Or lack thereof.

The sales figures are in.  Adele beat out Lady Gaga.  At least by the "Hits" numbers.  113,000 and change to 105,000 and change.  (One can ask why the SoundScan and "Hits" numbers are so similar and SoundScan charges so much for theirs but…)

So what do we want to say here?  That sales don’t matter?

Sales are only one piece of the puzzle.

But if you play the Top Forty game you live and die by airplay and sales numbers and in both those spheres, Lady Gaga is anemic.

Now if Gaga is going to launch a new career, something based on fame more than music, she’s got a great launching pad.  Everybody knows her, if not her music (yes, today you can have a number one hit and still be unknown to many…)

But Gaga broke the number one rule of the music industry.

IT’S ABOUT THE MUSIC!

Gaga dropped the ball.  Her album just isn’t good enough.  Ask radio, ask the fans.  She garners attention, but people would rather spin something else.

Doesn’t matter how many Twitter followers you’ve got.  If Twitter was about talent, Ronnie the Limo Driver would be bubbling up, hell, he’s got over 100,000 followers!

Ronnie the Limo Driver?

Yup, he’s Howard Stern’s driver.

Got it?

Twitter followers and Facebook friends are like MySpace friends.  A number that’s got nothing to do with talent and has everything to do with self-promotion.

It’s hard to create great music.

But when you do, the public rallies around you, especially when you’re coming off a fresh round of success.

How many times have we seen this movie?

Peter Frampton, star of the decade.  Released "I’m In You" and he’s just about over, hell, he never recovered.

Maybe if Gaga wants to start a fashion line.

Or wants to run for political office.

But if she’s interested in music she’d better stop the worldwide promotional tour and get back into the studio.  Strip it all down, sit at the piano and convince us she’s real.

Yes, this is what’s wrong with big time fame today.  It’s about marketing more than music.  Play to the middlemen, the ignoramuses at the newspaper, which are run by Luddites and are on the verge of going out of business.  Once upon a time music was cutting edge.  Now it’s just another piece of junk hawked by companies a hell of a lot less savvy than Procter & Gamble.

But one great thing about statistics is they’ll tell you where you are, but not where you’re going.

So Gaga isn’t dead yet.

But she’s pointing in the wrong direction.

And all that hogwash about Interscope picking a release date and sticking to it.  They should have put out the album the day of the first single, before the bloom was off the rose.

Enough with the set-up.

Music isn’t about set-up, music is about the NOW!

A hit touches people’s hearts.  Doesn’t matter if you tour, doesn’t even matter if it sounds like anything else.  You hear it and want to play it again. Others hear it and ask what it is.

Great music sells itself.

I’m not saying a major corporation can’t get you to GO.

But it can’t get you past NO!

The Fame Monster.

Where in that moniker is there anything about music?

What makes Gaga different from Snooki or JWoww?

What makes an artist different is the talent, the creation.

A musical star is nothing without the music.

And we love those most who create the music themselves.  They’ve got a constant well to draw upon called their life.  Otherwise, you’re just at the mercy of hired gun songwriters and businessmen interested in money, not music.

All this hogwash about Polaroid and the alternative retail venues.

Now here’s the truth.  I kind of like Gaga.  She’s us.  She’s not beautiful, she had to work hard to make it.  I’d love to see her turn it around.

But I will not sit here and listen to the bully label tell me what a great success this is.

I will not sit here as the mainstream press twists and turns and states inanities while demonstrating its cluelessness.

Everybody knows who Gaga is.

They know who Rebecca Black is too.

FAME IS NOT EVERYTHING!

MUSIC IS!

Make music your calling card.  No amount of talking about music, whether it be in e-mail or on Facebook or Twitter, is going to make a good song a hit.

Good.  That’s the problem today.

There’s more good stuff than ever before.

But we’re only interested in great.

We’re all time-challenged.  Even the prepubescent.  Music and entertainment are plentiful.

Music is the one art form that goes straight to the heart, that can resonate with a person more than any other.

Respect the music.  Make greatness your goal.

Jimmy Iovine is not a musician.  Nor Irving Azoff.  They can’t make the music and neither can I.

But we all know it when we hear it.

And it turns out most people don’t want to hear Gaga’s music.  They’ve moved on.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Nothing triumphs like great music.  Ticketmaster fees are irrelevant when the act’s hot.  People don’t care about cost, they just want to get closer.

That’s music’s power.

Doesn’t matter what you look like.

Doesn’t matter if you’re rich.

Like they used to say in the days of vinyl, IT’S IN THE GROOVES!

More people are making more music than ever before.  The barrier to entry is low.

But that doesn’t mean we want to listen to it.

People have rallied around Adele.

They’ll rally around you too.

IF YOU’RE JUST THAT GOOD!

I got e-mail telling me Buffalo Springfield did not play at Fordham University, they canceled.

I’ve got a very good memory.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t be wrong.  I asked the naysayer if he was at the Fordham gig.  He said yes.  And then when I a second e-mail came in, stating that the Chambers Brothers replaced the Springfield and opened for Arlo Guthrie, the headliner, I knew they were right, because I remember the Chambers Brothers playing "Time Has Come Today", as well as the closer, the Union Gap, playing their huge hit "Young Girl" twice and Arlo saying there were three versions of "Alice’s Restaurant" and we didn’t know which one he was going to play, and we didn’t, and he didn’t play the famous one involving trash and Thanksgiving but another involving LSD and then President Johnson saying he was paranoid…

But I was sure I’d seen Buffalo Springfield.  I knew they were booked twice at gigs I was scheduled to see.  And that they’d canceled one.  But I thought the other was as an opener for Sly & The Family Stone at the Garden.  But then the blocks in my brain rearranged themselves and I remembered.

It was at Fairfield University.  Stephen Stills said someone was sick.

I just read online it was Bruce Palmer.

And I also read online that the date was November 20, 1967.

It was a five act bill.

Four musical groups and a comedian in between, who I also couldn’t remember, but just read online was the Pickle Brothers.

Huh?

Who knows.

But I do know the other four acts.

There was the Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Yes, they played "Incense and Peppermints".

And the Soul Survivors.  Who did an explosive version of "Expressway To Your Heart" that just about blew the roof off the joint.

And Stills sang "For What It’s Worth".

Don’t get the wrong idea, it wasn’t hits only, the gig went on until just about midnight, I remember using the pay phone to call my dad to pick us up, every act played a set, if not full, comprising many numbers.

And the headliner was the Beach Boys.

When they were no longer hip.

They’d had the last hurrah the year before, with "Good Vibrations".  But rock and roll has a short memory, especially back in the sixties.

But I was the biggest Beach Boys fan on the planet.  I bought every album.  Even "Wild Honey", which was released shortly thereafter and not only contained the title track but a killer cover of "I Was Made To Love Her"…no one could sing like Carl.

Actually, I passed on the follow-up, "Friends", and couldn’t find it for years, didn’t own it until the CD era, but I was sick of getting shit for being a fan of this has-been band.

But they were my favorite.

The Beach Boys are why I live in California.  It’s the land of possibilities.

And after skipping "Friends" I started buying again.  With "20/20" and then the surprising "Sunflower" and then the album that brought them back, made them cool again, "Surf’s Up".

Then again, they started to be cool once more when Bill Graham chose them to help close the Fillmore East, which was simulcast on FM and was even more important than watching the video feed of Bonnaroo and Coachella because it was the last one.  Nothing ends anymore.  They just wait a while and repackage it, everybody needs the money.

The concert was in the gym.  The Springfield was good.

But the Beach Boys were transcendent.

Before we knew Mike Love was a Republican, never mind a narcissist.

When Dennis was just the drummer, never mind the coolest cat on the planet, dating Christine McVie yet befriending Charles Manson.

And when Carl Wilson was still alive.  The glue keeping the old band together.

Yes, Al Jardine sang "Help Me Rhonda".

But I needed to hear the surf hits.  And the car hits.  And they played both.  And Mike Love even broke out the theremin.

Back before Katy Perry ripped off the uncopyrightable title and changed the spelling to be hip, we certainly wished they all could be "California Girls".

Nothing popped out of the transistor like that before.  I’d have the radio strapped to the handlebars of my Raleigh and when I’d hear that orchestral intro, with the horn flourish, my heart would start to palpitate, I’d begin to swoon.

And then when the jaunty organ intro prefaced the verse I’d start to smile, believing life was all about possibilities, and if something could sound this good life would truly be an adventure.

Yes, you can go see the progenitor in ever-decreasing halls and he’ll play the music but you won’t be able to see the most important thing.  The creativity.  The writing.  The direction in the studio to get the players to lay down what he heard in his head.

A genius is someone who digests all the influences and creates something brand new.

Brian Wilson is a genius.

But the Beach Boys were a group.

And when they played this music on stage my entire fourteen years stood in relief.  From getting the gumption to ask Jill Philipson to dance to the strains of "Do You Wanna Dance?" at Camp Laurelwood to hearing "I Get Around" on the jukebox at the Nutmeg Bowl to trying to comb my hair just like theirs, mimicking Dennis’s doo on the back of "Surfin’ USA".

They say that that was a singles era.  But a true fan always bought the albums.

I knew every note.

I was elated that cold almost winter night in ’67.

And when the music pours out of the speakers today, listening to "California Girls", I’m just as happy.

Can you order rack of lamb at a gas station?

Howdy.  I’m in Mammoth Lakes.  Skiing.

I know, I know, you just had a heat wave on the east coast but here in California they had record-breaking snowfall and right now there’s an 8-16 foot base and the skiing today was GLORIOUS!  The mountain is open until July 4th, if Dave McCoy still owned it it would probably operate until August, like in ’95, so if you’ve got a hankering, you can take a direct flight from LAX but we drove.

Through Mojave.  Past the airplane graveyard.  All the way up to 9000′ and I’ve got the headache to prove it.

And after sliding this morning, into the early afternoon, they salted the slopes, keeping them firm, we went out on an adventure.  First to the June Lake Loop.  With astounding views of the backside of Yosemite.  And then up to Bridgeport, where we delved deep into the backcountry, far beyond cell service, to visit the campgrounds where Leo spent his formative years.  California’s an amazing state.  Way back in Twin Lakes there were RVs and fishermen, you couldn’t be farther from L.A.  At least in mentality, it’s a bit over 300 miles via macadam.

ANYWAY, after burning so many calories on the slopes, we were starving, and we ended up eating at the Mobil station.  At the intersection of 395 and 120, in Lee Vining, by the back entrance to Yosemite.  That road isn’t open yet, you can read about the clearing of it in last week’s "Los Angeles Times":

Blasting winter away at Yosemite

But just a football field up from the intersection is the Mobil station.

And Tioga Toomey’s Whoa Nellie Deli.

I heard about it from Tom Cartwright.  I love the Internet.  I wrote about driving the white knuckle back road into Yosemite and Mr. Cartwright, formerly of EMI, e-mailed and said DID YOU EAT AT THE MOBIL STATION?

HUH?

I subsequently stopped in.

But didn’t eat there until this evening.

It’s a typical mini-mart.  But in the back there’s a counter and some tables and some booths and the menu is just a bit exotic for these parts.  You can get ahi.  Then again, you can buy sushi in the Vons in Mammoth Lakes.  But not GOOD sushi.

Could this food at the Whoa Nellie Deli truly live up to its billing?

It was SCRUMPTIOUS!

The specials were filet mignon and rack of lamb.  $21.95 apiece.  But that’s it.  Because there’s no service, no tip, just tax.  Still, I’m gonna spend $21.95 for dinner at a GAS STATION?

But the cashier recommended it.  Not that anyone gave her the memo about being sweet to the customers.  When you live this far off the beaten path you’ve got CONTEMPT for the customers.

I thought about having the ribs.

But when rack of lamb is right, it always satiates.

There was only one left.  I took it.

And then the cashier jumped up on the counter, whipped out an eraser and eradicated the offering from the white board.  She did this with such relish I wondered if she had OCD, or was a completist, like me…needing to own every album by the act.

Leo ordered the buffalo meat loaf.

His meal came first.

Being well-bred, Leo waited for me.  My protestations eventually got him to partake, but this was after he engaged the CHP officers behind us.

They were eating ribs that Fred Flintstone would admire and a salad respectively.

And this CHP officer, that’s California Highway Patrol for the uninitiated, the Eureka division to be specific, said the Whoa Nellie Deli was the best food in the county.

And it was.

Leo got that AHHH look upon his face after taking a bite.

And when my rack of lamb came I was stunned.  There was plenty.  Four double-boned pieces, actually one was triple-boned, and a plethora of spaghetti squash.

No one can do vegetables right anymore.  They just serve them up as part of the recently-eclipsed food pyramid.  But this stringy concoction was so delicious, so well-seasoned, I felt like asking for the recipe…AND I DON’T COOK!

But the rack of lamb…  Mmm…  Succulent.

This was the best restaurant meal I’ve had in eons.

You can go to the Soho House and make the scene, but the food at that joint is far eclipsed by the Whoa Nellie Deli.  Hollywood’s got nothing on Lee Vining.

Tioga Gas Mart / Whoa Nellie Deli

MyMammoth

Re: Andrew Gold

Hi Bob

I lost a dear friend and songwriting partner last week, the singer, songwriter, producer and multinstrumentalist Andrew Gold.

He died in his sleep of a heart attack, following years of battling cancer, at the untimely age of fifty nine.

I first met Andrew in 1981 when 10cc’s US record company, Warner Brothers, recommended him as a co producer and writer, the idea being that 10cc’s chances of breaking into the American market would be greatly enhanced by us working with him.

That collaboration resulted in three great singles, testament to the fact that the partnership really worked well.

In 1982, when Eric Stewart and I decided not to continue working together as 10cc, I called Andrew in L.A. and invited him over to my house in Cheshire to write some songs for a couple of weeks. He stayed for six months.

What followed was five glorious years working together as Wax.

Although we stopped working  under that name in 1988 we continued to write and record together on various projects throughout the nineties.

We always kept in touch with each other and were planning to get together again to write and possibly record a new Wax album, which we were both very excited about.

Working with Andrew was my happiest musical partnership.

He was an awesome talent and it was a pleasure and a privilege to have him both as a friend and to make music with him.

Graham Gouldman