THERE ARE NO RULES IF SOMETHING IS GREAT

I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long

“Deacon Blues”
Steely Dan

There were no singles on “Aja.” Fans didn’t want a jazz-influenced rock album. But “Aja” sold prodigiously upon release and is considered a classic today despite breaking all the rules.

“Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.”

“No one wants albums.”

“It’s got to sound like Top Forty.”

All of the foregoing are irrelevant if something is truly great. We’ve got unlimited time for great. The rules don’t apply.

Unfortunately, all the great today comes in tech. Take this year’s stories, Uber and Airbnb. Ask a million people and no one would come up with them. That’s the trick, to give people what they want when they don’t know it. To turn all preconceptions on their heads. It’s the essence of art, which is why we’re living in a bankrupt era today, no one is testing limits.

But we’re always ready for those who are.

PIRACY IS IRRELEVANT

If you’re talking about piracy, it shows you don’t know the game. As Michael Eisner once said, 10% of the public will never pay, ignore them. These are the same people who borrowed albums to tape who never bought one. They’ve always lived outside the system. Most people are ready, willing and able to pay if you give them a reasonable option to do so. Yes, you can steal all the music, but why would you, when you can just click on YouTube and there it is! As for those hoarding MP3s and CDs for some coming electrical apocalypse…are you also worried that YouTube will break, that everything will go kablooey?

Furthermore, if there’s no juice, your LPs won’t play either.

Everybody’s moved on to the access model except the musicians. The labels, the audience… If you’re bitching about it, you’re demonstrating your ignorance.

PEOPLE WANT TO BE FANS

People need something to believe in. And when they find it, they’ve got unlimited money to spend on it. That’s the essence of KISS. You may hate ’em, but there’s a cadre of people who love ’em.

In other words, if you’re not getting rich, chances are people don’t believe in you. That’s the essence of social media, conveying your identity, not your tour schedule. But the music is enough if the music is great. No amount of tweeting will make a stiff record a hit, and a hit record doesn’t need tweets, at least not by its maker.

Instead of bitching that people won’t pay, concoct products and experiences that your fans want to give you money for. But just because some people want to give you all their money, that does not mean anybody else wants to give you a penny. You can raise a million dollars on Kickstarter but everybody who didn’t pledge doesn’t care a whit.

PUBLICITY INFLAMES THAT WHICH IS A HIT

There’s a myth that if people just knew about you, you’d be successful. But now, more than ever, with everything at people’s fingertips, that is untrue. Publicity is about getting early adopters to check out your incredible product and make it go viral, to e-mail and text and Facebook and tweet about it. And others will be receptive because they’ve heard about it.

But you only get one bite at the apple.

If you’re staging a huge publicity campaign, know that you don’t get a second chance, not in our time-constrained world of a million options.

TV DOESN’T SELL RECORDS AND IT WON’T MAKE YOU A STAR UNLESS YOU’RE ALREADY ONE

No one is watching, no one cares, if you think a late night slot is your one big break get ready to go back to your day job. A TV appearance is just another thing that lives on the web for those who are interested to check out. It’s a piece of the puzzle at best.

TRUTH RESONATES

Everybody is lonely, everybody is alienated. If you can encapsulate their feelings in a song you’ve got a good chance of making it. But this requires you to leave some blood in the file, to open the wound and get a ton of negative feedback from the snark patrol. You must be strong, you must realize that everyone will never like you, and that most of music is a fad but he or she who speaks their truth resonates forever, i.e. Joni Mitchell.

DON’T LIVE IN A BUBBLE

Robin Thicke had no idea people were against him.

But everybody knew he was seen as a one hit wonder and a cad.

By putting out his “Paula” album he misjudged his audience. First and foremost, there wasn’t much of one. You can have a monster hit and have no fans, ever heard of Carly Rae Jepsen?

The blowback killed Thicke’s album. It may be his truth, but no one else can relate, you mean you’re rich and famous and hang with naked models, squeezing boobies, and now you’re complaining your wife left you, what’s up with that?

Never lose touch with your audience. It’s cool to lead, but if you don’t have people’s hearts and minds to begin with, it could be a very cold journey.

So those who are proud of not e-mailing, not reading their reviews, not participating in social media…are missing the point. That is life today. It’s equivalent to going to the mall in decades past. To make music and not be online is akin to producing television and not owning a TV.

NUMBER ONE MEANS LITTLE

Especially on the SoundScan chart. Every week there’s a new one and the total is anemic. If your handlers tell you they’re striving for a high debut get out of the deal, they’re playing an old game, you’re gonna get buried. Today it’s all about sustaining, you don’t need a one or two week play, like the publicity extravaganzas of the major labels, but a six or twelve month plan. How do you infect people’s consciousness and stay there? Certainly not by debuting #1 and getting the “Times” to write about it.

As for radio number ones… What format? And didn’t Mariah Carey eclipse the Beatles’ radio record? That’s like saying you’re more successful than the World Series MVP because you’ve got more trophies in your bedroom, that you got for participating in Little League and AYSO.

People can’t make sense of charts anymore. One cadre is all about what’s happening now and another is about digging deep. So either your Iggy Azalea or Wilco. Numbers have nothing to do with it, it’s all about music.

BE ON SPOTIFY

First and foremost you must be available. I don’t listen to Sam Smith because he’s not on Spotify, it’s just that simple. And I get e-mail from people saying the same thing. So, the press says his record is selling… BUPKES!

It’s about the long money, not the short. There’s so little money in recorded music today that if you’re making people jump through hurdles to hear it you’re just leaving a ton of other money on the table. The real money is in touring and sponsorship. You want as big a pool as possible to be fans of your music so you can maximize the real dollars.

MISINFORMATION

Every week there’s another person saying how they’re getting screwed.

First and foremost, the music business has a history of screwing people.

Second, what was the deal?

You’ve got bad online royalties. But what is your deal with the label?

And if a musician could be a lawyer or an accountant, they would. In other words, they can’t read their own deal.

Don’t worry about what everybody else is making, just worry about what you’re making. And ever notice you’ve never heard of the people complaining about online payments most? They’re Grammy nominees but have no streams… Shows what the value of a Grammy nom or win is. That’s just a way for those who don’t count to keep score. Real artists keep score by the number of fans they have and the money they make, and they’re not bitching about either.a

GUARANTEED WINNER

Top graduate at an Ivy League college.

Used to be we lived in a meritocracy, he who worked hardest and was smartest would rise to the top. That can occasionally happen today, but your best bet is to get yourself a pedigree. Something the upper middle class is fully aware of, and those below them are usually clueless about.

Do you know that most top-tier universities are need-blind? That means if you can get in but are broke, they pay. Yet seemingly nobody other than those who go know. So if you’re a top graduate at nowheresville high school you believe you cannot afford the Ivy and just go to the state school and forever inhibit your future advancement.

There’s nothing like the Ivies. And Stanford. Everything else is second-tier, even the vaunted University of Chicago.

The Ivies impress. Even better, they are useful networks, the graduates look after each other, take care of each other, till the end of life.

So if you want a guaranteed income… Go to the Ivy.

And that’s what kids are looking for today, the smart ones, they don’t want to be left behind, sure, they’d like a NetJet card and a gated community, but they’re driven primarily by fear, that they’ll lose out, be left on the bottom.

Yes, the top-tier Ivy graduates do better than those who end their four years on the bottom. But the truth is, as a result of grade inflation, no one looks that bad.

Graduate from the Ivy and you can get a job in finance. That’s the number one exit strategy from the educational farm. And people do this because they want money. Everybody wants money. That’s what all the poor artists are bitching about, that they can’t make any money. The graduates of the Ivies ensure that they can.

LEFT FIELD WINNER

The entrepreneur.

It’s a personality, you love risk. Entrepreneurs are no different from extreme sports stars, they do what most people will not, jump off cliffs without a net. So just because all your friends are entrepreneurs, just because you’d like to be one, that does not mean you can be. It’s in the DNA more than a choice, but a choice is involved.

Entrepreneurs are willing to fail. And the most successful have had wins when competitors haven’t even been playing. They’re the ones who not only had lemonade stands, but sold baseball cards on eBay. Entrepreneurs know how to make money, they know it’s all about money, and it’s not about education as much as personality, and smarts.

Today’s entrepreneurs are the artists of yesterday. The best and the brightest who will their success. Sure, entrepreneurs look for investment, but they rarely cry “woe is me.” They know the game is hard, they work ’round the clock, they sacrifice lifestyle. They’re everything today’s musicians say they are but are not. And they know they could fail completely. But they’re willing to take the risk.

PROFESSIONALS

May be every bit as smart as the entrepreneur, but their lives are ruled by fear, they want insurance. That’s why they become doctors, lawyers or accountants. If you truly want to work in one of these fields, more power to you. But if you’re doing it to be higher on the leaderboard in the financial and status game… Beware, the foundation is crumbling. This is not your baby boomer profession, wherein a doctor or lawyer is a winner as rich as anybody. MDs still make a good living, but the sky is not the limit, the goal of the government and insurers and patients is to keep costs down, and you’re caught in this bind. As for attorneys… I hope you like the background, because your odds of getting a good gig are low. Legal research is farmed out to Asia. Corporations don’t want to pay. It doesn’t matter how much hard work you’ve put in, if you want there to be no limit, you’ve got to go into finance or be an entrepreneur.

SECOND TIER PLAYERS

Everybody who doesn’t go to an Ivy, is not an entrepreneur and is not a professional. You’re sold the bill of goods that a college education will improve your lot, when the truth is it will only get you the job when you’re competing against high school graduates.

Chances are you’ll get out of school with no opportunities and be living in your parents’ basement. Which is why so many of these people go to graduate school, increasing debt for just a marginally better chance to get a job.

If you’re going to college to get a job, take a series of courses that are practically applicable. Sure, you can win if you’re a liberal arts major, but it will be much harder. Graduate in computer science. Take the hard courses. Because the truth is the hard courses weed everybody else out, and if you make it through you’ve got opportunities.

SECOND TIER PLAYERS 2

You’re not doomed, it’s just that your path is harder. You’re now going to have to do the hard work you may not have done in high school. In other words, you’re going to have to work for the corporation and work your way up. You’re going to have to use your smarts, your wiles and learn how to play the politics. Not everybody running a Fortune 500 company went to an Ivy or is an entrepreneur. You’ve got a long climb ahead of you and very few make it past middle management. If you do, the financial rewards can be extreme. Good luck!

P.S. If you take this route, you’ll probably want to take a break to get an MBA, wherein the contacts you make will aid your career forever more.

COLLEGE DROPOUTS

Kanye made it, that does not mean you will.

What are you thinking?

Furthermore, how do you expect to succeed in life when you can’t even complete community college?

Everything your parents told you is true. Life is long. High school winners are oftentimes adult losers. So, it takes years, so you’ve got to go into debt, welcome to reality. If you can’t get a college degree, you’re a loser forced to work for minimum wage or become an entrepreneur. And chances are, you’re not the entrepreneur listed above. I’m just telling you this for your own good. To give you a leg up. Before you burden yourself with so many obligations, a spouse and children, that you root yourself to the past and cannot succeed in the future.

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE

You didn’t get the memo. No one in your life told you how it is, how the game is played. Or maybe you’re a rebel. But there is no cause anymore.

But you believe you can win the lottery. That’s what a Top Forty  music career is.

In other words, just because you can try out for the “Voice,” that does not mean you’ll win, never mind have a career.

Sure, some people do. And some people win in Vegas. Do you feel that lucky?

ARTISTS

An overused word frequently employed by those who have not succeeded/won in any other category. Once upon a time it was a reasonable career path. Today, Rivers Cuomo becomes a rock star and THEN goes back to Harvard!

So you’ve got a mixtape. You’re good with beats. But what separates you from everybody else?

That’s what an Ivy League education does, separate you from everybody else. In a country of 300 million, you don’t want to be limited to your good looks and charm, those are a dime a dozen.

Furthermore, since these “artists” are not in school or working, they’re all over social media developing their “brand.” Trying to up their YouTube subscriptions, believing if they just try harder, they’ll make it.

But most won’t. Because they’re not that talented and they don’t understand the game.

It’s a business. Companies don’t need you, they just need someone. George Michael got into a fight with Columbia Records, the company won, both in court and in truth. Because Columbia survives and George Michael never had another hit. The company had to teach artists a lesson. Tommy Mottola needed to get rich.

BOTTOM LINE

It’s not the sixties anymore, nor the eighties or nineties.

Today life is rough. There are winners and losers. The middle class is shrinking. Which is why all those with a brain want to ensure they don’t end up on the wrong side of the divide.

As for those who create breakthroughs, it’s always by not playing the game. In other words, if you’ve got no college degree, your music better not sound like anybody else’s. Same deal with tech. We don’t need a new smartphone OS, we need something we can’t even fathom.

Baby boomers were drifters. Part of a large, egalitarian “Woodstock Generation” wherein unions still existed and we were all supposedly equal, we could all get a job and pay our bills.

Now a lot of these boomers have been laid off and can’t get a gig, never mind their children.

It’s every man for himself in America today. If you’re coasting, you’re losing ground. You’ve got to decide on your goals at a very young age and then work tooth and nail to achieve them. You’ve got to separate yourself out, you’ve got to rise above.

And know that today everything comes down to money. The rich people who make it and the poor people who desire it. Sure, you can be an itinerant musician known by few, but just don’t bitch that you can’t make a living, because the problem is you, you didn’t understand the game.

And the game, once again, is money. That’s all anybody cares about. That’s all anybody bitches about. Everybody wants more.

There is no safety net, no haven for losers. You’re either on the road to success or the scrapheap.

And the winners know this.

Everybody else should understand.

You mean I need a bigger engine and a swoopy style to get laid? I just go on Tinder!

Welcome to the baby boomer nightmare, wherein everything they’ve held near and dear becomes irrelevant. Like automobiles.

Cars are a utility.

It’s not the seventies anymore, no one ever bows out of an affair citing car trouble. I’ve got a AAA membership, but I only use it to get tires changed in seedy areas, the concept of a tow because my carburetor is clogged is about as foreign as the blue screen of death. (And new cars come with run-flat tires!)

Yes, remember how you used to need to know how computers worked to use one? Same deal with cars. Everybody had a modicum of expertise, having experienced flaws and shoddy maintenance. But today you just turn ’em on and they go, you don’t have to even take your key out of your pocket. Sure, you might smash your automobile up, but Google’s developing an app for that, otherwise known as the driverless car.

Joy in driving? Taking a few weeks or months to drive cross- country? Why would anybody want to do THAT!

Yup, the road trip is as dead as the western. You could recast “Bonanza” and no one under forty would watch.

As for the freedom the automobile once represented…

You don’t have to leave your house to connect with your friends, you don’t have go to the mall, as for doing illicit things…sexting is more outre and volatile than anything baby boomers could ever cook up.

To the younger generation cars are transportation, nothing more. They take you from a to b. But appealing to the older generation, manufacturers don’t develop products that fit this appeal, they keep touting all the stuff that worked in decades past. Appearance, specs. They don’t even understand their own product!

Ever notice that every smartphone looks the same? Yup, a rectangular brick. And it’s about customization via software? Credit the car companies with putting apps in the dash, but if they want to win they’re going to have to move as fast as the tech companies, one of which is eating their lunch.

Imagine if Tesla had a 20k car. Yup, a utility you just plugged in, that didn’t harm the environment, something simple, futuristic… Then GM and Toyota would to be very afraid. Because kids embrace the new and care about the environment. All that brand equity in GM? A youngster cares not a whit about that.

Nor does he or she care about a Ferrari. If you buy one of these sleek automobiles, I hope you enjoy driving it, because your image is gonna take a hit. All the young girls you want to impress will be laughing at you, you wasted all your money on WHAT?

So long Ferrari. So long Aston Martin. So long the SUV.

Do you think kids want to own a big box with terrible mileage just like their parents drive?

Just because cars have lasted a century, that does not mean they’re here to stay, that does not mean they’re not ripe for disruption. Cars are the newspapers of today. Something oldsters can’t live without and youngsters can.

The basic premise is you’ve got to go. How you get there is irrelevant. Furthermore, the costs of car ownership…the insurance and the gas, never mind the maintenance, none of them appeal to a youngster who believes all costs should be baked in.

Hidden fees are anathema to the younger generation. They’ll pay, but you’ve got to be honest.

In other words, we live in a world built by baby boomers that does not square at all with the needs of their progeny.

You don’t hear kids clutching to their CDs, never mind MP3s. They don’t complain about sound quality. They don’t bitch about the way it used to be.

Unless you’re willing to question all your preconceptions, you’re going to be left behind.

It’s the sixties once again, with a giant generation gap that the self-satisfied oldsters just can’t understand.

But they’re envious of.

Come on, a world where everybody’s interconnected, where few are lonely because even geeks and nerds can connect, and everything’s at your fingertips?

Fifty years from now smartphones will look quaint. Bandwidth speeds will be laughed at like floppy disks. The revolution we embrace will be in the rearview mirror.

Just like that machine you’re overpaying every month for to impress people who no longer care.

I’ll buy a new Mac, if only they can tell me what’s wrong with the one I have!

Greetings from Computer Hell, a village where I’ve resided for the past two days when my Mac Pro decided it would allow the cursor to move, but not the screen. Huh? I mean the music is playing, but you just can’t click on anything and when you do a restart, it won’t.

That’s when I got scared. It’s a modern operating system, built upon Unix, supposedly inviolate, not only is this not supposed to happen, it doesn’t. But it did!

And I performed a few tweaks and when the problem evidenced itself again I decided to build a whole new drive, from scratch. Know how long that takes? Either you do or you don’t, either you know what’s going on under the hood or you don’t, and now you don’t have to. Because computers are like cars, they just work.

But mine didn’t.

Not that this is my first Mac to crap out on July 4th. But I was stunned that the Genius Bar was open, and I made an appointment, and worried about schlepping the behemoth of a computer down the Third Street Promenade I checked Waze and found you couldn’t get near Santa Monica, so I switched to Century City. Yup, want to get your computer fixed, 7/4’s the day, the schedule was WIDE OPEN!

Well, not exactly, but there were options.

Still, I left early.

But it was like the ’84 Olympics, there was no traffic. I was the only car on the road, it was like the 1940s.

And an employee helped me get the ‘puter from the car to the store.

And the Genius who helped me…

The Genius Bar gets a bad rap. Hell, all of Apple now gets a bad rap. Supposedly they aren’t, geniuses that is. But my guy was. Hunter had graduated from Berkeley, had gotten into medical school, but he deferred that when his mother got sick and ultimately died.

So what’s wrong with my Mac?

They assume you know nothing until they do, then you can speak console and crash and still, it wasn’t clear what was up. Was it software or hardware? He thought software, and I’d run the hardware test. But if it’s the OS… You mean I’ve got to spend days reinstalling and reconfiguring just to diagnose?

I certainly hope not.

But I’m not dropping thousands on a new computer just to find I have the same problem, that it’s somewhere deep in my data. And today data is everything.

That’s our number one possession, not a car or a house, but our data, our 1’s and 0’s, sitting on our devices, interconnected, and we don’t want to lose it.

And I was thinking of buying a new computer, because this one can’t be upgraded to Yosemite, and it’d be cool to have all my machines talk. But I couldn’t pull the trigger, and then this.

Ain’t that how life works. You’ve got it all planned out, and then the unforeseen occurs, totally altering your course.

You’re thinking about how to spend your money, and then you get fired.

You’re thinking about breaking up, and then the other person becomes ill. Or you’re working up the courage to ask someone on a date, and the next time you see them they’re flashing a ring.

So do you aggressively eat up life or let it come to you? Do you try to alter the course of the river or realize that’s impossible, and just go with the flow?

So Hunter’s gonna keep my machine for a couple of days, run all kinds of tests, and I hope he comes up with something definitive. And the great thing about computers is it’s always something, it’s just a matter of finding it. But that can take days, a week, of frustrating experience.

And mostly we’re on our own. That’s the twenty first century mantra. There’s no help. Especially if you don’t pay. But even if you do, there’s no manual, no one to call, products are exceptional, but everybody’s a mechanic, intermittently. We’re all experts on something, just different things.

So I thank god for the Genius Bar. At least it’s their problem for a couple of days.

But soon, it could be mine.

Note: If it’s the data, buying a new machine will not only be superfluous, it might exhibit the same problem. And I could delineate the difference between Time Machine migration and hand migration but your head will spin. But the point is, I want answers. And right now, I don’t have any. I’m alone at the prom.