NT-3238

Reel opens to a large darkened stage with streams of fireworks shooting out, people can be heard screaming

Host Robert Lipsyte narrates over Rolling Stones concert - he states the Stones are in town this week and if you go see them you'll be "hip" but if you watch The Eleventh Hour band you'll be "AvantGarde"

The Eleventh Hour graphic and show opener

Host Lipsyte talks about tonight's topic. He states that over 130,000 people paid $30 each to see a Rolling Stones Concert at Shea Stadium. However, at "The Knitting Factory" club on Houston Street this week, about 1300 people paid $7.00 to hear such bands as The Ordinaires (who are standing on stage with him).

The band plays live at club, The Knitting Factory.

z'in on female trumpet player from the experimental rock band, The Ordinaires, electric guitar strapped to her. Z'out on rest of band performing.

z'in again on female trumpet player, then zoom out to band performing.

Close up Cello player

Close up on hand strumming electric guitar with pick

Bicycle parked outside Knitting Factory. Male heading down steps into the building.

Bob Appel at soundboard

Dorf and Appel continue talking with (unsee)interviewer. Dorf explaining that when they found the site, it was a "dump" and people told them it should be named The Dump!

Audience shot, waiter serving drinks

Audience seated at small tables listening intently to the music

Patrons in the club sitting, drinking beer, conversing. Bartender making espresso. Dorf and Appel narrate that they make most of the money for the club from the bar, and they don't charge a minimum. A lot of people, jazz lovers, drink tea!

Circular pan of the colorful artistic ceiling as Dorf and Appel narrate about how tourists came in and took pictures of the ceiling.

Dorf seated at electronic sound board. CU Audio meters green and red move on sound board.

Dorf and Appel sitting still talking with unseen interviewer about how they're schedules are filled, they don't sleep much, lots of stress but they love it!

Led Zeppelin cover song

Wide shot of the studio, Host Robert Lipsyte seated around coffee table with guests.

Host Lipsyte pauses the interviews to show clips from The Rolling Stones, Steel Wheel Tour.

Rolling Stones female fan in a crowd, mic pointed at her, states, "They're the world's greatest rock 'n roll band in the world".

Cut to clip from Rolling Stones performance. Mick Jagger with full head of hair wearing Sticky Fingers leather jacket performing at his finest.

The Rolling Stones on magazine covers, Time and Forbes.

Hand unzipping fly on faux pair of pants and dollar bills spilling out.

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INTERVIEW

Kurt Hoffman 16:38
Yeah I guess so. yeah. I saw arto. Lindsay did a Budweiser commercial on the radio. I was really surprised. I guess I heard it. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't know if you'd have to think about it.

Robert Lipsyte 16:48
Gene, what you're talking about this corporatization of rock the Budweiser commercial? Does this have anything to do with the music itself?

Gene Santoro 16:58
It has right now everything to do with the music itself, because it has everything to do with the way the music industry is set up. MTV, for example exists partly so that at least partly so that the record industry and Madison Avenue can have a place where they kind of get together in a real way. I mean, the the videos on MTV are ads for record company product, as they call it and the ads on MTV or ads for other kinds of products that Madison Avenue is Hawking in a particular audience that MTV reaches. The directors who direct both kinds of ads are often the same people. They use the same cast of characters back and forth. So it's pretty indistinguishable. The trick of MTV is getting people to watch what are essentially ads and thinking that it's programming. And it's a real nifty trick. MTV turned a nice profit last year for the first time on the strength of around a quarter of a million viewers a day.

Robert Lipsyte 17:51
Now, your strength at the moment is the ordinaires is it considered on the cutting edge of music? It's elitist music, I guess in some ways, and it kind of avoids this, the Budweiser commercial. And the populism of it. But this is where you want to go. Ultimately,

Kurt Hoffman 18:09
I don't know, that's certainly not our main goal. I mean, certainly we would like to support ourselves playing music, you know. And so of course you want to, you know, get out there and fly to as many people as we can. But you know, no, our first goal isn't to be multimillionaires.

Robert Lipsyte 18:24
Well, you have an MTV Video out now,

Kurt Hoffman 18:27
which was one way to get out to a lot of people, you know, without moving nine people in a van to every city in the universe is

Robert Lipsyte 18:33
Van ordinare, as you call it. Now that you've seen the change in the Rolling Stones from you know, guys who sat down to a kind of corporate spokespeople, has that changed the music.

Stanley Booth 18:48
I think it's had a very profound change on the meaning of the music. I mean, what Jean is saying is so very correct and true, it seems to me. The people who have ruined politics in this country are now ruining the music business by making it a matter of sound bites and exclusive arrangements for interviews. And when I started touring with the Rolling Stones, it was like a small band of people, maybe a dozen. I mean, they started out doing with maybe like six or seven. But it was a small group of people sort of going out into gymnasiums, and they weren't playing exclusively these mausoeums you know, I mean, to me it is I saw stones the other night in Birmingham, and I went to a Rolling Stone show and I did not dance, nobody dance, because if you had danced, you would have fallen down the side of the damn Stadium, you know, and killed yourself. To me, this is not rock and roll. I mean, it's it's certainly a very tight expert show they're doing, but it is not. There was nobody saw anything there that would change his or her life. Well, I mean, there used to be an element.

Robert Lipsyte 19:57
Yeah, but I mean, does that mean that there's no way in In this kind of what becomes popular music to escape this Faustian bargain, and if you're going to be able to quit your day job, if you're going to be able to have the freedom to express yourself totally the way you want to express yourself, you're not going to be able to do it anymore. You're gonna have to sell out as such, is

Gene Santoro 20:18
Certainly that's, I think the goal of places like MTV, and it's certainly one reason that it was kept going at such a loss for four years. I think that's what the industry would like to have happen. Yes, whether it's going to happen, I don't know. Because records are funny thing. Music is a funny thing. Culture is a funny thing, every time you try to stomp on it, it has a way of like shifting out from underneath your feet and coming up somewhere else, you know, and hopefully, that'll happen with this as well. But right now, certainly, there's a lot of pressure being exerted in that direction, because it's a lot of money rock and roll music in general in this country, so $5.57 billion in 1987 $6.2 billion worth of stuff in 1988. That is a lot of money

Robert Lipsyte 21:00
Sound good to you. Okay, so is there something kind of silly about this sort of abstract thinking? I mean, when you guys are still struggling to find your audience? Oh,

Kurt Hoffman 21:09
we think about that. But I was just thinking, you know, there's also a lot of shades in between, you know, playing enormous stadiums where you can't dance and, you know, flying a, you know, a reasonable size hall or, you know, I mean, there's a lot of places, there's a lot of people that make money without going to the largest venues possible.

Gene Santoro 21:28
And there are some people who try to subvert the process like REM, who do shows in arenas and deliberately tried to undercut what an arena show means by by taking the conventions of an arena show and twisting them, you know, instead of the usual, we're happy to be playing here in New Jersey, or whatever it is, they'll have a goofy little slide that comes up behind them that says hello, where the band REM we're happy to be in parentheses, fill in the name of your town, you know, and stuff like that. They'll play with it, they'll try to try to make it something different try to sort of implicitly criticize it. Sometimes the audiences get it sometimes they don't

Robert Lipsyte 22:01
hope the ordinaires find that middle road Gene Sentoro, Kurt, Stanley Booth. Thanks so very much for being with us.

Show credits over show graphics.

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