From: Michael Shrieve
Subject: Re: Rattlesnake Shake

Well Fuck, God Bless you for caring enough about the music to really seek it out.

Peter was a friend of mine back in the 70’s. Sometimes, when I was on tour with Santana, which was always, and Peter was in the Bay Area, I’d loan him my house in Mill Valley. Of course you could stay there, Peter. I’d call him from the road and check in. Is everything OK?  "Everything’s great, mate".

So tonight, right now, I’m back from my weekly gig, which I’ve been doing for four years in Seattle, with my band, Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder. It’s an instrumental band, but cool as shit, and we get the whole range of age groups at every show. Here’s the truth. I make $60.00 every Monday night; $30 of which I pay to a friend to set up and take down my drums. I don’t enjoy that part of it, so it’s worth it to me. So I make $30.00. The people love the music, and I know why. It’s real musicians, playing passionate, beautiful music right in front of there eyes. Exceptional musicians, truly.

You want to know my reality? This year alone I have been voted one of the top 50 drummers of All Time in Drum Magazine, and been voted in the Top Ten in a Reader’s Poll in Rolling Stone Magazine two months ago of Best Drummers of All Time. Of course, you should know, no real musician considers these accolades as something serious, because the real players know that there there is always someone better than you. But that is not to say that we are not grateful for the recognition. But that and a buck fifty will get you on the bus.

If I told you how many Booking Agents I have contacted all around the world to consider booking my band you would be shocked. If I told you how many of them have had the decency to even reply to my emails, you would be even more shocked.

I ask myself, WTF? Why do I bother with this shit? I love music, like the heart that beats inside me, but is this worth it? And I have come to the conclusion that no, it is not worth it. I must find another way to make a living. I should build on what I have, and I have ideas, but it is so completely different than what I had imagined.

I didn’t mean to rant, but it here I go. I love the vibe of that music that you posted, like I used to love Michael Bloomfield with Paul Butterfield and those extended jams like "East West". I still love that shit. But I insist with my band that we are not a jam band, that we play tighter arrangements than other bands. Everybody jams now, but it better be fucking great because frankly I’m tired of hearing 10 minute guitar solos.

Back to Peter. Part of our connection, aside from the fact that with Santana, I recorded his song "Black Magic Woman" and made it more famous than he would ever imagine, we shared that Black Magic Woman, and her name was Annie, and she was truly remarkable, and mystical, and nurturing, as were a few very special ladies in that time and place. It was a very special time.

Years later, when Santana was being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Fleetwood Mac on the same evening, Carlos was gracious enough to invite Peter Green to play "Black Magic Woman" with us, as it became obvious that Fleetwood Mac was not going to have Peter Green be a part of their ceremony. Shame on them. Peter was a shadow of himself then, and barely remembered me. It was sad, for sure, but he was there with us on the stage  playing his song that we made famous. And that night The Eagles were also inducted, as was Fleetwood Mac, and I saw the road kill of what was the leftovers of that fiasco as well. The tears in the eyes of the wives of the members of the band that left or were kicked out, and finally seeing their embittered husbands getting a shred of recognition for the work they put into the band that became so famous, the few that survived shined and the rest are road kill. It’s not a pretty picture.

God Bless the musician that has his own, I always thought.

But now, even I’m not so sure of that. I always told myself when I younger, watching older musicians becoming embittered, don’t ever become bitter, that serves no one. I remember telling Mitch Mitchell, who was so bitter because truly, he got so screwed financially with all the Hendrix stuff, "Mitch, forget about it. What you’ve done, no one can ever take that away from you. Your contribution is so enormous, anyone would trade places with you. Forget about the money, forget about the lawyers, I said. Go back to that place where you first loved music, go play in a club every week like I do, and forget about everything else, and trust me, the music will set you free, like it did in the beginning.

But man……

With Respect,

Michael Shrieve

It was supposed to be Groupon.

The "Wall Street Journal" quotes an insider who says that the iTunes Store and Amazon combined moved 250-350,000 copies of the album.  And that’s just piss poor.  Especially in a country of 300 million.

Bottom line…

Amazon could not get the word out.

Record labels pray at the altar of radio and Wal-Mart.  But the new kingpins are Apple and Groupon.  The latter have got mindshare, Amazon does not.  In other words, no matter how good a deal Amazon offers its customers, most people want to buy their MP3s at iTunes.  Where there are 15,000+ reviews of "Born This Way" to the 120 on Amazon.

People don’t trust Amazon.  Not when it comes to digital delivery of music.  I’ve got to download an additional piece of software and…  With iTunes, it just works.  This is why Sony is in the dumper, their stuff doesn’t just work.  It’s all about software and elegance and consumer trust.  The public trusts Apple.  And it doesn’t matter if someone does it better, until word gets out and people trust the new entity, Apple is king.

And Amazon was unprepared, they had a digital glitch, pissing off those who did try to get the 99 cent deal.  They lost all that money on wholesale, and didn’t get the desired result.

But unlike independent music retailers, Amazon can afford it.

And retailers and artists alike are complaining that this promotion devalues music.

And Interscope/Universal smiles all the way to the bank, watching as Amazon pays them wholesale and takes the hit itself.

WRONG!

Interscope is thinking too small.  Everybody in this business is thinking too small.

What’s GaGa’s shelf life?  One can argue it’s very brief, that this may be it.  The shock factor has worn off and reviews are not so hot.  GaGa can continue to play to the media, to newspapers, television and radio, or she can play to her fans.

Everyone needs a Lady GaGa album.

Start there.  Think about that.

In a world where obscurity is your enemy, where we swoon if an album sells one million copies in a country of three hundred million, it appears that most people don’t care.

How do you get them to care?

Certainly not by suing them.

The challenge is not eviscerating piracy, but getting people to listen.  What’s the price of time?

I’d say a buck is pretty accurate.  Sure, hard core fans are gonna get a deal.  But what about all those who don’t care?  How can you create a mania to the point where MILLIONS of people will check out your music instantly?  And if they listen, they might like it!

The recording is just the beginning.

Let’s say you sell 20 million.  Let’s say 10 million people just don’t care and delete the files.  But the remaining mass is much larger than you can reach under the old paradigm, and these people will buy concert tickets and t-shirts and the fact that everybody’s got the music will make it a point of discussion.

In other words, music is now a sideshow.  How can we make it the main event?

By playing to masses of people, directly.  Cutting out the middleman.  Making it cheap and easy.

Furthermore, Interscope is not limited to recorded music revenue with GaGa, they’ve got a 360 deal, who was so shortsighted here?  If the deal had been on Groupon, the Internet would have been on fire!  Groupon is today’s GaGa.  Tomorrow?  Who knows!  If you offer a deal on Groupon everybody knows.  If you offer a deal on Amazon, almost no one does.

I’d say it’s about volume, but it’s more about attention.  By charging bupkes, you can get everybody’s attention, you can get everybody to listen, you can get everybody talking.  This is better than any paid advertising, any marketing.  You hook your star to the Internet powerhouse and you let the PUBLIC do the work!

But no one at Interscope seems to know this.  They’re hanging on desperately to an old paradigm.

What’s the biggest hit of the year?  Come on, it’s EASY!

Rebecca Black’s "Friday".  Despite no radio airplay, she got over a hundred million YouTube views and EVERYBODY know who she is.  More people know who Rebecca Black is than Rihanna.

And it’s all about YouTube.

You can play the track ad infinitum on radio.  But some of us are never gonna listen to the radio.  But create something that goes viral online and WE’RE ALL GONNA SEE IT!

Amazon’s promotion never went viral.

But it was the right idea.

I don’t care how much it cost you to make your record, how long you practiced, how many years you’ve been in the business.  If no one hears it, it’s WORTHLESS!  That’s the value of unheard music, NOTHING!  Stop complaining that you’re underpaid and deserve more and start thinking about how you can reach more people and get them to listen to your music.  If it’s good, they’ll react.  If it’s bad, no harm, no fail.  But instead you’d rather complain the system is stacked against you, that you can’t get on the radio, that you can’t get paid.

The problem is you.

Stevie Nicks goes on "Dancing With The Stars"?  HUH?  What, is it 1986?  That show is not about music and she wasn’t good either.  What Stevie Nicks needed to do was reach her fans.  She doesn’t even have their e-mail addresses, she doesn’t even know who they are, and that’s criminal.

Major labels have no idea who their customers are.  It’s the fans, plain and simple.  Think how you can build a fan base.  How can you convince someone to cough up his time, the most valuable resource on the planet.  If people like you, they’ll give you all their money.  Hell, so many teens and twentysomethings buy vinyl albums not to play, they don’t even have turntables, but to display!

That’s dedication.

GaGa may have the shelf life of a fig newton.  Better to get all the money today than to focus on tomorrow.  Hell, a great day would be when all sales were completed in a WEEK!  Because if everybody bought it then, there’d be no reason to sell it thereafter!  It wouldn’t be about radio spoonfeeding tracks, to keep the album alive, it would be about the artist playing live to satiate their fans and then going back into the studio and making more music!

The Amazon 99 cent deal was a fantastic idea.

But the execution was flawed.

But this is not the past, this is the future.

This is how Amazon made inroads in digital books.  By charging less, getting more people to buy more books because they knew they were getting a deal.  That’s how they got digital book sales to eclipse physical sales.  The publishers stupidly raised the prices.  And refuse to pay authors much.  So now both the famous and the infamous, the known and the unknown, are publishing directly on Amazon and charging a tiny amount and keeping all the profit.

And an author can’t even go on tour.  People don’t want t-shirts.

Maybe they eventually will, but in the music business they already do.

Amazon can afford to lose money.

But the music business cannot.

It’s time to enter the twenty first century.  It’s time to lower prices and get the word out.  It’s time to stop carping about anemic sales and start using modern techniques to sell more music to EVERYBODY!

I know, I know, I’m late to the party.

On my second trip over the hill today, from Sherman Oaks to Santa Monica, I heard Fleetwood Mac’s "Rattlesnake Shake" on SiriusXM.

Felice complained that her presets were screwed up.  So I was checking them out.  I was in her car, since mine was now in the shop and I had to go back to Santa Monica to discover whether I’d left my cell phone in my house or at Subaru of Santa Monica or on the bus or…

You can’t live without a cell phone anymore.  This occurred to me when Subaru of Sherman Oaks told me they’d call me. Where?  I was not gonna be home all day tomorrow.  The naked feeling of driving without a cell is bad enough, but what if you really need to use it?  They said they’d call me when a loaner became available…  Then again, how would they reach me?  If I borrowed Felice’s car to go to James’s studio in Glendale, which was the original plan, but…

And thinking about all this, wondering how to play it all out, and I’m a planner if nothing else, to the point where sometimes I find it hard to move, because I’m afraid of making a mistake, I keep pushing the SiriusXM buttons.  And even though I’ve been on the freeway for a long time at this point, they’re still playing the same damn Fleetwood Mac song on Deep Tracks.

It’s obviously live.  And at first it seemed a bit garage-bandy, which is why I did not stay there.

But now that I was on the off ramp at Cloverfield/26th, the song had slowed down and I was enraptured.  This was obviously Peter Green, the legendary Peter Green.

And the track kept getting better and better.  I was reminded of the blues rock era, of the days of innovation, when one track could take up an entire album side.

And I thought how even though this track was at least forty years old, it was new to me.  That’s what’s great about great music, it’s a land mine, just waiting for you to discover it and get blown up.

And I come home and start Googling and clicking on YouTube clips and checking allmusic.com and EVENTUALLY, I find the version of "Rattlesnake Shake" I heard on the radio.

Not the live YouTube clip from the Playboy show, with Hef and Barbi Benton doing the introduction of a truly live cut.

Not the version done by Bob Welch and Mick Fleetwood.

Not any version on Spotify.  Not any version on Rhapsody.  But the one on Napster.  From the 2002 album of a February 1970 Boston Tea Party concert, "The Vintage Years Live".

You can hear it here:

Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac
Rattlesnake Shake(Live Boston)

It’s a Chinese site.  We may overload and kill it.  You can’t catch the entire thing on YouTube, it’s a time limit thing.

And maybe you won’t get it.  Maybe you have to be driving in your car.  Maybe you have to be stoned in the dark in a club.

But listening to this extended, almost twenty five minute version of "Rattlesnake Shake" makes me think we just might be celebrating the wrong edition of Fleetwood Mac.

(P.S.  It’s not only Peter Green, it’s Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan AND Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.)

$5300.  That’s what Santa Monica Subaru wanted to fix my Saab.

Yes, it’s a Saab, but it’s really a Subaru, and that’s important, as you’ll find out.

You see I started the car in gear.  I had it on a hill.  In reverse.  And I forgot it was in gear, and after letting out the clutch, the car jumped.  Violently.

How many times has this happened to me?  I’ve driven a stick and a stick only for over 35 years.  But this time…

When I went forward, the gearbox was mush.

But then it got better.

But when I went in reverse…  I heard the kind of clanging that would not require a stethoscope to decode.  You know how you bring your car in for service and the problem doesn’t manifest itself?  That was not the case in this instance.

A freak accident.  That’s ultimately what Daryl at Sherman Oaks Subaru said.

He’s an expert.  He said if I drove it over he could get behind the wheel and know what the problem was in minutes.  It didn’t take that long.  He knew I’d blown the reverse gear.  And if it’s that only, it’s gonna be fifteen hundred bucks.   Which is excessive, but not fifty three hundred bucks.  In Santa Monica they said it would cost more to fix than repair it, but they wouldn’t fix it, because it was a Saab and the part numbers would be different, and a replacement might not even fit, but Darryl said this was wrong, he services Saabarus all the time, after all, Saab is their sister dealership.

And I’m pissed at Santa Monica Subaru.  And I’m wondering if I even needed that head gasket back in February.  And now they were going to charge me too?

So I’m so pissed at Santa Monica Subaru that with a mild delivery, I say "That’s gonna be free, right?  Since no work was done?"

And the service writer is caught off guard.  He protests that they put it up on the lift.  Then asks me, "What if I take half off?"

SOLD!

My father was so busy chatting up the help, trying to get a deal, that I’ve stopped, not wanting to be perceived as a schnorrer.

But sometimes you’ve got to schnorr.  Sometimes you’ve got to evaluate what’s equitable.  Sometimes people know they’re ripping you off.

And sometimes when you ask, you get.