Last night I watched Bud Greenspan’s documentary on the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics.

I’m not sure if you’re aware that the L.A. Basin is baking like an oven, but if you’re in Santa Monica, legendarily un-air-conditioned, you don’t want to be home. So, I wasn’t, I was off in the mountains, then at a party, then, after a brief respite at Ralphs, I was inside the Jenn-Air, lying on my bed, watching my suddenly working television. I pay for all the channels, but the Sony’s just about given up the ghost. Got to get a new one, but I’ve got to get this old one out of my domicile first, and that just hasn’t been a priority.

With the picture suddenly visible, I fired up the finale of "Deadliest Catch". Only when it was over did I realize I’d been duped, it was all an ad for the NEXT season of "Deadliest Catch", when the weather was truly horrid. I’m giving up, the show just isn’t that good.

And then, after flipping through all the channels, that’s the nature of television, you can’t shut it off, it’s an addiction that pales in comparison to surfing the Net, yet there are too many empty calories, I fell upon Bud’s show.

You know Bud, the guy who wears his glasses atop his head. You’d think he’d be dead by now. And how fucking weird is it watching an aged winter sporting event six years after it took place. But I couldn’t shut the show off, you see the storytelling had me hooked.

It truly doesn’t matter what the show is about, it’s the telling that hooks us.

Not that the media focuses on this. The media believes we want stars and explosions, we want visual excitement. No, we want something more internal, some insight into the human condition, something that sets our mind adrift, to contemplate how bizarre it is to be living and breathing on this human coil.

And nothing provides this human experience, this setting free of emotions, more than music. But that experience has been shoved underneath the rug by those historically in control, they want to sell, they want those same explosions that the TV and movie businesses strive to create.

So you get beautiful people with heavy beats uttering two-dimensional platitudes whored out to the Fortune 500. No, don’t see this as a condemnation of rap. Rap started out as the opposite. Rap was three minutes of truth, when rock and roll had abdicated the throne. But now even legendary rappers decry the state of the scene. As for popsters… Do you really want to sit down for a conversation with Kelly Clarkson? Do you really want to know where she’s coming from?

Sure, the Beatles wrote hits. But it was when they created "Rubber Soul", the album without singles, that it got interesting. And "Sgt. Pepper" and the White Album… Suddenly, it wasn’t about ditties, but statements, however understated, however subtle, and the audience was drawn in… "She’s Leaving Home" made the Beatles legendary, not "I Want To Hold Your Hand".

As the sixties wore on, artists inspired by the Beatles’ success, their testing of the limits, created album-long statements, usually with tracks that were never broadcast on the AM Top Forty airwaves. And the public gobbled up this experimentation, this truth, the modern concert business was grown and immense amounts of cash were generated.

Those days have returned. The Web is today’s free format FM radio. While the establishment purveys ever more vapid product, those who know the power of music are spreading the word on the Web. They don’t want automatons, they want artists, who inspire them, who set their minds free.

This is what all the blather about saving the album is really about. People want the statement saved, the full-length exploration. They want to revel in this experience. Unfortunately, they’re as locked into the past as Doug Morris and the record companies. If you want to know the future, you look at immutable elements and throw away the packaging.

The immutable element is the power of music to touch one’s soul.

There’s that cliche… Are we even going to listen to the Top Forty hits of this century, even the nineties, ten years from now? Five? Will they be the soundtrack to weddings and bar mitzvahs or classic rock, Motown and other sixties oldies? We’ve already got our answer. Today’s overplayed crap is completely worn out when it finally slides out of the public consciousness. Shit, who even wants to listen to an Eminem album now. But people want to hear AC/DC, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin… It’s how the music makes you feel, it’s what it does to your soul.

The problem is it’s harder to get traction with this type of music, hard to break through the morass and get noticed. But, maybe that Tom Petty song about the A&R man not hearing the single is what it’s all about. Maybe there is no single. Maybe the concept of an A&R man is archaic. Maybe it’s solely about the band. Making its music and releasing it to the public, unfiltered.

The old guard abhors this. They’re trying to rationalize their continued existence, spreading bullshit all the while. P2P will result in the death of music. You’ve got to sign 360 deals or the major labels will die, and we’ll all be the poorer for it. But all that’s untrue. The public hungers for that hit music gives them. Not something that slides off their backs, bounces off their foreheads, but x-rays that penetrate their souls and are held close forever.

You have to look at the Web music explosion not as theft, but as raw desire, for the hit that music has generated from the beginning of time. People know the power of music, and they don’t like what the businessmen have done to it, and with the tools at their disposal, now having power themselves, they’ve taken charge. That’s just how important it is to them.

It’s not important for a track to be in a TV show, in an ad. Those are just marketing tools. One track does not make a career. How can you convince people that everything you do is worthwhile, especially after the nineties, when the only cuts worth listening to on endless albums were the singles?

I’d say there’s a revolution brewing, but really, it’s a reclamation, of music’s power. The Netizens don’t care about SoundScan numbers and concert grosses, they only care about how the music makes them feel.

The music of the classic rock acts makes them feel powerful, and reflective, a whole cornucopia of human emotions. They go to the show for the album experience. They know all those cuts that never hit the airwaves, they played the albums ad infinitum.

We want order, we want comprehension instead of chaos. Therefore, we lean on old models. But the only way to the future is on a brand new path, the old models are dead. It’s truly about the music. Does it elate you, does it comfort you, do you want to hear it not only today, but the rest of your life. Will it help you get through after your beloved dumps you, or dies. Will it give you the strength to beat cancer. It will only do this if it’s the unfettered truth. If the focus is on what’s in the grooves instead of the trappings.