Also from the NYT, a review of a radio-sponsored potpourri concert in NYC, described as “an unstructured jumble of a night”:

On this patience-testing night full of sound difficulties, artist no-shows (Lil Mama, Shawty Lo) and some unreasonably long gaps between acts, the Tallahassee, Fla., rapper-turned-singer T-Pain was a welcome relief…

I realize all sorts of artists put on disorganized shows, but in my experience hip-hop and r&b shows are worse than most. The thrust of the piece was that the show was so delayed that T-Pain, the headliner, had to do quick, abbreviated versions of his songs because the show had to end at a certain hour:

Given the abbreviated nature of his set, T-Pain quickly shifted from playing full songs, to just verses, to having his D.J. play the first few notes of a song before cutting it off.

Sounds like a great night!

Yesterday (“Getting the Stones story wrong”) we saw transcontinental confusion, from London (The Observer) to San Fransisco (Wired News) about rumors that had the Rolling Stones working on a 360 deal with Live Nation.

Today, Reuters has a story saying the Stones are denying the reports. Well, sort of:

“We are not in talks with Live Nation in connection with any record deal,” London-based Rolling Stones spokesman Bernard Doherty said on Monday, reading from a brief statement.

If the denial is to be believed, the Observer was talking through its hat. The story included this assertion: “It is understood that Universal will have a role, with Live Nation licensing new versions of the [Stones’] catalogue to the American label, which would sell them online and as CDs.”

Whether the comment was designed to smooth ruffled feathers at EMI or just to keep attention focused on the band isn’t clear. A touring deal between the Stones and Live Nation will at once be more and less significant than Madonna’s or Jay-Z’s. It certainly won’t be a long-term set-up; Mick Jagger is 65, fifteen years older than Madonna, and sooner or later exhaustion or, sad to say, death is going to catch up with the band.

On the other hand, the Stones’ tour grosses are in a class by themselves; if Live Nation signed the band tomorrow just for touring (not even merchandise) and gave the group an advance equal to the gross of its last tour, that figure ($550 million) would be bigger than that of the Madonna and Jay-Z deals combined.

Meanwhile, Wired corrects itself for a mistake it didn’t make. Originally it repeated the Observer, which said the Stones had been with EMI for 31 years; Wired now says the band had only been with EMI since the conglomerate bought Virgin. But this is true only for U.S. releases; the group did have EMI distribute Rolling Stones Records for the rest of the world since the late 1970s. (My source is Old Gods Almost Dead.)

Wired doesn’t correct its figure for the group’s last tour grosses (”nearly three quarters of a billion dollars”) and displays its unfamiliarity with the concert-ticketing industry as well:

When the company’s contract with TicketMaster runs out next year, it will hopefully bring more competition to the online ticketing market, though we’re not holding our breath.

The company isn’t going to compete with Ticketmaster; it’s going to take the exorbitant and unnecessary fees the company collected for itself!

The Observer reports, and Wired’s Listening Post blog picks up, a story that the the Rolling Stones will soon sign a 360 deal with Clear Channel Live Nation. As is typical in such stories, they are largely promotional, don’t examine the implications of the figures they are reporting, and are contradictory of other recent reportage.

From the Observer:

The Rolling Stones are on the verge of ending their 31-year relationship with EMI, dealing a blow to private equity owner Terra Firma, led by Guy Hands, which acquired the label in a £3.2bn deal last summer.

Sources say the group is close to clinching a deal with Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promotion firm, which would market its back catalogue, depriving EMI of around £3m a year. Live Nation, which last year poached Madonna from Warner, would also take highly profitable merchandising and touring rights for future Stones shows, some of which have grossed as much as £750m.

Note that the “31-year relationship” refers only to sales outside the U.S. Even by the lower standards of UK journalism, this is pretty silly. It’s unclear if the Stones will take its catalog with them; the NYT reported yesterday that “If the Stones left EMI, it would have little impact financially, because the company would still have the rights to the band’s catalog.” One of the two stories is 100 percent wrong. Also, the implication of the next sentence is that Live Nation is also taking the Stones’ touring business away from EMI, which is not true.

The Observer story says the band makes EMI three million pounds a year; Wired reports this as three million dollars a year. Fortunately, the Observer is a British news outlet, and not a Japanese one, so Wired is off only by a factor of two. Its hard to believe, however, even the Observer story is correct. If the Stones earn the company only the equivalent of $6 million (which is roughly what £3 million is) a year, that would mean (assuming, crudely, a $9 wholesale price and $3 per disc to the band) the band sells only perhaps a million CDs a year, total, around the world, which is less than I would have guessed. (I’d be happy to hear if any of those assumptions are significantly off.)

And, finally, Live Nation didn’t poach Madonna from Warner Brothers. Given her declining sales and the fact that no one yet knows if these 360 deals make financial sense, it may be just as accurate to say the company took her off Warner’s hands.

As for the Wired story, it says, “the Rolling Stones are the kings of the touring industry, with some tours grossing nearly three quarters of a billion dollars.” Only the Stones’ most recent tour, by far its biggest, grossed something over $500 million, over some three years.

It also says:

Live Nation,for its part, has already become a major force to be reckoned with. Its focus on all-encompassing, 360 degree deals means it only stands to benefit as touring threatens to unseat recording as the largest sector of the music business.

This breathless reportage is inappropriate. Live Nation, formerly Clear Channel, controls most of the U.S. concert business and has been “a force to be reckoned with” for more than a decade. It already makes a lot of money from acts like Madonna, the Stones and U2. The question, which again will only be answered as the music business continues to shake out, is whether there’s enough extra leverage to be squeezed out of the deals (i.e., some new creative ways to gouge some extra bucks out of sheeplike music fans) to make the high initial outlays worthwhile.

Since those artists make the vast part of their income from touring—and have been doing so for many decades in every case—they are not lambs coming to the benevolent concert industry for a piece of the action. Mick Jagger knows how much any Stones show will generate in ticket and mersh sales, and begins the negotiations assuming it’s all his.

The tensions this chancy strategy has evinced spilled over into the pages of the Wall Street Journal ($) last week:

Having laid out so much cash—an estimated $120 million for Madonna and $150 million for Jay-Z alone—Live Nation Chief Executive Michael Rapino has sought to slow the pace of deal making so he can ascertain that deals already struck are working before entering new ones. But the company’s chairman, concert promoter Michael Cohl, wants to quickly strike deals with as many as 15 more artists.

According to people familiar with the matter, the dispute in recent weeks boiled over into a full-blown feud, with Mr. Cohl threatening to leave Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Live Nation.

All of these characters, by the way, deserve each other. Madonna and the Stones are artistically moribund, and U2 and Jay-Z are merely superior practitioners of the art of not looking that way. If Live Nation succeeds in harvesting even more big live acts for its stable, it truly will remake the industry; the company will be able to plan tours out years in advance, carefully doling out superstar roadshows to maximize box office, reduce scheduling conflicts, and avoid clustering too many big name acts on the road at any one time.

It will be accomplished by the simple expedient of taking actual artistic creation out of the equation altogether.

I forgot to link to artist Andrew Kuo’s fanciful graphic representation of the discomforts of the modern rock festival in the Times a couple of weeks ago. Almost nothing in the entire, dense construction could be argued about by any sensible person. Why fans put up with the crazy long lines, terrible sound, weather, horrendous travel times, safety issues, and, often, lack of basic facilities is beyond me.

(I’ve had a lot of fun at festivals and all sorts of other music events with huge audiences and meager necessities. But that’s because, as a critic, I got to hang out in the comfy VIP tents. I particularly remember fondly the original Lollapaloozas, when I’d often have reserved seats in front of the stage … and access to a box high above the floor as well. When you read a review of these out-of-the-way fests that don’t mention the crowds or the difficulty of getting food and water and such, remember it’s because the critics have those tents to go back to.)

Anyway, Kuo’s work got a couple of letters in response yesterday, one in favor, one agin. From the latter, written by Steven LaKind:

Instead of offering a real understanding or opinion (except his experience as a 15-year-old), he comes off as the ultimate insular New Yorker. Someone concerned primarily about insects and rain and unaware of new bands is hardly the ideal audience member for outdoor festivals.

I feel sorry for Mr. Kuo and his ilk; they feel so urbane, hip and culturally superior when in fact they are cut off from the reality experienced by most of the rest of the world.

I don’t think Kuo, like most normal people, was concerned so much about insects and rain as paying for the privilege of interacting with them.

——
Previously in Hitsville:

The best show of the year?
The Business of Festivals
The Year of the Fest

Idolator, tracking the performances at Coachella yesterday, raved about Prince … Portishead and Kraftwerk … the Breeders … the Verve…

Didn’t I see this show in 1995? I certainly could have, except for Kraftwerk … who didn’t do their big reunion tour until 1998.

I can’t believe they didn’t get Stone Temple Pilots and Dinosaur Jr.!

——
Previously in Hitsville:

The Business of Festivals
The Year of the Fest

The Wall Street Journal, in its survey of the onslaught of music festivals coming online this summer ($), has some interesting facts and figures. To wit:

• There are […] some powerful new business players emerging on the festival scene—bands themselves. Coldplay is taking a cut of the revenue at the new Pemberton Festival. The band’s manager is a major investor in the festival and helped select the location in British Columbia. At Stagecoach, a country-music festival in its second year in California, the Eagles were promised a percentage of the festival’s ticket sales and merchandise in addition to the group’s performance fee, according to someone familiar with the deal.
• Last year, 80,000 people attended the Bonnaroo festival in rural Tennessee, which featured the reunited Police as one of its marquee acts. The event grossed $16.8 million in ticket sales (up from $14.7 million the year before), not including revenue from concessions, merchandise and sponsors, according to Billboard magazine.
• A band can often command more than its usual fee for a festival gig—$1 million or more for headliners—in part because organizers are paying a premium to get a special performance instead of being a stop on a tour.
• A growing emphasis on mainstream headliners accompanies some shifts in the makeup of festival audiences. At Lollapalooza in Chicago, for instance, 35- to 64-year-olds accounted for 20% of ticket buyers last year, up from 16% the year before. The broader demographic mix helps festivals attract crucial sponsorship dollars. North American companies are projected to spend $1.04 billion to sponsor music events this year, up from $867 million in 2006, with festivals attracting a growing share, according to the IEG Sponsorship Report.

I personally don’t understand the economics underlying these; there are just a few $1M-a-performance folks out there, and most of them, like the Police or the Eagles, can make a lot more than that from one gig in most big cities. I suppose there’s some marketing benefits, for an oldster band like the Police, for example, playing at a hip festival. But I also suspect most of the lesser bands on the bill aren’t making as much as they would from a local show; presumably, again, there’s the opportunity to play in front of a larger audience, even one spread out over dozens of acres on a field.

Which is its own problem; these fests, relentlessly romanticized in the press, are horrible places to see any band perform. Grant Park in Chicago, where Lollapalooza now encamps, is just across the street from the Loop, so amenities aren’t that far away, and Chicago knows how to handle crowds. Kids love Bonaroo of course, and I don’t know of too many problems from there, but when I see the words “rural Tennesee” and “80,000 people” in the same sentence, I cringe.

As for Pemberton, well, it seems to be a few hours north of Vancouver, which is to say a few hours away from human habitation. (If you’re driving, just head north on rte. 99, past “Furry Creek” and “Squamish.”) Remoteness makes for cheap real estate for such fests, but it also creates miles-long traffic backups, iffy amenities, and, most importantly, not much in the way of governmental oversight, which is of course a big drag, man …

… until kids start burning, looting and raping. Generally, nothing horrifically bad happens at these fests, until it does, as the carnage from Woodstock ‘99 attests.

Worse is the stuff that just is taken for granted, stuff like this, reported by my former colleague Jeff Stark from that show:

Irresponsible: There’s no other word for Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst. He’s goading the crowd, pumping them up, higher and higher. It’s beyond working them into enjoying the show. He’s encouraging the pit, working them into a frenzy. He wants people to “smash stuff.” “C’mon y’all, c’mon y’all,” he shouts. Below him, the pit is a war zone, a sweaty, dirty, roiling mass of vicious guys knocking the fuck out of one another. It’s not a fun scene. It’s nasty, and people are getting hurt—bad. Bodies on cardboard stretchers emerge from the audience a couple of times per song.

After the last metal-rap hybrid song, the MC comes up onstage to make an announcement. “Please, there are people hurt out there,” he pleads. “They are your brothers and sisters. They are under the towers. Please, help the medical team get them out of there. We can’t continue the show until we get these dear people out of there. We have a really serious situation out there.”

A few minutes later, the crowd parts. The kids are hauled off. Tomorrow, at the morning press conference, the staff will announce that 10 people were taken away in ambulances with head injuries. I’m shocked that no one died.

Rock rejuvenates itself so quickly that its collective memory is six or eight weeks at this point. If one of these new fests—one of which, sooner or later, is going to be turned out to be run by folks without the obvious smarts of your Coachellas and Bonaroos—is Woodstock ‘99 revisited, we’ll see the appeal of the fests quickly wane. For another few years, at least.

The Chicago Tribune looks at the rise of the European-style rock festival in the U.S. There ‘s now a full dozen of what the paper calls “supersize” concerts. Key point: their effect on the normal concert scene:

Jerry Mickelson, founder and partner of Jam Productions, understands the appeal of music festivals, but companies such as his, which owns Chicago venues including the Riviera and Park West, are on the losing end. The contracts between festival organizers and bands contain “radius” clauses that prevent musicians from playing within a certain radius of the event and within a certain time period before and after it.

“What it does to the local concert scene is it destroys it,” Mickelson said. “We’re all in the same boat, we all have more dark nights. You can’t make and manufacture a band. There’s X amount of music out there that tours each year.”

Will the rise of such fests turn out to be the iPod Store of the concert scene, allowing fans to sup at a smorgasbord-like array of hot acts once or twice a year, and leave the traditional (high-priced) concert behind, just as they have with CDs? Doubtful: For one, the bands won’t have it. No one would give up the huge touring income for a few fest dates. Also, the worst effects are going to be in a place like Chicago, already home to Lollapalooza and Pitchfork. The other fests end to be in rural areas.

Besides the now established Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonnaro and Pitchfork, the paper notes there are new ones every year:

The industry’s new entrants this year are Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco Aug. 22-24, headlined by Beck, Wilco, Radiohead and Tom Petty; Mile High Music Festival July 19-20 in Commerce City, Colo., with the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer and Tom Petty; All Points West Music & Arts Festival Aug. 8-10 in Jersey City, headlined by Radiohead and Jack Johnson; and Rothbury Festival, in Rothbury, Mich., July 3-6, with Matthews, Mayer and Widespread Panic.

Tickets for this year’s Lollapalooza are $205; Pitchfork, which stresses younger bands and tries to keep prices low, are $65, up from $50 last year.

A NYT review today of a Cat Power show at a club called Terminal 5 in Manhattan skirts around an issue that is common at shows but almost never gets its due in reviews:

Terminal 5, on far West 56th Street, was hardly big enough to accommodate Ms. Marshall’s fans on Wednesday, though it was a good deal bigger than the music seemed to demand. Drawing from her new album, “Jukebox” (Matador), Ms. Marshall and her crew played blearily soulful covers of songs associated with Hank Williams, James Brown, Jessie Mae Hemphill and George Jackson. In a less cavernous room the results might have been haunting. The sound surely would have been better.

The review is by the Times’ Nate Chinen. He finally returns to the issue of the sound at the show in this last graf:

To Ms. Marshall’s great credit, the show went off without any unscheduled interruptions, despite the sound-system feedback that plagued almost every song. Though justifiably frustrated, she allowed herself just one small act of protest, lying on her back for a few verses of the old Patsy Cline hit “She’s Got You.” Then she pointed one leg in the air, slowly swung it in an arc above her, and nimbly rose to her feet.

I don’t know what any of this means. Should Marshall get credit for not interrupting her own show? Great credit? And who in the world was she frustrated at? There is a prevalent attitude among too many reviews that the artist is a tool of some unseen forces that create the show around him or her. It’s not; it’s the creation of the person who’s taking your money! Live audio has made truly wonderful advances in the last decade or two; most major arena shows I’ve seen recently have been perfect. Most dedicated rock clubs, too, have control of their own acoustics at this point. But there are a wide range of mid-level venues that take some work to get the sound right for a rock show. Last time I looked, that was a job the artist is getting paid to do.