Tom King died!

Tom WHO?

So I’m sitting on the plane reading the obituaries.  My father used to be addicted, would wake up my mom on a regular basis saying GUESS WHO DIED!

She hated it, and I didn’t get it, but now I’m addicted.  And I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s the compartmentalization of life, that’s all there is, between birth and death, the story’s complete.

And you read all kinds of crazy things.  The inventors of food products, scientific breakthroughs, if you make the obits, you were a hit.  You did something noteworthy.

And "Time Won’t Let Me" by the Outsiders was extremely noteworthy.

It was a hit in ’66.  And I always thought they were a Boston band, but I read online that was because local promotion man, AL COURY, broke them big there.

We were addicted to the radio.  This was just before FM.  The Beatles had wiped clean what had come before and everybody was trying to capture the energy of the U.K.

And "Time Won’t Let Me" did.

It’s the way the song bounces up and down.  You can’t keep from shaking your head.  And then your body.

There are horns.  An intimate vocal, like a phone call, and then a big chorus, that you couldn’t help but sing along with, that I still can’t help but sing along with when I hear it on Sixties on Six.

What did Bill Murray say in "Stripes"?  One day Tito Puente’s gonna die and then his girlfriend can say she’s been listening to him FOREVER?

Eventually, Tito Puente did die.  And now it’s the turn of the sixties rockers.  The ones who didn’t O.D. on drugs but had bad health turns and died before their time.  Like Tom King.

Tom King co-wrote "Time Won’t Let Me".

And this is all most of us remember, but it’s enough.

Watch him here:

Outsiders – Time Won’t Let Me

He’s the rhythm guitarist.  The front man is Sonny Geraci, who went on to front Climax, whose "Precious and Few" was written by former Outsider Walter Nims.

Whew!  Ain’t that rock history!

Local obit

Facebook page

I’m here to visit my mother in rehab.  She took too many drugs and…

No, she broke her hip and then her femur and she wanted me to come and here I am.

I was also going to go to the Rockefeller Estate at Pocantico for a big confab about voter registration but the money pulled out and the conference collapsed.  Other people’s money…  Makes you only want to work for yourself.

I read a fascinating article in the lounge, waiting for my plane.  It’s entitled "Why Pay Full Price?" and it’s all about loyalty programs and you can read it here:

Why Pay Full Price?

Did you know if you’ve got a Gap credit card you get 10% off all merchandise on Tuesday?  Think about this…  You’re a member of the Live Nation loyalty program and you get 10% off on all tickets and merchandise on Tuesday, or Wednesday, pick a day, any day.  Why isn’t the concert giant doing this?

Because Live Nation is convinced it’s about the deal.  We hear Michael Rapino rant and rave about unsold inventory, but the company doesn’t seem to take steps to address this problem.  Sure they have fire sales, but this is like blowing out Christmas decorations on December 26th.  You need to stick your customers to you, like American Airlines.

I only fly American.  I won’t go out of my way, to Seattle to get to Canada, but if American flies directly to the city I want, I take it. Hell, even though there’s only one flight a day, whenever I go to Toronto I take American instead of Air Canada.  Why?  BECAUSE OF THE LOYALTY PROGRAM!

It’s not about the miles.  Life is too short to manage and use them.  It’s about the gold status.  Got to fly 25k a year so I can get free bags and priority access and upgrades.  Hell, I flew Business class today, because of the loyalty program!  Do you think I’m gonna switch airlines and pay the same and fly in the back of the bus and pay for my bags to boot?

You see the concert industry thinks it’s about the deal.  And heat.

And if an act has heat, it is about the deal.  But if there’s heat, there’s not all that unsold inventory.  The question is, how do we get people to come when there’s no heat?  This is where Live Nation falters.

So either you’ve got to create heat or hire some retail strategists who know how to engage customers and boost your bottom line. Yes, what Live Nation needs is outsiders…

Let me give you an example.  Match.com hired a quant.  And what he found out was people didn’t want what they said they did.  It was all in the data.  They said they wanted blonde and never married yet they dated brunette divorcees.  Read this article, it’s fascinating:

Crunching the Data of Love

That’s what happens when you see your dating site as more than signups.  People are frustrated, they log in and don’t connect, but now the data helps them.  Tell me again how Live Nation is helping its customers?

And I was reading Jacob Slichter’s book on the plane ("So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful Of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer’s Life")  You know, the guy from Semisonic.  Actually, you don’t know. The book is a few years old.  But it’s fascinating.  Hearing how the band signed to Elektra and then Krasnow got blown out and then signed to MCA and Al Teller got blown out.  Music is about being master of your own destiny, why would you want to be beholden to these lying, cheating, scumbags who may not even be around when your record comes out?

Speaking of which, it appears that Len Blavatnik is going to buy Warner Music.  This disappoints me.  I wanted an outsider to buy it, Len’s been on the company’s board.  I wanted to see revolution.  Now we’re gonna see evolution.  Lyor won’t lose his job and it’ll be the same as it ever was except for the publishing spinoff and the merger with EMI.  I’d like to see someone blow the company up.  Stop putting out new music, do something different.  Instead we’re going to continue to see the fade of a great institution, whose sell-by date passed long before Blavatnik offered to overpay.  You see record companies still believe they’re in the recording business, they don’t realize they’re in the MUSIC business.  Watch this Seth Godin video, it makes the point, sometimes you’ve got to give it away for free to blow up:

PressPausePlay Sneak Peek #1 – Seth Godin

And speaking of free, the labels are too stupid to know that Apple’s cloud service is the worst thing that will ever happen to them.  If someone can listen to what they’ve bought anywhere, how are you going to get them to buy a streaming subscription?  A little cash from a lot of people creates a much bigger pot than a lot from a little.

And we’re flying over a landscape that looks like the Moon.  Was it Arkansas, or Texas?  Flying made me want to get in my car and explore this great nation of ours.

And speaking of this nation, WHY CAN’T EVERYBODY TURN OUT THE LIGHTS?

They say there’s an energy crisis, but I’m flying over the eastern seaboard and all I can see is all these unnecessary lights.  Can we have a national campaign to turn them off?  And don’t tell me it’s un-American, that we have to be able to burn as much juice as we want, were smog controls and airbags un-American?

And I might as well have walked from my gate to Connecticut, that’s how long the hike was to the baggage carousel.

And they’re doing construction everywhere, but when the Turnpike backed up we got off in Westport and suddenly I was…home.

I’m from Fairfield.  But we ate Chinese food in Westport.  I saw what used to be the old Sam Goody record shop, and even though it was dark I was surrounded by woods and I yearned to move back.

For a minute.  It’ll wear off.  It’s hard to leave SoCal after you’ve lived there…  Not only the weather, but the lack of scrutiny and the city in a suburb feel…I’m hooked.

But there’s something about the east coast.  The way everybody’s packed in together, the way they think they’ve got all the answers, the way the pizza tastes, that makes you hate the Yankees and love them all at the same time.

I’m in my mother’s apartment.  Seems weird without her here.  Just thought I’d check in.

What impressed me most was not that we achieved revenge, or that we put a dent in terrorism, but that we executed the plan.

America used to be a can-do nation.  We rolled up our sleeves and got to work.  That’s been our history forever. Until recently.

Now people feel entitled to success.  They certainly don’t want to pay their dues, they’d rather watch the big screen and contemplate winning the lottery or starring in a reality TV show, which in their minds is equivalent.  The concept of working hard for not only personal fulfillment but the general good is history.

And in the political arena elected officials and pundits shrug and say we just can’t have what we want.  We can’t afford health care, we can’t afford to take care of the indigent, because we’re a poor nation under stress and someone’s got to sacrifice and it sure as hell ain’t me.

So we’ve got gridlock.  The big questions are not even pondered.  What about Wall Street?  What about jobs?  It’s like America’s been compartmentalized into four distinct subdivisions.  The rich.  The political.  The media.  And the poor.

And it’s a circle jerk amongst the top three.  They don’t really care about the poor.  The poor don’t vote.  So the rich pay the politicians to play to a media that’s ever more out of touch, because what’s really going on is online, but no one over forty is willing to embrace the future, certainly not if it costs them their job.

After Ted Turner merged his company with Time Warner his son famously asked about his job, working at a Turner division.  Ted said "You’re toast!"

But no one’s willing to be toast anymore.  Everybody wants insurance that their life won’t change.  Sure, you can screw kids out of Medicare, but not me!  People must buy CDs and physical books and while we’re at it, why don’t we look at the Amish, they seem to have it down right!

So it’s easy to be disillusioned.  Not so much that you can’t get ahead, but that the system is broken.

And then we get Osama.

It wasn’t Justin Bieber.  It wasn’t kids on video games.  It was a seasoned group of elite warriors with an average age of 38.  The media tells us to worship youth, is this true?

And then there’s the patience involved.  Not only to track the lead but to find out if Osama is really in the house. And to balance acting in due time without acting too late, without tipping off the wrong person and risking Osama’s evaporation into the ether.

And then there’s the planning.  And the execution.

It all comes down to the execution.  Anybody can have an idea, but can you bring it to fruition?

But what exactly is the plan?  Do you blow the compound to high hell or do you execute with surgical precision, which is much riskier.

And what if you accomplish your mission, then what?  We blew this in Iraq and blow it in the music business all the time.  Wow, the record’s a hit, NOW WHAT!

So they fly in under cover of night and they get Bin Laden and all the data and get the hell out of there before anybody knows what’s up, ultimately burying the body at sea within 24 hours.

Meanwhile, we see the President laughing at Seth Myers’s jokes and playing golf.  Talk about being a poker player.

Makes you believe in America again.  That we can accomplish our goals.  That we’re smart, not just beholden to money, that we get the right things done.

Where do we go from here?

Well, you can criticize Obama.

But that’s just like pooping on the Beatles or the Eagles or Kurt Cobain.  All are imperfect, but can you follow their path, can you have a dream and execute it too?

The Beatles put in their 10,000 hours and then tested limits the rest of us didn’t even know existed.

The Eagles wanted perfection, unlike Crosby, Stills & Nash, they wanted to be able to reproduce their records live.

Not only did Kurt Cobain have an amazing sense of melody, he believed in the punk ethos.  He never sold out. The music was too meaningful, too powerful, too precious to be handed to corporations.

But it really comes down to JFK.  Who so famously said:

"As not what your country can do for you —
 ask what you can do for your country."

I’m not saying the government can’t help you out, but I’m wondering why you can’t see you’re part of a society.  If you’re rich, you’re not unreachable, there can’t be a cop on the front lawn of every person with a seven figure income.  If you don’t take care of your brethren, you’re gonna find yourself like Bin Laden, shot down for your egregious activity.

Class warfare?  I can understand fighting if you’re hungry and broke and so many are.

But this is not about division, this is about unification.  The stain of Jimmy Carter’s failed rescue mission has finally been eradicated.

It’s like we’re back in the sixties once again.  Only this time, the possibilities come from technology, not music.

We’re building a better society.  We lost our way, but we can get back on track.

If we can finally get Osama, what else can we accomplish?

Turns out Alex Zubillaga, Edgar Bronfman, Jr.’s brother-in-law, was one of the original investors in Songkick.

Zubillaga quit Warner in 2008 and invested in Songkick in 2008.

Draw your own conclusions.