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

EZRIN

Steve Hunter wrote the riff in "Solsbury Hill". And the original refrain was completely different, involving a taxi, and Bob said NO, there was NO WAY that was gonna be on the record.

To say Bob Ezrin’s interview with Ralph Simon was riveting would do it no justice. If you live for these records, the inside story behind them was everything. These records are part of our DNA. It’s like going to a family reunion!

Bob was supposed to say no to Alice Cooper.

But riveted by the live show, his boss Jack Richardson insisted BOB do it. At the age of twenty. Some people are born ready.

And the backstory of Kiss’s "Destroyer"? Bob told the band they were only appealing to boys, they had to appeal to girls, they had to be like Marlon Brando in "The Wild One", they had to express vulnerability, women needed to FIX THEM!

At first fans hated the album, then it went on to be KISS’s biggest EVER!

"Berlin" was written after Bob told Lou Reed that his songs were short stories, what ever happened to the characters in them?

As for "The Wall"… Bob knew he’d produced a masterpiece. And promptly went home to Toronto and waited for the phone to ring, which it did not. For four years. Randy Philips asked him what he was doing in T.O., told him he had to move to L.A., he did.

In an era where producers are yes-men, usually engineers, Bob is positively old school. He’ll tell acts no, he’ll inspire them, he takes control. Too many acts are not ready to be pushed to greatness.

But that’s what Bob does.

CHINESE HERITAGE CENTRE

I’m a Jew. Would I have left Europe to avoid the Holocaust?

I think not, it’s not in my personality, I’m kind of a stick in the mud. But the Chinese left their homeland in droves. For a better life.

All through the 1800s they shipped out to Singapore, many dying in the process, their bodies thrown overboard. And when the survivors got to the promised land they immediately went to the temple, to give thanks. And went on to live in squalor, breaking their backs, working hard, sleeping with their brethren all in one room.

Singapore is modern now, but it was not back then.

Chinatown Heritage Centre

CHECKERS

If Harry Chapin were still alive, he’d write a song about it. All the old men at the fringe of Chinatown, focused on victory. Funny what we live for.

And right nearby was a temple. I went in for the air conditioning. Singapore is so damn hot and humid it becomes intolerable.

But I was not prepared for the chanting. A whole room of worshippers singing in unison with the orange-saried man on the dais. It was awe-inspiring. With all the Buddhas on the wall. It seemed not a whit tedious, I was almost inspired to get on my knees and join them.

FORT CANNING PARK

I like to walk a city. It helps me understand the layout. But after exiting Chinatown and walking by the river that was once Singapore’s lifeblood I encountered so many steps up to the park my heart sank. But putting one foot in front of another, I slowly ascended.

And at the top I found an acoustic trio so good I couldn’t stop listening. They were playing Katy Perry, "Don’t Stop Believin’". This music travels the world if it’s done right.

And when I circled the mountaintop I found a sign referencing the "time ball". Yup, a hundred fifty years ago every day at 12:55 it dropped slowly to 1 PM, so people down below could set their clocks. It’s fascinating to go back in time. What seems antiquated today was progress back then.

THE BANANA LEAF APOLO

I went there for dinner with Ross & Laurietta and the AEG crew.

Ross was flying to Singapore on business. The woman sitting next to him was constantly being asked for her autograph. Turned out she was host of the Singapore version of "Entertainment Tonight". And when she asked him if he was a concert promoter, he said YES!

Even though nothing could be further from the truth.

But now he is.

The Banana Leaf Apolo is a legendary place in Little India, where we had fish head soup, yup, the entire head was in the bowl, and the waiters slung vegetables onto our banana leaf covered plates from swinging pots. It was all so yummy.

And after Meglen tried to buy gold we went down to the river, where I heard the stories of his minions. Expatriate Americans drawn into the AEG fold. One guy could have gone to Yale, but he moved to Taiwan, learned Chinese and went to university there. And went into translation, sports management and was ultimately recruited by Leiweke and Anschutz.

And after having dessert and hearing the local band Sixx, fronted by a Singaporean who’d attended Boston College, we descended into the subterranean nightclub beneath the Grand Hyatt, where all the expats congregate. Whereupon Ross and his buddy Phil told me about living in Singapore. There’s 100% employment, 100% home ownership, and if there’s a bit of censorship, that’s cool. Ross would never return to the States. Phil was supposed to be here for only a few years, as a management consultant, now it’s been seventeen. They can’t go back, when they do everybody in America is so unworldly, they can’t connect.

The Banana Leaf Apolo

ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES

And what costume shall the poor girl wear
To all tomorrow’s parties

And that’s what it was at the Factory, a 24/7 party.

Tod Machover told me about an Andy Warhol show at the Marina Bay Sands ArtScience Museum, I woke up and dragged my ass there Sunday morning.

Inspirational.

What I did not know was what a great illustrator Andy Warhol(a) was. That’s how he built his rep. He was in demand.

But he just didn’t give people what they wanted, he used that as a jumping off point, he challenged preconceptions, he built the silver-painted Factory, he made films, if people became comfortable with what he was doing, he moved on. Unlike the record industry, he was not mired in, not attached to the past, he moved into the future.

Ezrin said there were tons of performers, but very few artists.

Andy Warhol was an artist.

Even his quips resonated…

"They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

Whew! Are you just floating in the river or changing its course? You can give people what they want or strike out on your own and see if they follow. You can risk. Inertia is anathema.

"If everybody’s not a beauty then nobody is."

Kind of like that "Twilight Zone" episode "The Eye Of The Beholder". It’s all about viewpoint, we’re all human, we’re all exotic and special in our own way.

Then again, on another wall was printed:

"Even beauties can be unattractive. If you catch a beauty in the wrong light at the right time, forget it. I believe in low lights and trick mirrors. I believe in plastic surgery."

Ah, vanity.

There was film of the Velvet Underground, and of Edie Sedgwick, and playing over the sound system was "All Tomorrow’s Parties".

The sixties were fifty years ago. But we haven’t had a great leap forward in art and perception since. Maybe we’re ready.

Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal

SINGAPORE AIRLINES

They had iMacs in the lounge. That’s a first.

And although a tailwind made the flight just a hair shy of fifteen hours, it was interminable, without my buddies along, like on the way over.

And I get back home and it’s the same as it ever was.

And that’s depressing.

I want to go back to my hotel room, I want my friends at my fingertips.

It was a magical time.

It was fantastic.