My guess is late '21, more likely '22... It's gonna take that long for what I call the germophobia economy to be slowly killed off and be replaced by what I call the claustrophobia economy, which is everybody wants to get out and go back to dinner and have their life and go to festivals and go to shows. | | | | Masked drummer: Beach Bunny's Jon Alvarado soundchecking for a livestreamed concert at Lincoln Hall, Chicago, July 15, 2020.
(Scott Olson/Getty Images) | | | | | | “My guess is late '21, more likely '22... It's gonna take that long for what I call the germophobia economy to be slowly killed off and be replaced by what I call the claustrophobia economy, which is everybody wants to get out and go back to dinner and have their life and go to festivals and go to shows.”
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| | rantnrave:// Catching up after a week away (away in my living room, that is): I don't know if the MARC GEIGER quote heard 'round the world about live music not truly coming back until 2022—he prefaced it with "in my humble opinion" and used the word "if" a couple times—is going to be proved correct or not, but I suspect it will be quite some time before anyone can even begin to make a counterargument, if there's a counterargument to be made. What I appreciate about Geiger's take is he wasn't trying to say when the concert business should or must come back; he was, rather, offering an educated guess on when it *can* come back based on factors largely beyond the control of anyone in the business. This strikes me as the most honest way to face a crisis in which the live entertainment industry, for all the devastation it's facing, is one line on a long list of victims. Music fans, medicine and the virus itself will let bands, promoters, venues and agents know when they're ready. The business can prepare for that day and do its best to adjust to our new reality in the meantime, but it doesn't get to decide when that day will be. The former head of music at WME also told BOB LEFSETZ that music itself is as healthy and vibrant as it's ever been, while making no good promises for the industry around it, especially small- and medium-sized companies. "The economic devastation is gonna be bigger than people think," Geiger said. "The reshaping is gonna be bigger than people think"... There will still be live music here and there in the meantime, even while concerts remain on general hold. The three-day hard-rock MINI FEST, an awful name promoters came up with in a hurry to replace the much awfuller HERD IMMUNITY FESTIVAL, happened over the weekend in Ringle, Wis., and SPONGE frontman VIN DOMBROSKI tells the Michigan newspaper the OAKLAND PRESS that fans did "a good job" of social distancing at the outdoor gig. By that, Dombroski means they generally kept six feet apart but didn't wear masks, which, for the record, is not a good job, it's an objectively awful job, and promoters should be much more embarrassed by that than by the dumb name. Every worn mask is one step closer to concerts actually being able to return. Every unworn mark is one step further away... England swears it's going to allow indoor concerts, and other indoor live entertainment, socially distanced of course, starting in August... LA mainstay the SATELLITE is giving up on live music and turning into a restaurant... Suggestion for the chart gods at BILLBOARD, who just changed their rules for bundled albums for the second time in six months: Either count bundles or don't. It seems unlikely the best answer will ever exist anywhere in between... LIVE NATION is promising to double the percentage of Black executives at director level and above and to greatly diversify both its upper level management and its board by 2025. Good... DAYNA FRANK, CEO of FIRST AVENUE PRODUCTIONS in Minneapolis and president of the NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION, is the cover star of POLLSTAR's IMPACT 50 issue... VARIETY singles out DINA LAPOLT in its list of the top music lawyers of 2020... With a crystalline voice, a songwriting gift that channeled PAUL MCCARTNEY and HARRY NILSSON and a home-recording bug that was decades ahead of its time, EMITT RHODES was one of the lost wonders of late '60s and early '70s pop. He was adored by the power-pop cult, covered by the likes of FAIRPORT CONVENTION and the BANGLES and ignored by most of the big bad world. He released one album with his band the MERRY-GO-ROUND and four solo albums, three of which he recorded at home on four-track (way before this became a thing that artists do; it was actually against union rules at the time) while playing all the instruments. Frustrated with the business and having made pretty much no money, he then set his own career aside and became a staff engineer/producer for ELEKTRA/ASYLUM. And then, a few false starts and 43 (!) years later, he returned in 2016 with an album that, magically if not improbably, did justice to his legend, with help from disciples including JON BRION and SUSANNA HOFFS. RIP... RIP also EDDIE GALE, NAYA RIVERA, IDA HAENDEL, STEVE SUTHERLAND, MR. CHI PIG, EL DANY, PHIL ASHLEY, MARGA RICHTER, REGGIE HAYNES and PATRICK ELLIS. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | you take the dark out of the night |
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| Former worldwide head of music at WME, Marc Geiger has history as an agent, a record company executive and a tech founder. Known as a seer, here Marc dives into the inner workings of the agency business and assesses the concert landscape. | | |
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| Songs continue to explode on the app, but listeners often fail to form a connection with the artists behind the singles. | | |
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| A documentary about Emitt Rhodes. | | |
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| “Can we just get to 2021?” asks Avenue Beat’s new viral hit. Other artists are ready for this nightmarish year to be over, too. | | |
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| Classical musicians, composers and institutions are using the pause in live music to start a conversation. | | |
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| With over 40 years of success in the live production business, one would think tours of every stripe would be lining up to hire Lance “K.C.” Jackson and Bill Reeves as tour or production managers. Unfortunately, for over four decades in an industry severely lacking in racial diversity and inclusion, no major tour by a white artist ever called. They're working to change that. | | |
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| With regular music festivals, people can more easily seek help or advice about drug and alcohol or mental health issues. But with drive-ins we need to be creative to minimise harms. | | |
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| The MP3, not the invention of vinyl, was the most revolutionary format in musical history. | | |
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| For the beatmakers amassing an empire on YouTube, keywords can matter as much as any synth or sample they use. It helps if those words are "Drake," "Future," "Roddy Ricch," or the names of any number of popular artists whom up-and-coming rappers and vocalists are looking to tap into. | | |
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| The New York Review of Books |
| Did Sun Ra truly believe he had once been transmolecularized to Saturn? Did he really want to save black people by sending them to outer space? Was he some kind of intergalactic Marcus Garvey, who sold tickets back to Africa but never set sail? Was he pulling an elaborate prank? | | |
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| In an excerpt from her upcoming book "Larger Than Life," journalist Maria Sherman examines how Jackson 5, Menudo and New Edition inspired a generation of groups. | | |
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| To say Dayna Frank has had an eventful 2020 doesn’t even scratch the surface. | | |
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| Outdustry CEO Ed Peto discusses his new publishing company, which specializes in the China music market, what stands in the way of generating publishing revenue in the region, and his perspective on… | | |
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| After 14 years, the band formerly known as The Dixie Chicks is returning to a radically different industry. But they aren’t interested in vindication: 'We gave up caring about any of that.' | | |
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| After years of feeling isolated in my fandom, witnessing my favorite bands supporting Black Lives Matter has been both meaningful and conflicting. | | |
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| Thanks to savvy booking of multiple generations of hit acts, the festival met an audience eagerly awaiting its moment. | | |
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| The 1993 song reinvigorated the rap legend’s career - and against all odds became a Hollywood (and police) favorite. | | |
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| We look at a dozen songs — including the Stones' and Neil Young's — that no one would play at a rally again if they listened to the words... unless someone's sending a secret message about a campaign death wish. | | |
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| Listen closely to the start of "Hey Mama" by David Guetta, Nicki Minaj, Afrojack, and Bebe Rexha and you'll hear voices chanting "Be my woman, girl, I'll be your man." The voices belong to CB Cook and 10 other prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. These men never got credit for their work, even though it's been reused by everyone from Guetta to the Animals to Nina Simone. | | |
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| For musicians who want to play together while following social distancing guidelines, the solution goes beyond a Zoom call. Pianist Dan Tepfer leads us down the technological rabbit hole. | | |
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| When she’s not tending to patients in Australian emergency rooms, Dania Shihab oversees Barcelona’s bespoke Paralaxe Editions label. | | |
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