What if we don’t need radio. What if we don’t need television? What if we don’t need record companies and movie studios? What if we don’t need money?

Let’s say you had a thriving business. Wouldn’t you do your best to protect it? That’s what all of the foregoing entities possess, a beachhead, profits, and they don’t want to sacrifice at all. No one in America wants to go backwards, no one wants to lose, so those who are threatened spew ever more intense invective, accusing others of looting their businesses whilst convincing wannabes that they hold the keys to prosperity.

But this is not true.

I implore you to read this story:

Who Is RayWJ? YouTube’s Top Star: Earning an Estimated $1 Million a Year, a Foul-Mouthed Comic Shows the New Rules of New Media

In other words, you’re better off going on YouTube than "American Idol". But on YouTube creativity is king. To have big time success you must write your own material. Like on the rest of the Internet, brains triumph.

The nerds are inheriting the entertainment business. They’re stealing it from the guys who couldn’t get a date in high school who put on three piece suits and declared themselves important, but they’re not.

Any artist will tell you it’s all about freedom, the ability to do it your way. Suits have no idea what works, that’s why they’re suits!

Do you have the balls to do it your way? To stop looking for someone to rescue you, give you money to work on the plantation?

All we hear is the Internet ruined the entertainment business.

Hogwash.

The Internet is a washing machine that mixed up everything and we’ve yet to see exactly how it all dries out. But when we do, different people will be in power, the game won’t be the same.

If you’ve got talent, there’s never been a better time to create. Because the tools are cheap and you can go directly to your audience. Hell, you can even monetize on YouTube. Instead of complaining about Spotify payments, make a viral video. Yourself. Don’t sign with a major and put it on Vevo and get chintzed out of the revenue. This is your opportunity, this is your time.

Maybe RayWJ will go nuclear. But today, he’s unknown to most. That’s the new game, your niche is big enough, in this case, to make a million dollars a year. If you’re playing to everybody, you’re missing the point. Everybody doesn’t care. But many do. Play to them.

P.S. From the RayWJ YouTube page:

"MAKING YOUTUBE VIDEOS IS JUST A HOBBY OF MINE. PLEASE DON’T BOTHER CONTACTING ME WITH BUSINESS OFFERS. I’M SIMPLY NOT INTERESTED. THANK YOU."

The Ray William Johnson Playlist - YouTube

They were DANCING!

Last Thursday night I went to the Hotel Cafe to see Ed Sheeran. He was really quite special, he knew how to work the audience, he had them singing along, literally, helping him out with harmonies both on stage and off. Normally the acts there are nervous and unformed, beginning their careers. But the hundreds of gigs Ed’s played paid off. It was like seeing "Outliers" in action.

But the highlight of my day was hanging at Atlantic Studios.

Mike Caren is a white Jewish thirtysomething, but his forte his hip-hop. He had a studio in his home, but with people coming and going at all times of the day, even when he was out of town, Craig Kallman gave him permission to move his equipment to Paramount. Where success begat more success and they ended up moving the whole operation to a space on Cahuenga previously occupied by Babyface. There are four studios, three with a Mac Pro and Mackie monitors. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First we sat in Mike’s office, in the building, b.s.’ing. And that’s when he started complaining that the new stuff wasn’t on Spotify. Not the legitimate new stuff, but the mixtapes, that drove his business. I spoke of the illegality, and he coughed up the story of Don Henley, how he’s trying to eviscerate that "Hotel California" track from the Web.

Huh?

Turns out someone rapped over "Hotel California". Despite Don’s efforts, Mike had no problem pulling it up on YouTube. It’s the ENTIRE SONG! I was unimpressed, thinking it was just a cheap shot, but it turned out this guy had a whole catalog of tracks, some of which Mike admired, and Mike made the point that most of the audience had never heard "Hotel California".

Mike started going through the chart on YouTube, not the one with all the official Vevo hits, but the one peppered by the self-produced projects. He pulled up this good-looking guy from Tufts who drops tracks every week. He’s got a following. It was like going down a rabbit hole and finding a world that everyone knows about but you.

And then we toured the studios.

The deal is they’re free. To songwriters. There are two eight hour shifts. There’s soon to be a third. But the songs can’t leave the complex. To ensure that Atlantic gets first dibs. Atlantic acts can come in and work ad infinitum, they’ve just got to pay the engineer. It’s a veritable hothouse of creativity. The songs are put in Dropbox and Mike gives feedback and they tweak them to the point where…

Flo Rida cuts one.

Yup, three of the studios are simple.

But one still remains in its Babyface incarnation. At least on one side of the glass, the recording room has been carved up. And behind the door…

Was the party.

Now bankers have all the money. They say they can buy fun.

But they could never buy this.

The music is blasting out of the speakers, Flo Rida is sitting there composing lyrics and behind him are those tall skinny girls, with Gumby insides, grooving to the music. There were a few guys and some food and I didn’t want to leave. It felt like this was the epicenter, where everybody wanted to be. All those listeners out in radioland, if they could only get inside this studio.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t say Flo Rida had no idea who I was, but was still extremely friendly. And how he’d heard this track composed at the studio and had to record RIGHT NOW!

Now you might be saying this music, with its beats, isn’t gonna survive. But Mike made an interesting point… His two year old is iPad fluent. Not only navigates apps but burns out on them and demands more. What are the odds he’s gonna pick up a guitar and put in seven years of practice down the line? With this computer fluency, he’s going to make electronic music.

Fascinating point.

But the more fascinating one is that L.A.’s the place for songwriters. They can’t afford to live in New York, they’ve all come to L.A. And the best come in and work at Atlantic Studios. They just want to be part of the action, they want to participate, they want to create greatness.

And sure, they want to get paid.

But it was like the Brill Building. The hothouse atmosphere both inspired collaboration and a desire to top one’s competitors. It was creation in action, and very exciting.

It was curiously flat.

I don’t detest the new single and the "Like A Prayer" finale worked but a rock star never wants to risk being upstaged.

And the game walked all over the Material Girl.

I get it, it’s all about awareness, it’s all about selling tickets. And from what I understand, if you’re a fan, you liked this extravaganza, you’ll wanna go to the show. But on a musical level…

It just wasn’t about music.

Great performances are about that little something extra, something indefinable that touches your core. And that’s what was missing here. There was no sense of majesty, no soulfulness, just a middle-aged woman trying too hard to impress.

But I’m not sure she was trying to impress us. Rather she seemed to be playing to a higher tribunal, maybe St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, giving it all she’s got in order to get into heaven.

She’s left us behind.

And when the stage was dismantled and the game resumed her performance was forgotten, not execrable like the Black Eyed Peas, but not mindblowingly fantastic like Prince.

Then again, as well as the diminutive icon moves, he’s all about the music. He can play, he can sing, video only made us aware of his greatness, it did not define it.

Furthermore, the whole production seemed dated. From another era where excess was applauded, when life was fun and problems were pushed under the rug. Only now, our problems are front and center. And it’s clear that Madonna, like the rest of the 1%, really wants nothing to do with us, she only wants our money. Sure, everyone still likes to party, but you got no impression that Madonna wanted you up on stage, celebrating with her. If anything, you felt if you ran up, you’d get kicked off.

Today’s music is all about inclusiveness. Tastemakers like television and radio mean ever less. The swell of public appreciation is what truly matters. And you won’t get universal approval of Madonna’s Super Bowl appearance, it was a niche event on the main stage. And this is dangerous. You only want to play for naysayers if you can convert them.

And Madonna did not.

P.S. What’s up with the narcissism in the new single, the endless repetition of her own name? Didn’t that peak with Wang Chung back in the eighties?

P.P.S. Never do someone else’s act. The magic disappearance at the end smacked of nothing so much as Michael Jackson, another superstar who became so enamored of his fame that he lost touch with his audience.

I can see Jimmy play the guitar!

I stayed up all night April 30, 1975 listening to "Physical Graffiti", not because I wanted to, but it was my last night in Utah and the dope dealers across the street were the only people I knew still in town, everybody else had disappeared with the end of the season, and they were spinning it as they got high.

I was a Zeppelin fanatic.

But I burned out with "III". Oh, I played it plenty, but even though I came to know every note, it just didn’t have the majesty of the very first album. Sure, the second was a monolith, perfect in every way, accessible to the masses, but I always had the debut to myself…well, relatively speaking.

And then I dropped out. After seeing the band perform the tunes from "III" in a mediocre fashion at the Yale Bowl.

But I was exposed to "Physical Graffiti" so much, I came to love it, it brought me back to the band, I bought the intervening albums, even "Houses Of The Holy", with the overplayed "D’yer Mak’er", I wanted to get close.

And I wouldn’t put Zeppelin past reuniting a couple of more times in the future, after all they did for Atlantic’s 40th and Live Aid, but they’re never going to go on tour and all we’ve got left are the records.

And our memories.

The best time I saw the band was during the legendary Forum stand in ‘77. They played for hours, they played everything you needed to hear, it was a victory lap that of a type unknown today. Hype was limited, you could not reach everybody. But everybody who needed to know did. And tried to get a ticket.

And unlike Madonna, Robert Plant has aged gracefully, made music unforeseen by fans but fully satisfying, yet still, when I want the essence I put on "Ten Years Gone".

The first track on "Physical Graffiti" that hooked me was "Kashmir". It was the sound, the power, the majesty, you conduct the band with your hands as the notes descend. It’s like you’re ascending a mountain in the Himalayas and with this soundtrack you’ll have no problem making it to the top, with a great track in your ears you may not be able to move mountains, but you can certainly climb them!

And from there I got into "Night Flight". Then "Trampled Under Foot" and "The Rover".

But one afternoon on Chair 3 at Mammoth, a riff started going through my head. I had to go back to the condo and play Jimmy’s complete 8-track to discover it was "Ten Years Gone".

And it’s about the riff, but the intro is like Jimmy Page opens a door to a castle and you step inside, you leave everything behind and go into an all-enveloping darkness.

And then the door shuts, and the riff begins.

It’s not only one instrument, but many, thundering from every corner of the room, then it gets quiet again, and Robert starts to sing:

Then as it was, then again it will be
And though the course may change sometimes
Rivers always reach the sea

You can listen to all the new music, even go to the show, but you always come back to Zeppelin, the band excoriated by the critics but the one that lasts.

And it’s classic Zeppelin, going from quiet to loud and then back again. And two and a half minutes in, the track completely changes, its like a walk on the beach, like suddenly someone turned on the lights and everything’s bright, you’re happy, optimistic and then…

Do you ever really need somebody
Really need ‘em bad

That’s the essence of rock and roll, the need, to be known, to be understood. The music does this, and if you find a like-minded person, someone else who knows the tune, you’re at the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

But the track plows on, and Jimmy’s squeaking out accents, Robert’s singing, you’re locked right on.

And then it gets quiet once again, just like life. It’s not pedal to the metal 24/7.

This is album rock. This is what built this business. Extended tracks Top Forty would never play that you spun incessantly, that changed your life.

I just want to jump inside the Thiel SCS4’s and join the band, it sounds that damn good.

P.S. Just in case you’re under ten or you’ve been living without electricity, I’m linking to a YouTube clip of "Ten Years Gone".

But you’ve got to hear it on the big rig, on YouTube you can see it, but you don’t become it. In this compressed rendition you can take or leave it, but if you hear it in full-dimension stereo, with all the notes and no distortion, "Ten Years Gone" is UNDENIABLE!

Led Zeppelin - Ten Years Gone