The latest blog titled “Singapore” by that old codger blogger from the US- Bob Lefsetz was forwarded to me by many people still hanging in there in what’s left of “the music business”.
Why, did they? Mainly, for me to fight their battles for them so they won’t be seen as biting the hands that still feed them and also to show how naïve, how stupid and how geographically-challenged the world of people like The Bob is when it comes to Asia- and who is being PAID to come out to this region. If you haven’t already, read his blog about coming over to “Singapore”, please do and weep gently to that guitar playing in the background. The man’s a sad fucker.
Jasper Donat is a mate of mine- I would like to think he is- and I was shocked and awe and just plain embarrassed to see him- the organizer of Music Matters, pictured as a toadie for this blogger with “flight problems” and who is still stuck in the world of Jo Jo Gunne. Fuck me, it took him months to even hear of Gotye- which shows how irrelevant American Radio is- and how he won’t even ever hear the great bands coming outta Scandinavia and other ports outside of the USA. More and more, I keep thinking that Uncle Bob is the Rush Limbaugh of the sad state of the music industry in America which he rambles on about in his little blog which, sadly, his readers will be scouring and thinking, “THIS is ASIA?” It’s the Fox News of blogs in its incessant appeal to Ye Olde Great America which the country no longer is.Screw Billboard and its irrelevant charts.
In so doing, his readers will get the totally wrong picture of the future of, not just the music industry, but all the OTHER entertainment-related business opportunities there are in Asia and which very few get nor can see. Not even most of us dumbass Asians who follow the white man through thick and thin and over so many bridges of troubled waters like some Stepford lives in heat.
Asian sistahs and bros, enough is enough: We have kissed enough of white and black ass enough and it’s got us nowhere:
Terry McBride, Seymour Stein, Lefsetz, Daniel Eck and others: What have they brought and given to Asia despite all their Music Matters and Music Mutters appearances?
My mate Jasper Donat might think they have given us Asians their time, but what have they actually delivered…IN this time?
Some vapid words which go in one ear and out the next?
Plus, all those who really should know better and write vapid PR releases about Music Matter, well, they just piss me off.
What for? A freebie trip? To be a big swinging dick in an industry that’s gone all flaccid and cannot even raise a horn?
Music Matters is a business. It makes money for Branded, the organizing company which Jasper Donat and Michael Denmark own.
This is more than fine and it shows a good business model that has a very strong USP- for the time being- for the usual suspects.
However, what the fuck do these “Branded conferences” actually ACHIEVE and DO for the music and entertainment industry in Asia? .
Have ANY of them been able to make International Stars of ANY of the artists who travel to these annual tribal gatherings for free- and, as Joni Mitchell sang- PLAY for free?
Of course not. It’s just more white- and mellow yellow jello- noise and some background music while attendees get pissed and make promises to these artists they never keep.
The “dudes” from India are the worst culprits at false promises: “We LOVE, you, doot! You gotta come over, doots. You’ll be huuuuge, doots.” These “doots” are just usually happy to get the fuck outta India and get on some natural high cos they are rubbing shoulders with the “famous” white men.
I am sooooooooooooo proud to say that I now work outside of this very small “universe” of like-minded people and that one of my clients, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, does and is doing far more for entertainment than all those Noddys and Big Ears at Music Matters in Singapore this week. Yes, I wasn’t there, but music conferences do nothing for me. It’s a personal thing after being to around three Music Matters and seeing and hearing the same tired faces plod through all-too familiar ground. Getting back to the HKJC, it has the infrastructure, the venues, the audience- anything from 20,000 people at Happy Valley to over 60,000 people in Shatin- and the means to take entertainment far further than any ubiquitous “music conference” and all those speaking with forked tongues, Kemo Sabay.
Sorry, folks, but “Chuggie”, the ubiquitous Seth Bisla- what does this guy really DO?- the guys from Midas, those from Lushington, the same old and now much older music execs, well, sorry, but time’s up and the world has moved on. You people are in a very small circle, talking to yourselves while the consumers have taken over the asylum. One flew over the cuckoo’s next, but no one dared to look up and take notice of the shit being dropped on you.
But what’s truly sad is this: Those Asians who are still prepared to grovel at the feet of the Uncle Bobs, the Seymour Steins, the Bob Ezrins, even the Dave Stewarts etc of this world.
Why? All have had numerous opportunities to take music and artists from Asia further. Have they? Of course not. They’ve all been half-arsed attempts.
All they do is email or call only when they need to know something from this region and, like little Kunta Kintes, us, Asians, just play second and third fiddle and give them all the info and contact numbers- for free. But why? Who ARE these people in today’s overall entertainment environment? Many are has-beens, most are never-beens.
To Jasper Donat- and this is a business to him- I ask, Mate, with your hand in your heart, do you honestly believe this music conference in Singapore will make “music matters” when we are really talking about a totally different and far more wide-open world of entertainment?
Sure, we all have to make money and we all have businesses to run, but, please, people like Lefsetz and Seymour Stein helping music in Asia progress? Give me a fucking break.
So, Bob Ezrin gets the wonderful Sa Ding-sing together with The Two Cellists or whatever they’re called to make a record. And then what? A few tours?
And who introduced Sa Ding-ding to Bob Ezrin? Yep, you got in one. What’s my ROI? Am I just supposed to be quiet and keep playing “Boy” to the “Tarzans” of the West? I think not, Jane.
Boy has grown up and wants some of the pie. It’s the whole free lunch thing.
Those who paid to attend “Music Matters”- which is an oxymoron as music does NOT matter- not the way it did- would have understood far more about what is happening to ENTERTAINMENT in Asia if it had looked outside of the square and outside of that little box made up of the usual suspects and asked what, for example. Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, CEO of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, is doing in all of the Club’s venues- and how these can benefit the world of entertainment. Or asked Allan Zeman why Chengdu and other “secondary” provinces have over-taken Beijing and the faltering Shanghai and what he has done with his Lan Kwai Fong brand in China. Of course, both AZ and EB wouldn’t give a toss about attending this conference.
Frankly, neither would my old mate Simon Fuller, recently in Asia, and who truly is the Renaissance Man of today’s world of entertainment which does not start or stop with his “Idol” franchise.
Now is not the time to try and please the usual suspects. Now, is the time to break the mould, go back to the egg and hatch something new and relevant.
It offends me- as an Asian- to know that this region is pandering to those who’ll return home after Music Matters by the weekend and remember the five-star hotels, the restaurants, the curries, the Sarong Party Girls and the satay. Did music- in and from Asia- matter to them? Fuck no. It was, as Edgar Winter once sang, “A Free Ride.”
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