly outlined a compelling case for such a thing?
(note question mark)

this guy is so awesome

Lefsetz email with subject line : Too 10 Lists

Here’s part of it. It makes me laugh

I'm disturbed by the annual Top Ten lists. In many cases, they're comprised of music I've never heard, if not acts I've never heard of. And there's a distinct focus on pop, what is in the Spotify Top 50, and hipster music that is loved by a small slice of the public. Meanwhile when you look at what is selling tickets it is completely different. Pop doesn't dominate clubs, it's almost completely absent. And clubs is where live acts start their journeys, where they build their careers. And these are careers that last, that are not dependent upon hit singles.

They're not sexy for the press, because there's no flash, no theoretical universal story that appeals to all.

There's no rock on these lists, nothing that appeared on the Active Rock chart. These acts tour year after year to big bucks, they have dedicated fans, are you telling me that not one of them made worthwhile recorded music this year? ….

instead of top ten lists, we should have five finger death punches

Here is more :

The music scene is incomprehensible. Those at mainstream media outlets seem to have forgotten the pre-MTV era, where hits were not everything and lyrics dealt with more than love. Of course there are critical darlings, hip acts akin to those of yore, but most people have never heard of them and most people never will.

I think he just wants a list of age 70 something rock acts that are still touring

This guy really is a master class. Just 20 years of being confidently wrong about everything and just posting through it. What an icon.

Like I wholeheartedly agree with the central Lefsetz Premise that life would be exponentially better if we all returned a world of genre-crossing '60s A.M. radio, counter-culture media, arena rock bands that could play instruments, albums as cohesive statements and pop stars who exist on a scale between game-changing iconoclast and monocultural talking point. But we'd have to undo like 50 years of global economic and technological changes, so idk

Like he's absolutely right in that the American media has pretty much turned its back on the still incredibly popular world of rock music, but I can't really be convinced that a reality where critics ride for Linkin Park and Falling in Reverse would be all that better than Charli and Chappell. I think the Jack White album being good was kind of a fluke and has been popping up.

So, let's say I even want to go out to a club. Do I really want to hear some unsigned band playing original material, drowning out my conversation? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Are there acts with such a draw that you go to see them, to listen to them? Absolutely. But they are few and far between. Like I said above, that's not how acts develop these days, they do so online. Of course there are genres like jam, that defy the paradigm, but today's action starts with the recording, and then the live show

One Month Passes

Pop doesn't dominate clubs, it's almost completely absent. And clubs is where live acts start their journeys, where they build their careers. And these are careers that last, that are not dependent upon hit singles.

nek minnit

he has such a distinct vision of “the club” that he doesn’t evoke in any way? like a kind of city like Nashville or New Orleans where there are bars or entire districts of them that have live music several nights a week.

is that even a thing in LA in 2024, which is presumably the city he has in mind, or is he thinking of a different decade?

lol this fucking guy

Has "the club" meant anything beside "a DJ" since the late 90s?

And these are careers that last, that are not dependent upon hit singles.

says the guy who's been writing about Taylor Swift for 18 years

Yep.

Re his club take--
He has likely never been to a dj club or a dj night and must skip the stuff in Billboard about them. A live music club and a bar and a concert hall and an arena and Coachella are all he knows.

you was at the club - the bob bob west coast

We all Lef in da klerb.