F*ck Me I’m Famous.

That’s what it says on the billboard into town.

You’d think it’s Los Angeles in the seventies, with billboards for records flanking the roadway.  There’s no concert recession in Ibiza, then again, are these giant raves/clubs actually concerts?

A little backstory.

Felice has a brother.  Who comes to Ibiza for two months every year.  He’s implored us to come, said we’d love it, but the family declined the invitation until this year, when Chris is having a landmark birthday.

We started in London.  Well, not everybody, just me and Felice.  You see you can’t fly direct from L.A. to Spain, never mind Ibiza, so why not fly where we have friends?  I.e. Richard Griffiths and Harry Magee of Modest! Management.  They represent all the X Factor stars.  Along with Alison Moyet…  I was introduced to her at the party, in Richard’s backyard.

Just a coincidence.  That the Modest! garden party was scheduled for the day of our arrival.

One thing you’ve got to know about London in the summer time.  It never gets dark!  Really, in the middle of the night, you go out and the sky is still blue.  As for the sun going down, when you need to turn the headlamps on in your car…that occurs about 10:30.  To tell you the truth, I felt like Al Pacino in "Insomnia"…  It starts to get to you.  Like Barbra Streisand asking for rain in L.A., I just wanted a little darkness.

Well, the creme de la creme of the British music industry was assembled at this garden party, oh so English.  It’s the same in the U.K., but different.  The labels are no longer the heads of the vampire squid, and the concert business is not foolproof.  But as Nick Gatfield told me two days later, music is in the U.K. DNA.  It’s not like America, where everybody’s moved on to the Net.  Hell, it’s truly not like the U.S., everybody still reads the newspaper, the physical one!

We went to Wimbledon…  The grass is not as fast as they tell you.  With a Grounds Pass, you can amble amongst the dozen odd courts and take in the early round play.  Pretty fascinating, you can truly be up close and personal.  Makes you want to rally…but not in this heat!

The next day we went to the War Rooms.  Where Churchill and company worked underground during World War II. 

Churchill War Rooms

I love this shit.  So different from today, truly life and death.  Utterly fascinating.

And then the meeting with the aforementioned Mr. Gatfield.  Which, unfortunately, was off the record.  But I can tell you that EMI is doing very innovative deals.  And rather than try to compete with Universal, et al, they’re going their own way.  Will they have enough rope to complete their mission?  I believe Guy Hands injected more capital to get them to the lawsuit, which I think Terra Firma’s going to win, or settle.  Then again, when that’s complete, I expect them to sell the label to Warner.  We’ll have to just wait this one out.

Then on to Madrid.

Makes you hate L.A.

Because, just like London and Paris, Madrid has a PHENOMENAL underground.  You can get anywhere in minutes.

We went to the Prado.  Saw Hieronymus Bosch’s "Garden Of Earthly Delights"!  Almost didn’t seem real.  And to think he painted this five hundred years ago!  A heathen like this would be excoriated by today’s Christian Right.

And the cars!  All tiny, with weird shapes.  Especially the Citroen with the back like a shelf.

Citroën-c4-coupé

Raise the gas prices in the U.S. and suddenly everybody will be driving machines like this.  BMW 1 Series instead of 5’s and 7’s.

And today on to Ibiza.

For such a laid back place, the excitement is palpable.  After dinner tonight, we’re going to see Swedish House Mafia.  They say rock is dead, I’m not sure if electronic/dance music is here to replace it, but it’s certainly one of the surviving niches, in this case thriving.

Oh, and on the way back to the hotel in Madrid what did we pass…  THE LIVE NATION OFFICE!  Yup, climbing the hill by the Botanical Garden…

So, I was completely removed from my usual beat on the plane in, reading "Operation Mincemeat", living in the forties, but as soon as we landed and I saw those billboards for the clubs, featuring talent I know but barely has a profile in the U.S., I got a smile on my face, I got energized, I had a desire to dig into the scene.

And to tell you.

Swedish House Mafia, Ibiza 2010 – Monday, Pacha

Bon Jovi: The Circle Tour at New Meadowlands Stadium, with Kid Rock

When do tickets go on sale?

That’s what customers ask today.  And they don’t mean the ON SALE date, they mean WHEN DO THE DISCOUNTS BEGIN!

If Bon Jovi is blowing out tickets in his own backyard, what are the odds of getting discount tickets to everybody else…SPECTACULAR!

Meanwhile, this isn’t an old beat-up venue, the Meadowlands is brand new, you’d think people would want to go.

But how many times can you see Bon Jovi?  Talk about burning out the audience…

Yes, the venue is large.

But the point is my inbox is overflowing with this offer.  That’s what the music industry does not understand, the sophistication of the audience.

If people can figure out how to steal music, and if you think three strikes laws are going to impact that significantly that just proves you’ve never stolen music and are clueless, do you think they can’t figure out the best time and best price to buy concert tickets?

SOLD OUT!

That’s almost never true anymore.  Just wait to the day of the gig.  If the act doesn’t start advertising, just show up at the venue, where scalpers who bought up inventory driving up the price are now trying to unload boatloads of tickets and will do so at far less than face value.

What is the value of a concert ticket?

Obviously not as much as the concert industry thinks it is.

Have they been offering BMWs at half price?  How about MacBooks…  Ever get an offer for one for $300?  Of course not.

We’ve now got a product with low demand, and like the department stores, we’re blowing it out.  And if you know anything  about department stores, the name might be the same, but the corporation is not.  They all went bankrupt.  It’s hard to compete with discounters.

So let me get this straight…

You’re supposed to get an AmEx and a Visa card, you’re supposed to become a member of the fan club so you can get an early crack at tickets.

Then the scraps are left for the general public, who pay face value when the big ad hits the newspaper.

Then, as the date of the show gets closer, Live Nation eliminates the service fees.

Then, when the date is really close, the promoter offers discounts through GoldStar and other entities.

Then there are e-mail campaigns where for a code you can get in for essentially nothing.

I don’t line up in advance to buy paper clips.  Not milk either.  These are commodities, readily available at a cheap price.

That seems to be what concert tickets have become.

Life’s a struggle.  It’s the people who get us through.

Speaking of the people, get your ass out to a gig this summer.  The people watching is FANTASTIC!

I went to the Country Throwdown at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Irvine.  What a shithole.  Entertainment has gone upscale.  They’ve got Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack at Citi Field (where the Mets play, for the uninitiated) and at this venue they’ve got funnel cakes.  It’s like the whole amphitheatre’s stuck in some low rent seventies time warp, where we’ve got to eat overpriced hot dogs and beer and be happy about it.  You’d better be coming for the music, because the experience sucks.  Live Nation never heard of landscaping.  And every single surface was plastered with an ad.  You’d think back in caveman times there was no music, because there were no corporations to sponsor it.  And you wonder why the consumer is suspicious…  If you’re whoring it out to the man, collecting all that cash, why do you have to rip me off?

Twenty dollars to park.

Want to go to the show?  Let the insults begin!  The price is not the price, there are all these add-ons, which are incomprehensible.  Then there’s the print at home fee.  Makes as much sense as the convenience fee.  Why not call it what it is, A PROFIT CENTER!  People are not stupid.

And the people…  I’ve never seen so many cowboy boots in SoCal.  And the tattoos!  God, I saw enough bad ones to create a TV show.  Don’t these people do any research?  Can’t we create standards for skin art, license those wielding needles, make sure they’re up to snuff?

And the bodies!  There was this woman by the Bluebird tent, where the acts play acoustically, with a bikini top and a beer gut.  I didn’t know those two went together!

It’s a human sea out there.  Utterly fascinating.  And they knew the music.  God, the guy in the Bono outfit, even down to the same glasses, was singing along with every lick.

And the music…that’s what it was, MUSIC!  Don’t know if you got the memo, but music is supposed to be played by real people, not machines. It’s supposed to live and breathe, be different every night.  To go to a show where people actually knew how to play their Les Pauls, didn’t just sling ’em around their necks for effect (can you hear me Madonna?), was a thrill.

As for the music itself, what’s that line in the Eric Church song, "I like my country rockin’, how ’bout you?"  If only the classic rock audience could get a clue, this is where they belong, where the acts sing comprehensible songs that are closer to Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles than Kanye and GaGa.

And Kevin Lyman is trying to do a good thing.  Create an experience.  Starting is always hard, but he’s proved he can persevere.

But as much as I loved the show, really, being out in the sea of humanity was enough, and each and every act redeemed itself, the highlight of the evening was hanging with Jack Ingram.

He’d e-mailed me a few times.  Said he wanted nothing, just to meet.

I didn’t know he was such a Twitter freak.  Multiple times a day.  He tweets about USB wristbands with unreleased material hidden in the venue before the show.  But the reason I’m writing this is not to detail his new marketing techniques, but to talk about the feeling of connection I had in our conversation.

The babes all want to meet Jack.  We were constantly interrupted.  For photos, for the signing of cowboy hats (and the best hat I saw all day was a cowboy hat shaped like a six pack, yup, a circular brim with a Coors box on top…what was this woman thinking?) and I asked him…was he MARRIED?

Yup.  He’s been with his wife for two decades, from before he started playing live, he hit on her in a bar.  And he’s not about to mess it up with some pussy on the road.  Hell, looking is good enough.  He’s a lucky man, with this woman at home, and even if he could get away with lying, he’d know he’d lied, and how would he feel about that?

Because it all comes down to honesty.  That’s Jack’s mission, to lay it down true.  And although he’s hit number one on the country chart, he had years in the wilderness, did he ever want to give up?

Never.

This is the difference between someone who becomes successful and those who give up and go straight, go to graduate school.  A lifer never gives up.  He’s on a mission.  Willie Nelson didn’t have his first number one until he was 42.  You’ve got to stay the course.

But I was fascinated with Jack’s relationship.  He said he’d be with her as long as she’d have him.  This is the opposite of the hip-hop ethos, where you’re lucky to have me, bitch, and be ready to be kicked to the curb.  And it’s great that the females in rap have the same attitude, but is that real?  Aren’t relationships based on commitment and trust?

How about doubt?

Jack smiled…  OF COURSE!  He spoke about waking up in the middle of the night freaked out, he placed a hand on his wife’s back to wake her up…and she said the same thing I told my girlfriend when she did this to me…IT HURTS!  But then Jack expressed his fears, and she held his hand…

Can you express your fears?

Not that the doubt’s gonna keep Jack from moving forward.  He went from touring Texas to Rising Tide to Lucky Dog/Sony to nowhere.  I mean he could work, but he had no label, no manager…

And it’s just when most people would give up that the tough get going.  He got a new manager.  Who hooked him up with Scott Borchetta, and Jack ended up with a number one.  Was the music better?  No, he now had the right team, who’d kill for him!

Speaking of the music, now what?

Well Jack’s here.  He’d like to be up…here (he lifted his hand to eye height).  How do you get from playing Irvine Meadows as part of a multi-act bill to headlining it yourself?  He had no specific answers.  Neither did I.  This is where it gets tricky.  It demands great material and luck.  I don’t mean pure luck, I mean creating enough opportunities, being in play long enough that something unexpected can pop.

And that would be great, if he could be on the road 100 nights a year instead of 150.

And it’s not about the money.  He made a quarter million dollars a year gross without a hit, just touring Texas.  God, makes me think we should send all wannabe musicians to Texas, or Australia, where there’s a live scene that will support you…if you’re really good.

Jack’s very good looking, and charismatic, and those help, but he’s thinking about it.  Writing a song a week.  Wanting to get bigger not because he needs a bigger car, but because he wants to reach more people.  And he was of the sheer belief that it came down to the truth.  Both in his actions and his songs.

I love musicians.  They’re not like the business people.  Money does not come first.  They’re three dimensional.  They know struggle.  They know victory, but are truly familiar with defeat.  And when they encapsulate all this in a song, it truly resonates.  Because being a human being on the planet is the exact same way.  You’ve got more questions than answers, but you’ve got no choice but to keep on keepin’ on.

Here’s the money quote:

"Carolla cites his experiences as a frequent guest with Jay Leno in both late night and prime time. ‘I’d get a plug: "Adam’s going to be at the Irvine Improv," ‘ he says. ‘Jay Leno probably has 4- to-5 million viewers a night. You check back with the ticket guys. "Yeah, we sold 11 tickets." They could give out your phone number, and it wouldn’t ring once if they’re not your people.’"

Everybody thinks if they just get on TV, if a talking head in late night can mention your gig, you’re gonna be successful.  But that’s old wave thinking, that a scattershot approach, that’s what’s got traditional media in a tailspin.  Newspapers now want the government to save them.  Bad plan, they would have saved the music industry first.  Then again, do legislators and bureaucrats really listen to music?  But the point is if you’re looking to save your old model, you’re spiraling down the drain.

Once upon a time, there were three television networks.  In some markets, they didn’t even get ABC.  So whatever was featured had a huge impact.  Crack a joke on "Laugh In" and everybody repeats it the next day in high school.  Last Thursday night friends were discussing medical problems at dinner and referenced "Grey’s Anatomy" to make a point.  My response?  I’ve never seen it.  In the sixties we all knew who was on "Bonanza".  The Net tells me who is on "Grey’s Anatomy", but it’s not enough to make me watch, I don’t want to waste that much time, there’s so much stuff online I’m interested in…and if I want to watch a TV show, I just record it, skipping the commercials, which wreaks havoc with old line advertisers.

I’m not saying podcasting the future.  But read this article.  Carolla knows the old time radio paradigm is dead.  Why keep mentioning the time, doesn’t everybody have a clock?  As for the patter…it’s so far from real that the public’s moved on.  As for music…come on, everybody e-mails me and bitches that their favorite tunes never make it to the over the air medium, because that’s broadcasting, a purified product, homogenized for consumption in a world of narrowcasting.

So:

1. Focus on building your audience.

2. Fans are key.  An opening slot for the big name, a random appearance at a show for a different demographic, is close to a waste of time.

3. Don’t keep hawking your CD.  Sell your music!  Acts think if they deliver a CD, they’ve made a dent.  No you haven’t, the gatekeepers in media just throw them away, they certainly don’t listen to them.  How do you get someone to really check out your music?  By making it readily available online!

4. Criticism is irrelevant, only sales figures count.  It does not matter what the media says about your music, only the fans.

5. Reviews only matter if they’re in a place your fans read them.  Jam band aficionados might check you out (online!) after reading about you in "Relix", if you’re an indie act, Pitchfork means something, but the review in the paper…who is that for?  That’s just a mash note from your publicist, justifying his fee, no music fan gets turned on to music by the newspaper.  That’s like advertising drag racing in a sailing magazine, birth control in "Highlights"…huh?  As for live concert reviews…they never send a fan to give his take, so why should the review matter?  (And if you want to reach the aged audience that still reads the newspaper, you might as well advertise in "AARP".)

6. Marketing is secondary to music.  Old wavers would like to say it’s the reverse, point to Ke$ha and other flavors of the moment, saying they have the power to build stars.  That’s an old media circle jerk.  Fewer people are paying attention, fewer people are buying the music, almost no one wants to see these acts live and there’s no longevity.  This is just the dying gasp of an old system.  Yes, there will always be Justin Biebers, teen phenoms, but beneath a very thin veneer of ubiquitous stars there’s a vast wasteland.  You’re better off building from the ground up, brick by brick, your goal is to get to the middle, to sustain a career.

7. Publicity makes you happy, makes you think you’re accomplishing something, but unless you reach the core audience, it’s worthless.  Believe me, this "Fast Company" piece is not for Carolla’s audience, it’s for his advertisers, potential ones, at best.  If you get off on seeing your name in print, if you want to do interviews, go for it.  But the odds of dividends are frightening low.  Because most people don’t care.  And if they do, its not for long.  Don’t forget, reality TV is about making fun of those featured.  That’s what television is now.  Credible acts stay off!  Hell, who wants to go on Letterman, be pre-interviewed, tell a funny story from growing up and look like an idiot?  It’s about him, not you!

Which brings us back to the beginning.  A television appearance just ain’t worth much.  Maybe your fans will watch it online the next day, but as far as garnering new fans?  Essentially irrelevant.

Adam Carolla’s been doing his shtick for decades at this point.  He didn’t have instant success online because he was so damn good, but because he’d spent so much time building his base, which was dedicated to him, which would follow him anywhere.

And isn’t it funny that there’s a podcast every day.  When acts on major labels release an album every couple of years and keep trying to convert fans.  Keep pleasing the fans you’ve got, they want more music, more experimentation.  If you’re a new act, keep making music.  If you’re a classic act, you’re like the newspaper, riding the old paradigm to death, people only want your old shit, hopefully they’ll pay for it for a while.

Is podcasting the answer?  Let’s be clear, Adam’s show isn’t about podcasting, but his act.  The medium is irrelevant, just like it doesn’t matter if you listen to music on CD, on YouTube or your iPod.  It’s the music that matters, not the medium.

But it all comes down to the computer, to technology:

"’I said to anyone who would listen, all arrows point to the computer — all music, all entertainment,’ Carolla says. ‘Why aren’t we trying to get in front of that?’"

If you’re on the way up, if you’re not just struggling to save your old perch, throw out the old and focus on the new.  Face it.  People consume their media online, whether it be via the computer, phone or iPad.  Deliver for these media.  Which present challenges, but opportunities.

You’ll hit a million roadblocks.  Just like success forced Adam Carolla to deal with exorbitant bandwidth charges.

But you’ll succeed by your own wits, on your talent.  It hasn’t been that way for eons in the mainstream.  But it’s that way online.  And if you don’t think we live in an online, connected world…you’re probably not even reading this!

How Adam Carolla Became a Podcast Superstar