It’d be like restricting Taylor Swift to vinyl.

Or having Jason Isbell play the Grammys instead of Luke Bryan.

How in hell did the movie business lose touch with America?

The Oscars used to be an international rite. A veritable holiday. Movies drove the culture, especially after classic rock decimated credibility in music and disco took over… Hell, isn’t that the exact same thing? Pandering to the lowest common denominator and as a result losing your core audience? The music business imploded in 1979, if it weren’t for MTV’s appearance in 1981 it would have been a dark, cold, lonely winter for much of the eighties. And then rap killed the lowest common denominator hairbands. Don’t the movie studios realize they’re killing their own business?

Happened in music too. We called it Napster. Whereupon it was proven everybody wanted everything and they wanted it now.

But now, there’s an endless hype cycle for mostly unworthy movies, and those that are good require a trip to the theatre. Who wants to go to the theatre? Certainly not me. I love the experience, of a big screen and good sound, but the problem is movies don’t start when I want them to. We live in an on demand culture, and movies are not on demand.

So I don’t go.

I don’t know anybody who goes, except for my octogenarian mother, who grew up believing in the religion of attendance.

I too used to go, every night in the midseventies. But that was back when movies were part of the national discussion. Does anybody discuss “The Lego Movie” or “Guardians Of The Galaxy” other than the grosses?

Meanwhile, Amazon steals the Academy’s thunder by making a deal with Woody Allen, that’s the big story this week, not these nominations for films most people have not seen.

At least the Grammys now get it right. They nominate what the labels push, at least in the big categories. If you’re not successful, you can’t play. But the holier-than-thou film folk sell candy every Friday but once a year want to turn on those who keep them alive and focus on foie gras. Huh?

Meanwhile, the bankrupt media trumpets the nominations as if they matter. They don’t matter. They’re as interesting as lacrosse statistics to those who never played the game.

People want story. Isn’t that the essence of the television renaissance?

And big time movies are all whiz-bang, with cartoon characters made for adolescents who have now stopped going to the theatre too. That’s the latest bad statistic for the film business, the cratering of teen attendance.

But ain’t how that always is in modern society. You rule until you die, suddenly.

Everybody thought digital photography was a joke, it was on the horizon for years. And then in the space of twenty four months, film cratered.

Same deal with CDs. They may still be a strong revenue source, but they’re miniscule compared to streams and stolen files. Thank god the labels authorized Spotify, otherwise they’d be like the movie companies, protecting dying retail, in this case movie theatres, and sacrificing their audience in the process.

At least you could see “The Interview” when demand was hot, when the publicity peaked. I was invited to a viewing party. Who wants to go to a viewing party months after the marketing? When the buzz is done. Quick, name the winner of last year’s NBA championship, even the World Series! There’s so much going on today that we can’t even remember what went on yesterday.

I used to record the films when they hit HBO. But then I stopped even that, because I wasn’t watching them.

Meanwhile, now you’ve got to subscribe to HBO, Netflix and Amazon Prime. That’d be like shopping for groceries at multiple stores. Who’s got the time, never mind the money?

But no one wants to bite the bullet. No one in the film industry wants to rock the boat. They don’t realize they’re balkanizing the market.

But the truth is few care. Hell, even the ratings for the Golden Globes went down.

Do you even recognize the Oscar nominees?

You can tell me how many iPhones there are, and what their storage configurations are. But who cares about this dreck?

You’ve got to make it easy today. Talk to music people. The hardest thing is getting people to listen. And continue to listen. If you’re about windowing and restrictions, you’re ignorant.

And if Amy Pascal wasn’t caught up in the hacking scandal, you wouldn’t even know her name. Hell, I bet more teens and twentysomethings know who Chris Sacca is, he’s got a better track record and he’s on the bleeding edge, changing society.

That’s right, our films used to reflect society and change it.

And for all the endless hype about “Boyhood,” where was I supposed to see it?

How successful do you think “1989” would be if you couldn’t stream the hits on YouTube? Imagine that, a record release that you couldn’t hear. That’s the movie business, you can’t SEE the flicks!

I’m sure Woody Allen likes the money. And he’s so damn old, it’s like when Fred Silverman made that deal with Lucille Ball… But one thing he knows is you can reach many more eyeballs online, and that Amazon doesn’t mess with your creativity, something the movie studios cannot help but doing.

So there you have it.

All the talent, and there’s not much of it, not top-draw, dependable icons, is migrating to TV and the new banks/distributors… Who make the entire series viewable on a single date. And the movie business’s answer?

HOLD AN AWARDS SHOW HONORING FILMS PEOPLE HAVEN’T SEEN AND DON’T CARE ABOUT!

Why is everybody so DELUSIONAL?

Needless to say entrepreneurs are the new singer/songwriters, albeit with a bigger upside. It’s the American Dream, create something and get someone else to blow it up. For every Ian MacKaye, there’s someone polishing a turd, just hoping that Lucian Grainge will make a seven figure deal with them. Everything’s about the deal, everything’s about cashing out and using the proceeds to enjoy a large lifestyle.

But you know who’s getting really rich? MARK BURNETT!

It’s kind of like prospecting, better to sell the tools than to pan for gold.

As for being a shark… The money ain’t so great, did you see that Mark Cuban was offered 30k an episode?

But what they get is publicity.

Mark Burnett has created a hit show. And the main beneficiary for those who appear is the eyeballs, it can blow up your product, if you’ve got a real one.

But what I keep seeing is the equivalent of the blooper reel on “American Idol,” people who have no chance of making it, who have nothing but blind faith in themselves.

Yes, the greats had no guarantees. They broke through from nowhere. But that does not mean you will!

But you can’t say this. That’s what I love most on “Shark Tank,” when everybody says no. The contestants are truly dumbfounded. And then they walk off saying they’re gonna show the sharks.

Give me a break.

All they’ve got is this appearance. The publicity. If their business was so good, investors would be clamoring to give them money.

So we’ve got three Korean women with incredible pedigrees hawking a dating site. Don’t they seem to know IAC has this territory locked up? That Barry Diller is going to protect his cash cow? And sure, there are competitors, but the internet is laden with fads. The best example being turntable.fm…on everybody’s lips for a month, and then history.

Want to break through, want to make it? DO SOMETHING UNIQUE!

But the problem is these highly-educated people, with MBAs from Stanford and Harvard, can’t do this. That’s what separates the creative people from the grinds. Mark Cuban didn’t go to Harvard, he went to Indiana. Because success is about personality, not your C.V.

Your C.V. will do you well if you want to play it safe, if you want to go work for the bank. But if you want to go off on your own, you’ve got to have pluck. Not only ingenuity and perseverance, but a unique idea that you can see to fruition. If Microsoft couldn’t compete with Google, losing billions on Bing, what makes these women think they can reinvent online dating, where the barrier to entry is zilch!

But doggone it, they believe in themselves.

You sit at home and convince yourself you’re gonna make it and then you get to the gatekeepers and you give your spiel and the investors’ eyes roll into the back of their heads. If you’ve got a smash hit record, the plan is secondary, if not irrelevant. If you’ve got a great plan and no hit, no one is interested in.

And the hardest thing is finding a hit. You can find someone who can analyze the charts all day long, someone who lives for music, but what do they bring to the table?

So “Shark Tank” is a sorry commentary on America. The truth is while the rich are raping and pillaging in traditional ways, although you’ve got to give the banks credit for coming up with credit default swaps, and getting the government to insure them, the great unwashed underclass is reading self-help books, listening to testimonials by one-dimensional celebrities, deciding if they just believe in themselves, they’ll be successful.

But it don’t really happen that way at all!

Furthermore, just because you can write a business plan that does not make your business successful. Once again, the idea, the germ, the creative spark is the key. It’s nothing without execution, but once again you can’t polish a turd.

But you can’t tell people this.

“Mark Cuban Threatened To Leave Shark Tank Over Sony’s ‘Insulting’ Offer Of $30,000 Per Episode”

You used to be nobody. Los Angeles and New York were a dream. Rather than build a shrine to yourself on social media, you became engrossed in media, in music and films, and you went to the theatre, to the show, to get closer.

Nowhere as much as in Washington, D.C. Where there was a live Go-go scene that most of the country never heard of when it was peaking and still have no idea how to characterize. We had the Go-Go’s. The sound was big at the beach. Was this some kind of surf music? Or soul, akin to “Under The Boardwalk”?

“Sonic Highways” is the first explanation of Go-go music to make it comprehensible. As an interviewee claims, it was what shoulda been rap. If you don’t feel like you missed out when you see the Go-go show, if you don’t want to get in your car and drive there right now, you’ve got no soul, and certainly no ears. It was about the drums, the beat, it was participatory, it was about the interaction between performer and audience.

That’s today’s conundrum. All the action is at the show and all the publicity surrounds the record. It’s hard for musicians to flip the switch, to realize live has triumphed over recordings. That they can make it if they really try. But they must try harder.

It’s easy to fake it in the studio.

It’s almost impossible to fake it on stage. And that’s one of the reasons so many acts carry huge production, to cover up. If they had to be there naked it would all fall flat. But not for Trouble Funk at the Go-go show.

You’re watching Dave Grohl talk to this big black guy and you ask yourself…WHO IS THIS? Just another guy from the Chocolate City? No, it turns out to be Big Tony, Trouble Funk’s majordomo. But then Big Tony starts to testify about Chuck Brown. WHO?

But once you see the recently departed Mr. Brown on stage you get it, he was the progenitor of Go-go.

And that was the highlight of these two episodes, along with Steve Earle singing his Townes Van Zandt song. How is it that someone we all know the name of could be broke? Especially before the days of the internet, when it was nearly impossible to get noticed. But being a songwriter used to be enough, it still is, if you’re great.

And once upon a time a song was a story. Something heartfelt, that would make you cry, as Nanci Griffith does when Steve sings on “Austin City Limits.”

But the point is the seventies and eighties were a long, long time ago.

If you think music ruled in the sixties… It was even more dominant in the seventies, when it had an established place in the firmament, when FM ruled and the hardest part of going to the show was getting a ticket.

In the eighties…  What can I say, we had MTV. Musicians triumphed. You wanted to be one.

And then VH1 catalogued everybody’s exploits on “Behind The Music” and the past imploded. The scorched earth formula took what was personal and special and made it pedestrian, with the arc of a film, and the truth is every band has its own arc, every band tells its own story.

So you’re in Austin and a blues fanatic, Clifford Antone, opens a club to showcase his favorite sound. Was he doing it to get rich? Of course not! That was the difference between then and now. Today everybody wants to ring the bell, make a billion, back then we thought if we were paying our bills, if we were doing what was important to us, if it was fulfilling, we were happy. You remember happiness, don’t you? That’s when you pursue your dream. And if you take the money out of today’s dreams, do they still fly?

Rarely.

And the highlight of the Austin episode, other than Mr. Earle’s performance, is the Roky Erickson footage. And just when you figure he’s never going to be on camera, Roky is. Not all there mentally, but certainly all there physically. It’s astounding these people are still around.

That’s what you don’t realize, your heroes, the icons, they’re reachable, they’re here, touch them while you can.

And Willie Nelson only triumphed when he returned to Austin. Footage of his Fourth of July picnic will also have you lamenting you missed it. Once again, this was a minor story in “Rolling Stone,” most people were unaware of it back when, the boomers did not yet control the mainstream media, music was huge, but it was still outside.

And now Austin is booming. Willie just says to move west. The way the arts have taken hold in the old industrial areas of western Massachusetts. Artists need time to be able to create, they need to pay almost no rent and no overhead. But today that’s impossible in the cities.

And the cities pay the price, our whole country pays the price. Money has certainly triumphed over music. We want statistics, data. That which touches the heart is unquantifiable, and therefore doesn’t get much press.

And although Dave Grohl can be sycophantic, the truth is he’s doing God’s work here. He’s treating the music and the history with respect. Want to inspire the next generation? Show “Sonic Highways” in schools.

Because that’s not what music is today.

Stardom has triumphed over art. How do you look? What is your plan? Who do you know? As opposed to inspiration, and following it.

If you haven’t watched “Sonic Highways,” borrow someone’s HBO GO log-in and log on. Because it will take you to a different place, one you remember if you lived through it, one that will be intriguing if you did not.

When you had to make the record sleeves yourself, as they did at Dischord, as opposed to clicking a button and pushing your music into the online abyss.

I’m not saying that the internet is bad, I’m just saying you lose something with every advancement. And what we’ve lost is the local scene. The same way we’ve lost it in radio and concert promotion. The entire nation is homogeneous. It’s the same everywhere, the same TV shows and fast food. Maybe that’s why the restaurant scene is burgeoning. Cuisine is different at each and every establishment. Sure, Danny Meyer may rise above, but that’s the same way the Beatles and the Airplane rose above. But that didn’t mean we didn’t play music at home, that we all weren’t happy where we were.

Now no one’s happy where they are. They have to measure themselves against the titans of not only music, but tech. Everyone feels inadequate, and burdened by the self-promotion online. Everybody wants to be important and with everybody vying for attention, almost no one is.

But it used to be different. You used to be part of your own local community. Your identity was three-dimensional, your influences more important than your number of followers.

Then again, this insularity caused bigotry, caused us to leave and go to the big city to find our people.

Like I said, something is gained and something is lost in every revolution.

Chuck Brown “Wind Me Up”

Chuck Brown “Go Go Live”

Steve Earle (fast-forward to 9:30)

Trouble Funk, “Drop The Bomb”

Roky Erickson “Two Headed Dog”

Billy Joel by Fred Schruers

It really was different.

It bugs me that people claim otherwise, the youngsters who were not around and the oldsters hanging on by a thread.

First and foremost, as Malcolm Gladwell said in “Outliers,” timing is everything. Jason Flom’s father may have been blackballed because he was Jewish, but he found an opportunity in a Jewish law firm doing hostile takeovers, something that didn’t exist previously. So, you’ve got to be bright, you’ve got to be ready, but timing is everything.

And the truth is when Billy Joel took piano lessons, he could not foresee the advent of the Beatles, he could not foresee music driving the youthquake and the culture. But when it did, he was ready. He started off as the piano player in the band, and ended up the lead singer too. You’ve got to make the most of your opportunities.

And opportunities came his way. But they never worked out. It’s kind of like tech today, where failure is a badge of honor because you learn something. The Hassles, Attila, they proved what Billy did not want to do. And unlike his compatriots Billy stayed at it. That’s right, most people give up. Not only are they frustrated, life gets in the way. They want a new car, a house and a family. Billy didn’t even know how to drive. He was about music and girls only.

And music could keep you alive. You could play six nights a week, honing your chops without realizing it.

And then there was the deal with Artie Ripp.

The book makes the point that the two worst deals Billy made were what ensured his success.

Yes, Billy had to pay Artie Ripp seemingly forever, but no one else believed in him, no one else was giving him a chance. And it was the initial album and the resulting tour that gave him traction.

And Howard Kaufman gives credit to Billy’s wife Elizabeth. She fought harder as his manager, she believed.

So as you sit at home trying to get it right, know that if you insist on winning every time you’re probably holding yourself back.

And there was the switch to Phil Ramone as producer, and Walter Yetnikoff believed in Billy and got back his publishing, but the truth is Billy had the music in him. Still does.

It’s very different from today. When people are focusing on money from day one. When they want to expand their brand. The music is enough, it will get you through, if you believe in it, if you trust in it, if you’re good at it.

And despite all the naysayers, at this late date Billy Joel even gets respect. Last long enough and the flavor of the moment disappears and only the great remain, and Billy Joel is great.

And this is the book that was supposed to be the autobiography. And, unfortunately, some of the deepest questions remain unanswered. We hear some of the Artie Ripp story, find out that Mike Lang was the link between the two, but just when the story should slow down it speeds up. Billy’s tale is not unknown. If you’re reading this book it’s because you want to know more. And you learn tidbits, but you still want more depth.

But what struck me most was I could not put it down.

I was going through a stack of books, scanning them, getting them out of the way. But I got hooked by this and spent hours reveling in the way it once was. When the album mattered, not because it made more money but because it made a statement, and the public wanted to hear it.

SHE’S GOT A WAY

My favorite album is “Songs From The Attic,” wherein Billy re-records all his old songs the way he wants to hear them. I’m not sure I ever heard the original from “Cold Spring Harbor,” I was a latecomer to Billy’s oeuvre. But the original is astounding, because it’s intimate and heartfelt. You dropped the needle on stuff like this and you owned it, it spoke to you. And it still speaks to me today.

She comes to me when I’m feelin’ down
Inspires me without a sound
She touches me and I get turned around

Artists are sensitive. We’re insecure. We need to be lifted up, dusted off and encouraged.

THE BALLAD OF BILLY KID

This is on “Piano Man,” but the definitive take is on “Songs In The Attic.” Never a hit, it’s as important to Billy’s canon as the songs that charted.

From a town known as Oyster Bay, Long Island
Rode a boy with a six-pack in his hand

We all come from somewhere. Usually unhip, where we were an outcast. We migrated to the city to find like-minded people, to reinvent ourselves, to make it.
Billy’s a product of the suburbs. He wanted to GET OUT!

STREETLIFE SERENADER

Streetlife serenader
Never sang on stages
Needs no orchestration
Melody comes easy

Not everybody makes it. We all know naturals without the gumption, without the breaks. And when we listen to them, we’re reminded of what we thought would once be.

Billy decries the “Streetlife Serenader” album, says it was rushed, sounds wrong and doesn’t deliver, he wouldn’t even let it get released in Australia, for fear of hurting his momentum. But if you ever listened to a Broadway cast album, if you believe music doesn’t have to be hard-edged, but can be smooth and soothing…the sound of “Streetlife Serenader” will entrance you.

SUMMER, HIGHLAND FALLS

Another song whose definitive version is on “Songs In The Attic.”
There was a real house, a real location that inspired this song.
And for artists, who feel more than we do and translate for us…
It’s always either sadness or euphoria, they’re not even-keeled.

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

But I’m taking a Greyhound
On the Hudson River Line
I’m in a New York state of mind

He was. On a Greyhound. Returning from the west coast, to reside on the Hudson in a house Elizabeth rented. He landed at the airport and got on the bus, back before everybody had a black car waiting, never mind a private jet delivering them, and on the ride up… Billy was inspired. He didn’t know he was composing the definitive statement, but when he got to his new house he went to the piano and immediately wrote this. A track that marinated for decades before it found its rightful place as the anthem of New York in the wake of 9/11.

MIAMI 2017 (I’VE SEEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT ON BROADWAY)

Inspired by the famous newspaper headline, Ford telling New York City to drop dead, it’s written from the perspective of years hence, from a Jew in Miami, telling those who were not there what happened.

And one great thing in the book is learning of the Joel factory in Nuremberg. The family had money, the Nazis took the business, at least Billy’s grandfather escaped, ultimately going to Cuba and then America. We’re all immigrants. Our desire to make something of ourselves makes our country great.

JUST THE WAY YOU ARE

Don’t go changin’…

Sappy. Even Billy thought so. But it’s this standard that made his career. He didn’t even want to put it on the album, Linda Ronstadt had to tell him it was a hit. Write one song this good and you can live forever. Write more…

SCENES FROM AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT

A bottle of red, a bottle of white
It all depends on your appetite
I’ll meet you any time you want
In our Italian restaurant

Back when they had Chianti bottles hanging from the ceiling, before foodie culture told hold and everywhere there were Italians there were red-checked tablecloth joints where we met and drank and told our stories.

That’s what’s great about the east coast, the dialogue, the stories. Doesn’t matter who you are and what you’ve done so much as how well you tell it!

And the best of us told their stories in song.

We were addicted to not only the radio, but our records. They were our truth.

But that was back in 1975, when Brenda and Eddie were still in their prime, right after their divorce, before they gained weight, got sick and had their dreams dashed.

No one believed like we baby boomers. We thought we controlled the world. Still do, even if it’s untrue.

And the integral element wasn’t our smartphones, but our music.

Our social network was radio. We went to the gig to convene with our brethren.

And you wonder why we go in droves to see our heroes perform their hits.

Because they’re our songs.

And Billy wrote a whole hell of a lot of ’em.

Billy Joel – Spotify