1. The major music business, the “new music” business, is built upon radio, it depends upon it.

2. There’s a fiction that we still live in a monoculture. This concept has been blown apart on television, where there are five hundred channels available, but the Luddites in radio still believe the Internet didn’t happen, that we’re all prisoners of the dial, where there are few stations and little innovation.

3. There are radio alternatives. I.e. Pandora and the forthcoming iTunes Radio. Please don’t confuse Spotify and Rdio and Deezer and MOG/Daisy with radio, they’re nothing of the sort. Oh, they might have a Pandora or iTunes Radio component, but these streaming services are retail replacements, lending libraries wherein for ten bucks a month you can go into the store and borrow anything you want, as long as you return it. Also, you’re not limited to one album at a time…

4. The radio alternatives represent market fragmentation. Because Internet in the car is not yet here on a widespread basis, they’ve had little impact on car listening… Then again, we’ve experienced tapes in the car, CDs and iPod hookups. Terrestrial radio listenership is not close to what it once was. Radio used to dominate, it’s still the biggest player, but its market share has receded dramatically.

5. Satellite, Sirius XM, benefits from its automobile deals. That was the essence, even more than the programming. At this point, ten years past launch, almost all cars are satellite-ready. Not everybody pays, but subscriptions exceed twenty million. How can Sirius XM get the rest of the public to subscribe? By utilizing Internet techniques, i.e. social networking. People go where their friends are… Right now, Sirius XM has not leveraged its subscriber base.

6. When wi-fi hits the car, or whatever type of cheap Internet access deploys in automobiles, Sirius XM will be challenged too. Right now, Sirius XM’s Internet play is laughable.

7. Most people under age twenty have never experienced good radio. So when baby boomers and Gen X’ers start waxing rhapsodically about their old time favorites, wanting them to come back, it’s the equivalent of wishing that music videos would come back to MTV. Music videos are now an on demand item. No one is going to sit and wait for their favorite. And this is the same challenge facing all radio outlets, from terrestrial to satellite to Pandora to… They’re all based on an old model. Which is you’ll sit through what you don’t like to hear what you do, paying for the experience, whether with cash or by listening to ads. At this point, ads on Pandora are limited. But it’s the ads that will kill terrestrial…

Never forget Sirius XM’s music channels are commercial-free. The public hates commercials, despite all the b.s. propagated by advertisers. The absence of commercials is satellite’s number one selling point.

8. Insiders believe that there’s no revolution in terrestrial radio because the owners know it’s headed into the dumper. They’re just milking it for all they can before it falls off a cliff. So if you’re waiting for format innovation and fewer commercials…you’ll be waiting forever.

9. The challenge of Spotify/Rdio/etc. is…to tell their subscribers what to listen to. That’s what traditional radio has done best. So far, these services have not succeeded because they’re run by techies, and curation is all about human effort, not algorithms, otherwise we’d all be in relationships determined by computers.

10. Indie and left of center musical acts cannot get on terrestrial radio.

11. Terrestrial radio sells records and builds careers. Just not as well as before. The reason we see so few diamond sellers isn’t because of piracy so much as the fragmentation of the audience. In the old days of the walled garden, of radio and MTV dominance, if something got airplay it went nuclear, now radio just plays to its niche.

12. There’s very little innovation in the music played on alternative and active rock stations. Hip-hop killed rock and roll, but rather than innovating, rock and roll stayed the same. And now electronic music is killing hip-hop. Sure, kids want something different from their parents, but even more they want to own the scene, they don’t want to be dictated to, they want something that’s testing the limits!

13. Pop/Top Forty has more innovative music than alternative and active rock. Because the largest rewards are in pop/Top Forty, the best people gravitate there. I know you hate this, but it’s true.

14. Young people, prepubescent people, listen to Top Forty to be a member of the club, it’s a rite of passage, discovering pop after Disney…before you become an adolescent and want to express your identity by finding your own music, when you stop inviting all the kids in your class to your birthday party and only the few you like, who you gossip with about those you hate.

15. Baby boomers and Gen X’ers control the big time music business. They’re inured to the past, the dominance of radio and MTV, and they only want to be involved with that which pays, heavily… So they’re not about to put a decade into building your indie band, never gonna happen.

16. The young acts of today have to depend upon the young entrepreneurs of today to build their careers. It wasn’t oldsters who built classic rock, but a totally new generation of young players and young business people, only the young business people understood it.

17. Look at trends. Ten years ago the major labels said no record ever broke on the Internet. Look at PSY’s “Gangnam Style”! Radio is dying and YouTube and other alternatives are growing.

18. If you want to gain the most eyeballs, you must be controversial, tweet-worthy. If I can listen to your station and have no opinion, not hate or love your deejays or hate or love your music, if you give me nothing to talk about other than the same damn thing, then I’m not gonna talk about it, I’m not gonna bring new people in, you’re going to be living in an echo chamber.

19. Just like music piracy is a dead conversation, just like streaming has eclipsed it, terrestrial radio is dying…however, its replacement has not reared its head yet. Therefore the oldsters say radio is forever. But lousy sales figures of today’s mass market records proves this to be wrong.

20. We, as a culture, want to feel included. That’s what the radio of yore was all about. To grow mass, you’ve got to make us feel included. In other words, it’s all about culture. Talk radio has culture. As does public radio. After that, it’s a vast wasteland of sold-out stations with the same flaw of network television… Trying for broad-based appeal, they appeal to no one, and cede their market to excellence. HBO and the cable outlets killed network with quality… If you don’t think new services will kill terrestrial radio, you must like inane commercials, you must like me-too music, you must think airplay on one of these outlets will sell millions of albums, but that almost never happens anymore.

It was the first post-Steve presentation.

I know, I know, Apple’s supposed to be history. Samsung is on a full court press, giving away their devices to all the tastemakers while Apple, like the moribund music business, refuses to give it away for free.

But then today happened.

Tim Cook is better.

But he’ll never be good.

But the new Scott Forstall? This guy Craig Federighi?

He’s almost as good as Steve Jobs, and WE’VE NEVER HEARD OF HIM BEFORE!

That’s how deep the bench is.

But what we saw today, if you were watching, was cool, was wow, was…I WANNA GET ME SOME OF THAT!

Whether it be Phil Schiller previewing the new Mac Pro.

Or even the Anki race cars, with their glitch.

But the positively mind-blowing experience was iOS7.

Huh? Isn’t it a mature system? Isn’t that why Apple’s dying? Because they don’t know where to go?

With Steve gone… With Scott gone…

Jony Ive can take control.

Jony Ive is the new Steve Jobs. And rather than being cautious, resting on his laurels, Jony Ive has completely redesigned iOS7 to make it so cool, once it’s launched Apple-envy will be prevalent once again, with every iPhone owner showing off how cool it is.

Oh, I know, you’re an Android user. You’re a hacker. You like the flexibility of a PC.

That’s fine.

But most people are not.

I don’t want to know how to fix my car…I just want it to run right.

And if it breaks, I want to know where to take it, a place where the mechanic is familiar with the product, like the Genius Bar.

There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival. They need to feel special, they need to be ahead of the curve, they need to be one of a kind, they need to dictate.

But we just want our stuff to work… Easily.

And it wasn’t only iOS7. It was also Mavericks, the latest edition of OS X.

Lousy name, I agree. But just like a band, the name is irrelevant if the music is great.

Maybe you’ve got to be a fanboy to watch this presentation… But just like those in the audience, you’ll find yourself clapping at times, because what they’re showing is so damn cool.

It’s the opposite of the music industry, where everybody’s a moneygrubber looking to sell out. Apple cares not a whit about anybody else…except for its customers, it wants to satiate its customers, it figures they’ll spread the word, not the reporter with an agenda.

Smart people have inherited the nation. Being dumb and uneducated is passe. Smoke and mirrors have been superseded by substance.

We’re always ready to be blown away…

And Apple did this to us TODAY!

WWDC. June 10,2013.

P.S. Apple’s iPod strategy has died in mobile… The company doesn’t seem to know how to create a monopoly anymore. Yup, that’s what the iPod was, driven by software more than hardware. Still, if you like sexy, innovative products, the Cupertino company seems to have a lock on them. As for Samsung… It’s got one big problem…software. Sure, it builds upon Android, but you’ve got to control the whole thing to execute elegant solutions. As for Amazon… It’s Microsoft, where the money is, but nowhere close to the bleeding edge. There’s a business on the bleeding edge. The mass market bleeding edge. That’s where Apple has perched itself. That’s where musicians used to perch themselves. That’s what Steve Jobs took from Bob Dylan. But now we get inspiration from Apple instead of our musicians. Because at Apple they know it’s about the work, not the hype.

I can’t watch myself, but maybe you’d like to.

I don’t want to be one of those people trumpeting my personal appearances…on Friday I’m in Philadelphia, come on down! But as a reader of my words…maybe you’d like to see me live and in action, the man behind the b.s.

I didn’t know this was being recorded (then again, today everything seems to be), so this is my unfiltered, unvarnished opinion, being half a world away it didn’t occur to me to leave names out, not that I’d do that anyway.

I’m seeing love and hate tweets. But at this point, the former outnumber the latter, so I’m gonna pass this on.

I expect the lovefest and the excoriation to continue.

Click away!

 

SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROCK ‘N’ ROLL STAR

So you want to be a rock ‘n’ roll star
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time
And learn how to play

We all took lessons.

First it was Peter, Paul & Mary, the folkies, suddenly acoustics were everywhere, not only was “Hootenanny” on TV, we all sat in a circle singing the songs… Wanna know a great song? You can sing it yourself, in your head, with no accompaniment. Your own voice is enough!

And then came the Beatles.

Not only did we buy electric guitars, we went completely gear crazy, we could name every Fender amp, we knew the difference between a Strat and an ES-335 and could hear the difference.

Some wore it out, some stuck with it, like Mike Campbell and Tom Petty… They had so much gear on stage! It wasn’t an affectation, it was a lifetime of collecting, to get the right feel and sound.

And boy the sound!

This was the anti-Stones, they could hit every note, with feeling, and the venue was so small you could HEAR IT! Each and every player. Whether it be Steve Ferrone pounding the drums or Scott Thurston singing backups or Benmont tickling the ivories, never mind Ron Blair’s bass. There were no hard drives, no aftereffects, no tweaking, just a rock and roll band, America’s greatest today, keeping up the tradition.

LOVE IS A LONG ROAD

ISN’T IT!

There was a girl I knew
She said she cared about me
The way she thought it should be
Yeah, we were desperate then
To have each other to hold
But love is a long, long road

I had this relationship. You know, where you’re so intertwined, you become one person. But your significant other…she wants you to be somebody you’re not. Still, you hang in there…

Yeah it was hard to give up
Some things are hard to let go
Some things are never enough
I guess I only can hope
For maybe one more chance
To try and save my soul

The only thing that can save your soul is rock and roll. Those records are cast in amber, they never change, you can rely on them. And when you go to the show and hear them live… Your body starts to tingle, you thrust your arms in the air, you sing along at the top of your lungs…because this is your life, this is YOU!

DON’T DO ME LIKE THAT

It’s Benmont’s keyboards.

When you’re this close, you can hear every note, every instrument breathes and is fully alive.

Usually you’re in the big hall and it all runs together.

But Thursday night there was no noise, just individual sounds on separate parts of the stage coming together to produce the whole.

Your dream is to see your favorite band in a club?

I saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Whisky. The summer of 1977, after “American Girl” had finally caught fire, a year after release, and they were seasoned and self-confident and it was wondrous, but this was just as intimate, just as magical, just as good.

WHEN THE TIME COMES

The surprises. The album cuts.

That was what this gig was all about, the unexpected, the songs that you know by heart but believe you’ll never hear live again. Like this, the opening cut of the second album, “You’re Gonna Get It.”

There was no hit, but everything on the LP sounded so great.

Will you stand by me when the time comes?

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will.
My friends? WE’LL SEE!

GREEN ONIONS

I doubt Booker T. and Steve Cropper could do it any better.

Roots, we all have them. And the key is to never forget them. And nothing feels better than to hearken back to those days when you were excited by what was on the radio, when it seemed impossible to play, but you tried so hard to do so.

This is a driving song. A groove. And when the band was playing it it was like the audience wasn’t even there. There was no mugging, it’s like they’d locked on and elevated above us, or were pulsing down the highway in that new Cadillac with that fine fox in front and three mo’ in the back…

This is what makes a gig. When you hear the unexpected.

It makes the night special.

TAKIN’ MY TIME

From “Mojo.” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are still trying, they’re still making albums, they’re not like their brethren who’ve given up, they’re gonna keep recording whether you listen or not, because this is what they do, this is their job.

BORN IN CHICAGO

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band never had a hit. But they possessed one of the best guitarists in rock and roll history. One Mike Bloomfield. Who got a bit of recognition with Dylan and got some face time with Al Kooper before expiring.

Funny thing about those Butterfield albums… They were seminal. All the alternative acts of the eighties and nineties might have bought the Velvet Underground, but if you’re a baby boomer, if you played music instead of sports, if you stayed at it, then you owned that initial Butterfield album, and “East West.”

A WOMAN IN LOVE (IT’S NOT ME)

Now if you’re a fan, you know the song from the intro.

I’d listened to this, my absolute favorite Petty track, ad infinitum, especially on the “Live Anthology” album, so when Benmont was rolling his fingers over the keys my whole body sighed, my whole life came complete, this was what I was waiting for.

So it’s 1981. I’ve just broken up with my live-in girlfriend. I stay up all night in my new apartment thinking about her and then decide to wait until it’s late enough to call her.

Which I do.

You know how you get a notion in your head…it feels so right, nothing can stop you from taking action.

So I dialed her number. She picked up. And was hesitant and distant.

I can work through this. We’re in love.

So I keep at it.

Until she tells me…she’s in bed with her new boyfriend.

She’s a woman in love
And he’s gonna break her heart to pieces
She don’t wanna see
She’s a woman in love, but it’s not me

I quickly got off the phone. And played this track again and again and again.

HAVE LOVE, WILL TRAVEL

Bands cut the new records, but refuse to play them live, they’re afraid everyone’s gonna go to the bathroom, everyone with a career is afraid of losing their audience, which is pure death.

This is from “The Last DJ.” Petty even said so, just in case we were clueless.

TWEETER AND THE MONKEY MAN

You know this one, from the initial Wilburys album.

Dylan sings the lead on the original. And I’m sitting there thinking how lucky Tom Petty was. Scratch that, what he earned, from staying in the game, being great. Being able to play with Bob and George and Roy. Being made a member of the club. Pinching himself. You never know where the rock and roll road will lead you. In Tom’s case, from his producer Jeff Lynne to where it all began. Yes, they’re just people…but their music came out of the dashboard, it shaped our lives, how did we get from there to here? From Florida to L.A?

And Petty commented about Hollywood…

They lifted up the country and all the loose nuts and bolts fell to California. We’re all here because we just didn’t fit in back there. But out here…we found people JUST LIKE US!

REBELS

“Southern Accents” brought Petty back to the mainstream, made him an MTV staple, but it was never one of my favorites, and I don’t love the original recording, but this was a highlight. Hang in there long enough and songs surprise you.

WILDFLOWERS

Usually people go solo and no one cares.

Tom Petty went solo and went nuclear, reinvigorated his and his band’s career. To hear the notes strummed on an acoustic was so intimate…it was like we were in Tom’s living room.

CRAWLING BACK TO YOU

Also from “Wildflowers.” Another cut you’d never hear at the festival, in the arena. That’s what made this night so special, this whole run… Contrary to what classic rock radio thinks, these artists created a whole body of work, we don’t only know the hits, the album tracks are our friends, sometimes the best ones.

I’VE GOT A WOMAN

The Ray Charles song. Like I said, it’s all about roots. From an era when you could like and appreciate everything, and hear it all on the radio.

WILLIN’

Everybody does Linda Rondstadt’s version. Or Seatrain’s. No one does the Little Feat original. Wherein Lowell George, who possessed one of the most mellifluous voices of all time, basically speaks the verses. It’s about the lyrics more than the sound… Except for that magical chorus, with its rock and roll anthem words:

And if you give me weeds, whites and wine
And you show me a sign
I’ll be willin’, to keep on movin’

You’ve got to be willin’. Despite the roadblocks. You’ve got to get up in the morning and get going even if you’ve got no desire, because once you stop, you die.

And when I first heard this song, I knew where Tucson was, but I’d never heard of Tehachapi, Tonopah or Tucumcari.

That’s how you know you’ve left home… When you’re running down the road and you see that sign… For an outpost you only know from a record.

This was so good…it was like Lowell was in the balcony smiling down at the proceedings.

MELINDA

Talk about deep cuts!

You’d only know this from the “Live Anthology,” you had to be a fan to know this…but not to enjoy it.

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN IT

Another one from “Mojo.” As Donald Fagen so eloquently sang…

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

If you’re not doing it for yourself, you’re not gonna enjoy it.

This was the too loud, work it out number for anybody who had the notion the band had gotten soft. If you’re not willing to turn it up to 11 and noodle, you should hang it up.

REFUGEE

Yes, there are some classic hits in every show. Tom doesn’t want to insult you, but carry you along into the nooks and crannies. But the classics cannot be denied, they glue us all together.

And there was a time when “Refugee” was so popular, you could not turn on the radio without hearing it.

And the funny thing about this number is it means more to me now than it did then. Back then, I had it all together, I thought the future was smooth sailing.

Whew, how wrong you can be.

To a degree I still live like a refugee. I owe not a single dollar. I live beneath my means. I’ve got money in the bank. Because I know…you can lose it all. Your woman, your house and your health.

You do have to fight to be free.

But you get so tired of punching air.

I don’t know how you get through.

I hit rock bottom. Was saved by psychotherapy.

Laugh all you want.

But stoics tend not to last, they’re the ones who commit suicide, they’re the ones who are not here anymore.

RUNNIN’ DOWN A DREAM

Another number from “Full Moon Fever.” And this deep in the set, the band was truly on cruise control…at a hundred miles an hour.

You can still hear Del sing “Runaway” on the radio.

But not live. Del didn’t make it.

But you can.

YOU WRECK ME

I rarely play it, but this was one of the highlights. Maybe because at this point Petty and the Heartbreakers were that band in the bar when everybody is inebriated and the musicians have amped it up and are spewing it out not caring what anybody thinks, because they’re having such a good time.

AROUND AND AROUND

I’ve seen it done better. By DAVID BOWIE! At the end of the Ziggy Stardust show. It was the encore. With all the lights on. Bowie spread his arms. His charisma was in full-force. He would not be denied.

And I love the Stones’ version.

But Petty still knocked it out of the park.

I don’t think youngsters know this number.

But everybody over fifty does.

The joint was truly rockin’. We were out of our seats. Dancin’ ’round.

That’s the power of music.

That’s the power of this classic Chuck Berry tune.

It’s basic.

That’s what Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers know, you don’t need too much, just enough.

AMERICAN GIRL

The song that started it all.

On a bad label.

In England.

Because a great track cannot be denied.

Wanna make my night complete? Play “Luna” and “The Wild One, Forever.” No one does that introspective stuff anymore, that hot summer night stuff. But I guess I’ll have to wait another five or ten years until the band does the complete album shows.

And a great concert always leaves you wanting more.

But we got quite a lot.

We got real players, infected by rock and roll. Who had to follow the muse, despite having no cash, no fallback plan. It was a dream. But theirs came true.

And that’s what we need in society. More dreamers and fewer bankers.

Because when the dreamers succeed, they’re a beacon to us all.

What do they say, EVEN THE LOSERS GET LUCKY SOMETIMES?