We stopped by at the restaurant so Felice could say hello to Michael.  Dominick Dunne was in the corner, everybody was wearing a suit, and I wondered if I had it wrong, if I’d been stuck on the shore like Allen Ginsberg in the eighties, his appearance and style befitting the fifties.  I’ve got the education, maybe I should just get with the program.

But after lunch we stopped by Q Prime and found Cliff Burnstein, hair a-flowing, in a worn brown sweater and jeans and I felt I was home.

We started the day at Sirius.

Well, we arrived last night in time to have dinner with Jay Marciano at Soho House.  Funny how you read about these places in the "New York Times" and "New Yorker" but they don’t really come alive until you get an e-mail to meet in the meatpacking district.

New York is different.  Enter someone’s apartment and you wonder how long until you can get out, no matter how rich they are, there’s no ROOM, but just outside their front door there’s so much OPPORTUNITY!  The threshold for participation is so much lower than in L.A.  You don’t have to get in your car, drive across town, find a parking place, deal with the poseurs and finally experience what you came for.  Rather, on a whim, you can leave and BE THERE!  And it makes you feel so ALIVE!

And after a night at the Parker Meridien with heat so high I felt I was crawling in the Sahara we marched off for our assignation with Steve Leeds at the aforementioned Sirius Satellite Radio.

I’ve been an XM booster.  But I’m wondering if I should jump ship.  Sirius has tighter playlists, worse sound and worse reception, but it’s got the BUZZ!  XM plays it close to the vest.  Hugh Panero is penurious.  And then makes dumb deals like the one with Oprah when he ultimately opens up his checkbook.  And the dominant satellite service is in Washington, D.C., such a lame paragon of popular culture that it’s lost its baseball team more than once.  No, the pulse is in New York.  Maybe Los Angeles.  But desiring to be close to the government, XM is in D.C.  Where acts drop by…well, when they’re routed through.  That could be the story of the future, how XM lost the lead.

There was the Volkswagen deal this week.  And Mercedes-Benz and BMW are both Sirius outlets.  And XM’s in bed with the fading GM.

And Sirius has got Howard.

You could feel him in the building.  As we walked the halls, peeking in at Shady 45 where illicit activity is blocked from the hoi polloi by a curtain.  And as we saw the young, hip girls working out at the Cosmo channel.  This is HOWARD’S place.  This is where it’s HAPPENING!

And when Patrick Reilly gave us a tour of the King of All Media’s digs, I felt the kind of pulse people normally feel at Graceland.  Even though I’m not that big a Howard fan.  Then again, that was when he was on terrestrial radio.  When he was more of a buffoon, more of an everyman.  Now he’s serious.  Now, this time, it’s personal.  Fuck the FCC.  Fuck Les Moonves.  Howard’s got something to PROVE!  And we’re always intrigued by passion, we want to get close to the flame.  And Howard is on fire.  He’s WILLING Sirius’ success.  And when I looked at the monitor and realized he was at the center of the hubbub in the studio on the other side of the door, sitting on a couch, his back to us, I felt that flip in my stomach, that excitement, that one usually feels in the presence of rock stars.  Back when there used to be rock stars.  Back before all we had was sold-out endorsers.

And it was funny catching Steve Leeds’ history.  We all followed our passion.  This music.  We worked for next to nothing, we started labels, we did whatever we could to get in.  A business that’s almost impossible to STAY IN!

Running into Pat St. John in the hallway I was reminded that this WAS just radio.  A job.  With deejays.  WOLD on steroids.  Then again, when I saw all of Cousin Brucie’s photos adorning his studio I was reminded that radio once RULED!  It was the pulse.  It was the Internet of its day.  Before the behemoth corporations sucked out its soul.  And two of the perpetrators of this decline were Lee Abrams and Mel Karmazin.

But Patrick told me Mel has gone on record that Sirius’ music channels will NEVER have commercials.  NEVER EVER!  Whereas Lee Abrams’ brilliant programming philosophy, based on both respecting and exciting the audience, seems to be in its waning days over at XM.  Channel 49, Big Tracks, sounds like imitation Sirius.  Narrow playlist.  Idiotic bumpers.  Just the old crap minus the commercials.

I turned down a gig on the radio at Sirius because I didn’t believe in the programming philosophy.  Back when XM was doing everything right.  Now I’m wondering if I made a mistake.

I want to be where it’s at.

And it appears, stunningly, that Sirius is becoming where it’s at.

As for all you satellite radio naysayers…  Call me when HD Radio is in cars.  What, in the next DECADE??

And with our heads spinning we exited the McGraw-Hill building and went to Felice’s mother’s apartment and then Michael’s.  And then to the Carnegie Deli.

Oh, I didn’t need to make a pilgrimage because of Rob Reiner’s mother’s performance in "When Harry Met Sally", but because you just can’t get good pastrami in L.A.  And you can’t get this kind of experience either.  Jostled up to the unmarried nebbish brothers discussing taking classes with their mother.  The touristos from Florida in close proximity on the other side.

And then with nascent heartburn, we ventured down Seventh Avenue to the Q Prime offices.

Funny how here on the sixteenth floor in a nondescript office building beats the heart of popular culture.  Cliff was telling us hilarious stories of Metallica on tour in South Africa.  We were discussing the Pellicano case.  I felt like I was at the nexus.  The kind of place reporters want access to, and never get.

And after catching up, we went into the music room.  Where Cliff played us a couple of cuts.  First, one by the Lost Prophets, produced by Bob Rock.  It was so great to hear something COMMERCIAL after being subjected to such outside DRECK!  Yes, most of the atonal crap is just that.  What you call innovation is usually just not up to snuff.

And then Cliff played the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new single, "Dani California".

The verse went on too long.  I’m not even a Chili Peppers fan.  Every time I’ve ever seen them they’ve been untogether, except for the ’92 MTV Video Music Awards.  But when they hit the chorus of this song I was reminded of the days of yore.  When records got us through.  Pounding out of the dashboard of our cars.

Oh, the landscape is fractured.  All exposure sells records, but MTV is nowhere CLOSE to the pulse it once was.  You might tune in for the train-wreck, but not for the music.  You go to the Net for that.  Or maybe terrestrial radio, which despite a decline in listenership still has a major presence.  With satellite not having made significant inroads yet.

The language we used to speak in.  Of platinum discs.  It died with "Album Network" and the rest of the trades.  The music business is Iraq.  Or certainly Bosnia in the Clinton years.  All balkanized, unclear.  All you can hope to do is release something that CONNECTS!  Sure, the major labels can jam crap down our throats, the kind of stuff that’s cherry-picked for the single on iTunes, but the real bands, made for real fans, where do you START?

With the music.  There’s still a desire for real music.  Great music.  That will keep you company when you can’t fall asleep, when you’re on the long drive to someplace you’re both eager and trepidatious about going to.

And "Dani California" is unspooling on the Genelecs and I find my body moving, my hand slapping my thigh, and I let go of the old paradigm.  How many stations will spin it, for how long, how many copies will be sold…  I’m just thinking of the teenagers and twentysomethings who are gonna buy the album, and play the hell out of it this summer.  Whether on disc or iPod.

Remember when fans were HUNGRY for new releases?  Before everything was available online before it was released and we realized it was crap?  Before the single was the only good track on the album?  Well, that desire is still there.  If you’re in it for the career, for the long term, forget the marketing plan, forget the imaging, just focus on the music.  Believe me, great music is never ignored.  It usually sells soon, but if not there’s always somebody trumpeting it DECADES later, inspiring you to download and check it out, based on the passion with which it’s been sold to you.

Listen to Steve Leeds for an hour, and you’ll have a love for the business.

But that business, the one he grew up in, that’s one gone.  A new one is coming.

It’s based on exposing a ton of stuff.  It’s based on consumer choice.

But first and foremost it’s based on the music.

Music is more powerful than any of the people lunching at Michael’s.  Trumps all those people in "Vanity Fair".  It’s better than even "The Sopranos".  You drop the needle on that record and you go on a journey eclipsing the vision of Walt Disney.  With a new ride every time you spin the disc.  There’s religion in those grooves, those bits, and I’m a believer.