You see in the sixties, when the Beatles hit, we lived in one big homogenous Top Forty world.  Sure, there was a jazz scene.  And a big band scene.  But Top Forty was dominant, until the advent of underground FM radio.  Then the scene bifurcated.  It became about those in the know, and those out of the loop.

Funny, after Lee Abrams built AOR, after everybody got an FM radio in his car, almost a full decade after the advent of underground FM, the rock scene collapsed.  You can call it punk, but really it was disco.  You see when nobody was watching, a whole bunch of scenesters decided to reject the NEW mainstream for something completely different, a multi-beat per minute revolution.

It took YEARS for the rock denizens to realize what had happened.  To revolt at Comiskey Park.  But said revolt didn’t bring back rock and roll, it just helped kill disco.  Music was no longer dominant, the juggernaut was over.  And then came MTV.

What made MTV fascinating was it was Top Forty, the TRUE Top Forty of the sixties.  Oh, maybe it left out Louis Armstrong, but eventually it even included Tony Bennett.  We had one mainstream channel again.  And TV exposure sold tonnage.  There was no better way to get the word out.  But then it all collapsed.

One could say we’re back in the late sixties once again.  In an era of a bifurcated scene.  But it’s worse than that.  There aren’t TWO scenes, but ZILLIONS!  And except for the mainstream, there’s no KING of the rest of the scenes, no definitive tastemakers that clue you in.  In other words, you’re on your own.  And that’s positively overwhelming.

Let’s go back to the beginning.  When you listened to WABC, or 1010 WINS, or WLS back in ’64 and ’65, you had the distinct feeling you were on the pulse, that you were where it was at.  No mainstream media outlet today gives you that feeling, has that perception anymore.  The last time we saw it was a handful of years ago, with HBO Sunday night.  Before that, Must See TV.  Now…  It’s every man for himself, we’re living in a Tower of Babel world.

The Net is all about distribution.  Before everyone logged on, information was controlled by a very few, and it only went one way.  The big media powers were IN CONTROL!  They’re not in control any longer.  It’s got nothing to do with lawsuits or DRM, it’s got to do with choice.  Why go see a heavily-hyped movie when you got an IM from the theatre on opening night telling you it was a loser?  Why care about the new release by the old rapper when the album’s been leaked to the Net and everybody says it’s bad?  These new communication tools are ANATHEMA to the old media powers.  But they leave the individual in the lurch too.

What’s fascinating is how the old players think they’re still in control.  How not only Jimmy Iovine, but Les Moonves, thinks he has his finger on the pulse, that he knows what the people want, that he can build a hit.  Jimmy and Les are now in control of sideshows.  If they build something interesting, people will pay attention.  But shit, most people don’t watch "CSI", and you don’t have to be exposed to the Pussycat Dolls if you don’t want to.

Yes, we had no choice in the sixties.  We HAD to sit through "Hello Dolly" to get to the Beatles.  Same deal when there was only one music video channel in the eighties.  But now, why watch what you don’t want on MTV when you can log on to the Net and see any video you desire, if not STEAL said video!

The network news?  Who gives a shit about Katie Couric.  Most people get the headlines online.  Katie’s purely entertainment.  They don’t expect her broadcast to be any more real than Fergie’s boobs, never mind her music.

The SoundScan numbers?  If you care that Daughtry has a hit album, then you’re obviously not a music fan.  Real music fans consider EVERYBODY on "American Idol" to be a joke.  The fact that there’s an industry that sells discs by these people…fans aren’t even paying ATTENTION!

But let’s go deeper.  Clive Davis resurrects Rod Stewart’s sales career with albums of standards, but all those who liked Rod the Mod in the beginning are turned off.  And even though ticket sales are reasonable, his cultural impact is nil.  He’s a sideshow.

As is Eric Clapton.

Never mind everybody who ever hit on MTV.

You can’t push crap onto the people.

And the people don’t know what the hell to listen to and pay attention to anyway.  Not initially that is.  Until they talk to their buddies.

The Internet revolution has brought the public closer together.  People have contact with more human beings than at any time in history.  And that group has cred and legs.  Your BUDS are more important to you than your records, or the movies, or TV.

Used to be lonely people listened to tunes all night long.  Now they log on to MySpace and connect with other disenfranchised souls.

Not that everybody is so lonely, it’s just that the lonely are NO LONGER ALONE!  THEY’VE got a group.

As do those more alive, more active.

The exec?  He’s got his BlackBerry.  He’s e-mailing a large circle of friends all day long.

And everybody else has Net access.  Checking their inboxes as well as their IM’s.  Reading blogs.  Gaining information.

Sure, information may be passed by the old powers that be, the newspapers, the record companies, but the ANALYSIS, that’s in the hands of the people.  That’s why movie critics no longer matter.  That’s why rock critics don’t either.  Who ARE these people, part of the machine, dictating to us.  We don’t TRUST them, we only trust our FRIENDS!

Trust.  That’s a word absent from the media mogul’s lexicon.  The bigwigs have CONTEMPT for the public.  But it’s this attitude that’s killing them.  Now, unless you’re in bed with your audience, you’re fucked.  It’s all about the RELATIONSHIP!

Trust and cred.  That’s the only way to infiltrate the online dialogue.

But that dialogue DOES NOT have to be about the mainstream product.  Online, the indie band, that cut its record in a garage, has the same level of importance, and probably more cred, than Interscope’s million dollar signing.  If something unknown, or left field, is actually GOOD, word will spread like wildfire.

And everybody’s looking for something good.  And everybody’s overloaded with information.

THAT’S the story of now.  Information overload.  You just can’t get a GRIP on things anymore.

Used to be you could watch all the new TV shows.  That was before there were five networks and a zillion cable channels.  A movie buff?  God, with so many flicks released every weekend, many people have GIVEN UP!  Music?  With over 50,000 albums a year in circulation, many have tuned out.  That’s why Starbucks was so successful selling music.  They picked a handful of good albums, and employing the company’s trusted relationship with its customers ended up MOVING THEM!  But then the company got greedy, and started pushing more product, much of which was inferior, and ruined the relationship.

Everything’s cottage industry now.  Marketing is overhype, a joke.  It’s just about the product.

Don’t spend vast sums to market a piece of shit, just make something good to begin with.  That’s the story of "Little Miss Sunshine".  The audience will FIND the movie and keep it alive.

"Snakes On A Plane" sucked, so people stayed away.

As for good records, so much is perceived as crap, that people just buy the single at iTunes, or steal it.  Or, go to see the classic act live, figuring that Aerosmith is a lot more real than anybody scanning records today.

It’s all new to the teens, they’re devouring information all day long.

But the oldsters are immune to the hype, and therefore they’re COMPLETELY OUT OF THE LOOP!  You could break a record if you could penetrate the adult conversation, but it’s too hard for the old players to do.  Because it’s slow, and you’ve got to have the aforementioned trust, and something’s got to be good.

So we end up with a scene that’s not really a scene.  We end up in a balkanized village where newbies check stuff out and drop it, not EXPECTING acts to be good in the future, trusting only the classics, and the oldsters only KNOWING the classics.

Will this change?  I believe so.  But we’ll have to wait until completely new entities come along to service the public, in the way they now consume.  The old companies have just as much a chance of maintaining their power as IBM did of ruling personal computing.  In other words, they just don’t get it, they can’t SEE IT!

The old wave record companies have built a wall, between themselves and their consumers, telling people to pay up, the old price, if they want a look.  The new companies give it all away for free, figuring they’ll make the margin on live shows, or merch, or…

The oldsters are trumpeting ringtones.  When the consumer knows that ringtones have nothing to do with music, but are just a badge of identity.

In other words, the major labels no longer GET music.  And the public, which GETS music, just doesn’t know where to find it.  There are good bands, but how do you reach someone who’s tuned out all the traditional outlets, how do you penetrate his CIRCLE!

That’s what someone’s going to do in the future.  Penetrate the circle.  And he won’t only be making money, he will be providing a service.  People want to know where to go, it’s just that all the old purveyors are so sold out, so whored out, as to be completely untrustworthy.