HMV

Did you see that story in the “Sunday Times” entitled “Music giants rush to save HMV”?

 Music giants rush to save HMV

Ain’t that the entertainment business, always with one foot in the past, propping up that which is going under.

They don’t even listen to their own artists, what did Bob Dylan so famously say, “He not busy being born is busy dying”?

If your main goal in propping up physical retail is to aid in negotiations with iTunes, Amazon and supermarkets, you’re probably buying Best Buy stock and working on jamming cell signals inside so people can’t “showroom.”

Just like an addicted gambler, the entertainment companies can’t walk away from a losing hand. Yup, HMV closes so they get stiffed. How long did it take them to get rid of their CD pressing plants?

This movie is going to streaming.

I’d focus on upping YouTube payments. I’d be scared of Daniel Ek and Jimmy Iovine more than Tim Cook. Then again, the labels were smart enough to get a percentage of streaming services.

As for all you people lauding the CD, STFU. No one’s listening. Then again, the labels are. This is the main way they make money. But instead of preparing for the future, they’re wedded to the past. If Spotify had launched earlier, if it wasn’t delayed by label negotiations, YouTube wouldn’t be the default streaming platform. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you don’t give it to people the way they want it, a worse alternative appears, one in which you receive less compensation or none. Fighting Napster begat KaZaA. Shutting down Limewire resulted in locker services. The best bet against piracy? Easy to use authorized services. But if you’re always looking to make what you once did you’re a delusional retired baseball player just waiting for the call to suit up. Things change, change with them.

And know that the mainstream press is last. Hell, are you gonna trust the L.A. “Times,” which saw its subscriber base sink from 739,000 to 454,500 in the wake of the 2008 “Tribune” bankruptcy? There’s no one even there to report a story, everybody’s been given a golden parachute (well, more like tin) and those left are positively the B-team. Hell, the above story was in the LONDON “Times,” not the LOS ANGELES “Times,” even though the latter is in the same city as Hollywood.

A CD is a delivery system. HMV is a retailer. Delivery and retail change, the art remains. What next, a return to general stores, with no freeway access? The key is to focus on growing the future, not buttressing the past.

RIMM/BLACKBERRY

Done.

BlackBerry 10 is a failure.

How do I know?

CAN YOU SAY PALM?

I want you to name one tech company that came back from the dead. Oh I know, you’re gonna throw a curve ball, you’re gonna say Apple. Well, if it was still only in the computer business, Apple would be so marginalized as to be unknown to most people. What grew Apple was new products, the iPod, iPhone and iPad. If you told me RIMM was coming up with something new, instead of burnishing an old phone, I’d at least pay attention. Instead you’ve got an antique company trying to reclaim its glory days based on the fact that it sells physical keyboards and has an e-mail solution.

The initial Androids had keyboards… If that’s what people wanted, they’d all have them. As for e-mail, ask your teen if he’s addicted. No, he loves texting!

And Apple taught us it was about software and the ecosystem.

BlackBerry’s software has always been far from seamless. Ever wait for a BlackBerry to boot up? The world could end in the interim. And if you never had a BlackBerry that crashed/froze, you didn’t own one. Where is all the good will for this device? The people clamoring for BlackBerries are the same ones heralding the CD! I miss my BlackBerry not one iota. And the functionality on the iPhone is so high, it’s almost like it’s in a different product category.

And app developers like to get paid. There are almost no apps for BlackBerry 10 and no one’s gonna write any, because the universe is so small.

But the mainstream press, even the “Wall Street Journal,” never shuts the door on the Waterloo company. It always posts the positive. As if there’s a chance RIMM can come back.

IT CAN’T! IT’S TOAST! IT’S AS DEAD AS PALM!

But the insiders don’t know it yet. Only the hoi polloi are clued in.

Ain’t that modern America.

This is the kind of culture we live in. One of selfishness.

I can barely see a spot through the SUVs in the parking lot at the Galleria. Yup, that’s the kind of country we live in. One where what I do counts and I’m not even thinking about you. Global warming? Income inequality? The big issues don’t matter, I’m entitled to live my life how I want and if someone else suffers, screw ’em.

Kind of like the people inside the theatre. You know, the ones who talk and eat bon-bons from cellophane for forty five minutes in this almost three hour epic. After this chap ate a bag of popcorn and drank a twenty four ounce soda. The rich don’t even go to the theatre, they stay at home, they use their connections to get the latest flicks delivered to their private screening rooms. The poor go for release from their horrid lives and overspend for crap that will make the owner rich and themselves obese. And what’s left of the middle class stays home. We live in walled gardens. And we like it that way. Because the rest of the world bugs us. We hate people. We want to drive on an empty freeway and fly private in a world…

That’s overpopulated with poverty. The shots of Pakistan are horrifying. Empty these citizens from their SUVs and have them mingle in the market of Islamabad. That’ll get their neurons firing. And this ain’t no “Argo,” Hollywood entertainment to make you feel good. As a matter of fact, I now feel horrible, I haven’t felt this empty and at loose ends since the “Deer Hunter,” back when movies were our primary art form and they could still change the world. Now movies are made to play around the world, they’re two-dimensional whiz-bang affairs catering to teenagers and foreigners, and our nation has forgotten that the moving image can change lives and the course of history. Don’t get me started on music, the land of imitators doing it to sell tchotchkes to the unwashed, whether it be t-shirts, vodka or perfume. The music is irrelevant. No one’s taking a stand, no one’s being a leader.

And there’s so much to hate about “Zero Dark Thirty.” That it was single-handedly financed by Larry Ellison’s daughter, what kind of country do we live in where a twentysomething can write a check for $45 million, one in which she inherits $2 billion a few years before, and the issue of torture…did it help us get Osama or not.

I don’t know.

Because I’m an ignorant American. A knee-jerk liberal. We should not torture, that’s it.

And I stand by that. But I’m open to opposing facts. But my left wing brethren are not. They’re excoriating this movie, bloviating about it without seeing it, and you’ve got to see it, you must see it, IT’S THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR!

Oh, maybe that “Amour” flick is as good, dealing with human emotions, something radically different. But if you were not blown away by “Zero Dark Thirty,” you didn’t see it. And most people did not. Because of the aforementioned torture issue and the pussification of our country. We’re squeamish. We can’t handle torture scenes and tension, we prefer comedies. Well let me tell you, life ain’t no comedy, it’s deadly serious, and there are people laying their lives down so you can live in ignorance.

That’s what struck me about this flick. The concept of something being bigger than yourself. We live in a country of me, me, me, everyone refuses to sacrifice. But service is about sacrifice. If you watch “Zero Dark Thirty” and don’t contemplate joining the CIA, your heart doesn’t beat.

All those Ivy Leaguers going into finance, so they can get rich. Money won’t keep you warm at night. But if you’re really changing the world, doing good, you’ve got a reason to get up in the morning, your life makes sense.

These people are dedicated.

Got a boyfriend?

NO!

Got any friends?

NO!

That’s what drives me wild, the people who want to have it all. They want to be rock stars and have a family and live a normal life… That’s not how you make it. You make it by being single-minded, giving up everything but the cause. And still, you might not succeed. You might get blown up by a bomb just when you’re getting close. Even worse, you might get blown away when you’re far from the target. Are you willing to take that risk?

OF COURSE NOT!

You don’t want any risk. All you want is GUARANTEES!

Everybody in America, you can’t take anything away from them. If one more songwriter e-mails me about Napster and Spotify I’m gonna scream. THINGS CHANGE! Adjust or get out of the game. The past is never coming back!

And all you gun nuts, thinking the Second Amendment gives you the right to protect yourself from a heinous government… If you think an assault rifle has a chance against the U.S. military, you’re delusional. Not only do they have night vision goggles, they’ve got satellites and drones that can track you when you leave the house. Yup, they’ve got footage of everybody in the compound except Bin Laden. Right there on camera!

And why do I have to go see a movie about something I already know about? Because you’ve got no idea of the tension and the anxiety of a mission. It’s one thing to read about it in the newspaper, it’s another to be on the ground in a foreign country with your life on the line. Kathryn Bigelow depicts that so well!

And she’s over sixty!

But find someone green-lighting movies that age.

No, you’re too old to know. You’re ready for the scrapheap.

But you gain through experience. “Hurt Locker” was just a stepping stone to “Zero Dark Thirty.”

My mind never wandered. The tension was nearly excruciating. I knew it was a movie, but I also knew it was real. That there are smart people who are not worried about the number of Facebook friends they’ve got, but the bigger issues of life.

Yup, stay home. Be a pussy. Pontificate without even seeing the flick.

Or, you can go to the theatre and be positively blown away.

I was.

Justin Timberlake got everybody to pay attention for twenty four hours.

And now we’re done.

David Bowie’s reign was a bit longer, he was gone longer, but we all know when the album comes out it will sell for a week, and then fall off the chart.

Used to be it took forever to reach everybody. Now everybody knows in a day and then moves on.

It’s kinda like the streaming model, it doesn’t matter if someone buys your record so much as whether they LISTEN to it!

How can you get someone to listen to your record? Especially in a world full of diversions. Used to be nothing was happening, teenagers were bored, they had time on their hands to marinate in mediocre, to embrace it and call it their own. Now everybody’s foraging for phenomenal and if you’re not, you’re history.

Justin Timberlake blew his wad. Everybody listened, callout research is mediocre, and even old wave radio, which major labels depend upon, may not continue to spin it.

Now what?

If you’re not rethinking your game, you’re going to be plowed under. Forgotten. Irrelevant.

Either go on the road and play your hits.

Or stay at home and live on investments.

There’s always room for great. The problem is it’s almost impossible to bat 1000. Baseball players hit 300 and they’re in the Hall of Fame. But in modern music it’s believed that nothing should be released before its time, so everybody massages the tracks into irrelevance.

What Justin Timberlake should say is… You didn’t like that? Well, here’s another one! And another one! And another one! He should be doing his art in front of us, we should be seeing the creative process, and if he lands on something good we’ll embrace it and spread the word.

But in this case only he and his band of yeasayers believed the track was worthy. The public shrugged its shoulders. Same with Christina Aguilera. They’re all detached from their fans, they’re all playing to gatekeepers who are bombarded with content and mean less every day.

David Bowie gets into every publication known to man, both music and straight media, but try finding someone who can sing the song. People listened once and moved on.

Is this the modern paradigm? A spike of publicity and then history?

OF COURSE NOT!

A star is no longer just someone who plays.

A star is someone with a symbiotic relationship with his or her audience. Who’s constantly creating, revealing what’s happening behind the curtain, reacting to feedback and testing limits.

If you’re doing it the old way, you’re toast.

It’s a full time job listening to the show.

I mean it’s 2 A.M. and I’m sitting in front of Felice’s house unable to turn the radio off. Howard’s interviewing the nerds, Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong, and it’s so damn real, so much the essence of life, that I figure if it doesn’t end soon, I’m gonna wear down my brand new battery.

What did Gary say one day? About people giving him shit for digging so deep into Springsteen? That he was worth it? Yup, Howard’s worth it.

And it’s important you pay attention, because he’s breaking all the rules.

In music, being young and beautiful is a badge of honor and oldsters get no traction and give up or write horribly boring music that even their fans can’t stand. But Howard’s pushing sixty and he’s better than ever.

Let me put it this way…

Either you’re a Stern fan or you’re gonna be one, you just don’t know it yet.

Howard’s an Internet act even though he’s doing his show on the radio. You know why? He keeps on doing it. Day after day. He doesn’t harass you to listen to his great interviews of yore, he just keeps making more. And when you first become a fan you can’t believe all the callers who know all the characters, all the history, and suddenly you do too.

This is how you do it. You’re determined and you don’t give up.

Sure, Howard’s a tireless self-promoter. And I’m not even sure it’s working for him anymore. So, he’s a judge on AGT, even his fans know that show sucks and is not a good vehicle for his talent, no matter how much he talks about it. But this is a guy who worked on his craft, perfected it in Hartford when the other deejays were partying. Who got fired again and again but believed in his act and didn’t kiss the butts of the programmers who were telling him he was doing it all wrong.

The programmers don’t know. The label doesn’t know. Only the artist knows.

Are you an artist?

Probably not.

You’re not honing your chops and testing limits. You’re just eager to get on the gravy train and become rich and famous, you don’t care if it’s for music, a fashion line or just showing up at the club. That’s not an artist.

Then again, everybody’s got art in their life. And it’s this that Howard tries to extract. How did the porn star get here? What was it like to be the son of John Carradine and discover in your teens that your mom is not your real mom?

Or who is the hottest actress Kevin Bacon ever performed with?

Oh, of course that’s base.

But that’s what we all think about.

The late night TV talk shows are fading because instead of testing limits, they’re circling the wagons, being nice promotional vehicles for movies most of us don’t care about. Except for Jimmy Fallon, give him credit for trying something new.

Whereas with Stern, the promotion is less than ten percent.

The rest is story.

That’s what Stern knows best. Story. Arc. The essence of all great art, whether it be a book, record or movie. How did the celebrity get from there to here? And the cast of characters… I know them all, and their peccadilloes, because I’ve been listening so long.

Howard Stern built Sirius.

It will survive without him.

But I might not.

If Howard Stern retires, there’ll be a great big hole in my life. It’ll be like my best friend moving away before the cell phone era, when long distance calls were still expensive and my parents wouldn’t let me make any.

Ignore the haters. Get Sirius. Join the club.

IT’S WORTH IT!