My Las Vegas era music podcasts

Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns, and their extended tribe.

 

 

We lived in Las Vegas from 1992 through 2013. Loved it there.

 

Moved there from Knoxville TN when Cheryl was promoted and transferred to take up the post of QA Manager for the DOE contractor Nevada Test Site nuclear waste cleanup program. I was long out of music. But, in the fall of 2005 I was exhorted by a local bass player I'd met to "go check out Santa Fe, man. Every cat in town would kill to be in that band."

 

The night I first saw them at their Monday night late lounge gig at Palace Station, I was thunderstruck in the first 10 seconds. 15 top tier Vegas show musicians who did this over-the-top off-night gig for fun. Tasered.

Speechless. I could not sleep that night after what I'd just experienced. Floated into my health care analyst day gig bleary-eyed Tuesday morning—as late as I could finesse it.

I became a rabid regular. We soon became friends. Baddest cats in town, but not an once of ego within a hundred miles of them. Friendliest, nicest people I ever met. They're still going strong, better than ever.

I became their photographer, blogger, and podcaster. Eventually, I became the goto "20-feet-from-stardom" freelance photojournalist in Vegas. My stash of live performance shots is somewhere around 40,000. I never charged anyone a dime. Having been a hardscrabble road musician, and now a comfortable white collar tech guy, I just felt the need to help others promote their art. Vegas is about a dozen performers deep on every instrument and vocal type at the top, people who can just walk in and read the charts cold, but their struggles to survive is something I knew all too well, and felt compelled to support.

How blessed have I been? 

 

These podcasts have been offline for a number of years now (expired hosting URL). But I'm putting them back up. They need to be back up.

My Santa Fe and Friends podcast series. Turn it way up and enjoy.

  Santa Fe Podcast #1, Rochon Westmoreland on bass 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #2, bandleader Jerry Lopez on guitar 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #3, Here come the Fat City Horns 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #4, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 1 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #5, Santa Fe band members solo projects 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #6, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 2 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #7, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 3 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #8, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 4 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #9, Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 5 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #10, Jerry's pal Jay Graydon, “Scene 29” licks 

 

  Santa Fe Podcast #11, Friends of Santa Fe, “The Edge Effect”

 

PODCAST CENTRAL IN VEGAS

 

Still miss that pad.

 

 

THE HISTORY

 

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"Follow the TRUTH?" Uhhh...

Maybe you might want to Follow the DISCLAIMER.

 

APRIL 2022 UPDATE

 

It's not going well at all. This may turn out to be Trump's fastest business failure ever. Nonetheless he'll still likely come away with s ton of investors' money via this Smash & Grab.

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At the outset last fall, Trump's TMTG people put out a colorful, dutifully artsy 22-slide Pitch Deck for the incipient SPAC merger and IPO with the dubious $DAWC.

 

Yeah, blah, blah, blah...

 

 

Above: The short-term competition incumbency as Trump sees it (slide 7). Their combined market cap is north of $1.5 trillion. Trump's piddley-assed startup value will be a rounding error by comparison. Loose change pocket lint.

 

Slide 22 is the only one you need to examine carefully.

Disclaimer

Confldentlality and Disclosures
This presentation is not intended to be all-inclusive or to contain all the information that a person may desire in considering an investment in The Company and 1s not intended to form the basis of any investment decision in The Company. You should consult your own legal, regulatory, tax, business, financial and accounting advisors to the extent you deem necessary and must make your own investment decision and perform your own independent investigation and analysis of an investment in The Company and the transactions contemplated in this presentation. This presentation shall neither constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which the offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction.

Use of Data
The data contained herein is derived from various internal and external sources. No representation is made as to the reasonableness of the assumptions made within or the accuracy or completeness of any projections or modeling or any other information contained herein. Any data on past performance or modeling contained herein is not an indication as to future performance. The Company and TMTG assume no obligation to update the information in this presentation.

Use of Non-GAAP Financial Metrics
This presentation includes certain non-GAAP financial measures (including on a forward-looking basis) such as Adjusted Gross Profit. Contribution profit, AdJusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income. TMTG defines Adjusted Gross Margin as GAAP Gross Profit less Net Impairment. Contribution Profit is defined as GAAP Gross Profit less selling and holding costs associated with the sale of a home. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net income (loss), adjusted for interest expense, interest income, income: taxes, depreciation and amortization, and AdJusted Net Income is defined as GAAP Net Income less Stock Based Compensation. Warrant Expense, Net Impairment. Intangible Amortization Expense, Restructuring costs and Other. These non-GAAP measures are an addition, and not a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared In accordance with GAAP and should not be considered as an alternative to net Income, operating income or any other performance measures derived in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP counterparts are included in the Appendix to this presentation. TMTG believes that these non-GAAP measures of financial results (Including on a forward-looking basis) provide useful supplemental information to investors about TMTG, TMTG's management uses forward looking non-GAAP measures to evaluate TMTG's projected financial and operating performance. However, there are a number of limitations related to the use of these non-GAAP measures and their nearest GAAP equivalents. For example, other companies may calculate non-GAAP measures differently, or may use other measures to calculate their financial performance, and therefore TMTG's non·GAAP measures may not be directly comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies,

Personnel Disclosure
All personnel listed in the deck may change from time to time, subject to no notice. Please do not rely on any personnel listed in the deck. Some personnel may or may not be in a consulting phase subject to a contractual employment agreement, there is no guarantee whatsoever that such employment agreement will be finalized. Companies are cautioned not to rely on listed personnel, nor does TMTG give any assurances regarding listed personnel.

Channeling my inner John MacEnroe: "You Cannot Be Serious!"

 

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

 

Down in the TRUTH End-User ToS (Terms of Service) is "non-disparagement" language reserving TMTG's unfettered "at will" right to terminate subscribers for any reason—or "no reason."

14: TERM AND TERMINATION
These Terms of Service shall remain in full force and effect while you use the Site. WITHOUT LIMITING ANY OTHER PROVISION OF THESE TERMS OF SERVICE, WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO, IN OUR SOLE DISCRETION AND WITHOUT NOTICE OR LIABILITY, DENY ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE SITE (INCLUDING BLOCKING CERTAIN EMAIL AND/OR IP ADDRESSES), TO ANY PERSON FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION FOR BREACH OF ANY REPRESENTATION, WARRANTY, OR COVENANT CONTAINED IN THESE TERMS OF SERVICE OR OF ANY APPLICABLE LAW OR REGULATION. WE MAY TERMINATE YOUR USE OR PARTICIPATION IN THE SITE OR DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT AND ANY CONTENT OR INFORMATION THAT YOU POSTED AT ANY TIME, WITHOUT WARNING, IN OUR SOLE DISCRETION.

If we terminate or suspend your account for any reason, you are prohibited from registering and creating a new account under your name, a fake or borrowed name, your email address or the name of any third party, even if you may be acting on behalf of the third party.

In addition to terminating or suspending your account, we reserve the right to take appropriate legal action, including without limitation pursuing civil, criminal, and injunctive redress.

LOL. There are currently 27 fine print Sections in the ToS.

Their "privacy" and "data collection / usage" policies are equally dense and self-servingly one-sided. Anyone who signs up for this stuff deserves all of the adversity they are setting themselves up for.

This appears to be yet another classic Trump grift.

 

ACCORDING TO FORBES

A representative of the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, merging with Trump’s business declined to comment on anything related to the business: “Unfortunately, at this time, we are not accepting press questions for interviews.”

There have been some hints at Trump’s role. A company press release describes him as the “chairman.” The merger agreement calls him the “company principal.” A different document refers to a “majority stockholder,” without saying who it is. A slide deck released last week really only features one person, Donald Trump, but it comes with a strange “personnel disclosure” on the final page. “Please do not rely on any personnel listed in the deck,” the fine print says. “Some personnel may or may not be in a consulting phase subject to a contractual employment agreement; there is no guarantee whatsoever that such employment agreement will be finalized. Companies are cautioned not to rely on listed personnel, nor does [the Trump Media and Technology Group] give any assurances regarding listed personnel.”

Helming a public company could be challenging for the former president, given all the rules that come with it. Trump previously led such a business, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. Shareholders sued after he used the publicly traded company to buy a casino he personally owned at a suspiciously high valuation. Trump fought the allegations for a half decade, then settled around 2002 without admitting wrongdoing. As part of the settlement, he agreed to a new set of rules on corporate governance, including one that required a special committee to approve deals involving Trump’s other businesses.

“If Trump is really an officer or director of this company, as opposed to a licensor of his name or something like that, I expect he will be on the wrong end of a securities-fraud suit before long,” says Michael Klausner, a business and law professor at Stanford. “I can’t imagine him being any more truthful about his business than he is about anything else. Especially when it comes to size—the company, his following on the platform, crowds or other size-related facts—he just makes it up.”

ACCORING TO MARKETPLACE

 

No insight into a business plan and no mention of a single dollar figure

The meme-stock and SPAC phenomenon has gone to the extreme as Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, announced plans to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).

Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC, -6.44% and TMTG have no revenue, no cash flows, no profits or even a clear business plan, and DWAC’s stock is up nearly 10-fold in less than a week.

Investors need to remain cautious and not get caught up in the trading fervor.

DWAC is a vehicle for TMTG to raise capital and has become a meme-stock target for speculators looking to prop up and cash in on Donald Trump’s social media power. TMTG will have close to $300 million in capital once the SPAC merger closes and no realistic plans on how it will operate a business. Given the stock price’s meteoric rise and lack of fundamentals and clear plans behind the business, putting capital into DWAC now is closer to gambling than investing…

"Gambling?" Can you say "multiple casino bankruptcies?" Ring any bells?
 

Grifter gonna grift. Ya dance wit' da one what brung ya.

 

to wit:

 

Trump Baja Ocean Resort. Trump merely licensed his name/brand for a fee and served as the pitchman. He was not the developer, not "the builder," and had no investment stake in the (ultimately bankrupt) project. That's not how he and daughter Ivanka portrayed themselves.

[Donald Trump on camera @ 1:54] “I‘m very, very proud of the fact that, when I build, I have investors that [sic] follow me all over. They invest in me, they invest in what I build. And that’s why I’m so excited about Trump Ocean Resort. It’s going to be very, very special."

 

CODA

 

 

"The Apprentice" and "Miss Universe." Yeah, a real Mega-Mogul. Send your checks today.

 

UPDATE

Trump Media & Technology Group was always bound to be controversial, but it's inviting extra scrutiny by keeping basic details secret and making wild promises.

Among the notable departures from industry norms:

TMTG until Monday hadn't disclosed any members of the executive management team, outside of chairman Trump, before naming outgoing California Congressman Devin Nunes as CEO. No word still on a CFO.

A pitch deck filed with the SEC does identify 30 employees, but only with first name and last initials (a LinkedIn search doesn't turn up anyone who says they work for TMTG or its "Truth Social" brand).


TMTG isn't disclosing any of the investors who it says committed $1 billion in PIPE financing, to help it go public via a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Corp.


There also has been relatively little information on what TMTG is building, beyond some early screenshots that look like a reskinned version of Twitter, although Axios is told by a source that there is a team actively developing new products.


Among the big promises:

The pitch deck projects $3.6 billion in revenue by 2026, which would put it on par with Twitter's current business.

It projects 40 million streaming subscribers by 2026, which is roughly the same size as ViacomCBS' streaming subscriber totals today...

It's a multi-billion dollar grift attempt.

FROM POLITICO, Dec 10th

The ridicule that’s gushing down on Trump’s company from the tech and financial press is wholly warranted. Putting money into the company is “is closer to gambling than investing,” says Marketwatch. TMTG has already blown through its promise to produce a beta version of its Truth software by November and the Securities and Exchange Commission has commenced an investigation of whether Trump’s media company had broken securities laws in its formation. All this flakiness gives us a safe harbor the size of the San Francisco Bay to speculate that Trump hasn’t set out to create a viable media business as much as he has dreamed up a new fusion of politics, media and finance designed with one primary objective: To give people who like Trump an easy and legal way to give Trump money.

UPDATE

 

From a New Yorker article about incendiary right-wing radio host Dan Bongino. 

Trump announced in October that the Trump Media & Technology Group was developing an alternative to Twitter, called Truth Social. To finance its growth, the firm would merge with a publicly traded blank-check company (the fashionable Wall Street innovation known as a “special-purpose acquisition company,” or spac), giving the former President access to hundreds of millions of dollars. To Trump’s critics, the deal sounded like a grift to end all grifts. Within weeks, it was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. But, if Trump can hold it together, it may provide his largest step yet toward regaining a political voice in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Several weeks after Trump’s announcement, Rumble declared that it, too, planned to merge with a spac. Then the companies announced a partnership: Bongino’s favored platform would stream the video for Trump’s app. If conservatives wanted to get out of the wilderness, Bongino told listeners, they needed to build their own “parallel information economy.” Act now. “We decide who comes in,” he said. “It’s the only way to win.”…

A fanatically loyal audience can be very profitable—and, at times, very dangerous. During a public event in Idaho in October, the pro-Trump commentator Charlie Kirk was asked by a fan, “When do we get to use the guns?” The crowd tittered, and the fan continued, “I mean, literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” Kirk, who seemed to sense how poorly the moment was going to play on YouTube, interrupted him. “I’m going to denounce that,” he said. “We have to be the ones that do not play into the violent aims and ambitions of the other side.” Instead, he said, Idaho should ban vaccine mandates, eject some federal agencies, and “pick and choose” what federal laws it considers constitutional. When the man asked again when violence was required, Kirk urged him to be wary of abetting his opponents’ conspiracy: “They’re trying to get you to do something that then justifies what they actually want to do.”

The moment captured the perils of living in a nation beset by information warfare: if January 6th made anything clear, it was that some number of Americans will eventually abandon a distinction between rhetorical battle and the real thing. Bongino’s business thrives in that borderland, the realm of thinking where the best way to stay safe is to buy the shotguns and holsters that he advertises on his show…

…“The only good news about the rapid descent is we’re going to hit a bottom soon. And I promise you. . . . ” He [Bongino] squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists. “I promise you! I know it—the Lord will not let this country go down like that.” He stared into the camera again. “There will be an ascent just as fast, where freedom and liberty will reëmerge, and these people on the other side of it, the Big Tech tyrant totalitarian fascists, their liberal buddies, the Biden Administration, they will all—all—have to answer for this.”…

Yeah. Right.

Good article. Bongino is a real piece of work.

FEBRUARY UPDATE

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