Bob

Arcade Fire had the final slot on the Grammys as the ratings are low at the end of the broadcast. It really is that simple. We were one of the least known acts on the bill for a network audience. Don’t you think I wanted a better slot for the band?

The reason we got a second song was also simple. No big plot. We had no guarantee of air time, but it was simply to play out the end credits of the show, if we’re even had that much. The show never runs like clockwork to an exact time so the end is always loose. As it happened, the broadcast was covered by sponsors messages and the end credits.

For the Grammys international broadcast our main performance, along with that of Mumford and Sons and the Avett Brothers was completely cut from the show. Our end title performance was bastardised because they cut out ads/sponsor messages completely. It was a bit of a farce. You’d think we’d be given a little more after the fact.

Arcade Fire deserved the win this year. They made the best album. If the award was names "Album Sales Of The Year" award, there would be no discussion. Stoutes letter was nice piece of self publicity. Did he see Kanye’s tweets when we won and the praise he gave us?? He needs to tune in. Eminem made a big selling album but it was far from being his best work. Katy Perry made a big pop record that simply didn’t have weight or credibility. Gaga’s repackage, great album but it was a repackage of the main release. I think everyone felt it was going to be Lady Antebellum’s moment having won 5 out of 6 awards to that point. We all felt that way too.

I’m proud of this band and what they have achieved. We didn’t lobby any organisation for this nor did the band play the game. We paid our own overhead to do the event, thus the lack of on stage gimmicks. No label picked up the tab.

Arcade Fire are now one of the biggest live acts in the world. It’s not all about record sales. It’s about making great records and it’s about building a loyal fan base. Ther band make great albums, they’re not a radio driven singles band. On top of that, they own their own masters and copyrights and are in complete control of their own destiny. Things couldn’t be better.

Excuse any typos as I’m on my blackberry

Best regards

Scott Rodger

Jake sent me an e-mail about Chris Anderson’s appearance on Charlie Rose.  The TED Conference Chris Anderson.

And as Charlie does, which usually bugs me, there’s an opening roll of greatest hits, in this case the greatest TED speakers.

And I didn’t recognize the one guy who said we’re driving the creativity right out of our kids.  But I agree with him.  That’s my college experience in a nutshell.  Didn’t matter what I thought, what did the great thinkers of all time believe?  That was the English department at Middlebury College.  The creative writing department?  A guy who wrote unsuccessful sea stories, who told me my piece needed a twist.  Ever hear of the New Journalism?  Which was even old back then?  I didn’t write another thing for fifteen years.

But after this English gentleman came a legendary director we’d all recognize, only I didn’t, I was surfing another site while I was listening.  But what James Cameron said was:

"Failure has to be an option."

Whoa, isn’t this what killed the major labels?  They wanted to eliminate all the failure!  You can’t trust the act you sign, you’ve got to hook ’em up with famous songwriters, you’ve got to use the name producer, you’ve got to buy insurance.

"Failure has to be an option, in art and in exploration.  Because it’s a leap of faith.  And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk.  You have to be willing to take those risks."

It hurts to fail.

But if you come to bat more than once every two or three years, you’re gonna get better, you’re gonna learn something, your odds of success increase.

I know everything I write isn’t great.  Pains me to no end.  Because I know great.  And when I hit it over the fence, I’m elated, and e-mail praising me rains down.  And when I don’t…I get silence.  And I judge whether I’m on the right track by the response, not always the quantity, but certainly the quality.

I never write anything terrible, I’m too many miles in.

But when I write something great, I know I’ll get a response.  And I do.  I tingle.

Now my best writing is when I’m inspired.  It’s like I’m struck by lightning, I can’t get to the computer fast enough.  But if I always waited for that jolt of electricity, when I received it, what I wrote would not be as good.  Because my failures teach me things.  However wrenching they might be, I learn when I don’t succeed.

And you do too.

It’s the nature of the game.

Why do we expect everything an artist does to be great?

You know why the Top Forty wonders of the moment are here today and gone tomorrow?  Because no one believes it’s really them, they believe the success is the team.  Because they’ve seen no development, no failure.

And artistic history is littered with that which was considered to be a failure, unreleasable, which ultimately turned out to be legendary.

Why was it held back?  Because some suit unable to fail said no.

Suits in art should be encouragers and enablers, not people who say no.  If you can’t trust the artist, you’ve got no art.  Artists are vulnerable, their hit to shit ratio is not a hundred to one.  But the more shit you compose, the more hits you end up with.  Isn’t that Gladwell’s model?  That by playing dives 1,000 times the Beatles learned how to be good?  How do we expect acts to be great live when they’ve barely ever plied the boards?

Now the cost of production is cheap.  You can experiment for free.  Or close to it.  Are you following Adam Duritz’s "All My Bloody Valentines" giveaway?  Excellent idea.  Brilliant execution.  But the tracks are for fans only.

But I’d still check out the next thing Adam did.  Even though these cuts are subpar, maybe he was too concerned with process and next time he can focus on quality.

So stop polishing to perfection, rubbing all the good parts off, and focus on creating.  Sure, you’re gonna be hurt and abused when you fail, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pick yourself up and succeed in the future.

What’s great about TED is it’s not about money, but thought.  That’s what truly changes the world.

And one great thought in an artistic piece can change lives.

But greatness only comes when you challenge convention, test the limits, try new things and are willing to fail.

Look at all the songs that are professionally recorded, even serviceable, but they just don’t get your blood to boil.  Wasn’t that the point of Nirvana?  That raw and unpolished can resonate with the public?  Kurt Cobain killed the labored power ballad paradigm overnight.  Because it was calculated, it was without risk.

Watching James Cameron I was inspired.  Even though I like what he’s got to say more than his movies.  And ain’t that the point, it’s not about loving everything someone does, but the nuggets.

"In whatever you’re doing, failure is an option, but fear is not."

James Cameron is at 2:45

Adam Duritz

P.S. The guy before Cameron is the legendary Sir Ken Robinson.  You may not have met him, but he’s a one man dynamo who inspires and changes the life of all who meet him.

I’m not worried about anybody competing with me.

Because they just don’t have the dedication, they just don’t persevere.

In other words, if the first thing you’re thinking about is money, you’re doomed.  It’s just too tough. Not that it’s illegal to think about getting paid, but if you don’t love what you do, if you wouldn’t do it for free, give up now.  Because you just ain’t gonna make it.

The artistic life is truly about getting in your car and driving away from the action, away from the city, charting your own course and hoping the public catches up with you.  And if they don’t?

You’re probably not doing something they’re interested in.  Swallow that.  There’s a good chance you’re not good either, but I won’t make that judgment.  But the best work is done when the public is not in mind, when you’re following your own muse.  And following and following and following.

I don’t know what inspired Daryl Hall to start "Live From Daryl’s House".  But I know it was about music.  And music is always about collaboration.  Sure, you can make that record at home alone, but how you gonna play it live?  Furthermore, with a musician’s life so hard, you’d better enjoy the camaraderie, the give and take, the playing, because that’s all there might ever be.

Artists are a different breed.  They’re not about capitalism, but capturing emotion.  Telling an aural tale.  Hooking you and me not by dunning us, but through their music.  I’ve never been closed by an e-mail, especially an unsolicited one.  But music?  You can hear it once and get it.  You’ve just got to be exposed to it.

And one place to be exposed to it is "Live From Daryl’s House".

I used to go.  In the beginning.  But now that Fitz and The Tantrums was on I decided to check back. And was stunned that there were 39 episodes.  Sure, there’s been some TV action recently, but that was years later.  Are you willing to invest for years, with almost no financial return, just because you believe in yourself and are having fun?

I went to Daryl’s site and could now surf the archive and hear so many cuts.  I could spend some time there.  And this only occurred because Daryl Hall stayed at it.

Almost no one stays at it anymore.  They want a quick return or they’re on to the next thing.  "If this music thing doesn’t work out in 24 months I’m going to graduate school."  There’s no time limit on making it in the arts, you can work your whole life and never get noticed or be noticed when you’re sixty or be noticed immediately and then forgotten.  That’s the worst thing, to have quick success and never be able to walk away, trading on it for decades, stopping not only your creativity, but your life.

A great artist grows.

Daryl is just not presenting these artists, he’s playing with them.

That’s what a musician does.  Play.

All that social networking crap is secondary.  One great performance can eclipse a lifetime of tweets. And if someone can find you on YouTube, they’ll spread the word themselves, they’ll discover a way, you don’t need to work it on Facebook.

You see almost no one perseveres at their dream.  Certainly not once they’re out of school, when there’s little financial reward.  We revere those that do.

But we’re only interested in excellence.

When we find it, we stick to it like glue.  We tell everybody about it.

Don’t worry about holding on to your fans tight. They come, they go.  But they’ll always come back if you produce great new work.

But that’s hard.

Can you stay in the game when no one is paying attention, when not only do you not feel like you’re going forward, but you’re locked in the Sargasso Sea?

That’s the question.

Live From Daryl’s House

Wasn’t this the guy who was beaten up by Puffy’s people?

Funny thing about this story.  It was born in the "New York Times", but it lives online.  I got two e-mails from those who saw it in the newspaper, but now my inbox is filling up with messages from people who found out about it digitally.  Without the Internet, this is a non-story.  With online discussion, Steve Stoute’s 40k ad just might make a difference.

You’ve got to start with Neil Portnow.

1. Why doe he make so much money?

2. Why did he abandon a paid-for building in favor of too much space that costs a fortune a mile away?  (While the original building remains vacant.)

3. What is the relationship with Portnow/NARAS and AEG?  Why do the Grammys never go to New York anymore?  And isn’t it interesting that the Grammy Museum is part of L.A. Live.  With a terrible side entrance to boot.  Was negotiating power that poor?

4.  Why has membership dropped by half since Neil took over?

5. Why has the Grammy Foundation cut half its budget?

6. Who produces the show, Ken Ehrlich or NARAS?  It appears that Ehrlich, a contractor with no official position, is wagging the dog.  Furthermore, isn’t it interesting that Ehrlich’s company is owned by AEG, as is that of the producer of the MusiCares gala.

I don’t think only the acts should revolt, but the entire NARAS membership.  What we’ve got here is a self-interested dictator in bed with corporations.  This helps music how?

Don’t get caught up in Stoute’s anger about who won what award.

Do get pissed off that popular acts are being utilized for ratings when it’s clear they are not going to win.

Where was that segment where the two accountants come out on stage and say that the voting was confidential?  Obviously NARAS knew Arcade Fire was gonna win.  Otherwise, why would they close the show?  And they got two numbers.  If there was gonna be extra time couldn’t there have been another performer, or one of those legendary Grammy love-ins featuring Stevie Wonder and a whole host of legends, maybe playing a classic with Arcade Fire?

Acts want exposure, that’s why they do the show.  If it was about awards, they’d perform the tracks that got them nominated, not their new singles.  It’s a promotional vehicle.

As long as you’ve got acts lining up for that big audience, you’re gonna get no change.  There’s too much in it for them.  Then again, if the superstars could band together and not appear.  Then again, superstars are always afraid the end is near and so many "superstars" in the music industry were just minted yesterday and might be gone tomorrow.

No, what has to happen is Steve Stoute has to stage a coup.  Not only take out an ad in the newspaper, but round up his brethren and steal the entire organization.  It’s not that hard.  If you care.

Not that I really do.

NARAS is beholden to the dying record labels.  Without the TV show it’s nothing.  It’s positively last century.

Could the awards be made more relevant?

OF COURSE!

By eliminating almost all of them.  Or breaking the ceremony into two events six months apart. Fewer than ten awards in one, all the rest in the other, maybe Webcast, with performances.  That’s the place for Esperanza Spalding.  Where people can actually see her play and discover why she’s so great.

So when do you stop being a new artist again?  Is it record sales or visibility or are there no real criteria and if Widespread Panic, an act that’s been touring for decades, finally has a Top Forty hit they can win Best New Artist too?

And how can you adjust the nominations for "credibility", to make sure Jethro Tull doesn’t win the heavy metal award, and have us believe in them?  Furthermore, how can you vote if you’ve never heard the music?  We live in a digital age.  It would be easy to make sure the membership listens online in order to cast its vote.

Things are so rotten in Denmark that the King is tottering.

Now is the time to put the stake through his heart.

Exec Takes Out Full-Page Ad in NYT to Criticize Grammys