Feelin’ Alright

Actually, I’m not.  I’ve got this sinus infection that won’t quit.  But you can’t stay home forever, so I met Jane for lunch at the Century City Shopping Center.

Houston’s

Funny how this restaurant sustains, when so many fall by the wayside.

Jane told me about MySpace.  You see she’s jumped from the record company world to the Internet.  If only labels had done so years ago, instead of fighting new technology.

I don’t have a MySpace page.  Life is too short to cavort with fake friends.  But I do have an account, so I can delve into the pages of acts sent to me.  Music is the backbone of MySpace, it’s what makes it special.  The Snocap deal?  Irrelevant.  Bands are better off giving away the music, and sale by track is economic death and not the future.  But to have your music hosted for free…  And at this point, every act that ever existed seems to have a MySpace page, where you can go and listen to their music.  This is good.

As for the site itself, why does it have to be so clunky in an era of broadband smoothness?

The numbers keep growing, but who are the people JUST signing up?  Did it take them that long to get the memo?

Jane says social networking is just the backbone, that the future is content.  And as she told me, excitedly, the way no one who works at a label now does, about placing content on the Canadian homepage, even I got excited.  For there’s a pulse, and an opportunity.  And they’ve got this program where they give bucks to charities, is it every week, or every month?  Yup, some kids organized some skate to save something and they got 10k.  That’ll keep your site sticky.

I heard a big muckety-muck tell me all about MySpace, and it was more boring than high school math.  There was a zeal in Jane’s eye when she told the story that made one think that sure, MySpace has problems, but they’re trying to survive, despite the Murdoch connection, they’re trying to ride the Net bucking bronco.

Geox

When we passed this shop I asked Jane, "Does Geox make ANY fashionable shoes?"

She said no.

But I’m intrigued.  Hell, aren’t you?

How does the air come out without water getting in?  I’m a fan of Nike Air, walking on a cushion, that appeals to me.

I studied the shoes in the window after Jane took off.  But I didn’t go inside.  I didn’t want to be sold.  Funny how salespeople won’t leave you alone, but if you need one, you can’t find one.

Palm

Yes, there’s a Palm STORE in the Century City mall.  And it’s reminiscent of nothing so much as that old Scotch Tape store skit on SNL back in the day.  Is there really a need?  How many products ARE there?  Customers aren’t being satiated at the phone company stores?

Apple

Has replaced the record store.  Yes, there’s a buzz inside Apple’s retail establishments, a low level hum, like there used to be in the old indie record shops.  You’re never going to get this in Best Buy or Wal-Mart.  Didn’t the labels realize this?  It’s not always about getting your product in more places, it’s important what those places ARE!

There wasn’t a single soul messing with Apple TV, the just shipped product that every tech writer known to man reviewed last week.  I fucked with it.  It’s very cool.  Operation is completely intuitive, and when you see the album covers from your iTunes library or the iTunes Store large on screen, it’ll take you aback.

Is Apple TV a failed product, like the Cube, or another AirPort Express?

Yes, the AirPort Express is a wonderful item, allowing you to throw your tunes to your stereo, but most people don’t know it exists.  Seems like Apple TV is the same for now.  Then again, maybe Apple TV is the iPod, only purchased by early adopters at first, and eventually a mainstream product that everybody wants.  If only the movie studios would loosen up and allow their products to be distributed legitimately online.

We used to pooh-pooh home theater.  But now there’s home theater in a box for a few hundred dollars and hi-def sets for under a grand.  The future eventually comes.  Will Apple rule it?  They’re trying, but as of now, the hoi polloi just haven’t gotten the message.

But they have gotten the message about Macs.  The darndest people are now buying Macs.  Credit the Intel chip inside.  Why not purchase a machine that can run both Windows and OS X?  Especially if you’re hooked on the iPod.  And people buy these Intel-based Macs and…suddenly they don’t find themselves using Windows anymore.

Still, except for Apple TV, I didn’t see or learn about anything new in the store.  Funny how shopping can be done more easily online, and they ship right to your door.  Credit Westfield for reconfiguring the Century City mall, but I almost never visit, and after today I’m not eager to go and hang out.  There’s no need.

Clothing

Is the goal in life to STOP wearing a suit?

While waiting for our table at Houston’s, I was alongside a twentysomething in a suit, who met another twentysomething in a suit.  Whereas everybody over the age of forty five was dressed down, casual.  Has the game lost its luster?  Hell, the techie/genius at Apple was wearing shorts.  And, if he went indie, he could probably make as much as his dressed up contemporary, there’s a need for tech-knowledgeable people, not only fixing people’s home networks, but creating sites like MySpace.  Now it seems you sell out temporarily until you can find a way to jettison your corporate gig, the bullshit, and be the real you, dressing like the real you.

Kow Kow (Calqulator?)

On "Brave New World", it’s just "Kow Kow", on the boxed set, it’s "Kow Kow Calqulator"

I did a podcast on "Brave New World".

Maybe if it had a better cover, the album would be seen as a classic.  But now, people seem to think the classic Steve Miller era is the one containing "Fly Like An Eagle", "Jet Airliner" and "Rockin’ Me".  I love those ditties, that burned up the chart.  But the truly classic Steve Miller period is the first!

He cut more songs than "Living In The U.S.A." and "The Joker".  Be sure to get "Sailor", with "Quicksilver Girl".  But my favorite is the third album, "Brave New World".

You drop the needle, you hear the explosion and then…

We’re traveling fast from a dream of the past to the brave new world

And that it was.  Steve’s mellifluous voice with a jaunty groove.  This was FANTASTIC!  How did I discover it?  From Paul Volberding, the music fan in the basement of the fraternity house on the University of Chicago campus.

And I love the second song, "Celebration Day", which follows the initial cut and sounds like something off of a homemade McCartney album, but it’s not my favorite song on the album.  That’s "Kow Kow".

There’s a blues lick that hooks you, and then, like a pebble dropping in a placid lake, there’s a keyboard and a bass and you’re enraptured.

What comes thereafter sounds like a picnic by this same lake.  Absent the bullshit of real life, the hype, the oppressive Top Forty radio.  Steve Miller was as important a part of the San Francisco scene as the Airplane and the Dead, listening to this you get it.  And when the song accelerates and gets heavy, after the dreamy "Turn on your love light break", you just want to ride away with the record.

Of course "Brave New World" contains "Space Cowboy", one of the great stoner tracks of all time, but it’s not the best track on side two.  I prefer "My Dark Hour", with the uncredited McCartney vocal.  But the track that IS better than the classic is the opener, "Seasons"…

This is the record that sold me on XM.  I heard it the very first day I had a radio in my car, on Deep Tracks.  What kind of service plays "Seasons"?  One that I have to subscribe to!

I postulate that many Steve Miller fans have never heard "Seasons".  And, if they had, if the music community was exposed to it, he’d garner newfound respect.

Stunningly, "Brave New World" sounds as fresh today as it did back in ’69, when it came out.  And few records do.  And it’s just as fulfilling a listen.

To hear more, go to Rhinocast -The Lefsetz Letter: Steve Miller Band and listen/download the podcast.  Or go to the iTunes Music Store and search on either "Rhino" or "Lefsetz" and subscribe.
 

Cryin’ To Be Heard

After I exited the parking structure, when the satellite could see the sky once again, I heard this on the Loft.

Oh, thereafter I heard a mediocre Arcade Fire track and a very good Death Cab cut on Ethel, but this Traffic song truly resonated.

Steve Winwood gets all the credit, but Dave Mason was in Traffic for a while too.  And it’s his presence that makes their second album the band’s best.

Forever "Cryin’ To Be Heard" was my favorite cut off the album.  It replaced my first favorite, the opener, "You Can All Join In".  But now, somehow, I like "Forty Thousand Headmen" best.  Remembering Steve play it during the "John Barleycorn" tour at the Fillmore, when he hesitated, just before singing the line about having to stop and reload, gives me shivers.

You won’t hear any of these three cuts on terrestrial radio.  And you won’t find any deep cuts like this on the FM band either.  And therefore, the big labels don’t sell stuff like this anymore, a shame.

Baby’s Callin’ Me Home

Yes, this was on one of those early Steve Miller albums too.  And that’s where I eventually found myself.  Thinking I wanted to write about the podcast, but thinking how being out had stimulated me.