who is Bob Lefsetz?

Stephanie Setz

It's not your father's music business anymore. And we're the fathers, if not the grandfathers! As great as Giraldo and Benatar are, they appeared quaint compared to the rest of the acts. They were a blast from the past. Today image is key. And dancing. The trappings. Once again, it's not the seventies anymore. Not even the eighties!

Once, it wasn’t the seventies any more. Now, it isn’t the seventies again!

This still ain‘t no summer of love

ah yes the '80s when pop stars didn't care about their image or dancing or...trappings

Can we return to the image-free 1970s musics of glam rock, P-funk, punk, hippies, disco, Bowie and Kraftwerk

Lol

Should have just said Psst! Come over here!

sic i would ultimately like to return to the image-free 1960s musics of motown, ed sullivan, and also hippies

perhaps the image-free 1950s of elvis and little richard will provide a safe space for all of us.

tbfttl The Lef did not make any claims about those decades in his current assertion

Seymour loved not only Chinese, but other cuisines

Clearly Stein died so he would never have to encounter a Lefsetz letter again.

OMG

Believe me, unless you were living in NYC you didn’t know about CBGB’s. And the Ramones… Even aficionados didn’t know the band had released records until the second, “Leave Home.” It was only by time the third, “Rocket to Russia” with “Rockaway Beach,” was released, that people realized this was a real act, committed to success, much more talented than they’d originally perceived. You see the Ramones were seen as a novelty, a curio, a one and done. I mean when were they gonna give up on the joke?

yes the first Ramones record, famously didn't have much of an influence.

what a fuckin dildo

Served up on a pu pu platter.(xps)

Unbelievable this Lefsetz blurb for the Rap Capital book:

“You’ll be dining out on the book for a week. Telling all the incredible stories to your friends. Atlanta is hiding in plain sight, still most people don’t see it. But if you read Rap Capital, you will.” --Bob Lefsetz, Lefsetz Letter

I've said it in this thread before. I definitely — on a primal level — *agree* with Lefsetz's underlying viewpoint that the monoculture is dead. In contrast to life in the '70s and '80s, fewer people have a grasp on an agreed "music narrative" because there's so fewer universal music narratives everyone can agree on, thanks to the ala carte nature of the streaming landscape + death of genre tribalism + record labels only betting on sure things post-recession + death of mtv/omnipresence of rock radio.

But to sit here as a grown man being like, "You know there's a secret little diamond in the rough called "Atlanta hip-hop"

Like it feels like fake naïveté, but just might be ... naïveté?

loved his column yesterday when he explained that most people don’t realize that atlanta has a big rap scene

― comedy khadafi (voodoo chili), Tuesday, September 13, 2022 10:50 PM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Tell us more, Bob, about this...Watergate thing?

If you weren't of age back then you have no idea how big the Watergate story was. Not only did they write a book about it, "All the President's Men," they made a first class movie based on the book.

what a fuckin dildo

LOL

They mentioned it in a Skynyrd song!

A book has never been written about a real life subject before! It was all made up before!!!!!

If you weren’t of age then, you have no idea how big the balloon boy story was!!!!

nothing lives up to its billing anymore. i first noticed this phenomenon in 1974...

https://frinkiac.com/img/S04E17/1010809.jpg

You see I know these billionaires. To be in their orbit...let's just say there's a lot of largesse.

Fuck Musk/Zuckerberg. I want a Lefsetz/Steve Hoffman duel to the death

"threads is napster"

got a kick out of this exchange on cnn dot com

Armani White 00:24:50

… of the things that happened as far as challenges, people remixing it. And people were like- like there was like a Latin version of "Billie Eilish." That that happened at one point. And like, there's a lot of these things happened after the song already came out.

Audie Cornish 00:25:13

BUT did you freak out and say, hey, that's my song, don't mess with it?

Armani White 00:25:17

NO, no, no, no, no. I think, so there was this there's this guy named Bob Lefsetz. I used to I used to be a part of his newsletter that used to get sent to my email every Monday. And one of the things he's talking about was how Prince used to fight the music industry so much his entire career. He fought the music industry. And one of the things that happened, like in the Napster era, in the early Internet era, he just fought to have his music off of the Internet … etc

I think Bob's dictating his newsletter into his phone these days. the entries are interminable

Not with his take on the Aldean controversy

But he's moved on to the anti-Semite at a ski resort who's sending him hateful emails

lefsetz and ted gi*ia are diametrically opposed on the issue of artist catalog sales. idk who to reflexively disagree with!

What's his take?

What's Gioia's take? (Is this the same guy who wrote a book on jazz history?)

lefsetz: artists are dumb for selling their catalog because their money won't grow
gioia: artists are sly foxes for hoodwinking vc/pe money men and selling high on their catalog before the value of the music depreciates

or you can interpret for yourself here

gioia: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/investment-funds-are-now-selling
lefsetz: https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2023/09/19/katy-perry-sells-catalog/

Why are people down on Goia?

Goia Trance

he's fine in his jazz wheelhouse but pretty dunderheaded when he tries to talk about any other genre or the modern music business

lefsetz: artists are dumb for selling their catalog because their money won't grow

i'm going to take a wild guess that lefsetz has never had a couple hundred million bucks to invest with. because based on my anecdotal knowledge of people who do, that pile tends to grow!

right

Jann Wenner on the podcast today. I don't think I could bear to listen, but wanted to pass that along.

A true meeting of the minds

oh God

lord why must you tempt me?

I dunno. Yasi Salek is discussing the Smiths over on Bandsplain, so I got better things to listen to, but it's there if you want it.

FWIW, there's a note on the Lefsetz pod that it was recorded prior to the he publication of the NYT interview.

Costco

Every rich person needs to go. Not to one in the tony suburbs, but the inner city, where all classes meet.