What a character!

Pitbull tweeted about me. Welcome to the twenty first century where your heroes, the celebrities you see on TMZ, are just a click away. And even though I rarely tweet, I’m addicted to the service, it provides a pulse, or a glimpse thereof.

And I like having the reach, but didn’t think much about it until I emerged from “Gone Girl” to an e-mail from David Dorn, head of the iTunes Store, he just wanted to know, would I be interested in meeting Pitbull?

OF COURSE!

But it turns out I met his manager first. Today at Katsu-ya. I’m gonna go meet the Miami maestro on Friday at Staples.

So how did Charles Chavez get here?

By being a deejay and working at the radio station and…

Whoa, back me up, how did your family make a living?

Charles’s father was in the military. They moved around, but by high school they were in Texas. There were five kids, if you wanted something, you had to work for it. So Charles got a paper route. And then started deejaying in the club. And then convinced the radio station to put him on the air, because of the synergy.

And even though he was in Texas, he was making a lot of money. His salary at the station and the grand a night for deejaying. Yes, there’s a lot of money in the music business, assuming you don’t compare yourself to the Wall Street and tech titans, who’ve skewed the game.

And seeing how Cash Money and the rest of the indies were making money, Charles decided to go into the record business, making hip-hop compilations, paying the acts $800 and ending up selling 250,000 copies, some out of his trunk, some through a distributor who always gave advances, but never paid Charles what he was owed, welcome to the music business.

And when some of the acts on his compilations ended up getting deals Charles felt left out, he decided to become a manager. But with his profile rising, he got a gig working promotion at Interscope, from Albuquerque to Miami, almost as far north as the Mason-Dixon line. This is the music business, where if you believe in sleep, you’re never gonna make it.

And then one of his acts blew up. Yes, he was managing while he was promoting. Jimmy said it was cool, but then the act signed with Epic instead of Interscope and…

Charles ends up meeting Pitbull. Who’s doing it himself. Who’s got a deal with TVT. And they’re just acquaintances until they run into each other at the Super Bowl a few years later and Charles wonders why Pitbull isn’t bigger, so they throw in together.

You’d like to do it by yourself, but you never can.

And then Pit hears an international instrumental, he writes lyrics over it, they make a deal for the track and the rest is history.

And why is Pitbull so successful? Because he’s WORKING! Lifestyle is a minor element. If Pit isn’t on the road, he’s in the studio, he’s a bundle of energy.

Meanwhile, Charles knows hits aren’t forever, so he’s moving into TV. Pit has a deal with Endemol, they made a deal for him to host Fox’s New Year’s Eve show in Miami. But that’s not the only thing.

And all we keep hearing is music is dead, that there’s no money in it, it’s no longer fun, but these guys are having the time of their lives, making money all the while.

Sure, Pitbull works with Dr. Luke, but Luke adds the spice and Charles makes sure that Pit doesn’t lose his identity. There’s only one Pitbull, that’s the key, to find someone unique, and then make hits.

And these hits are playing around the world, and Pitbull has followed them there.

And the corporations have come calling. But Pit doesn’t always say yes. If the money’s not good enough, if the company doesn’t understand, and it frequently does not, Pit walks away. But usually the company comes back, because there’s no better way to reach the Latin market, they realize Pit and Charles know what they’re talking about.

And I’m not gonna say I’m a big expert here. That’s the modern world, where you might not align with the vertical. But I liked Charles, he was not jive, he did not know everything, he was willing to learn, he realized it was all about relationships, and he kept making them.

So the song remains the same. You can go to the music business school, but that won’t make you successful. The music business is a land of hustlers and pimps, who would be successful at whatever their chosen field turned out to be, they just believe in music.

And that’s where Charles remains. He wants a label on his terms. he combs Shazam for hits. He’s driven by the tunes, not the wallet, unlike so many in this business who are so envious of the tech giants they’re taking their eye off the chart.

So successful music entrepreneurs are not made so much as born. It’s about their circumstances, being infected by music and believing they can do it their way. Charles believes in himself, he doesn’t think another manager has anything on him.

And you need that confidence to play in the big top.

And one thing’s for sure, music’s a circus, a thrilling cornucopia of carney players we all want a glimpse of.

And right now, Charles Chavez is at the epicenter.

P.S. Charles also reps Magic!, which hit number one with “Rude.”

P.P.S. Charles’s wife does the books. Keep it in the family, there’s no one else you can trust.

Well did she make you cry
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of love
And is it over now
Do you know how
Pick up the pieces and go home

Not at that point, the crying came later. Although she had disappeared, she hadn’t told me it was over, but the silence seemed to say so. And I wasn’t sure whether to respect it or to reach out. Because unlike seemingly every male in the news, I’m hesitant. You don’t have to worry about saying no to me, I’m probably never even gonna touch you. I’m gonna wait until you say loud and clear that you want me.

Which makes it difficult to have a girlfriend. I’ve never quite understood the rules of courtship. I know the male should lead, I know I want to be close, but I’m afraid of imposing myself upon you more than I’m worried about rejection.

But we’d had a stimulating conversation. She’d talked about stuff no girl had ever mentioned before. I asked her on a date, she gave me an excuse which I wasn’t sure whether to believe and just when I’d given up hope, she called me.

Then you know they’re interested. That’s a green light.

She asked me what I was doing that night. I told her I was going to the record store, to return discs, which was a regular behavior for a big consumer like myself back in the seventies. And she started to beg off, telling me it was okay that I was busy, but after convincing her this was not so, I invited her to go to the movies, to the revival house in Beverly Hills, to see a couple of old Cary Grant films.

She drove to my abode, she’d a bad experience with a male a few months before, she didn’t want me stopping by.

I wasn’t sure she enjoyed the ancient flicks. But when I showed up at school the next day she gave me the biggest hello I’d ever received.

And there ensued Kinks concerts and chocolate crepes and suddenly my life made sense.

But there were always bumps in the road, because she had not come to Los Angeles to get into a relationship, she’d come to study, and our interaction was getting in the way of that.

As for me, I didn’t quite throw out my books, but I didn’t crack them thereafter.

And then there was this hiatus. Within which I went to the movies and listened to records. I’d purchased the stereo of my dreams only months before. Something with enough power to blow up the building, but enough clarity to have you sitting in front of the speakers wowed. And now that it was March, I was spinning the new Fleetwood Mac album, “Rumours.”

I never bought the previous album. Maybe I didn’t have to. Jimmy had it on 8-track in Salt Lake.

And I’d seen them play my favorite, “Over My Head,” at Anaheim Stadium the summer before.

I was primed. Even though I was not in love with the single on the radio, “Go Your Own Way.”

But there was this one track on the second side, “Gold Dust Woman.”

Christine was always my favorite, but this Nicks track was less witch and more rock, a groove that penetrated with a soul that resonated.

Rock on gold dust woman
Take your silver spoon, dig your grave

This was before regular people did coke, that came a few years later. I was struggling with giving up marijuana, which was now sensimilla and so strong that after I smoked it it weirded me out for 24 hours.

Heartless challenge
Pick your path and I’ll pray

My path was completely unclear. Part of me wanted to be back banging the bumps in Utah. But it was the worst season ever and suddenly I was in love.

Do you know love? It’s when nothing else matters, when you just can’t stop thinking of the other person, when skin on skin is more important than anything else.

But she was gone.

But then she knocked on my door. And came inside. And I put on “Gold Dust Woman” and as Stevie sang and Mick banged and John held down the bottom, we embraced, I can still remember the taste of her lipstick. She was back to stay. For a very long time.

They were the house band for “Where The Action Is,” only half an hour long, but the MTV of its era.

Used to be summer was a sleepy season, when television was filled with nothing but reruns, in this pre-internet era young kids could actually be bored.

But the one thing they could never get enough of was the radio, the sound emanating from their transistor, the iPod of its day, but much cheaper, everybody had one, or two, and at first you listened to the baseball game but then you graduated to the top forty station in your neighborhood, which was the epicenter of the culture. We tuned in to know not only the tracks, but to be members of the club, the deejays were our older, hipper brothers, and we were all along for this wondrous ride when the Beatles came out of nowhere and turned this entire nation upside down.

Suddenly, the young took over the country, they revolted not only against their parents, but the entire nation, ultimately refusing to go to Vietnam and protesting our involvement therein. It was like there was something in the air that truly made everybody think different, and that was music.

So the Beatles revolutionize society before they even record a song with that title and then we’re all rushing home at 2 PM to catch a black and white TV show featuring the heroes of the day in a season when there was no homework, when we could just ponder the wonders of life 24/7.

And at this point, Paul Revere & the Raiders had no hits, just a lame Columbia album of covers we saw in the bins that we could not afford and had never heard. But the band didn’t seem to get the memo, they were having so much fun on the show. It was visuals like this that made me and so many of my generation want to move to California.

And then came “Just Like Me.”

It’s just like me
To say to you
Love me do
And I’ll be true

And now this merry band of pranksters were cool! No one could deny “Just Like Me” rocked, from Mark Lindsay’s attitude to Drake Levin’s guitar solo, this was a smash. Paul Revere & the Raiders graduated!

The apotheosis was “Kicks,” we were already jaded, we knew they kept on getting harder to find, but that did not mean we stopped searching.

“Kicks” is not “Born To Be Wild,” but if you’re writing the story of sixties American rock, the Raiders track would be included.

And almost as good were “Hungry” and “Good Thing.”

And sure, the band ultimately had a hit with “Indian Reservation” in the seventies, but that was a coda, different players with a different sound, it was really about the sixties.

And Paul Revere rode that success all the way into the twenty first century, all the way until August of this year, when illness forced him from the road.

He was an American success story. Pluck and desire got him there. That was always the dream. That even if you were from godforsaken Idaho, if you wanted it enough, you could get it.

And Revere was not warm and fuzzy, he was not lovable, but he persevered and survived until Saturday, and for that he belongs in the rock and roll firmament, if not the Hall of Fame.

Girl, I’m gonna have it all some day if you’ll just hang on to my hand

He needed her to fuel his desire.

If I break some rules along the way, girl
You, you gotta understand

That’s right, today musicians bitch the techies are not playing straight, but once upon a time they wrote the book, they tested limits and stayed far from the corporations, selling out was anathema.

It’s my way of gettin’ what I want now
‘Cause I’m hungry

That’s how so many of us were, we wanted more. And we saw no ceiling, nothing in our way. We all had good public school educations, we could cogitate, we were all…

Hungry for those good things, baby
Hungry through and through
Well, I’m hungry for that sweet life, baby
With a real fine girl like you

That was the currency, even more than dollars…girls, sex. You picked up your axe, burnished your image, went on the road and…

They lined up to get close, to get a little of what you got.

The musicians were not nerds, they were the coolest.

Yes, even Paul Revere.

Jimmy Iovine may have all the money, but he’s got a fraction of what Paul Revere and the rest of the players got. We were in thrall to the people on stage. They were our heroes. Blazing trails. Enlightening us and illuminating our lives.

Paul Revere won.

I know he’s not resting in peace, but tickling the ivories on that celestial Vox Continental, creating a band to keep all the angels entertained. Because playing music is in the blood, you can never give up and go straight, work for dad or the company, you live on stage, it’s the only place  you’re comfortable, the only place you want to be.

I loved the book and I love David Fincher but I did not love this movie.

The tone was wrong.

The book is a romp. A devilish delight that you cannot put down. You ride the plot twists like a roller coaster and forget about it when it’s finished, just like your afternoon at the amusement park.

Fincher wanted to make a statement.

And he does pretty well re tabloid journalism. We live in a funny gotcha culture where if it bleeds it leads, even better, if it’s ethically wrong, we want to parade it all day long, but if we want a moral tale we’ll turn on Fox News.

What we want when we go to the movies is entertainment. And not so much the real truth as an aspirational truth.

Yes, marriage is hard, that’s another theme of this movie. But we’re not married to people who look like that and act like that and if you go to this movie and don’t feel inadequate, you’re rich, famous and beautiful.

That’s why we’re interested in the stars, who are often two-dimensional uneducated nitwits, they play these roles. And they live in these houses. And they have that sex. And why in the world can’t it just be me!

If for some reason you haven’t read the book, the whole story hinges on an unexpected twist. And if you consider that a spoiler, you lose points for not reading 2012’s book of the summer, deservedly so, and for watching this film and not knowing something is up.

And the twist is based on the manipulation of Amy.

But we just don’t believe Rosamund Pike in the role.

We believe Tyler Perry as the lawyer. I won’t say he steals the movie, but his performance is so note perfect it makes you want to run out and see his flicks, because anybody who can get it this right deserves our attention.

And Carrie Coon as Ben Affleck’s twin sister is also a revelation. She exudes inner attractiveness. She’s the kind of girl you not only become friends with, but marry, despite not wearing any makeup.

But we’re looking for Frances McDormand to be the cop, not Kim Dickens, Dickens radiates no intelligence, she’s neither bigger than the story nor a pawn within it, she’s just wooden, like the Dunnes fifth anniversary which kicks off this picture.

David Fincherized the story, ruining it in the process. The best director in the world may be wrong for your picture. Fincher gets the look down, you get enthralled by this world immediately, with the heavy Trent Reznor/Atticus Rose score and the dark cinematography. Only this is not “Zodiac,” my favorite Fincher flick, an exploration of a true story wherein every twist and turn is pregnant with unknown factors that might scare you as well as being a revelation. “Gone Girl” is a Midwestern frolic.

But I went.

Because I’m in search of greatness. And sometimes Fincher delivers it.

Too many flicks are sold on the high concept, the comic book upon which they are based. I want something deeper, that touches my soul, and Fincher is able to do this, but he’s not a writer, he can only work with other people’s material.

Which proves once again that the writer is king.

That’s why we revere these techies, they come up with this stuff.

And we used to revere our film creators and music makers for the same reason. They constantly wowed us. Listen to last week’s Smokey Robinson interview on Howard Stern, when he tells how he wrote his hits your jaw drops and you pray they don’t change the subject, you’re privy to a genius at work.

But there’s very little genius in the world today.

And most of our geniuses are not directors, or producers, but writers. The people who create this material to begin with.

Like Gillian Flynn. How did she come up with this stuff?

And Flynn does not look like Rosamund Pike, she’s not movie star beautiful. But we’re all looking for our Flynn, we’re all looking for that person who surprises us, who utilizes their personality each and every day to make our lives interesting and exciting.

So I’ll wait for her next book. Although I’m worried the eyes of the world and the resulting pressure will inhibit her. It’s hard to receive the accolades and still produce. Which is why actors can continue to be successful, but writers not so much. To dig down deep inside and come up with fantastic material is so difficult.

But that’s all we’re interested in today, the fantastic.

Unfortunately, the “Gone Girl” movie is not.

P.S. This movie needed its Sharon Stone, the one who spread her legs in “Basic Instinct,” who manipulated us and attracted us simultaneously. We wanted to know Catherine Tramell, despite being fearful of her sting. Stars draw us closer, the longer you watched Rosamund Pike in this picture not only did you realize why she had no friends, but you had no desire to hang with her, never mind sleep with her yourself, she radiated one note intelligence and almost no humor, and attractiveness is always more than skin deep, it’s an alchemy behind the eyes that can be aided by beauty, but does not depend upon it.

P.P.S. Affleck jumps from genteel to manipulative when he’s interviewed by Sela Ward, who’s both enticing and despicable as a high class TV interviewer, Sela embodied what Pike aspired to, but for too much of the movie Affleck’s a lunk, but not quite one we can believe has corn-fed roots but was still able to score this high class Harvard graduate.

P.P.P.S. David Clennon always delivers, but it’s shocking to see the lines in the face of Miles Drentell, the evil advertiser of “thirtysomething.” Aging is a bitch, but it happens to all of us, be sure to see the evolutionary pictures in today’s “New York Times Magazine,” they’ll haunt in you in a way this flick aspires to but is unable to achieve:

“Forty Portraits in Forty Years”

 

Smokey on Stern – start at 24:20 and listen through “Tears of a Clown”