You read a book once, you watch a movie a couple of times, but music is forever.

And this is a sea change. In monetization.

Isn’t it funny that the film business has accepted this, yet the music business has not. You don’t see actors taking to the Internet protesting Netflix, saying that they’re losing all that money from DVDs… Oh, that’s right, the studios screwed the talent on DVDs, but my point is streaming won in visual entertainment, but seemingly everyone who is a recording artist can’t stop bitching about Spotify.

But this isn’t about Spotify, or YouTube, or Beats Music, per se. It’s about a difference in consumption.

Once upon a time, the big effort was getting people to buy your record.

Now it’s getting people to LISTEN TO IT! AGAIN AND AGAIN!

In a world overflowing with entertainment, can you produce something so necessary that your fans and others can’t help but be drawn to it and continue to listen to it?

This is the blockbuster syndrome.

Even in the nineties, when MTV was rampant, most people owned little music. CDs were expensive, nobody had many, so they sat there spinning albums, learning all the deep tracks, going to the show to hear them. Now they only have time for the hits. Are you writing and recording hits?

In other words, if it takes multiple plays to understand and get your music, chances are you won’t even be niche, if that.

Difficult is passe. You can record the album tracks, but unless you’re a superstar and they’re as easily digestible and good as the hit, almost no one will listen.

This has already happened in the film business. Check the box office. One or two big winners and then also-rans. Everyone gravitates to the hits, they want to be part of the discussion, and oftentimes we know what’s a stiff by Friday afternoon, with our minions out in the theatres reporting.

Same deal in TV. When a show gets bad ratings do they let it run a season to develop an audience? Only in rare instances, maybe when superstar talent is involved and they believe in it, otherwise the show’s CANCELED!

That’s what’s happening throughout the music business. Albums are getting CANCELED, and no one seems to want to admit it.

Look at the SoundScan numbers, they’re positively anemic. Everyone blames it on piracy, but the truth is the audience has outgrown the album format, it doesn’t work for them, especially when they can go on YouTube and just get the hit.

So when you’re laying down your tracks, if you want to gain an audience, you’ve got to think about them, not you. Is what you’re doing so special that your fans will eat it up, play it incessantly and share it with their friends? Or is it good, something palatable people could enjoy, but will skip right over on their way to what’s popular.

Don’t decry popularity. Those tracks contain an essence most stuff that falls by the wayside does not. “Roar” works, even if it’s not as good as Katy Perry’s previous stuff. And if she ends up with enough hit singles people will push her album into the millions. But this is so different from when we sold millions to begin with, out of the box, because so many people were interested.

And the cycle is just that fast. Entering at number one is essentially irrelevant. Really, name the number one album from two weeks ago, three, I dare you.

So focus first on tracks. Get people clawing for more instead of foisting your work upon them. We live in a pull economy, and if you’re all about pushing, you’re probably not gonna last.

It’s in black and white and it’s depressing and Bruce Dern doesn’t deserve an Oscar, anything else you’d like to know?

I’ve been reading about this movie for months. Because that’s how you do it these days, you ramp up the publicity so that just maybe, people will go. I had to endure the history of Bruce Dern’s career, and road trips with Alexander Payne through Nebraska, and if that had anything to do with this flick, I’d tell you, but it doesn’t.

Yes, I went to the movies.

I just felt locked up inside. I’d read the newspapers, caught up on e-mail, the sun was setting and…I had to get out of the house.

That’s why we used to go to the movies, to get out of the house, because nothing went on at home, there were no friends and no Internet and only a couple of TV channels, everything that happened was out. As a matter of fact, on the way out of the ArcLight I ran into Larry and Carol, which proves the point.

And it’s so different in the dark cavern with the big screen. It’s a scenario I know so well.

That’s what I used to do in the late sixties and seventies. Go to the movies. I felt I knew the stars, that my life would just work if I could…meet Glenda Jackson, I had a crush on her. I knew all the players, back when you could see everything. And I did.

Movies used to be platformed. They opened in L.A. and New York first. When I first came to Los Angeles I literally went every night. It wasn’t unusual for me to see three flicks in a day. I didn’t go to become an expert, but that’s what I was. Back before “Jaws” and “Star Wars” ruined the paradigm, with all their revenues, the same way Wall Street is ruining the country today.

Wall Street and the techies. They’re skewing the entire nation. They make so much money that all that’s left for the rest of us is crumbs. You’re either a winner or a loser. And you know who gets the losers? The arts. Because it takes a special kind of intelligent, educated person to take the road less traveled, the one with bad odds, known as entertainment. There’s no safety net. If you’re not starting your career right after college, you’ve already missed a step.

So what we’ve got in music is reality TV. The same downtrodden denizens who will do anything to make it. There’s not a backbone in the business. Everybody’s looking to sell out. Sergey Brin and Larry Page want no press and Kanye West keeps telling us what a genius he is. And I’m sure there’d be musicians who spoke truth to power if only you could make as much money as you can in Silicon Valley, but you can’t.

So it’s a vast wasteland in music.

Of course I’m overstating the point. It’s really just like tech. Incredible winners and losers. Instead of Google, Yahoo and Apple, it’s Jay Z, Katy Perry and Rihanna. You can’t get traction without hits, and you can’t have hits unless you play Top Forty music, and tech is spread virally, built up by its users, and entertainment is still employing the ancient formula of hype.

Which brings us back to “Nebraska.”

It’s not even the movie they’re hyping.

But it creeped me out.

There’s are scenes where those with no money and no life are sitting catatonic watching television. This is why I left Utah and Vermont, I could see slow death seeping in everywhere.

Just like the buildings. Your mobile phone may be bright and shiny, but too often the edifices are cracking and need a new coat of paint. Yup, the bridge may collapse but you can get your television via cable, fiber optics or satellite dish. Oh, what a great country we live in, where the penumbra’s fantastic and the core is rotten.

And that’s what our movies used to be about. This rotten core. Before everybody with a profile was a winner and superheroes ruled the multiplex.

Watching “Nebraska” you’re reminded that more people are losing than winning in America. That it’s hard to get a job. And you don’t really know your relatives until you share an inheritance. Bill Gates may be giving away his fortune, but most are praying for a pittance to get them by.

But no one wants to see this anymore. Everybody’s praying at the altar of greed. Greed isn’t good, it’s the national credo, it’s what we base every life choice upon, because if you’re not rich, you’re a poor loser who just can’t get by.

So there’s a sea of empty seats at “Nebraska,” because no one wants to confront the ugly truth that they got the short end of the stick. That all they’ve got is drugs and alcohol and the same cronies at the bar.

We want hope and choice and the ability to lift ourselves up.

But the job creators tell us it’s our own damn fault.

And now they’ve taken over the whole damn country. Movie studios are small cogs in giant conglomerates, slaves to the bottom line, just like record labels. That’s right, the joke is on you.

But some people slip through. Like Alexander Payne.

His movie doesn’t deserve an Oscar, but it touched my soul.

You probably don’t know who Sue Mengers was. And that’s just the point, entertainment is here today and very rarely tomorrow. It’s evanescent, of the moment, and if you want to play, you need pluck, smarts and insight, this is one place a college degree doesn’t mean much..

I recently finished Lynda Obst’s new book about the movie business. Halfway through, I started to laugh. WHO CARES? As Lynda recites the various heads of Paramount I was reminded that who ran the studio once mattered. Today, movies are a joke. It’s all about television.

But it started with the flicks.

That’s how Sue Mengers learned how to speak English.

I thought this play was gonna be something different. A retelling of one of Sue’s famous dinner parties. I did not expect it to be a discourse on the entertainment business itself. I did not expect it to be so dense with insight that I was literally on the edge of my seat, sometimes too busy paying attention to burst out laughing at the jokes, which were plentiful.

You see it’s me.

I didn’t have a father in the business. Fairfield, Connecticut is not a hotbed of the entertainment business. I went to college in Vermont not only pre-Netflix and pre-Internet, but pre-VCR. My only link to the entertainment grid was “Rolling Stone,” which I devoured every two weeks, from cover to cover. That’s how I know so much about the music business. That, and reading the liner notes.

And how does one make it?

First you’ve got to move to New York or L.A.

Sue hated New York. Everybody looked just like her, a zaftig Jew, she needed to emigrate to the west coast, where everybody goes to reinvent themselves, and stays for the weather and the freedom.

But this was after getting a gig at William Morris. And lying about her position there.

Everybody lies. It’s how you get ahead in Hollywood.

But then she signs Julie Harris.

What did Bette Midler as Sue Mengers say? That being an agent is about the client. Julie was an intellectual, so Sue went to the library during her lunch hour to read the classics. It’s a service business. And if you’re not in front of the camera, or up on stage, you’re in service. Get over yourself.

She also said to make friends with the spouse. No matter how delusional and problematic they are. Sue couldn’t convince Ali MacGraw to make more movies unless she convinced her insecure, abusive husband Steve McQueen. And she couldn’t. Because Ali was happy.

That’s what some people are looking for. Happiness.

Sue Mengers was looking for action.

That’s how you can tell the difference. The person with the gleam in his eye telling you about who he just met, what he’s going to do, who lives to be engaged. The stars may sit at home waiting for a phone call, but not the service people.

It’s all business all the time. There’s nothing purely social in Hollywood. Every dinner, even the PTA meeting, is about business. And if it’s not about show business, those in it don’t care. Because careers are brief, and they want to stay on top, and because entertainment drives the culture.

Or at least it used to. Before Mike Ovitz and CAA. When it became about the deal more than the movie.

Kind of like the Tommy Mottola era at Sony, when it became about the executive as opposed to the artist.

And now the artists are just as bad as the execs. They can only talk about money. Spotify, Schmotify, if you make good music there’s plenty of money to be had. But music is not enough. Today you’ve got to be a BUSINESS! What a load of crap that is. Does Obama have a clothing line? A deal with Samsung?

Maybe that’s next, who knows.

I read an article two weeks ago that the rich are all about experiences. If someone’s talking about their car or their house, they’re not really that wealthy. Because the rich know what money can buy, which isn’t everything.

Kind of like Sue leaving money on the table. Because sometimes it’s about the movie, not the cash. And also being able to see not today, but the day after tomorrow. That’s what the wizards of entertainment service are so good at doing. If your representation is all about squeezing out the last buck, you’ve got the wrong person.

And speaking of the wrong person… Sue talks about how stars leave those who brought them to the dance because they don’t want to be reminded of who they once were. Once you start talking history, you’re on your way out.

There were so many lessons, so many truisms.

But today’s wannabes are sitting at home in front of computers. Believing if they just spam enough people, they’ll win. They’d be better off saving their pennies for a ducat to this show. They’d get five years worth of knowledge dropped on them in ninety minutes, but all the kids want to believe they’re inventing the world, that no one has been there before them. In our youth-centered culture age is decried, when it should be revered.

So if you want to have an experience, if you truly want to be rich, go see Bette Midler in “I’ll Eat You Last.”

It wore me out.

In a good way.

“I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers”

They’re so much more than “I’m Not In Love.”

1. “Rubber Bullets”

Start here, I did.

The debut album was big in the U.K., it was all over the U.S. rock press, but you could neither buy nor hear it until…the album finally appeared. “Rubber Bullets” was the hit, and what a breath of fresh air it was back in ’73, when art rock and singer-songwriters were in vogue and Brian Wilson was in his sandbox and we were still yearning for that sound.

The track didn’t hit in the U.S., but it was a smash in the world of anybody who heard it.

And as good as the vocals are, and the stinging guitar, it’s the breakdown at 2:45 that pushes it over the top.

Pure joy.

2. “Fresh Air For My Mama”

The debut’s closer.

Nobody in rock does majestic anymore, that’s left for the poppiest of the poppermost. But for those of us who grew up in the sixties on orchestras and crescendos, this is the kind of the song that has us conducting with our hands, playing Leonard Bernstein.

3. “Johnny Don’t Do It”

You don’t really have to listen to this, not unless you’re completely enraptured by the foregoing, but I list it to point out that the entire initial album was borderline parody, writing new songs in the mold of the old, on a high level, both musically and lyrically. And when the newscaster goes on about the death of Johnny Kowalski…you both smile and crack up.

4. “Somewhere In Hollywood”

The second album was a commercial disappointment. Still clever, there was less parody and there was no hit, despite the album containing one (see below). But “Somewhere In Hollywood” is my favorite, because of the aforementioned majesty, because of the lyrics…a dog up in Beverly Hills?

5. “The Worst Band In The World”

Legendary amongst those in the know. “Spinal Tap” before “Spinal Tap.”

We’re the worst band in the world
But we don’t give a…

Then there’s the closer…

Here we are together on your hi-fi
A little piece of plastic with a hole, oh
Fade me, fade me, fade me, fade me…

Which they do. As in the record fades out!

That’s what they were, little pieces of plastic with a hole, that meant so much to us.

10cc was winking and toying with us, back when it was cool for musicians to be smart.

6. “The Wall Street Shuffle”

The hit that wasn’t.

If Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927” could be resurrected by the rupturing of the levee, how come “Wall Street Shuffle” can’t be the anthem of the financial crash?

I don’t know, because it’s TOO GOOD?

7. “Art For Art’s Sake”

From the fourth album, “How Dare You,” which was a disappointment after
“The Original Soundtrack,” with the monstrous hit.

This is the album’s “Wall Street Shuffle.”

Art for art’s sake
MONEY FOR GOD’S SAKE!

8. “I’m Mandy Fly Me”

Ethereal majesty. This is a sleeper, it took me years to get hooked.

It has Eric Stewart’s mellifluous vocal and a stinging guitar and…

9. “For You And I”

From my favorite 10cc album, “Bloody Tourists.” When there were only two, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman. This is a bit sappy, but the track that truly resonates, “Old Mister Time,” is not on Spotify—you can hear it here, on YouTube, it’s got that majesty, only written for you magic:

10cc – Old Mister Time

10. “Dreadlock Holiday”

A reggae takeoff before the music hit in the U.S.

It was number one in the U.K., where the Jamaican sound penetrated early in the decade, but stiff in the U.S.

But over time, it’s grown over here, because it’s just that damn good.

I can’t help but smile whenever I hear it.

11. “Feel The Benefit (Parts 1, 2 &3)”

From “Deceptive Bends.” The first duo album, from ’77.

It’s an eleven and a half minute epic and worth every second.

12. “The Things We Do For Love”

The piece de resistance. The classic pop single that ran up the chart, deservedly so.

But what the unwashed didn’t know was it was a joke! A sappy pop song written to be so. This is what Todd Rundgren did so well, before he thought it was too easy and gave up.

But it’s not easy, but damn hard. To encapsulate the essence and enrapture the public.

This is anything but a trifle, anything but forgettable.

And the lyrics still go through my head on a regular basis today.

YOU THINK YOU’RE GONNA BREAK UP
THEN SHE SAYS SHE WANTS TO MAKE UP

That’s love. You never really know what’s going on in another person’s head. Even with a contract, that does not mean you’ll stay together.

There’s so much wisdom in this track.

And so much JOY!

Rhinofy-10cc