Don’t call it a guilty pleasure. Just admit it’s great music.

Kind of like the Carpenters’ “Yesterday Once More.” I hated the Carpenters on principle, they were MOR in an era that was positively rock. And then I drove around all summer doing my job for the City Directory and listening to the AM-only radio in my ’63 Chevy and I got hooked on this cut (although I burned out pretty quickly on Billy Preston’s “Will It Go Round In Circles”…and did I ever tell you that Felice wrote a Carpenters song? She sent a poem to her father and he set it to music and voila, “Sometimes”!)

And I felt the same way about Michael Bolton, until I heard “Said I Loved You…But I Lied.”

Where did I first encounter Robert John “Mutt” Lange’s moniker? Had to be a Graham Parker album. Then suddenly his name was ubiquitous and it appeared on the greatest hard rock record ever recorded, AC/DC’s “Back In Black,” and he entered the pantheon, reinforcing his reputation as the world’s best record producer by putting Def Leppard over the top, and then Shania Twain.

It’s the SOUND! That’s the magic of “Back In Black.” Who would have thought to make a metal track sound like the Beach Boys? Yup, come on, “You Shook Me All Night Long” is positively SoCal. You think these records are local, but Mutt heard Brian Wilson’s genius in South Africa, he digested it. As he did with the work of the rest of the hitmakers, that was his gig at the tip of the continent, making soundalike records, before the genuine item hit the country. All those hours replicating, getting it right, gave Mutt his foundation, which he could then expand upon to explode into the stratosphere. That’s what’s rarely acknowledged in this ever younger music business…roots, experience, education, they’re extremely important, especially if you want to last, which almost no one does now anyway.

As for Michael Boltin… How can you hate a Jew from New Haven if you’re a member of the tribe from Fairfield?

He dropped out of high school, had a glimmer of success as a songwriter, and then morphed into the housewives’ dream. And I’m sure he was thrilled with the traction, but didn’t anticipate it getting out of control, all the hate that descended upon him. Unlike Barry Manilow, Bolton had roots. How to demonstrate them? By working with the best rock producer available, Mutt Lange.

Come on, take a listen… Mutt’s doing David Foster, but even better. It’s Foster with credibility!

It opens like a movie score. With sounds not normally on a pop record. And then settles into a hypnotic groove, it sounds like “Body Heat.” And then there’s Bolton’s “Ooo-ooh,” which sounds more like Don Henley than middle of the road.

You are the candle, love’s the flame
A fire that burns through wind and rain
Shine your light on this heart of mine
Till the end of time

I know, I know… But have you listened to Leppard lyrics? Sure, the words are generic, but the way they’re delivered! As if Bolton’s in the bedroom with you.

And then he amps it up…

You came to me like the dawn through the night
Just shinin’ like the sun
Out of my dreams and into my life
You are the one, you are the one

He’s almost pleading. That’s what we want in our lovers, DESIRE! We want to be needed, and instead of playing to the grandstand, the fictional audience, Bolton seems to be singing to a specific individual, you get the feeling you’re getting a glimpse into his personal life.

And then the magical chorus, with the hook.

Yes, “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” is captivating throughout, but it’s the chorus, with its twisted meaning, that truly endears you.

Said I loved you, but I lied
‘Cause this is more than love I feel inside
Said I loved you, but I was wrong
‘Cause love could never ever feel so strong
Said I loved you, but I lied

That’s how much he feels it, IT’S MORE THAN LOVE!

In real life we often speak sarcastically, we twist our story for maximum impact, this almost overproduced record is winking at the audience, showing it’s just like them.

The break is the predecessor of Mutt’s work with Bryan Adams on “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman,” it’s positively cinematic.

And then the guitar keeps playing through the next verse, the number is building.

And then there are the backup vocals, which are understated, you’d expect the girls to be singing at the top of their lungs, reaching for a climax.

But that’s what’s so great about “Said I Loved You…But I Lied.” It’s ultimately controlled. At the end you feel the bedroom door is closing, and Michael and his beloved are behind the door ready to…

Now you get it, why the women loved him.

They can be romantic, whereas men have to be macho. They love it slow, they love the build. How did Mutt come up with such a production, which leads you to the cliff, but refuses to jump off it?

That’s the mark of a master.

One who took his job so seriously he had a nervous collapse, when you’re that close to the music, it’s got very little to do with the money, when you’re just trying to get it right, to get the sound in your head down on wax, money often comes, but the exercise is enough.

Ah, that’s b.s. We love to see our legends ride the edge, see if they can do it once again.

And no one’s done it at such a high level as Mutt.

But let’s not underestimate Michael Bolton. He cowrote the song. He sang it.

And if you hate him for it, you’re no friend of mine.

P.S. Our politicians can’t learn, too often our entertainers can’t either. But after reacting to the haters, Bolton embraced them, he developed a sense of humor about himself. Let his evolution be a beacon for the rest of those who gain success.

Rhinofy-Said I Loved You…But I Lied

Previous Rhinofy playlists

I’m sick and tired of techies with VC money believing they can solve the music industry’s problems via algorithms and data. It’s a people business. The day human beings are no longer necessary to create memorable tunes is the day I’ll believe these wankers have come up with a reasonable solution to music recommendation.

That’s a problem, what to listen to.

But even more, it’s that there’s SO MUCH MUSIC!

In the dark ages, and that refers to any time in the last century, when you had to buy music to hear it, most people had very little of it. Some, casual users, had essentially none at all. They just listened to the radio. Now everybody with an Internet connection has the history of recorded music at his fingertips and many are so overloaded that they’ve abandoned new music entirely. It’s kind of like being at an endless 24/7 buffet, with both McDonald’s and every three star Michelin restaurant. It’s hard to distinguish between the good and the bad and you get so stuffed tasting and testing that your main goal is to escape, ergo the boffo touring numbers for everybody who made it in the last century, i.e. the classic rock acts, who didn’t even have MTV to blow them up, but had to slog it out city by city, station by station.

I’ll give you an example. Yesterday I downloaded four of the most hyped, most prestigious recent albums. It’s interesting that they’re all British, where it’s less about flash than substance, but if you check the UK charts, they’re peopled with the same drivel insiders decry in the U.S. You see we rally around what’s popular, and the chart hits mean less than ever before, but they’re discussion points, water cooler fodder, and we all want to belong. That’s the yin and yang of today’s culture. The hits and the obscurities and the vast wasteland in between. You want to know what everybody else does, but you’re also deep into your own niche, and you wonder why the two never cross paths…why the popular isn’t better and the obscure isn’t more popular, but the fluidity in music is akin to the fluidity of wealth in America. Everybody believes it’s easy to go from poor to rich, but statistics tell us otherwise. Furthermore, with the rich taxed at such low rates, they remain rich, like the classic rock artists.

Anyway, first I started listening to Jake Bugg. Because he’s getting all the press. I liked it, was just shy of love. So I decided to go deeper. And doing web research, I see he lost the Brit Award to Ben Howard, who I decided to give a good chance. And while listening to Mr. Howard, I wondered if either of these gentlemen appeared at Coachella. Doing web research, I was reminded that James Blake appeared at Coachella (as did Mr. Howard), so I downloaded his latest album. And then a synapse fired and I decided to download Emeli Sande, because she’s the recipient deafening buzz.

I’d started on Jake Bugg, now I was stuck on James Blake. I liked where Blake was coming from. But I wondered, could I recommend him to anybody else?

And then I went back to Ben Howard and the track “These Waters” stuck out.

But by this point, I was so overwhelmed with new music, I went back to the old stuff. My brain was fried.

Now I know immediate. I know Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” Unfortunately, none of these acts were. All were good mind you, but they’re all essentially niche. Maybe one could blow up, but you see my problem is not recommendations, it’s bigger than that, I don’t have enough time!

Used to be you bought an album and played it to death until you knew it by heart, it was all you could afford. And then you went to see the act live and sang along. You lived for this experience.

But now it’s hard to listen to that which doesn’t immediately grab you, because you want to check out something else, or go back to that which you know so well. So, what we end up with is the old hits, the new hits and the obscurities. Who can solve this problem?

Not Twitter.

Think of television. There are five hundred channels or so. But that’s a limited universe. There’s no limit in music. And TV is challenged too, did you see that “New York Times Magazine” article about Jenna Marbles, the big YouTube star? Loved the words, didn’t love the clips. She’s just not that…good.

So where does this leave us?

If you’re undeniable, if you are Gnarls Barkley with “Crazy,” we’re all over you. We’re gonna tell everybody we know and we’re all gonna react and you’ll be a smash. That’s the essence of “Call Me Maybe” and PSY’s “Gangnam Style” video.

But if you’re not that hooky…

Wow, you’re in trouble.

I get it, I get it, your music is good, in the seventies people would give you time.

But it’s not the seventies anymore. If you’re lucky you’ll grow a niche, and then probably hit a wall. Kind of like Phish. Did you read that article bouncing around the web? I love the story, but most people don’t love Phish. That’s okay, as long as they’re happy. But the old world wherein something is anointed and banged to death on radio and TV and made a ubiquitous hit is history.

What we need are trusted human filters. The deejays of yore.

But there’s no money in that. Technology scales, human beings do not.

And these deejays must realize the music they promote can have no tune-outs. Imagine that! That’s what today’s music recommenders don’t get. Just because you like it, that does not mean I will!

I know, I know, this plethora of information is not limited to music.

Hell, it’s fascinating to see the mainstream press be last on everything but disasters. We’ve all got our niche news sites focusing on what interests us and when we see the same story a day or a week later in the newspaper, we laugh.

And we’re not going back to the old days. Music is never going to be scarce again. But any solution to our problems has to take into account the new realities:

1. There’s tons of music.

2. It’s all free at everyone’s fingertips.

3. People like to feel like they belong. Even if something is great, if it gains no traction, they want to move on to something that has steam.

4. With everything equally available, people only want the best.

5. Time. They’re not making more of it. To expect people to waste it on substandard stuff is delusional. Videos only go viral if they hook you the very first time through, it’s no different in music.

“The Woman With 1 Billion Clicks: Jenna Marbles”

Jenna Marbles’s YouTube channel

“How to trick people into thinking you’re good looking”
(this is Jenna Marbles’s first video, just watch it, it’s a hit, it made her career, if the follow-ups were as good, you’d know her name, but they’re not and she’s a niche item, albeit a profitable niche item)

“The Business Of Phish”

“When a page turns, it turns fast.”

Jerry Weintraub on Paul Anka in the May issue of “Vanity Fair.”

I love Jerry. Because he’s entertaining and loyal.

Having said that, I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.

That’s what they don’t tell you about the titans, how engaging they are! Some might say cunning, but one thing Jerry has is a heart. If you need something, call Jerry. He’s a fixer. All the great ones are.

Jerry’s writing about his friend Paul Anka. Let me give you the complete paragraph for context:

“For Paul, the biggest test, the thing that could have killed his career before it really got started, came in the early 60s, when the Beatles made their first tour of the United States. My God, nothing was the same after that. It was as if the old cavalcade of stars was folded up and shoved in the back of a closet. The biggest stars of the 50s, the heartthrobs, they couldn’t get on the radio or sell 10 tickets to a show. WHEN A PAGE TURNS, IT TURNS FAST. You might run across some old rock idol and suddenly he is not 19, he’s 27 and pushing a broom around Grand Central, or working as an agent.”

That’s what bugs me about my people, the baby boomers. They think they own the world, that they’re gonna rule until they die. Since they rebelled against their conservative parents, that they’re hip forever more.

But they’re not.

They just can’t understand this computer revolution. They tried to deny it. Some still do. They still employ BlackBerries instead of iPhones and Androids. Who needs an app, I need pressable keys to type! But if you ain’t got apps, you’re clueless.

I always wondered what it was like for my mom, the switch from radio to television, what did that feel like? (I didn’t wonder about this with my dad, he NEVER watched TV.) Now I know, I experienced the Internet revolution. Which hit the mainstream back in ’95, when everybody who pooh-poohed computers suddenly got one in order to play on AOL. It happened almost overnight. If you’re too young to have experienced it, you have no idea what it was like. Even faster than the acceptance of cell phones, suddenly EVERYONE was online.

And then there was the universality of information and products, low prices for everybody in America, not only those in metropolitan areas.

And then there came Napster. Label heads and acts are still lamenting its arrival. Ask these same blokes if they’d turn down chemotherapy and other medical miracles to treat their cancer and they’d say OF COURSE NOT! Used to be the Big C was a death sentence, now when you hear someone has cancer you ask them about their treatment, you expect them to survive, even though not all do.

Sometimes a tsunami comes along and wipes out everything that came before.

We saw this in music. Rap killed Geffen Records. It was supposed to be a passing phase, something for the inner city kids. Who knew it was going to be propped up by middle class white suburbanites.

And now we’ve got this EDM thing. Which clearly is unlike anything that came before. Where are the melodies? Where are the lyrics? Don’t they vary the beat?

But suddenly EDM is what all the kids want.

Kind of like video. We had passe idiots, even youngsters like Justin Timberlake, lamenting the fact that MTV no longer played music videos. Little did they know that progress, the Internet, broadband and YouTube, would blow up music video to a point it never reached before. Now, you can make a ton of money with your video, it’s not only a marketing exercise. Furthermore, the opportunity is available to everyone!

And Jerry goes on:

“When a door closes, don’t stand there like a dummy – find another door!”

This is what Steve Jobs specialized in, finding another door. It’s what Steve Ballmer is bad at, it’s what almost everybody who’s not an entrepreneur spending his own money is bad at. If you’ve survived by your wits, if you’ve built your edifice, you know it could disappear overnight, you sleep with one eye open. At least the best ones do.

And Jerry’s one of the best.

Because he knows it’s all about insight. The great ones see things the average person does not.

And he knows it’s about loyalty.

The world is a people business. If you’re bad with human beings, you’re gonna have a very rough ride.

It’s not about the music, it’s about the hang.

Name one band that’s broken from Coachella, I DARE YOU!

Want to take lessons from Coachella?

Here they are:

1. Be on the cutting edge. The reason Coachella is the granddaddy of U.S. festivals is because it was first. Its promoters took a risk. Want to succeed in today’s world? Take chances! Only one problem, if you take the road less travelled, you’re gonna hit roadblocks. Even the audience may not be up to speed. Yes, it took years for Coachella’s audience to catch up with it. And now it’s running on that good will, especially this year, with lame headliners that wouldn’t draw this crowd anywhere else. Also, unlike Bonnaroo, Coachella didn’t try to recreate Woodstock. Very few people like to camp in the mud. Provide that option, but don’t emphasize it. You want to stay in a hotel or condo, very few like to rough it. And Coachella/Palm Springs has a built-in lodging infrastructure. Give ultimate credit to the refashioned Lollapalooza, which realized that you could bring the mountain to Mohammed, instead of forcing everybody to jet to the middle of nowhere, you could get them to come to you. Lollapalooza also succeeded by plunking itself in an underserved market. People love the coasts and ignore the heartland, where the people are just as hip as they are by the ocean, as a result of the Internet and cable TV.

2. Image is more important than reality. Sound bleed at Coachella is horrific. The art and amusement park rides are a secondary sideshow, minimal at best. If you keep saying you’ve got the best site, others repeat and believe it. Yes, Coachella is surrounded by mountains, you’ve got clean air, but if you think this is the perfect concert site and installation, you’ve never been anywhere else.

3. It’s a Gen-Y world. Booking the Stone Roses as a headliner is like taking your grandma to see Swedish House Mafia. Huh? The band broke twenty plus years ago and never really made it in America. Curation? Give the people what they want, which is dance music. The nods to rock and other musical genres other than EDM at Coachella are completely superfluous. The attendees don’t care. And who are those attendees? College age and just graduating hipsters. And if you think they go for the music, then you don’t realize the event can sell out without any talent being announced. The same rule always applies, brand names mean something. Unfortunately, the Coachella impresarios don’t realize that it’s been in excess of a decade since the festival began and the generations have changed. You can get away with classic rock and classic hip-hop, stuff everybody knows, but whatever was big on MTV, whatever was hip in the U.K. but never made it here, is completely irrelevant. I know, I know, it’s scary. To think that thirty years of musical history has been wiped off the map. That almost everything between 1975 and 2005 is irrelevant. But that’s the truth. to think otherwise is to live in a pre-computer, pre-smartphone era. Things change, you’ve got to own them. This is a generation that loves to network, that has been taught that music is secondary, not primary. That their little lives are all that matter. Hell, want to have big success at your festival? Hold a karaoke contest! Don’t forget, this is the generation that grew up on Guitar Hero!

4. V.I.P. is for oldsters. This is the genius of Coachella’s pricing. Oldsters want to believe they’re better than everybody else, it’s the boomer ethos. Put them behind a velvet rope and you’ve made their day. Grandpa and grandma don’t want to hang with the great unwashed, but tell the kids on the field that they can go to spring break in Cancun and they say WHERE DO I SIGN UP! The girls will lift their tops and the boys will smoke their blunts and if you didn’t come of age during the sexting era, you’ll be both titillated and horrified. We had to go to the movies to experience nudity, today’s kids not only have the web, they have friends with benefits who are willing to play doctor way past the age of puberty. If you don’t think you’ve been left behind, if you don’t lament your age, then you’re asexual.

5. Don’t believe anything you read about Coachella. A movie could possibly capture it. But no one writing for a newspaper or magazine gets it. It’s not about the music! It’s not about who was good and bad, it’s about the AUDIENCE! The girl who was too high and kept falling down while dancing… It’s about the stories, not the tunes, months later telling all your buds what you saw. If you think it’s about saying how good x or y band was, unless it was a deejay, you grew up in the Fillmore and don’t understand today’s culture whatsoever. Coachella is where you drive your own car (hell, did Daddy buy you your own automobile in the sixties, OF COURSE NOT!), to a pre-approved place where your parents have no idea what’s going on. It’s like summer camp without counselors. Where you spread your wings and fly for the very first time. Come on, who other than youngsters wants to walk around in ninety plus degree heat with no shade other than in tents where you’re so close to other people you can smell their b.o?

6. It’s business. Appear if you get paid a lot and you want the publicity. Of if they’re making you a headliner before your time. Your performance is gonna do nothing for your career.

7. Exclusives don’t matter. Coachella is so busy protecting the brand, but they’re clueless as to what the brand is! It’s not the right to see exclusive performers, it’s the right to hang at an exclusive event that happens just twice a year!

8. Institutions. Think about it, MTV is history. Even record labels are irrelevant. As for regular concerts, other than the classic acts, they depend upon who’s hot today, and they’re oftentimes gone tomorrow. Coachella IS the new institution, but it’s more than what once was. It’s the promoter, the label and the tour guide all at once. And the fact that it grew slowly only strengthens its imprimatur and adds to its longevity, as does the out of the way location. That Jay-Z festival in Philadelphia? Huh? Where’s the exclusivity, where’s the gravitas? That Rothbury festival had it right, the only problem was the promoters didn’t continue to stick it out. If you’re not willing to lose money, don’t get into the festival business.

9. You never want to rely on the acts. Coachella’s strength is its checkbook. It can buy the biggest talent year after year. This is a huge change from the past, wherein the promoter was a second class citizen. He with the biggest bank book wins. And since you’re only buying talent for two weekends, you don’t have to kiss butt to fill holes in your schedule. And for every agent who wants to say no, at home he realizes he can horse trade and get his other acts on the bill by agreeing to provide the headliner. It’s pure commerce, music has got nothing to do with it!

10. You only have to go once. Well, every three or four years or so you have to check in, to follow the trends. Who headlined two years ago? I dare you to answer! But what we’ve seen is the dance tent has slowly gained traction and is now burgeoning. Coachella is the father of big time EDM in the U.S., I don’t know why they don’t embrace it. I think the idea of two weekends of the same acts is ridiculous, it only makes sense on a monetary level. Everyone knows the first weekend is the one that counts. Want to blow people’s minds? Make the second weekend all EDM! Tickets will sell even faster, that will prove where the power is. As for worrying about sacrificing the farm, abandoning the old acts and ending up a loser, this is exactly what hobbled the labels. If you’ve got one foot in the past, you’re not gonna last in the future. If EDM peaks and dies, you book what happens next.

11. Keep slots open for what’s happening right now. Yup, solidifying your bill eons in advance leaves you looking out of the loop. Now, more than ever, acts come and go and are then done. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis needed to be at Coachella. The promoters have to get off their high horse. They think they’re a museum, but what they don’t realize is they’re offering a smorgasbord, a veritable buffet of what’s current. That’s why the old acts don’t matter. I should be able to leave Coachella and say I saw everything that’s happening right now, along with some boobies…