Reprinted with permission by Bob Lefsetz. Read more at www.lefsetz.com Every Sunday morning my father went to Sam’s. Well, first it was Max’s, then he and his partner had a fight and it became Sam’s. What I remember most is the pickle barrel, with half sours that you can’t buy anymore, no one puts in that amount of TLC. And the chive cheese. Made by hand. As much as you...
The party of no…
Beware! Beware! The Ides of March are upon us …
…and they’re singing “Vehicle” 
The best-est part of working in radio was being able to play amazingly topical music. Specifically, March 15th meant the one time we got to play “Vehicle” by the Ides of March. A personal favorite tune, it’s a total one-hit wonder doomed to obscurity 364 days out of the year.
But not today!
I speak English good
In the process of creating some marketing collateral, I received the following piece of advice: “Don’t let grammar stand in your way.” I understand the concept — saying what you want is often more important than saying it correctly. But have we, as an industry/culture/populace gotten to the point where we’ve actually forgotten how to communicate? I think we have. And...
Food for thought – from your friends at the RIAA…
Online Promotion 101
I spent a good portion of last week delivering guest lectures to the “Creative Promotion in New Media” classes at Berklee. For the class, I offered up some slides which helped explain both what marketing is about along with a few examples of sites that were good, bad, or at least illustrative of the necessary understandings. Ultimately it came down to 5 major considerations. Here they...
RockGeek Fact of the Day #769
On this day, in the year 62 (!), a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck the city of Pompeii, Italy. While this doesn’t directly cause the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79, it does provide an excuse to offer up a clip from Pink Floyd’s “Live at Pompeii” …
P.S. This totally breaks the site, but watching this in the HD option is totally worth it …
Educating tomorrow’s music biz…
RockGeek Fact of the Day #1508
Today would have been George Harrison’s 67th birthday. On (my favorite George Harrison tune) “The Art of Dying,” soon-to-be Genesis drummer/singer Phil Collins plays congas. As a kid, Collins was an extra in the Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night. While Collins wasn’t credited on the original album, he’s thanked in the liner notes on the 2000 re-release...