It’s Monday, January 27, and for many in the global music industry, that should mean one thing: the start of ‘Grammy Week’ in Los Angeles.
Sadly, this year, things look very different in the City of Angels. Aside from a handful of music biz fundraisers for those hit by L.A.’s devastating wildfires – plus the Grammys themselves on Sunday (February 2) – this will be a week largely bereft of celebration, parties, and glad-handing.
Many international execs are staying home out of respect. Many Angelenos are still in shock.
Lucas Keller, founder and CEO of Milk & Honey Music + Sports has called Los Angeles his home since moving from Chicago in the mid-aughts.
Since then, Keller and his company have risen to become one of the music industry’s leading songwriter/producer and DJ management companies. They’re also serious players in the sports world, looking after 80 stars in the MLB and NFL… including one Travis Kelce.
But, right now, Keller is feeling less than his usual ebullient self. That’s not just because this month’s wildfires took out the homes of many of his friends, and licked dangerously close to Keller’s own house in the Hollywood hills. Nor is it just because he sunk more than a fistful of dollars into Milk & Honey’s own Grammy party (‘Award Season’, held annually in partnership with Reservoir) before reading the room and starting a trend of cancellations. (The likes of Universal, Sony, Warner, and most recently, Spotify have all scrapped their event; Keller went first, axing M&H’s bash while publicly willing music’s largest companies to do the same.)
The sharpest thought on Keller’s mind right now? The borderline-gleeful online reaction he noticed in certain quarters in the wake of the fires – especially those flippantly dismissing the ruinous conflagration as merely an issue of the affluent.
Below, Keller expresses his thoughts (and anger) on the fires, Grammy Week, and the warped take on L.A’s recent trauma by social media keyboard warriors. He agreed to write this piece for Music Business Worldwide on one condition: that we encourage our readers to visit MusiCares’ Fire Relief donation page, and give generously. You can do so here.
Over to Lucas…
Most Angelenos wish they could hit the reset button on 2025.
A fire that destroyed almost 13,000 structures, 12,000 of which were homes, has left a major part of the music business in peril. Coming up on two weeks now, the proverbial whack-a-mole of wildfires has put a fresh coat of paint on hell.
Mother Nature has reminded us that all walks of life are touched by her wrath. From the studio CEO to the key grip and the engineer, all were affected. Some of the most affluent zip codes in California have been left in ruins; so too have entire streets of the homes of middle-class families.
Many are still living in immeasurable catastrophe.
In the first half of this month, I spent a couple of days receiving about one text per hour containing a picture of the rubble of someone’s house, most simply exclaiming how lucky they were to be alive and safe. I would have an impossible time taking that perspective; I’d be angry, and that’s about it.
Then again, maybe my thoughts and respect would turn to the 28 people who lost their lives. Bigger things.
“Some of the most affluent zip codes in California have been left in ruins; so too have entire streets of the homes of middle-class families.”
The fire came within three canyons of my house, so I sit today with some survivor’s guilt, and a lot of gratitude for the great people of this city coming together.
I will not abandon L.A. Milk & Honey’s HQ will stay here, and I won’t join the list of folks leaving for Miami (for what, hurricanes?!). Lest we forget, California is the 5th largest economy in the world.
I was glad to accidentally lead the wave of Grammy party cancelations by going first. I remember why: we were planning this huge celebration, over 2,500 people getting together, networking, drinking, dancing, and misbehaving in the sunshine. But, sitting in pre-production, my business partner and I said, “We can’t do this; this is tone deaf. Let’s NOT do this.”
You can bring celebrations back later, but right now – still, today – people are suffering.
I’ll bite my tongue a little on the Grammy Awards themselves, but to have $20,000 dresses on a red carpet and hand out awards while great people and their families are living a desperate reality only miles away is a tactless, insensitive, and unsympathetic proposition. (Okay, I could have bitten harder.)
In the 10 days of madness that rocked my town, something else occurred to me, and my anger over it keeps growing stronger.
It’s an issue that hardly anyone seems to be talking about, at least not publicly: the meaning of Los Angeles, and many modern Americans’ dissent toward the greatest city of all time.
I grew up in the early ‘80s in a middle-class family in blue-collar America, the Midwest (to the Brits, let’s just call it Newcastle!). I bought cassettes and CD tall-boxes of alternative grunge records, watched MTV daily, and played (and toured) in punk bands. I then picked up a copy of The Operator and the Don Passman book (it was so long ago, my copy had only six lines about the internet!).
“I understood, in the US at least, that this was a business largely oriented around two cities… and it was always L.A. for me.”
By 2002, I had fallen stone in love with the music business. I was hooked. I studied great executives and the records they made with important artists. And I understood, in the US at least, that this was a business largely oriented around two cities… and it was always L.A. for me.
Over a hundred years of great film, music, and stories. Nowhere else came close.
Twenty-three years later, I find myself running a distinguished company in the music business, in an industry, and a magical city, I once only read about from afar (often in liner notes).
Accolades are smoke, and when that smoke clears you find that the truly successful people in Los Angeles are here for one reason: to make something important, then to go back to the drawing board and do it all again.
Most of us understand there has been mounting hatred across America toward Hollywood for a while now – folks who hate our politics, hate our award shows, hate our success, all powered by a growing dissent from many Americans toward the wealthy (or the perceived wealthy, anyhow).
I can just about swallow that. I thought Ricky Gervais at the Globes was funny, too.
“Angelenos (adopted or otherwise) have long been dismissed as cartoonish “woke leftists” out there in the pod-o-sphere and the X-o-sphere. But now, suddenly, we’re also not human?!”
But these past few weeks, reading the internet…I see what the world is saying about our landmark environmental disaster. Ten-to-one, it’s crass, insensitive responses.
I promise you this: I will remember every person who tried to drag down our great city in a moment of travesty. Every person who commented, “Oh, that celebrity’s house is burning down; they have enough money,” and “Oh, the Hollywood elites are burning, wah wah”; “Their politics are backward; they deserve to have their houses on fire.”
Angelenos (adopted or otherwise) have long been dismissed as cartoonish “woke leftists” out there in the pod-o-sphere and the X-o-sphere.
But now, suddenly, we’re also not human?!
Here’s a truth that the whiners and complainers about L.A. have never understood: this town is full of great people and great storytellers, who often work themselves impossibly hard, and bleed for their craft.
I meet very few 9-5’ers in Los Angeles.
More dreamers from all over the world have moved to L.A. to make a name and create something than anywhere else in history. Our art has reached the farthest corners of the planet.
And what of the people who make that art? So often transplants from ‘everyday’ cities from all around the globe. People who didn’t just sit behind a keyboard and bitch as their dreams evaporated; people who instead grabbed hold of their creative aspirations, and dragged them to a town that understood.
As the fires raged, it was humbling to see how much love came from different states around the country – even including our friends in Canada – as we went through this natural disaster.
But there remained – and remains – a deep current of haters out there.
“Who moves to L.A? People who didn’t just sit behind a keyboard and bitch as their dreams evaporated; people who instead grabbed hold of their creative aspirations, and dragged them to a town that understood.”
Simply put, if you’re not with L.A. now, you deserve nothing from us, forever.
Don’t watch our movies, don’t listen to our records, don’t consume our art. Don’t tell our stories to your children.
You loved The Wizard of Oz as Judy Garland sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Or that John Williams cue as Spielberg’s E.T. set flight? That scene in the rain in The Shawshank Redemption?
Oh right. And you loved Thriller and Pet Sounds? Purple Rain and Hotel California?
And now – now! – you mock and sneer behind a Dell laptop on X?
Shame on you. God damn you.
Part of the American dream is being able to create something, own something, and maximize human potential.
Los Angeles is where that dream has come true for so many, myself included.
It’s home. It might be one of the most important cities of all time.
Our beautiful town will rise again. When it does, the bitterness of your comments will not be forgotten.Music Business Worldwide