Talk about lame…

Instead of stepping up and participating or responding in kind, the Kansas City Star meekly reprinted Scott Ostler‘s tongue-in-cheek column in the San Francisco Chronicle poking fun at the Cowtown with a weak-wristed intro.

Now that truly is lame.

Get in the game guys – it’s time to play ball.

Not to curl up in a fetal position and meekly half apologize to what’s left of your readership with an unimaginative, lame headline: “San Francisco writer trashes Kansas City”

That headline doesn’t come close to describing Ostler’s hilarious depiction of Kansas Citians spending their days panning for gold by mixing ketchup and sugar, smoking and eating animals, then washing off their hands clean of it all in the city’s picturesque fountains.

That’s not trashing KC, that’s a USDA choice, funny-as-hell, good natured roast.

The fact that the Star didn’t a) participate in the fun or B) have anybody on board clever enough return fire in kind or c) felt it needed to garnish the reprint of Ostler’s column with  an inaccurate, “safe” headline, then warn readers it was written with a “Northern California sense of humor” and that they needed to bear that in mind while reading it.

Why? So they won’t blow a complete fuse and throw their television sets through the living room window once they realized the level of disrespect people in San Franciso have for we-the-people in flyover land?

Get real. Continue reading →

So the Titans lost to the Chiefs, no biggie…

More importantly, how does KC and Nashville stack up, sports teams not withstanding.

“Did you know Kansas City has a 19-foot-high badminton birdie in front of its art museum?” asks Tennessean writer Brad Schmitt. “We compare public art and more in the two cities squaring off.

“You’ve seen comparisons between quarterbacks Ryan Tannehill and Patrick Mahomes. Then there’s Derrick Henry and, uh, well, I don’t know who’s running the ball for the Chiefs. But after Sunday’s game, which puts the winner in the Super Bowl, life goes on for people living in Nashville and Kansas City. So let’s see how the cities stack up, shall we?”

Schmitt makes no pretense at objectivity.

“I mean, I’m writing for a Nashville-based news outlet, so there’s little doubt about how this is going to play out, right? But hey, there are some former KC residents in our newsroom, and I did get their input. So I pledge to do as unbiased a comparison as possible (sort of).”

Fair enough…I guess.

Speaking of fairness, Schmitt’s first totally fair comparo pits Nashville country music versus Kansas City and World War I.

“Yes, Nashville neighbors, there is something called the National WWI Museum and its home is Kansas City. And the museum is legit — really interesting and well done exhibits, many of them interactive, and I left knowing much more about the Great War than when I walked in.

“But c’mon, the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum? Stars, sequins, songs and Elvis Presley‘s 1960 solid gold Cadillac limo. A draw for people from around the world.”

Winner: Nashville

On a far more level playing field, next up is KC barbecue versus Nashville BBQ.

“Nashville has taken great strides with the smoked meats, even, dare I say (Dare! Dare!), surpassing Memphis. But, uh, the Kansas City Barbeque Society pretty much runs the BBQ world. And there really are some tasty, tangy treats slathered in hearty sauce coming out of those pits.”

Winner: Kansas City Continue reading →

Sure the Tennessee Titans  beat the Chiefs this past November…

But only where the final score is concerned.

Because in virtually every key measurable way, the Chiefs mopped up the floor with Nashville’s beloved Titans,Tennessean columnist Gentry Estes writes.

“They know they can beat these Kansas City Chiefs because they’ve done it before…(but) The Titans got lucky that day…” Gentry says. “The Chiefs largely controlled the game. They sacked Tannehill four times. They outgained the Titans 530 yards to 371. They had nearly 38 minutes of possession time, went 7-for-14 on third downs and totaled 28 first downs to the Titans’ 19…

“It was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of game that fell in the Titans’ favor when the statistics suggest that it shouldn’t have. Continue reading →

What kind of crazy, fucked-up world do we live in where Whitney Houston gets inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Judas Priest, Soundgarden and Todd Rundgren are not?

One in which the voters have lost all credibility, putting money over art, debasing the rock ethos and history to the point of irrelevance.

Come on, the only thing Whitney Houston has in common with rock is she OD’ed!

Then they constantly wank about influences.

Yup, Patti Smith is gotta be in because she broke ground and influenced those at home.

What new ground did Whitney Houston break?

Another pop singer, so what?

As for legacy…what did we get, American Idol? And to tell you the truth, Mariah Carey is more of an influence than Whitney. Yup, melisma reigns on TV competition shows.

Or is it because she married Bobby Brown and became a bad girl?

This is execrable, this is sacrilegious, I feel like the Nazi during “Springtime For Hitler”

I knew rock and roll, I was there, these people have NO CLUE!

Come on!

The biggest breakthrough in rock and roll – what built classic rock – was FM radio.

Yup, the Beatles opened the door and then underground FM radio blew the doors off.

FM stations played music AM wouldn’t dream of. Or if AM played it, it was eons late (kind of like terrestrial radio today, if you think about it – stuff breaks on streaming services).

As a result of FM we got extended songs.

We got side-long opuses. We got album-length extravaganzas. Yup, there’s more rock and roll in “Thick As A Brick” than in any song by Whitney Houston EVER!

But Jethro Tull can’t be in the Rock Hall because Ian Anderson is not warm and fuzzy and the band stole that Grammy from Metallica, even though that was the mistake of the ignorant Grammy voters, not the band.

Have you listened to “This Was” A blues-rock masterpiece?

I mean if you’re lauding Peter Green…

And “Stand Up” is enough to induct any band.

As for “Aqualung“…

And if Kiss can get in based on popularity – were you alive in ’71? – “Aqualung” RULED!

“Cross-Eyed Mary” still populates classic rock radio, somewhere Whitney Houston was never played. Continue reading →

Stumbled onto this funny Top 10 list from the comments dude formally known as smartman after Greg Hall left KCC…

The Real Reasons Greg Hall left KC Confidential

Hearne got upset when Greg confused his girlfriend with the cleaning lady.

He got a case of crabs after sitting next to Craig at last staff meeting. Crabs had shirts that said Team Glazer.

Office romance with Tracy Thomas never blossomed.

Tony Botello enrolled him in the churro of the month club. Was killing his 5K time

Glazer kept insisting that Greg join The Club, not Woodside, The Hair Club

Mrs. Hall tired of Black Barbie stopping by at 4:00 am.for chicken and waffles.

Joe Miller just wasn’t that into him

KCC Press Credentials only accepted at AA meetings.

Wanted to move on to greener pastures like JOPO and Whitlock

Will never have to lie again when Kelly Urich asks hims if he thinks his stuff is funny

Everybody knows how gawdawful things are for magazines and newspapers…

Not to mention what online shopping’s been doing to retailers and shopping malls.

It ain’t pretty, right?

Hey, before long we’re all gonna to have to take Joe Biden‘s advice and get in line with the coal miners and learn how to code.

Count Hallmark Cards among the industries struggling to remain relevant.

I spoke at length recently to a dude who “retired” this past year from Hallmark’s Lawrence operation and he did not paint a pretty picture.

Here’s the deal…

Because Hallmark’s a private company they don’t have to disclose their revenues, – kinda like Donald Trump doesn’t have to release his tax returns. But behind the scenes – according to my source – the company’s been on a downhill slide for 10 years.

Sound familiar? Kinda like the Kansas City Star.

By the time this 14-year Hallmark veteran left last year, business had dropped  off dramatically, he says. When he started, it was not unusual for the company to do print runs in the tens of thousand for each card.

These days you’re more likely to see smaller runs of 1,500 to 2,000 cards, he  says. Continue reading →

SALES DIED

Remember when we were arguing about the cost of cuts on iTunes and whether Apple could sell individual tracks or had to sell the whole album?

Funny how the battles of yesterday are meaningless today.

Of course I’m talking about file sales, but if you want to talk physical…CDs are great earners, but de minimis in sales numbers. As for vinyl…the statistics are all wrong.

They’re using a suggested retail price when digital is net.

Turns out people want to own things. And if you have something cut analog and are playing it on an expensive stereo system, more power to you.  However if the album was recorded digitally and transferred to analog and you’re playing it on a cheap system, the joke is on you.

STREAMING TRIUMPHED

Music has it figured out, we live in an on demand culture.

The movie business still can’t square with the digital age. As for those bitching about streaming, they were the same ones bitching about files, about Napster.

The past is never coming back.

And in the past, the key was to get a record deal, and then you could live off the tit of the record company. So numerous acts with few sales survived, the company hoping for a breakthrough. Today, record deals are not so rich, and mainly only in hip-hop and pop, and you live or die on your streaming numbers, i.e. demand.

And what we found out is that many acts who were loved by the press and tastemakers were not so loved by the public. Furthermore, tastemakers became irrelevant, critics don’t matter, it’s all about word of mouth. And everything is available and you get paid as long as people keep listening. So, in a business where everybody sells their rights it’s best not to, best to hang in there for the payments that will keep you alive down the road.

MAJOR LABELS

The center will not hold.

Major labels will decline in market share. You don’t need them for distribution and as far as their marketing efforts… Will TV and press make a difference? As for radio, unless you’re hip-hop or pop, it’s essentially irrelevant. So you’ve got Glassnote shifting distribution to AWAL. You’ve got a lot of wannabe rappers and pop stars trying to get signed, but everybody else, who can actually play, has given up on getting a record deal – they’re focused on building an audience, primarily on the road.

VIRAL VIDEOS DIED

You can only exhibit the trick once. One Radiohead “In Rainbows,” one PSY “Gangnam Style.” The public can smell a rat – if it’s not organic, they want nothing to do with it. And just like Guitar Hero and Rock Band before it, TikTok will fade as a way of breaking artists. Once everybody knows about it, the early adopters are on to something else, as the johnny-come-latelies try to monetize what is evaporating. Continue reading →

The Greg Hall that I thought I knew was leading a double life…

On one hand, the dude I just wrote about yesterday – and that most locals and sports aficionados knew – was the edgy skeptic who liked nothing more than making sports media know-it-alls eat their words by zeroing in on their dumbest utterances and making fools of them.

Greg hated former WHB kingpin Kevin Kietzman, for example.

Case in point, this soundbite taking Kietzman to task from a 2014 column in the Platte County Landmark:

“…Kansas City is not populated by a bunch of idiot Hoosiers. This is a city filled with great sports fans – just like a lot of cities that have professional sports teams. Kevin seems to be obsessed with how the rest of the country views Kansas City and whether or not they look down their nose at us. That is a problem with him not us. I think we are pretty darn great no matter what they’re saying about us on either coast.”

Greg’s earlier works were far harsher, as he gradually mellowed after throwing in the towel on landing a sports media career and settled into being a top notch family guy.

The latter was the Greg Hall I only knew tangentially…

However as I look around the Internet at some of the tributes to him, while it’s a bit foreign to me, it’s clear that in Hall’s second coming as the world’s nicest guy, he’d left much of his angry guy personality in the rearview mirror.

Check out a couple of the tributes… Continue reading →

Nobody was closer to Greg Hall in his glory years than I was…

When it came to writing about sports media and the like Greg was a gifted hothead (kinda like a stable genius). Which contributed to his multiple media breakups like at the Pitch – and including the one with KC Confidential several years back.

That said, return with me now to the early 1990’s when a sports talk radio-aholic who went by the handle Husker, began his unusual ascent into the annals of local pop culture history.

Let’s start with an excerpt from my December 2014 column about Greg…

“I heard Husker one time on – I believe – 1340 AM and and called host Denny Trease to track him down. Unbeknownst to most listeners, his real name was Greg Hall.

Greg was one of the youngest in a large family of Nebraskans and he’d relocated  to Kansas City. A die hard Cornhusker and Chiefs fan, Hall became a regular (call in personality) on KMBZ 980 AM,1340 AM and KCTE-AM, a new station former Channel 4 weekend TV sports nerd Kevin Kietzman had signed on with.

In other words, when it came to sports talk radio Hall was everywhere.

And a clever rascal he was…”

Greg had carved out a unique niche, that distinguished him on local sports talk radio.

“For some time now a sports talk junkie who goes by the name of ‘Husker‘ has been making the rounds of area stations doing variations on David Letterman‘s Top 10 theme,” I wrote in the Kansas City Star in late 1994. “His identity: Greg Hall , a free-lance ad creative writer. His latest effort: A schtick on Chiefs honcho Carl Peterson‘s booting of former Chief Nick Lowery from the sidelines during a recent game. It’s called the ‘Top 10 Reasons King Carl Kicked Nick Off of the Chiefs Sidelines.’ Some highlights: ‘Carl can’t stand seeing anyone but him in an expensive trench coat; Nick was reading a copy of The Kansas City Star; Carl’s last suit from Peter’s Clothiers shrunk. ” And the No. 1 reason: “There isn’t enough room on the sideline for both Nick’s and Carl’s hair. ”

Clever stuff, right?

Anyone remember KC councilman/mayoral wannabe Dan Cofran and his memorable mustache?

A couple weeks after tracking Greg down, I called upon him to do the “Top 10 reasons Dan Cofran had a family of Czechoslovakians waiting in line at 13th and Locust.”

The councilman had hired the Czechs to stand in line for three days in order to get his name first on the ballot for KC mayor.

Some highlights:

“The Czechs figured waiting in line would be less boring than watching the Chiefs game; Cofran’s family was unavailable because they were vacationing in Czechoslovakia; the Czechs were cheaper than hiring out-of-work Royals. And the No. 1 reason: You didn ‘t think Cofran was going to stand out there in the cold, didya?”

From that point on, I called on Greg and used  his clever Top 10 lists on a regular basis. Until a new columnist dude named Jason Whitlock showed up at the newspaper and adopted Hall as his daily sports muse.

Greg’s main specialty though was grabbing and making fun of out-of-context quotes from local sports personalities like Don Fortune, Kevin Kietzman and Frank Boal.

He’d been faxing those soundbites on a weekly basis to the sports desk at the Star – and clever as they were – the sports know-it-alls had complained to him about wasting their fax paper and asked him to stop.

That’s how clued out the newspaper’s sports experts were. Continue reading →