I was teaching my mother how to text.

Easy for you, deeficult for me.

That’s Senor Wences. If you’re in the neighborhood of sixty and used to see him on Ed Sullivan. He talked with his hand. Felice replicates the fingers and the voice and it freaks me out.

And that was a long time ago. We had telephones, but no call waiting. Certainly no cable. And definitely no computers.

Computers were of the future.

But then the future arrived. We didn’t get the flying cars, but we did get the power of the universe in our own little hands.

So my mother has an iPhone.

And in a month, she’ll be 87.

You’ve got no idea what it’s like teaching an old dog new tricks.

My nephew, the computer genius, has no patience. He knows how to do it, but not how to teach it. I’ve got more patience, but you need a lot.

What youngsters take for granted baffles oldsters.

But how cool would it be able to text Muggs?

That’s my mother. That’s her college nickname. Her real name is Muriel, but my father only used that occasionally, it’s on her driver’s license but she no longer drives and I haven’t heard her called that this century.

So we’re doing Thanksgivingkuh at my sister’s house. In the West Valley.

How do you describe the West Valley to someone not L.A. savvy?

It’s the burbs. It’s where you move when you see no need to go out every weekend, no need to be in the heart of the action.

We passed that point long ago.

As well as the need to go to the movies.

That’s what the Grey Panthers do, go to the movies. But the discussion at the dinner table was all TV. Of which there is too much good stuff. I read an essay in the “New York Times” which posited we should pay producers not to make shows, along the lines of farm supports. Just like there’s too much food, there’s too much good TV. When are we going to catch up on it!

So I got my mother to watch “House of Cards,” which she did on her iPad, but she barely turns on her TV. She’s a parent of the sixties. That’s the idiot box.

But after pulling up a video on YouTube to show the assembled multitude, about millennials, I love it, especially when the girl says she’s gonna call her parents, that’s what millennials do so much that drives me crazy, they’re attached at the hip to their parents, my mother sent me to college and disappeared, went to Europe, literally, I noticed my mother was on her iPhone.

What’s she doing?

Deleting mail.

But she couldn’t figure out the error message.

So I asked for her handset and noticed she was in the Trash, that she couldn’t see the rest of her e-mail because she was outside the Inbox.

And when I brought her back, showing her her messages were still there, she said she needed a tutorial, she needed to know how to use the iPhone, so I decided to teach her to text.

That’s how young kids communicate these days, e-mail is passe, and I’m thinking if I teach my mother how to text, I don’t have to worry about her seeing e-mail, since she only jumps on the computer once a day.

Of course she could read it on her iPhone, but that never seems to happen.

First, where is the icon?

That’s what I love about oldsters’ devices. The display of the icons. She’s only got three on the bottom, the green Messages icon is nowhere to be seen. I have to retrieve it.

And then I send her a text and she doesn’t get it…she doesn’t know where to look!

So not only do I have to teach her how to text, I first have to teach her how to find the text.

Which I eventually do, and we’re going back and forth, slowly, and she’s sending me incomprehensible messages.

She’s tapping the letters. And the misspellings are so grievous I’ve got no idea what she’s saying.

I point out the backspace key. But how to correct what’s there already?

Well, you put your finger on the screen until a magnifying glass appears.

That’s way too much information.

So then I decide to teach her how to take a photo.

She’s stunned when it works.

It’s so rewarding, for me, not only her.

But will any of it stick?

I don’t know.

My mother on her iPhone. pic.twitter.com/tlhoirvSi4

— Bob Lefsetz (@Lefsetz) November 28, 2013

 

“Millennials in the Workplace Training Video”

“A Surplus of Good TV? Try Depression Economics”

1. They can’t make any money on it.

It’s show business, not show art. The bottom line is the bottom line. Major labels don’t care if you’re the new Mozart Beatles, if they can’t make any money on you they’re not interested, now more than ever, where recordings render less cash than ever.

2. Radio doesn’t want to play it.

Marketing. At this date, radio is still number one. Once again, if you deliver the album of the century, a full-length opus that can’t be cut up and aired on a radio station that will generate sales, the major label won’t play it. This is what the major labels know best. They’ve got huge radio promotion departments. Deliver something they can get airplay on and they’ll take a whack at it. At many major labels the head of promotion is the most powerful person. Even if the A&R guy or the President gets you signed, if the head of promotion shrugs his or her shoulders and refuses to make an effort, you’re dead in the water.

3. Major labels are most interested in Top Forty airplay.

Top Forty sells tonnage. That’s where all the eyeballs are. That’s where stars are built. So decry Max Martin and Dr. Luke and Katy Perry all you want, they’ve just calculated the percentages and gone where all the action is. Doesn’t mean you have to go there too, just means if you don’t want to go there, the major label probably isn’t interested.

4. You refuse input.

Sure, acts had power in the seventies. The labels didn’t meddle with the product. But with so much money involved today, and so much risk, the label wants the ability to get you to use a cowriter, or sing someone else’s song, or redo the track with a new producer. You can earn the power to do it your way over time, then again, Clive Davis wasn’t happy when Kelly Clarkson did this and let her album languish. Doesn’t matter how good your album is, it’s whether they decide to put the weight of the company behind it. Furthermore, the label doesn’t care about albums. Oh, they want an album to sell, because of the price point, but they truly only care about singles. Tell them an album has four or even seven singles and they’re thrilled. Tell them it’s got no singles but tells an incredible story and their jaws will drop and refuse to release it.

5. It doesn’t play overseas.

Now more than ever before in history a label wants a record with reach. Something that can be spun in Greece and China and Brazil and a bunch of countries most Americans haven’t been to, never mind lack the ability to spell. Just because the makers of music are oftentimes unsophisticated, that does not mean those running the labels are. Proffering something that plays only in the U.S. is like trying to get Yahoo to buy your app that only works in Rhode Island. It’s all about scale. The risk is in product creation. Make something great and it can sell everywhere.

6. It’s just not good enough.

Good is subjective. You must filter it through all of the above. Most people don’t have the talent, almost no one can meet the requirements. (See #3 above, the star producers know the game, and that’s important.) And good is not good enough. Back in the seventies, when there were 5,000 albums a year and no national radio, never mind MTV, a label could get something “good” on a radio station and via relentless touring get traction in specific markets. Those days are through. The best of the best is available to everybody online 24/7. That’s who you’re competing with. Not the band down the street, but Rihanna. Oh, you think Rihanna’s garbage? Well, do you look like her? Are you willing to have your songs written by committee in camps? Are you willing to do whatever it takes to make it? Oh, I didn’t think so.

7. Because you’re good-looking and can sing and that’s it.

Major labels want someone who can write, someone with a personality, someone with something more than TV competition qualities. Isn’t it interesting that no one breaks out of “The Voice,” and you can win “American Idol” and not end up a recording star. Because those qualities are not enough, and if everybody knowing your name were enough, Paris Hilton’s recording career would be a juggernaut and Heidi Montag would be at the top of the charts.

8. You haven’t demonstrated anybody is interested.

That’s how you get signed today. By showing you’ve already got fans. YouTube views are important, but even more important is how many people show up at your show, in multiple markets. Since it’s all about the money, if you’re generating some and the sky’s the limit, the major label is interested, despite all of the above, they want in on that action. If you’re recording goose farts and your stage show resembles a rodeo and you’re ugly as sin the major label doesn’t care as long as people show up and buy merch and recordings.

9. Because you don’t want to be on one.

Now, more than ever, you can go it alone. You don’t even have to sign with an independent label, which usually loves your music but is underfunded and poor at marketing and struggles to pay royalties. Sure, some acts with traction sign with a major label. Because they want to be bigger, they want to tie themselves to the major label marketing machine. Does it work? You can decide for yourself. But you don’t have to make a deal. You can get an agent and book tours and sell recordings at the gig and on iTunes and stream on Spotify without the major label touching your efforts whatsoever. But if you want major label support, you’ve got to play by their rules.

I don’t care that you made it.

I don’t care that your mother and girlfriend like it.

I don’t care that you funded it through Kickstarter.

Why does everybody think just because you did it I should be interested?

Parents are interested in their kids’ Little League games, but I don’t want to go. I loved playing ball, but even my parents didn’t show up. In other words, if you’re having fun recording, here’s to you! But don’t make me listen.

Even worse, you want me to spin it five or ten times in order to get it…

While you’re at it, why don’t I make you sit in a corner listening to Wayne Newton for four hours straight. Get back to me when you think that’s a good idea.

How did this happen? Is it the no one gets cut from the soccer team and everybody gets a trophy paradigm?

The reason you’re making no money in the music business is because you’re just not good enough.

There, I said it.

This doesn’t only apply to wannabes and never-made-its, but all the once successful who think since they hit the airwaves yesterday they’re entitled to attention today.

Come on, name the band that cut an album as good as their seventies work.

I love Led Zeppelin, but everything Jimmy Page has done since, from David Coverdale to the Black Crowes to teaming back up with Robert Plan, is worthy of checking out…if that.

And now we get to try before we buy.

Whether it be on YouTube or Spotify, we get our curiosity satiated, and after one listen, usually just a sampling, we move on.

Is this our fault? Do you want us to marry someone without dating them first?

Oh, the music industry complaints.

Studios went out of business.

So now we’re supposed to go back to a grand plus a day so the wannabes can’t record at home? Is that what you really want? A barrier to entry? Because that probably means you can’t play the game at all. You can’t record unless you’ve got a record deal or a rich parent. That’s the gatekeeper syndrome. Do you really want that to come back?

And record stores!

Yup, do you want to pay ten plus bucks to buy an album to get it home to find out it’s substandard and you want your money back but can’t get it? That’s the way it used to be, there was no sampling at any record store I ever went to. You broke the shrinkwrap, you owned it. Furthermore, there were great records that you never heard because you could not afford them, now everything’s available cheaply online to sample and you want to eviscerate this because all the wannabes and has-beens above are crying in their beer that they just can’t make the money they used to? Tell that to print shops! Kill the laser printer! Sue Adobe’s page layout software out of existence! And get HP to disable the copying function in every home printer while you’re at it.

We’ve got to want YOU!

And if we do, there’s plenty of money to be made.

But you don’t know this. Because nobody wants you. You keep shelling out dough to make it and get nothing in return and you think it’s the system, but really it’s your music, we don’t want it.

If your music is good, there’s a ton of money to be made. Not all of it on recorded music. Hell, do you know that prior to the mid-nineties most of the money was still in recordings? This is before Napster. Tour guarantees and ticket prices didn’t soar until Bob Sillerman rolled up the concert promoters. Why don’t we jet back to that era and insist that prices go down. Oh, you don’t want that. Hell, you just want to raise prices and scalp tickets. Unless no one wants to see you, then you complain about prices. Sure, there’s the occasional act utilizing paperless to keep ticket prices down, but most love the soaring revenue, because they like to fly private and live a life of luxury.

New acts?

Let’s make it so you’ve got to get on radio to hear them. Or do you want MTV to play music again too? Putting them out of business, because no advertiser will pay when everybody’s flipping the channel when a video they don’t like comes on.

But no, everyone’s got to sacrifice so wannabe musicians and crybaby oldsters can continue to play by the old rules.

I like the new rules. I used to charge for this newsletter. Now I give it away for free online and I make a lot more money. Because many more people know my name.

But that’s because I’m damn good. There, I said it. I’ve been doing this for decades. I’ve got no children, own no house and drive an almost nine year old car. I’m driven and dedicated and I’m not complaining. Because I realize life is tough and you’re owed nothing.

So if you wanna bitch know that I’m not listening.

Spotify pays 70% of revenue to rights holders.

You can’t get a ticket to a hit show.

And One Direction got a quarterly royalty of 150k for duct tape. FOR DUCT TAPE!

There’s tons of money if you’re good and want to take it.

If you’re poor, it’s your fault.

P.S. No one’s entitled to make it in the music business. That’s art. I don’t think that anybody should starve, I don’t think that anybody should go without health care, but I categorically do not believe that everybody should be entitled to make a living in music. Food stamps and Medicaid are a SAFETY NET! Those people aren’t getting rich, they’re just getting by. And if you can get by at all in music, you’re lucky. If you can’t, do something else. They’re not lining up to dig ditches, an honorable job, but they are to be pop stars. Ever wonder why it’s so hard?

It’s the best book I’ve read all year and almost nobody’s gonna read it.

Because the intro is so damn slow and so overwritten you can’t help but put it down. I did. But having loved “The Secret History” so much I picked it back up, waited for the scenery to change and was blown away.

There’s no such thing as the Great American Novel. Even Mailer didn’t write it. Maybe you’ve got to go back to Tolstoy and “Anna Karenina” to bask in that three-dimensional greatness that’s a great read and also illuminates life.

Furthermore, we live in a bite-sized culture. Where we want to know what the essence is and then discard it.

But this becomes overwhelming. Because there’s little substance, only sauce.

Kind of like the AMAs last night.

Let’s get the fact that they’re ersatz awards out of the way. A Dick Clark production made to cash in on the aura of the Grammys. An AMA is so worthless, it’s not even worth stashing in your bathroom, where all rock stars mount their gold records, back when they used to get them.

But watching the amount of the AMAs I did, which was very little, in the nooks and crannies between the astounding Broncos/Patriots game, I was astounded by these facts:

1. I didn’t know who most of the people on the red carpet were.

2. Everybody was swinging for the fences.

In case you didn’t know, Miley Cyrus’s tour ain’t doing so well. Ticket counts in arenas are in the neighborhood of 6k. Which proves you can be in the news but that doesn’t mean everybody wants to see you.

They’re more interested in seeing the classic rock acts. Because they stood for something, they meant something.

Kind of like Ed Sheeran, who sold out three Madison Square Gardens. People react to real. And we’ve got a deficiency in that area right now.

Except in “The Goldfinch.”

The book business ain’t that different from music these days. They throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. If it doesn’t, they move on to something else. Trumpeting that which is a surprising hit and forgetting that which is not.

And “The Goldfinch” ran up the chart. But I doubt it will stay there.

Because at first it’s such a slog.

And is so at the end too.

But in between is a picaresque adventure far superior to any MP3 I’ve listened to this year.

You see not everybody’s a star. Not everybody’s a winner.

But we’re all at the epicenter of our own little movie.

The Web gives the impression that everybody else is interested in our movie. This is untrue. No one’s got the time. Unless you’ve got the most amazing story or can illuminate what it’s like to be a human being on this planet.

That’s what makes “The Goldfinch” so good. The interior dialogue.

Ever feel like you’re alone? Even when you’re together?

I do.

And so does Theo in this book.

Maybe that’s why I relate.

I’m not saying I made the same choices. But I understand the situations.

And I think about them.

No one talks about this stuff anymore. That’s why music tends to be so bad. So I can see you roar Katy Perry, what do you really think inside, how come you can’t put that in a song? Literally, not obliquely?

“…compliments threw me, I was never sure how to respond except to act like I hadn’t heard.”

I tend to nod my head. Sometimes I just say “Thanks.” I used to describe how I came to write what I did, but then I found people really didn’t want to know.

“It never failed to amaze me how my dad could charm strangers and reel them in. They lent him money, recommended him for promotions, introduced him to important people, invited him to use their vacation homes, fell completely under his spell – and then it would all go to pieces somehow and he would move on to someone else.”

I know this person. Not Theo’s dad, someone I was intimately involved with, a woman. She was beautiful and charming and people would give her everything and she would always disappoint them. I’ve never seen this paradigm described in a book. Until this.

“The memory of that childhood afternoon had sustained me for years…”

I’ve got a friend who’s still hung up on a woman he dated forty years ago. That’s the problem with the mind, it won’t let go. Oh, you can forget what you had for lunch yesterday, but personal interactions, a wink, a conversation, they can stay with you forever.

“…and the stainless steel fridge was always well-stocked with Girl Food: hummus and olives, cake and champagne, lots of silly take-out vegetarian salads and half a dozen kinds of ice cream.”

Eureka! Women don’t eat, but they obsess about food, especially sweets. And they want them right at hand when they get the urge.

I have a friend who says he was born without the money gene, that he just doesn’t know how to make it.

It’s not a gene, but a skill. And I’ve never seen it delineated so well as in “The Goldfinch”:

“…I had discovered I possessed the opposite of knack: of obfuscation and mystery, the ability to talk about inferior articles in ways that made people want them. When selling a piece, talking it up (as opposed to sitting back and permitting the unwary to wander into my trap) it was a game to size up a customer and figure out the image they wanted to project – not so much the people they were (know-it-all decorator? New Jersey housewife? self-conscious gay man?) as the people they wanted to be. Even on the highest levels it was smoke and mirrors; everyone was furnishing a stage set. The trick was to address yourself to the projection, the fantasy self – the connoisseur, the discerning bon vivant – as opposed to the insecure person actually standing in front of you. It was better if you hung back a bit and weren’t too direct. I soon learned how to dress (on the edge between conservative and flash) and how to deal with sophisticated and unsophisticated customers, with differing calibrations of courtesy and indolence: presuming knowledge in both, quick to flatter, quick to lose interest or step away at exactly the right moment.”

That’s the music business. Smoke and mirrors. Convincing the customer what you’re selling will make their lives better, whether it be the adolescent girl at home or the overweight PD at the major market station. It’s a game of hustling and deception. And the winners are masters at it. And it’s all right here, in “The Goldfinch.”

And now comes the piece-de-resistance:

1. “Because – the line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn’t matter if it’s been through the Xerox machine a hundred times.”

Which is why a great track sounds good even if it’s an MP3, even if it’s playing through the worst boom box ever.

2. “Still with real greatness, there’s a jolt at the end of the wire. It doesn’t matter how often you grab hold of the line, or how many people have grabbed hold of it before you. It’s the same line. Fallen from a higher life. It still carries some of the same shock.”

Like Joni Mitchell “Blue.”
Or AC/DC’s “Back In Black.”
Or any Beatles album.

Doesn’t matter if you discover it decades later, what enters your ears stops you in your tracks. You can’t believe how good it sounds, how it makes you feel.

And that’s what we’re in search of. This greatness.

And there’s very little greatness in the world. Which is why we’ve got astounding winners and also-rans. In the Internet era when everything is available we don’t have time for anything but the very best. Because it’s in our DNA. We want that jolt!

I got that jolt many times reading “The Goldfinch.”

But if only someone could have said no to Donna Tartt. Had her cut the book down, tighten it up, remove the need to read it with a dictionary ever-present.

But that’s what success buys you. The ability to do it your way.

It took her ten years to write this book. She was handsomely paid.

But she’ll never make as much as a banker.

Everyone will not know her name.

But those who read “The Goldfinch” will never forget her.

The Goldfinch