Is it only about getting paid?

Don’t tell me it’s about breaking music, that canard disappeared in the last decade. It’s almost impossible to get noticed. Kanye does a track with Paul McCartney and it’s dead in a day, despite being featured in every newspaper and on every music website extant. Getting the message out is not that difficult, sticking is near impossible. How does a brand help with that?

The dirty little secret is the majordomos, the handlers, the business people in the music business, need to get paid. They’re envious of their rich friends, they want to maintain their lifestyles, and the only people who can give them this kind of money is corporations.

But corporations are antithetical to art. Hell, they’re antithetical to truth, that’s why newspapers have Chinese Walls, keeping sales from editorial. Because once editorial is influenced by sales…

You get the inane online culture wherein everything’s about clicks, about advertising, where writers are paid by the number of views. In other words, news is irrelevant unless most people care. And that’s a piss-poor state of affairs. Because news is not a popularity contest.

Ultimately music is. Assuming you want to make a living from it. But who are you playing to? The audience or the brands?

When Michelin sells tires to BMW the public is not involved. Oh, the French tire company cuts a deal to be on the car so that ultimately buyers will replace their worn out Michelins with new ones, but art is different, art is sold directly to the audience.

Unless you start with radio. And radio is beholden to its advertisers, but they come after the audience. Radio is a gatekeeper, the most powerful one we have. But radio knows that the listener comes first, it’s got to play what people want to hear.

And the inane acts pledge fealty to their fans.

But the truth is everybody in the music business is dying to get paid.

So where does the corporate money, the brand money, figure in?

It goes straight to the acts’ bottom line. It’s not about spreading the word, it’s not about making the act bigger, it’s about lining acts’ coffers, because if you can sell out arenas you’re just not rich enough, you’ve got to make more, you’ve got to be greedy, that’s the American religion, greed, Christianity’s got nothing to do with it.

And forget all the working class acts who say they can’t pay their bills. Truth is brands want nothing to do with them, nothing significant.

So what we’ve got is a thin layer of blockbuster acts more interested in brands than fans. That’s the truth, no matter what they say. It’s not about art, it’s about getting rich.

And it sucks.

What happened to truth, justice and the American Way? Speaking from the heart, resonating with the audience?

That went out the window. Now you’ll put the whiskey name in the song. You think you’ve got your hand in the pocket of the brand, but really it’s vice versa, there’s a chilling effect.

The brand doesn’t want to know you do dope. They don’t want to know about your artistic lifestyle. The brands are run by people who play it safe, who haven’t got a creative bone in their bodies. They’re about spreadsheets and meeting expectations whereas art is about confounding expectations.

And you wonder why music is a second-class citizen. It’s got no self-respect. It’s like a whore who denies that fact. At least Gene Simmons says he’s all about the money, at least he’s honest, none of these other pricks trying to manipulate the public are.

Then again, we’ve got Hillary Clinton running for President by saying what she thinks people want to hear, as opposed to her own personal truth. Made her lose to Obama eight years ago, probably the same thing will happen this time. Really, the woman who said she didn’t want to stay home and bake cookies says her favorite book is the Bible? Make me puke.

But we know politicians are duplicitous.

Artists are not supposed to be so.

So my problem isn’t so much with the corporations themselves, the brands themselves getting into music, but the aforementioned chilling effect, the way it emphasizes the worst elements of the music game.

Isn’t being adored by millions and being able to get laid every night of the week enough? Believe me, those billionaire businessmen don’t have this, no way.

You’ve got your charisma, you live by your own hours, can’t you revel in that? Why do you want to be like everybody else? People don’t trust brands. Jeff Bezos may be rich, but he’s hated more than Fred Durst. That’s who you want to take money from and hang with? What are you gonna talk about? Whether to use a B flat?

It’s not only the music business, our whole nation needs a reset.

The richies have polluted the waters. They say they create all the jobs, that we’re worthless without them, that we need to be like them.

But nothing is further from the truth.

The truth is everybody should be able to pay their bills, have a roof over their head and food on the table, hopefully via a well-paying job. But after we institute the floor, life is about choices. And those who tell you to sell out to the man have no backbone.

Can you imagine a corporation tying up with John Lennon? Who incited controversy seemingly every time he opened his mouth? You wonder why we’ve got no more John Lennons? Because people are afraid to piss off the payers, the man.

But the truth is there’s not a soul in the music business who will not make a deal with an act with a hit song. You have to be a rapist, you have to be a child molester not to get a deal. And the truth is, some of the biggest stars of all time are both!

Not that I’m condoning that. It’s just that music is a seedy business. Always has been, always will be.

And the enemy is not the techies, but us. Yes, we who make the music and promote it, we’ve got no convictions, no balls, we can’t say no. We judge everything by money and however much we’ve got is never enough.

Musicians have more Twitter followers than almost everybody.

Musicians dominate YouTube.

Ticket prices have far outpaced inflation, and the truth is you can’t get a good one.

Enough with this hogwash about a financially challenged business. That’s just for wannabe and working class acts and those working at the label who got caught in the middle of a paradigm shift, with most of the money now coming from live instead of recordings. The truth is there’s a ton of money in music if you’re a star.

And just like in business, stars get all the money. It’s even that way in journalism. Don’t deny reality. Hell, in a democracy we all gravitate to greatness, and in the internet age all greatness is easily accessible.

So have some self-respect. Be willing to leave some cash on the table. Know that your power is not money, but your voice.

Focus on that.

It’ll deliver everything you need.

I woke up thinking about Turkish drummers
It didn’t take long, I don’t think much about Turkish drummers
But it made me think of Germany and the guy who sold me cigarettes
Who’d been in the Afghan secret police
Who made the observation
That it’s hard
To live

“Get Up Jonah”
Bruce Cockburn

Get Up Jonah – Spotify

Why does all the best art come from Canada?

Could it be the government support, or the framework of the country, a giant high school spread over a vast landscape where everybody knows each other and you can never rise above so you dig deeper into who you are and end up creating works that touch the soul in a way nothing from south of the border does.

Come on, whether it be Broken Social Scene or its descendants, if you want cutting edge music you look to the Great White North. And now you do for books too.

“Station Eleven” is the best book I’ve read since “The Goldfinch,” the only one that cried out to me all day long to be read.

It was recommended to me by Felice, not my Felice, but Felice Ecker of Girlie Action, in New York. We’ve never met, but we’ve exchanged notes on books. She told me to trust her on this one.

I trust no one. What kind of existence is that? I know. But ever since my divorce… That wrecked me. You stand up in front of God and family and say it’s forever and when it’s not, when someone jumps ship, it does something to you, makes you realize we’re all on our own and if you’re not looking out for yourself, no one else is.

So I researched “Station Eleven.” And it turns out it was nominated for the National Book Award. Which is imprimatur enough for me, although I was worried, you know how the highly vaunted is oftentimes unreadable, laden with so much description, so rewritten as to be bulletproof.

But “Station Eleven” is not.

“Station Eleven” is about plot. And mood.

So I’m sitting in an Airbus high above the western landscape, ruminating about my anger over the entitled, those with service dogs on the plane, when suddenly something happens in the book that creeps me out so much, weirds me out so much, that I say to myself…THIS IS FANTASTIC!

It was ominous. In a way horror can be, but “Station Eleven” is not horror.

“Station Eleven” is a post-apocalyptic novel. Not my thing at all. But the great thing about life is anything can be your thing if it’s good enough, and “Station Eleven” is.

“Survival is insufficient.”

That’s what you get in award-winning books, aphorisms, nuggets of wisdom the author has hoarded for years to deposit into the pages, and the result is oftentimes so disjointed and fake, because no one talks that way, and what we’re looking for in our art is truth.

But it turns out the above quote is from STAR TREK! I love a book with popular culture references. And the truth is, survival is insufficient.

That’s what’s wrong with American culture today, it’s all about survival.

Let’s start with the best and the brightest. Going into banking and tech not for the fulfillment, but for the financial rewards, they’re driven by a fear of being poor.

And those in the arts are imitative. Or bitching that they’ve got no recognition, that they can’t survive. America is so desperate it’s frightening. We’re either working or getting high, believing if we sleep we’ll get left behind and never be able to catch up. There’s no time for reflection, no time to do anything that doesn’t pay.

Because life is hard.

And it’s certainly hard after the apocalypse, after the defining event that changes everything. When mere survival is in question. And when that’s gone, what do you do…stage plays and perform music.

But I’m not gonna give anything away. I don’t want to ruin it.

And there’s no sense ruining a book, something that takes hours to complete. A book is no movie, no sporting event, not something neat and consumable before dinner. A book stretches out, it requires commitment, but with commitment comes reward, at least in the case of “Station Eleven.”

What happens when everything we know disappears. Everything we depend upon. Not only our friends and family, but electricity and phone calls and air travel and…

We revert to what once was, aware of what is gone and will never come back.

And it takes a while to compute. That’s another flaw in the modern game, everybody is supposed to be sans emotions, supposed to snap out of it and get over it instantly. But the truth is changes take time to digest, and when you come out the other side, you’re different. You’re capable of doing things you never contemplated.

Like kill.

Emily St. John Mandel is 35. Because you can’t write a worthwhile book if you’re a pre-teen.

And this is not her first book, because getting it right the first time is as impossible as winning the Olympic Gold on your very first try, the very first time you strap on skis.

You’ve got to experience not only victories, but losses in order to comment on the human condition. But south of the border our art is laden with testifying winners and petty feuds. Introspection is for losers.

The twist is not fully believable.

The denouement is disappointing.

But if you don’t get hooked by this book, if you don’t become intrigued and enraptured by some of the characters, you’re just another south of the border always wake zombie looking to get rich.

And your money will never keep you warm at night.

Station Eleven

YOU’RE NO GOOD

The original version of this smash track for Linda Ronstadt in 1974/5 was done by Dee Dee Warwick but the one that had impact, albeit more on the R&B chart, was done by Betty Everett. Sure, it’s the same song, but credit the nearly-forgotten Andrew Gold for arranging Ronstadt’s version into a hit. Andrew’s touch is especially present in the instrumental coda.

IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE

The famous iteration was a posthumous hit for Buddy Holly in 1959, but did you know it was written by Paul Anka? I’m including his version from his 1974 album “Anka.” His version swings, is R&B in a way that Holly and Ronstadt’s takes are absolutely not.

FAITHLESS LOVE

I’m not sure where J.D. and Linda were in their love relationship at this point, the follow-up to “Heart Like A Wheel,” “Prisoner In Disguise,” also evidenced J.D.’s compositions, but this is my favorite of their “collaborations,” i.e. Linda’s cover of J.D.’s songs.

But… Most people have never heard J.D.’s version on his exquisite 1976 solo album, “Black Rose.”

Produced by Peter Asher, utilizing so many of the Ronstadt players, “Black Rose”‘s take of “Faithless Love” is so intimate and so heartbreaking, it’s like J.D.’s singing it to you in front of the fireplace of his Silver Lake apartment, evidencing all the disappointment of a failed relationship. Whew!

Proving once again you don’t have to over-emote to get your message across. J.D. Souther will never be a mentor on “The Voice,” but he could add more than any of the fame-whores telling their charges to sell it by shouting it. Ugh.

This is magical.

Meanwhile, Glen Campbell cut a cover in ’84 and does an admirable job. You just can’t kill a great song.

THE DARK END OF THE STREET

This Dan Penn/Chips Moman song was originally done by James Carr, it was a hit on the black chart, but only entered the bottom quadrant of the pop chart. Check this original, it’s haunting, barely dated, it will reach you.

Subsequent to this, there were covers by the Flying Burrito Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton and Ry Cooder before Ronstadt put it over the top. Meanwhile, it’s been continued to be covered since, a great song is a great song.

HEART LIKE A WHEEL

I bought the McGarrigles’ debut LP just to hear this. And it delivered. It’s personal and understated in a way the Ronstadt take is not. Sounds like it was cut in a cabin in the Great White North by a field recorder, not for a hit, but as an artifact. Different words are emphasized, you’ll be unnerved, almost creeped-out, this is what music is all about, capturing all this honesty on wax.

WHEN WILL I BE LOVED

You had to be old enough… So many boomers came to music with the Beatles, they missed this 1960 Everly Brothers classic, written by Phil.

One of my great treats was seeing the Everlys open for Simon & Garfunkel at Staples Center back in 2003. You can’t see ’em anymore.

This will remind you of a bygone era, it will make you want to go back, believing you missed something. A true classic.

WILLIN’

Lowell George’s most famous composition, my favorite iteration, the one I heard first, was done by Seatrain, on their 1970 Capitol debut, it was the opening cut, it was entitled “I’m Willing,” and this was long before anyone knew of Lowell, never mind Little Feat.

It’s not on Spotify, so I point you to YouTube to hear a song that’s the same, but with a different arrangement, one that hooked me after purchasing the album having heard a cover band do “Song Of Job” at the Roundhouse in Manchester, Vermont.

Seatrain Willin’

Of course, there are two versions of “Willin'” by Little Feat, cut on their almost unknown eponymous debut and then its follow-up, which ultimately got a bit of traction, “Sailin’ Shoes.” I prefer the second, purists like the first. But since we’re getting this deep, I’m also including the live take from “Waiting For Columbus,” when the general public, at least those paying attention, began to realize Little Feat was one of the greasiest, most soulful bands on the planet.

Probably the most famous trucker song ever written, and even if you’ve never been behind the wheel of a big rig, you know it or should. Come on…

I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonopah

These places actually exist. Get in your car, fire up the tunes and go on an adventure through the southwest, it’ll pay more dividends than surfing the web.

I CAN’T HELP IT (IF I’M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU)

Originally cut by Hank Williams, its writer, in 1951, there are almost too many covers of this composition to count. Proving if you nail it, everybody wants a piece of it. Truth…they’re never making enough of it, it penetrates.

KEEP ME FROM BLOWING AWAY

Written by Paul Craft, who’s most famous for writing Mark Chesnutt and Ray Stevens songs, the original version of this song was done by the Seldom Scene, a bluegrass band most have never heard of, in 1973. It too is not on Spotify, you can listen to it on YouTube here:

The Seldom Scene – Keep me from blowin’ away

YOU CAN CLOSE YOUR EYES

Some songs should never be covered, they should be played live, as a tribute, but to record them is…sacrilegious.

That’s how I feel about Linda Ronstadt’s cover of “You Can Close Your Eyes.” And unlike some other songs on “Heart Like A Wheel,” “You Can Close Your Eyes” was not obscure, it was on the follow-up to James Taylor’s huge smash “Sweet Baby James,” “Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon.”

“Mud Slide” was a bit of a disappointment. Sure, it had the monstrous cover of Carole King’s “You’ve Got A Friend,” but it just didn’t hang together like “Sweet Baby James,” it overreached. Then again, by today’s mediocre standards, it’s a complete triumph.

The three best tracks on “Mud Slide Slim” are “Machine Gun Kelly,” “Riding On A Railroad” and “You Can Close Your Eyes.” When I bought the CD, I programmed these three on endless repeat, I can never burn out on them.

I’d heard James play “Riding On A Railroad” previously, it’s the picking and plaintive vocal that put it over. Forget that James has sunk into croonerdom these days, “Riding On A Railroad” is so good you just sit there mesmerized, blown away.

“Machine Gun Kelly” follows “You Can Close Your Eyes” on the LP. Like “Riding On A Railroad,” it’s all about the picking…and the groove. Sure, it’s a novelty topic. But it penetrates.

And that brings us to “You Can Close Your Eyes”…

Well the sun is surely sinking down
But the moon is slowly rising

Ain’t that life, endless repetition. You struggle to make it your own, knowing that as the repetition continues your time in the hourglass is draining.

So this old world must still be spinnin” ’round
And I still love you

It’s all about other people. Your records won’t keep you warm at night, never mind your mobile phone. Fame and fortune pale in comparison to relationships, do your best to sustain them.

It won’t be long before another day
We gonna have a good time

Lose your optimism and you lose your life.

And no one’s gonna take that time away
You can stay as long as you like

That’s right, no one can deny your existence and experience. It’s all yours, and as genuine as anybody else’s. Eat up life. Don’t let others inhibit you, tell you you don’t belong.

We all belong.

So you can close your eyes, it’s all right.

We’ll still be here tomorrow. You can drop the needle on these songs. You can pursue your dreams. But while you’re at it, stop and smell the roses. Oh, that’s a cliche, but the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

Wait…that’s another song!

Rhinofy-Heart Like A Wheel-The Originals

Trains – Spotify

Trains – YouTube

I’ve got this Porcupine Tree song stuck in my head.

That’s right, the spawn of Steven Wilson who seems more famous now for remixing classic albums. But…

I’d start you with “Radioactive Toy,” my absolute favorite, but for some reason it’s not on Spotify, none of the streaming services. Of course it’s on YouTube, we’ve still got a ways to go in music, making everything available legally, as for the movie industry…they’re so far behind the curve they’re clueless. The enemy is THEFT! Never forget that. To decide not to be on Spotify is like going on vacation with the house unlocked. First you must secure the boundaries, that’s what streaming has done for music. It’s made stealing less enticing, almost completely not worth it.

Always the summers are slipping away

They most certainly are. The seasons move so fast when you get older. I marveled the sun was setting at 3:40 yesterday, it was starting to get dark, and then I realized this was not a novelty, that I note it every year, and the only thing that’s changing is me.

When I hear the engine pass, I’m kissing you wide
Hissing subsides, I’m in luck

“Trains” is dark, but it’s optimistic, that’s the conundrum of progressive rock, not that Porcupine Tree is exactly that, but today if you know how to play, if you sing of bigger topics, if you don’t conform to the the three minute model and you’re male, you’re progressive.

Actually, “Trains” is six minutes long. And I’m going to deal with it first, because upon reflection “Radioactive Toy” is slower, more cerebral.

Trains set and match spied under the blind

The track begins with a pristine acoustic guitar, what a revelation in this digitized, electronic world. We all search for humanity, never forget that, acoustic instruments will live forever.

And to be truthful, the lyrics are meaningless to me, I can barely pick them out, it’s all about the SOUND! I know Mr. Wilson is singing something important to him…

And then he goes all falsetto.

And then the guitars start to slash, the music gets heavy, he’s not breaking new ground, but you’re hooked nonetheless. You know how it is, driving in your car and becoming one with the song.

And there’s melody. And changes. And listening you’re in your own private reverie. The solo happens. This is all about you and the music, there is no deejay, you’re nodding your head, you don’t need anybody else.

There’s even a bridge!

And “Trains,” and the album it emanates from, “In Absentia,” were  commercial failures upon their release back in 2002, but through the miracle of the internet, they live on. Used to be music died, no longer. If it’s good, it can always resurface. And I implore you to check “Trains” out. It just might be your thing.

As for “Radioactive Toy”…

It’s the Pink Floyd song you’ve never heard, far superior to that overhyped Pink Floyd album that came and went almost instantly.

It’s heavy, it’s plodding, it’s ethereal, but the sense of majesty is what will entrance you. You’re never gonna hear this on Top Forty, you’ll probably never hear “Radioactive Toy” on the radio whatsoever, but that does not mean it’s not great, that it does not deserve attention, that it won’t become one of your favorites.

It’s like the soundtrack to a Harlan Ellison novel, like “A Boy and His Dog”… Actually, Trent Reznor is great, but someone should give Steven Wilson a chance at scoring a film.

And the point is I was in an extremely good space. And I wanted something to amplify my mood. Something to ride shotgun and lift me higher into the stratosphere.

And that made me think of “Trains.”

And that made me think of you.

“Radioactive Toy”