I noticed a puddle on the floor.

What did Paul Simon say? Everything put together falls apart? Turns out the water heater is kaput. Rubin just came to my house and confirmed it. But the most fascinating part of the exchange concerned the device attached to his hip.

I noticed the white headphones. But workers love iPods, they can listen to music rather than their customers, whiling away the hours in reverie. But the screen, encased in the leather pouch, it was FULL-SIZE! Supposedly iPods like this aren’t being released until next week. Did Rubin, the plumber from Santo Domingo, have an iPHONE?

You should have seen the smile upon his face when I asked him.

And how did he like it? He LOVED it! He now only had to carry one device!

Had he been with AT&T? No, Verizon. But, he loved the phone connections!

I’m not switching to the iPhone because I don’t want to be on AT&T. I’m a Verizon man. I’m sticking with my BlackBerry. But, if the iPhone was on Verizon, with 3G surfing, now that push e-mail works with my server (Corporate E-Mail on the iPhone). I’d be a goner.

I’m tempted. What about the rest of the public?

Scuttlebutt is the iPhone is a failure, that not enough people want to buy it. It’s no Wii, an item you can’t get, there’s no mania.

Well, there was no problem buying the original iPod. People said IT was an overpriced failure. Just about every tech analyst out there.

So, should you believe the insiders, or the PEOPLE!

People love their iPhones. They testify about them. And it’s this mania that’s going to sell them.

Most people don’t know they need an iPhone yet. Hell, I didn’t surf the Net on my pre-BlackBerry cell. It was too complicated and too expensive. But, Daniel Glass’ kid Liam used his dad’s iPhone to find desirable Webkinz in the wilds of Connecticut. He didn’t know you could do this previously! Most people don’t know they need a smartphone because they’ve never used one, certainly not one as good as the iPhone. But, when they’re exposed, whether it be at the Apple Store or testing out a gushing friend’s, they’re going to be tempted, they’re going to want mobile e-mail, they’re going to get hooked.

Yes, you might not know it, but owners, the public, are spreading the word on the iPhone.

This is not how Madison Avenue does it. They dictate. About shitty products.

It’s no different in the music business. You’ve got to get FANS! People who love your music who will evangelize not because you pay them, but because they LOVE YOUR MUSIC SO MUCH!

Sure, Apple now does some iPhone advertising. But the run-up, it was all driven by the press and the public. Kind of like how people talk about a new band. And, Apple releases almost no information, you can’t get an interview with anybody other than Steve Jobs, who speaks occasionally, and only says what he wants to. Stars should be mysterious, people you can believe in, not overexposed nitwits on TMZ.

But in order for a band to blow up, its music must be as good as the iPhone. And we haven’t had that quality since, well, if not 1969, a very long time.

Concentrating on the music… WHAT A CONCEPT!

It’s hard to concentrate on the packaging/image. Retail is dying, and CD covers are so damn small that unless we’re building a new race of Lilliputian stars, artwork has almost no effect anyway.

As for video… TV doesn’t play hardly any videos. Oh, you can pull them from the Web, but you’ve got to have the DESIRE! What builds the DESIRE! WORD OF MOUTH!

So you’ve got to create something great. And it doesn’t have to sound like anything else, it’s just got to fire on all cylinders within its chosen genre. Hell, if Apple were a major label it wouldn’t have put out the iPhone because there was nothing else like it in the marketplace, there’d be no demand for it. But a great band creates its own demand. And, it takes a while for it to catch on.

We’ve been focusing on instant. Ever since we learned video can blow acts up.

But those acts crashed back to Earth just about as fast. Turns out if you want something to last, it’s got to grow slowly. You need early adopters, who believe and spread the word. You’ve got to let your act percolate in the marketplace. True riches come down the line. And they last, because you’ve got a legion of believers.