"Secret Love"
Stevie Nicks

I smile every time this comes on my iPod.

Once upon a time, radio was the filter, before it became completely corporatized, littered with twenty two minutes of commercials per hour and we all stopped listening.

I know, I know, that’s not completely true, the little girls listen to Top Forty and the oldsters revere the obscurities on the NonComm stations, but what about someone positively mainstream, a rocker who once was…where is she supposed to be played?

Nowhere.

So, Stevie Nicks’s best album in decades, maybe her best ever…went unheard.

Used to be artists spent months and hundreds of thousands of dollars perfecting a sound, knowing listeners were waiting with eager anticipation. Now…no one cares.

And that positively sucks.

Which is why he (or she!) who invents the filter will own the future, will make all the money.

It can’t be done with algorithms, otherwise Pandora wouldn’t suck. It depends completely on humans, picking certified winners for the time-challenged.

If you ever liked Stevie Nicks, you can’t hate this. You can’t shake your head and say it’s dreck. You may not love it, but you can’t dismiss it. And what more can you ask for?

Ignore the naysayers, who hate Fleetwood Mac because they were too successful. The hipsters who can’t like what everyone else does. That’s the fringe. The middle, and I don’t mean that disparagingly, the middle contains most people, would absolutely LOVE "Secret Love". But it came out and made barely a ripple and was forgotten.

It needs to be brought back.

First and foremost, there’s the sound. Like a dark night in the middle of the summer, and suddenly a door opens and you go inside.

And what’s up with that buzz saw guitar that keeps coming back, adding edge…I LOVE IT!

And the changes.

And the background vocals.

I am not asking forever from you
I’m just asking to be held for a while
In a timeless search for love that might work

You get older and you forsake your dreams. You’re not looking for perfection, you’re just looking for something, in a mental wilderness where there are people all around you, but very little connection.

This music is not made for the immature, it’s made for you. With the rough edges, with the love handles, with the wisdom of years.

Madonna misfired with "MDNA", she wanted to be forever young.

Stevie Nicks aged. Not gracefully, none of us ever do. And she delivered something positively adult, and for that she’s penalized?

The media only focuses on that with smooth skin, that which is brand new. But "Secret Love" is so in the pocket, so right, that it could become a cultural staple.

If people only heard it.

"What D’Ya Got"
John Batdorf

What if you admitted your age, what if you wrote from your heart, said what you wanted instead of what people expected?

Then you’d have John Batdorf’s album "Old Man Dreamin’", which is better than just about every new album by much more famous has-beens.

My girl worries that the worst is comin’
How can we live on next to nothin’
She’s busy stretchin’ out every dollar
So no more gourmet coffee or bottled water

Listen to hip-hop and everybody’s a winner. Pop is all about flaunting it. But life’s much more complicated than that. While mainstream acts are pretending like everything’s okay, as they pull on the strings of the zeppelin carrying away the upper class, the rest of us are left behind.

Can we afford Starbucks?

Is tap water good enough?

When you haven’t got enough, everything’s up for grabs.

My kids focus too much on pleasure
They think dad’s sittin’ on a buried treasure
Well I got a message that might surprise them
When their old man can’t subsidize them

Whew! I remember my dad ranting and raving that money didn’t grow on trees, that he was not rich… But that’s nothing compared to today’s generation. My brethren borrowed against their houses not denying themselves but most especially their children. But now they can’t do that anymore. Kids are having a rude awakening, especially when they’re released from the education system.

What d’ya got when the checks all bounce
What d’ya got kid that really counts
What d’ya got when the banks announce you’re a liability
What d’ya got when you’re overdrawn
What d’ya got when your credit’s gone
What d’ya got that keeps hangin’ on
You got me
Ain’t that enough
You got me

After the bank takes back your house, when you keep putting duct tape on your beater to keep it running, all that’s left is each other. And that is enough.

Get some perspective… Possessions are overrated.

Now John Batdorf was never a star. Which is why media completely ignored this album. Unjustly. This is the music baby boomers need and want to hear. Honest, from the heart, made by people, not machines. Songs about the human condition when you’re no longer a teenager, when you owe too much and feel cut adrift, alone.

All those losers who say there’s no good music anymore are wrong. You just haven’t heard it!


"Forgotten"
Neil Diamond

He’s playing the Greek, this August. I’m gonna go, because he’s still got it, and if you’re too proud to say you like Neil Diamond I feel sorry for you, worried about what everybody else thinks and denying yourself great artistry and pleasure.

This is from the second Rick Rubin record, which debuted at number one, that no one heard. If you loved the Johnny Cash "American Recordings", check this out, it’s just as good, if not better.

You’ve got me waiting out in the back
Under a stack
Stuck in a bin
You been keeping me in
High on a shelf all by myself
Feeling like I’m doing my time
Under that sign
That reads forgotten
Forgotten

Not everybody lacks a sense of humor, a sense of self. No matter how big a star you are, you’re just a few years from being forgotten. Time marches on, your hits fade and you’re lost in the rearview mirror. Instead of pretending this isn’t so, Neil Diamond sang about it.

And you want to hear this same track with the complete Neil Diamond production, you know, like "Holly Holy" and "Brother Love". But that ain’t gonna happen. Because even if he polished it up, spent all that money, the media still wouldn’t care.

This is insider music. This is truly hip. It’s not for everybody. But if you like real instruments, rough edges instead of perfection, you’ll get hooked and play it again and again, wanting more of this truth.

"Birds"
Elton John

This is why old acts don’t make new albums. Even when they nail it, no one pays attention, no one cares. The label tried, they put Justin Timberlake in the video for "This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore" at the tail end of the MTV era, but the people watching then just didn’t care.

And although good, that’s not the best song on the album.

Are you an Elton devotee? Do you know every lick of "Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player" as well as "Captain Fantastic"? Did you love more than the hits, do you know his entire oeuvre? Then you’ll be THRILLED by "Birds".

Sure, it’d be better on vinyl, pumped to the max by a tube amp. Because Elton’s music was always warm, and digital does an injustice to that sound, it just can’t communicate it.

But close your eyes and return to that dorm room of yore, when you’d spend the afternoon listening to albums, this would fit right in.

Elton moved on to Broadway. He made a couple more albums, but they got even less traction than this. He keeps saying he’s giving up, but he just cut a new one at the Village Recorder.

And I haven’t heard it.

But on "Songs From The West Coast", he recaptured his original sound. It was a thrill to hear it.

This is minor.

But minor Elton was always better than just about everything else on the radio.

I want more.

I can’t believe I’m the only one.

Spotify link

Previous Rhinofy playlists

There is none.

In Singapore, I interviewed Ken Parks, majordomo of Spotify’s U.S. operation. I told him I would ask tough questions. That I had to, everybody already thinks I’m on the Spotify payroll, I just couldn’t let him do a commercial. He said this was all cool.

And then didn’t answer a single question I had, certainly not any that probed into the inner workings of the service. Not that I was interrogating him. But why exactly did you have to sign in with Facebook? Ken said everybody liked that, he got no complaints. He did admit that search was flawed. But I still can’t understand why it works so well in iTunes and so poorly in Spotify. If I don’t find something in Spotify, I change the search terms and suddenly whole albums appear. I’m not a techie, why does Apple do it so much better, is it really that hard, hell, Spotify’s been around for years. And then I brought up the obvious point, the one I’m inundated with, the small payments.

Now let me say that artists are dumb. They’re the most antiquated people I know. They want no change, no wonder their music sucks. They’re too stupid to see that we’re going to a mobile world and on mobile handsets… Spotify is not free. The price and ultimate revenues skyrocket. This is the future. A world where we all pay for this convenience. The fact that artists can’t understand this is a good thing. Because finally, the technology is ahead of them, the legal technology.

But at the end of my "interview", Peter Jenner, original manager of Pink Floyd, thinker extraordinaire, stood and asked why there was no Spotify transparency, why artists could not see what they were getting paid.

Ken gave the usual response. That Spotify paid record companies and these entities accounted to artists, and if something got lost in translation, it was not Spotify’s fault.

In other words, Spotify’s on the wrong side.

Did you see the excerpt from Walter Mossberg’s interview with Daniel Ek and Sean Parker at the D: All Things Digital Conference today?

Check it out:

Sean Parker and Daniel Ek on Apple, Playlists and the End of the CD: The D10 Highlights

You’ll end up hating Sean Parker.

Sean starts to talk, and he’s blaming Apple, everybody but himself. Spewing untruths, that the people you license music from today are different from who they were a decade ago. No, that’s untrue. It’s the same damn suspects. It’s just that their revenues went down. They now wanted to make a deal.

But on their own terms.

Musicians are now doing it for themselves. Because they’re sick of the major label duplicity, the lack of transparent accounting. No matter what your deal, they don’t pay properly. They’re crooks in Armani suits. Which is why superstars don’t employ them and so many newbies don’t either. At least explain to me how you’re screwing me.

But the major labels won’t.

And now Spotify won’t either.

I get that they pay the lion’s share of their revenues to rights holders. But exactly how much? And why does everybody get a different deal? Everybody knows Apple splits. Hell, write an app and you get seventy percent. Why is it different in music?

Spotify’s on the wrong side.

Which is why artists are up in arms.

And the company can’t explain itself because it’s beholden to the labels/rights holders. Isn’t that how we got into this mess? Fat cats on the wrong side refusing to enter the future?

It’s one thing if I know I’m making a bad deal. That’s my choice. Maybe I’ll get screwed financially in exchange for fame, people will make that deal. But when you don’t even tell me how you’re screwing me, how much you’re really gonna pay me, that’s when I get mad, that’s when we all get mad.

It’d be one thing if labels said we pay you ten cents on the dollar every month. Instead, they pay a percentage based on a formula that’s open to interpretation and they’re obligated to pay infrequently and don’t even do that and you can’t even get the records to see if they’re right, it’s like trying to defend yourself in court without being able to see the police report!

Spotify may be new technology, but its business techniques are positively old school. And that sucks.

Now Spotify’s got a huge problem. Uptake sucks. Most kids haven’t even tried the service, even though it’s free. They’re not getting the message out. And once again, artists are ignorant. Payments might be low from Spotify today, but the competition is not CDs and iTunes, but YouTube and P2P, where the artists don’t get paid at all.

In theory, Spotify is brilliant.

But the devil is in the details.

We just don’t trust the company.

Daniel Ek, yes. He’s the techie, pursuing the mission of getting all the music to all the people as well as becoming rich. But as far as the rest of the spokespeople… They seem just like the label executives, short term players in it for personal enrichment.

Music only works if it’s forever. If you gain royalties for decades.

Can’t you at least tell me how much I’m going to be paid?

Laying all the blame on the labels is like saying you’re beholden to your parents. Come on, have some balls. Tell us how much you’re paying.

We promised we’d hear the band.

Which is how we, the assembled multitude, myself, the AEG guys and Ross and Laurietta, Singapore concert promoters, found ourselves in the Beer Market.

There’s no litter in Singapore. I think there’s a fine for that. Or a re-education camp. They actually have signs boasting about this. So, a bar is never seedy. Never unclean. Certainly not in Clarke Quay, a redeveloped area by the river, a modern entertainment center.

Actually, once upon a time, Singapore was all about the river. For the fresh water, for the access. Before it became overused and polluted. But now it’s been revitalized, it’s kind of like Venice, with shops on both sides and numerous bridges.

Oh, I’m overstating the case, but unlike so many areas of redevelopment, the riverside is not ersatz, you want to hang there. Then again, they wanted to charge us $400 to share a crab. Now that’s $400 Singaporean, which is just a hair over $300 U.S., and although it was a huge crab, it wasn’t that big.

Anyway, after having some ice cream, because it’s so damn hot there, we needed a respite, we ambled up the stairs to see Sixx.

Funny about bands. They always think there’s a future. But in Singapore? Hell, it’s even worse than America. There were nine people on stage, they were tight, nothing was prerecorded, they were energized, they killed, but I hope they enjoyed the performance, because there’s not a hell of a lot more than that.

Then again, the lead singer doesn’t only do this. She’s got multiple acts at multiple events. You see once again, and it’s not only in Singapore, musicians are itinerant, they’re cobbling it together from a multitude of sources, they just want to make a living. Hell, if you want to be a star, you’re doing the wrong thing. You’re better off writing software, the odds are better (and the longevity of your hit may be just as brief, did you see Molly Wood’s analysis of Facebook on CNET today? Facebook could be heading for the dumper. Because it’s all about mobile, and the company hasn’t been able to figure out how to monetize portability yet.)

Anyway, the band’s playing, I’m marveling at the boxes of wet beer coasters…since when did an establishment ever care, aren’t they usually strewn about and ripped apart, and Sean, CMO of AEG, previously at Levi’s and the Hard Rock, taps me on the shoulder, points out the big screen and asks me if I’d seen it.

HD screens are a dime a dozen. They’re all over airports. I think if you use a CRT you’ve got to go back to the nineties, you’ve got to listen to N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys only. And looking upon this wall, I saw three screens, no big deal, they were reporting the cricket scores, only they weren’t.

They were charting the beer prices.

You see they fluctuate. Up and down, depending on demand. The more people buy one brew, the more expensive it becomes. They reset the prices constantly, but they also list the prices for the week. You see what everybody is drinking. Which makes you want to partake, but then it costs you.

They’ve made drinking a game. That doesn’t involve ping pong paddles or trivia. They’ve added a wrinkle to going out that makes you want to.

I keep on hearing how the United States is the greatest country in the world. It might be, but the most beautiful girl is not necessarily the most intelligent, one thing can’t possess all characteristics.

The United States is imperfect. Rather than live in denial, maybe we could admit our flaws and try to become better.

First and foremost, we could become a world citizen, stop believing we’re independent and better than everybody else. China builds our electronics. And my friends in Singapore were thrilled when Obama became President, they could finally stop apologizing for their homeland.

Second, we could glean the improvements in the rest of the world and adopt them. Like electronic gas signs, requiring essentially no effort to adjust prices. And double flush toilets. And beer markets.

They call them "Dumb Americans". And it’s not that they’re stupid, they’re just uninformed. Our country believes in ignorance. People railing against high taxes when they don’t pay any. People saying there should be no national health care but you can’t take away their Medicare.

Oh, all you right wingers can now bombard me with insults.

But what you’ll find, if you travel the world, is so many developed nations are to the left of the U.S. They provide health care for everybody and they’ve got no death penalty.

Speaking of death, you know how many murders there were in Singapore last year… NONE! I kept asking if it was safe to walk in certain neighborhoods. They laughed, it’s safe EVERYWHERE!

The Beer Market

"If Facebook dies (and it might), its killer will be born mobile"

I saw the Woodstock movie, Santana killed with "Soul Sacrifice", but although I liked "Evil Ways" I didn’t buy the debut, I only had so much money.

So, months later, when I was a freshman at college and everybody was buying albums to evidence their identity, I didn’t purchase the newly released "Abraxas" either.

But I heard it emanating from Muddy Waters’s dorm room.

That’s what you did back then, you studied with the music blaring. Which might have been why I usually went to the library, then again, people talked there too. But really, I just wanted to get out of the dorm.

Still, while I was spinning "After The Gold Rush" during my off time, Muddy was playing two albums I became enamored of, Lee Michaels’s "Barrel" and "Abraxas".

And in each case, it was one track that closed me.

Off "Barrel" it was "What Now America".

Off "Abraxas" it was "Mother’s Daughter".

I know, I know, the single was "Black Magic Woman", no one ever talks about "Mother’s Daughter", but it had an infectious sound I just could not get enough of, my opinion on Santana changed instantly, the band went from one of the pack to necessary. "Abraxas" is their apotheosis.

"Mother’s Daughter"

It’s the organ intro, like Felix Cavaliere getting high and jamming late at night in the Haight. Meanwhile, there’s the bass dancing intermittently underneath. And then the chunky electric guitar riff, which cuts to the bone as the Latin percussion fills out the track.

And then, thirty seconds in, you go for a wild ride! It’s as if the roller coaster has crested the initial big hill and you’re speeding down the rails at the limits of control. This is the sound that made Santana famous. Alvin Lee could play faster, the English cats were about dancing all over the fretboard, but Carlos was all about sustain!

And the verse finally begins a full minute in. This song was not built for the radio, it was built just for you, the album listener.

And the guitar accents make you scrunch your face and then you’re back on the roller coaster and if this doesn’t make you feel thrilled to be alive, you’re no friend of mine.

And when the song modulates up and breaks down and then tears ass after three minutes in, you just cannot believe it could get better, everybody’s dialed in, you’re pulling into the station, you’re whipping out your quarter to go on this ride again.

Whew!

"Incident At Neshabur"

The stinging guitar has you banging your head. And the jazzy interlude is unforeseen. If only Carlos would stop being so debonair and whip out this sound at Bonnaroo, he’d truly be embraced by today’s music lovers. If he once more made it about music instead of hits.

This instrumental is just an album cut, but it’s my second favorite track on "Abraxas". Maybe because of the way all the musicians are so locked in, you can see them staring into each other’s face, afraid to make a mistake.

"Hope You’re Feeling Better"

In Hepburn Hall, everybody wanted to play the first side of "Abraxas", but I always liked the second side best. "Hope You’re Feeling Better" is related to "Mother’s Daughter", they’re cut from the same cloth, but "Hope You’re Feeling Better" is intense in a different way. It’s the over-emoted vocal.

But when it all breaks down about 1:45 in, you’re unprepared for the respite, which is introspective, positively post-coital.

And be sure to stay through the end, which is one of the best finishes in rock and roll, they’re firing on all cylinders, and then they just STOP!

Once again, WHEW!

"Singing Winds, Crying Beasts"

Usually album openers are in your face.

But this sounds like sunrise in the desert. It begins so quiet, slow and majestic. You’re not sure whether to be wowed or on guard. The best music will take you where you’re not sure you want to go. Santana was urging us to trust them, to go on this journey of darkness and light.

And when the song transitions after 1:30, the keyboard sounds like it was recorded in outer space. Nothing else sounded like this. Back in the classic rock era, where you didn’t fall in line, but went on your own exploratory trip.

"Oye Como Va"

Anita: "You sleep until noon and then you watch ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ and then you drive your cab, what a couple hours a day, and then you come home and order out food and then you play those stupid Tito Puente albums until two in the morning."

Winger: "Tito Puente is going to be dead and you’re going to say ‘I’ve been listening to him for years and I think he’s fabulous!’"

"Stripes" never gets enough love. Yes, it’s stupid, but it’s so damn SMART!

Bill Murray was not the only one who loved Tito Puente. Carlos Santana and his band brought this magic music to the rest of America. Santana turned "Oye Como Va" into a standard. And they lifted Tito’s arrangement, but by infusing it with Carlos’s guitar, they made it their own.

There’s no such thing as a bad version of "Oye Como Va", whether it be by Tito Puente, Santana or a marching band. It just makes you feel good all over. That’s the power of great changes.

"Black Magic Woman"

A magical intro. A few simple organ notes and a searing guitar. It doesn’t have to be complicated to be great, it’s just got to be right.

At the time, most people had no idea this was a Fleetwood Mac original, written by Peter Green, but this was when that band was still blues-based, before most of America caught on to how fabulous they truly were.

Fleetwood Mac’s take sounds dated, then again, so does Robert Johnson and the rest of the classic blues. Actually, it’s not exactly dated, but more akin to preserved in amber, evidence of another, better time.

Funny about Clive Davis victory laps. They bring the artists back to the forefront, they allow them to tour and make boatloads of money, but they muddy the legacy, the image of these great performers.

Sure, Rod Stewart would wear a suit way back when. But it was almost ironic. He was not selling out so much as pursuing his own dream, giving the middle finger to the establishment which he ultimately embraced, decades later. Yes, Levon Helm died and we’ve got a victory lap for the Band, but if you don’t believe Rod Stewart and his troupe of merrymakers deserve a victory lap for those first three, actually four, solo albums, you’ve never listened to them. But Levon stayed true, Rod did not.

And Carlos was even more down and out than Rod when he sold his soul to Clive. And the records he made with Mr. Davis were better than those of the Mod, at least they featured brand new material. But they were cookie-cutter, they were made to be hits, something "Abraxas" was not. "Abraxas" was a steaming hot platter made to blow listeners away on its own merit. It pulled no punches, played it not a whit safe. And it still stand up today.

"Abraxas" is not nostalgia, it’s MUSIC!

Spotify link

Previous Rhinofy playlists