who is Bob Lefsetz?

isn't this dunce supposed to be a music writer?

Oh he’s so much more

And when it comes to ticketing... I heard a lot of inside information from the source, one on one, but you weren't there and I can't repeat it. The code of the road, the music business is a club and if you're not in it, you don't know. And most of what's worth knowing never hits the news. But you could get so much in conversation in Aspen.

I always forget this guy exists, were it not for this thread occasionally activating. Is he an AI? Does he just live in an underground bunker somewhere?

I get his emails but don’t always read more than the subject line. Peter Frampton emailed him I see

Queen Latifah? I've got nothing against the woman, but she's definitely a B-level artist.

She's literally been nominated for more Oscars than Billy Crystal

I respect Rénee Fleming, but it’s not really my bag.

just the dumbest man alive

A variety show with dancing and singing? They’re already gone from regular network TV, the idea of appealing to everybody went by the wayside

- literally some of the biggest shows in the world are dancing and singing performance shows

I do not remember this time 10 years ago when the young people of the world got together en masse to live tweet the Kennedy Center Honors

It must be a terrible thing, to have lived too long.

terrible for us at least

Dreadful

I'm stunned how much feedback I got about "Killers of the Flower Moon." If I'd written about a record I would have gotten a fraction of the responses. It seems more people are familiar with Scorsese's movie than the music of Taylor Swift.

sir you are 70 years old and your readers are even older

https://Twitter.com/carlzoilus/status/1749625426559877310?s=46&t=m63acfIIT8JsOyy5v_2nJw

Not that Collective Soul was a hair band, it wasn't even a band at first.

But I loved "December." Not that I would have put it that way prior to today. I always liked it, but thinking about it and playing it this morning made me smile.

And think about how I was not the only one who knew it. EVERYBODY knows it. Because it was a different era.

Collective Soul had a song other than "Shine"?

oh weird I had no memory of that but looked it up on YouTube and totally remembered it, I don't know if I knew it was called "December" or by Collective Soul

just a lonely guy thinkin about and smilin over the song we all know as "turn your head now baby spit me out"

i hate it when lefsetz makes me picture him listening to music alone

xpost - what really surprised me is learning that the song is actually about Jesus and communion, apparently!

lefsetz is definitely thinking of "a long december" by the counting crows, no?

no, he actually links to the song at the beginning, but "a long december" would make a lot more sense

lol just amazing

But on this extremely warm late January day in Southern California it’s in the mid-seventies and Felice opened the windows and the bubbler in the birdbath was driving me crazy, distracting me, getting under my skin, so I got up to shut the windows and that’s when my eye caught Alexa. I wasn’t looking, but I saw what she had to say, and it was “December.”

Now oftentimes Alexa will display the last cut you told her to play. I didn’t call out “December.” Did Felice? But I couldn’t imagine that. And I sat back down to the “Times” and my coffee yogurt and…

haha OH MY GOD LEF

I guess thinking of “December” made me think of “Push.” Which is a great cut, but I didn’t realize it until I heard the acoustic version recorded in the Star Lounge of radio station 98.7. I bought a CD of performances on the station, at Music Plus, on a bad Love@AOL date. Well, it was a little more complicated than that. I drove to the far west valley to sit down at a sushi bar where the woman professed love at first bite, which freaked me out, but by time I’d calmed down she wasn’t as infatuated, and then I played Van Halen’s “And the Cradle Will Rock…” at top volume on the Alpine/ADS system in my car and that sealed the deal, as in she put her hands over her ears and insisted I take her back to her automobile.

There are a few Collective Soul songs I hear all the time, and they all sound like someone else. "Shine" (a cross between STP and Supertramp?) "December" (Alice in Chains? Pearl Jam's "Glorified G"?), "The World I Know" (Goo Goo Dolls).

But on this extremely warm late January day in Southern California it’s in the mid-seventies and Felice opened the windows and the bubbler in the birdbath was driving me crazy, distracting me, getting under my skin, so I got up to shut the windows and that’s when my eye caught Alexa.

is this the enright translation

Xpost - that Lef playing Van Halen at top volume and thereby ending a date story!

it's incredible, truly

He made the choice he had to.

I like the system brand notes....if the "Steve Hoffman Forum" was more akin to the "Penthouse Forum" I would suspect Lef of having constructed one of those elaborate fake annecdotes...

Alpine car stereo is perfect for Lef

Have never listened to his podcast. He’s hyping his interview with Christopher Cross on it :

I loved talking to this guy. He wrote songs, played in cover bands and then connected with a last chance demo tape. He's a fan, just like you and me. You're going to enjoy this.

Is that quote from a 1979 newsletter

still celebrating the Newmannium

he writes that hype like George Zimmer trying to get you to come visit The Men's Wearhouse

Fitting that Eric Carmen’s passing is drawing more reader letters than anything else recently.

Yep. Lefsetz age group.

His broad statements and judgments are something—

Elon Musk is more of a rock star than anybody making music today, and this didn't used to be the case. If you wanted to know which way the wind blew, you listened to a record, not anymore.

This bothers me, how the MTV paradigm of a worldwide hit single now dominates. That there's no parallel alternative music and culture, of any significance, but they call it the music "business," and everybody follows the money. Starving artists don't pay fealty to the work, they just complain that they don't get paid.

Man in the silk suit hurries by as he catches the starving artist's eye
Just for fun he says, "Start a Substack."

Once again, I'm against war, period. However, in this case Hamas did attack.

This thread is evergreen.

Putting Damon Kurkowski on blast in the new letter, ugh.

if the history of language (+discourse in general) was a game of uno, the word "HOWEVER" is the draw 4. and some fucking assholes absolutely cannot wait to drop that fucker on you.

😂 omg Lefsetz says he hates America cause of people like me and of all things holds up my dear late friend Tom Rapp as an opposite ideal - does he know Tom and I made music together?? And that Tom stood up for workers both in his job as a civil rights attorney and as an artist?? https://t.co/yoWNaTWMeg

— Damon K 🎤 (@dada_drummer) March 28, 2024

do love a good clapback.

Lefsetz is so obsessed with defending Spotify

Today's music business is all about consumption, CONTINUED CONSUMPTION! Do you know what I'm interested in? What the numbers for "Cowboy Carter" are a year from now!

Lonesome Cowboy Bob

his Spotify obsession is the most annoying of his 1001 annoying thing, it's like I'M NOT SOME BRAIN DAMAGED BOOMER INDUSTRY HANGER ON I LOVE DIGITAL STREAMING BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON