All I'm askin' is for a little respect.

A trendsetter is a person who leads the way in ideas.  A lot of times this applies to fashion, but it can also apply to music.  This is particularly true now, when there are so many resources to discover and listen to new music. How does the average listener even know where to start?  My sister-in-law Kally is loyal to Pandora, my wife Ranisa watches VH1’s You Oughta Know and my friend Margie is the entertainment manager for a casino and is always being sent new music.  Well in the lyrics of King Radio, but made famous by the Grateful Dead, “Let us put men and women together / See which one is smarter / Some say men, but I say no / The women got the men like a puppet show.” 

While living in Washington DC in the mid-1990s when I first started promoting concerts, I received the advice that I needed to get the college ladies on-board with the shows and then the gentlemen would follow.  This proved correct over the course of many, many shows.  Then years later while working at Stage AE in Pittsburgh, I have gotten to know some of the staff who work at the concerts. In fact, a majority of the concert-day staff are women and in late July when one of the female staff members referenced that I check out the opening act for Warren Haynes in late September, I took her musical recommendation seriously.  Although the artist was more country than I would typically seek out, something about the bluesy lines, “I used to spend my nights out in a barroom / Liquor was the only love I’ve known,” really jumped out at me.  Not surprising, since the lyrics belong to recent Country Music Award winning sensation Chris Stapleton.

Another example would be when Clean Bandit was dominating the airwaves this summer with their song “Rather Be”, their first UK Singles Chart-topping song, and I was fascinated with the vocals from the hook.  I would later find out that the singer was Jess Glynne, but she would then fall off my radar.  Flash forward to November when I would hear the song “Hold My Hand” (not to be confused with the Hootie & the Blowfish song of the same name).  Once again the vocals grabbed me and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was Ms. Glynne.  I then went home excited to share with Ranisa a cool new song, and she said she already knew all about Glynne from the song appearing in advertisement for Coca-Cola.

Forget the customer rule, women are always right.  Michele Anthony, is the Executive Vice President of U.S. recorded music for Universal Music Group. As the No. 2 executive at the world's biggest music group she's not running a label; she's overseeing those who do.  Julie Greenwald is the Chairman/COO of the Atlantic Records Group and has more than contributed to putting together a diverse roster that includes rock legends, up & coming pop artists and singer-songwriters.  The list continues, in fact Billboard’s Women In Music 2015 nominations are now open for submissions. 

Thanks for reading.

The Walls Have Ears.

I can hear Alex Trebek reading the following three places out loud, “Mason Inn (Washington DC); Static Nightclub (Pittsburgh, PA); 161 Hudson St Apartment Building (New York, NY)”.  And then my friends who all know music saying in unison from the live audience saying “What is currently occupying the space of the Grog & Tankard; Rosebud and Wetlands?” 

Then immediately cue the sad violin music.  Music venues of my youth that no longer exist.  I know that currently there are not a lack of places to see and hear concerts, but as I do my best to keep up with live music there is part of me that wishes these places were still around.   With cassettes and vinyl making a comeback, it would be great to take my boys’ to these places and share both the stories of the bands and shows that I have seen as well as talk about the successes of the musicians/bands who at one point graced the stages.

Walking along Wisconsin Ave with my cousin Anne recently, I recounted the $37.50 I was paid for the first-ever show I put together as a “professional” booking agent. I distinctly remember the manager of the club giving me 50 cents, and not in the form of 2 quarters.  Or the time that I saw the Spin Doctors (before the success of 1991’s ‘2 Princes’) just outside of famed performance space on the NYC-side of the Holland Tunnel.  Recounting an evening, Chan Kinchla (Blues Traveler guitarist) had the following to say about sharing the stage with the Spin Doctors in those days, “It eventually got to the point where one night we'd all go there, take their places one by one, and then they'd go back to where we had been playing and end up playing there for the rest of the night!”

There was a time in which a majority of my evenings (specifically the years 1996-2002) were spent inside the walls of venues plastered with posters advertising future shows and stickers of bands that had passed thru en route to another gig.  Sometimes I can still see the places while daydreaming or hear the songs from those years play in my head and of course, the grass is always greener.  I have to try very hard to forget about the people more interested in playing pool and talking at the bar than listening to the music.  And of course the images and grisly sights and smells of the bathrooms are hard to erase. 

But thankfully it is the music that brings me back.  I continue to listen to new music (to me), like Hayden Calnin or The Lone Bellow and maybe, just maybe you will see me on the South Side at the Rex Theatre.

Thanks for reading.