The Evolution of Concert Culture w/ Russ from Pop Pantheon (The Chill-Out Chronicles Edition)

0:10 Hi, my name is Randy Kim from the Bunny Chronicles Podcast, and I am very excited to bring on this guest here, and he is part of the Pop Pantheon Podcast. His name is Russ Martin, who is a co-host, researcher, and producer for the Pop Pantheon Podcast alongside DJ Louie, contributing deep-dive research into pop star careers with a background in media, Russ helps analyze and ranks artists, focusing on the detailed, research-driven retrospectives of pop culture history. Now, I feel like I've been listening to the Pop Pantheon podcast for the past several years. I think, like, right after the Pantheon.

0:51 Bánh Bánh I'm listening for a good two hours about the breaking down of specific artists. I think the one that I really enjoyed the most was on Britney Spears and Madonna and that was like maybe a three-part series which was about maybe running two hours each so it was quite a lot of legwork to Post so much information even information that I completely forgot about so I really appreciate the work that you put in and um and as a fan of your show sometimes I would ping you guys and ping you both I'm pretty surprised that DJ Louie hasn't blocked me yet because I do annoy him yeah and and also uh I really appreciated you bringing my perspective on Janet Jackson's legacy too so it's much appreciated that you had my voice featured on your show so yeah and well thank you so much for being on my show how are you doing and yeah what are your thoughts so far on this music landscape this year?

2:08 Well first of all thank you for listening to our show really appreciate it a lot goes in obviously to those episodes when we are doing chronological deep dives into pop stars and we're digging way back and we have these very long episodes and so we have Bánh Bites in a bit of a main pop girl drought. For the first part of this year, a lot of the biggest names were quite quiet. Now, kind of all of a sudden at the moment that we're recording this, a lot is going on.

2:51 New music, Robin, Madonna, Casey Musgraves, Olivia Rodrigo, Lady Gaga and Dochi. So suddenly there has been a huge A flood of people coming back in terms of A-list mainstream pop. While things were quiet over the winter, I sort of reinvested in discovering smaller acts and there's a lot of really cool stuff happening just outside the mainstream as they're sort of Always is on any given year we can debate at any time how pop has felt and I'm using pop here sort of as the most mainstream but also the genre of pop which can sometimes mean that and sometimes not mean that. We can debate which years have good pop and which years have less good pop but in any given year you're going to be having musicians all over The Field making really interesting and vital work.

3:46 This year I've been listening a lot to the new Underscores record. I just discovered Tiffany Day. The girl group Nona put out a really cool song called Work this year that I really like. So there's lots happening but at that tippy top A tier it was pretty quiet for the first little bit of the year. What do you think? Yeah I agree with you too because like I don't know maybe the last six months per se it feels like men in pop music started to emerge a lot more recently I mean we also had Bruno Mars and Harry Styles new album that came out and it felt like in some ways that There was a long drought of men and pop stars.

4:32 I mean, you know, there's Benson Boone, but then now we had Justin Bieber's return back to the stage, which, you know, it's very controversial for a lot of people. But like, I think it's very fascinating to see the push and pull between the genders and how that Sets the table for pop music, for how it's going to look like for this year. I mean, I think the summer is going to be very interesting to see what happens. I mean, two years ago, I mean, we were in the Charlie XCX Spratt summer and the Rise of Chaperone and the Espresso song by Sabrina Carpenter. And then, you know, Kylie Minogue before that with the Padam Padam.

5:13 I wonder now with Madonna coming out with her album at the age of 68 and Olivia Rodrigo and some of the more established female artists I wonder what that's going to look like for this summer and what do you think or what do you anticipate will happen during that particular time where we could expect more male summer anthems or is it going to be more back to what we have seen the last couple of years? I have my eyes on Zara Larson and Tyla I think that that is a real contender for this summer and thinking back to 2024 which was an incredible year and a really good summer for pop music Perhaps Zara Larson's sort of rise mimics in some way what we were seeing that summer with Tinashe, with Charlie XCX, and maybe this like long standing always the bridesmaid, never the bride might get to come into center stage.

6:10 That is something I think could be a really rewarding and fun thing to track. Yeah, so I'm very curious to see where this is heading towards because I feel like we're going to get more into the concert landscape these days, the concert going experience. I know you mentioned going into spending more time focusing on smaller independent artists. I feel like this is kind of where I'm starting to spend more time in. I started listening to Sudan Archives and Kane Koto and I thought they were fantastic when I saw them live. And I'm like, okay, can we... Is there a place for independent artists these days to be able to perform consistently at venues without completely burning out or being nearly destitute?

6:56 Because I think what we're seeing, especially with the rising cost of concerts in shows, it's pricing out a lot of regular fans and Ticketmaster is still very much a behemoth giant and continues to tack on more fees and limited availability because their bots put them on the resale market. But I wonder about, gosh, even the smaller artists, for them to be able to perform, be able to have to do their own laundry, go out on the road, you know, and perform in, like, 30 cities in 35 days.

7:41 I wonder what that looks like for the future of the investment of the concert-going experience. Yeah, I think it's tough. I would... Align it sort of to what is happening in Hollywood right now in that the middle class of workers are really disappearing. You know, it used to be that you could buy a house in the valley working as a staff writer on a television show. And that sort of represented this real middle class, you know, and then there was the entry positions, and there was also the people who were making millions, but there was a real steady middle class. And I think that what we have seen post pandemic is a shift in the The economics of touring, the material costs of a lot of things that go into touring just shot up during that moment.

8:30 Obviously the most obvious being gas, but also accommodations for everyone who is working on the tour, lots of the things that people rent for Tours got backlogged and then the prices shot up and then they never really came back down so it is more expensive to tour than it has been and that cost has been passed along to the consumer but I think that is not hurting the Harry Styles and the Amars of the world that is hurting much smaller artists you know Shirley Manson of Garbage recently spoke out about this and saying they've decided not to tour the way that they have in the past anymore and Garbage is a pretty big band you know Garbage has a well developed fan culture around them they have a lot of name recognition in the marketplace.

9:25 This is a band that has been established since the 90s that still gets cited as an influence a lot. It's not as if they are some irrelevant band. They are a band that still has a lot of cool factor to them and they are having a lot of trouble in this marketplace and the reason that Shirley spoke out she has said is not because of how it is impacting her but how it's impacting the smaller artists so yeah it's certainly distressing to think about and it's indicative of what is happening overall in the economy at this moment in that everything feels like it's getting passed along to the end consumer and nothing is being absorbed by corporations who by and large seem to be doing kind of fine.

10:11 Yeah, no, I really appreciate this because I also wonder about the political landscape because there are artists that have taken some very interesting positions like Nicki Minaj we've seen. We saw what happened with Kanye West recently with his SoFi album. Relaunch of his musical career and then you also have Usher and Chris Brown teaming up together for a tour which is very confounding but also that came in days after Usher had defended P. Diddy and I just feel like wow this is such an interesting time but we're also seeing a lot of people especially in social media getting very fed up with a lot of these big artists that haven't spoken out about whether it's on Gaza or the Trump administration or basically enabling or supporting the administration I mean I just feel like I wonder I know that this is like a question that we keep asking every single year is the day and age of celebrity culture dying is it finally putting it out to the pastures I don't know if I have the answer to that, but it seems like there's more of a divestment in a lot of these big artists as of late, or I could be wrong.

11:31 Yeah, I don't see that. I think that celebrity culture is probably shifting as opposed to ending. I think as far back as we can possibly go, there's always been notable people within any I see a shift towards different types of celebrities different types of notable people who are popular amongst young people quite frankly A lot of them are more right-wing than a decade or two ago, particularly if you look at in the influencer space, YouTubers, people who are popular as Twitch streamers, that type of a thing.

12:19 I think some have gotten good at covering up their political leanings, but for some particularly males who appeal to males, it doesn't seem to be A disadvantage to them if anything it may be an advantage but perhaps I'm being quite cynical Yeah, and then with the concert-going experience, going back to our time capsule here, I don't know what year was your first concert, but for me, I remember 2004. It was the Madonna Reinvention Tour. That was my first ever concert, and what a concert that was to go into. And I have to kind of go into my time capsule of what it was like as a 21-year-old fan who had never seen her, who had looked up to her for God since I was a little kid and this was before camera phones or right before camera phones were starting to take hold social media was in infancy and stayed on the desktop and like like a that one of the things that she does very often is when she doesn't really have openers or opening acts and second she does arrive fashionably late and I remember this was summer and the air was also off because she apparently likes to have the air conditioning off too so I don't know what person could actually you know try to Yeah, yeah, yeah.

14:03 Some of the women's boyfriends that were like come on Madonna we gotta get to work tomorrow and I just remembered seeing her coming out and doing Vogue and she was doing the yoga pose which was incredible and I was pretty much pretty much taken so I felt like I was not the same since and that's kind of where my concert journey began but I'm curious about for your the beginning of your concert journey Yeah, well, I have seen Madonna, but not until more recent years. I saw the Rebel Heart Tour twice, and I saw this most recent celebration tour. We got a drink at a hotel lobby bar near the arena.

14:46 Vaguely Vaguely Yeah, she is an incredible singer-songwriter. She had this really beautiful, raspy voice. It was only in the second grade, so my memory is a little bit limited, but I was completely taken away with the concert-going experience from that point on. As a child, I started to read the newspaper so that I could circle what concerts were coming and ask my parents to take me to them.

15:33 Yeah, what made the concert going special to you when you arrive and see your favorite artists perform? And especially since you can't take video footage and there's something that's very special when you're an audience that is literally immersed into the performance and not on their cell phones or digital cameras even a few years later. I wonder what that must have been like to just experience it. Did you feel like you were making new friends? Or did it feel like such a solitaire experience for you to mentally prepare for the entire day for it? Yeah, that was with my mom.

16:14 I don't know if I made a whole lot of friends, but this particular performer says records is business, stage is soul. And I think that there is a real truth to that. I think that there is a reason that live music has been a part of like almost all societies since almost forever there is something about the act of seeing live music that is communal and is community particularly as we are in increasingly agnostic societies it is taking the place of That I think is a real human need for communion.

16:56 I definitely found a sense of community later as a teenager going to pop punk shows, ska shows, hardcore shows. Very much so a part of my local scene and that was a really generative experience for me and a experience that taught me so much about being part of the community, taught me so much about politics. It was Yeah, very foundational to who I am to be part of that. And that was really centered much less on the type of experience that we're talking about going to see, you know, a Janet Jackson level concert.

17:41 Mì Bites Mì Bites I see nine bands at once, high school bands, you know, people who are just starting to figure out what making music is and doing that in a really messy and intriguing way in front Yeah, so I think that that is for me historically a big part of the concert going experience.

18:23 Now I am looking at it quite differently. You know, I will be 38 soon and now I am looking for venues where I have a seat. Same here. Same here I'm that same way too because those standing room only shows I'm like I'm like uh one I have to know who's performing I have to know how my travel time is gonna be I mean I have to put a lot of things into perspective too yeah the seating is important I'd like to also sit on the side that's another thing the aisle seats something I try to go for so I feel like I feel like as I've gotten older I don't know what it is I always joke around to people saying that look I'm not gonna sit in those poverty seats I'm gonna sit like in the in a decent seating you know I'm too old enough to be sitting in the nosebleeds at this point in my life but I think maybe it's because I've gone to so many shows and I feel like I finally earned that rite of passage to you know to spend more I guess and to have a real good experience and But yeah, do you remember what the ticket buying experience was like back in the day?

19:30 Because I remembered you could only get tickets through the kiosk of Carson Piri Scott, which is part of Bone Town, which is now gone. And then you could also go to an FYE record town and buy tickets there or over the phone, which I never had to do before. I cannot imagine the agony of buying tickets. Or he's actually just waiting out at the venue in Lime. Which, you know, did you have to do any of those experiences? All of those, yes. I remember trying to get to see Britney Spears on the phone. It must have been eight or nine. And I waited on the phone for like two hours.

20:11 I did not get them. I cried. Oh, no. Which tour was it? Was it Onyx? Or was it Dream Within a Dream? No, prior to that. Oh, I think Dream Within a Dream. But 2001? Yeah, that sounds right Oh, wow No, I think before that Oops, I did it again. Yeah, it would have been an oops. Wow. Yeah. I also, I remember physically going to a lot of places to buy tickets. Record stores, box offices of small clubs. Like, often, like, back in the day, clubs would have box office hours.

20:51 So you could go to the box office. It would open at three o'clock, even though the Club wasn't open until 9 or 10 and you could buy a ticket that way. Sometimes businesses had ticket masters in them. Like you could go buy tickets at the cashier. Yeah, a lot of tickets to small shows at record stores, but it also used to be much more of a thing to just be buying at the door. Just show up, you pay at the door. you walk on in but that was also that speaks to the types of shows I was going to I never really saw like a full pop music spectacular singing and dancing I don't think until maybe the Monster Ball yeah wow yeah I think when we Bánh Bites 20 plus years later it's like there's a gazillion pre-sales you know from Verizon to Spotify to MasterCard, Discover, American Express you name it and I feel like well one you know the general on sale is basically obviously it's there's like I would tell people in

22:22 the past like don't even bother with the general on sale you've got to get a pre-sale to even to be considered getting tickets and the minute that um in the minute that you're in the queue, you know, like for about five minutes, a good chunk of them are probably already gone, especially with the bots that have now taken over and start scooping them up and putting them in the resale. So, yeah, like, how do you think over time, like, There was always a lot of fun anticipation, the excitement of staying in line or going online for the first time trying to get those tickets.

23:03 Now it's like you're trying to figure out what is fair these days. I feel like you have to have these pre-sale codes. Make sure that you are like you don't even know what the price of the concert is gonna be anymore like back then you at least knew what the range was this time it's like it's done in real time pricing but how do you think that has affected your willingness to go to shows because I think this past couple of months I started having this um This epiphany that like I don't know if I could see myself doing a lot of these shows anymore, you know, like I one I've already seen everyone that I want to see at this point, but it's just the ticket master or the ticket buying experiences continues to be so difficult and just a miserable experience like do I have time to Wait for over an hour on a workday you know and not get in trouble with my boss you know get caught into a meeting which did happen to me when I was trying to get the Lady Gaga man tour tickets but I somehow got them you know I mean yeah that was that's that's the wildness of it all but yeah I wonder about that for you like Yeah there was a real sweet spot I feel like in the 2010s where you could kind of hunt around or be really plugged into a fandom and get a pre-sale code and you could get a real cheap reasonable seat I remember at the time like The going rate for getting a pre-sale floor ticket was like 80

24:35 to 120 bucks, that sort of a thing. I saw Gaga a bunch of times around that price point. Yeah, now it is a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. The Mayhem Tour. I think I'm going to see as many shows As I probably ever have I get to write some of them off on my taxes That helps a little bit Oh good, wow That's part of what I do So that is That's helpful I think I'm always trying to Be Cautious about how many giant tours that have high price tags that I'm seeing and trying to focus some of my energy on smaller tickets.

25:25 I saw Jay Stevens last weekend. She's a really great like pop R&B singer. I'm going to see Hot and Freddy soon. Getting tickets to these smaller like there's a lot of great pop shows. A lot of great across genres but my expertise is in pop. And you can see a lot of great pop tours for 40 or 50 dollars if you kind of try to get plugged into what's going on with smaller artists and start discovering new artists and at that point too it is more helpful right to go see someone you can feel good about spending that 40 or 50 dollars like it's contributing to somebody who is on their way up and somebody who is using that money to pay their phone bill as opposed to using it for I don't know, a Bentley?

26:18 Yeah, it's like back in the 2000s, it was typical for a concert ticket price to be like $25 to $300 being a luxury. Now it's like since 2016, we've seen tickets have shut up. $100 will get you like maybe at the minimum for a smaller act in some ways, you know, maybe small to mid-act. And... Now you're looking at 4 to 5 figure marks for a real good seat and that's not doing the artist meet and greet or in some cases not even the VIP which is also very astounding we saw how much Taylor Swift tickets were going for we saw how much Beyonce was fetching for Renaissance and the last couple years I have spent a lot of money I got to meet Janet Jackson in person for one and then I got to Uh, see Grace Jones when I flew to New York, saw Adele in Vegas, um, Beyonce twice for, uh, Renaissance and then for Kobe Carter.

27:19 Paul McCartney so let's just say that I have very expensive taste in an artist and so I think I've realized like god you know it's pretty sickening how much I've spent on the concerts but also on the merch merch like you're talking now it's like you're looking at $40 or $50 on a t-shirt $100 on a hoodie programs are like something that I like to collect but they're becoming far few in between but But in the past they usually would run anywhere from $20 to $30 For the Beyonce Renaissance one, that was $100 for that sucker And I was like blown away how massively, how massive an increase that was Yeah, what, I know we were talking about like your preference for small shows Do you also, enjoy the stadium arena or theater experience as well like what are your feelings on those venues because I think for stadium and arenas like I'm particular with which artist does it like who could actually perform in an arena what spectacle would they have because I think the worst concert for me that I did not like was the weekend back in 2017 when he barely had any spectacle it was just him on a mic and at the United Center and I just felt it was very I'm curious about your own experiences in those bigger to mid-sized arenas.

28:48 Yeah, I think Everyone is good in a covered theater. That is really a sweet spot. I think big acts going down to a covered theater always works. A smaller act can often scale up to a covered theater quite comfortably. I do love a club show, but I would always choose a covered theater, I think. More so than venue, I think the timing in career is where I find the most excitement. I love to see an artist who is just connecting with a new or bigger audience or performing a project that has really I really clicked with an audience I recently saw Rachel Chinneriri I felt that there's just like an electricity in the room I saw two stops on the Midwest Princess Chapel Rhone tour the first was a small club the second at a larger outdoor space and similarly just electric I think so much of a concert is about what the audience brings and there can be just like an energy in the room not everyone has the creative Vision or ambition to do full arena spectacle.

30:00 And so sometimes I find that a show is too small for the room that it's in. You know, you see someone like Madonna or Gaga who are real mad. I just saw the Cardi B tour and she's so charismatic it is so much fun to see her and you can kind of see the scenes a little bit because she's new to this, right? She hasn't done arena pop spectacular and you can see that the ambition is there but the finesse isn't quite there yet and that's okay because Cardi B is so damn charming but I can see the potential there.

30:46 I think that she could really, really master it. Missy Elliott is somebody who I have recently the last tour that she saw I thought was just incredible. That's somebody who has incredible artistic vision and in addition to being a really good beat maker, a really good rapper, a really good producer of having this visionary quality in terms of the sonics, also is an incredible visual artist and is really really tasteful in selecting choreography, selecting costuming, things like that. Not everybody has that. And sometimes you will see an artist and be like, God, this would have been really good in a covered theater, but I'm not sure that this belongs in an arena.

31:33 The style of show, the way that the show is shaped to me in the pop sphere, an arena show is a certain thing. I've also seen some uh rock acts uh throughout the years and I think that there was a format that was the previous format of arenas and that was the rock and roll spectacular you know I saw Motley Crue many years ago and they had uh the time you bring out the titty cam no you didn't do I think maybe I'm not remembering Tommy's drums get put in a cage and it flips upside down and drums upside down they have female dancers come down from the ceiling on silks like it is this full thing pyrotechnics that sort of a thing and I saw Aerosmith as well you know that was all I think that informs it's an old school like Little Richard sort of invented this type of rock and roll spectacular Elton John did it as well and In the 1980s, you see Madonna, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson take that and make it into a new format for pop music.

32:50 But not everybody, because so many people are in arenas now. We've seen a lot of scaling up of artists that I would have thought of as and a few years ago would have been acts for amphitheaters, covered theaters, large clubs who are now at arenas and it is not a format that is befitting of all of their worlds as musical creatives. It reminds me of like the Lumineers reunited what they performed last year at Soldier Field of all places I'm like Lumineers they were never that big especially to perform at a place where It fits for the Beyonce's and the Taylor Swift's of the world but the Lumineers and then Maggie Rogers I mean I like Maggie Rogers a lot but for her to play at an arena just didn't seem to fit you know so I was like wow some of these were head scratchers to me and I wonder about how does this current generation of artists these days are like seeing how they perform live because For a long time, we're used to seeing Britney, Janet, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince.

34:12 Those folks really elevated their game. The choreography was, bar none, incredible to watch and behold. I feel like it's more scaled back. The choreography is more scaled back. There's more lip-syncing. Or more singing with a backing track at the very least So I feel like there's more scaling back And then we've also had people like Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus Planning to exit out of the touring business So I wonder what that looks like moving forward with the future of concerts for these generations Yeah Yeah, well, I think for starters, the nature of pop stardom has really shifted, right?

35:00 For the past 15 years or so, audiences have really shifted towards wanting to connect with musicians on a super personal and sometimes parasocial level. I think a lot of Gen Z and maybe also Gen Alpha want to feel like the stories that are being told on stage are real. They're looking for authenticity and relatability as key factors in the artists that they're gravitating towards. This feels like a shift that happens maybe sometime around Lorde, but Billie Eilish is a really key example here for me. I think that that is counter to the past when entertainers were basically superheroes, right?

35:43 The reason now that people I think are buying tickets to concerts is often because they want to feel like they're part of something and to an extent that has always been true but in the past that I think was more so true at the level of subculture so that was true for genre spaces that was true for Musical Genres That Had Entire Subgenres Subcultures Associated With Them Styles Of Dressing Ideologies That Was Less True For Big Artists Who Would Be Playing Mì Bites Spectacle out of her show she's someone that I would definitely point to as carrying the torch she's not dancing certainly in the same way that Janet Jackson does but Janet Jackson was a pretty generation talented dancer Zara Larson as well the mic is on with Zara Larson, there is dancing, there are backup dancers, there's a whole world.

37:11 She's doing that on a small scale thus far, but if you look throughout Europe, she has some pretty large venues that she fills. So there is certain Certainly that style of dynamism I just think that tastes have shifted a little bit and you see that things come in and out in terms of tastes and you know we also don't have like big singer singers the way that we used to it's just a shift in what people are looking to connect with and I hope that some of those things come back but we'll see Yeah and I also wonder about K-pop concerts too because they are mammothly huge and I went to a Twice concert two years ago I believe and this was my first K-pop concert and yeah to hear the teenage screaming the people mimicking the choreography I mean that is some that's a dedicated fan base that really blows my mind I wonder where do you see it taking place in the next decade is it here to stay for the long haul or is it kind of like seen as a fad although I know people kill me for even suggesting such an idea but I'm curious about the musical do we see K-pop evolving more and more let's say if Blackpink reunites in 20 years would people come out to

38:43 see them or if they're going to still be able to have that staying power I wonder about that Yeah, you know BTS recently came back after several years because each of the members had to complete their mandatory military service that everyone in Korea, every citizen of Korea has to do and the response to their comeback was absolutely massive and in many instances The music market just moves on, and so to see them come back, I think that's a real sign of longevity for the genre. However, not my own original reporting, but I have spoken to several journalists recently who told me that K-pop, which in Korea isn't called K-pop, in Korea it's called idol music, and idol music in South Korea has waned in popularity in recent years and different forms they have what's called I believe ballad music apologies if I am misspeaking rock is actually pretty popular there's a lot of other genres that have sort of taken over in Korea well The Kpop industry is now looking to market outside of South Korea to market music too.

40:08 So it will be interesting to see to what extent losing that home is going to for this genre that is focused on pop idols. I have no idea, not a clue, but it's a really interesting thing to watch and it has been very interesting as well in the United States to see how many people over the course of the past 10 years have Shown that they are willing to listen to music in languages that they don't actively speak or that they don't speak proficiently or are not their native language.

40:52 The rise in K-pop has in some ways been linked to the rise in Latin pop and the rise in Spanish language. Rather music in the United States more broadly. I think that there was a lot of pressure for so many years. Whatever your native language was, if you wanted to be popular in the United States, what the industry would tell you, what label reps, A&R, etc. would be. giving to you as advice as a musical artist would be to make music in English. And it doesn't seem to be the case anymore that you need to do that or that you need to entirely do that.

41:33 There's been a lot of mixing of language and mixing of culture that we have seen over the course of the past 10 or 15 years that has been really different. from our generation you know uh when you look at say an act like Shakira who had to you know acts like her either had to make music in English or in Spanish and they were marketed to different places uh but a large part of America speaks uh Spanish, a lot of people speak Portuguese. There's a lot of non-English speakers across America. And that is, you know, a big part of that musical market.

42:16 And I think that applies to any form of popular music that is inherently linked to cultural traditions or even just to nationality. And shifting gears, what would you say was the most memorable experience you had witnessed that an artist that you saw on stage shocked you? Shocking! Oh gosh, what has really shocked me? Do you know what? I saw Lady Gaga break her hip Whoa, really? Wow Yes, yes, yes Yeah, that happened in Montreal.

42:56 On this most recent tour, she had to cancel Montreal again. And I was like, man, there's a curse on Montreal with that woman. I don't know that she should ever go back there. But yeah, I remember that was the Born This Way ball. And we had already seen it, I believe, in Toronto. And we went to see it in Montreal. And there was a moment in the show when she... goes out on her knees and sort of slides down the runway. and I'm 90% sure that is when she broke her hip you could tell the rest of the night she was unusually giving it her all she was just like leaving it all on the stage and we were like that was so incredible oh my god we gotta get tickets to another show some leg of this tour we were like looking up different places that we could go on the train ride back home and we got notifications that she had broken her hip and cancelled the tour My goodness.

43:52 Wow. What a thing to witness. And I think for me, it was Zack De La Rosa from Rage Against the Machine performing at Lollapalooza in 2008. And at that time, Barack Obama was running for president. I mean there were people wearing their Obama shirts because there were rumors that he was going to show up to Lollapalooza and also at that time Kanye was one of the headliners so there were rumors that he might be at that set that never happened but on that night The crowd was getting violently insane. It was so much so that Zack had to keep telling the audience to move back several times and people were breaking in from outside.

44:36 And then there was one moment where he had a speech and directed to Bites Bites Bites This is interesting, but yeah, that was basically a call, but that was one chaotic set that I had experienced with 3,000 people literally moshing, and it was very unpleasant.

45:16 Yeah, that was one, yeah. What would you say are the biggest pet peeves at a concert? I really don't like when a show is oversold especially I find that this happens at clubs I think that they sell tickets assuming as you can do As a event promoter, usually something like only 80% of people who buy tickets to any given event show up to it. But for a really hot act, 100% of the people who have tickets seem to show up. And yeah, I hate it. When people get crammed into a space, they act funny and that is not...

46:01 Their fault is the fault of the promoter in the venue. But yeah, I really hate going to a show where I feel claustrophobic. Same, same. It's also a thing that I do not like. And I will also say that one experience I had was at a Beyonce-Jay-Z show in 2018, On the Run 2. um there was a guy with his girlfriend he had on very strong cologne I kid you not and I was furious I was like oh my god I think I was like texting or messaging on Facebook I said that I hope that I He breaks up with him after this show because this is so offensive to me but he luckily left before it started so that was a miracle it was gonna kill me I was gonna have a headache or a lot of people were gonna get headaches from the second hand smell of it but there's a pet peeve of mine I will say like people who record the entire show and never put their phone down like I know I am guilty of recording like maybe I'll do like a No more than 30 or 40 seconds of a clip and I'll put back and I'll just you know be immersed but yeah like sometimes I do get very annoyed when people are very much oblivious to it and or very drunk and not even paying to the show paying attention to the show so that's those are pet peeves of mine but I think I'm getting at the age now I don't know if you're feeling it but one yeah 10 o'clock hits

47:32 You're like, God, when is the encore going to start? And I will start looking at the set list ahead of time, so I will have to see, do I want to leave when Usher does? Yeah, of course. I want to know what the songs are going to play at the end that I can actually leave and get to the parking lot quick enough. Do you see yourself doing that more often? Because that's starting to happen to me more. Oh I'm a real proponent of this I think for me it has to do with how I was raised I remember being a kid and my dad would do that when he would take us to baseball games just like anything to beat a crowd was my father's philosophy so I'm a checker I'm setlist FM I know what the setlist is going in I see I hate an encore I think that the most respectful thing that you can do is just finish your damn show Same I know Yeah, with concert etiquette, I think that I'm starting to feel it shift, and that is just getting older.

48:35 There is a certain strain where I have seen people essentially using concerts as a place to capture their own content, including lighting themselves and It's certainly disruptive. I ask myself the question when I'm getting annoyed at that. Am I the target for this act and if I am not then cool how annoyed you are because you know the cultural norms around this type of thing shift what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior shifts and should we maybe push back on it yes but if I'm going to see a show that is being essentially marketed to young women then maybe no one needs an almost 40 year old man being like turn off your ring light Yeah, I think there was something I was just going to say to that, but like, I think when I go to a show, I think about like, okay, do I want to see the opening act?

49:49 When do I come in? Because I do like to get in early so I can actually absorb the environment. And sometimes I've had to sit through like really bad opening acts, you know, against my own will, against my better judgment. But what artists do you regret not seeing when they were still alive or when they are now retired from touring? So I've never seen Elton John Yeah I do wish that I would have I've never seen Elton I've never seen Celine who is now only performing in Vegas or Paris Yeah, Paris The last Celine tour was just so expensive that I'm And that is out of my price range But I would love to see her Tina Turner I know, me too My mom saw Tina Turner and she still talks about her legs Every time she brings it up she says Her legs, that's what I remember from the show Her legs were just incredible Yes they are She was in the Haynes commercial for a long time For a reason yeah for me it would be Prince I regret not seeing Prince when I had the chance and it really annoys the hell out of me that I to this day Tina Turner being one of them I would love to see Sade I don't know if she's ever gonna tour because it's been 16 years and I'm like you've got to you you can't just go out like this like Give us one more.

51:17 So I'm hoping that that's going to happen. Who else would be another one? Amy Winehouse, of course. I don't know who else would be a good one. Carole King. Carole King would be another one too. I would love her to do Tapestry. But I know she's in her 80s, so... probably unlikely but although Paul Simon and Paul McCartney were touring in their 80s so not out of the question there um yeah and as we wrap up um what can you say about what you're currently doing with pop pantheon what I don't know I know you don't want to reveal too much but like in terms of like what are you looking to spend more time with like are Are you looking to do more deep dives on specific artists?

52:04 Are you looking to talk more about the trends in the concerts and the current musical landscape shift? What's in it for you guys so far? Yeah, so Pop Pantheon is a show that explores the world of pop stars in detail. We cover everyone from Diana Ross all the way down to Jessica and Ashley Simpson. We do seasons covering Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Explore different eras, explore different subgenres, parts of the world of pop.

53:02 That and then having a lot of fun with the format that we call our B-sides where we do lists. Lately, we have been doing what we call a draft where we bring a panel together and we decide the list of the best songs from a artist or songwriter. So we have loads and loads of fun. You can find us at poppantheompod.com. Yeah, thank you so much. I hope people get a chance to listen to Pop Hand Down Podcast, which is available on all streaming networks. And also, if you subscribe to them through Patreon, you do get the additional content as well, too.

53:47 So, yeah, this is great. This has been amazing. Thank you so much. And I really look forward to hearing more of your show. But thank you so much for this fun conversation on the concert-going experiences. And... What we can you know look back on and what we can maybe predict in the future I mean we could be wrong for all we care but like yeah I think this has been wonderful so thank you so much Russ really appreciate it Thanks for having me Randy