How Do You Separate Sex Appeal From Rock Music?

Success in the YouTube channel business doesn't typically come to dilettantes. To take a two year break and somehow not think that would wreck your channel...that level of naiveté is staggering.

What that does, is it attracts a low level audience. Heck, just look at the leaderboards here. I hadn't looked in about two months, but now Chuck Wood is Draven's new "leader" with a whopping score of 18. Some leader.

What an inspired group you've managed to attract, Draven.

Chuck, I had 151 (no, that isn't a typo, it's 151 just like the Bacardi) on the leader boards and that was three and a half months ago! Realize that a certain termite made it impossible for me to be part of this place after I helped build it. He has such an utter lack of backbone that he couldn't summon the fortitude to talk to me face and tell me "This is why I'm banning you."

He didn't have the guts to do that, yet somehow, he thought I'd let him keep all the articles I'd posted to build the foundation for this place! No, that wasn't gonna happen. I took almost all of them down. This place had four pages of content in early January. Now it doesn't have a full three pages.

Draven, the level of person you attract has no ambition to contribute anything of substance to this place. They're pitiful in their lack of artistry and ambition. They're not enthusiastic. I left just enough of my posts up so you'd be continually reminded of the difference between what you had here and what little you now have left.

Draven, you put people to sleep with your bullsh*t podcasts. You can see it in the number of views they get. Even your "community" doesn't have anything complimentary to say about them! You've got podcasts that last for over an hour and they get 51 views or 64 views. What that is, is reality speaking to you.

Reality is telling you: "Quit. You don't have what it takes. You have never had what it takes. Even you, on some level, realized it when you relegated yourself to Christian rock because there is so little competition there."

Look at what the people who actually do have "it" perform on YouTube.

Chris Liepe, for example, uploads three times a week and every video Liepe uploads either gets views in the thousands, the tens of thousands or sometimes even over 100K views.

Chris Liepe runs his business like a business and he actually has connections in the business because he takes it seriously. That's the difference!

Look on his YT channel:

Liepe has had Will Ramos as a guest.

Liepe has had Andy Cizek as a guest.

Liepe has had Spencer Sotelo as a guest.

Now, can you really imagine a dilettante attracting guests of that caliber? I don't think so! Who have you ever had that people would know and be excited about?

You told me you'd like to have coffee with Chris Liepe and talk about the vocal coaching business with Chris. In that barren wasteland that you'd like to believe is an intellect, are the two of you actually peers? FFS!

Come on now. What makes you think he'd give you the time of day? The man is a pro. People who are professionals don't have time for dilettantes.

If you asked Chris, or anyone like him, they wouldn't even respond. These are serious people and serious people associate with serious people. Bottom line.

Now then!

Jenna, Draven said I wouldn't reply to you. I'm replying to you now.

Jenna, you said: "Taylor Swift's main power isn't in her musicality" - That's problematic, considering she's in the music business as a singer/songwriter.

Picture someone saying: "Jalen Hurts' main power isn't in his quarterback abilities." That would be kind of a bizarre notion, wouldn't it, considering he's the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles!

Now, Taylor Swift makes a lot of money, so clearly she's doing something right. It's damn hard to argue with success.

Getting back to your comment about Taylor Swift though, if you're a pro singer/songwriter, but being a singer/songwriter isn't your strong suit, then that's suspect! No wonder you see so few men or even women over 28 years old at her shows. Swift appeals primarily to teenage girls, who are widely known to be the most fickle demographic there is. Fortunately for her, they keep on making more teenage girls who have daddies who can afford to buy them the most overpriced concert tickets in music today.

Teenage girls have a way of wrapping their fathers around their little fingers: "Daddy, can I have a Corvette? Oh, and some Taylor Swift tickets"?

Your description of Swift as something of a life coach or therapist for the young, troubled girls who make up her fanbase certainly has some truth to it. Taylor Swift is, in essence, the musical equivalent of a young, pretty Tony Robbins. Heh! She has sure got that cult of personality going for her.

Okay, with that PSA completed, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming:

Hip-hop didn't try to separate sex appeal from the music and for the first time since Elvis Presley became a phenomenon, another type of music overtook rock as the younger generation's favorite.

From the time when Elvis Presley went on nationwide TV and sang music unlike most had ever heard before and he shook his hips and snarled and had that look in his eyes, he became not just a man but "The King."

Elvis Presley had a beautiful, rich tone when he sang and the man could do it all. Blues, gospel, country, rock'n' roll, it all came to him so effortlessly.

Elvis Presley didn't just pioneer, he broke the whole damn wall down!

Elvis Presley struck fear into the hearts of parents and churches and governments. That's a dangerous artist. That is rock 'n' roll!

Ever since, sex appeal and rock music have been inextricably intertwined. Jazz and classical appealed to your mind but rock 'n' roll you felt in your groin.

By the way, there is nobody who can teach you how to have sex appeal on stage or how to have amazing stage presence. If anyone ever approaches you with the idea that he will "teach" or "coach" you in either, my advice is to run! The fool and his money are soon parted.

The only way to improve your stage presence is for your band to get experience performing in front of a live audience. In the rock music world, that happens at nightclubs, for the most part. Every member of rock royalty from Elvis Presley to The Beatles to all the truly iconic rock stars that came after them honed their skills in the nightclubs. If you're serious about this, you have got to pay your dues in the clubs. It is not optional.

A live audience gives you immediate feedback on how good you're doing your job on stage. That allows you to make adjustments and then see how the audience reacts to that. Make no mistake: Expect to suck your first few times on stage, unless you have a prodigious level of innate talent for this and even then, the nightclubs are the breeding grounds where good bands have always gone to become great bands.

Most never make it to the level of great. If most people did, "great", which is already a criminally overused word, would lose its meaning altogether. Nevertheless, it's that possibility of becoming great that led thousands of rock bands to the clubs to hone their skills to the best of their ability.

What is the best of your ability? You won't know unless you pay your dues on the rock nightclub level for years. You may surpass your wildest expectations or you may fall far short of what you'd hoped for, but you'll never know for sure until you get in there and give it your all!

Not all change is progress. We have one superstar today and her name is Taylor Swift, but there's no piss and vinegar in her music; it's cartoon music! That she's the biggest music star today and doing the best is an indictment of the musicians of today and of the fans.

There is no sensuality in what Taylor Swift does! She takes no musical risks! She's as far from dangerous as could be. She's so non-threatening because she isn't breaking down any barriers.

Elvis Presley's life was threatened because he had the audacity to play "black music" for white people. The government feared he would undo segregation and make the human race as one.

What has Taylor done that has one percent of the gravitas of that?

Elvis shook his hips because it was a passionate extension of what the music made him feel. His voice and his body melded into one and he was a force of nature. Young women fainted at his concerts in the dozens...or more!

It's sad that apparently there are many who can't remember when music made them feel so strongly. It actually made Elvis Presley considered dangerous. I mentioned that he struck fear into the hearts of parents, churches and governments. Today, what music artists are capable of that on that level?

The whole reason that Presley joined the army in 1960 is because if he hadn't, the government was going to try to imprison him for corrupting our nation's youth! Can you imagine that?

Some speculate it was the drugs that took Presley's life at such a young age. But I believe those were only the symptoms. It was his gifts that took him away. No man should be cursed with so many gifts. No one man could handle it all.

“Without Dreams Men Perish”. The Bible also tells a cautionary tale of another King. King Solomon. The description of him is eerily similar to Elvis. He also was given way to many gifts, and they too eventually took his life.

Another historical account says, “And Alexander wept, seeing as he had no more worlds to conquer” speaking of Alexander the Great. These were men who suffered this "thing" most of us aspire to be. But as humans, we can resist anything… except temptation.

Elvis Presley record sales now sit at approximately 1.8 Billion. None of us will ever witness anything like him ever again. Whatever anyone may feel about him, we were, without question, privileged to see this truly supernatural force of nature.

There have been many, many great Rock and Roll artists that without whom Rock as we know it today would never have happened.

But none greater than “The King”. Without him, it just simply would not exist… Long Live the King!

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