I'm watching the Jeff Lynne documentary, I recorded it from Palladia. And I'd like to recommend it, but it's kind of like the rock bios, Keith Richards does a good one and then everybody jumps on the bandwagon and there are too many, most are not good enough and you end up ignoring all of them. Now that video is so cheap, you can make a film about anybody in hi-def with decent production values so we get to see our heroes but there's no critical analysis employed. If you were under the age of twenty and you watched this documentary you'd think Jeff Lynne was the biggest and most skilled star of the seventies and however talented Jeff might be, that is untrue. Furthermore, they skated almost completely over the Move and Roy Wood, which is really the only reason I tuned in, I wanted to know more about this legendary madman/recluse.
But there was a moment early on, when they played Jeff's first single with the Idle Race...
Everybody comes from somewhere. And an explication of Jeff's journey from Birmingham to here, Los Angeles, would be interesting, but they dropped the needle on the 45 and...
You've got to know, turntables did not become the rage until the very late sixties, in some cases the seventies. Audiophiles might have an AR or a Thorens, eventually the hoi polloi purchased Garrards and Duals, but before that...we had record players.
The tonearms were about as sleek as a Dodge. Heavy, they were rarely automatic and you frequently taped a dime, penny or even a quarter on top to ensure they did not skip.
But what brought me back watching this documentary was the little arm, the little piece of plastic on the side... It was the lever you used to flip the needle from 33 to 45. And when you thought the music was getting a bit distorted, a bit scratchy, you'd go to your local electronics shop, which was just like an auto parts store but dustier, with more crap lying around, and you'd hold the needle in front of the guy behind the counter and he'd go back and retrieve a new one, which was encased in a tiny plastic jewel box, sitting on a piece of foam rubber.
Sometimes he had to look it up in a book. He'd translate it into a generic brand, the most popular was Pfanstiehl.
And you'd go back home, pop it in, and listen once again through your all-in-one unit with the single speaker.
This was how everybody did it. It was a routine as familiar as dialing a rotary phone. And it's been lost to the sands of time.
It's one thing to look at pictures of stuff that happened long before you were born. It's quite another to be jolted into a past you were extremely familiar with that has completely disappeared.
The image in the doc warmed my heart more than the music. This was the last stop, where the rubber met the road, after you'd paid your money and bought your record, this is where you heard it.
And everything was not at your fingertips. You built a collection slowly. You did not want to buy a dud.
And when you dropped the needle on your favorite record, you were in heaven.
What I'm talking about: http://bit.ly/RfN5o6
Pfanstiehl: http://bit.ly/PhRDOt
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Saturday 20 October 2012
Friday 19 October 2012
David Brooks On Relationships
Who you marry is the most important decision you'll make in life.
I'd be lying if I said I was a David Brooks fan. It's not because he signed off from my newsletter, it's because he's a conservative. And that sticks in my craw.
Paul Krugman, Brooks's counterpart on the Opinion page of the "New York Times," boils it down to this... Democrats believe in a social welfare state, Republicans do not. The government is imperfect, but I like it in between myself and corporations, I like the water and the environment to be safe. There are those moments in foreign countries when you wonder...
Like there's this chairlift in Portillo. It goes virtually straight up and there's a tower at the bottom and one at the top and nothing in between and I'm not good with heights to begin with and just as my anxiety starts to subside I realize I'm in CHILE! Are there tramway regulations? Could the cable snap while I'm on it? Could it jump the track?
Kind of like in the Caribbean. Where I found myself panicking as the current took me further asea as I was snorkeling. In the U.S., the proprietor of the snorkeling service would be so scared of liability he'd be looking out for me, scanning the water for people in trouble. Whereas these guys could be back in the boat, smoking cigarettes, telling jokes... Which is exactly what they were up to. When I finally got back and hauled myself aboard they weren't even paying attention. So I'm not worried when the man from the government says he's there and he's planning to help me. The same way I've got no sympathy for the small businessman complaining ASCAP and BMI are charging him for music, something they're allowed to do under the law. These establishments are profiting from the tunes. Why should they get a free ride? Shouldn't the creators be compensated?
And now I'm so far off point you may not even remember where I started, but what really turned me off on Brooks was his comment that this election was all about the viability of the twentieth century welfare state. Romney wanted to reform it, Obama and the Democrats didn't care about rising costs. If you think this election is solely about that, you've lost my attention. How about the nomination of Supreme Court justices? How about a woman's right to choose?
And Krugman tore Brooks a new one over the foregoing distillation.
And Brooks flew to Spain to see Springsteen... Which I thought was pretty frivolous, and sort of weird, considering their respective viewpoints, but when Jim Guerinot testified about Brooks's most recent book despite attending the latest Obama fundraiser I wondered if I'd dismissed him too soon. And that's when I found his podcast with Alec Baldwin in my iTunes library.
You've got to like the guy. He admits he's a nerd, makes fun of his alma mater, and says he's a liberal on social issues. He can make fun of himself, which too many right wingers cannot. And he explains his conservatism, by saying that despite good intentions, one cannot predict human behavior, government oftentimes gets it wrong. But what fascinated me most were his thoughts on marriage.
Now let me be clear. Brooks was not pontificating, not getting up on his high horse and letting us all know the truth. He did his best to beg off, but since Alec had just gotten remarried, Brooks quoted a blog post he'd found...
"Brag about your spouse and let them overhear you."
What did Pete Townshend sing, "I am an animal"? We all are. We all want to feel loved and safe. We want to feel respected. Contrary to conventional wisdom, many things should not be left unsaid. So if you want to keep your relationship going, do the above. It works wonders.
And the next words of wisdom were...
"Sometimes you've just got to go to bed."
I can be the worst offender here. Wanting to stay up all night, digging down deep to uncover the truth. But so many times you wake up the next morning and...it all just doesn't matter that much.
But after he was through quoting from this mysterious blog, that's when Brooks made the comment I began with. That who you marry is the most important decision of your life.
"...so I go to colleges and I tell kids if you have a great career and a crappy marriage, you will be miserable. If you have a crappy career and a great marriage, you'll be happy. So every course you take in college should be about who to marry. So like you should take literature courses, theater courses, science courses. Think hard about this one. They look at me like I'm crazy. But that is absolutely true. So if you want to know what correlates to happiness, money correlates a little but when you hit a certain point, it stops. Age correlates to happiness so people in their 20s are happy and then they go through a shallow, U-shaped curve and the nadir of happiness for the average person is age 47. And that's called having teenage children. And then the peak happiness is the first 10 years after retirement. But the people who are happy, marriage is equal to double your income; having a good marriage produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income."
I wish someone had taught me this.
We think we should marry for sexual attraction, or wealth, or compatibility. We've got our values all wrong.
First and foremost, does that person show up? Can you count on them? To do the right thing, not only with you but as your representative out in the world?
Fantastic sex won't mean much if your spouse can't balance his or her checkbook. If he or she constantly overdraws, incurring thousands of dollars in bank fees every year, never mind angering local merchants and friends.
A great conversation is wonderful, but if your spouse never calls to say he or she is late, never practices common courtesy, you'll be tearing your hair out.
And if you just got that big promotion at work, had a thrilling victory and your significant other just doesn't care, you're going to be very unhappy.
You learn all the foregoing as you age.
If you're lucky, you make no mistakes. But this is extremely rare, based on the divorce rate, never mind the unhappy couples who stay together.
And speaking of staying together... That's another trait you want to look for in a spouse, perseverance. Breakups are never mutual. Anybody who tells you otherwise is lying. And it's one thing if it's just a fling, but if you're married, if you got up in front of God and country and said "I do." you hope your spouse is gonna give it much more than the old college try. You hope the commitment is such that not only will they not step out, but they'll hang in there through the bad times to get to the good.
And unlike so much of today's pop music, Brooks's wisdom stuck with me. I just wanted to pass it on to you.
David Brooks on "Here's The Thing": http://wny.cc/Q733QM
Transcript: http://wny.cc/R6O5eP
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I'd be lying if I said I was a David Brooks fan. It's not because he signed off from my newsletter, it's because he's a conservative. And that sticks in my craw.
Paul Krugman, Brooks's counterpart on the Opinion page of the "New York Times," boils it down to this... Democrats believe in a social welfare state, Republicans do not. The government is imperfect, but I like it in between myself and corporations, I like the water and the environment to be safe. There are those moments in foreign countries when you wonder...
Like there's this chairlift in Portillo. It goes virtually straight up and there's a tower at the bottom and one at the top and nothing in between and I'm not good with heights to begin with and just as my anxiety starts to subside I realize I'm in CHILE! Are there tramway regulations? Could the cable snap while I'm on it? Could it jump the track?
Kind of like in the Caribbean. Where I found myself panicking as the current took me further asea as I was snorkeling. In the U.S., the proprietor of the snorkeling service would be so scared of liability he'd be looking out for me, scanning the water for people in trouble. Whereas these guys could be back in the boat, smoking cigarettes, telling jokes... Which is exactly what they were up to. When I finally got back and hauled myself aboard they weren't even paying attention. So I'm not worried when the man from the government says he's there and he's planning to help me. The same way I've got no sympathy for the small businessman complaining ASCAP and BMI are charging him for music, something they're allowed to do under the law. These establishments are profiting from the tunes. Why should they get a free ride? Shouldn't the creators be compensated?
And now I'm so far off point you may not even remember where I started, but what really turned me off on Brooks was his comment that this election was all about the viability of the twentieth century welfare state. Romney wanted to reform it, Obama and the Democrats didn't care about rising costs. If you think this election is solely about that, you've lost my attention. How about the nomination of Supreme Court justices? How about a woman's right to choose?
And Krugman tore Brooks a new one over the foregoing distillation.
And Brooks flew to Spain to see Springsteen... Which I thought was pretty frivolous, and sort of weird, considering their respective viewpoints, but when Jim Guerinot testified about Brooks's most recent book despite attending the latest Obama fundraiser I wondered if I'd dismissed him too soon. And that's when I found his podcast with Alec Baldwin in my iTunes library.
You've got to like the guy. He admits he's a nerd, makes fun of his alma mater, and says he's a liberal on social issues. He can make fun of himself, which too many right wingers cannot. And he explains his conservatism, by saying that despite good intentions, one cannot predict human behavior, government oftentimes gets it wrong. But what fascinated me most were his thoughts on marriage.
Now let me be clear. Brooks was not pontificating, not getting up on his high horse and letting us all know the truth. He did his best to beg off, but since Alec had just gotten remarried, Brooks quoted a blog post he'd found...
"Brag about your spouse and let them overhear you."
What did Pete Townshend sing, "I am an animal"? We all are. We all want to feel loved and safe. We want to feel respected. Contrary to conventional wisdom, many things should not be left unsaid. So if you want to keep your relationship going, do the above. It works wonders.
And the next words of wisdom were...
"Sometimes you've just got to go to bed."
I can be the worst offender here. Wanting to stay up all night, digging down deep to uncover the truth. But so many times you wake up the next morning and...it all just doesn't matter that much.
But after he was through quoting from this mysterious blog, that's when Brooks made the comment I began with. That who you marry is the most important decision of your life.
"...so I go to colleges and I tell kids if you have a great career and a crappy marriage, you will be miserable. If you have a crappy career and a great marriage, you'll be happy. So every course you take in college should be about who to marry. So like you should take literature courses, theater courses, science courses. Think hard about this one. They look at me like I'm crazy. But that is absolutely true. So if you want to know what correlates to happiness, money correlates a little but when you hit a certain point, it stops. Age correlates to happiness so people in their 20s are happy and then they go through a shallow, U-shaped curve and the nadir of happiness for the average person is age 47. And that's called having teenage children. And then the peak happiness is the first 10 years after retirement. But the people who are happy, marriage is equal to double your income; having a good marriage produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income."
I wish someone had taught me this.
We think we should marry for sexual attraction, or wealth, or compatibility. We've got our values all wrong.
First and foremost, does that person show up? Can you count on them? To do the right thing, not only with you but as your representative out in the world?
Fantastic sex won't mean much if your spouse can't balance his or her checkbook. If he or she constantly overdraws, incurring thousands of dollars in bank fees every year, never mind angering local merchants and friends.
A great conversation is wonderful, but if your spouse never calls to say he or she is late, never practices common courtesy, you'll be tearing your hair out.
And if you just got that big promotion at work, had a thrilling victory and your significant other just doesn't care, you're going to be very unhappy.
You learn all the foregoing as you age.
If you're lucky, you make no mistakes. But this is extremely rare, based on the divorce rate, never mind the unhappy couples who stay together.
And speaking of staying together... That's another trait you want to look for in a spouse, perseverance. Breakups are never mutual. Anybody who tells you otherwise is lying. And it's one thing if it's just a fling, but if you're married, if you got up in front of God and country and said "I do." you hope your spouse is gonna give it much more than the old college try. You hope the commitment is such that not only will they not step out, but they'll hang in there through the bad times to get to the good.
And unlike so much of today's pop music, Brooks's wisdom stuck with me. I just wanted to pass it on to you.
David Brooks on "Here's The Thing": http://wny.cc/Q733QM
Transcript: http://wny.cc/R6O5eP
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Thursday 18 October 2012
Newsweek
They changed their mission.
I was a loyal "Time" subscriber. I remember the "Is God Dead" issue sitting on my mother's coffee table. And like a loyal son, when I went to college I stuck with "Time"...and subscribed for years thereafter, until I discovered "Newsweek" at my doctor's office. Visit after visit I'd read snippets until I realized the "Washington Post" magazine was better. Not only did I subscribe to "Newsweek" for decades, I bought other people subscriptions on a regular basis. I thought the magazine was just that good.
And then they changed format.
I'm not saying the magazine got bigger or smaller, I'm not talking dimensions, I'm talking content. "Newsweek" befit its moniker. It was a review of everything that happened the previous week. So, if you were too busy to pay attention to some skirmish overseas, if you wanted to know the essence of a story and not every detail, "Newsweek" was a godsend. Everything you needed to know about a subject on a couple of pages. I could argue strongly you didn't even need to get the newspaper, only "Newsweek." And then, frightened by the burgeoning Internet, "Newsweek" remodeled, turned itself into a compendium of opinion, believing that news was at everybody's fingertips, instantly, online. "Newsweek"'s asset was curation, and they threw that out the window.
And the reason I mention this, because I know most of my audience just doesn't care, is the exact same rule applies with bands. Don't do a 180, don't change your sound, be loyal to your fanbase.
When the Beach Boys went disco, I knew they were done. How desperate can you be? And they were... There was another album, but even fans didn't buy it, the band had subjugated our loyalty to potential, a ton of people who ultimately did not care. Oh, the band got a ton of press for this move...because the press is dumb, but the people who really cared? They were turned off. Hell, listen to "Here Comes The Night" off 1979's "L.A. (Light Album)"...you'll laugh hysterically.
Now the Stones got away with their one big disco hit, "Miss You," then again, they had blues roots and the track was great. As for Rod Stewart, he had a monster with "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy," but it turned him into what he is today, a laughable sot who was once credible whose hard core fans refuse to even admit they once liked him. Then again, one can argue that by following trends Stewart maintained a career... You can do this if you're artistically bankrupt, if all you're interested in is money. If you're lucky. I mean who listens to those "Songbook" albums today... DRECK!
Just because electronic music is flourishing, that does not mean you should jump on the bandwagon. You can like it, listen to it at home, that does not mean it has to become part of your act. As for the Top Forty trendmongers, have you noticed none of them have a career, that they're hit dependent, that without airplay their ticket sales crash? And ticket sales are where the money is today.
In other words, "Newsweek" threw out all its good will overnight. I let my thirty year old subscription lapse. And when I was not satiated by "The Week," which is too fact-based without enough good writing, I resubscribed to the new, Tina Brown "Newsweek."
Horrible.
Hell, Tina invented "Vanity Fair" but Graydon Carter does a better job with the formula. As for "The New Yorker"...she demonstrated that change was necessary, but David Remnick is presiding over a "New Yorker" that's better than it's been in decades. As for "Talk"...nobody read it.
You see Tina Brown is an overhyped superstar.
Kind of like Barry Diller.
Barry did the impossible, he created a fourth TV network, but since that time he's gotten reams of press for cobbling together a ragtag bunch of companies which he's raped to get rich. If you think Barry knows the digital score, you probably expect Wayne Fontana to top today's hit parade. But once again, the press is dumb. They print the legend, they don't care about the story.
But Tina Brown and Barry Diller are chasing dreams.
"The New York Review Of Books" isn't doing so. Annual rates are sky high, nearly a hundred bucks, and subscribers stick with the magazine, because they want what it provides, endless commentary from a left wing perspective. It doesn't matter to the "The New York Review Of Books" that most people don't care. But those who do do!
Create a loyal fan base. Be true to yourself and them.
Most magazines may be digital in the future, but "Newsweek"'s print demise is entirely self-inflicted, the magazine would have had a run of years in print if they didn't mess with the formula.
In other words, if you're an ancient act and your audience wants CDs, that's what you give them. Know your customer.
Then again, if you're playing to a trendy or younger base, you do something different.
Everybody wants to be the story, everybody wants to be in the news. But did you ever notice when "Forbes" prints its annual list of the richest Americans you've never heard of most of them?
That's right, they don't equate wealth with publicity.
And you shouldn't either.
"Here Comes The Night"- Spotify: http://spoti.fi/QxuYbp
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I was a loyal "Time" subscriber. I remember the "Is God Dead" issue sitting on my mother's coffee table. And like a loyal son, when I went to college I stuck with "Time"...and subscribed for years thereafter, until I discovered "Newsweek" at my doctor's office. Visit after visit I'd read snippets until I realized the "Washington Post" magazine was better. Not only did I subscribe to "Newsweek" for decades, I bought other people subscriptions on a regular basis. I thought the magazine was just that good.
And then they changed format.
I'm not saying the magazine got bigger or smaller, I'm not talking dimensions, I'm talking content. "Newsweek" befit its moniker. It was a review of everything that happened the previous week. So, if you were too busy to pay attention to some skirmish overseas, if you wanted to know the essence of a story and not every detail, "Newsweek" was a godsend. Everything you needed to know about a subject on a couple of pages. I could argue strongly you didn't even need to get the newspaper, only "Newsweek." And then, frightened by the burgeoning Internet, "Newsweek" remodeled, turned itself into a compendium of opinion, believing that news was at everybody's fingertips, instantly, online. "Newsweek"'s asset was curation, and they threw that out the window.
And the reason I mention this, because I know most of my audience just doesn't care, is the exact same rule applies with bands. Don't do a 180, don't change your sound, be loyal to your fanbase.
When the Beach Boys went disco, I knew they were done. How desperate can you be? And they were... There was another album, but even fans didn't buy it, the band had subjugated our loyalty to potential, a ton of people who ultimately did not care. Oh, the band got a ton of press for this move...because the press is dumb, but the people who really cared? They were turned off. Hell, listen to "Here Comes The Night" off 1979's "L.A. (Light Album)"...you'll laugh hysterically.
Now the Stones got away with their one big disco hit, "Miss You," then again, they had blues roots and the track was great. As for Rod Stewart, he had a monster with "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy," but it turned him into what he is today, a laughable sot who was once credible whose hard core fans refuse to even admit they once liked him. Then again, one can argue that by following trends Stewart maintained a career... You can do this if you're artistically bankrupt, if all you're interested in is money. If you're lucky. I mean who listens to those "Songbook" albums today... DRECK!
Just because electronic music is flourishing, that does not mean you should jump on the bandwagon. You can like it, listen to it at home, that does not mean it has to become part of your act. As for the Top Forty trendmongers, have you noticed none of them have a career, that they're hit dependent, that without airplay their ticket sales crash? And ticket sales are where the money is today.
In other words, "Newsweek" threw out all its good will overnight. I let my thirty year old subscription lapse. And when I was not satiated by "The Week," which is too fact-based without enough good writing, I resubscribed to the new, Tina Brown "Newsweek."
Horrible.
Hell, Tina invented "Vanity Fair" but Graydon Carter does a better job with the formula. As for "The New Yorker"...she demonstrated that change was necessary, but David Remnick is presiding over a "New Yorker" that's better than it's been in decades. As for "Talk"...nobody read it.
You see Tina Brown is an overhyped superstar.
Kind of like Barry Diller.
Barry did the impossible, he created a fourth TV network, but since that time he's gotten reams of press for cobbling together a ragtag bunch of companies which he's raped to get rich. If you think Barry knows the digital score, you probably expect Wayne Fontana to top today's hit parade. But once again, the press is dumb. They print the legend, they don't care about the story.
But Tina Brown and Barry Diller are chasing dreams.
"The New York Review Of Books" isn't doing so. Annual rates are sky high, nearly a hundred bucks, and subscribers stick with the magazine, because they want what it provides, endless commentary from a left wing perspective. It doesn't matter to the "The New York Review Of Books" that most people don't care. But those who do do!
Create a loyal fan base. Be true to yourself and them.
Most magazines may be digital in the future, but "Newsweek"'s print demise is entirely self-inflicted, the magazine would have had a run of years in print if they didn't mess with the formula.
In other words, if you're an ancient act and your audience wants CDs, that's what you give them. Know your customer.
Then again, if you're playing to a trendy or younger base, you do something different.
Everybody wants to be the story, everybody wants to be in the news. But did you ever notice when "Forbes" prints its annual list of the richest Americans you've never heard of most of them?
That's right, they don't equate wealth with publicity.
And you shouldn't either.
"Here Comes The Night"- Spotify: http://spoti.fi/QxuYbp
--
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Wednesday 17 October 2012
Rhinofy-Mott The Hoople
I saw them at the Fillmore. Opening for Traffic on its reunion tour. Their debut with the Escher cover with the reptiles crawling had been released to a good amount of press and very little airplay, but what ever commotion there was about it had to do with the instrumental cover of "You Really Got Me," recorded when David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen were still wet behind the ears. They played it. Ian Hunter wore his sunglasses. There was a lot of energy, but I didn't buy the album, unlike with the middle act, Fairport Convention, who were out supporting "Full House." And I didn't buy any of the follow-ups either, despite their fourth, "Brain Capers," getting good reviews. It appeared Mott The Hoople's time had come and gone.
And then came "All The Young Dudes."
Instead of breaking up, David Bowie gave them an unreleased song and produced their debut for Columbia and suddenly, Mott The Hoople had a radio hit, they were on everybody's mind. And not long thereafter Mick Ralphs left the band for Bad Company, who knew he was a guitar hero?, Ariel Bender did a bad job of replacing him and Ian Hunter eventually went solo and after missing three times on Columbia, using up all his good will, he moved to Chrysalis and put out a near-masterpiece, "You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic." The best track is the long forgotten "When The Daylight Comes," but "Wild East" is infectious, "Just Another Night" is a great opener, "Bastard" is heavy and penetrates and Barry Manilow covered "Ships" and Ian finally had a true radio hit and some income, never mind "Cleveland Rocks," which ultimately got its due when the Presidents of the United States covered it as the theme of Drew Carey's eponymous TV show. So all's well that ends well, both Mick Ralphs and Ian Hunter had their success, and Pete "Overend" Watts and Dale "Buffin" Griffin ultimately had some credits as producers.
Now there was one more album after Bowie's involvement before Ralphs left, "Mott" had the rocking opening cut "All The Way From Memphis," which is a semi-classic and was featured at the beginning of Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," but it was already downhill at that point. "All The Young Dudes" was the apotheosis, and it's still my favorite, it's as fresh to me as it was when it came out, back in '72. The killer is "One Of The Boys."
"One Of The Boys"
It starts with the dialing of a telephone, and then quiet introductory licks that almost sound like a band warming up, and then the drum kicks, the organ enters and the guitar starts to crunch.
"One of the boys
One of the boys
I don't say much but I make a big noise
And it's growing"
And that's just what this track does. It keeps building in intensity. You nod your head, throw your fist in the air and totally meld with the sound, and what more can you ask for from rock and roll?
And then it gets quieter, and eventually seems to almost end before it's resuscitated and all I can say is "One Of The Boys" is one of those vaunted album tracks everybody reminisces and testifies about. Rarely heard on the radio (except for XM's Deep Tracks!), if you owned the album, you knew it by heart.
"Jerkin' Crocus"
And since we're rocking... It's like Mick Ralphs is dancing on the fretboard, you can't help but move your body.
"I know what she want
Just a lick of your ice cream cone"
Listen and decipher the sexual references yourself. But this is one of those tracks the Stones specialized in, little rockers with swinging, thin guitars. But in this case the axe is played by Mick Ralphs and it's a little fuller and unlike Jagger, Ian Hunter is not banging you over the head, he's just telling you his story. It all gels. "Jerkin' Crocus" is perfect in its own little way. Back when bands lived for the alcohol and sexual shenanigans on the road, when the Fortune 500 didn't come calling and the bands were not interested, couldn't even name them.
"Momma's Little Jewel"
And while we're still rocking...
It starts off slow, but it's still rock and roll. The combo of the piano and the guitar, the simplicity, hooks you. This is the sound the Faces made famous. And Mott The Hoople was every bit as good. Billy Joel wasn't the only one to sing about Catholic girls...
"Sweet Jane"
Still my favorite cover. Lou Reed wouldn't ease into public consciousness for a few more months, with his David Bowie produced hit "Walk On The Wild Side." This was before the Velvet Underground was legendary, this was before all the shoegazers testified they were inspired to start up a band by listening to the Velvets. 1970's "Loaded" had been almost completely ignored. Yes, the legendary album with the original version of this song and "Rock & Roll." "Loaded" was seen as their commercial sell-out album. It was on Cotillion, a division of Atlantic, as opposed to Polydor or Verve. "Rock & Roll" was resuscitated later by Lou on his "Rock N Roll Animal" album, but one must give Mott The Hoople credit for resuscitating "Sweet Jane," with a wink to producer David Bowie.
Mott's cover is simple and direct. Just like the original. And there's nothing wrong with that!
"Ready For Love/After Lights"
And most people have no clue this initial version exists, a Mick Ralphs original that's even heavier than the ultimately famous recut on Bad Company's debut. It's not a dirge, but a statement. With emphasis. Sometimes the best voice doesn't do justice to the material. Paul Rodgers is one of the best singers of all time, but to hear Mick Ralphs sing his composition is to believe every word. No one sings a song quite like the composer...they believe it, and so do you!
But the best part of the track is when it breaks down and gets quiet four and a half minutes in, when you get the ethereal vocals and the firework guitar licks, as if someone's setting off bottle rockets in the front yard. This is the opposite of club music. It's made just for you, lying on your bedroom floor, listening on headphones, going on your own aural adventure.
Some tracks never make the hit parade, but they move you even more than the hits. "Ready For Love/After Lights" is one of them.
And Verden Allen got his moment with "Soft Ground," and then promptly left the band, sick of having his material ignored.
And "Sea Diver" is classic emotive Hunter. And "Sucker" fits right in with the mood of the album, albeit not at quite as high a quality as some other cuts, but then we've got the elephant in the room, the title track, "All The Young Dudes."
"All The Young Dudes"
It's the guitar intro and the way Ian jumps right into the lyrics and the anthemic chorus and really it's the song more than the production, as Bowie's subsequent renditions make clear, still this was a perfect single from a band that could only seem to make album cuts.
And the lyrics are classic Bowie fantasy, these young dudes didn't really exist, but if you were just a bit left of center, you identified. Scratch a rock fan and underneath you'll find a loser. The one who knows all the credits, all the licks, all the players...they filled their world with hope from this music since in reality their social lives were nearly a complete vacuum.
And yes, it was a time of change, from the Beatles and the Stones to a second generation, Bowie was just breaking through, and punk's burgeoning was around the corner. And give Bowie credit for seeing the future, he was always good at that, but forgetting all the prescience and meaning "All The Young Dudes" just sounds right!
And maybe you know this album and are grinning from ear to ear.
Maybe you've never heard it before and it will become one of your new favorites.
Or maybe you think it's an antique best avoided.
But if you want a glimpse of the rock world from an English perspective in 1972, listen to this album, it nails it.
P.S. The album on Spotify is the extended one, with the demo versions and live takes, worth checking out even if you know this album by heart.
Spotify link: http://spoti.fi/p6HcZ8
Previous Rhinofy playlists: http://www.rhinofy.com/lefsetz
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And then came "All The Young Dudes."
Instead of breaking up, David Bowie gave them an unreleased song and produced their debut for Columbia and suddenly, Mott The Hoople had a radio hit, they were on everybody's mind. And not long thereafter Mick Ralphs left the band for Bad Company, who knew he was a guitar hero?, Ariel Bender did a bad job of replacing him and Ian Hunter eventually went solo and after missing three times on Columbia, using up all his good will, he moved to Chrysalis and put out a near-masterpiece, "You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic." The best track is the long forgotten "When The Daylight Comes," but "Wild East" is infectious, "Just Another Night" is a great opener, "Bastard" is heavy and penetrates and Barry Manilow covered "Ships" and Ian finally had a true radio hit and some income, never mind "Cleveland Rocks," which ultimately got its due when the Presidents of the United States covered it as the theme of Drew Carey's eponymous TV show. So all's well that ends well, both Mick Ralphs and Ian Hunter had their success, and Pete "Overend" Watts and Dale "Buffin" Griffin ultimately had some credits as producers.
Now there was one more album after Bowie's involvement before Ralphs left, "Mott" had the rocking opening cut "All The Way From Memphis," which is a semi-classic and was featured at the beginning of Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," but it was already downhill at that point. "All The Young Dudes" was the apotheosis, and it's still my favorite, it's as fresh to me as it was when it came out, back in '72. The killer is "One Of The Boys."
"One Of The Boys"
It starts with the dialing of a telephone, and then quiet introductory licks that almost sound like a band warming up, and then the drum kicks, the organ enters and the guitar starts to crunch.
"One of the boys
One of the boys
I don't say much but I make a big noise
And it's growing"
And that's just what this track does. It keeps building in intensity. You nod your head, throw your fist in the air and totally meld with the sound, and what more can you ask for from rock and roll?
And then it gets quieter, and eventually seems to almost end before it's resuscitated and all I can say is "One Of The Boys" is one of those vaunted album tracks everybody reminisces and testifies about. Rarely heard on the radio (except for XM's Deep Tracks!), if you owned the album, you knew it by heart.
"Jerkin' Crocus"
And since we're rocking... It's like Mick Ralphs is dancing on the fretboard, you can't help but move your body.
"I know what she want
Just a lick of your ice cream cone"
Listen and decipher the sexual references yourself. But this is one of those tracks the Stones specialized in, little rockers with swinging, thin guitars. But in this case the axe is played by Mick Ralphs and it's a little fuller and unlike Jagger, Ian Hunter is not banging you over the head, he's just telling you his story. It all gels. "Jerkin' Crocus" is perfect in its own little way. Back when bands lived for the alcohol and sexual shenanigans on the road, when the Fortune 500 didn't come calling and the bands were not interested, couldn't even name them.
"Momma's Little Jewel"
And while we're still rocking...
It starts off slow, but it's still rock and roll. The combo of the piano and the guitar, the simplicity, hooks you. This is the sound the Faces made famous. And Mott The Hoople was every bit as good. Billy Joel wasn't the only one to sing about Catholic girls...
"Sweet Jane"
Still my favorite cover. Lou Reed wouldn't ease into public consciousness for a few more months, with his David Bowie produced hit "Walk On The Wild Side." This was before the Velvet Underground was legendary, this was before all the shoegazers testified they were inspired to start up a band by listening to the Velvets. 1970's "Loaded" had been almost completely ignored. Yes, the legendary album with the original version of this song and "Rock & Roll." "Loaded" was seen as their commercial sell-out album. It was on Cotillion, a division of Atlantic, as opposed to Polydor or Verve. "Rock & Roll" was resuscitated later by Lou on his "Rock N Roll Animal" album, but one must give Mott The Hoople credit for resuscitating "Sweet Jane," with a wink to producer David Bowie.
Mott's cover is simple and direct. Just like the original. And there's nothing wrong with that!
"Ready For Love/After Lights"
And most people have no clue this initial version exists, a Mick Ralphs original that's even heavier than the ultimately famous recut on Bad Company's debut. It's not a dirge, but a statement. With emphasis. Sometimes the best voice doesn't do justice to the material. Paul Rodgers is one of the best singers of all time, but to hear Mick Ralphs sing his composition is to believe every word. No one sings a song quite like the composer...they believe it, and so do you!
But the best part of the track is when it breaks down and gets quiet four and a half minutes in, when you get the ethereal vocals and the firework guitar licks, as if someone's setting off bottle rockets in the front yard. This is the opposite of club music. It's made just for you, lying on your bedroom floor, listening on headphones, going on your own aural adventure.
Some tracks never make the hit parade, but they move you even more than the hits. "Ready For Love/After Lights" is one of them.
And Verden Allen got his moment with "Soft Ground," and then promptly left the band, sick of having his material ignored.
And "Sea Diver" is classic emotive Hunter. And "Sucker" fits right in with the mood of the album, albeit not at quite as high a quality as some other cuts, but then we've got the elephant in the room, the title track, "All The Young Dudes."
"All The Young Dudes"
It's the guitar intro and the way Ian jumps right into the lyrics and the anthemic chorus and really it's the song more than the production, as Bowie's subsequent renditions make clear, still this was a perfect single from a band that could only seem to make album cuts.
And the lyrics are classic Bowie fantasy, these young dudes didn't really exist, but if you were just a bit left of center, you identified. Scratch a rock fan and underneath you'll find a loser. The one who knows all the credits, all the licks, all the players...they filled their world with hope from this music since in reality their social lives were nearly a complete vacuum.
And yes, it was a time of change, from the Beatles and the Stones to a second generation, Bowie was just breaking through, and punk's burgeoning was around the corner. And give Bowie credit for seeing the future, he was always good at that, but forgetting all the prescience and meaning "All The Young Dudes" just sounds right!
And maybe you know this album and are grinning from ear to ear.
Maybe you've never heard it before and it will become one of your new favorites.
Or maybe you think it's an antique best avoided.
But if you want a glimpse of the rock world from an English perspective in 1972, listen to this album, it nails it.
P.S. The album on Spotify is the extended one, with the demo versions and live takes, worth checking out even if you know this album by heart.
Spotify link: http://spoti.fi/p6HcZ8
Previous Rhinofy playlists: http://www.rhinofy.com/lefsetz
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Tuesday 16 October 2012
Jimmy Calls
"We got young people interested in sound quality once again."
It's a funny rule of thumb. Be nice to people and you never hear from them. Be nasty or get it wrong and they light up your inbox!
Jimmy wanted to set the record straight.
What he said was they do no discounting. That there's one Costco in Canada that gives a few bucks off, that they can't seem to stop, but other than that everyone pays retail. They've got authorized distributors, if someone makes a deal, they lose the right to sell. Jimmy's not sure whether the KSL offer was of legit headphones or not. But if they're real, Beats is gonna find out who the distributor is and they're gonna lose their license.
As for the Chinese sites... It's a full time job, they've got a stack of lawyers fighting counterfeiters. Just like Nike. As for the existence of these sites, Beats doesn't have the cash of Apple, they're doing the best they can.
So here's how it goes, Dre says:
"It's one thing to steal it, it's another thing to destroy it."
Yup, there was nothing Dre could do about online theft, but it bugged him that the files kids were listening to were so awful. That was the inspiration for Beats. (Another source also told me that Dre was constantly pitched endorsements but wouldn't do them because they were not in his wheelhouse, sound was.)
So Jimmy and Dre hired Robert Brunner, who used to work at Apple, before Jonny Ive, to design the headphones. Once they were done, they approached Noel Lee at Monster for help, primarily in distribution. Jimmy says Noel did help a bit with design, but the termination deal is signed, sealed and delivered. Monster is in a sell-off period, but Beats has now established its own distribution network and the pipeline has been filled.
You see everything's manufactured in China. Which is how Apple does it. How so many high tech companies do it.
There are multiple sets of Beats headphones, and they all sound a bit different, they've got ten producers around the world who tweak the sound as to their liking. As for the sound curve, Jimmy emphasized that Beats headphones were made for modern music, the music of today.
Jimmy said I'M AN AUDIO FREAK! He said he's got five sets of Tannoys, he shows up in the studio with Brystons. He took six weeks to get the sound right on a single track on "Damn The Torpedoes." And Dre puts in the same effort.
"When we started this, they said no one will pay for sound again."
Jimmy's right about that. And like a true rock and roller, he wouldn't take no for an answer.
"Our goal is to get kids to go from earbuds to headphones."
And he's done a good job of that.
"It's our version of studio sound."
As for HP... That's a licensing deal. And Jimmy pointed out how interesting it was that Dell is advertising upgraded sound now. Computers were tuned for voice, Jimmy wanted them tuned for music.
As for Chrysler... Jimmy and Dre sit in the car with a geek in the back, tuning the sound.
As for HTC, they had half, now they've got 25%. (A source told me this reduction was made because Jimmy, et al, had an option, kind of like Jive with BMG, that would force HTC to buy them out, and with HTC's sinking fortunes, the deal had to be redone, so HTC wasn't on the potential hook for so much cash.)
Can two guys who spent their lives in the studio make better headphones than the traditional players?
I'll leave that for you to decide.
But I wanted to set the record straight. Jimmy says there's no discounting of Beats headphones. I believe him.
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It's a funny rule of thumb. Be nice to people and you never hear from them. Be nasty or get it wrong and they light up your inbox!
Jimmy wanted to set the record straight.
What he said was they do no discounting. That there's one Costco in Canada that gives a few bucks off, that they can't seem to stop, but other than that everyone pays retail. They've got authorized distributors, if someone makes a deal, they lose the right to sell. Jimmy's not sure whether the KSL offer was of legit headphones or not. But if they're real, Beats is gonna find out who the distributor is and they're gonna lose their license.
As for the Chinese sites... It's a full time job, they've got a stack of lawyers fighting counterfeiters. Just like Nike. As for the existence of these sites, Beats doesn't have the cash of Apple, they're doing the best they can.
So here's how it goes, Dre says:
"It's one thing to steal it, it's another thing to destroy it."
Yup, there was nothing Dre could do about online theft, but it bugged him that the files kids were listening to were so awful. That was the inspiration for Beats. (Another source also told me that Dre was constantly pitched endorsements but wouldn't do them because they were not in his wheelhouse, sound was.)
So Jimmy and Dre hired Robert Brunner, who used to work at Apple, before Jonny Ive, to design the headphones. Once they were done, they approached Noel Lee at Monster for help, primarily in distribution. Jimmy says Noel did help a bit with design, but the termination deal is signed, sealed and delivered. Monster is in a sell-off period, but Beats has now established its own distribution network and the pipeline has been filled.
You see everything's manufactured in China. Which is how Apple does it. How so many high tech companies do it.
There are multiple sets of Beats headphones, and they all sound a bit different, they've got ten producers around the world who tweak the sound as to their liking. As for the sound curve, Jimmy emphasized that Beats headphones were made for modern music, the music of today.
Jimmy said I'M AN AUDIO FREAK! He said he's got five sets of Tannoys, he shows up in the studio with Brystons. He took six weeks to get the sound right on a single track on "Damn The Torpedoes." And Dre puts in the same effort.
"When we started this, they said no one will pay for sound again."
Jimmy's right about that. And like a true rock and roller, he wouldn't take no for an answer.
"Our goal is to get kids to go from earbuds to headphones."
And he's done a good job of that.
"It's our version of studio sound."
As for HP... That's a licensing deal. And Jimmy pointed out how interesting it was that Dell is advertising upgraded sound now. Computers were tuned for voice, Jimmy wanted them tuned for music.
As for Chrysler... Jimmy and Dre sit in the car with a geek in the back, tuning the sound.
As for HTC, they had half, now they've got 25%. (A source told me this reduction was made because Jimmy, et al, had an option, kind of like Jive with BMG, that would force HTC to buy them out, and with HTC's sinking fortunes, the deal had to be redone, so HTC wasn't on the potential hook for so much cash.)
Can two guys who spent their lives in the studio make better headphones than the traditional players?
I'll leave that for you to decide.
But I wanted to set the record straight. Jimmy says there's no discounting of Beats headphones. I believe him.
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Mailbag
Re: Beats At Half Price
Hey Bob
I really enjoy your emails. i just wanted to point out that BEATS are one of the top counterfeited products in the world, and monsterbeats33.com is not a valid distributor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoE4sbJMMFU
1.5 million views! That shows the power...
Thanks
Philip Pendleton
________________________________________
Re: Beats At Half Price
Your article drove me to check out these great prices on Beats headphones. KSL was sold out. So I went to the link you said was for Monster. My sense is this is a bootleg or scam site based on their poor english and info on their about us page. I then just googled Monster Cable and found their true site here: http://www.monstercable.com. Likewise if you google Beats by Dre you get about 5 different sites that all look like authentic Beats sites and 4 of them have these huge sales going on but if you dig deeper (check the about us section or contact us or their actual URL name) you see pretty quickly that these are also of questionable authenticity. Anyway, you might want to look into this and send out a correction if you agree with me and save your readership the possibility of getting scammed as I almost did. Certainly this leads to a potentially even more interesting article about the bootlegging of headphones or using dummy sites to internet scam.
Best,
Carolyn Robbins
________________________________________
From: Paul Rosenberg
Re: Xbox Music
Bob-
When I was in my last year of law school in 1995, I wrote a term paper for my copyright class on the necessary shifts coming for copyright law in the "digital age". Back then, the intellectual property pundits were calling it the "Celestial Music Juke Box". Today, we call it subscription music service.
Years before the invention of the Internet, the legal scholars saw something like this coming. The record labels did not, or chose to ignore it for far too long. They got stuck in the business of selling plastic discs and put on their blinders. The elephant started out merely in the room, then it became the entire building.
For years I've been saying to anyone that would listen that if a music service is created that is CONVENIENT and EFFICIENT enough, where consumers can listen to anything they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, people will pay for it. Forget owning a CD, or even a digital file- those take up space, who needs 'em?
For a long time this level of service wasn't CONVENIENT enough because the mobile bandwidth wasn't there and because our phones didn't integrate easily enough into our components and car audio systems. That's all over with 4G data delivery and WiFi/bluetooth connectivity.
Now, it's just a matter of racing to see who creates the most EFFICIENT service with the best interface and functionality. Spotify is great, but as your pointed out, it has some limitations (which I'm sure they are aware of and constantly tweaking).
I for one would welcome Apple with open arms into the race for the best music subscription service. They have already changed the way that most of the world consumes and enjoys music with the iPod, then iPhone, with iTunes and the iTunes store. Why would they stop there?
I'm a firm believer that the right subscription service will bring enough dollars into the business to bring it back close to where it was in the heyday of the CD revolution. It's up to us as an industry to figure out how to redistribute the income and make it work for everyone. Fighting the digital shift that was imagined almost 20 years ago is a waste of time.
And this is all coming from someone whose client has sold more plastic discs than anyone in since the turn of the century...
Paul Rosenberg
Shady Records, Inc.
Goliath Artists, Inc.
@rosenberg
________________________________________
From: Chris Andrews
Subject: Re: Xbox Music
http://www.policymic.com/mobile/articles/16579/felix-baumgartner-jump-video-headcam-live-footage-shows-skydive-from-space-to-earth
You wanna talk about how streaming won. The link above is worth highlighting.
8 Million people streamed Felix Baumgartner's sky dive from Space on YouTube live. That until now was ratings only television enjoyed.
________________________________________
From: Joe Pinder
RE: Beats At Half Price
I don't blame Monster, who have over-extended and over-hyped themselves anyway. What's going to happen is that Apple is going to take its new earpods wireless within a year and no one except those who want the Bose technology is going to want anything else. Don't believe me? Look where they moved the headphone jack on the iPhone 5. It's now actually in the way unless you have it upside down and at least on my 4S the accelerometer will not allow the screen to work at 180 degrees. Remember which company was the first to completely ditch the "floppy," as you have pointed out? And who was the first to make laptops without optical drives? Watch for that headphone port to disappear. It takes up a lot of real estate inside the phone. And it's a hole to let stuff get inside their otherwise-controlled environment.
________________________________________
From: Halloran
RE: Beats At Half Price
beats were beat the second they came out.
bad fashion accessory from day one.
from a guy that uses headphones all day at work I can tell you that the sony studio MDR-V6 are perfect for club DJing and radio work. this is ironic as sony makes the shittiest speakers for home use. I prefer genelec monitors for air and mixing or some of the JBL powered monitors.
but to be seen walking around with a pair of beats attached to ones head screams "poseur".
all you need is an affliction/Ed hardy/Von Dutch/aero postale/ t-shirt and the package is complete.
beat dis!
________________________________________
From: Greg Khaikin
Subject: Re: Don'ts & Do's
One thing you forgot was "make your music easy to hear." I can't tell you how many bands I've tried to check out in anticipation of CMJ and they made it difficult for me to listen. If i have to "like" you before you'll even let me hear your music, then i'm out. If i have to give you my email address, then click three links just for you to play me a 30 second snippet, I'm done. and to top it off, if you don't have contact information online, then why are you even bothering?
-greg
________________________________________
From: Lee Van Put
Subject: Re: Don'ts & Do's
As a recent grad, I'd also throw in "Don't go to law school" - currently working in a non-legal (not illegal) internship at a fashion house since the job market in NYC is about as saturated with lawyers as the radio is with shitty pop tunes. Still, it beats sitting on the couch sending out resumes like the majority of my fellow alumni. Too bad we all have to pay back the $x00,000s in loans we signed up for when a well-paying job was all but guaranteed!
________________________________________
From: Rick Larson
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Fountains Of Wayne
The MILF crystallized and became okay for mainstream consumption once that song came out. It became okay for MILFs to admit to liking young boys to their friends and young boys to attempt to feast on MILFs. Up to that point, there was interest in both sides. After that, it was off to the races. And good for MILFs. Older guys had been chasing sweet young things for years while MILFs went begging. No more after that song and video came out. I discovered moms like Stacy's back in high school, in 1978. I had the market all to myself through that time and college. Guys my age were trying to make it with gals our age and making little progress. I was going to SMU, waking up at some divorcee's house in north Dallas in 1980, getting coffee and breakfast in bed and insatiable loving while guys my age had long taken their dates home. No strings, just fun. When they started taking me shopping, I rather liked it. As one said, "I don't know whether to fuck you or adopt you."
Rick
___________________________________
From: Ed Rivadavia
Subject: RE: Sales-Week Ending-9/30/12
Pending the size of their second week sales drop, Mumford's massive debut seems to support the fact that album promo cycles are increasingly resembling movie openings - where all of the marketing and $ might as well be focused on that one shot at glory, not a long term plan. Adele's year-long reign notwithstanding, we keep seeing more and more one-and-done artists - not just in the sales column, but in the public awareness/curiosity departments too, as you yourself have pointed out a few times. It makes sense: with so much to consume, listeners will keep hopping from song to song, week to week, Gotye to Psy, and brand loyalty be damned. It takes too much commitment. What's more, the kids KNOW there's rarely anything there beyond the one hit smoke and mirrors - they ain't falling for it.
___________________________________
From: Craig Skinner
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Fountains Of Wayne
A review of Fountains of Wayne is not complete without listening to Robbie Fulks' "Fountains of Wayne Hotline."
-----
Note: I did some research on this. Although there are many references in Google, there is no YouTube video. YouTube is the new radio, if you are not there, you really don't exist. Yes, there are live takes on YouTube, but we've been conditioned to expect those to be lo-fi and usually just ignore them unless we're hard core fans.
However, in the seven year old spirit of the song, you can download an MP3 here:
http://bit.ly/RnaNRR
Or here: http://bit.ly/QWa8X5
Don't forget, if you're on a Mac, and you click to download, you'll get a page with the track playing, not the download, to do that, you've got to hold down the Option key while you click and choose "Download Linked File" or "Save Linked File To Desktop."
If you're not that adventurous, or even if you are, you can read the lyrics here: http://bit.ly/TcXU9y
I'd like to tell you the track is more than a one listen exercise, but that would be untrue for most people. But for those of you under the age of forty, who were born before music ruled the world, by clicking above, you can experience the way it once was, when we were both hungry and interested, when it wasn't about bankers and money but creativity. Just imagine if Frank Zappa was twenty five today, he might go to work for Goldman Sachs as opposed to trying to be a professional musician, and how much poorer would we all be? Yes, there is only a minimal live circuit, it's hard to be a musician today, many people take the easy way out, which is to do something else.
___________________________________
From: Richard Arfin
Subject: Re: Pamela Hurley
I once asked my friend, Shadow Morton, about the end of "Society's Child" which he produced. He told me that when the song was finished, he felt that it needed a coda to resolve the song. He asked Artie Butler to come up with something. In Shadow's words, "I wanted an exclamation point." Artie came up with a riff and recorded it in one take. Shadow immediately added it to the end of the song. "I knew that the song was memorable by itself but I also realized that the coda was a hook unto itself. It's the first time that I can remember that a hook was placed at the end of the song. And it worked."
___________________________________
From: Nelson Leonard
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Fountains Of Wayne
Good morning, Bob.
Always enjoy your posts.
Regarding Fountains of Wayne and "All Kinds of Time", here's a link to a promotional piece Allan Broce and I created for the NFL Network:
www.thenowtv.com/a/Bob/FF_NFL_Network_AKOT_60.mov
(Note: Let the video load completely before you play it, otherwise it will stall.)
___________________________________
From: Nick Zieber
Re: Jimmy Iovine
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have had the #1 album on iTunes for a few days now. I just wanted to remind you that I wrote this to you in March 2011.
-----
Dear Bob,
Seattle is up to something. It has been a few years since Death Cab for Cutie, a few more since Nirvanna, and even longer since Jimmy Hendrix. There has been a movement that is about 5 years (or more) in the making. A so-called "Northwest Hip-Hop" group called Blue Scholars began on the University of Washington campus when two students joined forces. The two college students had a passion for hip-hop and recognized that labels had caused irreparable damage to artists, and that in order for them to succeed, they would have to go it alone without the aid of a record label...
Through the Blue Scholars and their community-driven leadership, another artist was propelled to the forefront of the movement. His name is Macklemore. Well, actually his name is Ben Haggerty, but he goes by Macklemore now. He may be Seattle's best hope for home-grown talent that blossoms on the national scene. Here's a recent article about him in the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/musicnightlife/2014178847_macklemore10.html?prmid=carousel_feat
Macklemore also did a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a music video. The goal was $10,000 and they raised about $18,500. Fans put their money where their demand is. I got in touch with the director for the short film, Zia Mohajerjasbi, and he said it would be great for me to come up to Seattle and help out once the money was raised. I got to experience the creative community in full-force. Never have I seen such professionalism and creative vision in my life. The video will be called "Wings" and will be so good that you will probably write an entire post about it. It will be the first music video to use the ARRI Alexa digital camera, and is scheduled for release sometime next month.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wings/macklemore-x-ryan-lewis-wings-dir-zia-mohajerjasbi?ref=live
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (the producer) are currently on tour, and have sold out every venue on the way, including Seattle's own Showbox at the Market three times in one week. That never happens. Macklemore is a very active twitter user, tapping into his fanbase through constant communication. The other day they sold out the Viper Room in Los Angeles, and before long Macklemore will be headlining at SXSW in Austin on St. Patrick's Day.
http://www.bmi.com/news/entry/550750/
Though the dollar figures are much smaller than would typically accompany an act of this caliber, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Blue Scholars will continue to gain support for their music through their loyal fan base, and you can count me in.
___________________________________
From: Arny Schorr
Subject: RE: Ed Cassidy
Apparently, Ed was found on the floor of his trailer, unconscious.
Conflicting reports said he had a stroke, others that it was severe
dehydration (which having spent a couple of hours in that tin can, was quite likely). He has been diagnosed with dementia and will likely require a caregiver.
His daughter and ex-wife plus Jay and Mark are aware and making efforts to help but Ed is the only one who can make certain decisions as he never granted power of attorney to anyone. He is paranoid and has a combative personality makes it difficult to help him. I understand there was a scene at the rehab center (in Arroyo Grande) with an ombudsman where Ed refused to sign anything in regards CPR or life support issues.
We're trying to get Music Cares to get him some assistance and any offers of support are probably best directed to them. It's very sad and very frustrating.
Thanks again.
Arny
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Hey Bob
I really enjoy your emails. i just wanted to point out that BEATS are one of the top counterfeited products in the world, and monsterbeats33.com is not a valid distributor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoE4sbJMMFU
1.5 million views! That shows the power...
Thanks
Philip Pendleton
________________________________________
Re: Beats At Half Price
Your article drove me to check out these great prices on Beats headphones. KSL was sold out. So I went to the link you said was for Monster. My sense is this is a bootleg or scam site based on their poor english and info on their about us page. I then just googled Monster Cable and found their true site here: http://www.monstercable.com. Likewise if you google Beats by Dre you get about 5 different sites that all look like authentic Beats sites and 4 of them have these huge sales going on but if you dig deeper (check the about us section or contact us or their actual URL name) you see pretty quickly that these are also of questionable authenticity. Anyway, you might want to look into this and send out a correction if you agree with me and save your readership the possibility of getting scammed as I almost did. Certainly this leads to a potentially even more interesting article about the bootlegging of headphones or using dummy sites to internet scam.
Best,
Carolyn Robbins
________________________________________
From: Paul Rosenberg
Re: Xbox Music
Bob-
When I was in my last year of law school in 1995, I wrote a term paper for my copyright class on the necessary shifts coming for copyright law in the "digital age". Back then, the intellectual property pundits were calling it the "Celestial Music Juke Box". Today, we call it subscription music service.
Years before the invention of the Internet, the legal scholars saw something like this coming. The record labels did not, or chose to ignore it for far too long. They got stuck in the business of selling plastic discs and put on their blinders. The elephant started out merely in the room, then it became the entire building.
For years I've been saying to anyone that would listen that if a music service is created that is CONVENIENT and EFFICIENT enough, where consumers can listen to anything they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, people will pay for it. Forget owning a CD, or even a digital file- those take up space, who needs 'em?
For a long time this level of service wasn't CONVENIENT enough because the mobile bandwidth wasn't there and because our phones didn't integrate easily enough into our components and car audio systems. That's all over with 4G data delivery and WiFi/bluetooth connectivity.
Now, it's just a matter of racing to see who creates the most EFFICIENT service with the best interface and functionality. Spotify is great, but as your pointed out, it has some limitations (which I'm sure they are aware of and constantly tweaking).
I for one would welcome Apple with open arms into the race for the best music subscription service. They have already changed the way that most of the world consumes and enjoys music with the iPod, then iPhone, with iTunes and the iTunes store. Why would they stop there?
I'm a firm believer that the right subscription service will bring enough dollars into the business to bring it back close to where it was in the heyday of the CD revolution. It's up to us as an industry to figure out how to redistribute the income and make it work for everyone. Fighting the digital shift that was imagined almost 20 years ago is a waste of time.
And this is all coming from someone whose client has sold more plastic discs than anyone in since the turn of the century...
Paul Rosenberg
Shady Records, Inc.
Goliath Artists, Inc.
@rosenberg
________________________________________
From: Chris Andrews
Subject: Re: Xbox Music
http://www.policymic.com/mobile/articles/16579/felix-baumgartner-jump-video-headcam-live-footage-shows-skydive-from-space-to-earth
You wanna talk about how streaming won. The link above is worth highlighting.
8 Million people streamed Felix Baumgartner's sky dive from Space on YouTube live. That until now was ratings only television enjoyed.
________________________________________
From: Joe Pinder
RE: Beats At Half Price
I don't blame Monster, who have over-extended and over-hyped themselves anyway. What's going to happen is that Apple is going to take its new earpods wireless within a year and no one except those who want the Bose technology is going to want anything else. Don't believe me? Look where they moved the headphone jack on the iPhone 5. It's now actually in the way unless you have it upside down and at least on my 4S the accelerometer will not allow the screen to work at 180 degrees. Remember which company was the first to completely ditch the "floppy," as you have pointed out? And who was the first to make laptops without optical drives? Watch for that headphone port to disappear. It takes up a lot of real estate inside the phone. And it's a hole to let stuff get inside their otherwise-controlled environment.
________________________________________
From: Halloran
RE: Beats At Half Price
beats were beat the second they came out.
bad fashion accessory from day one.
from a guy that uses headphones all day at work I can tell you that the sony studio MDR-V6 are perfect for club DJing and radio work. this is ironic as sony makes the shittiest speakers for home use. I prefer genelec monitors for air and mixing or some of the JBL powered monitors.
but to be seen walking around with a pair of beats attached to ones head screams "poseur".
all you need is an affliction/Ed hardy/Von Dutch/aero postale/ t-shirt and the package is complete.
beat dis!
________________________________________
From: Greg Khaikin
Subject: Re: Don'ts & Do's
One thing you forgot was "make your music easy to hear." I can't tell you how many bands I've tried to check out in anticipation of CMJ and they made it difficult for me to listen. If i have to "like" you before you'll even let me hear your music, then i'm out. If i have to give you my email address, then click three links just for you to play me a 30 second snippet, I'm done. and to top it off, if you don't have contact information online, then why are you even bothering?
-greg
________________________________________
From: Lee Van Put
Subject: Re: Don'ts & Do's
As a recent grad, I'd also throw in "Don't go to law school" - currently working in a non-legal (not illegal) internship at a fashion house since the job market in NYC is about as saturated with lawyers as the radio is with shitty pop tunes. Still, it beats sitting on the couch sending out resumes like the majority of my fellow alumni. Too bad we all have to pay back the $x00,000s in loans we signed up for when a well-paying job was all but guaranteed!
________________________________________
From: Rick Larson
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Fountains Of Wayne
The MILF crystallized and became okay for mainstream consumption once that song came out. It became okay for MILFs to admit to liking young boys to their friends and young boys to attempt to feast on MILFs. Up to that point, there was interest in both sides. After that, it was off to the races. And good for MILFs. Older guys had been chasing sweet young things for years while MILFs went begging. No more after that song and video came out. I discovered moms like Stacy's back in high school, in 1978. I had the market all to myself through that time and college. Guys my age were trying to make it with gals our age and making little progress. I was going to SMU, waking up at some divorcee's house in north Dallas in 1980, getting coffee and breakfast in bed and insatiable loving while guys my age had long taken their dates home. No strings, just fun. When they started taking me shopping, I rather liked it. As one said, "I don't know whether to fuck you or adopt you."
Rick
___________________________________
From: Ed Rivadavia
Subject: RE: Sales-Week Ending-9/30/12
Pending the size of their second week sales drop, Mumford's massive debut seems to support the fact that album promo cycles are increasingly resembling movie openings - where all of the marketing and $ might as well be focused on that one shot at glory, not a long term plan. Adele's year-long reign notwithstanding, we keep seeing more and more one-and-done artists - not just in the sales column, but in the public awareness/curiosity departments too, as you yourself have pointed out a few times. It makes sense: with so much to consume, listeners will keep hopping from song to song, week to week, Gotye to Psy, and brand loyalty be damned. It takes too much commitment. What's more, the kids KNOW there's rarely anything there beyond the one hit smoke and mirrors - they ain't falling for it.
___________________________________
From: Craig Skinner
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Fountains Of Wayne
A review of Fountains of Wayne is not complete without listening to Robbie Fulks' "Fountains of Wayne Hotline."
-----
Note: I did some research on this. Although there are many references in Google, there is no YouTube video. YouTube is the new radio, if you are not there, you really don't exist. Yes, there are live takes on YouTube, but we've been conditioned to expect those to be lo-fi and usually just ignore them unless we're hard core fans.
However, in the seven year old spirit of the song, you can download an MP3 here:
http://bit.ly/RnaNRR
Or here: http://bit.ly/QWa8X5
Don't forget, if you're on a Mac, and you click to download, you'll get a page with the track playing, not the download, to do that, you've got to hold down the Option key while you click and choose "Download Linked File" or "Save Linked File To Desktop."
If you're not that adventurous, or even if you are, you can read the lyrics here: http://bit.ly/TcXU9y
I'd like to tell you the track is more than a one listen exercise, but that would be untrue for most people. But for those of you under the age of forty, who were born before music ruled the world, by clicking above, you can experience the way it once was, when we were both hungry and interested, when it wasn't about bankers and money but creativity. Just imagine if Frank Zappa was twenty five today, he might go to work for Goldman Sachs as opposed to trying to be a professional musician, and how much poorer would we all be? Yes, there is only a minimal live circuit, it's hard to be a musician today, many people take the easy way out, which is to do something else.
___________________________________
From: Richard Arfin
Subject: Re: Pamela Hurley
I once asked my friend, Shadow Morton, about the end of "Society's Child" which he produced. He told me that when the song was finished, he felt that it needed a coda to resolve the song. He asked Artie Butler to come up with something. In Shadow's words, "I wanted an exclamation point." Artie came up with a riff and recorded it in one take. Shadow immediately added it to the end of the song. "I knew that the song was memorable by itself but I also realized that the coda was a hook unto itself. It's the first time that I can remember that a hook was placed at the end of the song. And it worked."
___________________________________
From: Nelson Leonard
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Fountains Of Wayne
Good morning, Bob.
Always enjoy your posts.
Regarding Fountains of Wayne and "All Kinds of Time", here's a link to a promotional piece Allan Broce and I created for the NFL Network:
www.thenowtv.com/a/Bob/FF_NFL_Network_AKOT_60.mov
(Note: Let the video load completely before you play it, otherwise it will stall.)
___________________________________
From: Nick Zieber
Re: Jimmy Iovine
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have had the #1 album on iTunes for a few days now. I just wanted to remind you that I wrote this to you in March 2011.
-----
Dear Bob,
Seattle is up to something. It has been a few years since Death Cab for Cutie, a few more since Nirvanna, and even longer since Jimmy Hendrix. There has been a movement that is about 5 years (or more) in the making. A so-called "Northwest Hip-Hop" group called Blue Scholars began on the University of Washington campus when two students joined forces. The two college students had a passion for hip-hop and recognized that labels had caused irreparable damage to artists, and that in order for them to succeed, they would have to go it alone without the aid of a record label...
Through the Blue Scholars and their community-driven leadership, another artist was propelled to the forefront of the movement. His name is Macklemore. Well, actually his name is Ben Haggerty, but he goes by Macklemore now. He may be Seattle's best hope for home-grown talent that blossoms on the national scene. Here's a recent article about him in the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/musicnightlife/2014178847_macklemore10.html?prmid=carousel_feat
Macklemore also did a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a music video. The goal was $10,000 and they raised about $18,500. Fans put their money where their demand is. I got in touch with the director for the short film, Zia Mohajerjasbi, and he said it would be great for me to come up to Seattle and help out once the money was raised. I got to experience the creative community in full-force. Never have I seen such professionalism and creative vision in my life. The video will be called "Wings" and will be so good that you will probably write an entire post about it. It will be the first music video to use the ARRI Alexa digital camera, and is scheduled for release sometime next month.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wings/macklemore-x-ryan-lewis-wings-dir-zia-mohajerjasbi?ref=live
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (the producer) are currently on tour, and have sold out every venue on the way, including Seattle's own Showbox at the Market three times in one week. That never happens. Macklemore is a very active twitter user, tapping into his fanbase through constant communication. The other day they sold out the Viper Room in Los Angeles, and before long Macklemore will be headlining at SXSW in Austin on St. Patrick's Day.
http://www.bmi.com/news/entry/550750/
Though the dollar figures are much smaller than would typically accompany an act of this caliber, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Blue Scholars will continue to gain support for their music through their loyal fan base, and you can count me in.
___________________________________
From: Arny Schorr
Subject: RE: Ed Cassidy
Apparently, Ed was found on the floor of his trailer, unconscious.
Conflicting reports said he had a stroke, others that it was severe
dehydration (which having spent a couple of hours in that tin can, was quite likely). He has been diagnosed with dementia and will likely require a caregiver.
His daughter and ex-wife plus Jay and Mark are aware and making efforts to help but Ed is the only one who can make certain decisions as he never granted power of attorney to anyone. He is paranoid and has a combative personality makes it difficult to help him. I understand there was a scene at the rehab center (in Arroyo Grande) with an ombudsman where Ed refused to sign anything in regards CPR or life support issues.
We're trying to get Music Cares to get him some assistance and any offers of support are probably best directed to them. It's very sad and very frustrating.
Thanks again.
Arny
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Beats At Half Price
http://www.ksl.com/public/deal/show/4735
Ironically, on the same day Trent Reznor announced he was working with the company:
http://www.facebook.com/treznor/posts/3343982178391
This is the beginning of the end. This is how you kill a brand.
You absolutely cannot get Bose headphones at a discount. They came out with the QuietComfort 3, they still sold the QuietComfort 2 at full price.
In other words, Beats is a fad. In it for the short money as opposed to the long. No different from Atari entering the computer market...and you know how that turned out.
Maybe they've just got too much inventory...
That's how Tim Cook got the top job at Apple. He may not have avoided the maps fiasco, which seems to be a press story only, but he's an expert in supply chain economics.
Maybe there's a new model!
But earbuds are not like cars, redesigned every year (although most major changes are on a 5-7 year cycle in the automobile business at this point.) And they never give discounts that deep on cars. Period.
Then there's the ankling of Monster. As for future products... It's like selling a car that looks like a Mercedes-Benz on the outside but has Suzuki inside.
This is typical of the music business. A giant fire sale. Nothing's built to last. Everybody's planning to get out tomorrow. Take the money and run.
And it's not only KSL, Monster is selling headphones at a deep discount on its own site!: http://www.monsterbeats33.com/?id=
Beats Electronics Is Breaking Up with Monster: http://bloom.bg/xFiONn
iPhone 5 Buyers, iOS 6 Users Don’t Care About Maps Fiasco: http://dthin.gs/QhLzlK
P.S. These discounts may be part of the disconnection from Monster, but it still hurts the brand. It trains people to wait for the deal. The same way papering trains people to wait for the free tickets.
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Ironically, on the same day Trent Reznor announced he was working with the company:
http://www.facebook.com/treznor/posts/3343982178391
This is the beginning of the end. This is how you kill a brand.
You absolutely cannot get Bose headphones at a discount. They came out with the QuietComfort 3, they still sold the QuietComfort 2 at full price.
In other words, Beats is a fad. In it for the short money as opposed to the long. No different from Atari entering the computer market...and you know how that turned out.
Maybe they've just got too much inventory...
That's how Tim Cook got the top job at Apple. He may not have avoided the maps fiasco, which seems to be a press story only, but he's an expert in supply chain economics.
Maybe there's a new model!
But earbuds are not like cars, redesigned every year (although most major changes are on a 5-7 year cycle in the automobile business at this point.) And they never give discounts that deep on cars. Period.
Then there's the ankling of Monster. As for future products... It's like selling a car that looks like a Mercedes-Benz on the outside but has Suzuki inside.
This is typical of the music business. A giant fire sale. Nothing's built to last. Everybody's planning to get out tomorrow. Take the money and run.
And it's not only KSL, Monster is selling headphones at a deep discount on its own site!: http://www.monsterbeats33.com/?id=
Beats Electronics Is Breaking Up with Monster: http://bloom.bg/xFiONn
iPhone 5 Buyers, iOS 6 Users Don’t Care About Maps Fiasco: http://dthin.gs/QhLzlK
P.S. These discounts may be part of the disconnection from Monster, but it still hurts the brand. It trains people to wait for the deal. The same way papering trains people to wait for the free tickets.
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Monday 15 October 2012
Xbox Music
Streaming won.
That's right. While you were lauding the sonic quality of CDs, bitching about Spotify payments and repeating endlessly that no one wanted to rent music, technologists, not married to the past, enmeshed in a sphere of creative destruction, necessary in order to win, saw what the people wanted before they knew it and delivered it.
The number one music service today is YouTube. Can a dedicated music service supersede it?
The iTunes Store has peaked. It's just a matter of when Apple goes into streaming. The Cupertino company has a long history of following the innovation of others with a more highly refined product. And if you don't think they can do this, you haven't employed Spotify search. In a world where Google delivers exactly what you want instantly, yes, usually the first hit is the desired one, it's frequently impossible to find what you want on Spotify. You think it's not there, then you change search terms and voila! It's as simple as the lack of a single play repeat button in the app... Apple gets the little things right. They provide all the solutions we need right up front. At least this was all true before Steve Jobs's unfortunate demise. If Apple gets beaten on streaming music, if it fails to corner this market, you know the company is past its peak.
Yes, it's not about Microsoft triumphing in the music sphere. Good luck to them. Let the best man win. But it is about bringing subscription services front and center. Just like all Blu-Ray players come with Netflix apps, music apps will be part of future operating systems. Will third party delivery services survive? Jimmy Iovine tied in with HP for Beats, he'd better do so soon with MOG. Then again, HP's in trouble, when the PC business is cratering and they've got no viable tablet strategy.
Spotify was the pioneer.
Oops, Rhapsody was the pioneer. But Rhapsody could not see that a free tier was necessary to adoption. Dope would have a small percentage of its penetration if the first hit was not free. A lousy interface and a lack of experience by the public held back Rhapsody. Then again, maybe Rhapsody was just too early. (I.e. see Apple above re timing.)
With Xbox Music the old world has been put to bed. People expect the history of recorded music at their fingertips. If your business model is based on scarcity, you're screwed.
And there are cultural issues too. If you're not insanely great, despite your music being available, it will probably be ignored. Because why listen to crap when excellence is right next door, a click away?
Xbox Music is like Netflix streaming. They had it for years before everybody caught on. And what sold Netflix streaming? Word of mouth! Yup, advertising does not sell new technology and services, only early adopters spreading the word. In other words, you'd be better off reading "The Tipping Point" than getting a job at an advertising firm.
I'm not saying subscription streaming services will triumph overnight. But just like digital photography, something that was heralded for a decade before it peaked, in seemingly a day, streaming will take over. Sales will not fade that same day, but will diminish quickly. And just like with digital photography kids now take thousands of pictures a year, more people will listen to more music.
Will they listen to your music?
Mm...
You think it's still about getting signed, getting on the radio, as if old media is gonna be king forever. That's like saying people will use MS DOS forever. Like saying no one needs a smartphone. Like saying desktops will not be impacted by tablets. Radio ceased long ago being anything but a delivery method, there's no soul except on talk radio. You can get the hits elsewhere.
Record stores have already disappeared. Those that still exist sell tchotchkes.
Apple's hottest laptops come without disk drives. So if you think there's a future for CDs...
And the newest laptops have less storage than before. Because what you need lives in the cloud.
We're in an era of access.
You're in the business of creating demand. In a world where everything is available essentially for free at people's fingertips. How can you motivate people to check you out and continue to listen?
If you hype something bad, you've lost credibility. If something's not great, it won't be listened to again. It's not like buying an album and playing it ad infinitum because you can't afford new music.
And if Apple can break up iLife, allowing you to buy only the components you need, via digital download, what makes you sure people still want the album, especially its weaker tracks?
You can follow the horse race. You can bet on whether Microsoft ends up owning music or not.
You can marvel that music is now a feature as opposed to a stand-alone item.
You can complain that you're making less initially from a stream than you did from the sale of an album.
Or you can recognize that the future is here, creative destruction is a way of life, and you're best to learn how to play by the new rules and anticipate future changes.
Sure, people are going to lose their jobs. Winners and losers will be realigned.
But if you don't think this is a heyday for listeners, you don't have ears.
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That's right. While you were lauding the sonic quality of CDs, bitching about Spotify payments and repeating endlessly that no one wanted to rent music, technologists, not married to the past, enmeshed in a sphere of creative destruction, necessary in order to win, saw what the people wanted before they knew it and delivered it.
The number one music service today is YouTube. Can a dedicated music service supersede it?
The iTunes Store has peaked. It's just a matter of when Apple goes into streaming. The Cupertino company has a long history of following the innovation of others with a more highly refined product. And if you don't think they can do this, you haven't employed Spotify search. In a world where Google delivers exactly what you want instantly, yes, usually the first hit is the desired one, it's frequently impossible to find what you want on Spotify. You think it's not there, then you change search terms and voila! It's as simple as the lack of a single play repeat button in the app... Apple gets the little things right. They provide all the solutions we need right up front. At least this was all true before Steve Jobs's unfortunate demise. If Apple gets beaten on streaming music, if it fails to corner this market, you know the company is past its peak.
Yes, it's not about Microsoft triumphing in the music sphere. Good luck to them. Let the best man win. But it is about bringing subscription services front and center. Just like all Blu-Ray players come with Netflix apps, music apps will be part of future operating systems. Will third party delivery services survive? Jimmy Iovine tied in with HP for Beats, he'd better do so soon with MOG. Then again, HP's in trouble, when the PC business is cratering and they've got no viable tablet strategy.
Spotify was the pioneer.
Oops, Rhapsody was the pioneer. But Rhapsody could not see that a free tier was necessary to adoption. Dope would have a small percentage of its penetration if the first hit was not free. A lousy interface and a lack of experience by the public held back Rhapsody. Then again, maybe Rhapsody was just too early. (I.e. see Apple above re timing.)
With Xbox Music the old world has been put to bed. People expect the history of recorded music at their fingertips. If your business model is based on scarcity, you're screwed.
And there are cultural issues too. If you're not insanely great, despite your music being available, it will probably be ignored. Because why listen to crap when excellence is right next door, a click away?
Xbox Music is like Netflix streaming. They had it for years before everybody caught on. And what sold Netflix streaming? Word of mouth! Yup, advertising does not sell new technology and services, only early adopters spreading the word. In other words, you'd be better off reading "The Tipping Point" than getting a job at an advertising firm.
I'm not saying subscription streaming services will triumph overnight. But just like digital photography, something that was heralded for a decade before it peaked, in seemingly a day, streaming will take over. Sales will not fade that same day, but will diminish quickly. And just like with digital photography kids now take thousands of pictures a year, more people will listen to more music.
Will they listen to your music?
Mm...
You think it's still about getting signed, getting on the radio, as if old media is gonna be king forever. That's like saying people will use MS DOS forever. Like saying no one needs a smartphone. Like saying desktops will not be impacted by tablets. Radio ceased long ago being anything but a delivery method, there's no soul except on talk radio. You can get the hits elsewhere.
Record stores have already disappeared. Those that still exist sell tchotchkes.
Apple's hottest laptops come without disk drives. So if you think there's a future for CDs...
And the newest laptops have less storage than before. Because what you need lives in the cloud.
We're in an era of access.
You're in the business of creating demand. In a world where everything is available essentially for free at people's fingertips. How can you motivate people to check you out and continue to listen?
If you hype something bad, you've lost credibility. If something's not great, it won't be listened to again. It's not like buying an album and playing it ad infinitum because you can't afford new music.
And if Apple can break up iLife, allowing you to buy only the components you need, via digital download, what makes you sure people still want the album, especially its weaker tracks?
You can follow the horse race. You can bet on whether Microsoft ends up owning music or not.
You can marvel that music is now a feature as opposed to a stand-alone item.
You can complain that you're making less initially from a stream than you did from the sale of an album.
Or you can recognize that the future is here, creative destruction is a way of life, and you're best to learn how to play by the new rules and anticipate future changes.
Sure, people are going to lose their jobs. Winners and losers will be realigned.
But if you don't think this is a heyday for listeners, you don't have ears.
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Don'ts & Do's
Don't make an album if you're an actor or actress. Nobody is waiting for it and if you're not willing to go on tour for years you'll get a ton of (paid-for) publicity and no sales. And if you're that damn good and can't say it in a single, don't start. Or keep it as a hobby.
Don't go to see "Argo." It's so typically Hollywood you'll wince, down to the revolutionaries following the plane down the runway as it takes off (and if you think this requires a spoiler alert, let me really blow your mind... You're gonna go to sleep and wake up tomorrow! You're gonna eat too! Whew!)
Do go see "Smashed." No one will. This is TV done right. But on the big screen. And that's like putting your kiddie show on Cinemax, however good it might be, it's the wrong place.
Do sign up for Twitter. But don't tweet if you don't want to. But if you do tweet, make it personal, not self-promotional. I went here and did this and feel that, as opposed to buy my this or buy my that.
Don't mistake publicity for success. Just because people can read about it everywhere, see it on TV, that does not mean anybody cares.
Don't ask to mail a CD. Do ask if you can send a link. Sending a CD makes you feel good, but it's rarely listened to. You've got a chance someone will click and listen to your music via a link. Because it's much easier. But don't expect them to listen to more than five seconds. Yup, that's how long you've got to hook someone. Don't blame the listener, blame the plethora of entertainment options. We're limited in time and we only care about the best.
Don't get excited about the Stones' 50th. It will only encourage them.
Don't read Neil Young's biography. Well, you're already not. It's self-indulgent, all about the money. Just because you can play music that does not mean you can write a book.
Do listen to each and every Alec Baldwin "Here's The Thing" podcast. Because the level of discourse is high in a world that is too often shooting low and you'll learn something. Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies, was working at the Greek Theatre box office when he got his job at the "Hollywood Reporter." This was after he had been on TV and under contract to Desilu. David Brooks is funny, and explains why he's a conservative better than Rush Limbaugh or anybody on Fox News.
Do talk about Palladia. The new MTV. Sans the bells and whistles of VJs, etc, you end up with just the music. And in hi-def, it works.
Don't stay at home and watch on YouTube instead of going to the gig, it's the same visuals, the same music, but a completely different experience.
Don't go to work at the label. There's no upward mobility. If you want to start in the music business, become an agent.
Don't boast about how little sleep you get. It just makes you appear a trend-whore and stupid. All the recent studies say almost everybody needs close to eight hours a night. If you're not getting it, you're not being creative. Yup, that's what it takes to have great ideas and execute them, sleep!
Do educate yourself on banking, not only titans like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, but hedge funds and private equity. This is the enemy. If you don't know him, you and society are worse off for it. It's like living in the sixties and not being informed on the Vietnam War. And once everybody got informed, a huge swath of the population was against it.
Don't make the mistake of thinking just because you like something, somebody else will. If you want to maintain your credibility, don't recommend that which people will not like.
Don't believe just because Gaga is one of the biggest stars today that she'll be one of the biggest stars tomorrow. Touring is a victory lap at her level. It all comes down to the music. Can she record more great stuff?
Do not think since "Jagged Little Pill" was so great, Alanis Morissette has anything left to say that you've got to hear.
Do not think electronic music is a fad. Because then you're like Geffen Records, which thought rap was a fad, didn't sign any and went out of business.
Do know that Showtime did not become the new HBO overnight. Success takes time. To find your way, to build an audience.
Nobody lives forever. The greatest threat haunting the powers-that-be in today's music business is death. The sphere is rife with opportunity. Because of the aged infrastructure. Or as Warren Miller so sagely put it, "Every hundred years, all new people."
Do know that access is king. Just like distribution. You might abhor electronic books, but a digital store, containing all available works at your fingertips, is good for readers and society.
Do know there's no longer such a thing as a rare recording. Everything's available online. Maybe not in a physical format, but you can hear it. Collecting is just sport today.
Do know the vinyl "revolution" has a sell-by date. It's comparatively tiny and will be eradicated once higher quality downloads/streaming become available. Which could take years, because of slow broadband. What kind of screwed up world do we live in where people can get the same speed on their phone (LTE) as they can at home (broadband.) One in which there are no government incentives to speed broadband up. Higher broadband delivers a stronger economy. Just ask the South Koreans.
Don't think Ticketmaster is the enemy. Acts are.
Don't believe ticket prices will come down. There's a shortage of good acts you want to see and income inequality means there's always someone willing to overpay to say they were inside.
Don't think Apple is forever. Music, when done right, can be forever. Not commerce, not gadgets and industrial products.
Don't listen when an artist says his latest work is his best. He's got no perspective and he's just trying to sell it.
Don't think the label is your friend.
Don't think just because an album entered high on the chart it's a success. Look to see if it's still selling a year from now. If not, it's almost irrelevant.
Don't sign with a label unless you truly believe you cannot do it yourself. And do you see yourself as that inadequate?
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Don't go to see "Argo." It's so typically Hollywood you'll wince, down to the revolutionaries following the plane down the runway as it takes off (and if you think this requires a spoiler alert, let me really blow your mind... You're gonna go to sleep and wake up tomorrow! You're gonna eat too! Whew!)
Do go see "Smashed." No one will. This is TV done right. But on the big screen. And that's like putting your kiddie show on Cinemax, however good it might be, it's the wrong place.
Do sign up for Twitter. But don't tweet if you don't want to. But if you do tweet, make it personal, not self-promotional. I went here and did this and feel that, as opposed to buy my this or buy my that.
Don't mistake publicity for success. Just because people can read about it everywhere, see it on TV, that does not mean anybody cares.
Don't ask to mail a CD. Do ask if you can send a link. Sending a CD makes you feel good, but it's rarely listened to. You've got a chance someone will click and listen to your music via a link. Because it's much easier. But don't expect them to listen to more than five seconds. Yup, that's how long you've got to hook someone. Don't blame the listener, blame the plethora of entertainment options. We're limited in time and we only care about the best.
Don't get excited about the Stones' 50th. It will only encourage them.
Don't read Neil Young's biography. Well, you're already not. It's self-indulgent, all about the money. Just because you can play music that does not mean you can write a book.
Do listen to each and every Alec Baldwin "Here's The Thing" podcast. Because the level of discourse is high in a world that is too often shooting low and you'll learn something. Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies, was working at the Greek Theatre box office when he got his job at the "Hollywood Reporter." This was after he had been on TV and under contract to Desilu. David Brooks is funny, and explains why he's a conservative better than Rush Limbaugh or anybody on Fox News.
Do talk about Palladia. The new MTV. Sans the bells and whistles of VJs, etc, you end up with just the music. And in hi-def, it works.
Don't stay at home and watch on YouTube instead of going to the gig, it's the same visuals, the same music, but a completely different experience.
Don't go to work at the label. There's no upward mobility. If you want to start in the music business, become an agent.
Don't boast about how little sleep you get. It just makes you appear a trend-whore and stupid. All the recent studies say almost everybody needs close to eight hours a night. If you're not getting it, you're not being creative. Yup, that's what it takes to have great ideas and execute them, sleep!
Do educate yourself on banking, not only titans like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, but hedge funds and private equity. This is the enemy. If you don't know him, you and society are worse off for it. It's like living in the sixties and not being informed on the Vietnam War. And once everybody got informed, a huge swath of the population was against it.
Don't make the mistake of thinking just because you like something, somebody else will. If you want to maintain your credibility, don't recommend that which people will not like.
Don't believe just because Gaga is one of the biggest stars today that she'll be one of the biggest stars tomorrow. Touring is a victory lap at her level. It all comes down to the music. Can she record more great stuff?
Do not think since "Jagged Little Pill" was so great, Alanis Morissette has anything left to say that you've got to hear.
Do not think electronic music is a fad. Because then you're like Geffen Records, which thought rap was a fad, didn't sign any and went out of business.
Do know that Showtime did not become the new HBO overnight. Success takes time. To find your way, to build an audience.
Nobody lives forever. The greatest threat haunting the powers-that-be in today's music business is death. The sphere is rife with opportunity. Because of the aged infrastructure. Or as Warren Miller so sagely put it, "Every hundred years, all new people."
Do know that access is king. Just like distribution. You might abhor electronic books, but a digital store, containing all available works at your fingertips, is good for readers and society.
Do know there's no longer such a thing as a rare recording. Everything's available online. Maybe not in a physical format, but you can hear it. Collecting is just sport today.
Do know the vinyl "revolution" has a sell-by date. It's comparatively tiny and will be eradicated once higher quality downloads/streaming become available. Which could take years, because of slow broadband. What kind of screwed up world do we live in where people can get the same speed on their phone (LTE) as they can at home (broadband.) One in which there are no government incentives to speed broadband up. Higher broadband delivers a stronger economy. Just ask the South Koreans.
Don't think Ticketmaster is the enemy. Acts are.
Don't believe ticket prices will come down. There's a shortage of good acts you want to see and income inequality means there's always someone willing to overpay to say they were inside.
Don't think Apple is forever. Music, when done right, can be forever. Not commerce, not gadgets and industrial products.
Don't listen when an artist says his latest work is his best. He's got no perspective and he's just trying to sell it.
Don't think the label is your friend.
Don't think just because an album entered high on the chart it's a success. Look to see if it's still selling a year from now. If not, it's almost irrelevant.
Don't sign with a label unless you truly believe you cannot do it yourself. And do you see yourself as that inadequate?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
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