I was reading an article about Songkick in today’s "New York Times" when my brain leapt back to last Thursday, when I blew an hour watching a Seth Godin presentation from Chicago.  I did this because someone e-mailed that Seth name-checked me and being unable to pass up a chance to experience this brief notoriety I clicked through and found out the video was password-protected.  The sender coughed up the key and I started to watch from the beginning, to glean some context for my big moment ten minutes in.

Turns out my name was just mentioned in passing.  Which relieved me.  Because if Seth had made a big deal I would have felt self-conscious.  I started to sweat as the time approached.  We secretly want acknowledgement but when it is given to us we pooh-pooh it and hide.

But the beginning of the clip was an explanation of Groupon.  How anyone could have built it if they’d had the idea. That’s what the future of America, not only the music business, is based upon, the idea.  And that’s why the music business is emotionally bankrupt, with only the blind still believing it provides a roadmap to salvation.  Because everybody’s just doing what they’ve done before.  From the acts to the labels to the concert promoters.  They say they’re innovating, but really they’re protecting their jobs, they’re negotiators, and in the case of the artists themselves, they’re shopping for insurance, as if art were school and if you just hopped through the hoops you’d get a degree, in this case, money and fame.

There was no mathematical breakthrough with Groupon.  No engineering genius was involved.  The company took off the shelf parts and reconstituted them into something new.  Which used to happen in music, back before the artists lost their sense of humor and became brands.  And once they established the infrastructure, Groupon let the public spread the word.  You could only get the deal if fifty or more people also signed up to buy, so wannabe bargain hunters furiously e-mailed their friends, making Groupon pop up on the radar almost instantly.

Now the deal had to be attractive.  Listening to four songs by an unsigned band that should be in college instead of parading on iTunes is not attractive.  But if the songs were good, think of the possibilities!  If somehow the audience felt you were doing them a favor instead of ripping them off!

And the other beneficiary in this equation was the emporium, the person offering the deal, the establishment at the heart of the Groupon offer.  Sure, we’ve been hearing about stores almost being driven to bankruptcy by Groupon, but that’s missing the point.  The point is, this is targeted advertising.  You’re reaching people who care, who might buy, as opposed to advertising in the newspaper or on TV and reaching so many who just don’t give a damn.

And Seth’s explanation of Groupon was so good that I hung in there past my name-check to listen to him talk about Henry Ford.  Who not only said he was going to build cars on assembly lines, he was going to get the government to build roads and subsidize gas exploration and he was going to get a flock of sheep to spin wool for the seats of his automobiles.  All true.  People who bring us the future look delusional to the pencil-pushers, those who refuse to dream.

But what struck me most was Seth’s list of companies that dominated in the past yet lost out in the future.  I really should have written them down, so you would be wowed, but taking notes while watching videos is like rock critics writing down song titles during the gig.  It’s about the emotion, the mood, the feel, not the list.  If you’re compiling the list, you’re missing the point.

And the point is the future will not be dominated by the major labels and quite possibly Live Nation will be blown away too.  Because they’re too wedded to the past.

Isn’t it funny that Topspin and BandCamp were not founded by labels.  Didn’t Edgar Bronfman, Jr. hire his brother-in-law to invest in new businesses?  Warner bought a concert promoter who charged four figures for exclusive shows in the Hamptons, believing that the future is just a variation on the past, but they missed this opportunity to sell variably-priced tchotchkes.

In other words, if record labels and publishers didn’t hold all those rights, they’d already be history, as gone as Coleco and Commodore.  They’re only hanging on because innovators need those rights.  But what if they don’t need those rights?

What if concertgoing was social?

Wait a minute, concertgoing IS social.  Which means you can have a Facebook of concertgoing.  And everyone could want to play and your company could be worth a fortune.

That’s Songkick.

But it’s even better, in the Facebook world, your users provide all the data, all you do is build the infrastructure.

In other words, Live Nation thinks it’s about the deal.

But it’s not.  The acts take almost all of the money.  And that doesn’t appear like it’s going to change any time soon.

And Ticketmaster talks about dynamic pricing, but the money isn’t in the tickets, especially now, when competitors are going to drive fees to the bottom.  The future is in the Website, the data, collecting all those people and selling them something that they’re dying to buy.  Like Angry Birds.  Ever wonder why there’s not been a great music app, that takes the world by storm?  Then again, there was Guitar Hero, but the rights holders were not versed in the lore of video games enough to know it would be a fad.  It’s like believing anyone’s gonna care about Justin Bieber a few years from now…  I mean how many times have we seen this teen dream movie?

You go to Ticketmaster.com and not only does it take too long to go through the pages, you can’t get the tickets you want, you HATE Ticketmaster.  But everyone involved is too stupid to realize the future is in having people LOVE Ticketmaster.

Concertgoing could be turned into a club.  Ticketmaster could provide tickets before the scalpers.  Have lotteries and essay contests and…  But they keep saying the acts are in control, they’re just a service.  There’s no future in that.

Vail Resorts just got nominated for a Webby, turning skiing into a game, having skiers earn badges.  Live Nation overpays its executives and adds nothing social.

P.S. Vail could have used cheaper RFIDs.  Ones that only go for eighteen inches.  But they employed the ones that could be read from thirty feet without even knowing they were going to build EpicMix.  They prepared for the future.

The music business is not preparing for the future.

Read this story on Songkick.  Why did it take college students in the U.K. to come up with this idea?  Doug Morris champions the money-losing Vevo, which is really not a new idea, video clips with ads, whoopee, and these kids have a great idea that they’re going to make money with.

Maybe you don’t know what an RFID is.

Well, you could use Google.

You could explore.  You could cogitate.  You could realize the people running the music business would already look different if it weren’t for the rights hurdle.  But now innovators are smart, they’re building businesses without music, without having to license rights, that’s the future.

Songkick

EpicMix

Cutting Edge—and Cutting Risk

From: ___________@___________
Subject: from Tom Scholz re BOSTON – Foreplay/Longtime

Dear Bob,

I’m glad you enjoyed my song Long Time, even if you didn’t care that much for some of my other tunes.  My mantra has always been that music should make us feel better, a viewpoint we seem to share.

Although John Boylan’s participation in the recording of BOSTON was limited, his guidance in mixing and mastering was indispensable.  I do have to take exception to some of his memories however, which may have become blurred over 35 years.  The recording of BOSTON was the culmination of a six years struggle for me, and remains the most exciting point of my career; as such, I have a vivid recollection of the events surrounding the making of BOSTON.

1.  It strikes me as odd that John would describe Barry Goudreau as "the often unmentioned lead guitarist in Boston," which might lead some readers to think that Barry was the lead guitarist for the band, and was not fairly credited as such.

Barry did perform the exceptional lead guitar parts on Long Time and also on Let Me Take You Home Tonight (but not on Foreplay or the segue into Long Time). Lead guitar parts for all other songs on the album, several of which you mentioned, were performed by me.

When Sony records finally allowed me to disclose the detailed musician credits on the remastered version of the album in 2006, Barry’s limited but important contributions were prominently mentioned in glowing terms.

Credits detailing who actually played the instruments on the album were left off of the original album jacket by Epic records.  This failing hid the fact that most of the tracks for the album (nearly 90%) were overdubbed by Brad and me, the original two "band" members signed to Epic, and not recorded by an actual band – which I don’t think sat well with their marketing people.

John was not present when these guitar tracks were recorded, since he was on the West coast, while I worked to record the instrument tracks for all but one of the songs on that album in my crude basement studio in Watertown, MA.

2.  The hand claps for Long Time were the only non-vocal tracks recorded in LA – all other tracks having been recorded in my basement without the aid of professional recording equipment or engineers – and were in fact attempted in the Men’s room of Capital Records as John described.  I remember it being a huge relief that for a moment I did not have to simultaneously be performer, engineer, and producer, and could just relax and clap along with the track while someone else pushed the buttons.

3.  Contrary to John’s memory, I remember the edit connecting the Foreplay ending segue to Long Time at the downbeat as pretty easy.  I had made the same edit in my basement before coming to LA at the slower 15ips speed of the original 1" master tape, but wanted the final splice to be made on the 30ips 2nd gen 2" master used in LA. The organ track brought to LA on the 2" master was copied at the same level for both the end of the Foreplay segue, and the start of Long Time, so that the final splice (made at 30ips) would be undetectable – masked by a drum kick as John says.  There were however numerous splices made in my basement studio (at only 15 ips) to alter the arrangement at other points in the medley that had me sweating bullets.

Far trickier was trying to coax the unearthly sounds in Foreplay and the segue into Long Time from my Les Paul heard just before the edit John mentions.

4.  No organ parts for either Foreplay or Long Time were recorded on a Lowrey organ, which I did not own, or any other type of theater organ.  Nor were any parts recorded on a Hammond B3 which I also did not own or have access to.  I had a minimal budget in my Watertown basement.  Two years after moving from that apartment, I did acquire a Conn theater organ for stage use, which lived in my living room when we were not touring.

The organ actually used was an old M3, often referred to as a "baby B3," with several damaged tone generator wheels in the upper register.  This and an old 147 Leslie is all I had, and after lots of work tweaking the individual tone generator levels, it sounded great.

The M3 can do something that a B3 cannot: it produces an additional low harmonic on the lower keyboard only, and I used this frequently to get the organ sounds heard on BOSTON.

Nothing was ever recorded in my living room in Watertown, it was all done in two tiny rooms in my basement the size of coat closets.  John Boylan’s engineer (and John) refused to work there, which is how I ended up engineering and producing most of the debut BOSTON album by myself, in the basement of an apartment house.

5.  I am forever indebted to John for what I learned working with him, and for his willingness to stick his neck out fooling Epic records into believing an album was being recorded "professionally" in LA, while it was actually being made by an amateur somewhere in a Massachusetts basement.

Finally, we all miss Brad, those of us in the band having spent weeks, months, and years traveling and working with him, but why not listen to his successor sing?  He happens to be a very nice guy, with a great voice, who admired Brad greatly.  John’s comment seems a bit cynical and I don’t think it’s something Brad would have appreciated.

Tom Scholz

Foreplay/Longtime – original post

Re: Foreplay/Longtime – John Boylan

Don’t it.

I was driving down Benedict Canyon with a Mercedes on my ass listening to "Stairway To Heaven".

When Lee Abrams was in charge of XM, "Stairway" was banned, we’d heard it enough, do we ever need to hear it again?  And while I’m contemplating the lift from Spirit, Robert’s pure voice, the inane lyrics and the dumb inner cover, the record changed.

When "Every Picture Tells A Story" was released Rod Stewart was unknown.

That changed overnight.

Despite having two albums under his belt, "Gasoline Alley" being the best work he’d ever do, almost no one in the States had a clue who the guy with the rooster hairdo was.  Then came "Maggie May".

That’s the game, staying in it long enough to get lucky.

But I never loved that track.  For me it was the first cut on the other side, the opening song, the title track.

Now back when this record was released, I didn’t even own a car.  I remember riding to the record store on my bicycle to buy the album the day it came out, I was just that big a fan, I had a poster on my dorm room wall.  And I dropped the needle and it sounded like where the last record left off, the plaintive acoustic guitar, the story continues, it was like getting a phone call from an old friend.

And then the drum hit.

Spent some time feelin’ inferior
Standing in front of my mirror

Ain’t that the teenage condition.  If you could only break out of the house and begin your life…and that’s exactly what Rod Stewart did, he was telling us his story.  Not that I’m better than you, but this is the tale if you take a risk, follow the music, opportunities and surprises are rife.

Down in Rome I wasn’t gettin’ me none
Of the things that keep a young man alive

Everyone’s a winner.  No one’s got questions.  No one has any despair.  It’s just a constant climb to the top.

Bullshit.

Then there’s that moment when Rod goes "Whew!"  THAT MAKES THE RECORD!  You see music is about emotion.  Not the kind that Christina Aguilera fakes, but the elation that you’re in the music game now and even though you might be bounced out any second, you’re loving the ride.

And when Maggie Bell comes in with the "vocal abrasives" you want to run out the front door and sign up, WHERE DO I GET MORE OF THIS!

Sure, I want to meet Shanghai Lil.  But really I want to be in the studio, just let me be a fly on the wall, experiencing all this.

I was driving to lunch with Craig Kallman.  I’d like to tell you I got insight into the Warner sale, but he knows no more than you and me, he’s reading the papers too.  But he did tell me about his big project, Atlantic Studios.

You see Craig’s looking for virtuosos, players.  He’s chasing talent instead of stardom.  He wants someone who stayed home and practiced like John Mayer instead of someone with a ton of YouTube hits.  And he’s having a hard time unearthing talent. So he decided to foster it himself.  They got a building in Hollywood, installed four studios and want everybody to come and HANG OUT!  Craig figures there’ll be some serendipity, young players will get inspired, it’ll be about the music as opposed to the fame.

And now David Guetta’s working there.  The building is humming 24/7.

That’s the future.  The music.

On paper, Rod Stewart was a stiff just moments before "Maggie May".  He didn’t sound like anybody else!  There was no slot. But the public becomes infatuated with that which is different and great, because there’s so little of it.

In other words, if you want to be successful you’re better off driving away from the mainstream instead of parking your car and hanging out with the usual suspects.

It’s a beautiful day in SoCal.  Not a cloud in the sky, it’s the time of possibilities.  And possibilities are born from music.  You put on your favorite record and get inspired.  I heard "Every Picture Tells A Story" and got inspired.  It sounded as fresh as it did back in ’71.  Just like a great book or "The Godfather" never fades, never loses relevance.  But few have the inclination to take such risk.  To be all in.

But that’s not enough.  You’ve got to work hard to get to the point where you can be noticed.

Rod did that vocal for Python Lee Jackson.

He was the lead singer for the Jeff Beck Group.

And now he was a member of the Faces.

He didn’t know he’d become so big.  He was just another voice.  Becoming more mature with each mile passing by under his wheels.

There are no guarantees in music.

You just get bitten by the bug and practice.

Or maybe you’re a listener, building your collection, addicted.

But what gets everybody addicted is originality.

And originality doesn’t come from a twelve year old.  It comes from someone who’s been bruised and battered, who can not only play but tell his world-weary tale.

If you don’t want to go for a ride on the Peking Ferry you’re no friend of mine.

You can’t bring your snazzy automobile.  Nor your designer outfits.  You can only bring yourself.

So shine up your personality, rehearse your tales, perfect your smile and LET’S GO!

I didn’t see one person I knew.  Either inside or waiting outside for the 10 PM show.

That’s the modern music business.

Yes, he played "We Can’t Make It Here", but the highlight for me was the opening number, "Down Across The Delaware".

Watch the video here:

James McMurtry – Down Across The Delaware 
(Sorry about the ad, sorry about the localization.)

The relevant lyrics are:

I heard a voice today I swore I knew
From somewhere down in the southern sticks
I turned around to see some ragged stranger
Bummin’ change on the uptown six
And I froze like a stone
Could I ever get that low?
Turned my face to the window
There by the grace of God I go

We’re only a motion away from personal devastation.

Most are only a paycheck away from financial ruin.

If you think you’re immune you’re dreaming.  It’s the nature of the human condition.  No matter how rich Steve Jobs is, cancer got him and he’s having a hell of a time beating it.

Which is why you’ve got to love your brother, keep an eye out for him, pray that the safety net catches you on the way down. We’re only here for a short time.  Personal initiative goes a long way, but not all the way.  You’re nothing without society, without people.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons that Jesse Colin Young song is a perennial, we do all have to get together.

And "Down Across The Delaware" is about separation/divorce/human disconnection.  That’s another thing that’ll break your bank account, put you into poverty.

But before the show James told me we’re screwed as long as people keep needing so much stuff.

That’s what it comes down to, right?  If you raise my taxes, I won’t be able to buy the stuff I need.  Works whether you want to buy a private plane or purchase a new flat screen.  Americans feel entitled, to more, more, more.  The concept of sacrifice is anathema.  But do we really need all the things we think we do?

And who’s going to pay for them?

I hope the economy rebounds and everybody gets what they want.  But it looks like the opposite is happening.  When are we all gonna pitch in and fix this country.  Instead of demonizing the government and asking what it can do for us when we want to give it nothing in return.  I mean how do you expect to fill the potholes if you don’t pay taxes?

You think you need money to make it in music.  You think you need to be ubiquitous.  That if you’re a journeyman, you’re lost.

But the journeyman gets to play forever.  His time comes and it never goes.

James McMurtry is up there telling his stories, evidencing all the years of practice on his guitar, and his loyal audience comes to see him.

And that’s all there is.

There’s no front page story in a newspaper no longer being read.

There’s no video on an MTV that’s all reality shows.

There’s no million selling CD.

There’s just the music.  And that’s got to be enough.  Journeymen can’t afford backdrops and dancers, frequently they can’t even afford a band.

Songwriters are bitching they can’t get paid in the new world.

Yes, you can.  You can put your old kit bag over your shoulder and go on the road.  Those radio dreams are history.  People find out about music online and support those artists who are authentic, who are playing to them, not the gatekeepers.

Everybody wants to go back to the past.  Well, that’s what we’re doing.  Only it’s further back than you contemplated, before CDs, before radio, when you made your living live.  Are you up to the challenge?

James McMurtry is.