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Justin Bieber’s appearance on “Saturday Night Live” was intended as a shot of Adrenalin into his projects. It worked a little, and not at all.
Flying to New York, Bieber accomplished pushing his woe-is-me single, “Lonely,” to number 1 on iTunes and his duet with Chance the Rapper, called “Holy,” back to number 4. (I objected to the big neon cross hanging behind him on the first number. “SNL” isn’t religious programming. NBC could have a problem with that.)
But Bieber’s bigger problem isn’t solved. His 2021 tour, which was supposed to replace his cancelled 2020 dates, isn’t selling. Let’s not forget that pre-pandemic, the 2020 tour wasn’t selling either. It was systematically downgraded from stadiums to arenas, dates were cancelled, moved, it was a mess. The pandemic gave Bieber an excuse for dumping the whole thing, right in the nick of time.
Now the new dates seem like they’ve been on sale since around August 6th. A look at Ticketmaster shows that almost all the dates have sold lightly, with the floor seats doing well, not great. But the balance of each venue is unsold, with blue dots everywhere indicating lots of available tickets.
The tour begins in June 2021, maybe, who knows? Depending on COVID, it’s unclear if it will really happen, and if it does, will fans take the chance of moshing together, standing, screaming, and breathing on each other?
The two singles now will help get attention for the tour. But Bieber will have to release another album, including them, in early spring so he has something to cross promote the tour. His album from last winter, “Changes,” has sold just 187,000 downloads and CDs. With streaming, the number bulks up to 873,000 but a lot of that includes sales of his only hit off the album. “Intentions,” his single featuring Quavo.
I do hope Quavo and Chance the Rapper are being remunerated properly for their use in these singles. They surely realize their importance in helping Bieber, a whiny white kid, reach a diverse audience.
For months, if not years, Vanity Fair’s website numbers have been a mess. Like its newsstand circulation, Vanity Fair has dropped in numbers considerably since Radhika Jones succeeded Graydon Carter as editor in chief and installed a new multicultural agenda.
But this week, the flailing magazine with an unclear mandate stuck gold, at least online. They published a piece by Caroline Rose Giuliani, daughter of crazy ex New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former newscaster Donna Hanover. The article was an excoriation of Donald Trump, Caroline’s vow to vote for Joe Biden, and a repudiation of her despised father.
The result, according to Alexa.com, was a sudden jump on October 14th in VanityFair.com’s readership. It wasn’t huge but it was something, a sign of life after a long, dismal decline. The website was ranked internationally by Alexa at number 5,169 among all sites on the 14th. Two days later, it was up to 5,019. In the US, the site 1,171. Last week, it was down to around 1,500.
Strangely, the Giuliani piece is not featured on the website right now, Sunday at 11am. It’s hard to find, in fact. It’s been replaced by a story about rapper Killer Mike that absolutely no one cares about. But that’s Jones’s Vanity Fair.
Let’s hope they paid Caroline Rose a lot since she briefly saved the site from torpor. It won’t last long but they should pay her a royalty on traffic.
Caroline, as I wrote here 10 years ago when she was arrested for shoplifting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hasn’t had it easy. I referred in 2020 to a piece I reported in New York magazine. To wit:
Starting when she was 6 years old, there was trouble.
I reported this story from April 27, 1995 in New York Magazine. That was the day Caroline was used by Daddy and his staff as comic relief to break up two presentations of the city budget — first to Wall Street and then to the press.
Caroline was seated next to Rudy’s then girlfriend Cristyne Lategano, who was also his spokesman, during the morning presentation to Wall Street analysts. Lategano tapped Caroline on the back. The little girl ran to the podium and interrupted her father’s delivery of the grim budget news. Everyone laughed. The Mayor said, “Did you learn that from Andrew?” He was referring to Caroline’s older brother, Andrew, who’d famously interrupted a Mayoral speech earlier. The solemn mood in the room was broken.
Giuliani must have liked the effect. Later that day, at the press conference, Lategano did the same thing. She sent poor Caroline “spontaneously” to the podium at the same time as before. The Mayor said the same thing. “Did you learn that from Andrew?” Everyone laughed.
Last year, Caroline went against her father publicly and backed Barack Obama for president. It’s no secret that the former Mayor and his children are estranged. But considering that during their childhood Caroline and Andrew’s dad had two affairs while in office, they might be excused. Let’s just hope Caroline can get some help so she doesn’t have to act out her pain in public.
You’ll be happy to know that Madonna has finished — Diablo Cody — the screenplay about her life. It came in at 133 pages, or as she says in a video posted to Instagram, the age of Jesus at his death plus 100. “The ups and downs, ins and outs, highs and lows,” as she describes it. Then she belches.
Screenplays are generally thought to run one minute per page, meaning Madonna’s life story, which we’ve experience in very real time, would last two hours and 13 minutes on screen, not counting musical numbers. Madonna plans to direct the movie, which maybe should be a miniseries or a limited series. Cody quips at the length that it’s “like Gone with the Wind.”
The 3 min video is more entertaining than new Madonna single has been in 20 years.
Light up the marquees! Governor Andrew Cuomo will allow movie theaters outside New York City to reopen next Friday October 23rd.
Maybe Regal Cinemas will have a change of heart. AMC Theaters are getting a lifeline tossed to them on the brink of closure.
The theaters will have to adhere to social distancing rules. But so far that’s gone fine in other states, like Connecticut, where Cinemark has done an excellent job of keeping everything COVID free.
New York State’s policy of closed theaters has just about wrecked a lot of businesses. So this is a boon to everyone’s finances. Now we need to get NYC theaters cooking.
NEW: Starting October 23, movie theaters outside of NYC can reopen at 25% capacity with up to 50 people per screen.
Here’s the Grammy Special Merit show that aired last night on PBS, which did everything it could to bury it.
But the performances are amazing, and Jimmy Jam Harris did yeoman working hosting it. David Wild wrote a great script.
At 48:00, Greg Phillinganes introduces 85 year old Sam Moore of Sam & Dave, who kills it singing his hits written by honoree Isaac Hayes. Stunning. Like Gladys Knight, Moore has retained all of his voice. He’s not only pitch perfect, but he has rare textures in that voice that have aged like a fine wine. Remarkable stuff here. This is an artist of lifelong talent at work.
Elsewhere, you’ll see Cyndi Lauper, Chris Isaak, Philip Bailey of Earth Wind & Fire, Cynthia Erivo with a soaring Leslie Odom Jr. and many more. A beautifully produced show that got ZERO promotion. What can you do at this point? Watch it now. It will make you feel better. The whole last half hour is devoted to John Prine, and it’s captivating.
The best movie of 2020, David Byrne’s “American Utopia,” hits HBO tonight at 8pm Eastern. You can’t not watch it. Spike Lee loved the Broadway production so much he asked to direct the movie version, and he has done it very well. Ellen Kuras, such an extraordinary talent, created a cinematographic beauty. The show was a massive hit on Broadway last year, so the Tony nominations this week ignored it. That’s how you know it’s good.
When I saw David Byrne’s “Here Lies Love” at the Public Theater it was a mind blower, of course. A work of sheer genius in its staging and execution. The songs were all new, nothing from the Talking Heads, and still it carried the audience– many of whom, like me, who were running, moving, shifting — into a new dimension. But this was not new for Byrne. I was there at Radio City Music Hall when he brought African musicians onto the stage November 2, 1980– this was years before Paul Simon’s “Graceland” — for the Fear of Music tour. I remember standing for the whole show (I was a lot younger) as “I Zimbra” enveloped the famed theater.
You can draw a direct line from that Radio City show to “American Utopia.” The latter show is 40 years in the making, really. Byrne was a precocious 28 years old at that show (I was 6) but the genius was fully formed. That show included “I Zimbra” — already more than a year old, as well as “Life During Wartime (This Ain’t No Disco)”– and the then already classic “Once in a Lifetime.” When I look back at that set list I see that Byrne still didn’t know how good “This Must Be The Place” was, and hadn’t yet given into the hit potential of “Burning Down the House.” Back in 1980, everything David Byrne was an oddity, a cult hit, not yet a commercial entity.
How funny to think of that as he prances across the “American Utopia” stage barefoot, leading his band of dancers, singers, and musicians in songs that you couldn’t imagine in 1980 would become standards. I remember waking up to WBCN in 1977 and hearing “Don’t Worry About the Government,” one of all my time favorites, for the first time. He’s singing about what? Apartment buildings? Convenience? With a robotic metal sounding voice that was somehow still soulful, the song unravels into a majestic poem.
I smell the pine trees and the peaches in the woods
I see the pine cones that fall by the highway
That’s the highway that goes to the building
I pick the building that I want to live in
And there you have the beautiful dichotomy of a David Byrne composition: it’s bitter and sweet, dancing and architecture. Human facing the unknown anonymity of life during wartime, or a pandemic, and you know we’ll get through it.
I’ll be there at 8pm tonight, my building has many conveniences. Let’s blow out HBO’s servers.
PS If you miss going to museums, this is also the best art installation of the last century.
The Kardashians have hit a stride, although not a good one.
The Thursday night episode of “Keeping Up with” them aired, unfortunately, while the presidential candidates were Town Halling on ABC and NBC.
The result was just 571,000 fans tuned in to see whatever nonsense was happening. That about ties two weeks ago when the number was 569,000. In between the show did rise to around 650,000. But I guess there wasn’t enough incentive to come back again.
The consistent numbers below 600,000 seem to be the average for this final go-round. And this was despite Kim K live tweeting the show. No one really cared.
I still think a murder cliff hanger a la “Who Shot JR?” would help, or a confrontation with Kanye West over his insanity. Maybe when they go under 500,000 we’ll see one of those!
UPDATE OCTOBER 16TH: “It’s About Time” sold a total of 997 copies in its first week according to Buzz Angle. Shameful on the part of BMG.
OCTOBER 11TH: Patty Smyth, the great rocker from the group Scandal, has released her first album in 28 years. It’s called “It’s About Time” and it’s a winner.
But for some reason Smyth’s album is on BMG Records, a kind of vanity junkhouse for legacy artists. I don’t know why artists sign with them. This past summer, BMG killed the latest Pretenders album, “Hate 4 Sale.” They do no marketing or publicity. Nothing for radio.
The result is disaster. “It’s About Time” — a labor of love — is now number 39 on iTunes. According to Buzz Angle, the album sold 412 copies on Friday. No one knows it’s out. I read about it from a post on Facebook.
On amazon, BMG even has the listing wrong. It says the album was available on July 24th. It was actually released yesterday. Even worse: it has no ranking on amazon, the one place where it could be selling. Amazon skews to older listeners who want CDs and don’t do much streaming. Patty should be at the top of their chart. So should the Pretenders, currently ranked at number 697.
Patty Smyth lead her group, Scandal, to the top of the charts in the 1980s with “The Warrior.” It’s still played all the time on WCBS FM and I’ll bet lots of other places. In the 1990s she married tennis great John McEnroe, had kids, raised a big family, and her career was backburnered. Over the years she’s appeared at New York charity functions, playing a blistering guitar and singing her heart out. But “It’s About Time” is a big comeback. Listen to it here on Spotify, or go get it on amazon. I’m ordering it right now, I want the CD in my car, cranked up and rocking.
We’ve been on a long tour of Bruce Springsteen’s past the last few years. He took it to Broadway, wrote a memoir, and continues to reminisce his glory days. This summer Springsteen, Little Steven van Zandt and Southside Johnny spent a couple of hours going over their magnificent beginnings on Sirius XM. For fans (that’s me) this was just about the best radio show I ever heard.
Now Bruce is trying to blend nostalgia with forward thinking. At 70 years old, he’s allowed. No one told him to keep making new records after creating an incredible library of music. But last year we had “Western Stars” following his Broadway run, and now we have the E Street Band album “Letter to You.” The album comprises some new songs, some from 1972 that he’s finally fleshed out, it’s a look back and forward simultaneously.
The album — Bruce’s 20th official studio album — was also made in just a few days. Springsteen smartly allowed director Thom Zimny, who made his Springsteen on Broadway film for Netflix, to shoot the recording of “Letter to You.” The film will unspool on Apple TV as the album drops. Interestingly, not all the songs from the album made the movie. One, called “Rainmaker,” which seems political to me. wasn’t included in the film. Maybe Bruce didn’t want to take the focus away from the camaraderie of the recording session.
Listening to the album is a whole different discipline than watching the making of the record. In the film, Zimny is looking for relationships, mixing old home movies with new visual anecdotes. It’s a tribute to Bruce and the E Street Band that they’ve never veered from their mission statement of 40 or 50 years ago. Their aim has remained true. You can draw a straight line through the decades from the beginning to now. And the film really brings out the talents of each member, Max’s pounding drums, Nils’s soaring guitar, Stevie van Zandt presiding over the whole thing as the architect of rock.
Maybe the one thing that has crept into the Band and Bruce’s lives is a melancholia derived from losing band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici. There is much toasting by the E Street to lost brethren, and much contemplating of the past. Songs from 1972 that were known only to fanatics have been reworked and recorded. One of them. Song for Orphans,” is conceded to be influenced by Bob Dylan, and I’ll tell you, it sure is.
Some of the songs that were known to fans, like “If I Were the Priest,” come to life as new classics. And one of them, “The Power of Prayer,” should be a radio single. It’s a hit, and it will misinterpreted as much as “Born to Run.” I like that.
You’ll want the album and the movie. Zimny knows how to get the most from live performances, and watching Bruce and the E Street Band construct the songs for the album is just dessert after a long, satisfying meal. And we get a little something extra after dessert, too. Through the film we meet Frank, Bruce’s “cousin” who taught him the guitar. And at the end of the movie, in what I called a post-film Marvel scene, they perform an acoustic version of the first single Bruce was on, in the group the Castiles, called “Baby I.” It’s a grace note Zimny, who gives us a little lump in the throat moment.
As for the album, a couple of songs that have grown on me in the short time I’ve had it: “House of a Thousand Guitars” with Roy Bittan’s piano leading the way at first I wasn’t sure about. The movie version sold me on it. The melody is surprising and disarming. “Burnin’ Train” is classic E Street, and I can’t wait to hear it in concert.
Both the movie and the CD hit next Friday, October 23rd, and I will probably have more to say about them between now and then.
Meantime, because it’s the 45th anniversary of “Born to Run,” I guess they’re playing it a lot on Sirius. I’m re-enraptured by “Thunder Road” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.” I’ve also been humming the mini-melodies from “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” There’s a moment in the movie when Bruce talks about fans at a concert doing that. I know how they feel. I love the look of surprise on his face realizing the fans know those interior melodies. These things are lodged in our heads, Bruce.
“If I Was the Priest” and “Janey Needs a Shooter” are old songs from concerts. They exist in bootleg form. Other artists sometimes got to them first. Warren Zevon has a version of “Janey” on YouTube. Allan Clarke of the Hollies (very underrated singer) did “Priest.”
UPDATE: Adding cable from MSNBC and CNBC didn’t help Trump, who still came up short by 1 million viewers.
Biden Town Hall: 12.7 million vs. Trump Town Hall: 10.3 million.
The people have spoken!
ABC’s Town Hall with Joe Biden scored 12.7 million viewers from 8 to 9pm last night while NBC’s Donald Trump Town Hall managed only 10.3 million.
Further, Biden held on to 11.7 million voters for his second hour on ABC with George Stephanopolous.
The key demo, though, is crazy: a 15 for Biden, a 10 for Trump in the 18-49 men. He got a 9 with women. This means that Biden is winning young people and middle aged people by a wide margin. He won among men, which is so important. (Maybe men are tired of dying from COVID?) In adults 50 and over, Biden edged out Trump with a 15 over a 14.
All the demos were for Biden, which is really solid. He trounced Trump across the board.
Trump’s lying and constant waffling about everything from when he was last tested for COVID to his support of white supremacists is not going over with the biggest sectors of the population.
Celebrities and many others were angry at NBC for staging the Trump Town Hall at the same time as the previously announced Biden event. But as it turns out, NBC knew what they were doing: Savannah Guthrie sacked Trump over and over like Tom Brady on his best day with the Patriots. And at the same time, running their show was almost like a pre-voting day referendum. LOL.
Trump, who lives by ratings, will be shook now.
Cable ratings for MSNBC etc will be in later but it shouldn’t change things much. MSNBC viewers hate Trump. And Fox News didn’t broadcast the Town Hall. So it’s unlikely Trump picked up viewers from cable.
PS Thanks to Mitch Metcalf and Showbuzz Daily for the numbers.
