“‘It was an emergency,’ he wrote,’ and when dealing with emergent behavior there is nothing to do but respond. I was in the moment. And it was not the fire I imagined or dreamed of. It was the fire I got.'”

This should not have been good. I never read the “T” magazine, the “New York Times” style supplement, because it’s all fluff and no substance, all pictures and no meaning. But I was intrigued by the cover, with a pic of Beck and the title “The Art of Sound.”

Remember when Beck meant Jeff? Ironically, it’s the English guitarist who is iconic, who will be remembered, he was getting his victory lap and then he fired his new manager Harvey Goldsmith and returned to that state he’s been inhabiting for most of the past few decades, hiding in plain sight but not acknowledged. It’d be like Mozart was standing in our midst and everybody shrugged.

And the piece on Beck had my eyes glazing over. I loved “Loser,” went to see him at some bowling alley where he emerged in a “Star Wars” helmet and refused to play it, but he gets way too much press for someone with so little impact. If this is pushing the envelope, we need a bigger envelope.

And there’s an interview with Kendrick Lamar, but I haven’t gotten there yet, because my eyes are bugging out about what Tom Waits had to say.

You have to know, back in the seventies, Mr. Waits was not an icon, just another struggling singer/songwriter looking for an audience. He was on a major label and got a push, all acts did back then, but he was just part of the firmament, he did not live on the mountaintop as he does today. That’s what longevity will give you. Not only inspiration and a muse, not only the audience catching up with you, but a spot where you feel comfortable in your art like an old pair of moccasins and you can stretch without worrying and your competitors have given up and gotten real jobs.

Now I met Tom once, when he was still living at the Tropicana, when he said he kept his tools in his fridge, remember when artists had a sense of humor, that’s one reason Van Halen succeeded, David Lee Roth’s cheekiness, and I’d be lying if I said Tom was real friendly, but this was just another drunken after hours conversation at the Troubadour, when he was recognized by the people there and not too many more and now Tom’s a legend.

So, if we go back to the quote above, it turns out Tom was trying to avoid the draft by becoming a fireman. We were all confronted with that possibility, having our ass shot off, our lives interrupted, maybe ended, and all our choices were not proud ones, but we had to escape the horror. And Tom tells a story of a chicken farm in flames and that’s the emergency he’s referring to above, putting out the fire, dousing the flying chickens with water. And there you have inspiration right there.

That’s what art is all about. Being inspired, catching lightning in a bottle, in reaction to some stimulus.

That’s why today’s popular music is so rotten. It’s written in the laboratory in search of dollars as opposed to being composed out in the meadow in search of truth. When you get twenty people together in the studio, build a track over time, you get something that may work on the hit parade, but it rarely touches your soul.

And writing songs is not about creating a hit.

“If you want to catch songs you gotta start thinking like one, and making yourself an interesting place for them to land like birds or insects. Once you get two or three tunes together, wherever three or more are gathered, then others come. It’s like a line for a hot dog place, you know? And when there’s four people lined up on the sidewalk, some people will stop and get in line just ’cause there’s a line.”

It’s about getting in the right space and catching a fire. Putting yourself in a mood, sitting at the piano as Waits does, taking a shower, and seeing what comes. And when it does come, letting the roll continue.

Any artist will tell you that. You’ve got to get the pump primed. And once it is, you’ll be stunned what comes out. Oftentimes the second is better than the first, even the third. And you’re so deep into it you’re not really sure, it’s a trance. And even if nothing commercial results you’ve been on a satisfying trip, you’ve got a smile on your face.

Art has been denigrated in our society. We pay fealty to false gods, but nurturing the creative process is dead. Not only is there no music in schools, we’re inundated with charts and awards, as if either reflected quality. Arts are not sports. There is no clear winner or loser. It’s about creating something that touches people. And unlike sports, arts when done right are not evanescent. Artworks sit in the agora waiting to be discovered years, sometimes decades down the road. They’re time bombs just waiting to go off. And oftentimes they’re hiding in plain sight before they become hits. Waiting for the public and the gatekeepers to feel comfortable pushing the button, waiting for word to spread.

So I know you don’t want to be an artist. My inbox tells me that.

You want to be a businessman. You complain about Spotify and making a living not knowing that that isn’t the life of an artist. An artist, as Tom Waits said above, is someone who responds to stimuli, who can’t help but get it all down, not knowing the end result, but confident this is what they were put on Earth to do.

Three Iconic Musicians on Artistic Creation — and Its Importance Now

This is an individual project.

I just finished reading “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century,” by Timothy Snyder.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Because sooner if not later there’s going to be a terrorist event and you’re gonna lose all your personal rights. That’s how they do it, especially Putin. Under the guise of keeping you safe, you sacrifice the freedom you think you’re fighting for. Like when the Reichstag burned up and Hitler used that as an excuse to declare a governmental emergency, which lasted for twelve years, until the end of World War II. It can happen here. It’s happened in Russia. Where Putin blew up/burned up his own establishments and then under the guise of keeping people safe got a stranglehold on power. Because never underestimate people’s fear.

It’s making them act like sheep today.

Most people are afraid to speak up, for fear of standing out, for fear of being ridiculed, they just want to get along. And Victor Klemperer’s friends slowly became Nazis, one by one, because it felt right, kinda like the internet bubble back in the year 2000. Remember when we heard it was a new economy and the old rules just did not apply? But they still do, they always do, the bubble burst and it turns out managed funds do worse than index funds, did you see Warren Buffett’s pronouncement the other week? He said that rich people don’t want to put their money in index funds, which outperform hedge funds, because they believe they’re special and entitled to special treatment, what the hoi polloi uses they can’t, they’re entitled to something better.

But the point is less about elites than conventional wisdom. Which has been wrong time and again. Even the pollsters. What bugs me about all of them, including Nate Silver, is they just can’t admit they’re wrong. They point to statistics saying that Hillary still won the popular vote as justification for their veracity and sanity, but they missed the major point. It was about who won the election, not statistics. But ain’t that America, where no one wants to admit they’re wrong and take another path.

Now the reason I read “On Tyranny” is because I got an e-mail from Jesse Kornbluth. We all have sources we trust implicitly, whose advice we take, or at least check out and judge for ourselves. You can see what Jesse had to say about Snyder’s book here:

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder
By Jesse Kornbluth

And Snyder can’t write and he hates the internet but he’s a cogent thinker and a Yale professor and his twenty lessons are good starting points.

But let’s go to the internet.

Because it parallels what’s going on in our society today.

When people decry Spotify/streaming, are they any different from the white working men and women who were left behind in the new economy? Hell, they hate Daniel Ek more than they hate Spotify, they consider Ek an interloper, who became a billionaire on their backs.

Forget that theft was rampant before Spotify.

But we’ve got endless reports of acts saying they got puny royalties from streaming services. Old paragons of truth like David Crosby decry streaming, which is just plain sad. Because we live in a global economy and if you want to shut the doors and make America great again, you’re denying the fact that it wasn’t so great to begin with. You needed a record company to be in the game, only a few could compete. Do we live in an era of chaos? Absolutely! But you must march into the future, you cannot live in the past.

But the point is the whole music industry doesn’t want to believe in facts, wants to jet back to the past, and do you think it’s any different in government? Look at yourself first, question your own principles. Then see the world through a different lens.

And the power of the individual cannot be underestimated. And artists can reach more people than politicians, especially musicians, who rule the social media our world runs upon. But rather than speak truth, they’d rather collaborate with established hitmakers and churn out stuff that’s indecipherable from what came before.

Snyder says we must be students of history. Knowing that the future is gonna come.

But no one wants to remember yesterday, unless they’re looking through rose-colored glasses.

Yesterday was an era where artists said no. They left money on the table, their credibility was key. Now they want to be brands, and to tell you the truth I trust BMW and Amazon more than any artist, a whole bunch of corporations, they do their job better. I mean what is the job of an artist? To make money? To anesthetize the public?

So I vacillate between thinking it’s business as usual and believing we’re at a tipping point and everything’s up for grabs.

And I know you do too, unless you’re e-mailing me fake Breitbart stories accusing me of not covering the other side.

My e-mail was blowing up on Friday wondering when I was gonna write about Obama’s conspiracy. Huh? I checked the NYT and the WSJ…nothing. But on Breitbart, those pesky Democrats were wreaking havoc, we have to be saved from their ineptitude that pushed our nation to the brink.

Huh?

While you’re at it, read Tony Blair’s piece in the NYT today, quite cogent and reasonably insightful:

Tony Blair: Against Populism, the Center Must Hold

But the point is it comes down to you and me.

Snyder tells us to turn off the screens and read books, fat chance, but his point that TV news is a reality show bouncing from one headline to the next, with no investigation beneath the surface, is true.

But he asks us to be members of society, to forge tight-knit bonds that will help us endure the coming shocks.

I just don’t feel like anybody in the arts is doing anything. Other than making statements at awards shows.

Hell, there’s no truth in the Oscars themselves. Asking us who didn’t see the movies to tune in and watch the film industry laud the flicks.

But where is the movie with truth? Certainly not in a special effects comic book show.

As for records… Music is the most truthful medium of all. But we’ve abdicated that power in search of the almighty dollar.

Interesting times we live in.

But one thing’s for sure, if we sleep we’re gonna lose.

And right now, despite all the hoopla, too many people are sleeping.

Music Media Summit

It’s about the hang. We’re gonna have a bonding experience. The panels will be good, but it’s about you connecting with me and the other attendees to build relationships that pay dividends in the future.

Lofty goal? You bet! Let’s see what happens!

Every year, for the past 21, in fact, I’ve gone to Aspen, Colorado for Jim Lewi’s Aspen Live conference. Many see it as a boondoggle, a ski trip, but they’ve never been. Spend time on the hill with someone and you get to know them. Most of my social life and a lot of my business life derives from the relationships I’ve made at Aspen Live, and I wasn’t even working it! But when you know someone, they love to reach out and help you, it’s part of being human.

So over Christmas Lewi hit me up to do another ski conference. I wanted to do it in Mammoth, in California, in April. Have you seen how much snow they’ve got there? Most people have never been to the Sierras. They’re staggering. Maybe not as visually impactful as the Tetons, but there are more of them. Mammoth is right on the backside of Yosemite, and if you haven’t been there, that requires a trip too, but Lewi got anxious that people didn’t want to ski in April and he felt it would be better to do it closer to town, so we’re doing it in Santa Barbara.

He’s Mr. Logistics. He’s the one who put it together.

I’m the one responsible for the talent and the interviewing.

So who do we have so far?

Chris Moore. Dedicated cable television watchers might know him from “Project Greenlight,” but in any event, he’s a Harvard-educated movie producer whose latest production is “Manchester By The Sea.” Do you like a depressing movie? I certainly do. Especially when it’s done by Kenneth Lonergan, who made my favorite flick of the twenty first century, “You Can Count On Me.” Lonergan just won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and Casey Affleck won the Oscar for Best Actor and “Manchester By The Sea” was bought by Amazon and Chris told me how hard it is to find material this good and that when he does he has to make it and he’s gonna fill us in on all that.

Second, we’ve got Neil Jacobson. Heard “Blurred Lines”? How about “Uptown Funk”? Neil was the A&R guy responsible for those at Interscope and as a result of this success he’s just been made the new head of Geffen Records. When I sit with Neil it’s so stimulating because he’s not an old fart baby boomer who yearns for the days of yore, he knows how to make hit records today, I can learn something, and he can learn something from me! Our dinners are endless and stimulating and I know Neil will impart wisdom.

And then there’s Jonathan Prince. Global Head of Communications and Public Policy for Spotify. Jonathan’s a bit different from the average streaming music service honcho, you see he comes from politics, not a record label, who knows, it’s he who might someday occupy the White House. But Jonathan is fully versed in the licensing issues and mumbo-jumbo spread about Spotify. He’ll give us the real story re the deals, re the steel wool covering up the truth. He’s a smart guy who sings it straight and you’ll be edified.

The above three are confirmed. There are others in the works, but until they confirm, I’m not gonna mention their names.

And, to tell you the truth, sometimes people cancel. So if you’re gonna sign up wanting a guarantee everybody appears maybe you shouldn’t come. Because maybe you don’t get it. Which is the conference is all about us. The exchange of ideas between the attendees. Working out the issues and getting to know each other, the speakers are just the icing on the cake, although there will be plenty of them and they will be good.

It’s Lewi’s conference, but I’m gonna interview these subjects. My goal is to find out where they came from, which defines where they are now and where they are going to. Where you come from is oh-so-important. It shapes your vision and direction. My goal is to not only find out about the speakers’ business, but what makes them so special as individuals that they’ve had success.

So, if you want to know more, feel free to e-mail Jim Lewi at jim@liveworksevents.com

And, of course, you can reach me at the above address.

This is an experiment, we’re hanging it out there. And when you push the envelope.

Good things can happen.

P.S. Roger McNamee just confirmed he will be a speaker. We’ll dig deep into how he snared Bono to be his partner in Elevation Partners, as well as his friendships with Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and his tenure in the band Moonalice…and those years teaching skiing at Killington!

I’d never heard of them.

But the guy in Blue Sky said they were from Vermont and they were really good. I could tell by his enthusiasm he meant it. But he lived in Vermont, he was a ski instructor at Okemo. Was he trustworthy?

You know a band is good when you like their music without hearing it on record first.

And do records really matter anyway?

Our music scene has bifurcated, there are recordings and live and they’re two separate worlds. Used to be you wanted to work at the record label, now you want to be a promoter or an agent, because live is everything. The labels are puffed up, saying they’re responsible for the sound, but how to account for a band like Twiddle?

Today Lorde dropped her new single. And believe me, it wasn’t a bolt of inspiration, she wasn’t lying in bed, hearing a sound and then running to her Pro Tools rig. No, there’s a lot on the line, so you bring in the big cats, in this case Jack Antonoff, to build the track into a superstar production that we can all bop our heads to at the supermarket. Even though there’s little humanity evidenced. At first listen I didn’t quite get it, not until the end, the second time through I realized “Green Light” was gonna make it, but it could have been anybody, it didn’t have to be Lorde, there’s so much at stake, and what we end up with is…

Cotton candy.

Now the music scene used to be much smaller. You could comprehend it. You could know the hit parade and the deep tracks, have an opinion on everything. But today we’re all foraging in the wilderness, hoping for a guide, hell, Don Strasburg iMessaged me a few hours back and asked me if I’d heard Hiss Golden Messenger, not only had I not heard them, I’d never HEARD OF THEM! But Don was looking for what’s new and he pushed agent Adam Voith, who has amazing taste, and Adam came up with the band and Don listened and loved it and he told me about two tracks, “Biloxi” and “As The Crow Flies,” and I pulled them up on Spotify and damned if they weren’t good.

Not so good that they’d play on Top 40 radio.

Then again, “good” is not the accurate term. In this case, Hiss Golden Messenger is not obviously commercial, not by the standards shoved in our face, but like Twiddle they have a place in the firmament, they have fans, well, it’s really one guy, but that’s not important, the important point is these acts survive, because they’re supported by their fans!

Now tonight’s show was a soft ticket affair. And middle of the week shows don’t do well, even when they’re attached to Burton’s U.S. Open of snowboarding, which made a bigger splash when it was back in Vermont, with the whole eastern seaboard within driving distance, and I wasn’t expecting much but on the way back from dinner I heard that reggae beat interwoven with electronic elements and damned if I didn’t get it.

I had to stop and listen.

On one hand it’s the Phish configuration. Even down to the drummer on the side.

But the first time I saw Phish was back in 1992, and that’s twenty five years ago. They keep making new people, and these people need new music.

So they’re off on an aural journey, the bass bleating and the lead guitarist dancing atop the beat and I hear no obvious hooks and my jaded outlook doesn’t get it and then…

I find myself bopping to the beat. Not quite noodling like at a Dead show, but the music got inside me and hooked me and made me feel good.

Used to be you went to the show to unite with the songs on the radio, on the turntable, the tracks you knew by heart. But now, many people go to the show for the feeling, the environment, in a digital world it’s great to interact with humanity, the music is the special sauce.

And I’m bringing the band up on my phone and I learn that they just announced their own festival, in Burlington, they’re gonna do four sets. And yes, Phish did this first, but the point is Twiddle has fans, they’re being supported. They’re MUSICIANS!

Remember when musicians ruled the world as opposed to pop stars? People who practiced and could play? And believe me, this guitarist could play, he was tapping, everybody pays fealty to Eddie Van Halen.

And there are no hard drives and the keyboard player is tickling the ivories and I’m starting to feel warm all over, that this scene survives.

And it does. Twiddle are part of the firmament on JamBase. And they have a live recording from Peter Shapiro’s Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, and I know that many readers are wincing right now, not believing I’m out of the loop, but we’re all out of the loop on some things, it’s the modern condition!

Then again, people aren’t so rigid in their listening. They’ll listen to Lorde and Twiddle. Katy Perry and Led Zeppelin. They’re consumers at the smorgasbord of music. Which sometimes cross-pollinates itself, hell, they rap in country music now.

And every band wants more. More audience, more fame, more money, more impact. But it’s a long hard road. So you’ve got to enjoy the journey. The traveling, the playing, the meeting of people, the getting high.

It’s a lifestyle.

And the audience is in on it. Which is why they go to the shows. Because they want to experience the feeling that only music can deliver.

And my research tells me Twiddle fails on wax, it’s got no obvious hits.

But they do have one track with two million streams on Spotify.

But that’s not the point.

It’s an organic thing. An evolving thing. Different every night.

Kinda like life.