Don’t make an album if you’re an actor or actress. Nobody is waiting for it and if you’re not willing to go on tour for years you’ll get a ton of (paid-for) publicity and no sales. And if you’re that damn good and can’t say it in a single, don’t start. Or keep it as a hobby.

Don’t go to see “Argo.” It’s so typically Hollywood you’ll wince, down to the revolutionaries following the plane down the runway as it takes off (and if you think this requires a spoiler alert, let me really blow your mind… You’re gonna go to sleep and wake up tomorrow! You’re gonna eat too! Whew!)

Do go see “Smashed.” No one will. This is TV done right. But on the big screen. And that’s like putting your kiddie show on Cinemax, however good it might be, it’s the wrong place.

Do sign up for Twitter. But don’t tweet if you don’t want to. But if you do tweet, make it personal, not self-promotional. I went here and did this and feel that, as opposed to buy my this or buy my that.

Don’t mistake publicity for success. Just because people can read about it everywhere, see it on TV, that does not mean anybody cares.

Don’t ask to mail a CD. Do ask if you can send a link. Sending a CD makes you feel good, but it’s rarely listened to. You’ve got a chance someone will click and listen to your music via a link. Because it’s much easier. But don’t expect them to listen to more than five seconds. Yup, that’s how long you’ve got to hook someone. Don’t blame the listener, blame the plethora of entertainment options. We’re limited in time and we only care about the best.

Don’t get excited about the Stones’ 50th. It will only encourage them.

Don’t read Neil Young’s biography. Well, you’re already not. It’s self-indulgent, all about the money. Just because you can play music that does not mean you can write a book.

Do listen to each and every Alec Baldwin “Here’s The Thing” podcast. Because the level of discourse is high in a world that is too often shooting low and you’ll learn something. Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies, was working at the Greek Theatre box office when he got his job at the “Hollywood Reporter.” This was after he had been on TV and under contract to Desilu. David Brooks is funny, and explains why he’s a conservative better than Rush Limbaugh or anybody on Fox News.

Do talk about Palladia. The new MTV. Sans the bells and whistles of VJs, etc, you end up with just the music. And in hi-def, it works.

Don’t stay at home and watch on YouTube instead of going to the gig, it’s the same visuals, the same music, but a completely different experience.

Don’t go to work at the label. There’s no upward mobility. If you want to start in the music business, become an agent.

Don’t boast about how little sleep you get. It just makes you appear a trend-whore and stupid. All the recent studies say almost everybody needs close to eight hours a night. If you’re not getting it, you’re not being creative. Yup, that’s what it takes to have great ideas and execute them, sleep!

Do educate yourself on banking, not only titans like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, but hedge funds and private equity. This is the enemy. If you don’t know him, you and society are worse off for it. It’s like living in the sixties and not being informed on the Vietnam War. And once everybody got informed, a huge swath of the population was against it.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking just because you like something, somebody else will. If you want to maintain your credibility, don’t recommend that which people will not like.

Don’t believe just because Gaga is one of the biggest stars today that she’ll be one of the biggest stars tomorrow. Touring is a victory lap at her level. It all comes down to the music. Can she record more great stuff?

Do not think since “Jagged Little Pill” was so great, Alanis Morissette has anything left to say that you’ve got to hear.

Do not think electronic music is a fad. Because then you’re like Geffen Records, which thought rap was a fad, didn’t sign any and went out of business.

Do know that Showtime did not become the new HBO overnight. Success takes time. To find your way, to build an audience.

Nobody lives forever. The greatest threat haunting the powers-that-be in today’s music business is death. The sphere is rife with opportunity. Because of the aged infrastructure. Or as Warren Miller so sagely put it, “Every hundred years, all new people.”

Do know that access is king. Just like distribution. You might abhor electronic books, but a digital store, containing all available works at your fingertips, is good for readers and society.

Do know there’s no longer such a thing as a rare recording. Everything’s available online. Maybe not in a physical format, but you can hear it. Collecting is just sport today.

Do know the vinyl “revolution” has a sell-by date. It’s comparatively tiny and will be eradicated once higher quality downloads/streaming become available. Which could take years, because of slow broadband. What kind of screwed up world do we live in where people can get the same speed on their phone (LTE) as they can at home (broadband.) One in which there are no government incentives to speed broadband up. Higher broadband delivers a stronger economy. Just ask the South Koreans.

Don’t think Ticketmaster is the enemy. Acts are.

Don’t believe ticket prices will come down. There’s a shortage of good acts you want to see and income inequality means there’s always someone willing to overpay to say they were inside.

Don’t think Apple is forever. Music, when done right, can be forever. Not commerce, not gadgets and industrial products.

Don’t listen when an artist says his latest work is his best. He’s got no perspective and he’s just trying to sell it.

Don’t think the label is your friend.

Don’t think just because an album entered high on the chart it’s a success. Look to see if it’s still selling a year from now. If not, it’s almost irrelevant.

Don’t sign with a label unless you truly believe you cannot do it yourself. And do you see yourself as that inadequate?

Last night I went to see Bettye LaVette at the Troubadour. Despite the venue being full but not packed to the rafters, Ms. LaVette gave it her all, with enough honest commentary to make you want to go to dinner with her, to hear her expound on life. In a world where opinions are anathema, at least when it comes to famous performers, Ms. LaVette was the veritable breath of fresh air. When someone whooped, she said “Don’t make any noises you wouldn’t at your grandmother’s house.” She lauded her label, said she sang songs better than the originals and screeched and crooned in front of her four piece band to the point you felt the rest of the music business was a distant cousin at best, you know, the one where everybody’s got no lines on their face and sings songs written by old men so they can get a bit of fleeting fame on radio and television. That’s what that is, the fame business, not the music business. Kind of like reality television, with all those nitwits who are famous for nothing. Once upon a time music was an honest profession, hard but full of personal triumphs and rewards, now it’s a sideshow, a diversion, a focus away from the heinous activities of those with all the money. And if you think the label head has all the money, you know nothing about modern economics.

But despite Bettye’s prodigious performance last evening, what inspired me to write was my conversation with her husband, Kevin Kiley.

I hear from Kevin on a regular basis. And at first it was about Bettye, then it became about the Animals and sixties rock and roll bands and I started to wonder, this guy doesn’t sound black…

He’s not.

But he’s a huge fan of soul music. That’s how he met Bettye LaVette. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So Kevin, who’s pushing sixty, is living in New Jersey, singing in a few bands and performing as a star in the drug culture, he was a bona fide drug addict. But when his brethren said he was doing too much, at twenty four he got clean. Got married, became an antiques dealer…

That’s what we never read in the press. The story of real people. We only hear about the winners, the worldbeaters. What about the rest of us who were thwarted in our dreams, who didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do, who fell into things?

Yup, Kevin Kiley fell into dealing antiques, primarily glassware. A dealer told him he’d pay him more for what Kiley was finding in his travels, and suddenly Kevin was in business. Until the Internet. When everything appeared on eBay and prices dropped.

The Internet.

After being married for eighteen years, getting divorced and singing once again, the Internet came along and Kevin found an online group called “Southern Soul.”

That’s what I love about the Internet, the like-minded people! This is what the mainstream cannot fathom, that not only are people not interested in their curated smorgasbord of bland news items, they’d rather dig down deep into the specialized area that intrigues them. The Southern Soulsters debated 45s that sold in double digits, they reveled in the history, they talked about the culture, they discussed Bettye LaVette.

Word got out Bettye was gonna make a record. Kevin didn’t like the proposed producer. So he said so online, Bettye got wind of this and responded. And when they spoke on the phone, she said YOU COME UP WITH THE MONEY AND YOU CAN PICK THE PRODUCER!

Bettye was destitute and living in the ghetto in Detroit. Thank your lucky stars that recording is so inexpensive today. Before modern technology you couldn’t make an album without a plethora of cash, and you didn’t get to choose all the players and the particulars…he who paid did.

And Kevin didn’t have this kind of cash. But on one of his antiquing sojourns he was in Detroit, and asked Bettye if he could take her out for a drink. The rest is history. Then again, that’s personal history, what about her career?

It all came down to performance. Her agent, Mike Kappus at Rosebud, saw her at a show. He decided to represent her. Her recording deal happened the same way. That’s how she got her manager, Eric Gardner.

Most of us don’t get the breaks. We’re not good-looking enough, or rich enough, or kiss-ass enough. No one’s looking for us. We’ve got to earn it, the hard way. That’s how we get so good. Woodshedding, building our skills when no one will let us in the club, to the point where we ultimately can’t be denied. This is the story of Howard Stern. He graduated from college and applied for a job in Hollywood, in TV production. Of course he didn’t get it. He couldn’t get a job in NYC, he was not Carol Miller, who started off at WMMR and then graduated to WPLJ. Now Howard Stern is the most famous radio broadcaster in modern history. But he’s still not in the Hall Of Fame, they don’t like his kind.

That used to be the rock and roll kind. The outsiders. Who were not pretty, who did not fit in. Can you imagine the legends of yore listening to judges on television giving them lame instructions on how to mold themselves to become successful? They’d give them the middle finger. They had to do it their way, there was no other way.

Bettye LaVette delivers. And it’s her performing skills that have not only given her everything she’s got, but everything she’s gonna get. The more she sings, the more the word spreads. It’s not about the one big break, it’s about a series of very small efforts, that add up to the whole.

She may be way past sixty, but Bettye LaVette is as modern as they come.

P.S. I spoke with Eric Gardner about Todd Rundgren, his management client of 37 years, after the show. What intrigues me most is that Todd cashed out his royalties on “Bat Out Of Hell”, one of the best-selling albums of all time, what inspired him? Kauai. Todd saw eight acres of prime real estate on the beach after the hurricane and it could all be his for $1 million. But he didn’t have a million. And he really wanted the property. So Eric went to CBS and proposed a buyout, since Bat 3 was about to be released and Bat 1 would get a sales bump. The rest is history…

P.P.S. Southern Soul is now a Yahoo Group:

southernsoul · The Southern Soul List

Once upon a time there were no recordings. If you wanted a career in music, you not only had to know how to play, you also had to know how to perform!

That’s what’s been overlooked about the Beatles and Prince and so many legends whose music has endured. When you went to see them, you were blown away. Now you go to see an act and wait for the moment when they perform their hit single, often to hard drive, so you won’t be disappointed, or you’re dazzled by production. Sure, songs count, but can you deliver them?

Used to be live music was abundant. Now there’s almost nowhere to play. And tickets are so expensive that the concept of going to a show has changed, it’s no longer entertainment, no longer something you do on a regular basis, but an event. And that’s different. As different as going on vacation to the Bahamas as opposed to your local beach. If you fly to an island and spend all that dough you’re on high alert, you want to get your money’s worth, if the help is slow and the weather is bad, you’re bummed out. Whereas when you’re at the local beach and the teenager takes a bit too long to deliver your french fries, it doesn’t ruin your day, if the clouds roll in and you have to leave early, it’s not a disaster. You go to your local beach all the time. You enjoy the environment, and it’s the little things that titillate you. That great wave you caught and body-surfed all the way into shore on. The woman/man/boy/girl who walked right by your blanket… The song you heard on the radio as you were being baked by the rays, thrilled just to be alive. This is how it used to be in live music. Used to be you went all the time. You wanted to have a great time, but if it was just good, that was o.k.

Everybody still thinks it’s about records. About hits. And nothing will garner you an audience instantly like a hit. But it won’t keep people coming to your show if you’re not a great performer. In this modern age where it’s hard to get people’s attention, where there’s so much clutter that if you’ve got a hit, many people still don’t hear it, shouldn’t you be focusing on your live show, shouldn’t you be honing your performing skills?

Look at it this way. Psy is one and done. He’s no different from those guys who did the Macarena. And it’s not about the song, but the video. And video was the dominant art form in the eighties and nineties, but now it really doesn’t matter what you look like. It matters if you can play, and if you can sell the song you’re singing.

I know this is the opposite of everything you’re hearing, but if you want a career in music today, you’re better off focusing on your live skills than your recoding chops.

This is why so many of the white/Brooklyn/hipster bands don’t penetrate beyond their core. If you don’t buy into it from the get-go, you can’t be convinced. Take anybody to see Prince and they’re closed. Take just anybody to see most of today’s bands and they’ll be howling to leave.

But the problem is bigger than that. It’s not only a lack of riveting performers, it’s a lack of places to play. People would rather hear records, or stay home. Because oftentimes when there is live music, it sucks. If you can’t sell it as the bar band at the Holiday Inn, you’re never going to go anywhere.

The path we’re on looks bleak. With winners and losers, a very small middle class, with over-massaged mainstream hits and overpriced tickets to see these one hit wonders and the has-beens. Forget that there’s less money in music than banking, the whole art form is headed to extinction. Then again, that’s what’s exciting about electronic music. Sure, many deejays don’t do much, but the show is an experience, the audience performs, you feel as one, which is vastly different from standing in the arena with people you neither know nor care about who are blocking your $200 view.

But as for those who sing and play guitars… First we’ve got to develop people worth seeing. Then there will be a demand for places to see them. And ticket prices will have to start off low. So people can go check things out on a regular basis.

Change is coming.

And I don’t know exactly how it will play out.

But if you want to be a musician today, learn how to perform. Play live wherever you can. Learn to do it with no electronic aids/help. People are clamoring for authenticity. It’s your job to deliver it.

Fountains Of Wayne was Brooklyn before that borough was hip. Overeducated boys playing thin music revered by critics ignored by the mainstream until…

“Stacy’s Mom.”

Not that that meant anybody would care thereafter. But it does ensure that people born around 1990 and before will always remember them.

And “Stacy’s Mom” is kind of like 10cc’s “The Things We Do For Love,” a tribute to a sound done so well that those not informed put it down as an irrelevant trifle, when both are exquisite exercises in irony that titillate insiders who were there at the time of the originals and get the joke. Yes, “Stacy’s Mom” was a gigantic hit, rocketed into consciousness by a video starring Rachel Hunter, but divorce the song from the images and…if you don’t crack up, you’ve got no sense of humor.

The crunchy intro segues into an almost sotto voce recitation of the chorus… These are guys who studied the Beatles and know the most memorable tracks come from capitulating to the form, yet twisting it to tempt those who never thought to look at the world any different. More than one Beatles song began with the chorus and so many had great bridges and too often the modern Brooklyn acts put the format out to pasture and end up with something far from infectious…whereas “Stacy’s Mom” is reminiscent of what came before, yet is still somehow unique. It’s no crime to be able to sing, it’s no crime to be able to play your instrument, the basics always come in handy, and Fountains Of Wayne have all the bases covered.

Did your mom get back
From her business trip

This modern reference is so endearing. Back in the sixties, most moms didn’t work. But today, women not only make up a significant part of the workforce, oftentimes they’re the family’s main breadwinner. This is an executive, she was on a trip. She’s much more than Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Stacy do you remember
When I mowed your lawn
Your mom came out
With just a towel on
I could tell she liked me
From the way she stared
And the way she said
‘You missed a spot over there’

It’s not only teenagers, all men play these mental games, have these delusions, they interpret every gesture and non-gesture, expression and non-expression. And the confidence! Scratch America’s surface and you’ll find most men believe they could screw Jennifer Aniston. Delusion is a way of life!

And “Stacy’s Mom” is on “Welcome Interstate Managers,” Fountains Of Wayne’s 2003 album that is one of those secret records that old males love so much, they feel it’s made just for them, music made by nerds for nerds. And we love it!

And if you look good in the club, if you like a beat, “Welcome Interstate Managers” is not for you.

But if you remember staying home dateless in high school, reading Kurt Vonnegut, dreaming of a better life, you’ll love it!

And “Stacy’s Mom” is fantastic.

But it’s not my favorite cut on the album. That would be “Peace And Love.”

Riding around in a Volkswagen van
Thinking ’bout the people upside-down in Japan
Staring at the stars in a distant galaxy
Wondering if there’s someone out there staring back at me singing…

Ha! You might be too old to remember Volkswagen vans, which were the official vehicles of the hippies, even David Crosby, they persisted through the seventies, even when you could buy a higher powered, better handling van at an even lower price…it’s what they stood for, kind of like long hair.

As for thinking about the people in Japan…isn’t that what we were gonna find if we just dug deep enough in the backyard?

And did you ever freak yourself out thinking about the universe being infinite?

Lying on the floor just playing my guitar
Trying to find the chords for ‘Just The Way You Are’

We dropped the needle on our vinyl records, figuring out the chords. And the fact that he’s singing about the cheesy Billy Joel song just cracks you up, because he’s not cool!

Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont
Open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant

Hilarious! For someone who went to college in Vermont…they nail it! The granola people. Living below their station. Back to the land.

The whole song is sung tongue in cheek. But the lyrics are secondary to the groove. They lock into it and after you hear “Peace And Love” a couple of times, you’ve got to hear it a couple of times more, and then more…kinda like Alanis Morissette’s “Hand In Pocket.”

Then there’s “Supercollider,” which sounds like an imitation of Oasis which is an imitation of the Beatles and that sixties sound. Still, it works. Because that sound is not of this earth, and neither is “Supercollider.” It’s a drug trip, no LSD required. Listening to it you can leave the world behind, it all fades to black as you live your own personal movie.

“Fire Island” is one of those tracks that is so schmaltzy, you skip over it and then one day the album plays through, you catch a few of the lyrics and you..crack up. Yes, it’s ostensibly about that period of adolescence where you’re finally breaking free from your parents, when you throw a party while they’re away, but what truly makes it is…

Don’t you remember
Last December
When you went to Steamboat Springs

Coaches always tell you to make your music universal. That’s hogwash. It’s the specifics that hook us. Some kids try to deny their heritage, imitate those below or above themselves. But here Fountains Of Wayne are being positively middle class, just the way they are. There’s no boasting, just honesty, owning who they are, it’s so refreshing.

“All Kinds Of Time” is positively inspiring, without being so inscrutable that you cannot connect with it. It’s about that moment of reflection, when the world stops and you get to think. Everybody’s such a winner today, so on it, thinking is passe.

He takes a step back
He’s under attack
But he knows that no one can touch him now
He seems so at ease
A stranger inner peace
Is all that he’s feeling somehow

It’s like a sci-fi movie, where everybody else is frozen in time and you get to slow down and contemplate your moves and marinate in your mood. Don’t you sometimes want to stop? Sometimes you do, and it feels just like this track.

I’ve written about “Valley Winter Song” before. Still, check it out again. It’s the chorus that hooks you.

And the snow is coming down
On our New England town
And it’s been falling all day long

That’s one thing I hate about Los Angeles, the inability to stay inside, play board games, be removed from the world because the weather precludes exiting. It’s quiet. It’s special. Just you and your thoughts and whoever is locked inside with you. It’s a respite.

And then there’s “Hackensack.”

I used to know you when we were young
You were in all my dreams
We sat together in period one
Fridays at 8:15

Do you surf the Net looking for those you once knew? It’s so utterly fascinating. They’re frozen in time. You remember them. Where and what are they up to today? Some you barely ever talked to, but knew intimately, because your name came right after theirs in the alphabet, because you shared the same home room.

Now I see your face in the strangest places
Movies and magazines
I saw you talkin’ to Christopher Walken
On my TV screen

Only one person from my high school was ever famous, Linda Kozlowski, from “Crocodile Dundee,” the one who married Paul Hogan. Long after my time John Mayer went to Warde, and Richard Belzer long before, but I never turn on my TV set and say “I went to school with him (or her!)” Ditto college. Middlebury is small. And everybody was not searching for fame, but playing it safe. They became doctors and lawyers, teachers and executives, no one was famous. Although I did turn on my TV and see my old classmate Jeanne Meserve on CNN, that was pretty weird, I never thought she was TV material, but you never know what’s inside, who someone is destined to become. But my point is that yearning to connect with someone who’s left me, gone beyond me, it’s never happened. Meg Ryan grew up in my town, but she did not go to my school, now that would be pretty weird if I knew her, but I don’t.

As for the rhyme about Christopher Walken, it’s cute, it’s showing off, but it still hits the spot, you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Just like in the world at large, in music it’s cool to be dumb. But Fountains Of Wayne are not.

I used to work in a record store
Now I work for my dad
Scraping the paint off of hardwood floors
The hours are pretty bad

Positively heartbreaking! Giving up, doing what’s expedient. I never ever contemplated staying in Fairfield, Connecticut, never mind becoming a real estate appraiser like my dad. My whole life has been about escaping drudgery. It may not have been lucrative, but it’s rarely been boring. I’ve had a couple of jobs where I stared at the clock. I died inside.

Sometimes I wonder where you are
Probably in L.A.
That seems to be where everybody else ends up these days

“Probably!” What a great word! You can sense the defeat and the distance. The only line between him and her is his memory, which is thin and is a nonexistent thread to her.

But I will wait for you
As long as I need to
And if you ever get back to Hackensack
I’ll be here for you

Hackensack. Despite Springsteen and Bon Jovi, New Jersey was never cool and still is not. If you’re from anywhere else, you look down your nose at the Garden State. Hell, not a single person from my high school applied to Princeton… The thought of going to college in New Jersey was unthinkable!

It’s our dreams that get us through. Give up your dreams and you’re truly dead. No matter how delusional they might be, like that of the guy in this song. Then again, he’s waiting. Are you moving or waiting? Actually, you’ve got to do both, that’s one of the themes of “Welcome Interstate Managers.”

And I’d be lying if I said I was hooked by any of the later albums.

And I went to see Fountains Of Wayne at the Wiltern and they were exactly what I supposed they were, not at all who I hoped them to be. They were like college kids, playing in the cafeteria, very little soul, getting it right, but not perfect. But on wax, where they could labor over the music like a science project, they could craft a statement.

And that’s what “Welcome Interstate Managers” is. Pop music filtered through the viewpoint of two Williams graduates who refused to leave their personalities at the door, who desired to get their perspective recorded. And they did. And if you share any of their history, and more do than don’t, you’ll love it!

Rhinofy-Fountains Of Wayne

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