I asked a powerful music PR man why the press never went negative on Taylor Swift.

He said it was about access. As long as she was available, doing interviews, feeding the press stories, coverage would be positive. It’s when you clam up that the media goes wild on you.

Which kind of explains why Kanye West is getting a pass.

Not completely. But here we have an egomaniac with little national traction, when it comes to music, being given a faux award and then rambling on for ten minutes nearly incoherently, sticking it to the man for giving him this award, any award at all. I’d say it’s hypocritical, but what fascinates me is the press is not full of stories about him being a blowhard. Why?

Because everybody in America is trying to get rich and the young are impressionable and if we can just focus on the antics of the young ‘uns we can get ahead.

Meanwhile, ratings for the show go down and one wonders what can be done next, live executions? George Carlin suggested that a while back, that ratings would be killer, but in our short attention span theatre, where everything is plowed under and history is irrelevant, no one seems to know, or get the joke.

Not that you can have a sense of humor these days. Because someone might be offended.

And the way you make hay on the VMAs is to offend. But that concept is so long in the tooth that we laugh when the oldsters get their knickers in a twist, because we know it’s just about attention.

Attention…it’s hard to get in the internet era.

You could make a record, but even that has a hard time triumphing. Happens every once in a while, with “Blurred Lines,” “Royals” and “Uptown Funk,” but what the industry thinks is important most of America does not so the way to get ahead is to be featured on this show, which resembles nothing so much as Halloween. That’s right, you put on a costume and have a night out and then you forget about the whole enterprise until twelve months hence.

The reason the VMAs are irrelevant is because the station no longer airs videos. I’m not saying they should, I’m just saying that in the heyday of the channel what was hyped on the night was exposed thereafter ad infinitum on the channel, and we were all paying attention. It’s a paradigm Beats 1 is trying to resurrect, by banging Halsey. Will it work?

That’s not the issue. We know there are anomalies. But the truth is we all don’t pay attention to anything other than the Super Bowl, which is why an appearance there is so meaningful and powerful. Prince resurrected his career, he can bloviate ignorantly about the internet but we all still care, because we saw him knock them dead at the game, whose contestants and score elude our memory.

That’s the power of music.

But we haven’t had “Little Red Corvette” in such a long time. A track that was indelible and so infectious that it didn’t matter who made it, what the video was like, we needed more.

So, if we were living in the old days, Miley’s manager would have brokered a deal wherein her new tunes would be featured on the outlet, ensuring they were hits. We’d all know them and we’d all talk about them. I give Ms. Cyrus props for dropping her LP right after the show, that’s how you do it, strike when the iron is hot, when the eyes are upon you, in a flash, but no one cares.

That’s the issue in America today.

It’s not that people have a short attention span, it’s just that they’re overwhelmed with product to the point they don’t care about much at all, percentage-wise, and those left out haven’t stopped bitching. Hell, it’s happening in television, read today’s “New York Times.”

But what the “Times” has that those appearing on the VMAs do not is a new paper, they’re in the public eye every day. Whereas you get your shot on the VMAs and if you don’t catch fire, you’re done.

So what have we learned?

If live shows were so important, a gathering of the tribes, ratings would soar, but they don’t. We’ve seen the trick, the antics, the train-wrecks, and it’s no longer new.

But if you’re not featured on one of these shows it’s even harder to get traction.

And everybody who puts money first plays by the rules. Developing acts that fit the paradigm are hyped this way to the point only the ignorant care.

So what’s next?

What I’ve been telling you all along, a whittling of the culture, a reduction of the offerings. Even fewer tracks are going to be hits. And you may not like what is selected, but popularity is everything in today’s culture.

And popularity can be manipulated, but victory truly occurs when the machine melds with quality such that we all care.

We can argue all day long whether “Blurred Lines” rips off Marvin Gaye, but we all agree it’s an infectious track.

As was Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” If only Kanye kut one that good.

But he’s so busy pursuing his power dream of ubiquity that he’s lost focus, he expects us to care, but most don’t.

But no one in the game will admit that.

What the internet has taught us is the consumer is king. It’s happened over and over again. The consumer gave us file-trading then streaming. Don’t blame Spotify, that’s long after the fact.

The consumer wants instant access. The consumer wants a low price.

And most consumers don’t want what the music industry is giving them. And rather than adjust, the players are just doubling-down. Becoming even more crass.

So, the VMAs are irrelevant unless you were on them. Most people didn’t watch them and didn’t care. If you say you hate the tracks, join the club. If you wonder what is going on, the media and powers-that-be believe youth drive the culture.

But we’ve learned the oldsters have the money.

And we all have smartphones.

And we all think we’re hip.

And the way you win is by appealing to everybody.

Don’t expect people to pay attention if you’re niche.

But if you’ve got a great voice, write melodic material with good changes, employ hooky choruses and a bridge, the world is your oyster.

Start there.

“Soul-Searching in TV Land Over the Challenges of a New Golden Age”

Just put out the damn album.

Do we have to endure a month-long run-up to an LP that’ll be over in a week? Testimony to the history of rock’s greatest living cockroach who is ultimately irrelevant in today’s world?

Yes, Keef surprised us with a successful tome. Supposedly, I found the bio impossible going. Nuggets are irrelevant if they’re not told in a comprehensible fashion.

And now he’s putting out an album with expectations so low, only the press seems to care.

That’s right, that’s how far we’ve sunk, give access and they’ll go for it. As Keith trots out some old tales and we all wince as we realize once again that rock and roll is dead.

Maybe if he moved to Nashville and cut a record with someone who could actually sing, with someone who knows how to make hits.

And yes, it is all about hits today. A hit is something that grabs you right away and spreads like wildfire. And if you think otherwise, you probably don’t have cable, a smartphone or access to the internet. You’re thrilled if someone gives you free music. But even five year olds don’t care.

Kind of like the buzz about Wilco giving away its LP for free. Do you believe that was a news story? Music hasn’t been inaccessible in this CENTURY! To expect us to salivate over something in the pipeline…is to be a member of the media that believes windowing and previewing matters. The late great Freddie Mercury had it right… I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it NOW!

Well, not all of it, just access to all of it.

Look at Keith’s track record, without Mick. It’s even worse than Jagger’s output. Half-baked riffs with scratchy vocals that unlike the work of hero Robert Johnson is far from memorable. Give Keith credit for taking the X-Pensive Winos on tour, decades ago, but to lead with his music in 2015 is utterly laughable.

Just put the damn thing out. What kind of crazy world do we live in where Beyonce does no hype and puts her music out, years ago, and Keith wants us to get excited in advance.

Creeps me out. Give us a catchy single. Entice us.

But he can’t do this. Because the music sucks.

And today everything that is not great sucks. That’s what the players don’t understand, we don’t live in 1975, where mediocre stuff on the radio garners traction and a career. Now it’s about the toppermost and then there’s everything else. Just check the movie grosses if you doubt me.

While you’re complaining about streaming revenue, superstars are rolling in dough. YouTube and Spotify and even Apple Music are gonna pay FOREVER! If you create the desire, we’re now able to fill it. Why are musicians so short-sighted? They’re not executives. When Lucian Grainge is long gone from Universal, today’s hit artists will still be paid by streaming services, and this is a GOOD THING!

But I don’t want to waste my time interacting with ignorant people who have little audience to begin with.

And I don’t want to waste my time getting excited for a Keith Richards solo album.

Once again, the media masters are out of the loop. That’s this year’s story, not has-been rocker drops an album nobody cares about, but how the press could get it so wrong, believing we actually care. Donald Trump wipes away convention, shows that the people have a brain, but in entertainment coverage it’s the same as it ever was. But now there’s even more of it. Over and over again I hear Keith Richards has a new album… AND I DON’T CARE!

And no one else does either.

Check second week streaming numbers.

Hell, CHECK THE FIRST!

Last I looked it was called the MUSIC business! Not the hype business.

You want us to have eager anticipation, have a track record. And Keith Richards’s in solo music is close to terrible.

He has to do something to earn our attention. Everybody starts from the same line. Data tells us who wins and loses.

So Keith, stop the interviews, just put out the record. Let us judge. Let us be surprised. Prove us wrong.

But you won’t do that.

Because your thinking is just as old as your age. You’re surrounded by those who refuse to take a risk.

But the joke is on you.

No one cares.

Your album’s a stiff.

AND IT HASN’T EVEN COME OUT YET!

Smoke Break – Spotify

Smoke Break – YouTube

If only the lyrics were written by Jason Isbell.

Who do we blame for turning country into rock and roll? My vote is Robert John “Mutt” Lange, who turned the tiny-talented yet beautiful singer Shania Twain into the biggest star in country music. In one fell swoop Mutt performed the same magic he did for Def Leppard, he turned conventional sales records on their head, suddenly the ceiling was lifted, turns out there was lot more money in pop metal and a lot more money in country music than anybody ever fathomed.

Country started to resemble nothing so much as the rock and roll of the seventies, the corporate version, laden with hooks and generic lyrics, but this time about babies, religion and trucks.

But not exclusively. If you ever listened to Miranda Lambert’s “Gunpowder & Lead” you’d be immediately enraptured, by a woman who had the music in her, who was willing to tell her own story, evidence more girl power than all the popsters combined.

Country’s got the biggest stars who last the longest, singing a palatable sound with all the elements of classic rock, and yet it gets pooh-poohed constantly, the cognoscenti believe it’s hillbilly music for the ignorant.

But it’s not.

True, the lyrics can be crap.

But the sound, OH THAT SOUND!

“Smoke Break” is Carrie Underwood’s new single. And despite Kelly Clarkson’s hits, Carrie’s career will burn brighter and longer, she’s a bigger star. Sure, she’s a face for others, despite getting a bit of songwriting credit, but those she fronts…they’re the best money can buy!

This is how it works… If you’re a songwriter, a studio musician, the best way to get paid is by working with a country star. So Luke Bryan and Carrie Underwood, they get the benefit of the best.

Yes, Luke Bryan, whose new album is defeating Dr. Dre’s on the chart. Bringing into question whether we live in a hip-hop nation, or a country one.

I distantly knew Carrie Underwood was prepping a new project, but I had no idea she’d dropped a single. But when I cued up my “Country Hits” playlist on Spotify yesterday I was immediately confronted with a sound that’s filled a zillion arenas. That’s right, rock and roll. With big guitars playing riffs that do nothing so much as make you want to break out your air guitar.

The intro is quiet, almost plodding, but soon thereafter Carrie comes in. (Not that the beat is not solid. In a beat-driven universe the bottom is evidenced so dramatically in country music.)

She’s a small town, hard-workin’ woman just tryin’ to make a livin’
Workin’ three jobs, feeding four little mouths in a run-down kitchen

Could almost be a John Prine song, a set-up for a view into a tiny life from which we can extract the bones of everyman.

But then…

When you never take nothing and doing nothing but giving
It’s hard to be a good wife and a good mom and a good Christian

Make me puke. This lowest common denominator pandering is what is holding country music back. The people involved think the audience can only tolerate crap like this, that you can’t go deeper and be chiaroscuro, can’t show life as shades of gray instead of black and white. Nobody is that good, especially the country audience. What could have been three-dimensional ends up as cardboard. As for the religious reference…utterly superfluous and offensive to anyone who is not of the faith, that’s another thing I hate about country music, the endless fealty paid to God and the values that the nation at large is so busy trying to tear down, like the Confederate flag.

But oh what a chorus, oh what electric guitars.

On one hand it’s utterly generic, but it’s oh-so-POWERFUL!

If you ever liked rock you’ll be hooked.

Forget the people in skinny jeans who can only bless that which appeals to few, they’ve never been more irrelevant. Hell, they make Pitchfork look mainstream. But for the rest of us, who can poke fun at ourselves and are not worried about our image…we can admit “Smoke Break” sounds GREAT!

So this weekend we’ll be subjected to the antics of one Miley Cyrus, who can get our attention but has a problem selling tickets, while the mainstream press fawns over the youth-culture train-wreck known as the MTV Video Music Awards, not questioning why MTV has authority to still have a show, seeing as how it no longer shows videos, which have sunk in popularity anyway, they’re just the images behind the tunes on YouTube. But there you have it, the press would rather trump the momentary as opposed to the lasting. There’s nothing sexy in the story of Carrie Underwood.

But there’s plenty of sex in her.

And in the sound of “Smoke Break.”

If it doesn’t oil your loins, if it doesn’t get you ready for action, you’re too uptight to do it.

That’s right, sex and rock and roll are intertwined, they’re two sides of the same coin.

And they run this nation of ours.

The remaining jukeboxes feature AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.”

It’s country acts that sell out stadiums. Hell, it’s where Taylor Swift got her start.

But it gets no respect.

Then again, with lyrics like this I’m not sure it deserves any.

But if Nashville could elevate the product, know that the way you succeed today is to deliver the unexpected, titillate us, illustrate the way we really live, warts and all, it could mow down pop overnight.

Because the truth is we live in a rock and roll nation.

But too many people have not gotten the message that the music has migrated from NYC, L.A., SF and Seattle to Nashville. Where jeans rule, and playing a mean guitar still counts.

It all works, except for the words. They’ve got to work on that.

P.S. Before you get on your high horse and dismiss this music before listening to it, know that the producer Jay Joyce started off producing Tim Finn, and has John Hiatt, Patty Griffin and Cage the Elephant credits too. You see the world is not as black and white as you think.

P.P.S. A co-writer of this song, Chris DeStefano, has written for Kelly Clarkson too, once again demonstrating the cross-pollination in music. Radio and media want to establish walls without bridges, but the truth is the audience is mashing it all up. Which is why so many country acts are rapping…but that’s another story.

Talk about forgotten men. Brad Delp offs himself and years later he’s just a footnote in the history of rock and roll, his crime being a member of the most successful new band of 1976/7, which burst on the scene with an album so perfect, so pristine, so hook-laden, that the cognoscenti could only lambaste it.

And I kind of get it. The fall of ’76’s airwaves were populated by a song so seductive that it almost seemed manipulative. “More Than A Feeing” was the most beautiful girl in school tapping you on the shoulder to hit on you. Could this be real? An apparition? The result of plastic surgery? It had to be fake, otherwise how could it be so GOOD!

And unlike Mr. Delp, his work on “More Than A Feeling” remains. The initial impact of Boston, it sustains on classic rock airwaves. Then again, other than the Beatles and maybe the Stones, the music of the pre-MTV stars is already starting to fade in the rearview mirror, but not in the minds of those who were there, stuff like “More Than A Feeling” can never be forgotten.

But it was not my favorite track on the album, I can even argue it was not even the best, I’d reserve that for “Foreplay/Long Time,” but my favorite is “Hitch A Ride.”

Yes, I bought the album. I didn’t love “More Than A Feeling,” the curious thing is I appreciate it more today, but I needed to go deeper, I needed to know what all the hubbub was about.

And that’s how I discovered “Foreplay/Long Time,” a modern day Led Zeppelin track, going from electric to acoustic and then taking you over the waterfall. It still gets me high every time I hear it, especially with the anticipation built by the instrumental intro.

“Hitch A Ride” is on the second side.

But it’s really more about the first side, it took a long time for listeners to get to the second, because the eighteen minute three track first was so damn perfect. “Peace Of Mind” was bookended by “More Than A Feeling” and “Foreplay/Long Time,” and one could argue that’s all you needed, when you put your Garrard or Dual or BIC on endless repeat, sitting stoned on your couch, looking out the window, contemplating how wonderful this life is.

And really, the flip side is not as good. You mostly hear “Rock & Roll Band,” with its reference to Cape Cod, if you hear anything at all these days, and “Smokin'” got airplay too, hell, every track on the LP ended up on the radio, and Delp’s closing composition, “Let Me Take You Home Tonight,” even got more recognition than my favorite, but stuck right smack dab in the middle of side two is “Hitch A Ride,” the song that probably goes through my head most these days, really.

Day is night in New York City

Yup, that’s what my brain sings, quietly, intimately, just like the record.

But if you’re listening to the record, there’s an acoustic intro so magical it’ll make you throw away your computer and buy a Martin if you’ve got any chops at all. Sound… Especially of an acoustic axe. It evidences humanity, just like the rest of this track.

Gonna hitch a ride
Head for the other side

I’d like to say it’s about the lyrics, but really they’re nearly irrelevant. Hell, you can scrape up the demo and find out the words were completely different. But just before the chorus, when Brad is done singing the verse, the drums come in and then there are background harmonies and the sound is so mellifluous you can do nothing but smile.

Oh yeah

Really!

Then the intro riff is played on an electric, a harbinger of what’s to come, but no one told Brad Delp, he’s still singing quietly, stuck in the groove, but when he’s through the second chorus, all hell breaks loose. Brad goes up and an organ comes in and it’s almost like you’re in ELP territory, but with a briefer solo and more melody, and then there are guitar effects and you’re coming down an aural roller coaster and then you’re taken on twists and turns by a guitar sound so exquisite you can’t believe it was caught on tape.

Eventually it all goes quiet. And then, in the spotlight, a lone electric guitar plays some notes, and then another guitar comes in and you’re marveling as they twin and you want this show to never end, you just want to live in this sound forever.

Gonna hitch a ride
Head for the other side
Leave it all behind
Never change my mind

That’s the problem with suicide, the finality. You’re here and then you’re gone. Suddenly, we can no longer hear Brad Delp’s vocals again. If only we could have showed up at his house en masse, taken him by the hand to the hospital, his life could have been saved.

Alas, this was not to be.

He was carried away for the last time.

Not that he knew this when he sang the words to “Hitch A Ride.”

But, through the magic of recording, his past work is not only etched in our brains, but on tape, in grooves, in digits, for all to hear.

Seemingly some of the best work is subtle, not looking for attention, sneaking up on you. Like Zeppelin’s “Ten Years Gone,” like Boston’s “Hitch A Ride.” You don’t get them at first, but then they become your favorites.

The problem is that Tom Scholz is a genius. And our society has no place for the personalities of people like this, with plenty of answers as well as questions, who need to do it their way, so we can be exposed to stuff so incredible that until it’s laid down it can only be heard in their heads.

Yes, Brad is great, but the less than warm Tom is the star here. His crime is one of hubris, he never said he wasn’t talented, he never suffered fools, as a result the media turned away from him.

But…

The great thing is the art remains. Long after not only Brad Delp is gone but no one cares what classic rockers have to say…

The music lives on.

Come, hitch a ride with me. I promise you’ll want to come. And when I’m gone you can sing this song in your head and remember all the great work of the past which gets little respect but was monumental. And still is.

P.S. I just pulled up the demo, “San Francisco Day,” which through sleuthing you might find too, mine is labeled “We Found It In the Trashcan, Honest!,” and in the original lyrics Brad sings…”Bury me alive with those sweet sounds.” Oh, how true that is!

Rhinofy-Hitch A Ride