If one function devices could continue to triumph, the iPod would not be supplanted by the iPhone.

A friend just asked me if I was on BBM.  That’s BlackBerry Messenger for the uninitiated.  And many may never be initiated, because BlackBerry is so 2001.  Or 5.  Or maybe even 6 or 7, but certainly not 11.

BlackBerries do one thing incredibly well, process e-mail.

And that’s it.

If you think BlackBerries surf the Web well, then you don’t, or have never used an iPhone.

Sure, RIM sells a touch screen BlackBerry, but that’s like the Beach Boys doing disco music, or Elton John rapping.  The Beach Boys actually tried that.  Didn’t work too well.  If you’re a musical act, you can’t follow trends, you’ve got to be you.  But in both tech and music, you only survive if you’re ahead of the curve, and not if you’re behind.

It’s all about software.  And software can have no glitches.  The reason Apple is triumphing is because their gear just works.  Sure, it looks cool. But that’s just icing on the cake.  People didn’t buy all those Toyotas because they looked cool, but because they didn’t break.

It’s utterly fascinating watching the tech landscape.  It’s truly either innovate or die.  Once upon a time, I’d pay extra and buy Sony with almost no research.  Now Samsung makes a better television and Microsoft makes a better motion detection gaming system.  I can’t even remember the name of Sony’s wii-style competitor, but everybody’s testifying about Kinect.

You’ve got to read David Pogue’s 10th anniversary tech column in the "New York Times":

The Lessons of 10 Years of Talking Tech

He talks about the littered landscape of deceased items but also states that he too is overwhelmed, with the sheer plethora of tech products.

Just like we’re overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of music.

But make a great tune and it lasts forever.

A mediocre, trend-following track may be a hit today, but it’s as useless in the future as a Motorola StarTac.

I know, I know, you’re Canadian, you beat your chest for RIM.

But it’s over.

Because RIM looked for a day it could dominate, but once it reached that peak…nothing.

Google’s making inroads in the mobile world because of Android software.  Doesn’t matter the handset, they all work well enough.

Sure, iPhones work better, but Apple is proving you don’t have to dominate to be profitable.  Look at their Mac sales.  And whatever dominance they had in MP3 players is about to become irrelevant, as a result of not only smartphones, but on demand streaming.  Isn’t it interesting that the best-selling iPod is the Touch, which is basically the iPhone without the phone (but it does have FaceTime!)

It’s confusing.  Just when you get up to speed in one area, time passes and you’re passe.  You can stay where you are, in the backwater, but please don’t try and tell everybody else to live in your ancient village.  This has decimated the major labels and is now impacting newspapers and movies and…  It’s tough to be dominant in the old world but start over in the new.  But that’s what you’ve got to do.  The only way to triumph these days is by being cutting edge.  There’s no way you can corral people into living in the past.

I’ve probably bought my last BlackBerry.  I’ve got app-envy.  There are whole issues of "Macworld" and "MacLife" that don’t apply to me.  Media is fascinated with apps, and I’m left out.  I’m not a shopper, but all I read about are apps that help you navigate Black Friday sales.

RIM is a one hit wonder.  That is now chasing trends, poorly.

This doesn’t work in music and it doesn’t work in tech.

It’s great!  Fantastic!  Because finally the NFL figured out that it exists in the twenty first century and classic rock is aged music from another era and represents not a whit what is happening in the game today.

Hell, the soundtrack of the NFL is hip-hop.  But they can’t say that or the white folk watching the black men will ask them for their birth certificates.

The Who killed classic rock at the Super Bowl.  Sure, it was time.  If it had been another act, the result might have been the same, or maybe one more year of geriatrics, but to see these old guys going through their old hits was as disappointing as the thought of Jim McMahon and Refrigerator Perry taking the field in the game.

Time marches on.  It’s not like babies are not being born.  How come in music we only believe the past is any good?

Maybe because the Black Eyed Peas are crap.  will.i.am is lovable, but how come he has to set his sights so low?  Is he that interested in money?  The vapid lyrics and the robotic tunes…  This is like making a living selling McDonald’s, when there’s a burgeoning Food Network and every publication known to man reviews the latest hip eateries!

In other words, food is more hip than music.  More cutting edge, there’s bigger risk-taking.  Then again, you don’t need the approval of Jimmy Iovine and the other baby boomer gatekeepers in order to open a restaurant, you can do it yourself.

Which is what musicians are doing today.  They’re rejecting the mainstream, because they don’t want to make evanescent cookie-cutter crap.

Look at it this way.  The NFL finally realized it’s living in a new era, and that it can’t stay rooted to the past.  The music industry?  Take the classic rock acts out of the touring industry and you’ve got anemic numbers.

Then again, it’s the old acts overcharging that’s giving the whole industry a bad name.  There’s a burgeoning indie live scene, selling tons of tickets at cheap prices.  That’s the future, not whored out brandmeisters being overpaid to play the Live Nation sheds.

I don’t expect the NFL to employ anything but a universal act in the future.  That’s why they used classic rock, supposedly everybody loved it.  But the Super Bowl only happens once a year, and music plays constantly.  Why do we all have to listen to the same crap?  Whether it be the monochromatic new or the preserved in amber old?

Take notice.  The times they are a changing.  The sun is setting on not only the baby boomers, but their music.  The future is new and uncharted and those in power hate it.  They hate that it’s so much harder to break an act, they hate that you make so much less money, they blame the audience, as if the customer owes them anything at all.

Now there are rules in football.

But there are none in music.

Your song can be two and a half minutes long or a whole album side, even a complete CD!  You can use real horns or their digital equivalent.  Same deal with drums.  There’s a vast canvas.  And the Black Eyed Peas are only painting upon a tiny sliver of it, visible to fewer people than ever before.

It’s a free for all.  It’s a land rush.  Everything in music is up for grabs.  Pete Townshend has gotten old and eventually he will die.  Then what?  An animatronic Who?

No.  Music will be made by new people.  And they won’t be the I want to be famous at all cost TV contestants, hell, fewer people than ever are watching network TV, but those so unique and so good, so innovative that those who don’t even think they’re interested in music will be paying attention, dying to get closer.

That was the power of the British Invasion, that was the power of the Beatles.  The music created its own market.  The Black Eyed Peas are playing to the existing market.  You want to create your own.

The boomers are too old to fathom this.  But you’re not.  Are you up to the challenge?

Re: Todd Alsup

I see your gay soul/jazz singer (actually a poorer version of the terrific but not yet Lefsetz-stamped Mayer Hawthorne), and I raise you a transgendered/queer songwriter from Calgary, now a man known as Rae Spoon, who blew my mind tonight in Ottawa, seeing him live for the first time.

Rae Spoon There is a Light (but it’s not for everyone)

Jon Bartlett

For all I know Rae Spoon has camped outside record company offices and has a burning desire to conquer the world.

But I don’t think so…

Everybody in America is trying to get famous.

But maybe you can only be really good if fame is not your goal.

There is something absolutely touching about Rae Spoon’s "There Is A Light (but it’s not for everyone)" linked above.  Yes, everybody’s employing tricky videos to try and get noticed, but I wasn’t even watching this clip, I was listening in the background and I got hooked.  Who mentions Leonard Cohen and Kraftwerk in the same song?

For all of those reading this to try and learn how to make it, you can move right along.  Because to really make it, you’ve got to focus on art first, the music.  You can’t think about doing it how everybody else is doing it, but only how you can do it in your own unique way.  The role of an artist is to speak his truth from isolation, in such a way that it becomes universal.  In other words, if you’re second-guessing the audience, you’re a loser, you’re never going to make it, or you’re going to be instantly forgotten after your brief moment in the sun.

Used to be there was a cut-off.  Either you had a record deal or you didn’t.  So there were only a few Rae Spoons out there.  Now there’s a seemingly limitless quantity of singers trying to make it.  Most lousy, but they cloud up the atmosphere so we can’t see the good ones.

Rae Spoon wasn’t made for the hit parade.  It’s not about some A&R guy telling him to change his music/look/cowrite in order to make it.  That’s like trying to turn a bicycle into an automobile.  Rae Spoon is just Rae Spoon.  He’s not for everybody.  But when something is made for mass consumption, it means so little.

And the road to great success is paved with people who thought they were doing it just for a few and found out that tons liked it.  That’s the story of classic rock.  Who knew it was classic?  Who knew everybody wanted to listen to it?

When you speak from your heart, you have a chance of enrapturing me.  And I’m looking for those moments.  I don’t want to be a faceless member of the crowd, I want to be recognized for being unique, an individual, like Rae Spoon.  Maybe that’s why his music appeals to me.  He did it his way, and took the risk that in doing so, we could relate.  I did.  You?

Something’s wrong here.  Because this guy is good!

I got this e-mail:

From: Ben Sheehan
Subject: RE: Billy Joel On Howard Stern

I saw Todd Alsup last week, and I’ve never felt this way about a triple threat since Billy Joel. Read between the lines on this one — it could be this generation’s political anthem.

How I’m Made

That’s worth a click through, don’t you think?

This is a very easy process, the music never lives up to the hype, someone is friends with the performer or took a hot date to the show and listening at home it just doesn’t work.

But this does.

Maybe he’s a bit too Bruce Roberts.  Maybe it’s unclear what his sexuality is and who the target audience is.  But if you think this guy has no talent you know nothing.

But he’s got absolutely no traction.  No label.  Hell, you can listen to the music on his site but you can’t even buy it.  Huh?

He’s hyping some "Billboard" thing.  Guess that must not mean much, because he’s nowhere.  Hell, his site hasn’t even been updated recently, the news is from earlier this year.  But he does have a gig on December 1st at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA, wherever that is.

But I’d figure this guy would kill at colleges.  Especially those out of the way, far from the metropolis, starved for quality live entertainment.

Ellen champions Greyson Chance when there are people like Todd Alsup out there?

Are we truly more interested in people who are good for their age than those who’ve grown up and learned how to do it themselves?

What’s wrong here?

I can find out hardly anything.  I’ve never heard of the manager.  Maybe Todd’s just got the wrong team.

Or maybe he just doesn’t care enough himself.

This guy is close.  Clive Davis could easily make him a star.  If he had a team behind him, he’d have a career overnight, there’s always room for someone who can write and sing catchy songs with melody.

I’m not saying his lyrics are as insightful as Billy Joel’s…  Then again, this is just the beginning.  Maybe with time Todd Alsup could develop.  Then again, maybe he couldn’t.

All I know is if this record came out when I was in college everybody would know who Todd Alsup was and if he played a gig he’d be the biggest act on campus.

Either Todd’s got to hook up with a booking agent who gets him 250 gigs a year or he’s got to find a whole new team, committed to breaking him, because right now he’s nowhere.

But he made an impression on Ben Sheehan and now he’s made an impression on me.  Then again, he’s not as good as Gabe Dixon, but he’s younger.

Are we so trend-centric, are we so beat-oriented that we can’t give regular music a chance?

I’ve been playing Todd’s tunes for the past hour.  I’ve gotten stuck on a couple of tracks.  Like "The Way It Goes" and the last one on the page, "The Good Fight".

Todd, fire everybody you’re working with, they’ve got it wrong.  Or you just don’t want it bad enough.  Because you’re close.  If you just hang in there, you’re gonna make it.  I can hear it.

Click on the titles and the songs will play: Todd Alsup