We believe in it because there’s no advertising.

That’s not completely true, that’s just the icing on the cake. The truth is HBO is a paragon of excellence with deep pockets that attracts the best creators in media. And when HBO says yes, which is not that often, it gives carte blanche to those creators, believing art is best left to the artists.

Sounds like Mo Ostin’s Warner Brothers, I know!

So HBO has Bill Maher, who offends people on a regular basis, caring not a whit if you disagree with him.

And “Vice,” which takes you to places you didn’t know existed or never wanted to go to and makes you want to buy a plane ticket, gets you so riled up by the world’s inequities that you want to protest, just like you did in the sixties.

And John Oliver, who uses comedy to poke fun at the ridiculousness of life.

And it is ridiculous. Public life. All the ass-kissing. I watched this iHeartRadio Country Festival on Yahoo and it made me want to puke. The constant screaming, the endless plaudits, what world do these people live in? ONE IN WHICH RADIO CONTROLS THEIR CAREER DESTINY, SO THEY’D BETTER PLAY BALL!

Everybody in music is beholden to someone else. Bob Dylan had it right, when he said you’ve got to serve somebody. And it’s true, but how bad is your boss?

The Warner Brothers of the past is not the Warner Brothers of the present. Today’s record company wants to own everything you do and pay you little for it and if you don’t succeed instantly they’re going to kick you to the curb.

So in order to make your numbers, you tie up with the corporations. Who are people according to Mitt Romney, who have our best interests at heart.

HUH?

So John Oliver is poking fun at the Bud Light controversy, wherein their tagline says the beer eviscerates the word NO. Despite five layers of scrutiny, no one could see the implication of rape. And that’s corporate America, so up its own ass it can’t see a bit of light.

But what’s even better is the show pokes fun at Bud Light’s advertising. The same thing the musicians and the Kardashians and the rest of the nitwits clamor to be a part of.

The game is…if you drink the Bud Light on hidden camera, you get to play with Peyton Manning. This is real. Bud Light has hidden cameras in bars and the reward is life-sized Pac-Man and other inanities.

But no one in the John Oliver version will drink the horse piss. They keep putting it down. They don’t want to work on Maggie’s Farm no more.

And there you have it, the transition over fifty years from Bob Dylan telling you to not follow leaders and watch the parking meters to country artists putting brands in songs. And you wonder why we live in a golden age of television and music is in the dumper…

THERE’S NO CREDIBILITY!

But what’s worse is everybody working in music stokes the fire. Sponsorship is good… That’s what makes Live Nation’s numbers. That’s what will give you marketing money, if you’re rich it’ll go straight to your bottom line.

And you know why punters can’t get good concert tickets? Because American Express has paid for all the good ones. That’s right, AmEx writes a check so they can sell access to the good seats to their cardholders as a perk. And if for some reason you’ve got a Citi card, you’re out of luck.

Then again, sometimes Citi screws AmEx. So you’ve got to have them all. Kind of like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, HBO…

But no, you can buy HBO all by its lonesome. For fifteen bucks.

A good value proposition?

Well, let’s see, they’ve got “Game Of Thrones” and the rest of the aforementioned series. And the archives have the “Sopranos”…

But there’s not new programming 24/7! We don’t get to view inane reality programming? Isn’t that today’s media landscape, people make it but no one wants to watch it, kind of like your track on Spotify, which goes unheard.

HBO decided to take the high road. Sure, they market, but there’s no smoke and mirrors, no bait and switch. And the outlet knows that only programming of the highest quality will keep its enterprise going. People can cancel EVERY MONTH!

But more than 30 million households subscribe to HBO.

They are believers.

Not Beliebers.

Justin is an uneducated idiot who the machine told us was talented but we knew was a flash in the pan. Kim Kardashian will have a longer lifespan.

And we keep hearing how great Kanye West is, but he hasn’t done anything good in ages other than complain on a world class level. His sales suck because the audience cancelled him long ago. But the media didn’t get the message. It was as if the “Times” and “USA Today” kept writing about “Deadwood.”

But they don’t.

HBO gets respect.

And it doesn’t beg for it.

Because it’s above the fray, beholden to no one.

It’s a cultural issue. Music is bankrupt. The only acts with credibility are those without traction. As if everybody who couldn’t get on HBO said they deserved to.

“Dream On” was twenty five years ago. “Larry Sanders” last century. It took HBO decades to become a juggernaut. You don’t change people’s impressions that quickly. And you don’t know what you’re doing that soon. Takes a while to figure it out, takes a while to be good.

So while you’re salivating for corporate dough, tens of millions are drinking at the HBO trough, which is credible and skeptical. Not drinking the kool-aid, not accepting the corporate b.s., the antithesis to the mainstream mantra.

Kind of like Frank Zappa.

But he’s been dead for almost twenty five years.

Kind of like the music business.

John Oliver, Bud Light (either watch the whole thing or start at 2:45)

Just because you’re a rock star, that doesn’t make you right.

In case you missed it, Roger Waters railed against techies in the London “Times” behind a paywall, but read a snippet here:

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters accuses music industry of ‘stealing every fucking cent anybody ever made’

and now we’ve got to see his inane opinions trumpeted across all media because he was once a star and you know stars, we’ve got to listen to them. And I don’t want to even touch his anti-semitic ravings. Sure, I’m Jewish, but to think the Israelis are the sole oppressors and no band should play there is denying thousands of years of anti-semitism and the obvious point that Israel can only lose once. It’s a complicated story, and I am far from approving of everything the country does, but read Ari Shavit’s “My Promised Land” if you want to know what’s going on, Kerry did, it’s his bible, but you’d rather have a knee-jerk reaction than research complicated issues, just like in tech.

The damn tech companies did not steal your business, did not steal your opportunity, did not make you broke.

The customer did.

Which way do you want it, do you love your fans or hate them? Love those who wanted everything you ever did, even the goose farts in the studio you never thought would be released, or hate those who now have access to everything and don’t want to listen to you.

Let’s state some rules.

1. It’s the best time to be an artist in the history of the world…especially if you make popular music, if you are willing to do it yourself. There are no barriers to entry, but you’d rather sign a deal with a major label, which is kind of like a slave signing up with a plantation owner or those Scientologists who wanted to stay in the hole. I can’t help it if you’re too afraid to embrace the new paradigm, that’s your fault. Meanwhile, you’re bitching that the labels don’t pay like they used to. You want more Spotify money, put your music out yourself.

2. Major labels push what sells. They’re businesses, not museums. You can excoriate the Top Forty all you want, but if klezmer music was the new rage, the majors would pick up that. To bitch that the labels won’t put out obscure music is like complaining to Detroit they don’t make vent windows anymore. It’s not cost-efficient.

3. When everything is available, there’s a race to the top. “The Long Tail” and other tomes perpetrated the fiction that we’d all get rich in the internet economy. Didn’t work during the dot com era and doesn’t now. As a matter of fact, the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, in not only business, but art. The public is confused. They’re gravitating to the anointed and the popular. Tech helped grease the skids, by providing access, but it’s the public that chooses what to listen to. You can get your music on Spotify easily, YouTube even easier than that, but that doesn’t mean anybody wants to listen to it.

4. Change happens. Live went to wax cylinders went to shellac to 45s to 33s to cassettes and CDs and then files and now streams. The album was a result of the 33, didn’t exist before that. But now you want to keep it. Keep the buggy whips while you’re at it. You’re supposed to be an artist, using new tools to create something different and exciting. You’re like a painter bitching when Picasso and Braque came up with cubism. Embrace the new, it’s the only way out.

5. Piracy is a problem for recorded music revenue, not artistry. It’s actually good for artistry, you can reach your public for nothing, as you now can on YouTube. Get rid of music on YouTube and watch the ARTISTS go nuclear. They want to reach people for free. Because it’s hard to make a fan.

6. Radio is not forever. Bitch all you want about a closed system. But suddenly TV is unbundling, and despite all the radio hogwash there are so many better ways to experience music that one day music radio is gonna crash, the same way AM and Viacom have. Did you see Viacom’s ratings? Double digit declines, because their young target demo doesn’t watch TV anymore, they utilize other platforms and want it instantly, on demand.

So Roger Waters blows hard and all the has-beens and never-wills throw their fists in the air and scream that he’s right.

But it doesn’t make a bit of difference. Railing against change is like bitching that you can now call across the country for free. Used to be expensive, with long distance tolls. But I don’t see you taking up the cause of the telcos, who all saw the light and moved on to wireless, and when talk declined moved on to data. How come businesses can change and you can’t?

And techies glommed on to music because it was desirable, they wanted to hear it, they wanted others to. They’re the future, not you. People want to create an app, not a song, and that’s sad.

And the truth is that despite you going on that today’s music is as great as it was in the past, the so-called “classic rock era,” it’s not. Of course there are talented people working, of course there’s money to be made, but once upon a time there was more experimentation and music was front and center in the culture, moving it. Now music is all about promotion and money. Don’t be afraid to speak the truth for fear you’ll look old, only in America do we denigrate our elders, experience counts.

And Waters’s experience is of what happened in the seventies. If he wants to tell us how he did it, we’re all ears. But if just wants to bitch that someone moved his cheese, tune him out and give him no press. The truth is Roger can’t sing and no one wants his new music. He’s not on good terms with David Gilmour and separately they’re not desirable. Hell, Brooks & Dunn got back together but we’re supposed to give every solo act a break? Going solo after the group breaks up and succeeding is the exception, not the rule.

We live in a wild, woolly time of cacophony, where the greats are at our fingertips for the same price as the dreck. And to be able to hear everything ever recorded is a boon to the listener, albeit overwhelming. As a result, there’s a shifting revenue picture. It used to be those who jumped through the hoops made money and those who didn’t didn’t. But now that everybody can play, the revenue is tilting towards the winners.

And everybody can’t be a winner.

But tech is inert. Software and devices are tools. They need juice to run on. Art can harness the tools and succeed in ways previously unknown. Could PSY’s “Gangnam Style” have made it in the old era? OF COURSE NOT! Could you watch concerts 24/7 online for free? OF COURSE NOT! Could you have a world class studio in your home? OF COURSE NOT!

We’ve got all the time in the world for great art.

And creating greatness takes a long time, to get to that level and reach people. But the audience is always ready, the techies have provided the pipe, there’s plenty of money and that’s a GOOD THING!

Never forget it.

Ari Shavit – “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel”

Find the end of the rainbow
Fly wherever the winds blow
Laugh at life like a sideshow
Just what you need to make you feel better

John Miles never broke through in America, but he’s a star in my book, because he sings lead on “(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether”!

Huh?

Once upon a time Alan Parsons was unknown. And his initial LP didn’t help his condition. Released on 20th Century Fox in two different incarnations, it made not a dent, no one cared that Parsons was a famous engineer, and 20th Century Fox was a noted entity in the film business, but nearly irrelevant and certainly inept in music. As a result, Ambrosia’s first album was nearly buried, it too came out on 20th Century Fox, is that why the band ended up playing on Parsons’s opus? I DON’T KNOW!

I didn’t know much. By time the second iteration of the LP was released, it featured only an illustration of Mr. Parsons and almost nothing more. The details evaporated with the rarely seen gatefold cover the album was released with first.

And lord only knows what inspired me to buy it. I found the album in the promo bin at my favorite record store on Gayley, in Westwood, and at two bucks I took a flyer. I ended up buying five copies, I gave them away, just like I did with Karla Bonoff’s debut, which I discovered the same way.

THE RAVEN

The album starts off with an instrumental, almost the whole second side is instrumental, you can ignore it if you choose, you won’t be missing much.

But the second cut is this, “The Raven.”

That’s the right, “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, it featured the same moniker as Poe’s 1908 collection.

Nevermore!

Thus quote the raven, you remember that from high school, don’t you?

Actor Leonard Whiting performs the main vocal, Parsons appears on vocorder and Eric Woolfson does the backups. The end result is majestic, positively cinematic.

It starts off quietly. With a thumping bass that resembles nothing so much as a heartbeat.

And then the track starts to build. It’s like you’re descending into a dark basement, apprehensive, and then the world starts to spin, you’re on an adventure that’s only yours, you’ve left the world behind.

It’s not a single, it’s not a hit, it’s something better…an album cut speaking only to you. From a concept album, back when you needed an entire LP to tell your story.

THE TELL-TALE HEART

Arthur Brown! That’s right, from the “CRAZY WORLD OF”!

By this time he was a has-been, only famous for his 1968 super-smash “Fire.”

And befitting its vocalist, “The Tell-Tale Heart” starts off on a tear, there’s no subtlety involved.

But it does get quiet in the middle, with strings and moodiness, reflectiveness, but then the whole concoction starts to pulse and tear once again.

Louder and louder
Till I could tell the sound was not within my ears
You should have seen me
You would have seen my eyes grow white and cold with fear

Only Arthur Brown could convey this scariness, and if he was frightened…you should be too!

Perfect casting. Classic.

THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO

I read the short story in sophomore English class, Mrs. Hurley dared someone to do it, while holding a lit candle in the darkness.

The problem was there was not quite enough time, so I ended up rushing and sacrificing dramatic effect in order to finish.

Funny what you remember…

But as a result I’ve never forgotten the word “amontillado,” although John Miles pronounces it differently.

The track is lyrical, melodic, it has movements.

Funny how punk was launched at the same time.

But it was possible to love bombast as well as simplicity.

I certainly did.

(THE SYSTEM OF) DOCTOR TARR AND PROFESSOR FETHER

The first side closer, the single. The tour-de-force.

How did Alan Parsons come up with such greatness, a near-masterpiece?

He switched labels, on Arista he started to have hits.

But his initial failure tarnished his inspiration. He was always a bit cautious thereafter, never quite as out there, never quite as adventurous. If you listen to one Alan Parsons album, “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” is it.

And you should.

Then you’ll know what the seventies were like. When nobody sounded quite the same and everybody was testing limits. When you broke the shrinkwrap and you never knew what you would encounter. When you couldn’t wait to turn your friends on to your favorites. When music still drove the culture. When you sang songs in your head because they inspired you.

I still sing “Doctor Tarr.” It pops into my head at the strangest moments.

LIKE TODAY!

Rhinofy-Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Nobody wants to watch the Discovery Channel. 2.9 million people viewed “Naked and Afraid.” But a hundred million paid for it. More than a buck a month. The CEO made $156 million. Now what?

Lawsuits.

Verizon is following the customer, allowing its FiOS TV subscribers to pick and choose channels. And the content providers are going nuts!

Sound familiar?

Let me analogize for you.

A CD cost $12. But people only wanted to hear one song. There was no other way to get it than to purchase the album. The labels liked the income and the acts believed the other nine tracks had value, but not to the ultimate customer, who didn’t care and oftentimes didn’t believe in the act at all, moving on to someone else soon thereafter.

What changed the equation?

PIRACY!

Piracy is disruptive, sure it’s theft, but it breaks the logjam. You might be bitching you’re making less money on recorded music, but you’re simultaneously complaining about your cable bill.

You can’t have it both ways.

Napster begat the iTunes Store, the great unbundling already happened in the music business, and the acts still haven’t recovered. Turns out most people only want the single, and with everything available they don’t want your music, maybe not at all. Kind of like in cable… The three networks used to have 90% of the audience, but now the four and a half networks get a fifth of the viewers, with the rest spread amongst a zillion outlets. And these outlets get paid by the cable company, via extortion. That’s right, the providers consolidated the channels, such that if you turn off one, we won’t give you the other. As a result, customers are paying for what they don’t want to watch. And they’re sick and tired of it.

Now in music we’re ahead, you can get all the programming in one spot, whereas in TV you’ve got to have a subscription to Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, cable, internet… They’re inviting you to pirate. However, we’re also moving in the wrong direction in music, with the exclusive. Once Apple/Spotify/Tidal all have different product people will return to piracy, or stop paying all together, as they’re doing with cable, cutting the cord.

HBO is going direct. You no longer need a cable contract, you can subscribe on the internet for $15.

But HBO is a winner, Discovery is not.

Taylor Swift is a winner, you are not.

That’s right, the old model was different. Very few people could record and distribute. Radio was the only way to get traction, and the major labels controlled the slots. And, as stated above, music was sold in a bundle for a high price. So, if you ran this gauntlet, you were a winner, you made money, whether it be the advance on your deal, even if you were a failed artist, or the royalties you got as a songwriter. But now that old system has been decimated, via the internet and piracy, and it turns out most people don’t want most music and you just can’t make what you used to.

Like Discovery. I’d cancel it tomorrow if I could, I haven’t watched it in years.

Nor have I viewed the vaunted ESPN, which costs every cable customer six plus bucks. That’s right, the success of sports is built upon a fiction, that we all care. But we don’t. Go a la carte and sports turn niche. Well, they tumble to a level far below the perch the media puts them upon now. As for the value of live sports… That’s to the advertiser, other than the Super Bowl, which is a national holiday, most people aren’t watching the game either. And if we all stop paying six plus bucks a month…

Everybody makes less money.

The corporations didn’t beat you, the public did!

It turns out people have time for great, they’ll even pay for it. HBO has got over 30 million subscribers, it costs $15 a month. Just like people will pay triple digits to see a superstar in concert. But they won’t pay to see you.

Superstars are making more than ever before. Sure, recorded music is a smaller piece of the pie, but ticket prices have far outpaced inflation and sponsorship offers are legion.

But it’s hard to become a superstar. You have to be great, you have to have promotion, to gain traction and stick you have to be at it for years.

And there are very few shortcuts. Ignore the U2 tour hype. They scaled down from stadiums, their new album was distributed and not heard. The people going are all Gen-X’ers who still believe, there are no new fans, because U2 is irrelevant, because the band doesn’t have hits.

You hate that you need hits.

But that’s what “Game of Thrones” is.

No one wanted to watch “John from Cincinnati.”

And that obscure show you love on Animal Planet… It’s being paid for by those who never watch, who aren’t even aware of it. It’s going to disappear when the great unbundling appears.

Which is happening now. In five years the TV landscape will look totally different. You’ll pay less, but there will be fewer high quality shows available. Then again, maybe TV should be made on the cheap, for YouTube.

You can be on YouTube. You can put your music up there and get paid just like the superstars.

But you won’t make much because most people don’t care, you have a tiny audience not because your promotion sucks, but you do.

Sorry to wake you up.

But what killed you was the customer. Turns out the customer only wants great. And if something is superior, there’s seemingly no limit to what he’ll lay down for it.

Them’s are the rules, that’s the game we’re playing, don’t shoot the messenger, your cheese was not only moved, but completely stolen, you can complain all you want but it ain’t gonna make any difference.

Note: Partially inspired by “How Cable Lost The Remote”