David Choe Talks New Facebook Wealth, Love Of Gambling & Jerking Off On ‘Howard Stern’

You will learn more about being an artist listening to this interview than watching any amount of "American Idol", reading every issue of "Rolling Stone" and listening to any bloviator in the music business.

It’s all about freedom. And self-expression.

David Choe is the artist who was paid in stock for painting Facebook’s walls.

There’s a bit of backstory. Sean Parker contacted him when he was still at Napster, stayed connected while at Plaxo, and when he finally landed at Facebook, Sean said he was ready, it was time, they had money, this one was gonna fly.

So David goes up and paints the walls and the question arises… Should he take $60,000 or stock.

Everybody knows the answer…TAKE THE MONEY!

But Choe did not, even though he needed it, having just gotten out of prison, because he believed in Sean Parker, he saw Sean clean himself up and get buff in order to sell Facebook to the suits.

It all comes down to people. Relationships.

Speaking of which, Choe testifies how great Zuckerberg’s girlfriend Priscilla is, and repeats what Mark says about fame… There’s no amount of money that can buy your privacy back.

WHEW!

In a nation where everybody wants to prostitute themselves to be well-known, it’s good to hear someone speak of the cost. Choe likes flying below the radar. He said no to everybody, but he wanted to be on Stern, but Stern didn’t call.

We’re living in the era of NO.

You think all publicity is good publicity. The pricks at the label say to do everything. Those days are history. Just ask Bon Iver, who refused to appear on the Grammys because he’d have to do it their way, a collaboration with other musicians, despite being nominated for his own damn songs.

Bon Iver turns down performing at Grammys

If you listen to the suits, you’re history.

And don’t be a prude and turn off because of the discussion of masturbation, of sex. I’m gonna let all you women know…men masturbate incessantly, it’s in our DNA, listen here, you might learn something.

And Choe does Howard’s act to the King Of All Media. He turns the tables, has Howard had his dick sucked by two women, his ass licked?

Choe’s not playing by anybody’s rules. He’s raw, he’s honest, he’s the anti-Bon Jovi. There’s no calculation, there’s no fear of offending anybody, and as a result, you’re drawn ever closer to him.

Has Choe ever screwed a celebrity?

OF COURSE! He’s had ten women in a day! Sure, his penis got sore, but he wanted to test his limits.

How about Lindsay Lohan, did he screw her?

EVERYBODY he’s in a picture with, he’s done.

HUH?

It’s like in one fell swoop David Choe blew up "Entertainment Tonight", "Extra" and the entire E! channel, all built on flack fluff. There is no filter here. This is what "Vanity Fair" dreams of including between its covers, but Stern got it first.

There’s no direct road to stardom. It depends on talent. And risk. And perseverance.

And David Choe has all three.

Please take the time to listen to this interview. I don’t care if you hate Howard Stern, he’s barely on it, Choe can tell his story quite well. This is THE media story of the week. This has got more heat than three years of the U2 360 Tour. It’s got more truth than the entire Top Forty. You just can’t wait to hang with Choe, not because he’s cool, not because he’s a boaster, he’s neither, but because he’s so damn honest and he made it purely on his wits and talent.

P.S. If for some reason the above link does not work, you can hear the interview here:

david choe 2 7 12 p1

So I’m having dinner with Randy Phillips and he says he never lies. Because you can Google the truth in an instant.

But too many reporters don’t Google, or believe everything they see there.

You’ve got to watch this RayWJ takedown of the "Wall Street Journal" article about him:

FIGHTING THE ELEPHANT - Ray William Johnson Video

Start at: 2:29 and be sure to stay until he points out that more people watch his videos than subscribe to the "Wall Street Journal" at: 5:40.

The press. Reporters e-mail me seemingly every day wanting to interview me about entertainment topics, usually I say no, but when I agree I’m stunned that they’re clueless, they’re still operating in the pre-Internet era, asking "who, what, why, how and when", trying to get the story when there’s someone online living the story, and if anybody cares, they go there first, to this website.

In other words, I reach my audience better than the "New York Times". Never mind the "Wall Street Journal" and the regional newspapers. How do I know? Because people tell me. A story is in the "New York Post" and executives get not a single e-mail about it, I put my spin on it and suddenly their inboxes are filled up, they’re put on the defensive.

And the point of my tale is not to say what a big swinging dick I am, but to illustrate how the media landscape has changed. That the so-called "authorities" often aren’t.

Now I don’t believe in responding to the press, it’s not worth it, even though they make mistakes ad infinitum. But RayWJ points out reporting that’s so shoddy, it makes you wonder if the "Wall Street Journal" gets anything right. As my dearly departed friend Tony Wilson once told me, he got the football scores in Spain wrong on a telecast and although he didn’t get fired, his boss told him if we can’t get the football scores right, how are they supposed to trust us on the big issues?

Big media has got its head so far up its ass heading towards a cliff that all one can say about their declining revenues is SAYONARA! I don’t see why we should save your jobs.

In every field there’s a self-styled expert testifying on the Web. The newspaper is where you go last, if at all. Ask sports fans. As for television, where was it written that good-looking people make the best reporters? But the dirty little secret is they barely report at all, they just regurgitate what the newspapers say.

And you might say the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

I’d say the Internet revolution is finally giving the public a voice. And by time we’re through all those people in power won’t be.

Good riddance.

Re: BitTorrent activity on Paul McCartney’s "Kisses on the Bottom," the album is being traded at a fraction of comparable titles. Van Halen’s "A Different Kind Of Truth," also released yesterday, is being traded at about 4X the volume of "Kisses," and Leonard Cohen’s "Old Ideas" is seeing more than double the audience of McCartney’s album. Interestingly (and perhaps to the credit of the file sharing community), Amnesty International’s various artist release, "Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan," proceeds from which benefit the organization’s support of human rights causes, is being swapped in surprisingly small numbers — less than half of the volume of the "Kisses."

Incidentally, Diana Krall appears on the Amnesty album as well, performing "Simple Twist of Fate." She wins!

John Robinson
BigChampagne

Macca piracy is not "nothing," but I take your point. Been looking at it. Fair bit of curiosity about the new standards record, esp in EU, on the one-click sites and torrents. But the feedback is pretty overwhelmingly negative: a combination of "I got what I paid for this," "this is not rock, it’s easy listening," and "the quality of the recording is awful." IOW, what you’d expect from the torrent set.

Eric Garland
BigChampagne

Updated: Paul McCartney Is Now Pulling His Albums from ‘All Streaming Services…’

Nobody gives a shit about his standards album anyway.

Despite the reproduction of press releases in mainstream media, despite the reviews of said album in same, no one really cares. That’s the dirty little secret of being a classic rocker, you’re done, you’re toast, only people your age have any desire to hear your new music, and most of them don’t either.

Which is why you’ve got to make it easy.

Somehow, these acts still put money in front of exposure. When their problem is just the opposite. Believe me, McCartney’s grosses are not going to go down if his music is on Spotify, just the opposite. People know the legendary cuts and want to hear them live. But they don’t want to hear the new music. That’s time to pee, to get popcorn, an indulgence by the oldsters that they tolerate, just as long as it’s only a couple of songs. And how do you change this? By making good new music and making it available to people.

Hell, if I contacted BigChampagne I’d probably find out no one’s bothering to torrent the McCartney covers album, desire is just that low.

But some might give it a spin if it was easily available to stream on Spotify, which is not like forcing me to go to a site I’m unfamiliar with because you made an exclusive publicity deal with them to use an antique player to hear the songs. The advantage of Spotify is everything’s in one place. So people go there and take risks.

And what’s great about Spotify is it kills piracy. Isn’t that what got us into this mess? But by putting your stuff behind a pay wall, by making people buy it to hear it, you’re hanging on to an old model and encouraging those who care to steal. We don’t want to buy anything without checking it out first. Kind of like buying a car, would you do so without a test drive?

You’ve got to look to endgame. Not the tiny streaming payments of today. Not only is Spotify the first service to negatively impact piracy (it doesn’t pay to take the time to steal to check out new albums anymore), as we move to a mobile world more people will pay for the service, as it is, uptake has increased.

I give a shit about music. I think artists should be paid. I think that recording revenue is just part of the total pie. I think the more artists rail against Spotify the more they demonstrate their ignorance and greed. What, do they all use BlackBerrys and refuse to use iPads too?

The public embraces the new when you make it good and easy. Convenience is something people pay for each and every day. Hell, that’s what blew up MP3s to begin with! The ability to hear what you wanted whenever you wanted in your digital jukebox, ultimately in iTunes which synched with iPods. All those millions of iPods sold, if you think they were filled with paid tracks, you’re dreaming.

Can we all get our heads out of the sand and live in the present? Can we all agree that the only path to the future is to get ahead of the consumer and corral him? This is how the iPhone killed the BlackBerry. Four and a half years ago, only Apple zealots needed iPhones, now everybody needs an app phone.

Many customers don’t even know they need Spotify yet. The service is still growing. Isn’t that great! Because once everybody knows about something and no longer cares you’ve got Nokia, or Palm, and you’re toast. Spotify’s got room to grow. But if Luddites like Paul McCartney keep crippling the service they’ll make good and sure that music is free in the future.

P.S. For the umpteenth time, I’ve got no financial interest in Spotify, I own no shares in Apple, I’m just championing what I think is great, the same way you trumpet a band you love. And Apple’s sales have proven iPhones and iPads are not niche, and neither are streaming music services. We’ve all got to start somewhere, whether it be Google or Facebook. The way acts are going they’re gonna push back the future of digital music consumption for years, sheerly out of ignorance.

Spotify hits 3m subscribers to improve conversion rate