SONG READER
A new album from Beck Hansen

It’s a publicity stunt.

Unable to sell an album, people no longer interested in what he has to say musically, Beck has made an end run around the music business and gotten his old fans and techies excited, and has them spreading the word better than any major label publicity campaign would be able to.

Josh Freese started this.

Radiohead capitalized on this.

Kickstarter institutionalized this.

And now Beck is employing the same paradigm.

Let’s separate music from publicity. The dirty little secret is if you’re nobody, publicity doesn’t count and music is everything. If you’re nobody, if you’ve never broken through, if you have no toehold, you’ve got to create at least one track so good it’s passed on virally to everybody.

Yes, the track can be good in a train-wreck way, a la Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” but it’s got to be noteworthy. And this is much more difficult to do than to create a genius marketing campaign.

But if you’ve already got traction, if people already know who you are, then it’s time to put your thinking cap on and come up with a left field marketing idea.

In other words, that old newspaper/magazine/interview game doesn’t work anymore. Unless you say something truly astounding, like you were humiliated by a famous paramour, like John Mayer did, traditional publicity doesn’t go viral. Everybody shrugs their shoulder and sees it for what it is…hype.

And we’ve become immune to hype.

Of course, if you can get your song on the radio, that pays dividends. Radio is still the dominant way to expose music, but contrary to the opinion of the blowhards employed in it, radio’s power is fading and will continue to diminish. These are the same self-satisfied pricks who said the CD was forever, that no one would want to buy an MP3. Just wait a few years, when there’s Internet in the car, hell, there’s already Internet in Audis, radio’s mindshare will decrease. Just like network TV ratings plunged in the wake of the advent of cable and the resulting hundreds of stations. Talk radio is vital, on the pulse, music radio is not. Which is why MTV got out and now relies on longform shows. Music is an on demand item. You can hear it whenever you want wherever you want with a mouse click or a touch of the finger, ever hear of YouTube? Sure, people need to know what to listen to, there’s room for trusted filters, but most commercial radio is beholden to advertisers, it’s anything but trustworthy. As for satellite… What we’ve learned here is people are cheap. And satellite will never become ubiquitous. But Pandora is free. As are many other Internet music options.

Which brings us back to the issue of fame and exposing new music.

These old acts…no radio station wants to play their music. None that mean a damn. So, these acts can either work with Max Martin or Dr. Luke or stop making music or realize they’re journeymen. Ironically, it’s these old acts who will triumph most as radio declines, people no longer care if an artist is signed to a major label, an indie is just as credible, being on the radio won’t be the end all and be all in the future.

Great music will still count. And we can debate whether these old acts can still create great music all day long, but one thing they have is their fame, can they leverage their fame?

That’s what Beck Hansen has done here. He’s a known quantity. Furthermore, he’s known for cutting edge innovation. So people are interested in what he’s doing. And he was smart enough to get them interested without the music! People haven’t been talking about Beck for years, but with this one little stunt he’s become part of the discussion. And what’s even more interesting is the word was not spread by the music press, or traditional mainstream media, but “Forbes.”

Beck ‘Produces’ A Genius Innovation That Appeals To The User-Generated Generation

In other words, if you want to go viral, you’re better off being featured in “Wired” or on Gizmodo than in the “New York Times” or “Time.” Because the former outlets have no b.s. images. They’re not known as bastions of hype. People trust them. It may not be true if it’s in the newspaper, but if it’s in “Forbes”?

What Beck is doing is no different in theory from what Trent Reznor did years ago. What artists do every day on Topspin. They’re upselling. Selling products that have nothing to do with the music itself. Like books. All Beck has done is push the envelope.

Name your own price is dead.

Sheet music has now been taken.

How will you get the public’s attention in the future? How will you go viral?

It depends entirely on creativity. By the book, pardon the pun, does not work online, does not work with today’s generation.

So Beck gets some notoriety and some coin. Maybe this stunt even drives people to his show.

But it is a stunt and it’s not about music and it’s no different from having some has-been movie actor appear on a sitcom. If the sitcom sucks, it’s just a payday. If the sitcom is great, it burnishes your image.

It all comes down to the music. And creating great music is almost impossible.

And we’re only interested in great. Good just ain’t good enough.

But “Loser” was phenomenal! You only had to hear it once and you needed to hear it again. It made Beck’s career. It set him up so he could employ this sheet music stunt and people would care. Have you written “Loser”?

If not, better keep your day job.

“People who end up living their dreams are not those who are lucky and gifted, but those who are stubborn, resolute and willing to sacrifice.”

How to Get Doping Out of Sports – The New York Times

And while I’ve got your attention, I want to talk about compromise.

Artists don’t.

I can’t stop watching “Newsroom.” One of the things I love about it is the critics hate it. But the ratings are good, it keeps soldiering on and it’s been renewed for another season. And sure, it defines the political and TV news issues, but it also brings up moral issues. Like values. And compromise.

They’re changing the format of the broadcast because the ratings tanked. Nancy Grace covered Casey Anthony and they didn’t and they lost half a million viewers overnight and the big boss is pissed and the honchos cave. Why? Because they want the debate. The Republican debate. It’s fifteen months ago, spring of ’11, and they want to have an impact.

This is what businessmen do.

This is not what artists do.

This is what politicians do. That’s why I keep scratching my head about D.C. Believe in what you want Republicans, but your job in Congress is to legislate, to move things forward, it’s a giant sausage factory and you’re on the line, work. But they won’t. They’re standing on ceremony, they’re hewing to their principles.

No one gets to do this in business. Not even Steve Jobs.

That’s why we revere artists. They’re above the fray.

But now the artists have become beholden to the businessmen. Or they’re businessmen themselves. Hell, if your goal is have a perfume and clothing line, you’re in the land of expedience. It’s not like you’re creating breakthroughs, you only want the money, the cold hard cash. Furthermore, these so-called “artists” listen to their labels, agents and managers, who are businessmen themselves, with different priorities. The way it works is the artist is on top of the pyramid, everybody works for him. But it hasn’t been that way in a very long time. Not since Tommy Mottola and his ilk made much more cash than any artist and every artist’s career seemed to last a nanosecond. The businessmen gained control of music and instead of fighting to get it back, the artists capitulated.

Which brings us back to the quote above. Most people don’t get a say. Because you’re not an artist. Maybe you can play your instrument and put your songs up on iTunes, but that doesn’t make you an artist, any more than playing sandlot ball makes you a major leaguer. Only a few people get to play in the big leagues. And if you think these are well-rounded friends to all, you’ve never met one. Successful artists are narcissists. Who only care about themselves and their careers. You come second. Whether you’re the girlfriend or the manager, it makes no difference. Hell, if you’re a manager you’re just a day away from getting fired. If you’re not moving the ball forward, you’re in jeopardy. Hell, you can be doing great work and still lose your job, because the artist is mercurial and impressionable.

Most people have no idea what it takes to make it. They think it’s about putting in 10,000 hours practicing in their bedroom. Hell, you’ve got to do that, but you’ve also got to live on ramen, eat from dumpsters, use and abuse your significant other and still probably not make it. Those who succeed have run a gauntlet akin to fighting a war. And once they’ve emerged triumphant no one is gonna take the fruits of their labor away. Artists sleep with one eye open, always fearful of falling down the ladder. Money isn’t enough, fame is just as important. They’re not satisfied to be retired in Florida at their mansion, they want and need you to pay attention. Forever.
The above quote comes from an essay in the “New York Times” from a professional bicycle racer. He doped. He explained why. You couldn’t win without it. Oh, he’s anti-doping now. But the point is he put in all that time, years of practice, and he wanted to win. So he shaved the edges.

Which is what artists do every single day.

If you think an artist is trustworthy, you’ve never met one.

If an artist has kids, he doesn’t spend much time with them.

An artist thinks only his opinion counts. Contradict him and you’d better have a lot of history and power, something the artist wants, or you’re banished.

Are you ready to sign up for this?

I’ve been sick as a dog.

You see I was hanging with Roland Orzabal, who told me his son was in an outdoor play in Bristol, and it’d been raining all summer, and his boy had gotten sick, and the illness had spread itself throughout the family, they’d just all been to the doctor.

Didn’t mean a thing to me back in the seventies. We used to share Pepsis, we were immune to germs. But then I caught a cold, and I got older, and I won’t say I refuse to shake someone’s hand, but I do know people who won’t go places where someone else is sick. Yup, in a can-do society, we don’t want anyone who can’t. We require everybody to be in tip-top shape all the time.

But Roland seemed fine to me.

So I shook his hand and it wasn’t long before I too was under the weather.

But I toughed it out. Six days later I was fully recovered. Without missing that much of a step. I was back in action.

And then I ran around a bit. Well, more than a bit. And last Monday I went to the Bowl to see Aerosmith, and when I woke up the next morning…

I felt like I’d been hit in the head with a brick. I couldn’t even stand in the shower. I figured it was the loud music. That’s what the pain on the side of my head was all about, some weird result of wearing an earplug on that side and not the other. Yes, Tyler sat us feet from the stage, in the pool box. And after fifteen minutes of Brad Whitford’s guitar, who knew he was this talented?, I had to move. Or go deaf.

And we found box seats.

But we never did find Tyler thereafter. He took off for Pink Taco with his buddy Johnny Depp, who’d come out and played “Train Kept A Rollin'” on his Les Paul, quite well, in fact, and after connecting with Ron Jeremy and Mitch Schneider and the assembled multitude, I went home.

And I would have decompressed longer, but Lupe was coming in the a.m. to clean Felice’s house, so I got in the bed and slept…for an hour. And then two more. I was tossing and turning like Flipper. And when I finally arose…that’s when I had that left side headache.

Do you call an ambulance?

I’m prone to panic. I’m either going zero or a hundred miles an hour. It was illegal to be sick when I was growing up. If I told my mother I was ill, she’d say go to school, see if I felt better, her mom was a hypochondriac and she had no tolerance for complainers.

And this has gotten me in trouble. Sometimes you need to go to the doctor. And eventually I did. Two days later. Got to credit Felice for that, I would have hesitated forever and not done this. And I got this nasal spray and a Z-Pak for if I didn’t feel better by Saturday, which I didn’t, and I took it and I’m finally feeling decent, today I’ve turned the corner. So I want to tell you about this book “Gone Girl.”

Maybe you’re paying attention.

But probably not. Most people don’t read books. Then again, they’re reading ” Fifty Shades of Grey .” The publisher has moved in excess of 20 million copies in the U.S.

20 Million Shades of Green: Racy Book Hits Milestone

A huge percentage of them digital. Hell, “Fifty Shades of Grey” doesn’t top the print best seller list. ” Gone Girl ” does.

Yes, it’s the number one best seller. And I wasn’t gonna read it. Because I’m not into genre books, mysteries. Because you end up reading for plot and only plot. And I hate skeletal books. Give me a bit of description, flesh out the story a bit, just don’t write a movie script.

But then I read in “Entertainment Weekly” that ” Gone Girl ” was a “literary read.” As in a “real book.” And the columnist compared it to Jeffrey Eugenides’s “The Marriage Plot.” Did you read that? I won’t say it’s unreadable, but I will say it’s unsatisfying. And this was before I knew the author of “Gone Girl,” Gillian Flynn, once upon a time wrote for “Entertainment Weekly,” and writers are a backslapping bunch, forever doing each other favors, but I took the bait, I bought it.

And I’m gonna tell you very little about it. Because I don’t want to ruin it.

But I’m gonna tell you to read it.

Because the plot’s interesting. Although there are too many turns. And many believe the end is unsatisfying…

OOPS! Sorry, I screwed up there. I like to go into a book cold, and when a friend told me the end wasn’t as good as the beginning, it stuck with me, and I don’t want to ruin your experience, it’s just that…

The writer nails men and women. Relationships.

That’s all that matters anyway, people. You can’t make love to your computer. Without the dirty pictures and the words, it’s meaningless. We’re fascinated with people. How do we relate, how do we interact?

Hang in there for the whole book. Not that the pearls of wisdom don’t come fast and furious. But mating is a game. And perception is key. And Gillian Flynn gets this so right, that I’m recommending this book.

Which won’t be remembered forever.

But chances are you haven’t read a book in eons anyway. And I won’t say “Gone Girl” is impossible to put down, like Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken,” but it’s close. The book calls out to you in the middle of the night. Read me…read me…read me…

And I was mostly done by time I got sick. But I finished it when I was out of the woods but was incapable of writing. And I just don’t want to let it go, let it pass into the ether of history.

Sometimes number one is more than a train-wreck. “Call Me Maybe” may be a trifle, but it’s a good one. “Gone Girl” is deeper than the Carly Rae Jepsen hit, and it’s even more satisfying.

Read it.

And then let’s discuss it…

“‘Guess what Jeff found in his cabin for me?’ Greta says. ‘Another book by the ‘Martian Chronicles’ guy.’

‘Ray Bradburow,’ Jeff says. ‘Bradbury’ I think.

‘Yeah, right. “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” Greta says. ‘It’s good.’ She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It’s good or it’s bad. I liked it or I didn’t. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog.”

And while I’m quoting from the book, here’s a few more:

“I picture them at one of the pricier strip clubs, the posh ones that make men believe they are still designed to rule, that women are meant to serve them, the deliberately bad acoustics and thwumping music so no one has to talk, a stretch-titted woman straddling my husband…”

STRETCH-TITTED? Wow, she gets this exactly right. Whether it be the pole-dancers or Kate Beckinsale before she had her implants removed, we all notice, but we never talk about it.

“It is a do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police investigation. Go online and fucking figure it out for yourself because everyone’s overworked and overstaffed.”

Whew! We can’t get answers anymore. Whether it be at the department store or Facebook. I’ve never seen it put better.

“Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it’s their kryptonite.”

Which is why Brooklynites look down their noses at Midwesterners. Sarah Palin understands this, but she’s too stupid to understand the other side, she’s completely irony-challenged.

And speaking of stupid:

“This is the hardest part: waiting for stupid people to figure things out.”

 

“It was one of the few stories we told the same way.”

That’s the story of being in a relationship! You lived through the same events, but you always tell the story differently. Except sometimes…

“Our kind of love can go into remission, but it’s always waiting to return.”

I posit that’s the story of all love.

Fiction, when done right, is all about truth. There’s enough truth in “Gone Girl” to keep you reading. Dig in.

” Gone Girl “

She won the gold last night.

In case you were oblivious to the hype, last night, in a counterprogramming move against the Olympics, Comedy Central premiered its roast of Roseanne. And Amy Schumer stole the show.

Who is Amy Schumer?

Damned if I know.

Well, I know a little. I heard her on Stern. She was kinda funny and kinda endearing. On late night TV, comedians just do their material, it’s an excerpt of their act, it’s a tease, to get you to partake, hell, everyone’s selling. But on Stern, it’s about the information, the backstory, how you got from there to here. And what I learned was that Amy was a nice Jewish girl…what I mean is she didn’t have one of those hellish backgrounds that cause people to flaunt their dirty laundry in public…who graduated from college, in Maryland, and was on the comedy road.

You remember that road, right? It used to end at the comedy clubs. But then everybody got a sitcom and that became the holy grail. Kinda like being a recording artist and begging to be a judge on “American Idol” or “The Voice” or “X Factor.” Oops, isn’t that what Alanis Morissette is doing right now?

You’re a singer, goddamnit.

And what we love most about our favorite comedians is the material. The jokes. The stand-up. When they’re out on the wire, risking it all in front of a live audience, instead of repeating canned lines written by soporific Harvard graduates slumming after working for the “Lampoon.”

And that was what was so great about last night’s roast. It was comedy, pure and simple. Walking up to the line and frequently crossing it. Because we don’t know exactly where it is unless we journey to the other side.

You’d never get me on one of these things. My skin is not thick enough. No one was left unscathed. But the dirtiest work was done by Amy Schumer.

Who?

In today’s media megalopolis, not only are we unexposed to so much, sometimes we haven’t even heard of you. That guy hosting the VMAs, Kevin Hart. I could be like you, and self-satisfiedly say I’ve been tracking his career for years, but the truth is I’m clueless. I might have heard his name, but I know none of his jokes, whether he’s on TV or just performing in clubs.

To reach critical mass, you’ve got to get in the game and stay there. Wait for your moment, and when it arrives, you must KILL!

Check Amy Schumer’s Wikipedia page:

Amy Schumer Wikipedia

Only in music and movies do people become famous overnight. Without chops. Sailing by on their punims. In comedy, you’ve got to earn your stripes. As you do in computer programming, law, medicine and the rest of the professions. If you see nitwits doing it, it’s probably not worth paying attention to. Because greatness takes time. And reveals itself slowly.

So you think you just want to be on the big show. And close it.

Here Amy just about opened. After her, everybody was an afterthought. Because she wasn’t worried about being liked by the panel. She didn’t play it safe, she immediately went for the jugular and SQUEEZED!

Everybody’s always playing nice, kissing ass. But what made Amy’s performance triumphant was she was doing the act without winking, she was up on the high wire, not looking down, but performing tricks, we could only sit at home and marvel.

So you’ve got to pay your dues.

And you’ve got to wait for your chance.

And when you get it, you can’t be good, you’ve got to be GREAT!

And I didn’t see Amy on the front page of today’s “New York Times.” She’s nowhere where you can quantify success. No Nielsen, no SoundScan. Because success is not something you count, but feel.

If you were watching last night, you witnessed a groundbreaking, historical appearance, Amy Schumer pulling herself up into the big leagues all by lonesome. And I don’t know if she wrote all the jokes, but she certainly delivered them. Because it’s one thing to write the songs, it’s another to perform them.

Just ask Prince. He slayed us at the Super Bowl and has been on a victory lap ever since.

Amy Schumer’s performance last night was thrilling. We live for these moments. When one of us, a human being, casts off the chains of society, digs down deep and WAILS!

________

Because of rights issues, you can’t see an authorized version of Amy’s performance online, for that you’ve got to tune in on TV. And that sucks, because you want your breakthrough moment available, forever. Still, you can see the entire performance here:

http://bit.ly/Qw0sxL
This video has been removed by the user.

And the sound is bad and you won’t get the jokes, so you can see authorized excerpts here:

Amy Schumer – Women’s Gymnastics Team

And here:

Amy Schumer – Wayne Brady & Carrie Fisher

TV is experienced alone, on the couch, on the bed. We’re waiting for someone to reach out and grab us, shake us both awake and alive. These moments are rare. Last night’s was one of them.

P.S. Normally show business is seen as one big club, a giant high school where everybody’s friends and not a bad word is said. Watch the reaction shots during Amy’s set. Jane Lynch is uncomfortably squirming, Ellen Barkin doesn’t know what hit her. And only Amy could nail Jeff Ross:

“You look like Krusty the Clown dressed as Joe Paterno!”