It snowed on Friday night.

Now not only does it not rain in Southern California, it certainly doesn’t snow, except in the mountains, which are as high as some Rockies, which always stuns people when they see them through the smog.  But I remember snow.  I grew up in Connecticut.  I went to college in Vermont.

And the funny thing about being ensconced deep in winter in a secluded environment is you don’t care about anybody else, you don’t worry about the havoc being wreaked by the storm miles from where you are.  You’re isolated.  In a way that’s so rare in the interconnected Internet era.  The snow comes down and creates a silence, and you’re inside the bubble, trudging through the accumulation, and you feel your heart go warm inside, like E.T.

I knew it was serious when the doorman asked if we wanted an umbrella.  That’s usually for the rain.  But it was coming down so hard the umbrella was a godsend, it kept us from getting covered as we trudged to Matsuhisa.

And on the way back, the snow had stopped and it was a winter wonderland.  I felt connected with some far distant memory of who I once was.  I’d been here, I’d done that, I felt like I was home.

Needless to say, the skiing on Saturday was fantastic.  Although windy and somewhat cold.  And just before the sun set we met in the lobby of the St. Regis for one final go-round.

We learned a lot.

Rick Farrell from ICM told us soft ticket show money had dried up in so many cases, the cities had just run out of money.

Rob Gordon said that Jonathan Coulton couldn’t be on a major label, because they wouldn’t let him do what he wanted. Release infinite product when the mood struck him, license, give stuff away.

And that’s one of the reasons Marty Winsch didn’t make a deal with a major for Corey Smith.  They wanted everything and offered very little in return.  I mean it would be one thing if these companies actually functioned in the areas where they want to skim revenue.

And Peter Tempkins told us how insurance really worked.  Pretty fascinating.  One of the most recent claims was the result of a roadie toppling a drum riser through a movie screen.  Can it be repaired?  If not, it’s 50k.

It was one of Dan Steinberg’s gigs.  He runs Square Peg concerts.  They go where the big boys won’t, like Fresno.  They’re doing boffo at the b.o. with Straight No Chaser.

And Michael Goldberg revealed some of the vagaries of running a club in Aspen.  He’ll pay, will you come?  Wayne Coyne flew in just to check out the space, Flaming Lips are playing the Belly Up this month.

And Ted Guggenheim told us all about apps.  The funniest story he had was about a meeting with Buick.  Where the company revealed the biggest problem with the cool car they showed a picture of was the brand name!

Should every venue and act have an app?  Shouldn’t people be able to buy tickets through an app?  Do you text?  Do you cough up the e-mail addresses to the band?

Goldberg’s got a policy against that, turning over the e-mail addresses.  I’m with him.  I hate spam.  Everybody decried ReverbNation, which floods our inboxes with junk.  Maybe this is one of the reasons young ‘uns don’t even use e-mail anymore.  They text.  They BBM.  They want it immediately.

It’s so hard to reach people.

Then again, if you have something great, people can’t get enough of it.

And late Saturday night, after dinner, we sat in the bar debating the best drummers in rock and roll.  Funny how the online lists can be so wrong.  We were cataloging the unsung, from Jim Keltner to the Marotta brothers, and wasn’t it interesting that a great drummer was key to a successful band but so many of the great drummers had been in so many bands?

It’s over now.

And I miss it.

But the funny thing about friends these days is they don’t have to live down the street, they don’t have to go to the same school, you don’t need to be able to reach them by bicycle.

Today, everybody in the world lives right next door.  You can have good friends that live in another country, never mind a different time zone.  And when you reconnect physically, it’s like no time has passed.

That’s what the Aspen group is like.