This is so right, even I’m dying to attend, and I’m not that big a Wilco fan!

1. Context

Major labels will ask who you sound like, they don’t want anything unique, just something similar to what came before.

Now it’s about creating your own context.  No one has done this better than Wilco.  They don’t sound like anybody else, and have no desire to do so.

2. Hits

Huh?

You know that famous Wilco track, what’s it called again, it was all over Top Forty radio…

Funny thing is most acts topping the hit parade couldn’t stage a festival like this, no one would come, or certainly not past the first year.

It’s about a body of work.

3. Fans

They’re fans of the band, not the track.  This is the way it used to be.  And this is the way it’s got to be again in order for the business to be healthy.  We’ve got to go to the show to hear what the band has to say, not to hear the one big hit.  Because if that’s all you’ve got, you’d better provide plenty of production, plenty of distraction, to cover up the fact that underneath…there just isn’t much.

4. Take Your Music Seriously

I’m not saying there can be no humor, no one took his music more seriously than Frank Zappa, and his music was loaded with humor.  Not that the humor has to be in the material, it’s about having a sense of humor, being able to make fun of yourself, especially in an era where everybody can make fun of you online.

Are you angling for music nirvana or fame?  For cash or credibility?

Except for that misstep with product endorsement, Wilco never seems to be about the money, only the music.

5. Artist Development

Jeff Tweedy was in Uncle Tupelo.  A band that wasn’t truly revered until it broke up.  Wilco experimented with various sounds, switched labels after being dropped, even made a movie solely for the hard core.  It took the band a while to find both its sound and its niche.  And with such a rich history, old fans are satiated and new fans can be enticed.  It’s about more, not less.  It’s about being in it for the long haul.

6. More

That’s what fans want.  Which is why this festival line-up is so great.  Not only do you get Wilco, you get all the band members’ side projects.  You can wallow in Wilco!  You don’t trek across the country for only two hours of satiation, you get a weekend’s worth.

7. Even More Than That

They called it the Woodstock Music & Art Fair.  And Wilco’s presenting comedy and art.  There’s three-dimensionality.  Not just stand in the dust and heat and drink overpriced beers.

You can leave with a story more than I saw the band and they were great!  You can have your eyes opened to what interests Wilco beyond music.

8. Location

Aren’t festivals supposed to be held in a field, where you moo like cattle as the promoter rips you off?

To hold Solid Sound in civilized North Adams, at an art museum, not only demonstrates innovation, but respect for the band’s audience.

_____________________________

Festivals have become smorgasbords.  Have you been to a buffet recently?  Everything looks really good at first, then you sample and overeat and wish you went to a regular restaurant.  Because what you really want is one thing really good as opposed to a plethora of stuff you don’t truly desire.

Festivals have become about the promoter, not the band.  How can the promoter create a concoction of crap to the point where you want to go.

And on some level it works.  But at this point, so many are tribal rites focused primarily on socializing and punching your ticket to hipdom as opposed to music.  Most people who don’t go to the Wilco festival won’t care that you were there.  How twenty first century.  Where it’s not about the masses so much as the individual.  Not so much about everybody as opposed to the like-minded. Everybody at this weekend will be a Wilco fan.  What a great place begin!

WILCO Announces Solid Sound Festival

One day I expect to open my front door and find a booklet, with tiny little pages, four or six of them, which I can barely read through my thumbs.  This booklet will be known as the "Los Angeles Times".

They shrunk the height, the width…got rid of so much that one must question why it’s necessary.

Oh, don’t go nuclear on me.  I’m entitled to my opinion.  I pay for the print version of the "Times", as well as the physical editions of the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal".  That’s how much I love newspapers.  I read the news the night before online, but still get the paper.

Then again, stumbling through the pages of the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" I find interesting articles that escaped my attention online.  Whereas with the "Los Angeles Times", I find gossip items that were blasted all over the Internet the day before.

Once upon a time, the "Los Angeles Times" decided to go for it, beefed up its D.C. bureau, had a ton of foreign correspondents.  But those days are history.  The only reason to read the "Los Angeles Times" for national or international news is if you’ve got no Net access and it’s the only rag available on a desert island, yup, if it washes on shore in a bottle.  The Business section?  You’d think America had gone out of business!  There’s almost nothing there!

Which leaves the Calendar section, the so-called entertainment section.  Which features a pop critic who lives in Alabama. That’s like the "New York Times" having an architecture critic who lives in Mississippi.  I mean, if you want the pulse of a city, don’t you have to live in that city?

But they keep Ann Powers, who may be likable, but whose writing is damn near incomprehensible, and let Dan Neil go?

Dan Neil?  Who the fuck is Dan Neil, you ask?

Well, soon you might know.  He’s now writing for the "Wall Street Journal".  Rupert Murdoch’s like the cable networks, when the going gets rough, he doubles down, unlike the record labels and the "Los Angeles Times", which bitch and moan and downsize and in the name of keeping their margins eviscerate their businesses.  I mean what’s end game at the labels?  One employee who licenses the catalog and then turns out the light?  Shit, isn’t this what EMI is planning to do?  What’s end game at the "Los Angeles Times", that tiny irrelevant periodical referenced above that it’s almost become?

If the "Los Angeles Times" is to survive, it’s got to deemphasize national and international news, business too, and go extremely local.  Tell me everything that’s happening in the city within which I live.  I don’t watch TV news, and that’s only about murder and mayhem anyway.  Hell, it’s worth a buck to read about what’s truly going on in my city, the rules and regulations, the local politics, but that’s on life support in the newspaper too.  I mean what can the "Los Angeles Times" do best?  Shit, it and "Daily Variety" have lost the movie beat to Nikki Finke and her Deadline.com.

When the going gets rough, you cover everything, like Rupert and the WSJ, or you go hyper-local.  Or you die, like the L.A. "Times".

They’ve got a must-read columnist.  A rock star, who lost his previous job for delineating his sexual activities in the automobile he was reviewing, who won a Pulitzer Prize, and they let him go?  Isn’t that like Apple losing Steve Jobs to Microsoft?  Or the Indianapolis Colts trading Peyton Manning?  Or the Stones firing Mick Jagger?  Huh, what’s up with that?

Give me a reason to read, beyond the fact I don’t want to see an another aged institution bite the dust.  Become something new or die a deserved death.  I’m THIS close to canceling my subscription.

Dan Neil’s debut WSJ column:
The Power and the Fuel-Sipping Glory

The theme of our program tonight is how fucking great it is to be alive!  And if you don’t believe life is a gift, that should be lived to the fullest, if you don’t dream of driving with the top down, blasting the radio, pounding your fist on the dashboard, if you haven’t seen God, if your genitals have not tingled at a concert, I WANT YOU TO STOP READING RIGHT NOW!

That’s right.  Shut down your computer, turn off that BlackBerry, I don’t want to bring you right down, I don’t want to bum you out.  We’re surfing the astral plane, we’re enjoying ourselves, and we don’t want your downer energy.  Go utilize apps, go play video games.  Just please stop reading, this is going to bum you out too much.

Clive Davis would say Wishbone Ash can’t sing, that the song is too long.  Jimmy Iovine would say they’re not good-looking enough, that there’s no way to tie in with the Fortune 500.  And a band this good wouldn’t make a deal with a major label today anyway, they wouldn’t give up 360 degrees of revenue, wouldn’t sell their souls, they’d want to be free, on stage, where they belong!

I never even HEARD this song until today!  Sitting at the light, waiting to turn from Sunset onto Barrington.  When I heard the live rendition done at XM.  Which is not the take I’m going to point you to here, that one had better vocals, but this ancient one just WAILS!

Wanna know what it was like in the seventies?  WATCH THIS CLIP!  Catch the audience clapping, grooving, moving to the music.  Others standing in sheer admiration…how do they DO this?

We know how Britney did it.  On sheer desire.  Flashing her lashes for aged men.  But that didn’t used to be the recipe we admired.  We liked acts that truly cooked.  Who assembled the ingredients and every night attempted to make that cake RISE!

Watch this clip.  Doesn’t it make you want to raise your arms in exultation like the dude in the black shirt at the end?  Doesn’t it make you want to grab your wallet, put on your jacket and go to the gig?

You can’t get this feeling anywhere else.  Only music can light such a spark inside, transport you three fifths of a mile in ten seconds.

Hang in there, through the intro ad, through the first few notes, until the guitars lock in and start to WAIL!

In the old days, music was sealed up, you could visit it in the store, but it was hard to hear.  But via the miracle of the Internet, you can hear Wishbone Ash’s "Blowin’ Free" right now!  TURN IT UP!

WISHBONE ASH # blowin’ free #

When the bat cracks and the ball’s moving towards Jeter, he doesn’t run through the fundamentals in his brain, hell, he doesn’t think at all, he just picks up the ball and throws it to first base, just like that.

Well, not exactly.  You see he’s got decades of practice.  He’s just acting upon that foundation.

But every ground ball is different, every play is unique in its own way, like a snowflake.  There’s different turf, weather, hitters, pitchers…but Jeter adjusts.

Can you adjust?  As a musician, I mean.  Do you have so much history, so much practice under your belt that you can turn on a dime, create something great?

Sure, there are technique issues.  Being able to change keys and tempos, etc.  But what about writing.  How many shitty songs do you have to write until you get a good one?

Ah, the scourge of the professional.  You read all this b.s. about writing being painful.  If it’s painful, you just haven’t done enough of it!

I’m reading this book by Susie Essman, "What Would Susie Say?: Bullsh*t Wisdom About Love, Life and Comedy".  Yes, that Susie, Jeff’s wife, the one always busting Larry David on his sick behavior.  My bookstore owning friend gave it to me as a present.  And I’m not sure I’m recommending it, but the points about making it as a comedian are fascinating.  Susie wanted to host.  You know, like Belzer at Catch A Rising Star.  She finally convinced the owners to let her give it a try.  It took her 1000 PERFORMANCES before she was comfortable, before she had it nailed.

In other words, by time you hit the stage, you should be able to do your act in your sleep, react to hecklers, perform requests, like the greats.

Read this Steve Miller interview.  Fascinating on so many levels.  But you’ll love the bits on the Beatles.  To excerpt the salient quote:

"The way they recorded. They recorded so fast it was ridiculous."

Steve goes on to delineate how fast the Beatles recorded "Get Back".  And how when he worked with Paul, it was always about the first take.

Just like the first cut is the deepest in love, the first take in music is almost always the best.

Let me be clear.  It’s different if you’re still writing the song, if you’re working out the parts.  But once you’ve got the elements down, everybody’s in the room and the song’s been written, when you all hit it for the first time, so often that’s the best creation.

When you record to synthetic drums, so often the life’s squeezed out of the production.  And believe me, when done right, music should breathe, be alive.  It’s not about getting it perfect, it’s about capturing lightning in a bottle.  Something elusive, that can never be seen or done again.  How many of our favorite records have mistakes?  Shit, listen closely to J. Frank Wilson’s "Last Kiss", you’ll hear the backup singer run out of breath and fall off.  The mistakes don’t ruin the record, they’re necessary elements of the whole, they’re what make the production human, just like you.  Hell, ever know someone who’s had so much plastic surgery they’ve become generic?  Hell, look at Jennifer Grey, she had a nose job and it ruined her career. Was her real nose perfect?  Far from it.  But it made her unique, it made her her.

So, if you’ve done all the work, you can create upon inspiration

Hell, if you’ve done all the work, you can create upon deadline, with a gun to your head.  Maybe you need a bit of grease, need to work your fingers a bit, but within minutes, you’re in the groove.

This is what greatness is about.  Having all that skill and ability and talent at your fingertips, to be evidenced at a moment’s notice.  Comedians are never great in the beginning, they hone their chops, why should musicians be any different?

With the short cut of machines, with the focus on youth, with it being about rich and famous, we’ve done our best to eliminate all the work behind the scenes.  We never want a kid to show us his finger painting, we want to see the Picasso, before he’s graduated from high school.

Doesn’t happen that way.

The greats can teeter on the cutting edge and still get it right.  They wow us.  Like Jeff Beck.  A man without a hit who survives because his talent is so well-developed, because he makes his guitar come alive.  Can you do this?  Do you WANT to do this?

If you don’t, please stop making music.  Or, if you continue to make it, please stop telling us to pay attention.  We’re only interested in those who are dedicated, who are doing something we can’t, for the sheer joy of it.  Hell, the money’s just an afterthought.

The Gibson Interview: Steve Miller (Part 3)