Note From The Ether
Are you a fan of music or stars? If you’re a fan of stars, despite the celebrity culture we seemingly inhabit, your legion is diminishing, music is returning.
Music is a bellwether. Music leads the way. Despite the capitulation of the industry, despite the endless polishing of vapid turds, music is the most vibrant medium, the one that we look to for truth. You can write and record a song in minutes, you don’t have to ask anyone for permission, you don’t have to hit up your parents for production fees, never mind a movie studio. There’s a direct connection from you to your listener’s heart. Assuming someone’s paying attention.
While the film industry grapples with declining disc sales, and tries to establish another physical format, the music world knows that the disc is dead and that online is king. After all, Napster hit at the end of 1999.
Like I said, music is first.
Sure, there are ninnies interested in popular culture, who want to wear the badge of major industry hypes, but music, real music, the kind that touches people, not the momentary stop traffic hit, has gone underground. All that you lament has been gone from the game, everything from songwriting to mistakes…it’s back. Despite the major media being clueless.
You don’t follow the music industry anymore, you don’t listen to the radio and you don’t really care who’s number one, you’re a fan of an act. And those not interested in your act don’t give a shit. It’s not about crossing over, it’s about the great divide.
Don’t feel bad if you don’t like the records reviewed in the newspaper, the ones talked about by the hipsters. They think there’s a mainstream scene. But that’s gone. Propped up to a degree by touring dinosaurs and what’s left of over the air radio, but it just doesn’t count.
I was about to write about an Ian Matthews song, a cover of Jules Shear’s "Shadows Break", from "Walking A Changing Line", one of my favorite albums. And I found out that the now monikered "Iain" released a live album, you can hear the samples here:
Artist: Iain Matthews
Album Title: Nights In Manhattan (And Points West)
Label: ItsAboutMusic.com
you can even buy the MP3s on Amazon. And thinking of that long ago decade known as the eighties my mind stumbled upon John Kilzer, whose first album slayed me. It didn’t break through, but that was back when being signed counted, when it gave you a hand in the game, a shot at stardom, before the game imploded and it all became meaningless. And I learned that you can hear Kilzer’s "classic", "Memory In The Making", on MySpace, on a page a fan established for him:
And, if you try YouTubing Mr. Kilzer, you’ll find not only his video for his lame attempt at a hit, "Red Blue Jeans", but a cover of his greatest song by..? 2,614 people have viewed this musician’s cover
of a song by a musician who’s dropped out of sight. But the song lives on.
That’s what a great song does, live on. Kind of like Willis Alan Ramsey’s "Satin Sheets", or Steve Young’s "Seven Bridges Road", the arrangement of which by Ian Matthews the Eagles supposedly lifted and rendered an off-handed classic.
It’s not about chart position. It’s not about sales. It’s not about gold albums. It’s about hearts and minds. Are you in people’s hearts and minds? Do you touch them, do you affect them?
That’s all that counts. The rest, the trappings, are bullshit.
