I just finished reading the Millennium Trilogy.

It wasn’t easy.  Richard Griffiths had to send me the "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest" from the U.K.  It was six hundred pages long.  But I savored every line.  As I was introduced to a new world that was eerily similar to my own.  Because, as Depeche Mode once sang, people are people.

Mikael Blomkvist is all about the work.  He may get laid in the midst of his passion, but romance will not get in the way of his pursuit.  For truth, justice and what we used to call the "American Way".  Something Tea Partiers have bastardized to the point where socialistic Sweden is closer to what we used to be than their vision for the future.  One in which we live in a society where everyone is included and the government makes sure no individual gets an unfair advantage.

Lisbeth Salander is an outcast, an outsider.  No different from the pierced, tattooed denizens making up the audience at a punk show.  Desirous of playing it their way, skeptical of anyone who wants them to conform, who wants them to play by their rules.

Well, this was before today’s punks went home after the show and wrote software to become rich and famous on their laptops.  Actually, Salander does become rich utilizing her computer skills. But fame?  No, she’s lurking behind the scenes, like a real artist.

A real artist doesn’t do it for public adulation.  If the unwashed masses love you, then what you’re doing can’t be too good, can’t be very edgy, can’t be testing too many limits.  Great art makes people uncomfortable, yet ultimately draws them in.  The Beatles were laughed at in America, they sounded nothing like Elvis or the Four Seasons.  Then, suddenly, seemingly overnight, people threw off their mental constructs and embraced the four lads from Liverpool.  They were born to follow…young men who were not restricted by convention.  John Lennon was chastised by oldsters for stating the obvious, that the band was bigger than Jesus.  Isn’t it interesting that we remember him and his work yet not his detractors…

Stieg Larsson, author of the Millennium Trilogy, died before its publication.  Do you get that?  He wrote three books alone at night, not wondering all the while why he didn’t have more Facebook friends or Twitter followers.  He wasn’t checking his bank account, he was following his passion. The passion of people who call themselves artists today is too often for riches and fame, not utmost personal expression.  An artist does it for the work, too many of today’s "stars" do it for the aftereffects of the work.

In today’s L.A. "Times" there’s a story about the infiltration of corporations in music.  If you think this is the future, you’re probably sucking at the tit.  You too, want to get paid.  That’s what’s wrong with too many agents, too many middlemen brokering corporate deals, they say they’re about the music, but really, they’re about the money.  Do you really want to trust these people?

Who do you want to trust?

Lennon said he could only believe in Yoko and himself.  That’s the essence of an artist.  You can’t believe in the label or the promoter.  They’re necessary evils.  But their interests are not aligned.  You are the creator, they are the exploiter.  So you end up with Clive Davis telling you how you should make your music to please him.  That’s like having Mickey Rourke over your shoulder telling you how to screw.

Maybe you don’t get that reference.  How Mr. Rourke supposedly had fourteen women in one night.  It was all over the Web last week.  Just like GaGa shopping in that ridiculous outfit.  And the exploits and meanderings of too many little-talented but ultra-famous.

And then we’ve got the OK Go Rube Goldberg video.  An incredible achievement sponsored by State Farm Insurance.  Is this a victory or a loss?

In the world of music, it’s a loss.  Because if the underlying song, whose name escapes me, was that good, we’d already know it, and certainly remember it after seeing the clip.  Unfortunately, the clip was more creative than the music.  Damian Kulash’s expertise seems to be as a performance artist more than a musician.  And that’s fine, but what about the music?

And there was some more hype about Phoenix in today’s "New York Times".  But at least the music led the way there.  SNL wanted the band because it heard the new record, not because Procter & Gamble threw its weight behind the foursome.

It’s hard to put an ad in a book.

No, let’s restate that.  It doesn’t work too well.  Or, most companies won’t pony up, unless the author is already ubiquitous, and then the company’s money isn’t needed.  The book stands alone.  What makes the Millennium Trilogy work is the work itself.  The writing.

Stieg Larsson sketched out a landscape of events, with assorted characters and motivations. Unlike "Avatar", the key wasn’t the surface, but what was underneath.  Today mainstream art is about the sheen.  But it used to be different.  Used to be art was edgy and oftentimes ugly.  And the conflagration surrounding it brought the mainstream to it.  And that’s quite a difference.  One is made for a market, the other creates a market.

Used to be it was almost impossible to get attention.  When Andy Warhol uttered the famous aphorism, the average punter could not get on TV, not even in the newspaper.  But now people put themselves and their wares up on MySpace and YouTube and expect endless attention and adulation.  When most of us shrug.  Because there’s no reason to pay attention.  Unless you’re Tila Tequila showing us your boobs and alternately claiming pregnancy and miscarriage

I kept hearing good things about "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo".  I saw it seeping into the public consciousness.  I checked it out.  Over a year after it was released in America.  Ever play last year’s pop hits?  They sound as dated as a Pinto.

And when I entered the world, I was alone.  Just like I was listening to great records in my bedroom.  There was no club I could go to to try and chase women while someone read from the book in the background.  I was drawn in, gave up my regular life to read, in thrall to the work.

"The Girl Who Played With Fire" wasn’t quite as good.  Because it ended abruptly.  Little did I know its loose ends would be picked up in the third edition…

It was like following a band.  You’re dedicated.  You wade through the morass, buy the not as great second album to get to the third.  Because the band is on a mission, of exploration. Reaching for the Holy Grail of expressing themselves, of their art.

Music will be relevant once again when it is purveyed by people like Stieg Larsson.  Doing it not for the fame, but the experience.

Do not confuse GaGa and Lucian Grainge and all the other tools trying to make a buck with music.  That’s commerce.  And no wonder big corporations want to play along.  That’s what they want, money.  No corporation wants to be involved with something unknown, edgy and dangerous.  It can’t risk its reputation.  Whereas all the artist has is his reputation.  So he won’t do one thing that compromises it either.  Even after he’s made it.  Because the audience knows.

All of America is a sham.  Because the media and the politicians make like the audience doesn’t know.  It does.  It knows that the Democrats are almost as bad as the Republicans and Obama can’t lead and you can’t trust Fox News.  And the story of the decade is how the Internet is undermining the establishment and the old institutions can’t cope.  That’s you, "New York Times". To think that a newspaper should be relevant in 2010 is to believe that we should all be driving Model T’s and using electric typewriters.  Times change.  And you need to change with them.

And like I said, the people have changed.  They know the music on the hit parade is vapid, evanescent and insignificant.  They know who’s selling out.  They know, like Frank Zappa claimed, most people are only in it for the money.  And they also know, just because you know how to use GarageBand and are hawking your music, that doesn’t mean it’s worth listening to.

Everybody wants to be famous.  Everybody wants to party with the Hiltons and the Kardashians. Everybody wants to be atop the pecking order.  As if we could truly live in Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average.

But this is untrue.  There are winners and losers in the world.  And great artists speak of both. They don’t tell us about their exotic lifestyles, in song and on TV, they speak about honest emotions, heartbreak and financial ruin.  Because this is the fabric of America.

Sure, there are entertainments that provide escape.

But what we draw close to our bosom, and what truly lasts, is the unsullied honesty of the lifer, someone doing it because he has to, because he’s got to get his message across, who will continue even if no one is paying attention.  And believe you me, when most of today’s failed "artists" realize no one cares, they jump ship immediately, into marketing something else. Because it’s not about the music.  It’s never about the music.  And to be valid, to be interesting, to draw us away from our smartphones and PlayStations and flat screens, it’s got to solely be about the music.  No dancing, no playing to hard drive, just expression, warts and all.