SPOONER OLDHAM

About fifteen minutes into the movie, Spooner Oldham walks across the floor of FAME studios, sits down at a ratty old piano, puts his fingers to the keys and starts to play music so soulful, I tingle as I write this, remembering it.

RICK HALL

He was motivated by rejection, he needed to prove to the kids at school who saw him as poverty-stricken and Jerry Wexler, who pulled Aretha from FAME and never came back, that he was the baddest, bestest, record producer extant.

I know I wrote about grit, but the truth is so many people who achieve great things have something to prove. They want to set the record straight. Show all the bullies and naysayers they were right.

If you’re shooting for excellence, you have a strong opinion. You do your best to get along, but by testing limits in search of greatness, people are gonna be offended, they’re going to try and put you in your place. The key is to swallow the negative feedback and soldier on. Unfortunately, when you do break through the revenge is not as sweet as you envision it, but it’s what got you there.

PRODUCERS

Sometimes they neither play nor sing, they don’t even put their hands on the board, but they know what’s right. They’re searching for that elusive something that separates an average track from a hit. It’s not so much eliminating mistakes as it is capturing the essence. It’s the exhalation at the end of a vocal line, the way a note is bent, getting the drummer in the pocket… As the years have gone by and acts have seen everybody produce themselves, the value of a great producer has been diminished. But every session needs a boss. And it’s best if it’s an outsider.

ARETHA

Was backed by white musicians on her legendary hits. Soul is not a color, it’s something you feel.

MUSCLE SHOALS

None of the Swampers was famous. They were all local players who gravitated to FAME to get their chance.

MICK JAGGER

Looks like a fop surrounded by these down home crackers. In his cap and color it appears to be artifice, whereas the players were all about soul.

WILSON PICKETT

Wanted nothing to do with Rick Hall and vice versa. Hall saw Pickett as dangerous! But they ended up becoming fast friends. MTV has done a lot to integrate America, but in the sixties racial tension constantly boiled, especially in Alabama.

PERCY SLEDGE

He’s still alive!

He’s working in the cotton fields, singing and…

He ends up recording “When A Man Loves A Woman” at FAME. Rick Hall calls Jerry Wexler, who said to ring him whenever he had a hit, and it was.

HITS

That was Rick Hall’s goal. To deliver a hit whenever anybody came down to record. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t come back. Talk about pressure. In today’s world where you get extra time on the SATs for disabilities and everybody wants a do-over, the truth remains that when push comes to shove no one wants to hear about your shortcomings, they just want you to deliver, instantly.

BARRY BECKETT

Is barely in this movie. Even though I believe him to be the most talented player in Muscle Shoals. Listen to his piano work on Paul Simon’s “One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor.” The notes are simple, but the way Barry extracts them from the instrument…whew!

ROGER HAWKINS

Didn’t believe he was good enough until Jerry Wexler said so.

Today everybody’s overconfident.

But praise can inspire.

DAVID HOOD

Looks like your uncle who never got married and works at the insurance agency! Proving once again, it’s not how you look, but how you play.

JIMMY JOHNSON

Looks like David Hood’s boss at the insurance agency.

ARETHA FRANKLIN AGAIN

Was once young and sexy.

ETTA JAMES

Was a hottie in every sense of the word. She was visually exciting and was hot-headed, she could be pushed into delivering that something extra.

HEY JUDE

Duane Allman convinced Wilson Pickett to record the Beatles number during a break. Duane went from hippie outcast to insider instantly as a result.

LYNYRD SKYNYRD

Jimmy Johnson spent a year trying to get a deal for Skynyrd, but no one would bite. But when you see the band playing live, after so much studio footage, your head will spin. Once upon a time, a band could become so successful that they could sell out stadiums on their music alone. There was no big screen, almost no production whatsoever. But the minions came and lost their minds to the sound.

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This is a flawed movie. Trying to be everything to everybody, it disappoints those who care and those who don’t. Bono speaks, even though U2 has no history there. Alicia Keys testifies even though she’s decades removed from the music’s heyday and the session featuring her at the end of the flick is boring. And as great as he is, there’s too much Rick Hall, is it his biography or the story of the music?

But having said all that, watching this movie you want to do nothing so much as make a pilgrimage, because place is important, you can feel the music when you’re in Memphis, I’m dying to go to the Shoals.

But what’s most thrilling about this flick is the geekiness and the music. Stripping away the star testimonials and the landscape footage, what you’ve got here is a renegade bunch of crackers who made some of the most legendary music of all time, and they’re all there to explain how they did it. And it wasn’t difficult so much as it required dedication to their craft, stardom was secondary, hell, almost none of the musicians had ever hit the road, but boy could they play!

There was a small coterie of people bitten by the bug. They formed bands and played fraternity parties. They could never give up and go straight, they had to follow the muse. And when you put a bunch of people in a room who love to play, who are in search of excellence, you find out the whole world is watching, and listening.

P.S. Denny Cordell named them the Swampers, after they worked on “Leon Russell and the Shelter People.”

The Muscle Shoals Movie

He was interested in ME!

Not a day goes by where I don’t get e-mail imploring me to waste my time listening to someone I usually don’t know try and sell me something I don’t need. That’s what they want, some of my time, so they can convince me to help them get ahead.

Huh?

I’ve about given up going to lunch. I don’t even respond to most e-mail. It’s not so much that these people are takers, but that I’m nowhere in the equation. You meet them and they don’t even pay lip service to the fact I’m a human being, they’re just narcissistically on their own trip.

Maybe you’re too young to know who Joe Smith is.

He started out as a deejay (after graduating from Yale), and then went on to star in the Mo and Joe show, running Warner/Reprise Records.

Oh, he told me some great stories.

My favorite was about the Eagles, when Joe’d moved on to run Elektra/Asylum. He’d convinced them to do a live album. It would be good for the label and the band. But days before, Irving called and said there was a problem… He put Glenn Frey on the phone. Glenn went on about how it really didn’t feel right, how they didn’t want to play the Santa Monica Civic, how they could make so much more somewhere else and…the band would only do it if Joe could name the four starting pitchers of the Baltimore Orioles who each won twenty games in 1971. Joe had a history with Glenn, discussing baseball trivia, but this was too much, this was manipulative, this was unfair. But like the father who lifts the automobile crushing his son via pure adrenaline, Joe answered Glenn, he got it right, and they went on to record the double album!

That’s exactly how Joe told it.

Not that he was into polishing his image, it’s just that I got uptight with the focus all upon me and shifted it back to him.

So I asked Joe about the Grateful Dead. What did he say to them when they put out one stiff album after another?

First, Joe said they burnished the roster, the Dead helped the label sign other bands. Then he told me of a conversation with Mike Maitland, his then boss. Joe told him he could sign every San Francisco act for the same 50k he gave the Dead…Joplin, Country Joe and the Fish… But Mike said to wait and see how it turned out with the Dead.

But by then it was too late.

But the Dead ultimately turned it around, with “Workingman’s Dead.”

How did Joe get them to record it?

By saying MAKE ONE FOR ME!

After letting them do three studio albums their way, and one overpriced live album, Joe felt the label deserved something it could work with.

And what did Joe say when he heard the result?

He was thrilled!

But he had absolutely no input into the record whatsoever, that’s not the way he did business.

Joe signed Bonnie Raitt by having her meet with him and Randy Newman and Ry Cooder, her idols. She was gonna sign with Capitol, which paid to fly her to the west coast, but now she switched allegiance. And for her first record she wanted to record in Minnesota with a friend.

Joe was against this. But he let her. Because artists have to find their own way. Bonnie learned what she didn’t know making that first record and adjusted for the second.

There was one story after another of how Joe was hands-off. So different from today.

But then I asked Joe about Ry Cooder, who never broke through commercially, what could I take from that?

Well, Ry was an artist.

But Joe threw it back to me…how was I gonna make some MONEY!

I told him about personal appearances, about my gig with “Variety,” but Joe wanted to know about the plan, the strategy.

I wish I had more answers.

But I did tell him I wanted to make seven figures a year.

I shoot high.

Which is what Joe believes in. He felt I had to meet with more people who could push my career. Not the HR person, but the ones who ran companies.

I told Joe I wanted to be on the Amazon homepage. Or iTunes’. Or maybe even an interview podcast for AEG or Live Nation, someone who’d put it on the homepage and promote it, I’m not gonna start at zero, I’m too old, and Joe agreed.

But Joe told me first and foremost I had to know what I wanted. And then I had to get along. In other words, people had to be glad to see me, when I walked into their office they had to be thrilled.

And I’ve worked on that. I’ve learned how to be warm and nice. But the nature of my act is I’m going to inherently piss people off in my writing, otherwise it wouldn’t be honest.

Joe told me not to change the act. Not to take any ads, not to play the game, not to change the essence of who I am.

But to strategize, to reach out, to not be afraid to fail, he said I was too old to be afraid.

And he’s right.

P.S. We went to Bouchon Bistro. Mmm…was the food good. You could go just for the bread, but I ordered the steak and frites. Got to say, it was the most tender steak I’d eaten in years, and I even had the Japanese wagyu at CUT last week! I had to look down with my weak eyesight and investigate, was this hamburger? My knife cut through so easily!

P.P.S. Steve Ross was the big boss. And Steve never interfered, whenever Joe asked him what to do, Steve said it was Joe’s money, the same thing Joe told the acts. If you give people responsibility, they step up and deliver, or at least try.

P.P.P.S. Joe referenced having breakfast with Dick Wolf, to trade basketball tickets. Joe’s got the Lakers, Dick’s got the Clippers. His point was everything’s social, and you’ve got to play with the right people, those you can call up who deliver. The same way Irving did when Joe was writing his book, furnishing addresses and phone numbers. That’s the nature of the game, he who does favors wins. And the big boys don’t ask for payback, because if you give enough, you always get.

P.P.P.P.S. Joe tracked me down. I felt he had an agenda. The fact he wanted to focus on me was quite the surprise. Then again, if you walk out the front door you never know what will happen.

“How country music went crazy: A comprehensive timeline of the genre’s identity crisis”

At least they’re having the debate, no one’s fighting over the soul of rock.

Will the traditionalists pull country out of the proverbial ditch, leaving trucks and babies by the wayside, or has country truly left Nashville and is just another pop format, albeit a couple of generations behind Top Forty?

In other words, do you play to the lowest common denominator or go for authenticity?

Authenticity wins in the end, when people burn out on the hollow, but it can take a very long time.

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“Disruptive Innovation Explained”

This is the guru of the future, Clayton Christensen, expounding upon his theory of disruption. How the inadequate cheap gets slowly better and ultimately supplants the high margin quality. Christensen believes good enough is good enough for most people. In other words, not everybody needs a Mercedes Benz, BMW or iPhone. Tim Cook should watch this and be very afraid. Once upon a time, the iPhone owned the market, with high margins to boot. Then inadequate Android handsets came upon the market. And now you’ve got Samsungs, never mind Motorolas, LGs, HTCs and a plethora of cheap knock-offs that are not quite as good as the iPhone, but good enough for most people (and in the case of high end Samsungs, nearly as good!)

But the biggest takeaway from this clip comes at the end, wherein Christensen says that fact-based analysis inevitably looks backward, because that’s where the facts are. If you want to go forward, you’ve got to have a theory!

I doubt business school is as interesting as this clip. But this is the most fascinating video I’ve watched all week.

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“The Doctor Is In”

The story of Dr. Luke. Worth the price of this week’s “New Yorker” if you’re a wannabe and want to see how to make it.

Will Dr. Luke be on top tomorrow?

Everybody dies. Whether it be Phil Spector, Roy Thomas Baker, Mike Chapman, Stock Aitken Waterman or… You wake up one day and you’re done.

I’ve got no idea why Dr. Luke agreed to this victory lap. Everybody profiled by the “New Yorker” tanks right thereafter, or doesn’t make it, it’s kind of a jinx, from Ben Kweller to Cherie to…

Everyone feels inadequate, everyone wants the kudos, but he who refrains from this wins.

David Geffen agreed to Tom King’s biography, and his image has never recovered.

Be grateful you’ve earned the success you’ve got, if you’re on top the only thing press can do is…bring you down.

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From: Rich Harris
Subject: Re: The New Me Decade

No it is NOT going away. It’s just different. To your point……some stats for ya….(I’m a mobile analyst/strategic for a Fortune 250 company). Get on board or move to the caves of Tora Bora.

A long, long time ago, back in 2011…

96M smartphones in the US.
13% of all internet traffic was mobile.
U.S. E-Tail sales was at $197B, $25B of that from mobile.

Today…

230MM smartphones in the U.S.
39% of all Web traffic is mobile, expected to crest 50%+ by end of this year beating out desktop/laptop internet traffic.
U.S. E-Tail sales expected to hit $240B this year with $39B of that from mobile.

Rock on….
-Rich

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From: Andrew Oldham
Subject: Re: Desperation

bob;

old acts do not deserve 60 minutes plus of saying time.
neither do most younger acts, but it is what it is.
and most younger acts do not survive the long term format.
some shirts should only be washed and left to dry as opposed to dried. they look – or sound – better.
in the beginning there was sheet music, and that was all about one song.
guy drives around the houses with a piano on his flatbed, plays the songs and sold the sheet music for the folks to play at home. he sold the hits!
in our day you got to cut your first 45 RPM; if that did well you were allowed another, then an EP, then another single and if all that hit, an LP.
you were on probation!
as you grew and succeeded you were promoted from the fourth division to the first.
i do understand how much elton enjoys being in the studio. it’s like going back to the safety of the womb, but sometimes you just gotta stand in the alley and jerk off …..

best, o

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From: Chris Wink
Subject: Re: Grit

If you look at Angela’s Lee Duckworth’s TedX talk you see a big drum in the background. That’s because her TedX talk was in Blue Man Group’s rehearsal Space. We brought her in because Grit was one of the topics we were interested in trying to teach at  the School we founded

Blue School

It also resonated with our own experience. The question is, is Grit teachable? Or do some people just have it?  Well, one thing is certain, you won’t have it if you pursue things you aren’t passionate about. I’m like you; people said I was lazy when I was doing stuff I didn’t like. But when it comes to building cool shows, I’m an unstoppable force. I’m not saying all my ideas are good, I’m just saying I can’t be stopped. I keep going, getting help from others until the ideas get good. Maybe not every time, but most of the time my partners and I can outlast the forces of mediocrity (which are everywhere).

Anyway, Angela Lee Duckworth rocks.
Chris

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My favorite viral video of the day:

PEOPLE ARE AWESOME 2013 (NEW)

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“Say ‘Cheese’ to the Narrative Clip Life-Logging Wearable”

I want one. But not this one. Kickstarter sucks. Have you seen a Pebble in real life? Absolute junk. A plasticky thing you’d never wear on your wrist.

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Thirty Seconds To Mars vyrt

I love everything about this but the counter.

Jared Leto is smart, innovative and I give him credit for this live stream. The only problem I have is he’s only sold 4,114 of 7,500 tickets.

That’s why you don’t want a counter online. Because people can see how puny your effort truly is. Like the number of people who fund the Kickstarter project. You might have raised the money, but you’re proving your a tiny niche.

As for Jared/Thirty Seconds To Mars…it’s a big band. But with this small number, it gives the impression they’re not so big. Bottom line…people want to go to the show, they don’t want to pay to watch at home, because going is as much about the experience as the music, and free live footage is plentiful online.

Now you know why people buy Twitter followers and YouTube plays, to give the imprimatur that something is happening, when in many cases it’s not.

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Howard Stern’s radio show is no better today than it was before he was a judge on “America’s Got Talent.” But having been on network television, the gatekeepers, the handlers, now approve of him and the quality of his guests is equal, if not better than that of mainstream media outlets. Howard interviewed Floyd Mayweather soon after the fight, as well as Michael J. Fox and James Caan and so many others. And sure, Howard extracts information everyone else is afraid to get near, but my point is Howard played a very traditional game and it worked for him, we want to believe the Internet changed everything, but it didn’t.

P.S. Listen to Howard’s interview of Graham Nash, it’ll blow your mind. That’s the thing about Stern, he digs deep when no other pro will even pick up the spade

Howard Stern Show : Graham Nash Interview 10/01/13

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Speaking of disruption, soon the “New York Times” will be even more powerful than it is today. If you focus on money, you get left behind. When everybody else was cutting severely, the “Times” held out, well relatively. As a result, the paper is ready for the next paradigm, Web 3.0, filters. We want trusted ones. We’re all sick of the online outlets we’ve never heard of reporting rumor or rendering opinion at best. Television has punted. Radio is almost exclusively opinion. The “New York Times” sets the American agenda more than ever, whether you’re a liberal or a conservative, it’s what those in the know read to find out what is going on, they haven’t got time to waste on untold Websites.

The “Huffington Post” has jumped the shark. It’s linkbait and nothing more.

The “Wall Street Journal” is the only paper in the “New York Times”‘s league.

I’m not saying the “Times” is not challenged, but it’s got boots on the ground. And suddenly, that’s very important.

P.S. The “Times” is taking all kinds of risks, even though it’s doing a bad job of promoting them. Baby boomers should bookmark this page, to read about the long term marriages and the divorces if nothing else:

“Booming”

I went to a show and it took all my willpower to refrain from dipping into my pocket and checking my iPhone.

An e-mail would be nice, or a text, but in my fingertips I hold a personal link to the entire world, and this has changed not only my behavior, but that of the entire globe.

We used to put stars on a pedestal. Now they’re vehicles for put-downs. If you’re famous, you’ve been abused online, it goes with the territory.

And if you’re having a “digital free” day enjoy the analogue to camping but there’s nothing wrong with the new paradigm and it’s never going away, it’s only going to intensify.

We were never at the heart of the action. In fact, we had to leave home to participate. Now we can not only watch TV in our lairs, we can surf for dates and dig deep down into our personal interests, chatting with those like-minded all the while. When I went to college with my hundreds of albums in the seventies I was an outcast, I came to Los Angeles and found people just like myself. Now no one is alone, everybody lives in a virtual village of their choosing. And the star is you.

It’s already happened. People won’t leave their house without their device. Forget the baby boomer backlash, decrying the loss of… Actually, it’s a gain. Everybody you ever knew is at your fingertips. You’re more socially engaged than ever before. You can buy goods at the lowest possible price without living in Los Angeles and New York. Virtual connection is a panacea that brings whole nations together and fosters revolutions, and this is good.

In other words, expect people to continue to take photos at the gig. To dial their friends and have them listen in. To check their timeline or feed while the music plays. Because what’s happening in your world is more important than what’s happening on stage. As Sly Stone sang decades ago, everybody is a star.

And our heroes are the enablers. The techies who create this stuff. Disruption is in their blood the same way it was in that of the classic rock musicians. That was their appeal, the way they tested limits, it’s why we’re always interested in a new social network and data has triumphed over emotion, everybody looks at the numbers first.

If they’re in business. But emotion is king in your own personal world. Music is not primary, but part of the ever-flowing background, no different than the wallpaper on your phone. He who realizes enabling the listener is the key to success triumphs tomorrow.

Putting your fan primary does not mean paying lip service to those adhered to you. No, it means giving them artwork and free music and snippets of information, that they revel in, believing they’re truly your best friend.

Yes, the world has been flattened. Everybody’s equal. And if you act differently, you’re going to get mowed down. That’s what’s wrong with Kanye, he’s living in the wrong decade, Jay-Z too, wherein they believe proclaiming themselves rich and powerful makes them so. No, everybody believes they’re rich and powerful today, and if you establish a moat between you and them you’re headed for a downfall.

If you’re in the public eye, humility is key. It’s the essence of Howard Stern’s success. He could go on about how wealthy he is, how he doesn’t fly commercial, but instead he focuses on his foibles, bringing his audience ever closer to him, cementing a bond that cannot be broken.

We’re immune to so much hype and me-tooism because we’ve all tried it ourselves and found out it doesn’t work, that fame online is earned over time, based on the work, which explains why everything that pops up on YouTube seems to die quickly and is never followed up, we view it not as the start of a career, but a wreck on the side of the highway to rubberneck at and then forget.

And it all started with the Internet.

But the final link was the mobile phone. Because suddenly we can take our world with us. BlackBerry didn’t realize this and died. It’s not solely about e-mail, we want EVERYTHING at our fingertips, we never want to encounter a technical glitch, to have a problem with your mobile phone is akin to having a problem with your body, something that is completely untenable.

And it’s only going to become more so. We’re all connected, we’re all primary, and it all happens on the mobile.

The clock ain’t turnin’ back.