Music is my food and life
Don’t take it away

I was expecting a greatest hits set.

I didn’t expect Peter Frampton to be the savior of rock and roll.

There were blue-hairs in the audience. Well, wealthy ones, who looked like they’d cozy up to a horse but not a Les Paul. Patrons who go to all the shows. People who looked to have abandoned rock and roll with the advent of the Beatles.

So, Peter comes out with his acoustic, performs mellow tunes to satiate the assembled multitude and then exits to hosannas.

But this is not what happened, he positively WAILED! Didn’t give the audience what it wanted, but what it needed. He illustrated what it was like to be a guitar god, from a different, long gone era, but in this case positively modernized for today!

The band hit the ground running with “Somethin’s Happening,” technically entitled “Baby (Somethin’s Happening)” from the third LP:

All right, somethin’s happening
Hold tight, it might be lightning
Turn up the lights I feel like dancing

He was doing the full shed show, after all, he’d graced the stage at a sold-out Red Rocks the night before, but instead of 9,000, the Vilar holds 575, and the audience was full of resort retirees with more money than fandom. But Frampton plowed on. Playing to those who cared and converting those who didn’t. Shining the lights on them and getting them to sing the chorus as if they were at a rock and roll fantasy camp.

And the best part of “Somethin’s Happening” is when Peter squeezes out those notes, which he did so exquisitely on his Gibson, my fingers were twitching and my face was scrunching just like it did when I listened along back in my bedroom in Fairfield, Connecticut.

And from there the show just rocked harder.

Until the fourth cut, when Peter gave them what they wanted, what they came for, “Show Me The Way.”

But then the show took a left turn. Peter played a new number, “Saved A Bird,” prefacing it with the true tale that inspired it and imploring the audience to clap after like it was “Do You Feel,” getting them to practice beforehand, and they executed their job with energy and excitement after Peter performed the number he just “dropped” last week, and the live iteration superseded the recorded version.

And then, it’s back to “Frampton Comes Alive!,” right?

NOOOO!

Frampton went to the opening cut from his 2006 Grammy-winning instrumental album “Fingerprints.”

“Boot It Up” reminded me of nothing so much as a Jeff Beck workout. But with twin guitars burning up the stage.

And then it occurred to me. This show was straight out of ’69. Maybe ’70 or ’71. Back before the internet, back before diversions.

Before the show Frampton announced that you could take as many snapshots and videos as you wanted during the first three songs, but after that… The ushers policed this policy, no one was distracted.

And there were no video screens. Just a band on stage. MUSIC!

And when the mellifluous tones engulf the auditorium your mind is set free, your life is laid out before you, you contemplate where you were and how you got here but in this instance it wasn’t nostalgia, but new music that was positively ALIVE!

In an era where everything is canned, there were no hard drives whatsoever. Just a five piece banging it out, it was akin to listening to a band in a basement, back when that’s what kids did, get together and knock it out before they all became addicted to social media.

Listen to “Boot It Up,” you’ve probably never heard it, but it’s a one listen get:

Boot It Up – YouTube

And from there it was ANOTHER cut from “Fingerprints”!

I saw these acts when they were in their heyday.

I saw them on the comeback tour, maybe once more, but I cannot go again.

They’ve stopped being musicians and started being cardboard cutouts, vessels for your memories. They emerge in outfits and play their hits to prerecorded backup tracks and the whole thing is positively creepy. I may be old, but I am not dead.

Whereas Frampton doesn’t wear a wig, he let his hair go white, he’s still venturing down the path of rock and roll, being a musician, do you want to come along? HELL YEAH!

And after his tribute to Chris Cornell with a searing rendition of “Black Hole Sun,” I started to wonder, was he EVER going to give the audience what they came for? NO! There was a high-amped take of “Money,” and the version of “I Wanna Go To The Sun” was not the quiet one from the live album, but a take even more blistering than the studio version.

And after a rousing rendition of “Baby, I Love Your Way,” the audience which remained, the blue-hairs were long gone, was up and swaying in a communal ritual that linked what was to what now is.

And then…

I thought he wasn’t going to play it. Since he’d mentioned it earlier in the show, that’s a harbinger of absence. And the whole presentation was a left turn, a journey down the road less taken, but then…

The last song on “Frampton’s Camel,” the longest cut on “Alive!,” the one that dominated FM radio in the seventies but is rarely heard anymore except on the satellite, since it’s over fourteen minutes long…

You know the descending riff.

And soon those not already standing got up from their seats. They had to pray at the altar of rock and roll, they needed to reveal who they truly were.

They didn’t look the same. They’d experienced ups and downs. Were beaten down by the world, but when they heard this song they all felt like we who lived through the era when rock ruled do.

Must have been a dream, I don’t believe where I’ve been
Come on, let’s do it again

Seems like a dream from this distance, and I thought I could never do it again. But I’m standing there, part of the assembled multitude, watching the band trade solos (Bob Mayo!) and I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, rock can come back, at least for those of us who once believed. It requires us to pull on our boots and start marching, not forgetting where we we’ve been, but getting excited about where we’re going.

He could have gone through the motions. No one’s paying attention in Beaver Creek, Colorado. It’s just another gig on the endless road. I’ve seen acts punch the clock for decades, on the fumes of what once was, burdened by who they used to be. But Frampton somehow cast aside the chains. He’s all over Twitter, tweeting his political opinions when everybody is afraid to offend a single potential customer. Hell, I’ll argue the debacle in Minnesota was good for his image, you see he’s still a star and he still cares! We want those who believe in themselves, who want to give it their all, who want to surf the zeitgeist along with us, who have not forgone their sense of humor, who know their prowess on their instrument can motivate armies immune to the rantings of politicians.

You see, we feel like they do.

And we want to feel this way more. We want to get up off the couch, the only reason we’re watching Netflix is because our musicians have let us down. But if a pied piper stood up and decided to lead, we’d follow them.

We couldn’t help but follow Frampton last night.

CODA

I figured there’d be no encore. After all, Peter and his band had given it their all for almost two hours, and how do you follow up “Do You Feel Like We Do”?

But the house lights did not come on. The audience kept clapping and cheering. It resembled nothing so much as the Fillmore East. And then Peter came back on stage.

I figured for a couple of quiet numbers, you know, to calm the audience down and send them home ready for bed, some of those acoustic takes from the live album.

BUT NO!

“Four Day Creep” boogied into an over the top version of “I Don’t Need No Doctor”! They were rockin’ the Vilar. Just like Peter rocked the Fillmore back in the spring of ’71, when I was there, when the headliner was Lee Michaels.

The double live LP was released that fall and Humble Pie became giants. It looked like the laugh was on Frampton, who announced he was leaving before it was recorded. But in music you don’t play it safe, you go your own way, that’s where the rewards are planted, on the road less taken.

And we walked down that road to nirvana last night.

STAY IN THE MARKETPLACE

Mystery is history. Remove yourself from the scene and you’re forgotten. Your number one concern is satiating your fans. You do this by giving them news updates and new music. Music is primarily one-offs on YouTube and Soundcloud. An acoustic cover of a new hit or a classic can work wonders, people already know the song so they don’t tune out and they love to pass these things on, potentially converting newbies. As for news… Unless you’re a superstar, keep it under the radar and don’t overdo it. Put it on your website and socials, BUT ONLY ONCE! Sure, if you’re inclined to, post life updates and opinions on the social networks. But you must do it yourself, if you’re employing someone to do it the audience can tell and it works against you. You don’t want to look like you’re working it. If you’re a superstar, you want to play the gossip game, hopefully to your advantage. You also don’t want to look like you’re working it and you don’t want to look bad. But when you’ve reached the pinnacle there’s only one way to go, down, and it’s a long, hard climb back up. So do your best to maintain your status until…

NEW MUSIC

It must be great, it must be a hit, or don’t even bother. You want to keep up your momentum. A stiff can move you backward. Nobody knows anything, but you know when you’ve crossed the bar, when you’ve achieved greatness. Your heart pitter-patters after composing the song, or upon hearing the final mix. If you’re not reaching this peak, don’t double-down, take a break. Great art is based on inspiration, which comes at the strangest times, when you’re in the shower, when you’re reading the newspaper, the more you live your normal life the better chance you have of capturing lightning in a bottle. As for songs written by others… If you’re in Nashville, if you’re a superstar, you get the best, because the writers want to make money. But if you’re not Luke Bryan, best to compose yourself, because you’re evidenced in the song, it’s personal, or try to work with outside people, those not part of the usual system. If it’s pop, yes, there’s nobody like Max Martin, but too many of these songs sound alike, they were made in a factory, and what draws people most is the outside cut, the different. Don’t be afraid to take a chance.

ALBUMS

Forget it unless you’re an oldster, if you’ve had hits in the past and are not gonna have one in the future. The album will garner you publicity, even though radio won’t play it and no one wants to hear the new songs in concert. It’s a circle jerk, the last remnants of an old paradigm. So, you can go for the low hanging fruit, or you can truly be a musician and try to play the game like the youngsters, try to cut a hit. Believe me, people will give it a listen. As far as gaining traction…

YOU NEED A TEAM

Nothing succeeds on its own anymore. You need a team of people lobbying the tastemakers. Go with a team that is excited about you, not the team that has the most success, they don’t need you. But chances are you’re already signed to a label anyway. In that case, make friends with the powers-that-be. Keeping your label at arm’s length is a disaster. Have dinner with the President, take the promo staff out for a brainstorming session, send an e-mail when someone does something good. People want to work for those they know who are nice, it’s no different in music than it is in any other walk of life. Your label is in the marketplace 24/7, they know who they can work, whereas you don’t come to bat that often.

THE TRACK STIFFS

Happens more often than not, best to have something else in the pipeline, something that sounds different, that you also believe is great, give it a shot, but not until you’re sure the prior track is dead. But that could be as soon as a month, even sooner. People have short memories, they forget the stiffs, as long as you subsequently have a hit.

TELEVISION

This is tricky. Because it means less than ever before and nothing is worse than playing a cut that has already failed. Don’t expect much, but you can get lucky.

PRINT

Not as important as online, although the major news outlets are there too. DO NOT DO A TYPICAL STORY/INTERVIEW WHERE YOU SAY THIS IS YOUR GREATEST ALBUM EVER AND HOW… People ignore this stuff, they’ve seen it too much, it’s just hype. Better to just have a squib or a quick review, or else a full interview that’s more about you than the music. Best instance of this is the Father John Misty story in the “New Yorker,” it’s what “Rolling Stone” used to do, he came across as an individual, as opposed to part of the working combine. Also, it was OFF CYCLE! That’s the new game, if you’ve got any traction, you want stories long after the new music has been released, both talking about its run in the marketplace and where your head is at. Front-load at your peril.

ONLINE

It’s a cornucopia of outlets. Have your PR team service them all. You’d be stunned how many just print your press release verbatim.

RADIO

It comes last today. Even if you’re a superstar. The action is all in streaming. Become a student of the Spotify charts, see what is working, how long the tracks stay on. Also note that oftentimes the most successful cuts sound completely different from the rest. You can get lucky, people can stumble on to your track on a playlist and get hooked, even if they didn’t know you before.

PLAYLISTS

The new payola. Even if you’re just paying a service. If you’re truly a star, your team has a relationship with Spotify and Apple (and Amazon!) It behooves these services to make hits, it burnishes their image, evidences their power, but they’re run by data. If you’re not reacting, you’re done.

TOURING

Don’t become too invested in cleaning up on the road. The shorter the better. You want to be in the studio, you want to make records. If you have enough hits, you can work forever. Once you go on tour you’re forgotten. Oh, the music press might publicize your initial date, you might get a review in every market, if you’re lucky, it’s just that the action is all in cyberspace, online, on streaming services. Out on the road you’re in your silo, doing nothing but making dough. Unless, of course, you do something different, which almost nobody does. Best example is Phish’s Baker’s Dozen at Madison Square Garden, not repeating any song in a seemingly endless number of dates. Their fans can’t stop telling everybody they know how great this is, it puts Phish top of mind. Yes, there’s more than one way to play this game. But if you think taking a year to make an album that you publicize a month or more before release and then sell an eighteen month tour at the same is the game to be played, you’re living in the past. The present rules, wake up and change, it’s good for you!

The First Day In August – Spotify

The First Day In August – YouTube

On the first day in August
I wanna wake up by your side
After sleeping with you
On the last night in July

I play this song every year.

We knew Carole King wrote “The Loco-Motion.” At least I did, it was one of the first 45s I ever bought, it was that MWAA sound of what I think is a saxophone, actually I just did a little research and Artie Kaplan said he overdubbed his sax five times to get that sound, the infectious one that made me make my mother rush to the discount store so I could purchase it. It spun on that box record player I owned, you know, the one with the heavy tonearm and speaker inside, that made the records turn grey if you played them enough. I was in fifth grade, before the Beatles broke, I remember buying “Monster Mash” at the same time, and I knew it was a novelty record, but I couldn’t get over the lines “The coffin-bangers were about to arrive/With their vocal group, ‘The Crypt-Kicker Five,'” it’s amazing how one sound or one line can hook you. And this was before music was forever, I’d graduated from “Ruff and Reddy” records, tracks were only for then, it wasn’t until the Beatles broke over a year later that we got the idea there was something more here, at this time music was just a business, sound like today?

Anyway, I remember “The Loco-Motion” having a blue label. I used to watch it spin on the record player. Why did we do this? I don’t know! We were enraptured, we wanted to get closer to the music. And, like I said, under the title, it said “Goffin-King,” whoever they were, but I soon learned. But their run was starting to end, and then it was 1971.

There was a previous LP that stiffed, and “Tapestry” was not an immediate hit, it didn’t jump out of the box, but then word spread, maybe it was the single “It’s Too Late,” they don’t make dreamy, heavy songs like this anymore, “You’re So Vain” was similar, whereas today you’ve got to hit them over the head right away, then again “It’s Too Late” was not that dissimilar, the hooky chorus came soon, and then back to that irresistible piano figure. And when there was a giant song on the radio and the act had credibility what you did was go out and buy the album and immerse yourself in it. And from the initial riff of “I Feel The Earth Move” you were hooked, these were perfect compositions performed with heart and energy, no one could pooh-pooh the album, and no one did in an era where everybody was deploring your taste, we all rallied around “Tapestry” and if they wiped history clean and re-released the LP today it too would go straight to the top of the chart, no, music doesn’t sound like this today, but songs still rule and when your compositions rule, so do you.

“Tapestry” was followed up by “Music,” released only ten months later, which seems kind of amazing, but the truth is the two to three year cycle didn’t emerge until later in the decade, now it was still an album a year and you didn’t want to miss Christmas, everything was faster back then, don’t forget, the Beatles broke the paradigm of multiple LPs a year by going to one an annum, but even the then breaking Elton John put out multiple LPs a year.

And “Music” was not as successful. “It’s Going To Take Some Time” and “Sweet Seasons” were mild hits, but the following LP, “Rhymes & Reasons,” put out in October 1972, ten months later, was a relative disappointment, with no singles. King wasn’t quite Alanis Morissette, with one big hit and then almost nothing of stature, but it looked like she was on a bad arc until two years and two albums later she had a gigantic hit with a different sound, the then ubiquitous “Jazzman” with the indelible Tom Scott sax solo. But I purchased “Rhymes & Reasons” and knew it by heart, you bought two LPs after the monster breakthrough, and it’s this album that contains “The First Day In August.”

There were winners on “Rhymes & Reasons,” mostly “Bitter With The Sweet” and “Been To Canaan,” but “The First Day In August” is the one that sticks in my brain, that I start thinking about in the middle of July, the peak of the summer on the east coast.

Not in California. In Los Angeles summer starts slowly, it creeps up on you. And the hottest days can be when the sun starts to set early, in September and October.

But when it hits August on the east coast you know summer’s almost gone, you start thinking about school, you start thinking about fall, you start thinking about cold weather. Your mentality starts to change, from pure fun to a reflective state, like the vibe of “The First Day In August.” Then again, if you’re a rock star, and Carole King was, it’s summer all year long, or it can be, if you choose. School is far behind you. Every day is a playday. Sure, you’ve got to go into the studio, make records, but that seemed like a privilege to those of us on the outside, and this was before the sheds, when everybody toured during the summer, rather you toured all year long, whenever it fit with the album cycle.

So, it was the first day in August after the album containing the track had been released. I’d had a dumb job all July, and now I was going to drive my sister cross-country to the promised land, to Los Angeles for graduate school. And I vividly remember sitting on the brown corduroy couch in the “new room” of the addition which had been built eleven years before in 1962 and listening to “The First Day In August” over the stereo. There was hustle and bustle, we were about to go on our trip, my mother and sister were conversing, but I was trapped in my reverie.

It was the first day in August.

It’s an outdated business model. Pirates stole a Netflix show and the majordomos shrugged and said all episodes were available online, no biggie.

And it wasn’t.

You don’t fight pirates.

You fight their business model!

Which is why you never hear about P2P in the age of streaming. Scour the internet for files that take minutes to download? Never mind worry about viruses? When you can hear what you want instantly, on demand? Never forget convenience wins. Worried about people stealing your wares? Make it easier to buy them. Works every time. Remember when insiders said no one would pay for music anymore? Then yesterday Spotify announces it’s got 60 million subscribers. Wait long enough and people figure it out.

But the fascinating thing is no one wants to steal and leak music anymore. Go back to the earlier part of this century, and that was a big crisis. In the era when the first week meant everything. Now the first week is a joke. Where is Katy Perry’s album today? It’s all about the longevity. Leaving the starting block fast grants you no advantage. The biggest hits of the year were not instant successes, they took time to develop, like “Despacito” and “Redbone.”

But there’s something more sinister afoot. Turns out people are just not that interested. When we had a cohesive business, one in which you knew all the players and all the records, when music was akin to MLB or the NFL, there was an excitement in a release. Now people are inundated with music and they believe they can wait for great to ultimately surface, and they’re only interested in great.

But music does not drive the culture.

Who do we blame? No one? Or the labels that are enabling these niches. The acts playing to sponsors. Adele and Ed Sheeran dominate the landscape, yet no one follows in their footsteps, they may laud the songstress but they denigrate the troubadour, as if creating songs with melody you can sing along with is a crime.

But at least people have an opinion on Adele and Sheeran. The rest of the pile? Most don’t care.

So the acts leak their own records. On Soundcloud, via mixtapes. They’re satiating their fans with a constant stream of product, knowing that recording revenue is not the only one, if you can bond someone to you, you’ve got them possibly for life.

So Drake and the rappers are doing something right.

And the media is completely missing the boat. Thank god Bewkes is selling HBO, because its business model is flawed. Dripping out shows for water cooler discussion. It’s funny, the Netflix shows start slower and last longer, they work their way through the culture, and today you don’t want headlines, but hearts and minds. As soon as someone starts quoting statistics, ignore them. In an era of big data what we want most is that which touches us, that which we embrace. When we binge on Netflix or Amazon we feel we’re on an individual quest and we can’t wait to tell everybody about it. Whereas “Game Of Thrones” airs, an episode is talked about for forty eight hours, and then it’s over.

So what we’ve learned is we’re looking for mania, that which we can all pay attention to and have an opinion on. Isn’t that what the web epitomizes? Everybody weighing in with their opinion? You want to enable this, you want to see it as paramount, you want to interact with your fans, not keep them at arm’s length, you want to come down off your throne and be an Average Joe.

Well, not really. But in an era where everyone feels powerful online, if you puff yourself up you’re a target.

So ignore the headlines, not because they’re fake news, but because they just can’t get it right. They report the stories in an old way. Focusing first on numbers, and headlines that are meaningless. Who knows what was number one on SoundScan last week, does SoundScan even matter? I can go on Spotify and find the true number one, and it’s updated DAILY!

So know that we are in charge. We are the customer. And the customer rules.

We make hits. We spread the word. And eventually the business model comes to us.

And that business model is on demand.

We want it all.

And we want it NOW!