He should never put out an album.

I’ve seen him twice. Once at a private party put on by his record label, the other time at Coachella. I didn’t get it in the private club, I didn’t think his original material was that good, but I did love his cover of “Third Stone From The Sun”. But at Coachella, Clark killed. It was all about energy and sound and a connection with the audience, without pandering to it. Like a rock star of yore, Clark wasn’t raising his fists, imploring attendees to cheer, building fake energy, it was the sound itself that levitated the audience. And this is the essence of a great show.

And everywhere Clark plays he gets great reviews. He just lit up the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, even the “New York Times” featured him in their review, the paper said “and the young blues phenom Gary Clark Jr., whose laid-back virtuosity as a guitarist was one of the festival’s forthright astonishments.”

Youth and Age, Both Served at Newport

And I bring up the “Times” because every week they review records and every week I skim the words and scratch my head…who are these written for? Overanalyses of complete albums that appeal to very few. You see, not only have record sales declined, it’s become about the live show, and when you tell me someone is astonishing, my curiosity is piqued. I don’t want your analysis, but your emotion.

And now Clark is bringing this astonishment across the continent. And you’ve got to be there to get it. Sure, there are YouTube clips, but there’s not a soul alive who believes these videos substitute for the real thing. They’re shot from afar, the sound sucks, they’re souvenirs at best. You’ve got to go.

In other words, everything that once was is back, with a twist.

Mystery. It’s very easy to achieve. Just never put out a record! Everybody’s trying to short-cut the process, all the while bitching that nobody is purchasing their opus. But if you’re truly good, someone has to see you live. The buzz passes and we all want to go. You become an underground hero, and that’s everything today, being owned by your fans as opposed to the media. Those playing to the media are evanescent, fame-whores who get a meager paycheck and soon disappear. Those who earn their stripes on the boards, building audience via word of mouth, last. Hell, look at Phish, have they ever had a hit single?

Albums are kind of like Facebook. Facebook was all cool with amazing buzz until it went public. I’m not sure the social networking company will ever recover. Its cred was shredded instantly, the stock is now trading at half the price of its introduction, everybody’s abandoning ship, there’s bad news every day, when do people wake up and give up, because no one wants to be where it’s not cool.

We don’t want to be at the show of the fake artist, the sell out, the one doing it the way everybody else does. We want to be at the show where life is created every single night. Kind of like Skrillex. Read the portrait of EDM in “Forbes”:

DJs Are The New Rock Stars

But focus on this:

“One thing he hasn’t done yet: a product endorsement. It’s not for lack of opportunity. (One top DJ, Diplo, is now a ubiquitous television presence shilling BlackBerry.) ‘We turn s–t down every day,’ says Tim Smith, Skrillex’s manager since his screamo days.

Indeed, keeping those $15 million takes coming ultimately means protecting the brand. ‘I don’t care if someone offers me half a million dollars,” says Skrillex. “I’m not going to do a cellphone thing.'”

In other words, everything you’re being told is wrong. Not only by the labels, agents and managers, but the acts themselves. Agents and managers are on a percentage, they only get paid when you do. Which is why they implore you to make the deal, so they can get paid! They’ve been around long enough to know that you’re probably not gonna last, they’re more interested in their wallet than your longevity.

And other artists are whiners. They complain about being ripped off by everybody, instead of working hard to gain success and be in control. Yup, with success comes control. Can you use it?

As for labels… They only get paid when you sell a record. Or else they’ve got a 360 deal, and you’re giving them a piece of everything.

If suddenly it’s about live performance, if you want no record, no endorsements, no synchs, no placements, do you really need a label? Then again, if this is so it all comes down to you. Not only on a business level, but a musical level. Are you such a good performer that you can sell yourself?

Gary Clark, Jr. is.

Then again, it was the record company that truly got me interested. Ha!

P.S. If you go back in history, Clark did put out some independent albums, with limited distribution and traction. But Warner Brothers has so far only released an EP. It’s the live show that’s driving this, not recorded music.

Re: Income Inequality Killed The Music Business

Bob:

This is Bonnie Hayes, a songwriter and musician from the SF Bay. You and I have exchanged email before. Always enjoy your posts!

I’ve been teaching at the Berklee College of Music all summer, in their regular 12 week college program, including several advanced classes of students who are about to graduate. Many of these kids come to see me in my office and ask, “How can I make some money?”

But they’re not asking because they’re greedy and want to be rock stars. They’re asking because they can’t figure out how to live at all. There’s no way to live in the cracks like musicians, and all artists, once could. In Boston, in SF, in NYC even the crap apartments are insanely expensive. Owning a car in the city is impossible; and how are you going to get to those famous $25 gigs in podunk without wheels to move your gear? There is nowhere to rehearse,and no time to sit around concocting dreams with your pals when you’re holding down two jobs. Just staying alive is a full time job, even when your job pays well.

Yeah, yeah—I lived in a 6th floor walkup in NYC and trundled my fender rhodes and gynormous amp up and down the stairs, then watched the cabbie ditch when he saw me with my stuff waiting in the snow. But when I wanted to start a band, make a record and play my own songs in nightclubs, I went back home where you could still rent an apartment for peanuts, and where it was still possible to drive a car to a gig without getting towed and impounded. Now, a 2 bedroom apartment in SF costs twice my house payment. I was lucky, and I’m still lucky. How much luck is left for them?

I don’t see many kids who want to be rock stars. They want to be songwriters, guitarists, producers (in the sense that daniel lanois or t. bone burnett are producer—creating gorgeous, original worlds of sound for the listener to get lost in).  Some of them are more pragmatic and proactive than others, but they all love music, like mad. They just see very little chance of ever making even a living wage from it. I advise them to develop multiple income streams and to try to build a teaching practice to fall back on, to get their music out there, use licensing opportunities,  network and create community. Life is a schlepp whether you run a corporation or work at starbucks—you might as well work hard for a dream. But a dream with no chance of coming true? That’s beyond a schlepp, and for many talented people, it comes to seem like a waste of time.

There’s no separation between what’s going on in the political/economic world and what’s going on with music or art, popular or not. We’ve created a culture that turns creatives into pampered lap dogs or ants working shit jobs to do their life calling their spare time. Why are we surprised when kids want to know about making money? It’s the dream we bought for them when we started prioritizing money over people; and the only dream they can afford.

Bonnie Hayes

There’s great music today, there is in every period, but why were the sixties and seventies such a fertile era, why did we get not only the Beatles and the Stones, but the entire British Invasion, the San Francisco Sound and the great acts of FM radio?

You’ve got to start in the U.K. Every famous musician of the sixties said they performed to avoid a life of drudgery, in the factory. They didn’t think it was forever, playing music, but it was a great respite from the inevitable. They struggled to succeed for as long as they could. And when the Beatles broke through, all hell broke loose.

Sure, the Beatles’ music was great. But when America saw the Fab Four on “Ed Sullivan”, suddenly everybody wanted to be them. Their performance inspired an entire country to pick up guitars, to play drums, to be just like them.

And what did they want?

The joy of playing music.

The sex.

And the money.

Today people listen to the radio and watch “American Idol”, but a whole swath of the public has no desire to imitate these performers. Because they just don’t make enough money. In other words, only those with dim futures, with few advantages, slog it out in music.

Oh, of course that’s a generalization. But if you lived through the sixties, you know that back then everybody had a band. Today you might sing karaoke, but very few have the life of a professional musician in their sights. Because not only are the odds long, when you make it, it doesn’t pay enough.

They say MTV saved the music business. One could argue quite strongly it killed it. As for the excoriated disco that killed rock… We now know that corporate rock deserved to die and that it’s disco that survives. Yes, all the beats of EDM started in disco. Disco was made by a marginalized group who lived to party every day. And punk and new wave were experimental and vital sub-genres of rock that rebelled against what came before. But everyone in the game knew you could get rich if you had a hit. Even Johnny Rotten.

Now you just can’t get that rich playing music. Which is why Bono is a partner in a venture capital firm. Can you imagine that back in the sixties, our musical heroes becoming bankers? Impossible!

So Reagan lowers the tax rates in the eighties and suddenly incomes start to diverge. And the record execs don’t want to be on the wrong side of the divide. They no longer care about music, they just want money. The acts are disposable. It devolves into formula by the nineties. And by time MTV stops playing music, at the advent of the twenty first century, after the executives have wrung all the cash out of both new acts and old, via overpriced CDs, the scene was dead.

And I don’t know when it’s going to come back.

The acts have no soul, no backbone anymore. The first thing they want to do is sell out to the Fortune 500, do endorsement deals. You see they want the money. And their handlers are imploring them to do this, because they want their commission. Everybody’s chasing an ever-shrinking piece of the pie. And anybody who is smart is staying out. What did David Geffen say last week, “I’d kill myself if I got into the music industry now.”? As for the consumer, he’s screwed incessantly. Wall Street rolled up the concert business and ticket prices went through the roof. And very few acts want to go to paperless and keep prices low, because they too want the cash, they too want to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous. They’re chasing the bankers, who make millions year in and year out. Very few musicians do, but that doesn’t mean they don’t try.

Sure, banking is boring, but tech is not. Which is why a huge swath of the youth make apps, are entrepreneurs, they want to be in control of their own destiny and make a fortune, the sky’s the limit in tech. But there’s a definite ceiling in music.

And the radio stations were rolled up, hell, Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners took Clear Channel private and squeezed out billions, despite the company being in extreme debt, and now stations have innumerable commercials and they all sound the same. And they’ll only play what’s on the major labels. Who won’t sign something left field without instant radio play, they don’t want to take that chance, there’s too much money involved.

The rich are getting richer and the musicians are being left out. And yes, piracy contributes to income deprivation, but it’s more complicated than that. Adele sold ten million albums in America and she doesn’t do any endorsements. Her music is perceived to be honest and from the heart. That’s a role model for you. But no one’s following in her footsteps. No one is taking a risk. Then again, you can’t manufacture Adele on an assembly line, you can just recognize genius and nurture it. But that’s no longer the job of the music industry.

The fact that so many are so wealthy is putting a huge dent in our cultural institutions. Sure, there were scalpers in the sixties and seventies, but no one paid ten or twenty times face value, because no one had that kind of cash. You could get a good ticket back then. It’s almost impossible today.

And the first thing a musician asks is “How do I get paid?” That’s the culture we’ve developed. Paying your dues, doing it because you love it, very few are willing to play that game for decades. Furthermore, most people didn’t make it in the sixties and seventies either. But they didn’t complain ad infinitum about not being rich, they just played bars, got drunk, got laid and eventually gave up or were satisfied being journeymen.

Our whole country is asking why it can’t be rich. What do the Republicans say, they’re the party of the rich and the soon to be rich? Not everybody can be rich. But this mentality has people perpetuating income inequality, believing that one day, when they’re wealthy, they want taxes to be low, and has the lower classes fighting for scraps, that’s what reality TV is all about.

We won’t have another heyday for music until we’re all in it together, until income gaps decline. Hell, there haven’t even been any protest songs since the economic collapse and ten years of war. No one is speaking truth, they’re just speaking money, and it hurts us all.

This book is positively fabulous.

First and foremost it’s not an easy read, certainly not initially. You’ve got to wade through all this brain science that would turn most people off. Malcolm Gladwell is a much better writer. That’s why Gladwell is a household name and Jonah Lehrer is not. But that doesn’t make Lehrer’s book any less significant.

I guess that I’m troubled by the fact that people don’t like to work. No, let me restate that, people don’t like hard work. They don’t mind working hard, putting in the hours, but if their brain hurts, if they’re frustrated, they give up. But all the great creative work comes after a period of frustration.

So you’ve got to read this book. Once again, it’s entitled “Imagine: How Creativity Works”.

Yes, depressed people are more creative. The mentally ill are a fount of creativity. Did you read the Remnick piece about the Boss in “The New Yorker”? I highly recommend it. Because within its pages, as the news has so forcefully delineated, we find out that Bruce Springsteen is an incredibly screwed up guy from a less than perfect background. The Boss has talked ad infinitum from the stage about his father, but Remnick gets it right. How Bruce’s dad sat in the dark and controlled his son. Made him talk long enough until they got into an argument and Bruce left the house.

But the Remnick article is flawed. Because the writer is constricted by the “New Yorker” ethos. It reads like a “New Yorker” piece. It’s absent any joy or excitement, the essence of Bruce Springsteen’s music. You learn facts, but you get no emotion.

You see Remnick has been working at “The New Yorker” too long.

Turns out the young are more creative. Because they don’t know the game. They don’t know what they can’t do. You can be creative as you get older, but you must stimulate yourself by playing with younger people, having new experiences. In other words, the classic rock artists shouldn’t work with their friends, but twenty year olds. Not necessarily flavors of the week, but those who are not in awe of the legends, who don’t see what can’t be done, only possibilities.

And this is why the major labels are doomed. They can’t see solutions. Turns out those most trained in their disciplines usually can’t. It’s outsiders, oftentimes untrained, who come up with answers. We see this again and again in entertainment. Napster (a creation of teenagers) and the rest of the tech innovations have undermined the creative industries. In other words, the established institutions and players are doomed. They’re circling the wagons instead of engaging with the young ‘uns to benefit from their insight, to gain solutions.

Kind of like those nitwits in the U.K. telling Google to crack down on file traders. Hell, Google can’t keep spam out of Gmail, do you really think they can eradicate piracy? What is required is a breakthrough business solution. But the old farts agitating just want to return to a past that is never coming back.

Whether it be the autistic surfer or the loosening up of the minds at Second City, the Lehrer book is a wellspring of information. And the longer you read it, the more you get hooked.

We’re in the creative business. Without ideas, we’ve got nothing.

My instincts told me not to write this. I’ve written enough this week and I’m only a third of the way through the book. But I felt something. And it was that which I wanted to convey to you. I had to cast away my inhibitions and go with what I felt. My instincts were reinforced by this book. Hell, I said hallelujah when I learned that school saps creativity. If I’d paid attention in college, I’d be a drone.

And “Imagine: How Creativity Works” is just a stepping stone. Just a beginning. There’s more to come.

But it explains how EDM can burgeon and the major labels can miss it. Hell, it didn’t fit on Top Forty radio, they saw no way to make money. Never mind that most of the money is on the road now anyway. Furthermore, insiders have seen the electronic scene spike and fade so often they didn’t think it could be for real this time. But to Deadmau5 and the twentysomethings, it was brand new.

I could write forever, but I’m going to go back to reading the book!

Imagine: How Creativity Works

We Are Alive – Bruce Springsteen at sixty-two