So I asked him how he felt when "Incense and Peppermints" went to number one.

The blase look I got in return surprised me.  After all, that’s what artists DREAM OF, and constantly recite the story of.  Hearing their song on the radio the first time.  Tingling when their track hits the top of the charts.

But it didn’t surprise John Carter.  After all, he worked the request lines at one of the biggest top forty stations in L.A.  And bought five or six copies of the single every day at Wallich’s Music City.  Hell, when the record finally peaked, he and his songwriting partner showed up for a meeting with the record company president and produced the FIVE HUNDRED singles they’d purchased.

Ah, the old days.  As Carter says, when it was still all about hype.

Yup, he laments the advent of the computer, and SoundScan, it ruined it.  Used to be a nice little business, that hustlers and scammers could work to provide themselves and their loved ones a good life.  Today?

Well, Carter still believes it’s ultimately the same business.  One of creating hits and selling physical discs.  On this we disagreed.  But the ride, listening to the tales of someone who was there for forty years, THAT was riveting.

His father was a wildcatter.  In Illinois and Indiana.  Made millions.  As Carter says, it was just a matter of what COLOR Ferrari he was going to get for his sixteenth birthday.  But then his dad hit some dry holes in Colorado and lost just about everything.  And Carter went from hoity-toity to hustler, or hanger-on, as we all were back in the sixties.  You see, Carter had been bitten, by the music bug.

His mom encouraged him.  She was addicted to record-buying.  And when he showed such prescience at the record store, he got a job, offering him one free for ten of everything he ordered, since what he ordered sold.  And then his friends started a band, he wrote lyrics for their tune, and he ended up with a semi-hit, "Acapulco Gold".

And then Carter hit paydirt, with "Incense and Peppermints".

And a few years later, the big time truly came calling.  His phone rang and it was Pearl, saying she was gonna cut his and his partner’s song.  Something about a hundred pounds of woman and what she was gonna do to you.  And Janis Joplin kept calling.  Wanted Carter and his partner to come to the studio, to see their track recorded, the one that was going to be her single.

And then Janis died.

Carter’s partner was so fucked up by it that he went back to college.

Carter moved to San Francisco.  Where he ended up working at a one stop.  And doing so well there, he got a gig as a promotion man with Atco.  He was constantly traveling up and down the coast with the likes of Zeppelin, Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.  And then his buddy Bob Buziak got the gig as head of A&R at Capitol.

Carter followed Buziak there and lasted eleven years.  Long enough to not only break Sammy Hagar, but engineer Tina Turner’s comeback and Bob Seger’s breakthrough.

He’d helped Bob and Punch with "Smokin’ O.P.s".  And then, having gotten the gig at Capitol, signed Bob to the label.  And after working hard on "Beautiful Loser" and "Live Bullet", Carter was confronted by Jack Richardson as to why he wouldn’t put out what he’d done with Seger.

Carter said he had no idea what Jack was talking about.  Hell, he’d paid for no sessions.

And then Jack put up "Night Moves".

And Carter called Seger.  Who said the track sucked, it wasn’t representative, it had those chick backup singers.

So Carter told Bob he was going to cut it with Sammy Hagar.

Bob said cool.  But then called back a day later and said he’d reconsidered.

Carter said fine.  But told Bob if it was released it would be the title track of the record, the single, and Bob would have to sing it at EVERY GIG for the rest of his life!

And riding high on Seger and other hits, Carter was interviewed.  Who did he want to produce?

Tina Turner.

He ended up signing her.  For a pittance.

But then Jim Mazza came in, and cut her, along with a bazillion other acts from the label.

Carter got down on his knees and begged.

And the rest is history.

From there?

Well, a bunch of two year stints at other labels.  And now he’s in management, the last stop for all oldsters kicked out of the major label system.

Oh, he’s had success.  With E and the Eels.  And most noticeably Paula Cole.  But it’s a struggle.  Applying the old rules to the new world.

But it was this misconception of the new world that confused me.  Carter quoted Munns saying that almost none of the tracks downloaded P2P were ever listened to.  And the more we talked, I realized Carter wasn’t exactly clear on the differences between P2P and IM and hard drive swapping and ripping.  Shit, you have to PULL with P2P, you just don’t download for the hell of it.  You may not listen to EVERYTHING you take, but Munns’ ninety nine percent never touched?  That was just plain wrong.

And Carter went on to state that nobody he knew, none of the kids of his friends, were downloading P2P at all, that it was a myth.  I told him about the fifteen year olds I know with thousands of tracks stolen via the Net and it was like I was speaking of WMDs in Iraq.

But the physical business?  Carter was a maven.

He said you had to enhance the package.  That when in a cost-cutting move they got rid of the gatefold and the posters on "Dark Side Of The Moon" they got ninety percent returns.  That some people were buying the record JUST FOR THE POSTERS!

And I agree here.  Physical product is evidence of one’s addiction.  But it’s an ever-decreasing piece of the pie.

But what was truly fascinating was the downward spiral of his "Incense and Peppermints" royalties.  Carter said NOBODY WANTED "Incense and Peppermints".  It was just a bonus.  Something you got along with "White Rabbit" on the compilation CD.  But now that you can buy JUST ‘White Rabbit" ALONE on iTunes…  Fewer people were bothering to BUY "Incense and Peppermints".

There’s still room for John Carter and his brethren in this business.  People searching out that perfect radio single, produced by acts they nurture, who will rain down money for a period of time.

But that’s an ever-narrowing slice of our business.  One owned by the major labels, who else could afford the cost, never mind has the radio/media relationships?  The future is long tail.  Finding your profitable niche, just like one of the three hundred cable channels.

But that’s a scary business.  One not based on lunch, but starving, as you work on sweat equity, building your empire.  Veterans have no time for this, it completely eludes them.  It would be akin to getting them to drive a Toyota Echo.  That’s in their PAST!

But the heyday of this business is IN the past.  When renegades like John Carter, people who lived by their wits, who couldn’t fit into mainstream society, broke all the rules and created art that had the country mesmerized.

Here’s hoping that era returns.  But if it does, it won’t look the same.  And, much younger people will be in charge.

Because the Internet, and accurate data, and files, are here to stay.  After all, Apple Computer announced a 32% increase in year to year sales of the iPod today.  Those players are not being filled at the iTunes Music Store.  It’s no longer about saving to buy an LP every three or four weeks, it’s about creating DEMAND, getting people excited about checking stuff out from an inexpensive, LIMITLESS pool.

The old guys are just trying to replicate their physical business online, grudgingly.

But those days are through.  This iPod mania is like the Net boom of 1995.  Prior to that year, computers were for geeks.  Suddenly, everybody got a box to play online.  Everybody’s buying an iPod.  The key is not to lament this fact, but to figure out a way for everybody to have a ton of music on his device.  Make it so that EVERYBODY has "Incense and Peppermints" on his iPod!