Fantastic article in today’s “Washington Post”:

Are Foodies Quietly Killing Rock-And-Roll?

Normally I’d just tweet this, but it’s too important to flow down the rabbit hole of digital effluence, yes, that’s the dirty little secret of Twitter, very few people see your tweets and none of them last.

There’s a belief in the world of music that we’re still living in 1964 or 1984, when music ruled the world via the Beatles and Michael Jackson, via radio and MTV. I’m sick and tired of people saying it’s just like it used to be, because it’s not. Music is rarely cutting edge and almost never drives the conversation and the culture, it’s just a placeholder to be consumed like milk. Sure, some people are passionate about acts, but the rest of us go to festivals where we look at each other and eat food.

Food, it’s everything music once was.

Take the TV channels… MTV is a dying enterprise which is not based on music, but lowest common denominator losers in reality shows. The Food Network had to split in two, there was that much demand. They’re mixing ingredients we thought didn’t go together, and everybody in music is playing in their own niche ghetto, complaining that it’s not bigger.

Going to the show is expensive. But food has gone downmarket. You can eat gourmet at a food truck for under ten bucks. Try seeing a music star live for that price.

Musicians are trying to sell out, get in bed with the Fortune 500, whereas food doesn’t scale that way, it’s an end unto itself. It used to be that way in music, before everybody got a scent and a clothing line.

But we all are still listening, just like we all are still eating, how can the game be changed?

1. STOP COMPLAINING!

That’s all musicmakers and industry titans seem to do anymore. Lament the passage of the good old days and blame the techies and the public for ruining their business. This is like a friend bitching a decade out about being dumped by his ex. GET OVER IT!

2. INNOVATE

You’re always looking for new tastes in the food world. But somehow, we believe in selling the same old thing in music. Just listen to the Top Forty. But when something is different, it triumphs in unforeseen ways. Mumford & Sons becomes one of the biggest bands in the land by employing a banjo and making folk music. Everybody on the inside said no, everybody on the outside said yes. Kind of like PSY… The video was as jaw-dropping and innovative as the classics of the eighties. But it was less about special effects than humanity. That’s what we’re looking for in food and music, humanity!

3. CHEAP OPTIONS

Most restaurants don’t scale. You’re in it for the love of the experience. Where is it written that musicians must be rich? Sure, some people establish chains, Danny Meyer has a string of restaurants, but there are always superstars and in reality a string is what the label is supposed to do. And isn’t it interesting that Meyer’s restaurants are all different yet the label’s music all sounds the same!

4. EXCELLENCE

Music is all about lowest common denominator, hitting the target as opposed to exceeding expectations. Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack was better than the competition, it delivered the unexpected treat, at a fair price. In other words, if you can play your guitar and sing and write, people notice, you’ll gain a following!

5. PAY YOUR DUES

Although there are always stories of teenage chefs, they’re anomalies. The greats have all been trained, at culinary institutes or in restaurants. How come in music you need no background, no skill, no underpinnings?

6. SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY

There’s not only McDonald’s, there’s not only Chez Panisse. In food, there are tastes and styles and prices for everybody. And everybody’s searching for excellence, just watch Triple-D if you doubt me. Those dive owners are honing their craft, making their reputation on their food.

7. LET THE MUSIC DO THE TALKING!

The chef rarely comes out of the kitchen. What sells restaurants is the food. Whereas in music, it’s all about the hype.

8. NEW BLOOD

They don’t continue to sell us Emeril. They add Iron Chefs. But in music, we think it’s the film business, that we want tent poles we can sell to the people again and again. But the movie business is stale and stagnant, everybody’s moved to television. We need new blood not only on the performance side, but the business side too.

9. SCHOOLS

There are no restaurant business schools that I’m aware of. They all focus on the cooking, the establishment is secondary. Why is America populated with music business schools and we pooh-pooh performance schools, and too many of those don’t focus on popular music? Don’t forget, Adele was trained in a school. Music is not a god-given talent, you need to work at it!

10. EXCITEMENT

It comes from the food, not the atmosphere. Beautiful restaurants with lousy food don’t last. All the excitement in music is about the penumbra, who’s wearing what, where they’ve been, how much money they’ve got. Deliver music that wows people and watch a star be born overnight.

Unlike the above-linked article, I don’t think food has taken money from the musical sphere, but I do say I’ve lived long enough to know that trends and opportunities change. In other words, as Bob Dylan sang, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” Quote me some lyrics from today’s artists.

Point proven.

P.S. If you got this far and you still haven’t clicked the link to read the WaPo story I’m disappointed, because the writer did a better job than I did. Dig deep, that’s where the nuggets are (and I don’t mean chicken!)

Since so many enjoyed my Buyer’s Guide…

I just got an e-mail from a friend of mine:

“My computer is dead, dead. Luckily everything is backed up. The bad news is I don’t have the time and money for this…

I need to go buy a computer first thing in the morning. No more PC’s. Which Mac would you recommend? I don’t need the fancy displays…I use my computer for Microsoft office, Internet, blogging and social…which is also Internet…I’m thinking that’s it..except Skyping, and crap like that.

Thoughts please. Going to bust a move as soon as they open.

Sorry for typos…sent from mobile device.”

This is what I said in response. You might find it useful:

(Note: I’m giving you ALL the information below. Don’t get overwhelmed, I give you an easy conclusion at the end…)

1. I assume you want a laptop, something you can travel with, otherwise buy a 27″ iMac, which will blow your mind. Don’t buy the smaller one…that’d be a mistake.

2. But, you want a laptop.

For the record, I’m one of the few people who travel with a laptop anymore, everybody else travels with an iPad…this is the way the world is going. You’ll be traveling with an iPad soon, you just don’t know it yet.

3. If you had another computer, I’d tell you to buy a MacBook Air. Instant on, very fast because of the solid state memory, but it can’t be your only machine.

4. So you want a MacBook Pro.

Although some buy the 13″, since it’s your only machine, I wouldn’t. I’d buy a 15″. Don’t skimp, it’s not worth it when you’re at home, squinting, with so little screen real estate.

The best MacBook Pro 15″ is the one with the Retina Display. Unbelievably sharp, but you pay for it. I’ll let you make your own decision here, based on what you think when you look at it and how much cash you want to spend.

5. Caveat…

Rumor is they’re going to be updating the MacBooks at next month’s Worldwide Developer Conference… If you buy, you can return at no cost, usually within 14 days, sometimes they let you stretch…no new breakthroughs, but computers just get faster and cheaper, it’s supposed to look the same, but with the newer chip, which you probably won’t notice, since you’re just surfing and e-mailing as opposed to crunching movies/video.

6. So, having said all that, buy the 15″ MacBook Pro with the 2.3 GHz chip. I’d really recommend against getting the 13″, but if for some reason you must, they’re blowing  out the 13″ MacBook Pros with Retina Displays at other companies.

I see they’re now blowing out the 15″ MacBook Pros with Retina Displays too.

One company doing it is Mac Mall, they’ve got a retail outlet on Wilshire in Santa Monica, as well as mail order, check prices here:

MacBook Pro – MacMall

BUT DON’T BUY ANY OTHER MACHINE AT MAC MALL OTHER THAN THE HEAVILY DISCOUNTED RETINA DISPLAY MACBOOK PROS!!

It’s worth it to pay a hundred dollars more at the Apple Store, because if anything goes wrong, they treat you right, like if you get home and in a couple of days you realize you bought the wrong machine, the Apple Store will make the exchange no questions asked.

But Mac Mall is selling some of these machines at $500 off. I’d go for that offer if that’s the machine you want.

7. The machines at the Apple Store can be custom ordered. If you were doing this, I’d say to pay an extra $150 for a 7200 RPM drive and I’d pay $100 for 8 gigs of RAM too…I would not pay extra for a faster chip.

8. DON’T BUY A DISCONTINUED MACHINE! They’ve got some at Mac Mall, not at the Apple Store. With Apple, you always want the latest, because they supersede these machines after a few years and you can’t update/upgrade them.

9. Just to make you crazier, the Retina Display models come with a faster chip, 8 Gigs of RAM and flash storage, which is light years faster, although smaller in size, but you store so much in the cloud these days.

10. P.S. Get the educational discount, buy in one of your child’s names and you’ll get approximately 10% off. Very simple to do.

I always buy AppleCare. But it’s very expensive. Laptops break, but the one I have now has not, but on my previous machine I got the screen replaced twice, in two days, via AppleCare. Also, you get 3 years of phone support as opposed to 90 days. Then again, you can always make an appt. at the Genius Bar for free…

BOTTOM LINE!

Buy the best MacBook Pro you can afford.

If it were me, I’d buy one with a Retina Display, since you get the screen, more RAM and flash storage, but you will do fine with one with a regular screen. A faster hard drive and more RAM help, but they’re not dealbreakers, if you want to save money, you can go with 4 gigs and a 5400 RPM hard drive.

Twitter is a news service.

It’s been shaking intermittently on the Westside for a month now. And if you were here during the ’94 big one, and it was pretty big, let me tell you, you’re afraid.

We like to feel in control. But during a quake, we’re at the mercy of the world, there’s nothing we can do but hang on for the ride. And there’s no confidence, like at Disneyland or the ski area, that the government has tested the experience and no matter how fearful you might be, you’ll be o.k.

But when something happens in today’s world and you need to connect with other human beings, you need to know what’s going on, you need to have your anxiety assuaged, you don’t go to TV or radio or even the newspaper site, you go to Twitter.

Twitter got a bad rap. That’s where you went to find out about people farting and eating dinner, minutiae we just didn’t care about.

But that is untrue. Twitter is where you go to find out about what the mainstream media doesn’t report, immediately.

That’s the dirty little secret of the media, it’s limited. With sinking financials and ever fewer people working there, they only report what is pitched. It’s a veritable cornucopia of press releases. Old wave publicists pitching stories that most don’t care about. Along with some big time disasters everybody’s anointed as important.

Now stories break online and then cross over to the mainstream media.

And the mainstream media is not an independent reporter of reality, but gloms on to trends like a prepubescent follows a boy band. Kids get shot in Newtown and suddenly the mainstream media reports on every school and child shooting. And it’s not that there are more, just that the media is now reporting them. Is this any world to live in?

And the oldsters don’t get it. They pat themselves on the back and call themselves gatekeepers. But there are no gates, they were torn down years ago, when the Internet took hold and everybody got broadband. Just ask the music business. Trying to put its finger in the dike it was overrun by a rush of water before it realized it wasn’t a hole, but the whole damn wall had come down.

You don’t try to mold the future to your past, you adapt.

Streaming services are already putting a dent in piracy. But the RIAA’s disinformation campaign would have you believe otherwise. Innovative solutions are the way out, not a giant megaphone imploring everybody to return to the past.

Not that the titans of yore will be victorious in the future. Otherwise, we’d all be driving Oldsmobiles, and typing our missives to each other on Smith-Coronas.

Crowdsourcing not only works on Kickstarter, but in news too. Now we’ve got a reporter on every street corner, in every home, nothing goes unexperienced. And nobody’s interested in all of it, but in case we are, there’s a permanent record, a trail of information that we can pick through and decipher. Instead of a clueless reporter calling the usual suspects to spin the story, we’ve got citizens with no skin in the game calling it as they see it.

And maybe Twitter fails. Maybe we want more than 140 characters.

That’s not the point.

The point is something has changed. The public is now in charge of the story. You go to the people to learn what went on.

And this is good. Because the more facts the better.

And sure, it’s incomprehensible if you grew up in the old world of scarcity. But you’ve got to adapt, no one can read everything, no one can know everything, but you can know what you need to, there are no blackouts. And ignorance of trending subjects is no longer an excuse. He who knows most wins.

Remember that!

P.S. It shook, I e-mailed my girlfriend, I tweeted, I searched on Twitter to find out I was not alone, everybody else was shook up too. I no longer bother to turn on the TV, there’s no one there other than the talking heads, assuming it’s a news show, otherwise they just wait for someone to phone in the story so they can run a crawl, eons late. I went to the L.A. “Times” website, nothing, but on my Twitter feed people were weighing in with their experience. As for radio, it’s taken itself out of the loop, I’ve given up checking, I’m now all Twitter all the time for breaking news, just like kids have cut the cable cord and have gone to the Internet. You can deny the future, but it’s gonna happen anyway.

He runs his business like a family. With Daniel Glass you’re either in or you’re out. You don’t want to get on his bad side, he’s got a very long memory, but if you’re in the family, there are no limits to what Daniel will do for you.

Tuesday I went to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to see Daniel Glass honored as the International Music Person of the Year at Musexpo. Interviewed by Jimmy Kimmel, Daniel kept telling stories of his relations, from his supportive parents to his wife to his children. There was no separation between work and downtime. Because there are no vacations in the music business, you’re working 24/7.

And Daniel’s been working for a very long time. Since his days at the college radio station in Brooklyn.

You never know where your passion will lead you. It was by championing an obscure record that Daniel got a call from its writer, inviting him into her lair, offering him his first gig, as a publisher.

Don’t be so worried about where you’re going next, do a good job where you are, people will notice. And what they notice most is not your ability to market yourself, but your depth of knowledge and your passion. Getting in the front door, getting the job, is the easy part, sticking is a whole ‘nother matter.

So Daniel parlays this gig into a job at Chrysalis. After pitching the writer’s songs to Vic Damone and other geriatric performers in the Catskills. No job is too small to do right. You’re learning all the while. And while at Chrysalis, Daniel pitched Spandau Ballet’s “True” to Frankie Crocker, who played it multiple times during his shift, and the song went on to become a smash, because Crocker was a tastemaker, people paid attention to him, not only his listeners, but other professionals. That’s the way the business works, there are always leaders. Right now, Daniel is one. But he’s doing it differently from everybody else. Sure, he’s got hit records. But everybody can discover talent these days, nothing is hidden, but can you sign it, can you make it hit, especially if it’s left of center? That’s Daniel’s specialty.

And that’s when I met Daniel. In the waning days of Chrysalis. Which was sold by its founders, leaving Daniel pondering his next move. Which ended up being with SBK.

Daniel wasn’t a pop guy. He liked rock and dance, hell, he was the DJ at Regine’s. But when he heard Wilson Phillips he knew he had a smash, and he executed, he made it a hit.

And what’s fascinating is the team Daniel employed was never stolen from another label, it was always home grown. He hired green people and taught them his method, and always gave them credit.

And after SBK blew up, Daniel had a long time in the wilderness, working for Doug Morris at Rising Tide, going indie, working with Danny Goldberg at the hedge-funded Artemis. He was king of the world at SBK, but now he was starting over. Most people don’t have the wherewithal, they certainly don’t want to invest in themselves.

Who implored Daniel Glass to start the hugely successful Glassnote?

His wife, Deborah.

We’re all unsure. We all need someone in our corner. We need validation, we need to be pushed, we need to be comforted when things go wrong, we need to be told to soldier on.

And suddenly, thirty years later, when everybody else is out of the business, Daniel is at his peak.

But he’s doing it the same way. Hiring a bunch of passionate nobodies who he molds to his system. This is the opposite of the major label model. The majors are all about the kingpin. Who works for Lucian Grainge? Doug Morris? They’re all about being king, taking all the credit. Whereas the great bosses give their charges leeway, and let them get the kudos. I learned this from Tom Freston, when he ran MTV. Tom too ran his business like a family. And he would never tell his people what to do. Freston wasn’t about trading favors, he’d link you up with the appropriate person, but it was their decision whether to play ball or not.

In the corporatization of the music business something has been lost. Homage is paid to the “team,” but really it’s every man for himself. Just like America. We’re not in it together, I’ll step on you to get ahead. And then I won’t respond to your e-mail once I’ve left you behind. It’s funny money. No one is an owner. So everybody’s playing an endless game of Monopoly, trying to win. And when the board is wiped clean and put away, then what?

Mmm…

It’s more than being in it for the long haul. It’s about people, relationships. Doing right so right will be returned unto you. And those who don’t play this game have very short shelf lives, when they hit a bump in the road, no one’s there to rescue them.

So the reason Glassnote is so successful is not because of the acts, but because of Daniel Glass. If you take a meeting with him, you’re gonna sign, because he’s so different from everyone else. Everyone else tells you how much money they’re gonna give you, send a limo, try to dazzle you. Whereas Daniel exudes passion for your work, tells you how long a road it’s gonna be, and then has his team of no-names work hard on your behalf. You can either buy a BMW with no gas, or a Prius that won’t break down and will get you there. Flashy and shiny went out with the nineties, today it’s all about the work.

It used to be about muscle.

Now it’s about smarts.

That was the majors’ ace in the hole. The ability to squeeze radio, where records were broken, and retail, where they were sold. But now radio, although important, means less than ever before. And iTunes is not about shipments and dating and all the other shenanigans of the past. Anybody can play. But everybody’s afraid. Or not interested, since the amount of money in music pales in comparison to finance and tech.

But it’s about the artists. Imperfect yet transcendent. That’s what Daniel told Jimmy, it’s the only reason to be in this business, to shepherd great talent to its deserved audience. And so many say they want to do this, but they don’t have the patience, never mind the skill, to deal with these impossible acts who can make great music but are frequently thorns in your side.

But it’s much easier if there’s trust.

A family is not without arguments. It’s not without a father. But it contains a bond transcending any business relationship. You know your back is covered. You know if you get in trouble there’s someone to bail you out.

It’s no wonder Daniel Glass is successful. He’s there for you.