From the Rockist

Great read on the vinyl craze … The Rockist. He nails a lot of good points … remember, a pessimist is just an optimist with all the facts …

The independent record store lives another day. But how long can the vinyl lifeline continue to keep them afloat?

Carry on >>

Tech Trends Indeed

It has bad words …

Tech Trends

I Scream, You Scream

From The New York Times:

Primal Snippets, on Vinyl

Experienced as a piece of music, “Favorite Recorded Scream” offers a riveting if unsettling tour through decades of popular music.

Carry On >>

“Now the concert business is imploding”

I had this forwarded to me from the Lefsetz Letter. Nice little take from the live front:

Now the concert business is imploding.

It’s not like promoters, managers, agents and acts couldn’t see this coming.  They just didn’t want to believe it.  They’re just as ignorant as their major label brethren.  It’s just that their comeuppance is occurring a decade later.

How long did you think it was going to last?  Did you really think people were going to want to overpay to see the Stones, believing this was the last tour, when that whisper campaign began TWO DECADES AGO?

Do you really have to go see Aerosmith?  Sure, they outlasted their seventies contemporaries, had hits in the MTV era, even played the VMAs year after year, but you don’t even want to hear those lame Geffen hits, you want the Columbia classics, and you’ve been able to hear them year after year.  So, you say NO MAS!

It’s not only Aerosmith that’s having problems selling tickets.  AC/DC is papering stadiums.  Paul McCartney is essentially giving tickets away.  Springsteen’s tour is a joke.  Come on Bruce.  You’re on a closing buildings tour?  Just call it what it is, a going out of business tour!  You’re just so greedy, you want to get the money before it evaporates.

Ticket sales are not in the dumper because of the economy.  That’s like saying major labels are in trouble because of piracy.  Sure, piracy put a dent in the Big Four’s bottom line.  But what about the fact that people hate the crap they’re purveying, and where they’re purveying it most people aren’t paying attention anymore?  Sure, the economy is hurting ticket sales.  But that’s just the cover-up.  The true story is the business has broken very few superstars, and the old ones are on overpriced tours, blaming Ticketmaster while they scalp their own tickets.

You say the labels should have seen Napster coming.  That they should have authorized P2P.  When is the concert business going to have an all-in ticket price?  When is greed going to be put aside for the long term health of not only the promoters, but the acts themselves?  Do you really think Live Nation can overpay forever?  Look at the company’s financials.  And no new entity is going to line up to overpay guarantees.

We’ve got to start over.

But the live business, like the recorded music business, doesn’t want to start over.  It just wants to raise prices in order to assure growth.

Hate to tell you, but music doesn’t drive the culture.  Because all the big acts are tied in with corporations, and are fearful of speaking the truth for fear of being Dixie Chicked.  Used to be the artists were beholden to no one, which is why the business blew up.  Artists lit the way.  Now techies lead.

You’ve got to start small, charge little and build an audience.  Which you nurture over time.  Trying to break a new superstar overnight is like GM believing it can save itself with a new Malibu (it didn’t, in case you weren’t paying attention).  GM drove itself towards a cliff with no consciousness of the future.  People want mileage and longevity.  GM provided neither.

Concert attendees want music.  Sure, Madonna might be able to survive selling spectacle, but how many successful circuses exist?  There’s Ringling Brothers and…

And a night at the show must not break the bank.  Broadway overcharges because it’s seen as a once in a blue moon event.  You’ve got to go to New York City…  It’s like selling tickets for a U2 show on the moon.  You can charge up the yin-yang for that!

As for U2…  They don’t sell out either anymore.  Maybe because they’re no longer seen as vital, they’re the new Stones.  U2 could possibly rehabilitate itself, by releasing a string of singles, one every month.  By releasing a live album from the tour in progress.  Instead, playing by the old rules they topped every mass media event with their lame “Get On Your Boots” and no one cared.

Just like no one cared about Springsteen’s album after the Super Bowl.

Maybe no one cares to the equivalent of a multiplatinum level anymore.  Maybe the live business has to give that paradigm up.  At least for a decade, until new acts are grown.

We want music that resonates.  And we want music.  Lady GaGa is outfits.  Katy Perry is so second rate she’s third rate.  The future looks more like the Kings Of Leon.  A band that’s been around for years that finally breaks through.  And doesn’t break the bank when it sets ticket prices.

Screw lawn tickets at a discount.  That’s like listening to music on your neighbor’s stereo.  How about getting a ticket for a developing artists show when you buy the ticket for a star.  We’ve got to get people sampling, we’ve got to get people coming to the show on a regular basis.  Now we’ve got a business of extravaganzas.  We’re like North Korea, trying to blast rockets into the stratosphere, but usually failing.  To the point we’re a joke.

What’s the Buzz? Tell Me What’s-a Happening

SPOILER: Old man straight ahead …

I miss some of the buzz. The buzz of getting my news; more directly, news about band shake-ups. Not long ago, it seems that when there was a reorganization in a band, like a big personnel shift  … and that’s a whole other ripe topic for everybody to weigh in on) there was a palpable, physical buzz in the air. A slow, roiling boil. Of course, it’s all still happening, those juicy nuggets that get dropped on me that are shocking, unexpected, and oh-so refreshing. Like having your musical-mind’s mouth suck on a tasty mint, chew it up and then inhale…wake up! But that’s all diffused now. Don’t get me wrong: I love my Interwebs. I really do. But the inherent “democratization,” or the aim for it at least, seems to cause the whammy news to dissipate, to diffuse..the sudden impact is lost on me to a big degree. I liked going to party, or a show, or any place I was allowed to be, and bumping into someone you knew, knew well or even just on the fringe, and getting the “Hey, Dude! Did you hear (insert your personal earth-shattering info here…like, Eno left Roxy Music, Bennett and Wilco split, Gillan is in Sabbath, whatever info-bomb blows/blew you away…) ?!?!?!?!” Now, I just get an email more often than not. And sure, some of the effect is the same, but as I’m reading that arrow that just got shot at me, I often slowly realize that I already kind of knew it…It just seeps in now, like an I.V. feed. I won’t go as far as saying it’s narcoleptic in nature, but it does feel like the dispatch came from behind the wall of sleep a bit (of finger…sorry, couldn’t resist). I really miss that physical component. But the instantaneous nature of how things move now is like a super ultra-yummy drug I just can’t say no to: the weakness of fan-boys. And yet, it’s what we always wanted … And not that the price is too high to pay, but I still feel the pinch. I love talking to fellow travelers about almost any topic that they are engrossed in, or smitten with, because now we can all be homespun mini-historians or archivists of our subjectiveness. Often not very professional, but…its’ personal, and it’s yours. Just because it isn’t shiny doesn’t mean it’s not tasty. No matter what the crows tell you.

Maybe this spreading out of info is dulling the buzz over the news. Shake-ups seem minor now, or inconsequential, in a lot of cases. Take away that visceral impact, and it’s like a thump, rather than a smack. And in this example of music/bands, it’s got to have a lot to do with the fact that people have access now to a million other bands (read/swap in writers, painters, photogs, etc …) ready to move in at a moments notice and take their place.

I seem to have to work harder to feel that rush. The floodgates are wide open; it all washes over me, I can drift in it (quickly, for sure), with no real concern or hopeful trepidation that there might be rapids ahead. I have a toothache-y pang for a little of the old world when it seemed like the water wasn’t being let out of the gates so fast. Somebody (like that ‘dude” at the show…) was siphoning it into water balloons and storing them in his or her cosmic pocket. And every now and then I’d get this unexpected, bracing blast upside the head Hey! Who’s shifting my paradigm?) as they would let one of those balloons fly…”Dude! Did you HEAR?!?!?”

Now I get a ding in my inbox. I miss when that ding came with a bang. And sometimes had flames painted on the side.

{ But there are so many dings to be had now…I can’t really complain }

The Database of Self Redux

Came across this post from the Marginal Utility again. Still seems relevant…but anything dealing with self usually is…I think…

The Database of Self

It’s Not Luddism, Silly Rabbit

Came across a Marginal Utility post that I couldn’t agree with more: Going Analog. And it dovetailed with some things knocking around in my noggin lately. I was recently trying to turn a friend onto some new music, holding an intense sonic attack education. Not 5 minutes into it I get asked, “Can’t you just hook up your iPod and let it play? Don’t you have a multiple disc changer? This is taking too long.”

No, I don’t … can’t…etc…

I’m not a Luddite by any means. But just popping in my iPod or loading up a multi-disc cartridge seems to remove what little bit of ritual (and control) is left to me enjoying music. It was perfect timing. I had been recently lamenting that I seemed to spend more time amassing music and cataloging it than I did listening to it. I wanted back that intense relationship of listening I used to have; pulling out the disc or vinyl, building up my personal mythology of a band/album based on the sleeve alone at times, creating all sorts of tenuous connections that did or didn’t exist, the anticipation. And I won’t even get into the joy of hunting something down in the flesh, meeting other denizens of the Island of Misfit Toys, arguing and discussing music, having my tastes and opinions challenged and rethought.

Now, I hear all the time how wonderful the Inter-webs are, so much music at your fingertips, etc, yadda yadda, etc…Bull. It’s like cable TV: unlimited access to unlimited garbage. Sure, there are gems out there and I cringe at the thought of all the folks locked away creating wonderful, wonderful music that I might never find. But being a Completist is, at a point, counterproductive to pursuing music, let alone enjoying it. On a level I need to to enjoy it at. Of course I want all I can get my hands on, but not at the expense of dimming the experience further. Just because access is up that doesn’t mean the quality went up with it. That argument doesn’t hold water.

Later, I had another victim in the listening room. He loves music, but isn’t rabid. So I seized the opportunity to bathe my listener in whatever I could find that I thought might blow his mind. It was pretty clear that what I really wanted to do was get across to him why it was so important to me, to feel a little bit of that rush I felt when I was spinning something precious. I was sincerely hoping he could syphon off some of my mania, and, in turn, get to know me a lot better. I pulled out some vinyl. It doesn’t matter what it was, but for the record, a classic: original issue on vinyl of Hawkwind’s seminal “Space Ritual.” Double vinyl…two gorgeous platters of all kinds of astral travel and pounding mania, a sleeve that folded out and out into a multi-panel visual freak-fest. As he poured over it, taking the whole package in, the whole experience of it in…taking out the record, putting it down, going over the sleeve, etc…it finally started to sink in as the anticipation was building up. I pointed at the package and said, “Doesn’t that command you to listen to it?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean now.”

You can’t download that.

Let My Love Open the Floodgates

I was revisiting Pete Townshend’s “Empty Glass” this week (great, great album, even though what follows may sound like I’m railing against it….) and I started thinking about the time it came out. Now, I don’t think Pete set out to create a quickly corrupted sub-genre if you want to call it that, or if it is even that…I’m not sure what it is really…but I was listening to it and this equation of sorts came to mind:

“Let My Love Open the Door” is to Pete Townshend as “Sledgehammer” is to Peter Gabriel as “Dancing in the Dark” is to Stringcheese as”Forever Man” is to Eric Clapton as “While You See a Chance” by little Stevie Winwood is to…you get the point. Hell, throw in “Stay Up Late” by the Talking Heads (but I’ll defend KC’s “Elephant Talk, and so should you…)

It goes on forever, man.

Pete wasn’t the first I’m sure, just the one that rose to the surface (I know that’s wide open to whether cream rises to the top, or if it really IS more like s_ _ t floats. You decide. Though I lean heavily, HEAVILY, to the latter) through the fog. I remember after that, almost every soon to be mid-to-old giant rocker was putting out something along those lines. Even Jeff Beck tried with “Ambitious” and thank God it didn’t take…but then again, I’ll forgive Beck about anything. As someone far wiser than me once said, “Jeff Beck is about the only guitarist coming out of that era that can get up and look himself in the mirror.” And based on his recent output, Jeff Beck can still eat most for dinner without even swallowing (and no, there is nothing wrong with being able to play your instrument well. That’s a completely fallacious take on guys like him…and ripe for another rant on those that slam Prog. Good, valid Prog has more of a warped, misconstrued reputation than most religions…) Yeah, it was the 80s, I get that. But these folks seemed to have that ONE song. And they all share so much: it has to be definable. It’s not just the deluge of highly questionable material from the 80s: as soon as records were being made, pablum was being pumped out at an alarming rate. Still is. More so than ever possibly. Thank you, Inter-webs. Just as it is now, there was good stuff then from folks who had been around if you knew where to look, or had the patience to follow them: Warren Zevon was making great records, “Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School” up through “Transverse City” for his 80s output (If I say “Zevon” and all you think of is “Werewolves of London,” shame on you). After that, he was still great. It just became the 90s (I miss Zevon. I miss him like an appendage). Robin Trower survived it all: “Victims of the Fury,” “Back it Up.” They may not have had a “Too Rolling Stoned” or “Day of the Eagle,” but they were great, solid outings. Rory Gallagher held the line (and I miss him like two appendages…).

I come dangerously close to the age-old 80s rant. What was eating at me was what makes this line of songs all…belong together. It’s got to be more than trying to cash in. Face it, most bands TRY to write a hit (“Touch of Grey?” You bet), or a great pop song. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, I’d love more pop songs. Good pop songs. As long as it’s done extremely well, like…”Let My Love Open the Door.” I’m not trying to saddle Pete with any kind of responsibility for what followed (he ALWAYS wrote accessible “pop.” Hell, he wanted to)…no one can shoulder that alone (though, Zeppelin might want to think about it: they ARE responsible for a lot filth that came down the pike…but then you can get on the Pixies’ case as well for a whole other generation. I’ll try and play nice). And it can’t just be that people were starving for something easy to digest. That’s been going on since the dawn of recording as well…Something holds these all together…and I’m not sure it’s just plain old garden variety charisma.

More than likely, there’s nothing there (remember who is writing this after all…). That’s why I’m fumbling I suppose. I’m sure these kind of “rivulets” appear in every time. Probably scads of them now…but that’s a whole other departure.

But in the rare instances when I have to be subjected to commercial radio, or any outlet that passes as radio and it’s kind now, I’d sure kill to have something as good as “Let My Love Open the Door” come out now, by anyone:, young, old, middle-aged, dead … but then I quiver thinking of what would come after. I don’t want to drown.