I know it’s counterintuitive, but think about it.

I was on the phone with a publisher, he was encouraging me to do a book. In the conversation he revealed he was a big Ryan Adams fan, even e-mailed me the one released track from his new album

Lucky Now – Ryan Adams

And in our discussion of Ryan’s work, from Whiskeytown to the doldrums, I told him about this article I’d written about this spectacular show at the House of Blues back in 2001, when "Gold" had just come out. I told him I’d send it to him.

But after finding it on my computer (thank you Spotlight!) I was stunned to find out that it just wasn’t that good. I winced. I didn’t want to send it. I remembered it as being great, but it wasn’t.

That was ten years ago.

I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

Read this article in today’s "New York Times":

"Sell Big or Die Fast"

Technology has become the movie business. You succeed or fail in a weekend. With everybody paying attention your wares are analyzed, combed over to death, and either pass muster or are heaped into the garbage can. If the TouchPad had been manufactured off the radar screen, if the hardware had been brought up to snuff with the software, if they’d developed an ecosystem of apps, maybe HP might have succeeded. Instead they released the product, the mavens were disappointed and word spread instantly, don’t buy this POS.

Whew!

It’s no different in music. You may think you’re ready, but you’re not. You think if you just tell enough people, send e-mail blasts, fill up inboxes with unsolicited MP3s, you’ll make it. But this just turns us off, we’re immune to marketing. We only want to find out about products from friends.

But worse, when we finally check you out, we find out you’re just not that good.

Your mother may say you’re great, your significant other may love you and your music, but the rest of us just shrug our shoulders. Good enough is substandard today. It’s not like the TouchPad didn’t work, it just wasn’t an iPad.

You’re competing with Adele and Gaga and U2 and even the Beatles. People can only listen to one song at one time. And with literally everything at their fingertips, your music must be as great as that of the superstars. And we know it isn’t.

You can be twelve and play good piano for your age and hook up with a famous songwriter and producer and have chart success, but everybody knows there’s no real talent involved. That’d be like a prepubescent topping the "New York Times" Best Seller list, writing a novel and competing with Jonathan Franzen. Doesn’t happen.

Real artists develop. And they struggle.

I’ve got no sympathy for your hard times. Live on nothing, get a day job, borrow from your parents. You’re not the first person to suffer for his art. If you’re great, you’ll find your niche. But there’s no guarantee you’ll be rich. If you want a guarantee get an MBA. There’s more work for them than there is for musicians, hate to break it to you.

There’s a thrill in creation. And breakthroughs happen constantly. But that doesn’t mean you’re ready.

When you are, you’ll find doors opening.

Not a day goes by when some media outlet isn’t looking for a quote from me. Ten years ago, I’d be dying for this recognition. But I didn’t get it because I wasn’t ready yet. And I’m getting older by the day. And being criticized therefor. As if the only art worth consuming is that which is made by people without lines on his face.

But experience is key to greatness. As is hard work. It’s not about the number of hours you put in, but the degree to which you challenge yourself. Learn how to play every Beatles song. Write in that genre yourself. Then throw it all away and you might be on the verge of being ready.

We live in an instant society. But art is the antithesis of this. Art needs to marinate. It’s not sold like a Website and it’s not developed by the school system. Great artists are outsiders who go their own way. They challenge convention. And since they’re doing something different the public is not ready for them until they’re fully-realized. When you can’t be criticized for your playing, when you can sing on key, when you’ve got something to say, then you’ve got a chance of hooking up with the public.

If you make your move too soon, not only will you be rejected, it will be that much harder to get people’s attention in the future.

"I saw that, it sucks!"

That’s what people say. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and in today’s world of media overload, you don’t even get a chance to make a second impression, people don’t have the time.

So be grateful no one cares.

And don’t try to get them to.

Just practice and play in your own backwater.

And then make your art available.

If it’s good, the public will spread the word.

If this doesn’t happen, you’re just not good enough, go back to the drawing board.

And if your mother or your wife or your friends complain that you’re a loser, that’s their problem. To succeed in art you’ve got to walk down the road not taken.

Too many people are unwilling to do this today.

13,197. In a country of 300 million.

That’s piss-poor. That shows you just can’t jam product down people’s throats anymore. The old game is dead. Good riddance.

But you say those sales still qualified Jeff’s album for #25 on the chart, which ain’t bad.

I’ll say, which way do you want to have it. Albums are dead, people would rather buy the single or stealing triumphs.

Or maybe people streamed the tracks on YouTube or Spotify and decided to pass.

That’s another thing that’s died. Buying on the come. The entertainment business is a carnival barker, enticing you to pay first before you see the man behind the curtain, who’s too often a disappointment. Now it’s try before you buy. People take the music out for a test spin, and unless it’s really damn good, they pass.

And if people aren’t buying albums, maybe we’re just not giving them what they want. Adele’s "21" is #2 on the chart after 25 weeks, she sold 80,018 copies in the last seven days for a cume of 3,061,539. That’s a good number in any era, and she’s still on the first single.

But for the sake of argument, let’s just say album sales have tanked. This just means you must take a more holistic approach to your career. You’ve got to make money in more arenas. You’ve got to have a career.

A career is developed over time, you create a bond with the artist, you want to see where he goes.

I’m interested in seeing what choices Jeff Bridges makes in films, but I could care less what he does in music. He’s never hooked me. The hype slid right off my back.

And we no longer know what the hook is. Oftentimes it’s a track, sometimes not even played on the radio. Sometimes it’s a gig, at a festival. Could be a video. Which is why you’ve got to be in the game to get lucky. You just can’t swoop down and steal all the eggs.

This change haunts the major labels. They can run a single up the chart but people still don’t want to see the act live, and that’s where the money is, sales are anemic.

And the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber are fads. Only cool if you watch your budget and get out early, having made your money before investing too much in a nonexistent future.

It’s hard.

And music’s been easy for far too long. It’s been about people with relationships exploiting same. The head of the label hooks you up with songwriters and producers and gets your track on the radio and your album in the store, no one can compete. But now everybody can compete. And the public has choices.

Let me put this in perspective. 13,197 albums sold is not even $130,000 net to the label. They’re deep in the red. Better to spend little in the advent and chase success than blow your wad and be instantly forgotten, like most of the movies that opened last week.

Music is not the movies. Music is about repeatability. The focus is on the artist. If you concentrate on a weekend instead of a decade, you’re screwed.

The Jeff Bridges hype is over. There’s one last television hurrah, on "Austin City Limits", a stab at authenticity and credibility for an audience which wants its artists to prove it to them, who reject interlopers like Bridges.

And then it’s completely over.

No one wants to see him, no one wants to listen to his music. Kaput.

There was not a media outlet that did not cover this release. From "USA Today" to the "New York Times". TV.

But no one cared.

Let this be a lesson to you.

The Internet has leveled the playing field, there is justice in the world.

Are you watching this? It’s so EXCITING!

It’s called the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, but all you’ve got to know is it’s the same crew from the Tour de France, but now they’re racing in Colorado, where the peaks touch the sky.

Yesterday was a time trial. Down in the flats.

Today they rode over Monarch Pass, which tops 11,000 feet, and then after making the turn in Gunnison, they rode up to Crested Butte, the ski village, at 9,400 feet.

There were people breaking away in front. But they ended up falling back into the peloton, which is a hornet’s nest of riders, swarming forward, a teeming mass of testosterone, energy drinks and strategy.

You see the race is not what it seems. Like an army facing battle, riders sacrifice themselves for those who can truly win. They break the wind and then, when they get close to the finish, the superstars emerge. But you never know which ones. The Colombians are legendary climbers, could they eke it out today?

And it’s a free for all. There are people running alongside, bikers are cutting corners, riding on dirt instead of pavement. It’s like the Yankees battling the Red Sox with fans on the field. You get caught up in it. Especially in a world focused on money, with politics so disillusioning, it’s fascinating to watch these well-oiled specimens slug it out.

And tomorrow they’re going to Aspen. Over two passes. Both exceeding 12,000 feet. Where there’s 60% as much oxygen as at sea level. I feel lightheaded getting out of the car on Independence Pass, I’m wondering how in the hell they’re going to ride their bikes over it.

And the whole state of Colorado is bike crazy.

And it’s pouring a ton of money into the economy.

Then again, it’s not free.

And the governor’s a rider, and he didn’t look stupid talking about the sport.

It’s all on TV. Versus, if you get that channel, used to be called Outdoor Life, OLN. It gets a little long and boring like baseball, but the tension at the end is equivalent to the NBA finals, where you wonder how they perform under such pressure.

Sure, it’s niche.

But whereas niches used to be backwaters, with modern communications techniques, niches can rise, can shine, can grow much larger than previously possible.

They’re beaming the images to a helicopter 2,000 feet in the sky. Occasionally the images freeze, they should have done a bit more preparation. But it’s modern technology that’s making this possible, allowing viewers from all over the world to join in.

And what they’re seeing is Mother Nature. Peaks and desert, a landscape that’ll take your breath away.

And when you see the building-sized American flag hanging in Gunnison you feel proud. It’s not a lapel pin worn by miscreants looking to get rich, it’s a badge of honor, saying this is us, we’re here, isn’t it amazing?

It is.

USA Pro Cycling Challenge

Too many people who would like this album will never hear it.

You see country is the new rock and roll. Or, more accurately, the old rock and roll. But it’s wrapped up in so much ass-kissing right wing family values bullshit that there’s a wall through which the music doesn’t penetrate, it lives in its own ghetto, happy as a pig in shit, but it could be so much more.

I don’t want to say this album is fantastic, but I’ll say there’s not one moment when you want to pick up the needle and trash it. And then you hang in there long enough to hear winners like "Boys From The South" and "Family Feud".

Country music too often plays to the lowest common denominator. When they start singing about babies and church I puke. It’s like the CD should come with the minivan. The boys all wear cowboy hats and the girls wear cowboy boots and it’s so inauthentic you want to dismiss it out of hand. But if you do you miss so much.

Just listen to Keith Urban’s "Stupid Boy", especially the long guitar instrumental. If Jerry Garcia were still alive he’d be asking Keith to sit in.

And Miranda Lambert’s "Gunpowder & Lead" rocks harder than the work of the Brooklyn shoegazers.

But too many people don’t hear this music.

Now I’m not sure Pistol Annies will sell that well, because the album doesn’t have the obvious big hits. That’s how we’ve been selling albums for the last decade or two. By bait and switch. We load ’em up with singles and you find out there’s nothing holding them together, they’re like swiss cheese, full of holes. And then there are albums like this, collections that hang together but are minus the radio showstoppers. But it’s albums like this that make us fans, make us want to go see the act live, make us want to hear what the act is up to next.

You see it comes down to music, not fame. And I can’t stop listening to Pistol Annies. Because they’re not working hard to convince me they’re the shit, because they’re not banging me over the head to pay attention. Sure, there’s the hype in newspapers, the glitzy website, but they’re just obscuring the music, this is good music. You could go to the gig and let your mind drift, tap your feet a bit, leave feeling like you got something you couldn’t get anywhere else, that you weren’t an endless cog in the money machine.

The single is "Hell On Heels". It’s good, but doesn’t live up to its initial promise. Starts off all swampy and moody, a slowed-down country "Gimmie Shelter", then great harmonies and a good change, but it’s just a bit too sing-songy, not quite memorable enough, in other words, the song doesn’t go anywhere.

But I love the aforementioned "Boys From The South". It’s got the country intimacy of Neil Young’s "Harvest", albeit without the attitude. It’s an aural movie, a great antidote to the two-dimensional crap being forced down our throat.

And "Family Feud" may seem like an outtake from a Dixie Chicks album, but is that such a bad thing? The Chicks spoke the truth and for that they were excommunicated? Are we really so big on Bush and Iraq and Afghanistan these days? Polls say otherwise. But ain’t that America, the knee-jerk reaction, the drawing of lines when we’re really all in it together.

And the dirty little secret is those on the margins of both the left and right have a lot in common. They’re both disillusioned with the government, mad at corporations, could what happened in the Middle East happen here?

Yup.

If we come together instead of fighting while the bad men make all the money.

There’s no reason left wing liberals can’t eat up Pistol Annies.

And although the trappings might lean right, the music here is positively dead center. We’ve all got problems, we’re all trying to get along. That’s what Pistol Annies are singing about.

And the music is no secret if you’re a country fan, Miranda Lambert is a star.

But if they’d only take off their cowboy boots and leave their smugness at the door…

And if the city rockers pooh-poohing the "ignorant" folks down south would realize that all the real playing and singing comes from Nashville, maybe we could meet in between.

This music isn’t for everybody.

But it’s for a lot more people than what’s being played on Top Forty.

They say rock is dead, radio stations are dropping like flies. But that’s wrong, rock is flourishing, just turn on the country radio, there might be some banjos, but underneath it’s all rock and roll. You’ll like it.

"Family Feud"

"Boys From The South"

"Hell On Heels"

"Stupid Boy"

"Gunpowder & Lead"