"One minute you're here / Next minute you're gone," BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN informs us on the first song of his 20th studio album, which arrived at midnight on the wings of an old-school promo campaign that made sure we understood one of rock's all-time great live bands recorded it live in the studio and released it in the middle of a pandemic that has made playing live anywhere else all but impossible. It's a song about mortality but you could, if you were so inclined, read it as an epitaph for the very idea of playing live music. At the beginning of the week, I wrote about my favorite ad of the presidential campaign, a 60-second spot that focused on the pandemic through the lens of the struggling live music business, and specifically through the eyes of the co-owner of the BLIND PIG, a rock club in Ann Arbor, Mich. The co-owner, a wealthy tech investor named JOE MALCOUN who inherited his fortunes of heaven in diamonds and gold, turned out to be an unwise choice to narrate the spot. Supporters of PRESIDENT TRUMP, the target of the ad, zeroed in on the wealth of a man who says he doesn’t know if his club will survive, and called the ad hypocritical. For good measure, they also doxxed Malcoun. The BIDEN campaign pulled the ad on Thursday, four days after it first aired. Here one minute, gone the next. But one essential thing was lost in the flood: the politics of blame aside, the ad remains true. The message is still ominous. Rooms across the country that were crowded eight months ago do sit empty now. The sound of guitars and drums has disappeared. Clubs don't know how much longer they can survive, and a lot of them won't. And that, to quote Malcoun, "is the reality," even for an investor like him. Investors don't keep funding investments that have gone bad. Much bigger, better-funded companies eagerly seek government assistance in times like these. And there are hundreds of struggling club and theater owners who don't have Malcoun's personal wealth who could have narrated the spot, word for word. It's a shame one of them didn't. It would be a bigger shame if the spot's very real message got lost in the politics... A 2020 dilemma: What's a masked artist to do in an era when everyone else is wearing one, too?... BLACK PUMAS, GRUPO FANTASMA and ALOE BLACC are among the acts playing this afternoon's ROCK THE BORDER, a "virtual 2,000 mile wide concert" to protest President Trump's border wall... BECK, BRANDI CARLILE, CHRIS STAPLETON and FOO FIGHTERS are among more than 40 acts celebrating what would have been TOM PETTY's 70th birthday with a two-part virtual birthday party that starts at SIRIUSXM's TOM PETTY RADIO this afternoon and continues online tonight... BILLIE EILISH is performing what's billed as an interactive livestream at 6pm ET Saturday to raise money for Covid relief. Tickets here... It's FRIDAY that means new music from SPRINGSTEEN (and a documentary on APPLE TV+), DEJ LOAF, TY DOLLA $IGN, ADRIANNE LENKER (two solo albums from the BIG THIEF singer/songwriter), CLIPPING, PALLBEARER, the MOUNTAIN GOATS, LAURA VEIRS, JUNGLEPUSSY, JOYNER LUCAS, BOOTSY COLLINS, GORILLAZ (songs from season one of Gorillaz's web series "SONG MACHINE"), ELA MINUS, BOY PABLO, ACTRESS, the late SHARON JONES & THE DAP KINGS, JEFF TWEEDY, JOEL ROSS, MELODY GARDOT, LUKE STEWART, TINO CONTRERAS, AQUILES NAVARRO & TCHESER HOLMES, STEPH RICHARDS, THEY., XAVIER OMÄR, LUH KEL, SONGHOY BLUES, TENO AFRIKA, HHY & THE KAMPALA UNIT, GREG PUCIATO, FEVER 333, SEVENDUST, FUZZ (TY SEGALL side project), MAGIK MARKERS, SEN MORIMOTO, TECH N9NE, D DOUBLE E, JOE BONAMASSA, SHEMEKIA COPELAND, KAKI KING, BRUCE SUDANO, GALDRE VISIONS, LERA LYNN, TERRY MCBRIDE, RAYE ZARAGOZA, PUP, FAT TONY, SALEM, JOHN FRUSCIANTE, FAITHLESS, NOTHING BUT THIEVES and BLUE OCTOBER... And singles from ARIANA GRANDE, SAWEETIE and CHRIS STAPLETON... RIP BENJI ESPINOZA and KEVIN O'MEARA.