We went to the SModcastle.

It’s the filters that kill me.  You know, that intestinal process in Hollywood where what goes in one end resembles not a whit what comes out the other.  There’s always some jerk-off insisting that a scene be changed so that someone in a faraway land will like the movie.  And all the truth, all the heart, all the reality is stripped from the original concoction.  But when something eludes these filters, when an artist gets it right and I get to experience it I wear a grin ten miles wide, I feel alive, I want to tell everybody I know about this most private of moments when I was in touch with the zeitgeist, when I not only saw my humanity but felt part of the collective consciousness.

Like in "Chasing Amy".

There’s this scene, where Silent Bob finally talks.  Tells a tale about a woman he was once involved with.  He elicited her previous sexual history.  Hell, that’s part of every relationship.  Any way it goes, it sucks.  Either she was wilder than you or tamer but you feel uptight nonetheless.  Guys are bad with this.  We want to feel macho yet miniscule at the same time.  We want to be your man, but we also want to regale you with tales of our Lionel train sets, sports stars of yore, we want the ability to be little boys, and if you’ve fucked more people than we have we feel inadequate and can’t reveal our softer side and there you have the death of a relationship.  We make up an excuse and break up with you.  Because we can’t tolerate the conflicted feelings inside. Then we spend our whole lives chasing Amy.

That’s the girl Silent Bob let get away.

Every guy’s got an Amy.  It may not even be a woman.  But a job, a situation he fucked up because he was immature.  He wants another chance.  He’s haunted by Amy.  He goes to sleep with Amy on his mind.  What if he hadn’t been such a hothead, what if he’d played it differently?

But there aren’t any do-overs in life.  And what’s gone is usually gone for good.  But you end up with a story, which you whip out with your buddies, when it’s late at night and you’ve had a few and you let your guard down.

I knew Kevin Smith played Carnegie Hall.  I was surprised you could pay twenty five bucks and see him in an intimate venue in Hollywood with less than a hundred fans.

It was him.  In his hockey jersey.  And Jay, Jason Mewes, from all those movies they did together.  Ostensibly it was a podcast, but really, it was the story of their lives.

And Jason Mewes has got stories you can’t make up.  Watching his brother fuck a woman while he beats off.  Screwing this same older woman years later.  Never knowing his father.  Being raised by his grandmother who turned out to be his great aunt. His sister’s got seven kids, each and every one of them taken away by the state.  His brother’s living in North Carolina, as a racist and a homophobe.  You’re related, yet so different.  Then again, they all had different fathers.

But as interesting as Jason’s tales were, it was the ones told by Kevin that truly resonated.  Because he grew up in a middle class suburban household just like me, just like so many of us.

He talked about this fight his parents had on Christmas.  His dad wanted to allow his uncle to come over, even though it was now bedtime.  To his wife, Kevin’s mother, he ultimately said "Blood is thicker than water."  And Kevin’s mom put her fist through the wall.  A feat that Keven was ultimately unable to duplicate.

Meanwhile, the kids were all downstairs in the living room mortified while this was going on.  My parents fought.  I remember huddling with my sisters debating whether they were going to get a divorce.  They never did.  Which is why when you marry me, it’s forever, unless you leave me first.

Kevin’s older brother is gay.  He and Jay discussed when Kevin found out.  But even more interesting was when Kevin finally started to bring home girls, his parents encouraged fucking, they wanted to cover up what had come before.

It’s normalcy that gets to us.  Because normal is so abnormal.  It’s the little things that resonate, it’s the quirks that we remember. Sanitized entertainment can be interesting as a train-wreck, but we can’t identify.  Who can identify with a beautiful twit who’s been enhanced by plastic surgery singing a song about winning written by middle aged men?  Or, as John Lennon sang, gimme some truth.  All we want is the truth.

It was just like sitting down for a conversation with your buddies except these were professionals, you could see Kevin’s screenwriting mind at work.  The words chosen, the questions asked, it was like living in a movie.  A very blue movie.

That’s the secret.  Both males and females talk about sex and relationships and are raunchy in a way you never see portrayed. Howard Stern is a voyeur, Kevin and Jason were telling their own stories, they were in it together and we were getting a sneak peek.

Ultimately you’ll be able to listen to tonight’s show as a podcast.  But if you’re a fan of these guys, I urge you to go down to Santa Monica Boulevard and experience it live.  The gap disappears, you feel part of something real.  It’s thrilling.

http://www.smodcastle.com/

Mayer Hawthorne.

Did he kill someone?  Did someone kill him?  Then why is he featured in both today’s "New York Times" and "Los Angeles Times"?  HE MUST BE PROMOTING A NEW ALBUM!

Once upon a time I tolerated Mayer Hawthorne.  Now I hate him.  And his handlers and the media complicit in this charade.

Used to be we were isolated.  We had to read the local newspaper, it was the only way to get information.  Now we’ve got a plethora of information sources at our fingertips via the Web/new technology.  But the media industry, the entertainment companies and the hypesters they employ, still believe we live in a pre-digital era, where information was scarce.

These perpetrators will say they’re only trying to reach people.  That’s the conundrum.  In an era where people know more than ever before, they care ever less about what you’re selling.  Not only have they become immune to hype, they ignore it.  They don’t trust marketers.  They wait for the imprimatur of a friend before they dip their own toes in the water, because their time is at a premium.

So how do you reach these people?  Double down?  Create the Keith Richards publicity where everybody in old media covers the story for a week and then it’s scotched, with the book reaching number one and then forgotten?  We know this paradigm in the music world.  Skid Row had a number one album.  Where is Sebastian Bach today?

It’s about longevity.  And longevity comes from quality and trust.  Your product needs to sell itself.  It’s got to be that good.  Then those that acquire it will tell everybody else about it.  That’s the success of Lexus.  It’s even the success of Apple.  Sure, the company advertises now, but is that truly necessary?  People believe in the brand, they tune in to watch product demonstrations by Steve Jobs, affairs that were once for journalists only.  But everybody’s a journalist today.  Creating his own paper. Information is at our fingertips.  Why should we trust the intermediaries?  What is their agenda?  Exactly why did the "Times" of both coasts do stories on Mr. Hawthorne?  It wasn’t news.  Do they want to maintain a relationship with the publicist for a real get, or do they want free concert tickets or..?  And if you really want to know about Mr. Hawthorne, why in hell would you go to the daily newspaper when there are authorities online who live the story.  Old wave reporters investigate a story, online writers live it, each and every day.

If you want to date a woman do you call her each and every day?  Bombard her with text messages?  Not only does this not work, you’ll be arrested as a stalker.  Today, everyone selling in the entertainment business is stalking the audience, and it’s positively creepy.  The way you get a date with your crush is to be so attractive, so desirable that when you finally put the offer out, she can’t help but accept.  When you put your concert tickets on sale, fans clamor, because they believe in you.

And concert tickets are the measure of career success.  That’s a commitment of money and time, going to a show.  Buying a track doesn’t mean much.  Do you remember the last candy bar you bought?

But if you buy what I’m saying the game is much harder.  There are no tricks.  You’ve got to be good, success is slower.  But this is not only where we’re heading, it’s to a great degree where we already are.  You just don’t want to believe it.

I’ve never had a reader e-mail me about Mayer Hawthorne.  I’ve only read about him in the mainstream press, which I don’t trust to get it right on anything truly important to me, why should I trust them on this?

We had an election in the music industry, the incumbents lost.  The public gave the thumbs-down to the major labels, Live Nation and a ton of the acts.  But just like in the real world, the only ones hurt were the little people, the acts themselves.  Who got famous, but in most cases didn’t get rich.  Watch Kid Rock’s testimony on this.  Talking about the "American Idol" stars.  The executives got rich off "American Idol", the producers.  Even if you won, you gave up the lion’s share of your income to the label. That’s the way it’s always been.  But now that the label can’t make as much money, you’ve got to give up revenue on your other, more profitable streams…  Why, because the fat cats deserve it!

There’s a fascinating column in today’s "New York Times" about the superrich.  Turns out they’re not the people you know, not the celebrities or the singers, but those who work for the corporation and the bankers.

Do you see Jimmy Iovine going on record?

No, that’s the job of the RIAA.  The RIAA takes the heat for the labels just like Ticketmaster takes the heat for the acts.  And if the public is too stupid to realize that the Ticketmaster fees are a result of exorbitant act prices/demands, do you really expect people to know that the real winners in the post-MTV music era were the executives?  Mariah made much less than Mottola. And Mo Ostin made more than all of them.  You just don’t know this.

But you do know music is overpriced and shitty.

But as soon as you say this, there’s someone in the industry decrying the inaccuracy and injustice.  Music is just as good as ever, and what a value, you can listen to it forever!  And you should pay MORE so the music can be of an even higher quality! So they can be richer and have more time to make it.  Huh?

This is the same kind of double-speak we get in D.C.  That we just don’t understand.  But we understand that the bank is taking our home and you can’t get a good job.  We understand we paid fifteen dollars to hear one track.  You don’t forget that.  After all, the public doesn’t get its music for free.

Until now.

Never underestimate the hatred of the public towards the music industry.  Sure, free is nice, but most people believe they’re entitled, after being ripped off for eons.  And if there were no copyright, we’d have a whole different bunch of people running the music ship.  You see the rights holders, the labels and the publishing companies, use their catalogs to continue to wreak havoc, to make war on their customers, to resist change, not in an effort to save music, but to get richer.

Tell me.  Who is the young new record label star?

There isn’t one.  The rich fat cats don’t want to let anybody in.  Just like the Forbes 400.  Only 16 of the latest list was newcomers. That’s down from 40 or 50 in recent years.

And the funny thing is how wannabes are lining up to sign away their rights to participate for poor pay in this old edifice. Wanting their face in lights, thinking that fame is everything, they become tools of the corporation, chewed up and spit out in the process.  Today’s new major label artists are just like the poor people voting to decrease taxes on the rich, thinking they may be rich one day.  But the statistics tell a different story, the odds of getting rich in America, working for the man, are ever lower. Because the man controls the game.  And the man wants to keep all the money.

So what is the way out?

It’s the acts.  It’s all new players.   The old guard has proven that change is anathema to them, and rich interlopers just want this same power, like Meg Whitman running for governor with her eBay money.  She didn’t want change, she just wanted to buy her way in.  The public didn’t buy it.

The public doesn’t believe the present music regime is on its side.  And the reality is, it isn’t.

The present regime says recorded music and concert tickets must be expensive.  That you’ve got to tie in with corporations.  Let me get this straight, these same Fortune 500 corporations that are ruining American are going to somehow save music?  Music only triumphs when it’s distanced from the game, when it personifies truth, when you can believe in it.

And when it’s really good.  Made by people who’ve been honing their craft for eons.  Not the ten year olds who can’t write, sing or play the industry is always trumpeting.

P2P trading and the Internet are the best things to ever happen to music.  Because it brings it all to the people.  It may not be good financially for the old, very rich guard, or even some old rich acts, but it’s fantastic for the public.  Isn’t it funny that those who can afford to hear everything don’t acknowledge this.  When I was a kid you had to sit by the radio to hear a track.  Now you just fire up your browser and it’s right there on YouTube.  You can download an entire album for free and find out it sucks, so you don’t have to buy it.

But if you like an act, you can still give it all your money.  Hell, there are more ways to support your favorite acts than ever.  There are those studies saying the music industry in toto is on the way up.

I’m not saying music should be free.  I’m just saying we now live in a better world for the consumer than ever.

In the future, how can we get everybody to pay a little for a lot.  That’s the way out of this mess.  The cell phone industry figured this out.  Handsets used to be a grand and calls were a buck a minute.  Now kids have cell phones and parents like this, because they can be in touch with their progeny 24/7.  Technology is not the enemy, it’s the solution.

But this isn’t about the Napster question.  People are trying to solve that problem.  With Spotify and other services.  This is about the people holding the future back, those presently in power controlling the rights.  They are the enemy.  And if you don’t think this is true, you’re one of them or have been brainwashed.  Or let me put it this way, if you believe cutting taxes for the rich is going to benefit the poor, how come there’s been no trickle down effect in the music business?  How come when the hidden fat cats got richer, music didn’t get better and concert tickets didn’t get cheaper?

The public has very little control over the Fortune 500.  Sure, they can stop buying their products, but oftentimes they don’t even know what those products are.

But they know what the music industry’s products are.  And they’re not going to overpay for crappy music on the antiquated technology known as the CD and they see no reason to see that hair band at the amphitheatre one more time, paying to park if they didn’t even drive and consuming ten dollar beers.

The music industry has been running a disinformation campaign worthy of the CIA.  And just like the CIA, most people have no idea who’s in the organization.  And if you question the CIA’s behavior, the blowback is YOU WANT TO BE SAFE!

But music is not your life, hasn’t been for eons, even though that’s the case when the industry is most healthy.  People are not afraid of the rights holders.  They’ve rejected them.  And the rights holders have been crying about it for a decade now, to no avail.

Because the public threw the bums out.  It’s just that the bums don’t know it yet.

"Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich?"

Kid Rock video (use Firefox for best results)

1

I meant to write this three weeks ago.  But I got sidetracked.

I could not figure out a need for an iPad, but once I experienced the Sonos app, I was hooked, it’s a FANTASTIC remote control! It’s like having the dashboard of the Millennium Falcon in your hands.  Suddenly I could scroll through the Wolfgang’s Vault concerts with the scroll of a finger, I could SEE them!  And when I came across a Lee Michaels show, I was so inspired that I jumped up from my bed, walked into the living room and found…no sound.  Nada.  The speakers emitted not a note.  I could have written anyway, but I’ve got an innate desire to troubleshoot, I can’t let a malady go unaddressed.

So I’m tearing apart wires, surfing the Web, convinced the solution is only an insight away.  But I was wrong.  The speakers were toast.  And that’s a problem, because they come from Italy.  And it took a week to get their replacements.  Sure, I hooked up the $150 jobbies I’d used previously prior to their acquisition, but although sound came out, it was not music.

I’ve had a rough week.  I’ll just tell you a simple story.  Which reflects not a whit what actually happened, but represents my frustration.  I had a flat tire.  I limped to the repair place.  They fixed it.  Only they didn’t.  And I had to limp back to Sherman Oaks from Glendale, white-knuckling it all the way.  Was I going to crash on the freeway, was I going to trash the rim?  My Pirelli spent an hour in surgery.  They literally drilled a hole in it to insert a plug.  I shouldn’t have watched, but the repair seems to be holding. And I was so stressed out and overobligated that I didn’t finally get to relax until last night when I was sitting in front of my Mac listening to music suddenly stunned how phenomenally great it sounded.

I couldn’t get up from my machine.  Couldn’t pee.  Couldn’t eat.  Even though these were MP3s, through these AUX speakers the music was a revelation.  It was like Bettye LaVette was on my desktop, even though she was only ripped at 162 kbps.

I don’t ask for much, I only want your trust
And you know it don’t come easy

If you were here right now, we’d be dancing around the room.  Bettye LaVette’s take on Ringo’s classic is a wild conglomeration of Muscle Shoals and Stax with a dose of "Let It Bleed" sitting on top.  You remember listening to "Gimmie Shelter" in the dark, right?  IT’S JUST LIKE THAT!  But Bettye LaVette is not going to break through.  Because nobody can.

We’ve got a mainstream media that wants to believe we can live in the past and wannabes who want to use the new tools to triumph in the fading mainstream, but the truth is we live in an era of chaos.  We’re all inside a giant pinball machine, with Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg playing the flippers with unknowns filling in during their absence.  There’s no center.  You’re chasing a dream that doesn’t exist.  Jay-Z’s not that big a star.  Not even GaGa.  Unless you made it prior to this Internet mania, most people have no idea who you are.  Or, if they do, they don’t know your music.  And this isn’t going to get better, it’s going to get WORSE!!!!

Despite the gossip sites, everybody’s a journeyman these days, almost nobody’s getting rich, I hope you love what you’re doing, because that’s all you’re gonna get.  World domination?  You can’t even dominate KANSAS!

2

When I bought "Barrel", I was listening on a separates system that cost $150.  And I know most people are listening on systems that cost less than that today, but back in the seventies sound was EVERYTHING!

But it wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles that I got the stereo of my dreams.  JBL L100s.  Technics direct drive turntable.  Sansui integrated amp, with 110 watts of pure power.  I’d drop the needle and that was all the entertainment I needed.  I could stay home all night, listening to the soaring melodies, I could hear Mick Fleetwood’s foot in the kick drum.  Literally.  Listen to "The Chain" on a good system.

And last night, I had this experience once again.  My synapses were firing, thinking of tracks I wanted to hear.  It was like the decades had not passed.  I was still the same person.  When everything’s compressed, when music is a second class citizen, suddenly I’m reminded of what once was, just because of these phenomenal speakers.

And that’s when I was reminded of the Lee Michaels song.  "Day Of Change" wasn’t contained in that concert I pulled up on Sonos via the iPad, but the sound was so invigorating, I went to my collection and played this early classic.

There are two versions.  The studio take on "Barrel" and the version from the live album.  And on that live album, there are only three elements, Keith Knudsen’s drums, Lee’s organ and his vocals.  The studio take is better, the lyrics meld with the music to have such power.  But speaking of power, nothing can compete with the live take.  Remember going to the show and being overpowered by the sound?  Not the visuals, not the dancing, not the production, but the hair-raising sound?  That’s what this is like.  It’s like Bill Graham brought out giant hoses of medicated goo and covered the floor of the auditorium.  That’s what the organ sounds like.  And the drums are the kick in your butt that prevents you from relaxing, you can’t help but have the music inhabit you, grab hold of your insides and move through the mud like Gumby!

3

My favorite Animals record is "Don’t Bring Me Down".  Eric Burdon’s throaty intimate vocal embodies the midsixties in the U.K. even better the Beatles.  Underneath the suits, the Beatles were rough and tough, John Lennon ultimately tried to recapture this spirit, of lads who broke more laws than they obeyed, who were raising themselves, trying to escape lives of drudgery.  They didn’t do it for the money, they didn’t do it to become rich and famous, they did it to ESCAPE!

And the Beatles did.  But listening to "Don’t Bring Me Down" you don’t believe the Animals ever did.  They seem prisoners of this record just like ? is forever wrapped up in "96 Tears".  It’s nothing without him, and he’s nothing without it.  Alan Price’s organ on "Don’t Bring Me Down" has got the same sound and feel as the instrument in "96 Tears"…this sensuality is as good as it’s gonna get.

"Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood" was not quite as big as a hit.  But it’s this song that Elvis Costello covered.  And Bettye LaVette too.

Elvis sounds like he’s afraid he’s trapped.  His vocal is more expressive than Eric Burdon’s.  But my new favorite is Bettye LaVette’s version.

She doesn’t want to be misunderstood.

And that’s funny.  In this era everybody wants to be misunderstood. They want to appear to be somebody else.  Twelve year olds want to be seen as sophisticated.  Fat cats want to be seen as caring for poor folk.  Politicians placate through duplicity, they hope the public is too stupid to know the truth.

The music we loved best is not about artifice, it’s not trying to be something else, just itself.  The greatest accomplishment we can have as human beings is to be known.  Actors play roles in movies, now too often singers are playing roles in their own songs. Thug.  Macho.  Even wounded.  But laying it all out honestly and being vulnerable, that’s anathema.

4

Earlier tonight, I inserted Bruce Springsteen’s new old album into my computer.  I wanted to hear the alternative take of "Candy’s Room", entitled "Candy’s Boy".

Positively awful.  Not even interesting as an historical artifact.  And the rendition of "Racing In The Street" was not much better.

It’s so funny that these outtakes are being lauded when "Human Touch" was decried.  Yes, the "Lucky Town" album is better than "Human Touch", but no one had a good word to say about either when they came out because Bruce was no longer working with the E Street Band.  That’s why you can’t listen to the public.  They don’t want change, they just want what came before.  And a concert promoter wants to give you what came before, maybe an agent and manager too.  But an artist wants to break new ground.  He wants to take chances, he wants to do something different.

Springsteen’s released a better track since the title cut of "Human Touch", that song is known as "Streets Of Philadelphia", but "Human Touch" is number two when it comes to the last twenty years.  It’s got all the power, all the emotion Bruce built his reputation upon.  That’s all we want, a little human touch.

You and me we were the pretenders
We let it all slip away

How prescient.  We pretended we were rich.  But the only ones who are are those buying seats down close at the Boss’s show with the winnings they made on Wall Street.

In the end what you don’t surrender
Well the world just strips away

They tell you to keep your chin up.  But from square one, they break us down into winners and losers.  Bruce Springsteen was put into the latter camp, he didn’t believe it.  But that was back when the record company gave you a big advance and your music could be played on thousands of stations everybody in the target demo was listening to.

I ain’t lookin’ for praise or pity
I ain’t comin’ ’round searchin’ for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to
And a little of that Human Touch
Just a little of that Human Touch

These records made me feel alive, in touch.  I just wanted to tell you.