‘The Book of Mormon’ One Word Review

Go.

Technically, that’s the end of the review, but just to emphasize where I’m coming from on this, the show is everything that I believe Broadway and the live entertainment industry as a whole should be doing: leading the audience and the culture itself by creating original intellectual property that is both incredibly entertaining and also important enough for people to use brain cells to think about.

Well done,  folks.

Powerlessness Corrupts

I read that in a book by Elizabeth Moss Canter about what happens when people in an organization begin to feel that they have no ability to influence events, or when they feel that the destiny of themselves or their organization are out of their control.  (It’s also nicely summarized in this EMC article too.)

That’s what I thought of when I read the collection of pieces that Thomas Cott mailed out today about government funding.  His collection of stories detailed the ups and downs in places as divergent as London, Atlanta, and New York: government funding is cut; it’s restored; it’s cut but only partly.  Up, down, yes, no, maybe.

I hold a couple of opinions on this topic that make me unpopular with just about everyone.  First, even though I have a pretty wide libertarian streak, I can’t exactly get excited about cutting these programs because they’re so small.  Financially, they’re irrelevant, so why bother? If you’re talking about this as a source of reducing the scope of government or balancing budgets, you’re wasting your time. Besides, as government spending goes, this is probably one of the higher impact places, and it’s certainly visible in its payoff.

The second unpopular opinion I hold is that any self-respecting organization in the live arts or entertainment business should be working actively to avoid taking any government money because of the distortions it causes.  The need for government funding is an indicator that any organization that takes it is not creating sufficient value to sustain itself.  As a transitory state or in start-up mode, that’s ok, sorta, but as a way of life, it’s poison.

An organization doesn’t have to be a for-profit for it to matter if they can pay their own bills.  It matters because it’s the powerlessness and dependency that Canter was talking about that sets in.  Entitlement, anger, infighting, insularity.  These are things you’re more likely to find in an organization where the power resides outside the organization (with those funding it, especially when it’s the government) than within it or its base of supporters.

My view is this: design your organization so that it delivers enough value to pay for itself.  This happens by both increasing the value delivered and contemplating how to use fewer resources.  I’m not talking about penny-pinching.  I’m talking about re-thinking needs altogether.  Traditional arts organizations strike me as being heavy in fixed, long term investments like buildings, permanent salaries and gear.

So my argument is not that the government shouldn’t fund this stuff or that arts organizations need to prepare for the reality of this stuff not being funded, both of which are highly debatable.  It’s that live entertainment and arts organizations should work very hard not to need this money because it’s bad for them in the long term, and maybe sooner.

Preference is Perishable. Keep Your Mindset Fresh

It’s amazing to me how quickly things go from cutting edge to tired.  Here’s an article that reminded me of that today entitled “Wrong Turn for Food Trucks in Los Angeles.“  Here’s the snippet that I found particularly poignant, which starts with a quote from Josh Hiller of RoadStoves, which is the company that outfitted the famous Kogi truck among others:

“‘We got hundreds of calls [from potential food truck operators], but we rejected 95% of the requests.  The problem came when the other commissaries and truck owners saw money and basically just prostituted the whole culture. So what you ended up with was 15 so-so trucks parked on Mid-Wilshire, the city unhappy, a mediocre food product and all the truck owners cannibalizing each other’s business.’”

Hiller doesn’t paint a pretty picture, and it’s undoubtedly not as bleak in many ways as he paints.

But for me the point is this: it’s easy to pick up on some change and then forget to revise your view of it.  A couple years ago, the NBA as a product was on the ropes, but now it’s much healthier (assuming they don’t have a lockout next year.)  Preference is perishable, and I suspect it’s more perishable than ever in a way.

And then you have people in established organizations and institutions who still think it’s acceptable to be adjusting to the Internet.  Goldstar’s own John Loken told me a story that made me laugh the other day.  He was moderating a panel at Digital Hollywood and one of the panelists, from the traditional music business, said it was difficult for them to adjust because they “had a Studebaker [1950's car] and were being expected to make it into a Prius while still on the road.”  In other words, they were in a hard situation because they were being asked to adjust to change.

Hmmm.  If you’d said that in 1996 when the Studebaker was old but running fine, or in 1999, when Napster slashed the Studebaker’s tires, or even in 2002, when the iPod put a banana in its tailpipe, I could be somewhat understanding.

But in 2011? It’s too late to plead that things are moving too fast.

You’ve got to be able to revise your mindset much, much faster than that.  If food trucks and flip cams, and Digg are already out, and they feel like they were just coming in, you’ve got to develop some kind of system for reminding yourself to challenge your beliefs, even the ones you just recently formed.

That’s Called “Leading the Culture”

A few years ago, in 2006 to be exact, a little show debuted in LA called “Rock of Ages.” We sold, well, quite a few of them on Goldstar, and basically, couldn’t keep them on the shelves. For you historians out there, here’s the link to the first version of this show. There were two or three different locations in 2006, the first year it appeared.

Then, as Bob Lefsetz pointed out, David Chase, in 2007,  used “Don’t Stop Believin’”  in the finale of “The Sopranos” and I immediately thought, “he must have gone to see “Rock of Ages.”

And now I read that Bryan Cranston and Catherine Zeta-Jones are going to be in the movie.

And that is what I mean when I say that live entertainment should lead the culture.

The Rock Revolution, a View from 1967

Do yourself a favor and watch all six segments of this scratchy old CBS Special from 1967 called “Inside Pop: the Rock Revolution.” (Huge hat tip to Bob. Thanks for passing this along.)

Before I send you on your way, I have a few things I want to say about the show.  Leonard Bernstein hosts the show, and, as a representative of the “square” generation, he’s there to tell the old fogeys of the day (meaning, anyone over 25) that Rock and Roll is not only important, but some of it is really, really good.  He concedes that 95% of it is “trash,” but that the rest is “irresistible.” It was as if he was giving America permission to let this new cultural expression in the front door, where it had been banging loudly for the last decade or so.  After all, if it’s good enough for Bernstein, who’s isn’t it good enough for?

Here are a few things that struck me.

-Everyone who was interviewed spoke simple, clear English.  Even with a little hippie jargon thrown in, people avoided the kind of halting police-report style formality and the latter-day valley girl jibberish that you get so much of today.  Heck, even middle aged business men say “like” as a way of pausing between phrases these days.  None of these people did that.  Here’s a fairly representative example of how a man on the street interview sounded in this piece:  “The kids like music, you know? They’ve gotta have someplace to go.  They don’t have a lot of dough, so they come to a place like Pandora’s Box. But if they close ‘em all down, what can you do except stand out in the street?”  This was some kid they pulled out of a street protest on the Sunset Strip, and it was typical of every person who spoke on the show.  Compare that to what I just heard on a news clip from an elected official here in LA: “It has come to light that there are instances where customers are not being billed for months at a time for their water and power usage only to receive a bulk bill with numerous months of billing.”

In 1967, that would have been, “We’ve learned that some customers aren’t getting their water and power bills monthly, but instead getting a big bill for several months at once.”

-There really isn’t a generation gap anymore. Of course, this came out before I was even born, but the idea of a big, big difference in the musical tastes of people over 25 and people under 25 today is the difference between Lady Gaga and Madonna.  Then it was more like the difference between Lady Gaga and Pat Boone.

-It’s impressive that CBS could produce this and put it on prime time and expect that people would watch it.  I’m not saying tv journalism this good doesn’t exist today.  I am saying, though, that you couldn’t produce it and put it on network tv or probably even basic cable.

-Herman’s Hermits really were terrible.  Sorry.  Brian Wilson was and probably still is a musical genius.

-Frank Zappa was the smartest person in the whole piece, with the possible exception of Bernstein.  They should have gotten more out of him.  I absolutely loved his reaction to the idea that drugs were going to bring peace and love to the world as part of the “revolution” and would make people “more loving and more understanding of the universe and of life,” as the Byrds Jim (Roger) McGuinn said.  Zappa retorted the following:

“If they’d stop taking drugs, and they’d stop kidding themselves with their fantasies, and if they’d straighten up a little bit, grab themselves a little sense of responsibility, I think everything will turn out alright.”

Instead we had the 70s.

-Bernstein wasn’t faking it.  He really loved the music.  You could see it when he played and sang.  He had a real delight in the rock music itself, which makes this whole thing work.  It must have blown some people’s minds to see the maestro endorse what was supposed to be heresy against the church of which he was the high priest.  Traditional music, many must have felt, was under assault, and it was Bernstein’s job to protect it.  But his ability to be interesting, articulate and specific about why rock music was worth hearing defeats all attempts to deny his point of view.

This must have been a powerful cultural moment.

Anyway, there are six parts, and I’m embedding the first one.  You can follow on to 2 through 6 from within the player:

Will There Be an NFL Season? And What Does That Mean to You?

I have to say that I’m spectacularly uninterested in the ups and downs of what’s going on between the NFL Players and the League and Owners.  That’s not because I don’t like football.  I’m a big fan.  It’s just that the only thing I want to hear is “the lockout’s over. Football starts again as scheduled.”

Alas, that’s not where we are.  The owners locked out the players six weeks ago, but yesterday a judge ruled that they couldn’t do that and ordered the teams to re-open their facilities to the players.  Basically, it told the teams to let the players return to work.  If you want to see NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s (in my opinion slightly deceptive) thoughts on the subject in today’s WSJ, here they are.  In summary, he thinks that a decision which forces work to start again without a collective bargaining agreement is a really bad idea that tears down the fabric of the league’s success of the last decades.  I say it’s slightly deceptive because he gives the impression that this is what the players want, when in reality, they didn’t strike; they were locked out.

Anyway, the more intriguing question is this: what does it mean if there’s no NFL season?

The obvious beneficiary is college football in terms of both stadium attendance and television, advertising and online revenue (including gambling, don’t forget.)

But what about all those Sundays and Monday nights that suddenly come free again?  It reminds me a bit of this talk by Clay Shirky at a TED conference a couple years back, who talked about the ‘cognitive surplus’ that has come from people watching less television and doing less of other more traditional forms of “passive” media.  It’s well worth watching:

Here’s the idea and a challenge to the live entertainment business: if there’s an NFL lockout that keeps the teams off the field this fall, what can you do to absorb that entire ‘cognitive surplus’ as opposed to letting it go to playing Fruit Ninja or watching When Animals Attack 13. How can you plan to be so involving, absorbing and compelling that some part of that lost tribe of NFL fans would spend its time engaging with you and your organization and your shows, performances, and games?

And then let’s suppose they do play (which seems likely to me). Do it anyway. If you’re ready to take up the slack for the most popular type of entertainment, arguably, in the whole country, you’re better off regardless of whether they play.

(And of course, to our friends at the teams around the NFL, we hope you’re up and running as soon as possible!)

Pick Up “Do the Work” for Free

Through Seth Godin’s Domino Project, in which he is quite modestly working to change the entire book publishing model, there’s a book available for free in its e-book edition that I recommend.  It’s called Do The Work by Steven Pressfield, and it’s a brief, inspirational (in a drill sergeant kind of way) work that’s for you if:

-You’ve ever been convinced you had a great business idea, but could never actually go anywhere with it

-Had a great idea for a book, play, food sculpture or mime epic

-Had a notion that you could do anything at all that would be exciting, beneficial or transform your life for the better

But didn’t actually follow through on those things, which means pretty much everyone except Neil Patrick Harris.  This is the antidote to the ‘resistance’ that you naturally feel to making it happen.

As an entrepreneur with some success to my credit, I can tell you that what Pressfield says about getting started is true: it’s most important to start and keep going.  Once a thing is ‘real,’ it takes on a strange kind of power and momentum, which is precisely the opposite of the inertia that holds a thing back before it takes living form.

It’s probably about 1 hour of reading, and if it gives you a new perspective or tools to deal with your ‘resistance,’ it’s well worth it.

Here’s the book, totally free for download:

Do the Work.

Dodgers Taken Over by MLB

This is big news for me to be reporting not only because the Dodgers and MLB are Goldstar partners, but also because the Dodgers are one of our two home town teams, and the one with the longest history here (although we love our friends at the Angels too.)

Here’s a snippet from an LA Times analysis piece:

“It was a move that was as stunning as it was necessary, a franchise that was once baseball’s model of ownership stability being stripped of its ownership because baseball no longer trusts the guy. ‘I have taken this action because of my deep concerns regarding the finances and operations of the Dodgers,” [Baseball Commissioner Bud] Selig said in a statement.”

This has happened before, most notably to the Montreal Expos, whose team was dismal in every way: bad on the field, bad on attendance, not exactly beloved by the people of hockey-loving Montreal, and without much of a history.

But this is the Dodgers.  This is the team that Branch Rickey ran, that brought Jackie Robinson into the majors, that the O’Malleys ran for decades in a way that was the envy of the league.  I’m not commenting at all on the management that is now on the way out, but I will say that there are so many things that the Dodgers do right: great attendance, good on-field product, decent stadium experience, solid fan base, great staff.  This is not a team in trouble for lack of interest.  It’s a fabulous draw, and Goldstar members are HUGE Dodgers fans in LA.

So MLB has taken control and will now try to find a healthier ownership group or owner to take over and right the ship. On balance, that’s a good thing, but it’s an excellent reminder that legacies can be squandered and the devil really is in the details.

Goldstar Advisory Board

I’m extremely excited to announce the Goldstar Advisory Board, which is composed of three of the smartest, most successful and positive people I know: Matt Coffin, founder of Lowermybills.com and general entrepreneurial genius, Sean Moriarty, former CEO of Ticketmaster and in my book the most knowledgeable person in the entire ticket business, and Neil Patrick Harris, an absolutely brilliant performer, but also a passionate lover of live entertainment and a communication mastermind.

You can read more about all three of them here.

To give you my own color commentary on this, I feel extremely fortunate and proud to have these three incredibly smart and accomplished people to be able to turn to for input.  They all get Goldstar on a very deep level, and have already been extremely insightful and helpful.

It is great to have them as part of the Goldstar team!