If the Big Man can die, so can I.

Bruce Springsteen hasn’t written a hit in years.  But we go to the show to remember.  Who we once were.  When we had hope, when we believed, when we still had hair, when we were skinny.

Danny Federici was bad enough.  Then again, there’s been some change in the group.  David Sancious used to play in the E Street Band.  And Max wasn’t the original drummer.  And Nils Lofgren broke through with Neil Young.  And Miami Steve left and then came back.

But there’s no Springsteen without Bruce.

And there’s really no E Street Band without Clarence Clemons.

Not only was the Big Man on the cover of "Born To Run", the breakthrough album, he signified that Bruce was something different, not a me-too act.  Springsteen might have been labeled a Dylan wannabe, but when they finally turned up the band on the second record, and Landau enriched the sound on the third, the music was as far away from Dylan as Asbury Park is from Hibbing.

I bought that first album.  And as good as "It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City" was, "Spirit In The Night" was the keeper. Because of the sax.

And "Rosalita" was the keeper on the follow-up album.  For the same reason.  The explosion of pure joy.  When Bruce sings about the record company giving him a big advance you feel like it happened to a member of your family, you’re not envious in a twenty first century way, wondering how come you haven’t gotten yours, but thrilled that someone you know has made it.

And then came "Born To Run".  If you’d been following at this point, the sax was not a surprise.  It was an integral part of the group.

Then there was the end of "Jungleland".  That lonely sax spoke of nothing so much as despair.  That’s the flip side of rock and roll.  The exuberance and then the solitary feeling that you’re Wall-E, alone in a city without heart, without hope.

And what do you do when you feel this way?  Put on a record!  It’s the only thing that gets you through!

Springsteen changed with "Born In The U.S.A."  He tried to become what we didn’t want him to be.  Everybody else’s.

But he redeemed himself with "Tunnel Of Love".  Listen to the title track.  That’s love, a ride on a roller coaster in the dark.

"Lucky Town" was the better album, but the title track of "Human Touch" was pure Bruce.  Anthemic without being meaningless.  Bruce was not Gene Simmons, he wasn’t asking for your attention.

Ironically, that was Clarence’s gig.  He could be everything the Boss was not.  Flamboyant.  A cheerleader.  Clarence could enjoy the success when Bruce could not.

But no longer.

Like Ian Hunter, we were shocked to find out how old Clarence Clemons was.  We think all our stars start out in garages and are on their way by twenty one.

But it takes others time to find their way.  Their life experiences enrich their music.  They’re one step ahead of us.

Then they’re gone.

It was bad enough he had a stroke.  Dick Clark had one of those, he may not speak well, but he’s alive.  Same with Kirk Douglas, hell, he was on the Oscars.

As long as Clarence Clemons was alive so were our hopes and dreams.  On some level I’d just graduated from college, the E Street Band was on the stage at the Bottom Line, it was still a year away from "Born To Run", never mind law school, marriage and decay.

But then he died.

I found out the way you do now.  On my BlackBerry.

And the e-mail got me frantically searching.

There was a link to TMZ.  But I wouldn’t believe it until a Twitter search confirmed it.

The Big Man had finally left the band.

Like Bill Murray said in "Stripes", one day Tito Puente’s gonna die and you’re gonna say you’ve been listening to him for years!

One day Clarence Clemons is gonna die and he won’t be a secret.  We’ll all say we’ve been listening to him for years.

It’s sad.  For him.

And for us.

So put on a smile, let your freak flag fly, get behind the wheel of that convertible and floor it!

It’s fucking great to be alive.  Seize the moment.

Clarence may die, but the music survives.

Crank it!

The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys

"Life flows on within you and without you…"

George Harrison actually SAYS THAT!  About Roy Orbison.

Stop everything.  Really.  Pull this movie up immediately.  Because it’s gonna evaporate in a matter of hours.

Then again, does anything ever really go pfftt in the Internet age?  Or is it just resuscitated by some pirate making sure it doesn’t fade away but radiates?

The sun just came out in Southern California.  And watching this video will lift the sadness from your eyes. This is the pure essence.  Watching this your only desire is to go hang out in the studio yourself.

Hanging out online ain’t bad.  But it’s nothing like the real thing.

And back before the whole world was democratized, we had a superior race, not rich fucks, but rock stars. They ruled our world.  We believed if we could only meet them, our lives would be irreparably changed, we’d be happy forever more, fulfilled.

This could be one of the great rock films of all time.  Because of its simplicity, its honesty, because it captures a moment in time, the zeitgeist, five players at the top of their game coming together to create something spontaneously…

George Harrison?  He hasn’t gotten his due.  He died and people forgot that he created so many of those riffs.

And Bob Dylan?  He’s the crusty old enigmatic bastard with barely any voice who you can see but you cannot touch.

But here Bob is like your next door neighbor.  Unguarded, fully alive.

And George is truly alive.  A Beatle not luxuriating on his laurels, but soldiering on in creativity.

Roy Orbison is a living legend who’s dead now too and Tom Petty is the luckiest guy in the world. Sometimes, you’re in the right place at the right time.  Just a generation behind, your elders stumble upon you and anoint you, they welcome you into the club, they believe that you’re just that good.

And if the organizer, the true glue is George, the man who makes it all work is Jeff Lynne, who was just coming into his fame as a producer.

We’ve listened to these records ad infinitum.  How did they make them?  What did it look like?  How did they come up with the words?

This film answers all those questions.

You’re the fly on the wall.

Music, when done right, exists in its own separate universe.  Unencumbered by the outside world, it’s pure, that’s its magnetism.

You can trot out your bank book all day, tell us about your endorsements, but anyone can do that.  Can you be cool, can you have charisma, can you create great music out of nothing…

That’s what a rock star can do.

This film is both riveting and inspirational.  It reminds me of why I’m a music fan and why I live in Southern California.

I just had to get closer to the sound.  Its power was undeniable.

Never forget that the boy band juggernaut was concocted and executed by a roly-poly man in Florida who had visions but no connections.

You see success in the arts always takes place in the head.  It’s conception.  Creativity comes in a burst. Who has the perseverance to make it real?

The story about Amanda Hocking in today’s "New York Times" is littered with details you won’t care about. But focus on the endless rejection and the dedication to make it.  Along with the inspiration of Mark Hoppus of Blink-182.

That’s what great music does.  Inspire you.  Keeps you going when no one else will pay attention, when they’re pissing on your dreams if they’re aware of them at all.  Put on that record and let your freak flag fly.

Well, not exactly.  Amanda Hocking was cold and calculating.  She delivered books she believed would sell.  Which is why when we ask why no outsider has triumphed in the music game we’ve got to point out that they’re all trying to be hip and cool, whereas he who wins without a major label…will be positively mainstream.

The music will be catchy.  With great vocals.  Harmonies.  Not only choruses, but bridges.

The breakthrough will come not from Brooklyn, but somewhere far from hipdom, where a young soul is creating to get out of the hole he’s in, to make it.

The gatekeepers don’t know.

Repeat that to yourself.  You’re as smart as they are, probably smarter.  Because you know the target audience.  What does a fiftysomething male know about what kids desire?  Radio doesn’t know either, otherwise it wouldn’t do research!

You’re the expert.

Amanda Hocking started telling stories and writing when she was still in her single digits.  This is the 10,000 hour phenomenon.  In other words, if you woke up yesterday and decided you wanted to be a rock star, you’re in trouble.

She got better as time went by.  She honed her chops.

Then she created what she believed the audience wanted and put it into the marketplace.

Here’s the key…  Repeatability!  Does someone hear something once and need to hear it again?  People couldn’t stop reading Hocking’s books, they needed to read one more chapter before putting out the light.  In other words, if I have to play your song many times to get it, chances are you’ll never be that big.

But if I only need to hear it once…

That’s the magic of "Friday".  Don’t wince.  Ark Factory looked at the landscape and delivered a lowest common denominator version of what was popular.  Spent almost nothing to make it.  There was gargantuan success.  Which would not have happened if you could get the damn song out of your head.

Can you create something that catchy?  Rebecca Black may have been a nitwit newbie, but the Ark Factory guys were not, they’d paid some dues.  And YouTube blew them up.

You don’t need the major label.  You don’t need radio.  All you need is yourself.  If you create something that hooky, something that entrancing, all you’ve got to do is put it up online and it’ll flourish.

But notice there are not a plethora of Amanda Hockings.  Because only the best and the brightest, the top of the elite, make it in the democratic Web/self-publishing world.  Without all the marketing, without all the hype, all you’ve got is the naked product and it had better be damn good.

Amanda Hocking’s story is inspirational.  It’s gonna happen in all creative industries.  Because the gatekeepers just don’t know.  I’m gonna let you in on a secret, they never knew!  It’s just that you could not play without them.

Now you can.

Just like Amanda Hocking wrote the books in her head before she put fingers to keyboard, think before you create music.  And make a lot of it.  Hocking writes a book in two to four weeks.  If you’re polishing an album for years, you’re doing it wrong.  Keep writing and producing songs until you have the one, people don’t care about the chaff, they’ll find the wheat.

P.S. The fact that Amanda Hocking ultimately signed with a major is irrelevant.  First and foremost, book distribution is not as refined, not as up to date as it is in the music world, where iTunes is dominant and everyone can get on there.  And even if we posit that fat cats ultimately poach the independent artists, which is doubtful, they’re going to have to pay dearly for the privilege.  The majority of the spoils will flow to the artist, not the company.  Don’t listen to the B.S. of the majors saying they provide necessary expertise and deserve the lion’s share of the money.  They just want to perpetuate the old system, when you know it’s not only broken, but almost extinct.  You know.  Trust yourself.  Fire up your computer.  Make something so hooky it can’t be denied.

Storyseller

He was famous, but he was broke.

Don’t equate fame with riches, certainly don’t equate it with quality.  But the best artists just don’t understand the system, all they can do is create.  Which is why they get ripped off and become disillusioned, like the two guys in Badfinger who committed suicide.

Wild Man Fischer was an institution.  A club you became a member of in high school or your college dorm.  Someone cool but friendly, not a football player or a cheerleader, would start talking about a record, with a smile on his or her face, and begin singing…

Merry-go
Merry-go
Merry-go-round

Huh?

It all came down to Frank Zappa.  Who didn’t kowtow to the mainstream, rather barged in upon it.  He didn’t wait for mass success to create a vanity label, signing acts that sound nothing like him to get rich, like Madonna did with Maverick, rather early in his career Frank started two labels, Bizarre and Straight, to sign acts that aligned with his sensibility.  Those that were just a little bit different.  That caused the audience to think.  That could not be ignored.  There was Captain Beefheart.

And Larry "Wild Man" Fischer.

You remember the cover of that initial double album.  With his electric hair?

Maybe you don’t.  Maybe you’re just too young.  Maybe you equate music with money, learning about the riches of Led Zeppelin or seeing all those acts on MTV.

But once upon a time, it was about music.

And it was certainly about creativity.

Could you question convention?

There was an irreverence that doesn’t exist today.  Even SNL, it winks at not only its audience, but its network.  Really, we’re safe, we want to go on to movie careers.

But once upon a time, SNL was dangerous.

And when Belushi imitated Cocker we all got the joke.  Because we’d all seen the "Woodstock" movie.  Because we were all beholden to music, the hippest medium.

Actually, we’re at the beginning of a new golden era.  You don’t need a tastemaker or a bank or a label to play.  Then again, not only have we not yet found the new Frank Zappa, we’ve got tons of barely talented wannabes, doing it for a while before they sell out to the corporation, hopefully.

Zappa was a lifer.  He made music, that’s what he did.  He didn’t want to be broke, but he didn’t change careers because music did not pay enough.

Wild Man Fischer was a lifer too.

Until now.

Larry "Wild Man" Fischer just died.  Read the below obituaries, they’re pretty good.

And it’s not so much his music we mourn, but the era.  When music surprised you, when it was peopled by the best and the brightest, when instead of trying to get in bed with the man, you didn’t trust him.

Frank signed Alice Cooper.  The GTOs.  It was all outrageous.

But not without meaning.

It’s the end of an era…

"Merry-Go-Round"

Larry ‘Wild Man’ Fischer dies at 66; vagabond singer made albums with Frank Zappa

Wild Man Fischer, Outsider Musician, Dies at 66