"The blackest despair that can take hold of any society is the fear that living honestly is futile."

-Italian journalist Corrado Alvaro, quoted in the Sydney Australian

Via "The Week"

This is what bothers people. The belief that the game is rigged, that if they play by the rules they just can’t win. And winning doesn’t mean a private jet and an island vacation but the ability to put food on the table under your own roof after doing a hard day’s work. It’s not that we believe rich people should cough up all their dough, but how is it that hedge fund management fees are taxed at capital gains rates when they’re guaranteed? Oh yeah, they own Congress, that’s what money buys you.

Same deal with the copyright police. Mickey Mouse is about to go into the public domain so Michael Eisner sics Disney lobbyists on D.C. and suddenly the term is extended. Huh? So if you want to use Mickey to add a little brightness to your business, you can’t.

It’s not how much is too much but the fact that we can’t get ours.

Now the younger generation is different. They believe in honesty and transparency. Try convincing an educated young ‘un he should be screwed by the record company. It’s almost impossible to do. That’s why those who want to succeed on their music instead of the trappings want nothing to do with the Big Four.

Shouldn’t the music be enough?

The banks blew up the country and were rescued by the government. Constituents purchased overpriced houses run up in value by the financial shenanigans and now that they’re underwater there’s no relief.

And if you think you can make it from the bottom to the top, you’re dreaming. You need that Ivy League education, you need to know the right people, people you’ve got no chance of ever encountering. As for living on your public employee salary…you’re the problem with America, don’t you know? Not Goldman Sachs, but you… Just like homeowners created the mortgage problem.

This is not a left or right issue. The gap between rich and poor has demoralized a vast swath of our country. Hell, I feel it myself. I went to school with these people. But no matter how hard I try I can never make the money they do. As for those so rich in the music business… I can get a good concert ticket, I know people. But the average person cannot. That’s what’s keeping StubHub in business, the ability to get a good seat. You might have to overpay, but at least you’ve got a chance. Logging into Ticketmaster you don’t.

And it’s not a Ticketmaster problem. It’s an artist greed problem. The artists could solve this problem but they don’t want to. They want to live the life of the bankers too. Everybody’s trying to climb a greased pole, pushing those below them down. Yet we still can’t get to the top.

This issue spontaneously combusted. Just like the Arab spring. It’s not like the connivers on Wall Street only started today, like we just found out, their misdeeds have been in plain sight for three years. But finally, people have had too much.

I’ve had too much. Have you?

So I’m listening to William Shatner on Howard Stern. And he says he owes his career to saying yes, if anybody asks, that’s what he says. He’s open to any idea, because you never know the end result.

That didn’t sound right to me. Because if it’s not right, I don’t want to play. It’s my name on the line. One false move…

And the very next day Howard decried choices Conan O’Brien had made. The nature of radio is I didn’t hear exactly what he was talking about, I got in the car thereafter. But when Howard was done ranting, saying Conan should have said no, Robin asked him about William Shatner…

And Howard chortled. Said that’s why people laugh at Shatner. That Bill should have said no more often.

Now if you’re an actor, you’re playing a role. It’s not you.

But if you’re a musician, and you’re doing it right, it’s solely about you. If you compromise your values, if you do what you don’t want to, you’re gonna pay the price.

I know, you want to make it so bad, you don’t want to be difficult.

But I’ll let you in on a secret, the most successful artists are impossible. Case in point, Van Morrison. And so many of the other stars with a nice image, they employ someone to say no, so they don’t look like an asshole.

But when you’re starting out, it’s hard to hire a spokesman, hard to have someone on your team. It’s just you. But you must still say no.

If the deal isn’t right, don’t think it’s gonna get better.

If someone wants you to change your image, wear outfits, sing someone else’s material, don’t think they’re going to suddenly let you be yourself.

You can’t be a tool of the man.

You’ve got the vision of success. Everybody else comes and goes, from manager to label. Too many of these people have their own agendas. They want you to say yes so they can make their percentage, so they can make their bonus. You’ve got to be your own manager. Until you train someone to think like you.

There’s no such thing as a missed opportunity if you’re truly great. Those opportunities return. Actually, that’s the best way to get more money, saying no. If they really want you, they’ll up the offer. And sometimes it’s not about money, you don’t want to do it at any price. Leave the money on the table, there’s no payment that will equal the death of your career.

You have to value yourself. You have to trust yourself.

This doesn’t mean you have to rant and rave and be a tyrant. Then again, when you decline offers, so many others rant and rave. Ignore them. You’re just a pawn in their game.

And just because everybody else does something, that does not mean you should too.

Just because everybody else ties in with corporations and makes perfume deals and has a clothing line that doesn’t mean it’s gonna work for you. You’re selling your music. The rest is penumbra, hardly vital. You can make quick cash, but at what cost? The public sees you selling out and wonders…whose side are you on? That’s the question of the Wall Street protests. Artists have a direct relationship with their fans. Abusing this is career suicide.

So stand your ground. And when it feels right, excel, don’t mess up your chance!

You either have it or you don’t.

That was Billy Beane’s take. The aged scouts would always see potential. Billy thought potential was bullshit. Instead of fantasizing about tomorrow’s statistics, it was better to look at what the player had already accomplished. The only dreaming done was by the players who wanted to be in the big leagues. Then again, many didn’t even do this, because they didn’t possess the qualities the scouts were looking for… And what were scouts looking for first and foremost? Players who LOOKED RIGHT!

Yes, the best indicator of future performance was your god-given looks. Didn’t matter if you could really hit the ball, if you had the physique, they were interested. They’d teach you how to employ those muscles to power home runs. Only this rarely happened.

Sound familiar?

The major labels are in decline, but if you want to sign with one, you’d better look the part. You’d better not be difficult. They want artists they can mold. But the best artists are unmoldable.

The best label ever was run by Mo Ostin. Warner Brothers. Mo specialized in finding true artists and letting them do their thing. This is positively scary to business people, but this is the key to long term success.

Finding someone who can already play, who’s performed gigs, who’s got an audience. That’s a better strategy than starting from scratch. Which is why the Warner catalog is so valuable today and Arista’s is not. Clive made stars, through smoke and mirrors, via publicity and promotion, engaging the best songwriters to prop up the image. But mostly it was image. The tracks were successes, but the performers were empty vessels.

But the Dead and Prince and Neil Young… They’re still working today. Their songs are being played on the radio. They had it to begin with. Might have taken them some time to find their way, but there was no development by the label, no coaching, no cowriting, they were on their own road of discovery.

Now things are different today. Major labels are in the Top Forty business. Which is so hollowed out, even the audience doesn’t believe these people are artists, entitled to a career.

And there’s no sieve to separate the wannabes from the true artists in the rest of the world.

But I’ll make it simple.

If you’re getting no reaction, you’re not doing it right. That’s today’s test. Not whether a middle man will sign you, but whether the audience believes in you, wants to hear more.

As for longevity, you’ve got to have a body of work, you’ve got to stand for something. You’ve got to convince the audience you’re real. Everybody loves a catchy ditty, but that doesn’t mean they believe you’re gonna last.

Look at Rebecca Black. She and her delusional mother can’t see "Friday" was a fluke. She should stay in school. Laugh at her success. Because it’s all she’s gonna get.

But forgetting the ridiculous, let’s look at Owl City. The guy had a hit, now his career is shit, almost nonexistent. Whereas Bon Iver hasn’t had a hit, but he can play multiple theatre gigs in Los Angeles, thousands of people a night, because he’s got an army of believers.

It’s not about casting a wide net and trying to catch everybody. It’s about starting with ones and twos and trying to build a sustainable base. And these people will spread the word much better than any high-priced publicity campaign.

You’ve got to get good on your own. Your potential should be innate. It should not be dependent on the glommed-on work of the usual suspects. If you can’t do it by yourself, you’re not gonna last.

These tracks have nothing in common other than I discovered them listening to XM’s Loft.

I didn’t want satellite radio, didn’t need it, but when Lee Abrams reached out and insisted they put a radio in my car I acceded, eventually. And the very first day I was blown away, when I heard Steve Miller’s "Seasons" on Deep Tracks, a phenomenal cut from "Brave New World" which I’d never heard on the radio ever. I was closed. Immediately.

But Deep Tracks featured oldies. I discovered some unknown cuts, like the twenty minute version of Fleetwood Mac’s "Rattlesnake Shake", but it was the other station on my presets that fascinated me, the aforementioned Loft, which was programmed by one person and one person only, Mike Marrone.

He had a way of excavating nuggets, that were in my mind, that I thought only I knew.

And he also had the ability to find the one track by an act I knew but had never cottoned to that made me a fan overnight.

Here are some of my greatest discoveries:

1. "Motel Blues" Loudon Wainwright

Just one man and his guitar is enough. If he knows how to get it right. And Loudon Wainwright III does. None of the endless seventies hype reached me, but hearing this cut once on the Loft opened my eyes and made me a fan.

There are multiple iterations of this song. My favorite is the live one in which Loudon tells an audience member to shut up. But every version is good. You just can’t wreck a great song.

Everybody thinks the life of a traveling musician is glamorous. The lights, the groupies. But talk to someone who’s been there, especially those who are not superstars, and you hear tales of desperation…

In this town television shuts off at two
What can a lonely rock and roller do

Hard to believe, but in the seventies, television was not 24/7, you just couldn’t turn on the box and zone out, unless you were thrilled by the test pattern.

The bed’s so big and the sheets are clean
Your girlfriend said you were 19
The styrofoam ice bucket is full of ice
Come up to my motel room, treat me nice

How creepy is that? He’s almost begging.

I don’t wanna make no late night New York calls
I don’t wanna stare at those ugly grass mat walls
Chronologically I know you’re young
But when you kissed me in the club you bit my tongue
I’ll write a song for you and put it on my next LP
Come up to my motel room, sleep with me

Puts a twist on the Taylor Swift paradigm, don’t you think?

This is how the less desirable rock star convinces a reluctant fan to give it up.

There’s a Bible in the drawer don’t be afraid
I’ll put up the sign to warn the cleanup maid
There’s lots of soap and lots of towels
Never mind those desk clerk scowls
I’ll buy you breakfast, they’ll think you’re my wife
Come up to my motel room, save my life

Save my life. That’s what it feels like on the road alone, that you’re never gonna make it through the night. Want to know the truth of the traveling musician? Listen to "Motel Blues".

And it may not have been a hit on the radio, but the musicians know it. There are multiple covers on Spotify, be sure to listen to the one by Big Star.

2. Jay Ferguson "Real Life Ain’t This Way"

This is an anthem. The kind of thing you can listen to for a day straight, it just makes you feel good all over.

Jay Ferguson was never recognized as a genius in Spirit, Randy California got most of the credit, but look back and his fingerprints are all over those records, and if you don’t know "Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus", you’re in for a treat.

When the band split in half, Jay ended up with Jo Jo Gunne. Which I never got, but I now understand after going back after hearing "Real Life Ain’t This Way".

In the winter of ’78, after going solo, Ferguson had a surprise hit with "Thunder Island". Unfortunately, so stunned he’d finally connected, Ferguson went on to repeat the formula, "Shakedown Cruise" was too close to what had come before and Ferguson was dismissed. But on that 1979 album is this gem, the title track.

It’s the keyboard intro, the horn interplay, the way Jay reaches for the high notes…

And a great pre-chorus and a great release when Jay sings the title.

There’s even a bridge!

Jay knows how to write a song.

If you ever liked Pablo Cruise, and "A Place In The Sun" was a marvelous track, if you wear something other than black, you’ll understand this.

And, real life ain’t that way. It’s not like it is in the movies, in books, it’s got twist and turns, it’s disillusioning. Never has such negative sentiment been wrapped in such a beautiful sound.

No, that’s not true. This is what music does best. And it allows you to keep on keepin’ on.

3. Eels "Jeannie’s Diary"

For a while there, this was the most played track in my iTunes library.

I’d purchased "Beautiful Freak", I got it. But hearing "Jeannie’s Diary" made me a fan for life, made me always be interested in what Mark Everett has to say.

Yes, "Jeannie’s Diary" is about obsession. But not the creepy stalker kind, but the type you know, unrequited love, when you’re dying to be around them but you can’t, because your heart starts to pound and you become tongue-tied.

You create an entire fantasy life. Not only sex, but laughter and hanging at the beach and…

If she’d only say yes.

But she never does.

And you never quite get over it.

How does her world spin
Without me in her nest
Could there really be such happiness

How can she live without me?

Oh, she’s got a dark side too
Even murderous
But I love that
Just like her

She’s not a model, she’s not two-dimensional. We don’t fall in love with the pinups, but the imperfect, the ones with rough edges to go along with the smooth. We love everything about them.

Yes I am intense
Maybe quite obsessed
Everything she does is curious

If I had a dollar for every time someone called me "intense"…

That’s what’s wrong with the songs on the hit parade. They’re made for everyone, not me. I look at the movies and I don’t see anybody like me. But I’m in this song.

Oh, she’s going to let me in
I just know it’s so
Then again, who do I kid

Alternately hopeful and then disillusioned and depressed. That’s what a crush, that’s what love from afar, is like.

She could have anything she wants
So why not me
She could have anything she dreams
Oh to be, one single page
One single page
In Jeannie’s diary

Once you start rationalizing, once you stop going for the brass ring, you’re screwed. Either she loves you with all of her head and heart, you’re the one, or you have no chance.

Still, you’d be satisfied with just one night.

And the track sounds like a well-dressed schoolboy making his best pitch.

Whew!

XM merged with Sirius. The Loft still exists, but Mike is not the only deejay.

But when Mike is spinning the records, you never know when one of them is going to sneak up on you and get under your skin.

It’s something Pandora can’t do, it’s got nothing to do with algorithms, none of the above tracks is similar, that’s the essence of music, it’s all different but there’s a thread, a human thread, that’s what Mike establishes. He turned me on to these tracks, they’re now in my DNA.

Spotify link

"Motel Blues" Loudon Wainwright III "Album II"

"Motel Blues" Loudon Wainwright III "Recovery"

"Motel Blues (Demo)" Big Star "Keep An Eye On The Sky"

"Real Life Ain’t This Way" Jay Ferguson "Real Life Ain’t This Way"

"Jeannie’s Diary" Eels "Daisies Of The Galaxy"