HOT: Mosh Like Nobody’s Watching
Like approximately 8 million other misattributed aphorisms, Mark Twain never said, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” The oft-referenced quote about self-consciousness and letting go is from Susanna Clark and Richard Leigh’s song “Come from the Heart,” a 1989 Country hit for Kathy Mattea. An elderly woman in Idaho recently personified the quote when she got to experience a mosh pit for the first time. A smartphone video showing the woman gleefully swirling around in the pit at a Slayer concert in her wheelchair (pushed and protected by a posse of burly metalheads) has gone viral in the past couple of weeks. The video caption says that the old-school Metal fan’s son-in-law arranged the bucketlist event, and if the blissed-out look on her face left any doubt, he says “she had the best time of her life.”
WARM Buffett Has Gone to Pot
Though his music sucks, it’s difficult to argue that Jimmy Buffett’s business acumen is anything but legendary, at least in terms of his ability to create side-biz that is shrewdly on-brand. By laser-targeting the largely middle-class/middle-age-and-up fans enthralled by the laidback beach-bum image he has cultivated throughout his music career, Buffett’s “lifestyle brand” has made him a half-billionaire, according to a recent New York Times profile. Along with endeavors like restaurants, hotels and retirement communities, Buffett’s businesses and partnerships have resulted in Buffett-branded things like pool floats, ftip-flops, frozen-drink makers and mixes, saltshakers, beach chairs and beer bongs. Buffett mostly goes in on low-capital/high-return products and ventures; like the Margaritaville casinos, his latest pursuit squarely falls in that category. Buffett is entering the lucrative marijuana biz and partnering in a well-funded startup, which will license his Coral Reefer brand for a line of pot products, including edibles, lotions and vape pens. Interestingly, the Buffett products will focus on the health benefits of cannabis (pain and other symptom management, appetite accelerant), which is pretty on-the-nose for Baby Boomer Parrotheads. It’s astutely aimed at the same fans who would choose a Margaritaville retirement community — “Yeah, I’m getting old and I’m definitely needing assistance day-to-day, but I still want to be able to respectably drink tequila, get high and lounge by the pool for hours wearing a dumb hat.”
COLD: The Crüe Exploits Retirement Contract Loophole
Thanks to the precedent set by every musical act from The Who to Jay-Z to LCD Soundsystem, when Mötley Crüe announced its final tour in 2014, the group knew the public reaction would be “Yeah, right, sure.” So to sell more tickets, they made the finality official by having all four members sign a “cessation of touring” contract that “legally” restricted the group from reuniting. But the Crüe’s attorney apparently put some loopholes into that agreement. Singer Vince Neil has announced that the band is recording four new songs. Though this appears to be basis for a class-action lawsuit to be filed by fans that bought tickets to those last concerts, Neil added, “We never broke up or said we would never make music again,” confirming their contract has some wiggle room. One has to assume elsewhere in the fine print it also says, “Future touring may commence if the signees decide they need more houses, boats, cars or motorcycles.”
This article appears in Sep 12-19, 2018.
