GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

Source - concert attendance analysis on Bob Lefsetz excellent email list (google it, Bob’s singular style matches his singular name) A month ago KT Tunstall sold out her show at the Meridian - Houston, TX. Around the same date the Black Eyed Peas/Rihanna tour could only half fill Charter One Pavilion - Chicago. A week later ARC Pavilion - Davis, CA The Strokes, Muse, The Like could only muster a slightly over half full house. The kt show was in a 985 capacity venue, Black Eyed Peas Charter One venue holds over 8,445 and Strokes Arc Pavilion Joint 6,284. But here’s the rub - tickets for the Strokes gig $35. Tickets for The Peas were $45, for kt $15. Who is the longterm -rather than the lets make a quick buck before the bottom falls out of our market - winner here? Parting with over double the money kt’s ticket buyers forked out the Peas and Strokes fans get to sample their music in a half empty atmosphereless surrounding. The lights, the sweat, the flash and the staging seem a little excessive in such surrounds. You might try to drown out your collective embarassment through alcohol, nembutal or sheer gall but the diminishing returns of the Where Is The Love phenomenom and the hot to trot new punks on the block spell would be felt a little too keenly. The kt audience on the other hand got to experience a closeness, a heat, a real musician in the throes of what she does - and has been doing, long before 700,000 sales in the USA was even a distant dream. The Scottish lassie - providing good value and intimacy insures more love and possibilities next time she hits Chicago. But how many will turn up to salute The Peas and The Strokes next time round? Or will that audience simply move on to the next similarly under the media spotlight new bloods? I don’t know if kt’s attitude to booking and pricing her live shows is in anyway connected to The Glasgow School Of Moral Philosophy, a 19th century creed surely deserving of reappraisal in our modern era. But I do know this - short term boom and bust economics are no guarantee of musical success.

London 2.45am Tuesday 17th October Just been from west to east, home from the book launch for Redemption Song at the Inn on The Green in Ladbroke Grove. I get this email Hi, > Just wanted to say how nice it was to see you and J tonight, I > got off relatively early (Trains and such stuff) but I did manage to > speak to Bernie Rhodes, he even autographed my book, in a typically > surly but entertaining way  - ‘1977 -2007 DO SOMETHING INTERESTING! > DO SOMETHING GOOD BR’.> Anyway, The Clash thing got me all emotional, > Best > B I form a reply I ended up in The Globe with Bernie, tell him you like the Beatles and he gets quite incandescent! The Globe, by the way, is the greatest unused art gallery in Britain - a really special and unique slice of living Black Culture. These people who saw off fascists. From real good stock. The illustrations on the wall, the photo display of the owner’s time as an actor? Culled from 50s Movie mags? Interspersed with Ethiopic jah Rastafari thick gloss paint. With colours of green red gold to light the soul? Extraordinary, I’d say. The images have more than enough to intrigue please, tease and illuminate many interests and sensibilities. I told the owner he could and should open the club during the day as an art gallery. Lord, if they can charge £18 to look around the Art Freize thing in Regents Park, then a fiver a shot for the Globe Guided Tour must be worth a punt!!! Bernie signed my copy of the book in exactly the same way as yourn! I asked him if he came up with the song title London’s Burning. But he wouldnt answer.