In the sixties, cars only lasted a few years.  Assuming your automobile did not need repairs when it rolled off the truck, like the Chevy Lance’s father purchased that had no reverse pin, or the Chrysler my father bought that caught fire on the way home from the dealership, it was only a matter of time before you ended up at the gas station, where there was a mechanic to change belts and perform other surgeries required to keep your motor running.  And although we occasionally hear of cars overheating on the Grapevine, the needle on most cars’ temperature gauge barely moves.  Despite Toyota’s recent woes, cars, if not quite bulletproof, are expected not to break.  You can drive Hondas for 200,000 miles trouble-free.  Automobiles may be expensive, but you can keep the same machine for a decade, quite happily.

But those days of the lame Vista-Cruisers were half a century ago.

Let me put that in perspective.  When my family owed lame cars in the sixties, they’d only been making cars for sixty years.  Now, they’ve been making them for fifty years more!  Those cars of yore were only halfway through the life cycle.  Those pieces of shit were a long time ago!

Just like classic rock.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I like classic rock as much as the next guy.  I saw the Who perform "Tommy" at the Fillmore East.  Did you?

But that was back in ’69.

And that was forty years ago.

And now it’s 2010.

Yup, TWENTY Ten.  So many years have gone by that we now know how to pronounce the year, we’re in the teens in case you weren’t paying attention.  Hell, no one could come up with a name for the first decade of the twenty first century until it was over, and if you call them the "aughts" now, you’ll still get mostly blank stares.

In other words, it’s time for new music.

Let’s be clear.  Kids know nothing.  They listen to the hit parade before their pubic hair grows in.  If you’re that young, or a parent subjected to Radio Disney, you know a lot of current material.  Most of which will curdle the milk of an oldster.  But oldsters want new music.  Something more than the bland Susan Boyle, who proved that we’re willing to lay our money down, if you just tell us what to listen to.

And that’s the big problem.  Not so much the lack of good music, but the inability to find it, to connect with it.

Which brings us to the Gorillaz.

Not a big fan of Damon, not a bit fan of the band.  But searching for something new on the satellite yesterday, I heard "Stylo".

Have you heard this track?

Dial it up here:

Gorillaz – Stylo

It sounds like Kraftwerk is playing in a roller disco while a hip-hop deejay is spinning vinyl in the background, all the while an MC toasting above.

This is great.  Not phenomenal.  Not Gnarls Barkley "Crazy" stupendous, but extremely fulfilling.  Because it just FEELS GOOD!

Great music is like pornography.  To paraphrase that Supreme Court justice, YOU KNOW IT WHEN YOU HEAR IT!

We can argue over the disco roots, can decipher and analyze the lyrics, but the key point is you feel so fucking good listening to this song.

Which was leaked a month ago.

Yes, I’m going to be inundated with e-mail from hipsters, telling me I’m late to the party.  I could make excuses, say that I knew the song had leaked, I just hadn’t listened to it, but that’s not the point.  The point is hipsterdom is irrelevant.  Now we’re all hipsters.  Deep into our own niches.  And don’t tell me your niche is better than mine.  That’s so twentieth century.  But how am I going to find out what’s good in your niche when I don’t even have enough time to explore my own?

Quite a headscratcher.  But when I discover something as good as "Stylo", I’m hungry like the wolf for more good new music.  I started pushing all the satellite buttons.  Which is how I discovered Hurt’s "Fighting Tao".

Fighting Tao

It’s a funny thing about heavy music.  You’re drawn in, you dial it up because you’re alienated and angry, but when you listen to it all your problems fall away, you feel happy and powerful.

Tell me "Fighting Tao" is derivative.  Tell me it’s akin to Tool.  Even go deep and say Hurt changed its sound after the band lost their major label deal.  All I’ll say is as an angry fuck, music like "Fighting Tao" is the aural rabbit hole I like to dive down into not only to recharge my batteries, but energize me.  Anthemic rock, beholden to few restrictions, long-haired guys exploring in their basements with their amps turned up to 11.

But, ironically, it’s the soft passages that make "Fighting Tao" so good, juxtaposed against the full force screaming.

Somewhere in my memory bank, I’m aware of Hurt.  But if I’ve ever heard any of their music prior to last night, I couldn’t pick it out of a lineup. But when I heard it long after dark on Octane, I couldn’t change the channel.  I was waiting for it to get bad, but it never did, it only got better.

You get to a point where you can’t live in the past.

Then again, when the present becomes too confusing, that’s where you retreat.  That’s what the NFL did.  And nostalgia can be comforting. But it’s not as exciting as discovering something new that touches your soul, that shines like an exquisite diamond in between your ears.

It’s a bittersweet victory.

To triumph in the Olympic downhill is an amazing feat.  Not only do you have to be that good, you’ve got to emerge victorious on a unique hill on a single day.  This is not like winning at a swimming or track meet, where the conditions are essentially identical every time and no competitor has an advantage.  There’s so much variation and luck involved in ski racing that when the favorite wins, they earn supreme compliments.  I doff my hat to Lindsey Vonn.  She’s the best, and she proved it, on a single day on a single piste.

But did she have to trot out all that tripe about being injured?

Maybe she truly was injured.  Then again, why didn’t she go for an x-ray?

You know when you’ve broken a bone.  I’m speaking from experience.  There’s nothing better than going for an x-ray and finding out the result is negative.  It’s a great relief.  And if you’re truly injured, it doesn’t matter if you go for the x-ray or not, you can’t compete.  Maybe they can tape you up and shoot you up in football, maybe even occasionally in basketball, but not ski racing.

Even major competitors believed Lindsey was lying.

Anya Paerson, who’s won her share of races and is no crybaby, claimed that everybody out there is injured to a degree, it goes with the territory, especially after months on the grueling World Cup circuit.  It’s just a matter of whether you make a big deal about it, use it as a crutch.

Didier Cuche, the favorite in the men’s downhill, was racing with a recently implanted plate and seven screws in his broken thumb, but he didn’t complain, he got up and raced.  And when he lost, he shrugged his shoulders.

Bode Miller would have won the men’s downhill if the sun had broken through when he skied down the hill, as it did for the eventual winners. On a bumpy course, Miller was stiff and off guard, he couldn’t see the terrain variations, he lost by only nine hundredths of a second.  But he didn’t complain about this in the finish area.  He ultimately covered the subject on his blog, but there were no sour grapes involved.

And then we have Lindsey Vonn.  Who says she’s injured to such a degree that she may not be able to compete at all!  May let down our entire country, the universe, after appearing on the cover of "Sports Illustrated", showing up in a bathing suit the week after!

Or maybe she just wanted to lower expectations.

Or maybe she just wanted to play mind games with her competitors.

And eventually Lindsey took to the snow and bitched about her shin.

Then she won the training run.

Utter hogwash.  Reminded me of nothing so much as the weasel who leaves class telling you he flunked the test, needing to cry on your shoulder, requiring sympathy, and then when the results come in walks around with a shiteating grin on his face, like he’s the cat that just swallowed the canary, ultimately revealing that he got the highest mark in the class.

Ugh.

I hate people like this.

And Lindsey Vonn hasn’t got enough rough edges to hate her, but I’m not jumping up and down, expectorating hosannas either.  Because how you win is very important.  Are you a gracious winner?  It’s bad enough being a sore loser, but can you win without cheating, without playing mind games, without sacrificing your soul?

Lindsey Vonn didn’t cheat.  She spent more hours in the gym than Madonna.  She’s got a full time coach in her husband.  She earned her medal.  But she didn’t earn our trust.

P.S. When Bode Miller disappointed America by winning no medals in Torino he was hampered by a knee injury, which required surgery after the season ended.  But he made no excuses.  Said a few dumb things.  Then again, he was too stupid to know that the media doesn’t like its heroes authentic, but malleable.  They want someone they can manipulate, to fit their story.  They got what they wanted in Lindsey Vonn.  A grind with a pretty face who achieved the goal but didn’t touch our hearts.

P.P.S. After winning the bronze medal on Monday, it was revealed that Bode Miller had arthroscopic surgery on his knee just after Christmas, an injury that has never even been revealed prior to now.  This on top of a sprained ankle sustained playing volleyball on December 12th. Who’s the loser and who’s the winner here?

Rivals Questioning Vonn’s Injury

Is Lindsey Vonn Faking?

Bode’s Bronze Followed Knee Surgery

I often wonder what it would be like to go to college today.

When I went to Middlebury, not only was there no Internet, there were no DVDs, and if you were really lucky, you could get one TV channel, with snow.  A couple of times a week we’d go to Dana Hall for movies, otherwise we’d study and get drunk.

That’s what you did in Vermont in the seventies.

Oftentimes in your dorm room, with the stereo cranked, but usually down at the bar.  Fifteen cent beers before 8, and a quarter after that.  And if you were feeling really flush, you’d go down to Mister Up’s, which doubled as a steak house, and pay a bit more and listen to traveling troubadour Peter Isaacson on Tuesday nights.

You’d get conversation.  Argument.  And sexual frustration.  Sometimes the concoction of loose lips and liquor gave you the gumption to speak with a female, but then you’d run into her on campus and be tongue-tied, it was ultimately like hitting on your sister, and how creepy is that?

Today is completely different.  Today we’re all wired.  Trying to be rich.  And famous.  Sometimes both, but frequently not.

The poor are looking for fame.  Look at ’em sidling up to MTV, so they can go bump asses in bars and get paid to party.  And the rich used to be content with their money, but now they want fame too.  Nerdom hurts.  They buy Ferraris, sprinkle their cash, try to live a high school life they did not.

And the poor ultimately go back to a life of drudgery and the rich just bitch that the hoi polloi wants to ruin their business, stealing their wares online, as if being rich is something immutable, unlike beauty.  The actresses all get plastic surgery to try and appear young, but on the inside they’re aged, the media barons think they can hold back the sands of time, prevent the erosion of their power, but both are wrong, time marches on, if you’ve got beauty or power it’s only temporary, enjoy it while it lasts.

Corporate recruiters came to Middlebury, but I didn’t put on a suit and show up and brown-nose.  No one I knew did.  Life wasn’t about achievement, but experiences.  John worked in an auto plant, saving money for a year in Europe.  Steve and I went west to Little Cottonwood Canyon to be ski bums.  We were going nowhere fast.  And the only people who had a problem with that were our parents, who’d made all kinds of compromises so we could live our dreams, but were frustrated we had no safety net.

Everybody wants a safety net today.  Everybody’s going somewhere.  If not getting an MBA, developing an iPhone App.  As if everybody could be rich.

But that what the media’s selling us.  Success.  Defined as beauty, riches and fame.  You’d think that Perez Hilton was the American cheerleader, pulling down everybody else so he can ascend to his rightful place atop the popularity pecking order. Buff off all your rough edges so you can make it, so you can live fabulously.

What a bunch of crap.

Life is difficult.  You can be famous and broke.  And if money and success brought happiness, no one in a high tax bracket would commit suicide, and we know that’s untrue.

Every day I get e-mail from people begging me to tell them how to make it.  How to get noticed, how to be rich and famous, how to live the TMZ lifestyle.  Some are even more brazen, they e-mail me their music directly, as if I’m a starmaker who can solve all their problems overnight.  Hell, I can’t solve all MY problems overnight.

Sometimes I sit at home paralyzed.  By a society that tells us to drive headlong towards a cliff, not understanding what’s truly going on.  Makes me want to check out, move to the mountains, leave this game behind.  And that’s the mood I was in last night, the last thing I wanted to do was get up from the couch, brave the freeway and interact with people at a club.

But I did.  Because I made a commitment.  And if you start welshing on your commitments, you’re truly fucked, that’s when the downhill slide really begins.   They say the key to success is showing up?  They couldn’t be more right.  You’d be surprised how many of the wannabe winners don’t seem to own a watch, get too frightened when the moment of truth arrives.  Like my buddy Daniel Glass once told me, he only hires college graduates not because you learn anything in the ivy tower, but because graduation proves you can COMPLETE something!

Completion.  That’s what’s lacking amongst new acts.  They think if they play they’re entitled to something.  They don’t know you could play for decades and never really get much further from where you started, that you could work your whole life and never break through, like James McMurtry.

Sure, McMurtry got the benefit of a major label start.  But I’d argue his profile is highest from his latter-day indie work, with "We Can’t Make It Here", "Just Us Kids" and "Choctaw Bingo".  It’s these cuts that are bringing people to the club, and it’s not that many.

On a good day, you could fit a couple of hundred people into the Mint.  With almost none getting a good sightline.  Last night there was a bit of elbow room.  Which we needed.  To groove, to jitterbug to the sound McMurtry and his trio laid down.

Who knew that McMurtry had become facile on the guitar?  Sure, Springsteen plays lead, but most singer/songwriters, the people responsible for the insightful material, play adequately at best, whereas McMurtry was responsible for everything but the bottom, and he was twanging away, singing his songs about life, about desperation all the while.

The media tells us we live in a nation of drivers, of winners.

We live in a nation of losers.

Because by the modern rules if you’re not rich and famous, you’re a loser.  But how many can win?  Most of us are losers.  Are you willing to own that identity?

Then you would have fit right in last night.

James must have shaved once this month.  Maybe not more.  His hair was scraggly.  But you know he’s got women hitting on him, they want some of that insight.  Beauty doesn’t go as far as you think, we want something inside, that’s what makes us stay.

And nobody in the audience would get past the velvet rope at a club on Hollywood Boulevard, but nobody cared.  Sure, they wanted to get laid, but unlike the clubsters, they were getting high on live music, not solely on alcohol and ogling.

There were aged dudes in the corner who knew every word.

And a girl in her twenties who looked like she’d made a mistake, had made a wrong turn and ended up here instead of the Lady GaGa show.

Lady GaGa is playing to the very last row.  She’s just like Madonna, she needs the fame.  But how happy is Madge?  How much of a pain in the ass must it be to change your outfit every ten minutes?  Isn’t life about enjoying the ride?  If you’re working that hard, you’re not savoring the essence.  And last night was all about savoring the essence.

McMurtry refused to play requests.  Why?  It just wasn’t worth it, to fulfill the desires of the few, sacrificing yourself in the process. You can’t go on the road forever for someone else, you’ve got to do it for yourself.

And whilst tuning his guitar, McMurtry joked that he’d been waiting twenty years for a guitar tech and a tour bus.  They’re probably never going to come.  But he’s soldiering on.

This is the music business.

That fame game, where acts snatched the brass ring and ascended into a pantheon of endless success, is an aberration. Whether it be the classic rock or MTV eras.  If you’ve got a lot of mindshare today, you’re calculating, sacrificing to get less than ever before.  Today you’d better love to play, because that might be the only reward you ever get.

McMurtry’s better than he ever was.  That’s what twenty years will do for you.  He didn’t give up and go to law school, music was his calling, he stuck with it.  More success would not be anathema, but it’s not necessary.

So maybe nothing’s really changed.  We’ve got Blackberrys, the ability to stay constantly in touch, but we’re still human, still lonely, going down to the bar for a night of entertainment.

The difference is in too many venues they’re playing records.  Or the stage is owned by tribute bands.  As if whatever we experienced before is the peak and we can just either imitate it or surrender to fashion.

James McMurtry is not fashionable.  But he laid down grooves last night deeper than Timbaland’s.  Live music, like we used to play in the garage in junior high, only better.  You see McMurtry didn’t give up, he soldiered on, so he could make us feel fully alive all these years down the line.

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

In yesterday’s "New York Times", Lucian Grainge, Universal Music’s CEO-To-Be said:

"I believe that the CD will out-survive me as a format."

Universal Music Names Grainge as Its Next Chief

That’s utterly laughable.

We could allow Lucian to explain himself, but the damage has been done, Lucian has debuted in the U.S. as a man looking backward.  And make no mistake, we’re in the era of moving forward.

Those who are trying to restrict behavior, tamping down both experimentation and the ultimate tsunami of followers who result, are doing their companies a disservice.  They just don’t get it.  It’s about leading.  Isn’t it funny that record companies want to lead with their acts, trying to get everybody to become a fan, but when it comes to business they want us all to come back to the clubhouse and obey their rules.

In the "Wall Street Journal", Mr. Grainge throws his support behind three strikes laws (in France, two!):

"To combat illegal downloading of music, Mr. Grainge says he supports an anti-Internet piracy law passed in France stipulating that offenders have their Internet connections cut off after receiving two warnings. ‘I am a fan of tasty carrots and big sticks,’ Mr. Grainge said. ‘Music downloading has to be legal. It is as simple as that.’"

Vivendi Names Lucian Grainge as New CEO of Universal Music

I’ll agree with Mr. Grainge that downloading must be legal, but the key is a business proposition that is enticing to the majority of the public, not one that works primarily for rights holders, which leaves the majority of the public stealing or ignoring.

In other words Mr. Grainge, as Bob Dylan most famously sang:

Something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Maybe Lucian’s clueless because "Ballad Of A Thin Man" is owned by Sony.  Whatever the case, he’d be better off watching Derek Sivers’ presentation than going to lunch with his troops.  Because Derek understands how innovation occurs, and innovation is killing the recorded music companies.

How do you entice people to join you?  How do you look cool?  How does everyone have fun?  Once upon a time, the labels were leaders, now they’re too busy watching the parking meters, which are about to expire.

Watch this video.