Mailbag

From: Terry Ellis
Subject: Alvin Lee

Bob,

When Alvin Lee walked on the stage of a small UK blues club in 1967 in his trademark clogs, blonde locks and dramatic good looks and began to play that red Gibson with the peace symbol sticker, fingers flying across the frets, you just knew you were in the presence of a star.

Ultimately millions agreed as Ten Years After stole the show at the UK's Sunbury Jazz and Blues Festival in 1968 and later, as, for many, Alvin became the face of Woodstock after the movie was released in 1970.

Alvin was a warm man, with a ready smile and an easy sense of humor to go with those flying fingers.

As an aspiring musician in England, Alvin entrusted his life and career to two recent University graduates, still wet behind the ears! In doing so, Alvin helped put in place the first building block of a business which became known as Chrysalis.

Chris Wright and I will always be grateful.

Alvin left us far too early and we will miss him,

Terry

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Subject: Re: Clive's Book-1

In my humble opinion, the music business began to decline when the label executives tried to become as famous as the artists. To prove my point, I challenge anyone to remember who the chairman of Capitol Records was when they had the Beatles AND the Beach Boys. That, and when musicians began wearing tennis shoes in the studio. Ugh.

Bill Bentley
Vanguard Records

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From: Mike Pinder
Subject: Re: A Little More Moody Blues

It is interesting to hear musicians develop. I can hear the same thing in my boys' music that is inherent in all developing musicians. Raw talent that has to mature.

Too bad records companies don't take the time to mature artists like in days of old. From Love Me Do to Magical Mystery Tour. (I sang harmonies and played mouth organ on Walrus and Fool on the Hill) From Go Now to Nights in White Satin. And so on.

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Subject: Something happened

Hi Bob
I've been messing around in the music business for over 45 years and now at 67 despite my misgivings I am trying to help a young artist named Charlie Hole get started in the biz.
I want to share with you something that happened this weekend.
Charlie plays bars, clubs, little theaters and any place where he can to get his 10,000 hours.
He's only 19. He works most nights.
We have made a CD and its pretty good.
Most of the copies are in my garage and we need to get them heard. If no one hears it, we will never get anywhere. (it's on iTunes but that's not the point)
Now, on any given night he is playing to 50 plus people in a club and will ask them if they want to buy a CD after the show.. He has been selling 2 or 3 this way. The price is 10 pounds ($15)
This weekend he changed tactics.
He told them the CD was free.
Just pay whatever you think it's worth.
Don't worry if you don't have any money, it's free.
He sold 17 copies, an increase of of over 500%
Nobody took one for free.
Some people paid double.
Everyone wanted to help Charlie make a living because they got it.
They wanted to be involved. They felt good helping him on his way...
Amanda Palmer knows this.
Now I know it too.
Try giving your music away. Sharing has its own rewards.
It takes courage to do this but sometimes you make more money that way.
Even if you don't, your music is out there...listeners can become fans and fans are your lifeblood.

Bob, you have been talking about how the music business has changed.
This weekend an old boy like me saw it working first hand and I'm over the moon.
Keep the faith
All the best
Jim Cregan
London

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From: Mic Tienken
Subject: Re: Billy Joel At Vanderbilt

Bob, you rock. Just met your sister Wendy Friday night at a Dan Navarro show
in Minneapolis. She tells great stories and you are featured prominently.

Love your take on the biz, so fun to read. Phil Solem actually turned me on
to your newsletter and I'm ashamed to say I had not been hip to it prior.

I've been writing songs with Phil (the Rembrandts, Thrush) for over 30 years
now and I love me some good songwriters and I love great stories about the
biz, I could tell a few myself.

Phil tells me I need to meet you someday as he feels our tastes and opinions
are simpatico.

Whatever.

I enjoy your missives, keep 'em coming. Especially enjoyed the one about
virality (the Mila Kunis thing). I'm in violent agreement. I tell young
bands and musicians all the time that all that really matters is that they
kick ass.

You can print out flyers, post 'em on every telephone poll in town, send
thousands of emails, create an event on FaceBook, Tweet to everyone you
know, and if you do a really good job, maybe you get 50 people to come to
your gig. Play there the next night, nobody comes, because you suck.

Another band, doesn't do s**t, they play in a bar and the regulars are
there, maybe 10, 15 people. They rock the place, they are great, the next
night the bar is packed.

That's the way rock and roll works.

That's the way the world works.

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From: Andrew Oldham
Subject: Re: Instant Karma

bob;
hopefully tea in toronto.....
woman is the nigger of the world.....
i am to clive davis what hugo chavez was to george bush... at the UN....
f**k the sulphur,....
the very best book that was ever written about popdom is STONE FREE.
i managed to bridge over hustled waters... nobody else has
apart from chet baker, keith, edith piaf, miles davis, and john stanley donaldson.....
i thank myself, i bridged with privilege.
and i gave thanks for it....
albert grossman, brian epstein, chris & kit... you better move on...
johnny lennon did not care. he cared about the moment, the translation would be yours.
there was no way he wanted to be brian jones...
john would resonate, he would move on. he never relied upon you..
we loved him, he knew it.
bowie is a shop window, the store is empty...
we love you...
best, ALO. right now in huntington beach.....

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From: george drakoulias
Subject: RE: Instant Karma

Great song great record. In addition to drums, a lot of the excitement can be found in that distorted vocal. Lennon was too hot for the mic! In fact the drums are a simple shuffle, but run through tape slap. Spector went from the wall of sound, which was mass reverb and chamber and lots of players playing in a close room together, to a tape echo thing with Lennon. (Lennon loved "Elvis Echo") The whole record is run through echo. Piano, drums, vocals et al. It's also the sound of "Imagine" Add the "throw your drum set down the stairs" drum fills and you got pure joy. Spector's work with Harrison on "All Things
Must Pass" is more wall of sound. Listen to "What Is Life" for and you can hear the difference.

By the way looked it up "Instant Karma" on wikipedia learned this: "It ranks as one of the fastest-released songs in pop music history, recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios the same day it was written, and arriving in stores only ten days later. Lennon remarked to the press, he "wrote it for breakfast, recorded it for lunch, and we're putting it out for dinner."

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From: Shelley Germeaux
Subject: Instant Karma post

Hi Bob,

I interviewed Alan about Instant Karma and the other songs he did with John, a few years ago. That interview ended up at "Not So Modern Drummer" magazine so it's not on line...but thought I'd share with you what Alan told me.

About the drum part on IK, he acknowledged Spector's role in creating it. He said Lennon originally had that song as a "shuffle" and the song was just a rough bit that he'd just written. Alan thought it should be changed up a bit and talked to Spector about a different drum approach. "That's when we decided to use the Tom. We put a towel over it and played the tom like a cymbal. I did the drum breaks in a different meter..."

John liked it and said "keep doing that." Spector put a "slap echo" on the drum to make it sound like two.

So that's Alan's story about IK in case you're interested.

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From: Mary Catherine Sneed
Subject: Re: Clive's Book-2

Clive Davis was on Fallon last night. He took a moment to tell some story that was really "Clive discovered Justin Timberlake"...along with taking credit for so many others. unbelievable. I have been in radio since college. 1970. Since I was 19. One of the reasons Clive Davis had so much success was because of a man name Richard Palmese. He hired the best promo people for Arista. They would never give up on a song. Other labels had artists and music that was just as good as Arista but they gave up. The promo staff at Arista made u believe that if u didn't add their songs u would b depriving your audience of something special. Other labels did not do that. U never hear Clive Davis talk about any of these people. So I am!!!!

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Subject: Re: Kelly & Clive

Love this line, "The octogenarian who's all over conventional media
but doesn't realize that's passe?"

We recently requested credentials to cover The Who tour when it swings
through the area, but were told by the publicist "only the local daily
and weekly papers in the market that preview the show are being
approved to cover The Who tour." I was tempted to retort "that makes
sense, because only the people who still read the local daily and
weekly papers seem to be buying tickets."

(if you post, please omit my info, else the publicist will freak-out)

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Subject: Twitter over Facebook for Music Marketing says CD Baby post

Hey, Bob,

I grabbed this off of today's CD Baby email newsletter. What do you think?

http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2013/02/4-reasons-why-twitter-is-better-than-facebook-for-music-marketing/

Larry Butler

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From: Rev. Bill
Subject: Re: Billy Joel At Vanderbilt

About 15 years ago, I was doing a magazine for musicians called GIG. Through a series of weird coincidences, i got hooked up with a guy named David Santos who wrote for the mag about being a working bass player for a couple of years. He went on to play with The Neville Bros, Julio Iglesias, John Fogerty and a bunch of others but at that time he had just gotten his big break playing with... Billy Joel.

The story of how he got the gig falls in lockstep with a lot of stuff you tell musicians (except that David was a sideman). He was living in New York, playing whatever gigs he could get. Got booked on a couple of high-end weddings where the sax player was Mark Rivera who has been with Billy forever. Mark dug David's energy and the fact that he did not just phone it in even though it was "just a wedding gig." Later that year, Mark goes out with Ringo Starr on on of the All-Starr Band tours. It was the year when Ringo's kid tragically died at home while Ringo was over here. When RIngo left, so did John Entwhistle and somehow it fell to Mark to bring in a drummer and bass player to finish the tour. Mark called Liberty DeVito who played with Billy up until a few years ago and he called David.

David goes out and finishes the tour. At the end, Liberty and Mark sit down with him and tell him that Billy is not currently touring but might again soon and would he be interested in the gig. He says "of course." And here is where it gets cool.

David decides to prepare for a call that may never come. He moves to Nashville because he feels he can work on learning better there. He sits down over a period of months and learns to play every single song from every single Billy Joel record ever recorded. Something like 150 songs.

The call comes. Kind of. Mark calls and tells David there is no tour but that Billy is doing VH-1 Storytellers. No rehearsal and they will probably just play a couple of songs but can he come to New York for a one-off TV gig. David goes. It is similar to the college gigs. Billy talks about the songs and interacts with the audience. David has barely met Billy. Audience member asks about a little-known gem of a song called "Summer Highland Falls." Billy says he really can't play it because there is a bass line that is crucial. David waves from the side of the stage. Billy sees him and asks, "Do you know it?" David says yes. Billy calls him out to the stage and they do the song. David ends up on stage for almost the entire show with Billy asking "Do you know this?" on every tune and getting a "yes" on every tune. At one point he comments tothe audience that he has just met this guy and never played with him and he "knows every song i've written."

David ended up playing with Billy for a long time including the Elton and Billy tours and the millenium concert at madison Square Garden. And the Billy gig led to every other thing he has done.

All because he DID THE WORK...

-b

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From: Jason Darling
Subject: Re: Billy Joel At Vanderbilt

When I was at Berklee (92) Billy Joel came and did this. I only went because my roommate was obsessed. It was extremely refreshing to hear someone who had succeeded in music lay out the hard truths about the business. He was honest and forthright and it was a very informative if you took his message to heart.

A year later my roommate did a BJ tribute and sent a recording and asked if Billy could listen and if he might critique it. To my surprise one afternoon I answered the phone in our crappy Boston apt. and it was Billy Joel calling for my roommate. They talked for 40 min. I thought "how cool is this guy to do that?!"

A few years after that I was on a gig in Montauk during the off season (some MTV thing being filmed in a empty seasonal resort) The drummer pointed out Billy Joel in the corner of an empty dinning room eating lunch all alone. He suggested we go over and ask him to sit in.

Even though we rudely interrupted his lobster lunch he was totally cool and cordial as we talked for a few minuets.

________________________________________________

From: Harvey Leeds
Subject: Re: Billy Joel At Vanderbilt

Small world-Michael Pollack is my cousin's roommate in college-the kid is a great song writer and has sent me some original material the is wonderful. Smal world-great viral clip! Bill Joel is a mensch!

P.S. "US music mogul looks for next big thing in Israel": http://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Arts/Article.aspx?id=305419

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Re: Alvin Lee

Esther Ratner was my landlord! Although it was a few years after
your experience, I lived on the third floor, next door to Judy Collins'
brother, Denver. Esther's husband had since died, but I was aware that he
traveled through the south with Tennessee Williams, I believe creating a
series of paintings related to that adventure.

Although those were the days when I was afraid to go to sleep in fear of
missing something, I occasionally relented in that third floor walk-up on
Greenwich Street. I fared a little better than you did in Esther's home...
I think I even got my security deposit back!

Dan Beck

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From: Ryan Richards
Subject: Re: The Yahoo Kerfuffle

Oh boy, I bet your inbox is filling up with vitriolic responses to this one. The merit and productivity benefit of "Working at home"/"Telecommuting" or whatever you want to call it is one of those Silicon Valley sacred cows that people will defend to the ends of the Earth, and those people are working from home.

Ask anyone who isn't personally invested in this concept and they'll either tell you it's BS or they won't have any opinion at all, they're too busy working. I've worked in the Valley for 7 years. Everyone in the office knows who the 'work-at-home' people are, and oftentimes they're perceived as jokes. I'm not talking about new mothers, or temporary situations. I am talking about employees who are "out there", but no one knows what exactly they do and there's no accountability. And yes, it definitely has an effect on morale and productivity.

Put another way...why would successful companies like Apple and Google put the effort in creating their own private transit systems to shuttle people back and forth from San Francisco, Santa Cruz, etc, if everyone were so much more productive at home?

My favorite retort to Mayer's move was the claim that working at home is 'green' and asking people to do otherwise somehow makes her a polluting monster. Yes, working at home is green, but it's passively green. You could stop showering, that's green. Also you could stop breathing, less CO2 for the rest of us.

Thanks for writing Bob, keep it up.
- Ryan

As an aside, did you know traffic is significantly lighter in Santa Clara Valley on Fridays? I don't recall that being true in LA, or New York. What does that say about our culture here?

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Subject: Re: More Information

Nice piece Bob. As a fishing guide I've done the same thing for years. My website hypes the product (Finger Lakes fishing,) not me. Many of my clients spend years going through the site and content before contacting me for a trip.

It's a no BS site - if I go fishing or do a guided trip and don't catch anything, I post it. I also have no problem giving props to other competent guides.

Prospective clients also get to know my personality through my site. I'm on top or near the top of most search engines and I receive an average of 100 to 150 hits a day.

I don't partake in social networking like Facebook, but when clients have a good day, they'll often post info on those sites - so I get some publicity over there.

John Gaulke
www.fingerlakesanglingzone.com

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Subject: Re: The Women Of L.A.

The women of L.A. are just reacting to what they have been sold. The formula lie: be skinny and very attractive and smart and you can land any kind of guy you want who will worship you and marry you and have babies with you AAAAAND give you the huge diamond, and a villa in Italy and a nanny to look after your children. Withhold sex until you get a proper payday on the horizon. It's like the dowry thing.

It's like how the previous generation was told all you have to do is get a degree and then a high-paying job where you simply GET respect after graduation (like the AUTUMN after graduation) will knock on your door and hand you a life.

I was one of the women of L.A. until I hit 29. Starving myself to be thin, turning down anyone who didn't have a great job and working my way up the entertainment biz ladder. I found myself alone for a week in Las Vegas all expenses paid with a hot body and tons of sexy outfits and no one REAL to share it with - lame. It was then I realised I had to get out and go back to basics: be a WOMAN. One who knows how to cook, doesn't need stuff to be happy and wants a real man to look after her.

I met a wonderful normal man who lives in London, married him and moved there.

Do I miss L.A.? I miss Mexican food and occasionally the weather. But it's a lovely sunny day in London today and we have great Italian - something they NEVER had in L.A.

Angela Randall

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From: Marcus Sheridan
Subject: A quick thank you

Hi Bob, My name is Marcus Sheridan and you wrote about me in your newsletter last week. I thought your words were incredibly kind and so I wanted to thank you for taking the time to review what you reviewed and say what you said. Many people have emailed me about your words, and Mitch Joel even said: "I'm more impressed with you getting mentioned by Bob than by the New York Times!"

I thought that was funny, and quite the complement to you as well.

Again, thank you sir for the kind words, I hope your week is a great one.

Marcus

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Re: Then/Now

THEN

A photographer shooting a celebrity for a national magazine was given 3 hours. The retouching took 15 minutes.

NOW

A photographer shooting a celebrity for a national magazine is given 15 minutes. The retouching takes 3 hours.

Neal Preston

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Re: Then/Now

THEN

A parent was home raising the kids

NOW

Both parents have to work multiple jobs while kids are raised in day care or
by grandparents.

Dan Titcomb

________________________________________________

Re: Then/Now

THEN

College dorms were cinder block and linoleum military style cubicles, food was inedible and tuition was low enough for you eventually pay off your student loan.

NOW

Dorms are luxury hotel suites food is gourmet and tuition is so high you'll never pay it off.

Grooves Analogplanet

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Re: Then/Now

THEN

You bought music and water was free

NOW

You buy water and music is free

John Stix

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Re: Then/Now

THEN

There was one television in the house. Everyone crowded around the set to watch it most nights .

NOW

There's a TV in every room and everyone watches shows on their tablets, that aired a week ago.

Steve Leventhal

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Re: Then/Now

THEN - At a friend's house you would flip through their record collection.
NOW - We fwd YouTube links to each other.

Greg Watermann

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Re: Wealth Inequality In America

Bob,

I worked at Interscope for ten years -- throughout all of my twenties. I made a great living doing something I loved doing with great people. It all collapsed five years ago. The music video departments shrunk once the budgets were slashed. Transitioning to another industry has been difficult and I've been homeless for three years now. If you saw me walking down the street, you would think I had a good job and was doing well. Most pople have no idea I live in the streets. I earn just enough money doing editing and odd jobs to feed myself and maintain my car. When you become homeless you start to realize how many of us are out there. You see where they sleep at night once you're one of them, and I'm not talking about the lifers who are chronically homeless -- but the people like me who fell on "hard times", don't have anywhere to go, and don't want to be a burden on friends.
,
Promoting new methods for job creation and new industries; sustainable energy solutions; raising minimum wages; universal health care; affordable college education... along with all the other issues that are supposed to make for a more perfect union is one of the most important things we can do in getting people to see that maybe there's a better way of doing things, and most importantly bring the nation closer to where the chart in the video says Americans want it to be. It requires people to stand up; take a look around, and start doing things for reasons other than their own selfish interests. As always, it will just take one person at the right place and the right time to start this whole thing. I'm searching for it again; we're just not there yet, people are caught up in there own little worlds. There's still too many sheep.

Morgan Hartmann

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Subject: Re: Alvin Lee

Bob,
Back in High School I used to borrow (and sometimes give back) records from a friend who's Dad was a DJ at an Easy Listening station in Detroit; they had 1000s of 45s on shelves in the basement. One of the ones that I did give back was by Ten Years After on the Deram label: "The Sounds" was the A-side, a plodding, un-memorable exercise, but the B-side was a really beautiful track called "Portable People".. That one's a classic IMO. There are live versions on YouTube but the studio track is one that I highly recommend.
I still like the "Undead" album; the guys really sound like wanna-be Jazzers on that one, doing kind of an English, amped-up version of what they used to call "Soul Jazz", a la Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, et. al. The way Alvin would grab a riff and Repeat It and Repeat It and Repeat It and Repeat It, that was a very Jimmy Smith thing to do..
RIP Alvin Lee,
Marshall Crenshaw

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Subject: Re: Monitor But Don't Respond

Taken out of context but your words in the article below........ "we're now all truly equal online."

Internet or not Bob, in reality we're NOT all equal.
I get what you're saying but we just aren't all equal and we're NEVER going to be. Fact.
Whoever wrote that was "working the room".
This device and the web doesn't make us equal. It gives more of us a voice but I'm not convinced that a congress made up of 50 million people is going to be any more effective than the lame bunch that walk the halls of D.C. right now.
I think humanity, led by this apparatus is spiraling into the great unknown. I'm suited up, let's go!
Have PC, Iphone, Galaxy, etc.
......I read your stuff and enjoy it whether I always agree or not.
We're going to wake up, sooner than later I'm afraid, to the stark realization that this cyber device owns and controls our world.
....it morphs into some kind of global, cyber dictator.

What if, while it's busy taking over and eating everything in it's path, we wake up to find that it has robbed us of a very basic "human dynamic"... .....one to one, real life, real time, live interaction ?
That's the ultimate show and the hot ticket that I'm throwing my money at.
I THINK that may be why we're here on this rock.

It can't be left up to the machine to sort out the fate of mankind.
It's just going to run the numbers, do a mindless, black and white assessment (sounds like a few major label execs, huh ? )...dress us all in gray and confine us to our quadrants....(did I just describe mainstream radio ?)
I'm as guilty as the next guy. I text. I seldom call.
I'm concerned that as we allow technology to "white out" basic human traits that we're going to wake up dehumanized and under the control of "THE MACHINE". That's a reality and it's coming at us fast.
.....first, it eats intellectual rights (music), putting people out of work, next it consumes the work place and puts millions out of work.....the solution is to re-tool people to service the machine which, in turn results in even more people left jobless. Music is an obvious victim but if we're focused on music then, you and a lot of cutting edge cyber surfers are being left behind. I don't have a solution so< I shouldn't be popping off but we should talk about this. The Cost of Livin's High and Going Up.

You should come to dinner if and when you're in this "neck of the woods".
I know you're a mainstream rock cat at heart but...I'll invite some engaging country and Western friends over.
I know some really fun Southern girls that LOVE to cook healthy food as much as we LOVE our music.
It's not all fried here in Tennessee.

Ronnie Dunn

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From: Andrew Mills
Subject: RE: Clive's Book-1

To your point:

http://www.nme.com/news/noel-gallagher/69067

March 7, 2013

Noel Gallagher criticises Muse drummer for smoking an electronic cigarette Former Oasis star unimpressed by his time at Brit Awards

Noel Gallagher has said that his experience of the Brit Awards was summed up by seeing a member of Muse smoking an electronic cigarette.

Gallagher was at the ceremony alongside Damon Albarn of Blur to award War Child with a special recognition award for their work in music and charity. However, he left unimpressed by the ceremony, which was also criticised by Kasabian this week. Speaking to Time Out Dubai about what he hated so much about the awards, Gallagher stated that everyone he saw was a "careerist" and that everybody is too nice.

"There are no characters left in the music business. When we first started going there was a healthy percentage of people, and we were all dirt-kickers from council estates, and we all couldn't believe our luck that we were at the Brits. You go in now and everybody is a careerist. It's very corporate, and you know what I've actually seen people doing at the Brits? Eating. I saw the drummer from Muse smoking an electronic cigarette. A cigarette with a battery in. I had to say to him: 'Really? Really? Is that where you are at? Do me a favour mate, either have a proper one outside, or don't have one.' It lit up green when he had a drag of it. Nonsense. He said that immortal line - 'Oh you know how it is mate'. And I said 'I'm sorry mate, I actually don't.'

Gallagher continued his outspoken views on the ceremony, calling the night "instantly forgettable" and rallying against young people who wear hats. "It was an instantly forgettable night," said Gallagher. "There was nothing going on at the Brits, there was nothing going on at the aftershow parties. There seemed to be a lot of young people in hats, with iPhones. They're either all involved in some massive video game that they're all hooked up to, or they're just texting each other saying 'Where are you, what are you doing?' And they've all got hats. Where did the hat come from? We're going back to some Dickensian nightmare. I don't understand it. People with hats and Blackberrys under the age of 30 should be shot. Or stoned to death."


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