Last Sunday night I went to the Wiltern to see Ray LaMontagne.

I am not a fan of the act, but I am of the manager, so as a favor I went.  I wasn’t closed.  But the throng in attendance was.  It was a veritable babeathon.  I saw Joey Lauren Adams downstairs by the bathroom, I LOVED her in "Chasing Amy.  During the break I saw the sex addict from HBO’s "Tell Me You Love Me" with her posse on the next couch over.  And Lisa was swooning over Tom Brady’s baby mama Bridget Moynihan in the lobby, although I thought she had a tiny head and Eric thought she was nowhere near a 10.

But women only made up half of the audience.  The guys were out in force.  And they didn’t look soft.  And the assembled multitude ROARED not only when Ray hit the stage, but after every single number.  And what did Ray have to say about all of it?  NOTHING! Other than the obligatory "Thank you" and band introductions.

It was truly strange.  We’re used to assaults.  Productions.  Shows.  The music hasn’t stood alone for oh-so-very long.  Blame MTV, blame Top 40 radio, blame Tommy Mottola, but where we are today is so far from where we once lived.  Used to be the acts and the audience were in it together, celebrating the music.  The acts of yore didn’t wear stage outfits, they came on stage in their regular clothes, like Ray LaMontagne, wearing his flannel shirt, well-worn jeans and work boots.  But when they hit those notes, you got this inner joy, you looked to the heavens and sang along as the music inhabited your soul.

On the way back from Beverly Hills just now, I heard "Statesboro Blues" on Outlaw Country.  The Allman Brothers version.  Do you know it?  You could be lying somnambulant on the couch, even stoned out of your mind, and when you hear Duane’s slide you’ve got no choice but to jump up and start dancing around the room.  Your mood is instantly changed.  You feel positively alive.

In a long conversation with Alex Hodges at the Greek Saturday night he told me he booked EIGHTEEN stadium dates for the Allman Brothers in the summer of ’74.  EIGHTEEN!  There isn’t an act extant that can sell out eighteen stadium dates today.  Not even U2. They gave up on that kind of trek in the U.S. after the "Pop Mart" tour.  The Stones may book ’em, but they don’t sell ’em out.  Kenny Chesney tries, but he books a whole slate of acts, he alone is not enough.  The Allman Brothers were enough.

Conventional wisdom is no one wants to go, no one wants to sit that far away.  But we went to the stadium shows the same way people went to Obama rallies.  We wanted to show our solidarity, we wanted to unite with our brethren against the forces of evil, WE WANTED TO HAVE A GOOD TIME!

And it’s nice to be able to be up close and personal, to be able to see the acts full-size, but that’s secondary to the music.

We haven’t sold music that infects the audience in so long.  Let me change that, music sans artifice hasn’t dominated the national conversation in far too long.  The machine wants flash, it wants gossip, the music is just a platform upon which to build a personality. Even though so many of the great musicians were verbally impaired and could only truly speak through their instruments.

Talk to a promoter.  Ask him or her what sells.  They’ll talk about bands you barely know that come back to their market more than once a year and never falter, even though they haven’t had a new record in eons.  It’s like there’s a private network supporting these acts.  Reported nowhere but in the grosses.  Like that Ray LaMontagne gig.  He sold out TWO Wilterns!

But it wasn’t his first album.  His music wasn’t jammed down America’s throat.  It was allowed to percolate, it was owned by the public, not the media.  And suddenly, SUPERNOVA!

And it’s only about the music.  He didn’t party with an Olsen twin, he’s not involved in a big scandal, he’s just writing his truth, and the audience has responded.

We’re in a new era.  There hasn’t been this big a divide between the Top 40 and what’s real since the late sixties and the advent of underground FM radio.  The Top 40 acts of that era might be able to play the lounge in Vegas, but Eric Clapton still plays arenas.  If Led Zeppelin reunited, THEY could sell out stadiums.  Their success was based on the music.  Personalities came second, if they figured in at all.

If you want instant fame, record a Top 40 hit.  Flog it to high heaven.  If you want a career, create great music.  That makes people jump up and participate.  Worry less about staggering statistics than the rabidity of the audience you do have.

I discovered the Allman Brothers in January of 1970, smoking dope in Dave McCormick’s dorm room, downstairs in Hepburn Hall, at Middlebury College.  If you haven’t been high and nodded your head to the guitar figure in "Midnight Rider", you haven’t been stoned.

Bill Graham booked the act without a national profile to close the Fillmore East.

Shortly thereafter, the double live album, sans any hits whatsoever, was unleashed upon the marketplace.  It became the soundtrack to dorm life, even though the mainstream media was completely out of the loop.

Then Duane died.

But the band didn’t.

"Eat A Peach" shored up the base.

But it wasn’t until the fall of ’73, YEARS after the band had been formed and started recording that they broke through, with "Ramblin’ Man".  Even though I’d seen them the summer before, blowing the Band and the Grateful Dead off the stage at Watkins Glen, it wasn’t until months later that the rest of America stood up and took notice.  And not only bought "Brother & Sisters", but went back and purchased the catalog.

This is the way it used to be.  This is the way it’s gonna be now.  The mark of your success will be how many tickets you can sell, not how many discs you can move.  Casual listeners are satisfied with the track, fans want to go to the show.

Like Barack says, we’re all in it together.  It’s time for the music business to heed this lesson too.  We’ve got to bring the audience in. And the way you do this, the way you keep people coming back, is not through production, flash and sets, but music.  Top 40 stars are only as big as their last hit.  Whereas the Allman Brothers, even absent multiple key players, can still do bang up business on the road forty years later.