On a weekend when artists from YG to MILEY CYRUS to BRITTANY HOWARD to FOO FIGHTERS were livestreaming sets from some of the most famous empty music rooms in the US to raise cash and awareness for the struggling live music industry, and dance venues in the UK were protesting their exclusion from their government's Cultural Recovery Fund, an unusual TV commercial showed up during CBS' broadcasts of American football games, which, for all too familiar reasons, were being played in empty or sparsely populated stadiums. In a slot normally reserved for ads for food, beverages, insurance and other network sports staples was a minute-long spot narrated by JOE MALCOUN, the full-bearded co-owner of the BLIND PIG, a long-running Ann Arbor, Mich., rock club. Malcoun is also a member of the NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION, the lobby that's been at the center of the fight for pandemic relief for indie clubs and theaters and that co-sponsored the weekend-long livestream benefit with YOUTUBE. As music by the BREEDERS, PIXIES, the BEASTIE BOYS and Ann Arbor natives the STOOGES played in the background, Malcoun talked slowly and deliberately about what has become a life-or-death struggle. "For 50 years," he said, "the Blind Pig has been open and crowded. But right now, it's an empty room... We don't know how much longer we can survive not having any revenue." It was a slick, powerful, emotional appeal to one of TV's largest audiences, the kind of appeal one wouldn't imagine a group of indie music venues could afford even in the best of times. And, as viewers discovered about 40 seconds in, it wasn't, in fact, their commercial. It was a campaign ad for JOE BIDEN and KAMALA HARRIS—and quite possibly the most rock and roll presidential campaign ad that's ever aired on American TV. The small business owner struggling to survive is a familiar trope of presidential campaigns; touring underground rock bands and the people who support them are not. Much was made Sunday about the participation of the Beastie Boys, who apparently had never licensed a song for an ad, but what seemed most amazing, to me, was a presidential candidate elevating the struggle of indie music clubs to a national issue and co-signing their cause. Live music, the ad was telling us, is at the center of American culture, and the pandemic's threat to the artists, venues and people that make it happen is a national crisis. "A lot of restaurants and bars that have been mainstays for years," Malcoun warns, "will not make it through this." That's a message, I believe, that will resonate no matter who you're voting for, and by turning it an issue of national concern, the ad may just make survival a little more likely... THREE 6 MAFIA has scheduled what it claims will be the first arena show in the US since the pandemic began. TICKETMASTER began selling tickets last week to the Dec. 11 show at RUPP ARENA in Lexington, Ky., which will be reduced from a capacity of 21,000 to just over 3,000 (including staff) and will require masks and temperature checks... Pro tip: Don't rap about committing unemployment fraud if you are committing unemployment fraud. Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles who arrested NUKE BIZZLE on Friday say he did just that to the tune of $1.2 million worth of pandemic unemployment aid... BOB BIGGS was a visual artist whose entrée to the music business was mostly based on the fact that his studio was next door to the offices of the punk magazine SLASH in Los Angeles in the 1970s. What started as a $600 loan to help the magazine record a local band, the GERMS, led to Biggs taking over the magazine and founding what turned into one of the great American indie rock labels. SLASH RECORDS' roster include the Germs, X, FEAR, LOS LOBOS, the BLASTERS, VIOLENT FEMMES and FAITH NO MORE. There was a time when if you were, say, me, you bought every album that had the Slash logo on it, no questions asked, and you were hardly ever disappointed. (Good advice for budding label execs: "First of all, you sign good bands. You don’t sign a bunch of s***.") What you might not have known is that Biggs, also designed some of the label's iconic album covers and shot some its videos. Do it yourself, kids. In the '90s, Biggs and his partners sold Slash to major label LONDON RECORDS, where he became an executive and delivered RAMMSTEIN to America; he later tried, unsuccessfully, to restart the Slash imprint at WARNER BROS., before moving to the desert and concentrating on his art for the remainder of his years. RIP... RIP also JOHNNY BUSH, GORDON HASKELL and JAY SWARTZENDRUBER.