He spent too much!

And he was Doug’s guy and it’s now Rob’s company.

Come on, you expect history to repeat itself ad infinitum? For things to never change? For the wall to fall and democracy to reign in Russia and Napster to happen and for recording CEOs to continue to be big swinging dicks?

The power has shifted. To promoters. To managers. To producers. The guys at the labels are traffic cops, signing based on relationships and heat, they’re about as memorable as the guys running movie studios, can you name ONE? Sony just upped Tony Vincequerra to the top post and I doubt even insiders know who that is, proving the point.

First and foremost you’ve got to spend less. L.A. Reid was in the league of Clive Davis, who pissed off the Germans, even if you’re making dough, why do you have to live such a large lifestyle, why do you have to waste so much money? Do that at a tech company and you’re history, and today record companies are tech companies. It’s all about the data. And when the data says yes you push go, if the data says no you hold your horses, maybe make a few small bets, try to build a fire, which is the exact opposite from flying everybody across the country to appear on late night television, with all that hair and makeup, nearly six figures, for no impact.

Maybe a slot on the Grammys still counts. But that’s all about relationships, not bread, and Ken Ehrlich runs that with an iron fist.

And today’s execs have learned the Doug Morris lesson, who got so big for his britches he got canned at Warner. Doug flew lower than that thereafter, you want to fly low today, the talent rules, not you. However, right now the talent is evanescent and it’s your job to promote acts that last but you won’t take a risk, you won’t make the long investment, because you’re paid on yearly numbers and who knows how long you’ll be there.

And the era of Ahmet and Jac Holzman is deep in the distance, music lovers with their own money at risk. Just about everybody at a label today has come up through the system, they don’t know what it’s like to lose their own cash. The recording industry is mature, no wonder it no longer attracts the best and the brightest, they’re looking for room to move, but all the label says now is NO!

But the generations are changing, and that’s a good thing. Royalty deals will get better, because the acts will have leverage. You don’t need the major to get started, and if you start yourself and get traction you can extract a better deal. The dirty little secret is all these companies need the revenue, for their market share, for Wall Street, if they suddenly show no cash flow the majordomo is gonna get blown out, proving once again that finance is key and L.A. Reid is out of time.

And we’re headed for a wholesale revolution in the business anyway, because no one seems to see that the hottest medium, i.e. music, is taking a back seat. Comedians are all over the news, but musicians are just famous for their TMZ antics. Why is that? You can’t say it’s a lack of publicity, we’re all on Beyonce baby watch.

And the new acts will realize they are not a tool of the machine, not there to be manipulated by either the media or the major, but to direct their careers themselves.

And other than the trades, who knows what labels these acts are on anyway, it’s not like you’ve got a 45 with a spinning label, and all the hit acts have vanity/custom labels… It’s a banking deal, you just want someone you believe in to push the button. You don’t need the label for guidance, to make the record, all the greats are hirable individually, from Max Martin to Jeff Bhasker to even the radio promotion people. The label develop you? Once again, the label says NO! And just like in tech, we’re in a world where you develop yourself, and then the big boys buy you.

So if you’re waiting for a deal, for mommy and daddy to save you, you’re living in a bygone era.

L.A. Reid was living in a bygone era. He thought he was a kingmaker.

But that was in an era when we all watched MTV, physical dominated and we all knew the hits on the radio.

Now music is much more surgical. You’ve got to learn how to win on bunts and singles, with the occasional doubles. If you’re lucky a home run like Ed Sheeran or Drake will come along, but you can’t count on it, and now, more than ever, acts have a hard time repeating.

So, those on the street are empowered.

But just like with your tech devices, there’s little help.

They’re still evolving the record company of the future.

And there’s no room for old farts overspending anymore.

Now you don’t lead with your relationships but your data.

Data is everything.

Except for the tunes, of course.

Have a hit tune and you can own the world!

L.A. Reid just did not have enough hit tunes, not enough for the amount of money he spent. If he can come up with more hits that others can make money on he’ll re-emerge.

Otherwise…

Kevin Bacon is a revelation. Like a less loquacious Don Henley. A not quite as nice J.D. Souther. He’s a Texan of few words who’s completely confident in his opinion and is unafraid of expressing it.

And Kathryn Hahn is obsessed with him. Believing herself a filmmaker previously, at dinner Bacon cuts to to the bone, outs her personality, identity, her hopes, wants and dreams and she becomes infatuated with him, becomes a writer, pecks out all her fantasies.

And this happened in real life. Only it was the downtown art scene, not Marfa, and it wasn’t about visual art, but writing. And to be this naked and honest is what art is all about, which is why “I Love Dick” became a cult classic, not that this was clear back in ’97, when it was released, it had to marinate in minds for years and be rereleased to get its well-deserved victory lap, and this limited series on Amazon, which is a failure.

Not the initial episode. Watch that, it’s all you need, it sets it all up, delineates all the issues and the tension and…

Is that really Griffin Dunne? We’re unallowed to age in today’s world, but he did and gained not only weight, but gravitas. He plays Hahn’s husband, she worked so he could write, they both gave up children for their careers, which they believe are still gonna happen.

Hard to fathom if you’re living in internetland. Actually, that comes up much later in the series, one of the institute attendees makes a viral video, and of course its attraction is sex, i.e. nudity, but it gets Bacon wondering, the five hundred people who visit his museum a year, his work, is it worth it?

People like this still exist. But they don’t live in Manhattan, they can’t afford to.

Some smarties go to Harvard and get on the fast track, write for late night comedy shows, become rich and famous.

Then there are Oberlin graduates like Lena Dunham, who through sheer will and pluck and endeavor capture the zeitgeist and are recognized for it.

And then there’s a plethora of nobodies going nowhere, part of a community of analysts and creators that does not include us, with its own hierarchy, its own fellowships and rewards, and “I Love Dick” is about them.

Now prior to Reagan, prior to the great greening of America, and I mean mazuma, cash, dollars, your mind was more important than your bank account, and if your mind was good enough you could always find a way to survive. But those times have passed us by. Even the elite institutions are focusing on jobs, with their entrepreneurship courses, the parents paying 60k a year want to see tangible results. As for the schools further down the totem pole, it’s always been like this. But we relied on the best and the brightest from the elite institutions to be a beacon, to show us where to go, to be the soft underbelly of our culture, to illustrate that life is worth living, that it’s all just not work and accumulation. But as the rich got richer the intellectuals became self-satisfied, resentful of their low economic status, and drifted apart from you and me.

And if these worlds have ever touched yours, you’ll be reminded of all this watching “I Love Dick.”

Which got made because Jill Soloway had such success with “Transparent,” deservedly so. And we need deep pockets like Amazon to fund creativity. And creators don’t always succeed. But there is something different about this production, it has a woman’s viewpoint. And the end result is it’s much more raw than a man would make. You feel Hahn’s desires, you see both the weakness and the attraction of Griffin Dunne. If you can endure the four hours you will be rewarded with a foreign film, the kind you used to go to the theatre to see, that made you feel good about yourself, a member of the club.

And some were better than others.

This is not a good one.

But Kevin Bacon, whew! He’s just so calm and collected, yet coiled tight like a snake inside. This is not the sneering a-hole of the past. He’s mature, he’s past his peak, he’s comfortable in his clothing, and that makes him oh-so-attractive, it draws you to him.

And Kathryn Hahn’s intellectualism. Men believe looks are everything. But watch Ms. Hahn long enough and you become attracted, even if you weren’t previously, to her character anyway. Who is brave and not subservient, a woman of heart and mind who cares about you, but not at the cost of herself.

There was a common enemy.

And Neil Young was Canadian. Talk to today’s Canadians, the electors of a snowboarding instructor, they’re completely flummoxed with what’s going on south of the border. And in the seventies they sewed Canadian flags to their backpacks before they ventured overseas, so they wouldn’t be confused with their American brethren, responsible for Vietnam.

Yes, Vietnam united us. Our hatred for our country’s policies. Our fear that we’d die there. Truly palpable. A lot different from being executed in a video game. Rich men could get their kids in the Coast Guard, the Reserves, but there were not that many rich people and not that many who were connected so you turned eighteen, registered for the draft, and started to worry.

But the bifurcation of society began before. One can try to pinpoint the separation of the youth from their parents but let’s settle on 1964, when the Beatles appeared on “Ed Sullivan.” Overnight kids had new heroes. And this mass was just that, a huge segment of the population, known as the baby boomers. And at first the Beatles were singing about love, but it wasn’t long before they weighed in on deeper topics and we listened.

To “Surrealistic Pillow” too. Then Cream and Jimi Hendrix. We were implored to “feed our head,” on national radio, in an era when most people had never even heard of marijuana and most considered drugs to be heroin. And then, suddenly, you knew someone with reefer, and people switched from alcohol to herb, it was a badge of honor, to reject your parents’ lifestyle, beliefs and mores. You took your instructions from countercultural heroes, mostly musicians.

Now it’s not like “Ohio” was created in a vacuum. Stills had written and Young had been in the group when Buffalo Springfield had a monster hit with “For What It’s Worth.” Even though most listeners were unaware of the Sunset Strip riots, had no idea what Pandora’s Box was. Still…

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

There’s the dividing line right there. Awareness as opposed to conformity. In an era where guns were anathema amongst the youth, long before the NRA permeated their consciousness, demonstrating that music and love are more powerful than firearms.

And the Byrds made their bones on a cornucopia of protest music, providing insight into the happenings of the day.

And then, on the second side of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut, David Crosby penned and sang “Long Time Gone.”

Hear, you must hear what the people say

Powerless? The younger generation believed it could move mountains.

Speak out
You got to speak out against the madness
You’ve got to speak your mind
If you dare

If you dare… You’re home in your bedroom with the album you bought that everybody owns and your hero, your teacher, was not only telling you what was going on, but he dared you to take action, to do something about it.

And you were not the only one. There were protests in the street. There was a path to follow. And then there was a trigger moment.

Kent State. Proof of all our paranoia. Not radically different from last week’s FBI shenanigans, only in this case four of our brethren died, how many of our brethren will die if Obamacare is overturned?

And action begets inspiration. The famous photos in “LIfe” magazine had Neil Young putting pen to paper, pick to strings.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own

We. The youth. There was no division. This was a wakeup call.

Most people had little idea who Neil Young was. He was just the fourth guy added to Crosby, Stills & Nash, but his songs, his playing, had been included on “Deja Vu,” that spring’s monster hit, with Graham Nash’s composition “Teach Your Children” high on the chart.

And Young’s scorching guitar was a sound unknown to most. But when it emerged upon the airwaves in May of 1970 the audience clamored, became aware, ultimately made his fall album “After The Gold Rush” a monster.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago

What should have been long ago? Upgrading your mobile phone? Posting to Instagram?

A hit is not what it used to be, the “Billboard” chart is irrelevant, most of America does not know the hits, ubiquity is history. However there are stars. But as close as most get to saying what’s going on, standing up to the insanity permeating our nation, is Kenny Chesney singing about “noise.” No one wants to take a side, for fear of alienating a potential customer. So leadership goes elsewhere, listeners are on their own, even though they’re hungry for direction, but musicians have abdicated their power.

But the songs are written by committee, oftentimes by Europeans, who see it as commerce rather than art, who seem not to know the power of a song, how it can impact people, change their thinking. Hell, most baby boomers were for the war before the musicians convinced them otherwise. It’s always the artists who think for themselves, at least true artists.

How can you run when you know

That’s one thing for sure, today everybody knows. It was easier to tune out the news back then, just turn off the TV, stop reading the newspaper. But today we’re bombarded with messages. Yet there’s no unification, there’s you and me and we just disagree. Because we no longer have similar values. Because life is so much harder in the twenty first century than it was in the twentieth, when you could survive on a minimum wage job and upward mobility was rampant.

So you’ve got a vocal crew telling musicians to shut up. But they’re not the only ones being told to keep quiet.

And since there was an election we are supposed to shut up, which is like asking Neil Young not to sing about Kent State because Nixon was President, he just called him out.

You cannot predict history. But you can see for all the similarities to what was, today is completely different.

Musicians were rich. They followed their own muse. They were brought up in an era of possibilities and felt it their duty, were thrilled to push the envelope.

Today the best and the brightest put their head down and rape and pillage in the name of the almighty dollar. Working for Goldman Sachs, the tech company, they’re afraid of being left behind so they screw you, they don’t care about you.

And you wonder why we have no protest music.

Oh, we’ve got a lot of niche acts, veritable unknowns, protesting loudly. But what we need is those with power, those with influence, to take a stand, like the Republicans in Congress.

Good luck waiting.

Ohio –
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Sounds best with no distractions.

But we live in a distracted world. One in which concertgoers can’t get off their mobiles, where we need a hit of adrenaline 24/7, otherwise we become depressed, feel like we’re falling behind. But what if someone made a record for a different time, when we lived life much more slowly, when we paid attention!

In case you haven’t been, paying attention, that is, Chris Stapleton is the number one hero in Nashville. Because he did it his way. He’s old and experienced and overweight and that does not seem to bother him whatsoever. He’s just walking into the wilderness, doing it his own way. Wowing people, especially his fellow artists, who are forced to cowrite and make radio-friendly music or risk obsolescence. He not on the hit parade does not matter. But is this true?

Please, let’s separate the wheat from the chaff. I hate to even stoop down and say this, but most people are wannabes, even if they believe in themselves. In the old days they never would have gotten a deal, never would have been heard, and that’s a good thing. Today they’re in our face, spamming us all the while, saying THEY’RE DOING IT EXACTLY LIKE STAPLETON!

Only they’re not. They’re not aged journeymen with hit songs under their belt who lived the life of AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll).” And what’s amazing is Stapleton’s new album, “From A Room,” is not rock and roll. It’s like he’s had the radio turned off for a decade, maybe longer, when country music evolved into the rock of the seventies. That’s right, if you like country because it’s the closest thing to classic rock, you’re not gonna like “From A Room.” It sounds like it was made in the south decades back, all languid and loose, it’s all the stuff you hated…

Before you began to hate rap music.

Rap made its bones on its honesty. Who knew it would be so lucrative? But now you can’t leave the money out of the equation. It’s a motivator and an influencer. And rap is filled with braggadocio, you know the story if not the music, but Chris Stapleton is nearly mute.

And pop music is a producer’s medium. No one is as big a star as Max Martin, not Katy Perry, Lorde or even Harry Styles. It’s Martin who lasts. But what is fascinating is he lasts because he keeps changing his sound, which is astounding when you consider all the legendary producers in the rearview mirror, who could not make the transition to modernity, like Roy Thomas Baker and Mike Chapman, never mind Stock, Aitkin & Waterman. But if you read the Martin interview you’ll see that he’s playing by modern rules, a world wherein attention is precious and you’ve got to grab the listener right away, otherwise they’ll be on to something else.

But either you give “From A Room” your attention or you ignore it. There’s no flash, no bombs, few obvious hooks, but if you turn off your phone and do nothing else, it resonates.

Now in the old days you’d buy a record unheard, except for maybe the single, you’d drop the needle and get a first impression. Hopefully a track or two would pop out, which would be hooks for further listening, to bring you into the album.

And I found two of those cuts on “From A Room,” but mostly I felt this was a guy cutting a record who didn’t give a rat’s ass what I thought, that this was a musician following his muse not worrying about the chart, only himself and his peers. That’s right, first and foremost Chris Stapleton is a musician, and we haven’t had that spirit here in quite a long time.

The first of those two cuts is “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning.” Which you’ll notice is so SLOW! Who would risk this? Right after the opening initial single, “Broken Halos.” And “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is a 35 year old Willie Nelson hit. Don’t acts do covers to fill out LPs, for obvious radio play? But this rendition fits neither of those paradigms, but it does set your mind a’thinking. Which is what music used to do, when it was everything.

And the best cut on “From A Room” is the final one, entitled “Death Row,” just when you think you’ve digested the message, the gestalt, like “Moonlight Mile” at the end of “Sticky Fingers,” Stapleton goes all quiet, all touch-feely, and  you are enraptured.

Well up here’s the window sitting way up high
I can’t look up enough to see the sky
There ain’t no good light here below
Death row

This is not that celebrity movie starring Sean Penn, nobody cares about this inmate, nobody cares about you, you’re faceless, most of us are, and that’s why “Death Row” is so haunting, you believe if not for fate, you could be there too.

And there’s a forty five second intro, sans explosions, just a groove, enough to lay your body and mind within before Chris starts to sing.

And when he does…

He reminds me of Lowell George, who didn’t have the best voice, and neither does Stapleton, but both have a way of singing that’s completely unique that touches you, evidences humanity, you know there’s someone home.

And there’s so little on the track. Almost nothing beyond Chris and occasional guitar accents, but the axe never starts to wail, this definitely does not go to 11. As a matter of fact, the break at the end is even less dramatic than the playing in the verses, as if the lead were wiped off, and then the whole thing walks down a country road and fades out.

WHAT?

It’s like Stapleton heard none of the hype, wasn’t on all those TV shows, is uninfluenced by the pressure, to have another hit, to belong.

And I’m not sure “From A Room” will be a big hit. But I’m positively stunned the number one star in Nashville has gone down this path. As if to say I’m a musician, not a money machine, a creator, not a star, if I can’t do it my way, if I can’t explore, I don’t want to do it at all.

But that’s what happens when you’re 39 instead of 19. You know life is full of ups and downs, and if you don’t do it your way you’ll end up regretting it.

I’m not sure people can slow down enough for “From A Room.”

I don’t know if the music industry knows how to sell something based on music as opposed to beats and statistics.

But if you care, turn off the lights, tune out the noise, lay back and check this out. Tell me what you think. Does it set your mind free, do you think to way back when, when you lived to buy albums and discover them, go to the show not for the fireworks but for the tunes?

I’m not predicting huge commercial success for “From A Room.” I don’t hear that obvious radio track that ensures that.

But it’s an artistic triumph. Because of the RISK!

“Death Row”-
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