Anyway, the newsletter is brutally honest commentary about what's going on in the music biz, and of course I don't always agree with it. He's a really good writer but doesn't know how to use anything but commas for punctuation, so if you're looking for pure journalistic poetry a la Greil Marcus or Peter Guralnick, forget it. But I learn a lot every time I get an edition of the newsletter.
You all probably remember when, sometime in the '80s, word got out that Van Halen insisted that their promoter provide them with M&Ms backstage at their shows--
M&Ms, but none colored brown. Everyone laughed, and called Van Halen a prima donna band, spoiled rock stars, all that stuff.
But in reading the Lefsetz newsletter the other day, one of the people writing in said that the reason the band requested no brown M&Ms was to see how well the concert promoter followed the rider in the contract. If the promoter noted something as minute as their request about backstage candy, then the band could relax a bit about the more
pressing details--those would be taken care of. This makes sense, eh?
It just goes to show that we shouldn't really slam artists--even those we love to hate--as much as the leeches higher up in the music industry machine. Yeah, that's it.