Haha. You’ll make me famous, and maybe get me sued too.  🙂
There had to be a soundcheck. Mic levels. Getting the right key for the backing track. They all knew.
Anyone who has ever done anything like this knows its not really really real. Its only fakely real- for the dupes.
And the dupes just love to wallow in their dupedness-
like believing in Obama.

Best,
DR

(p.s. the "main goal" is to make money.   In our world, NOTHING is in real time. Even Haiti is packaged.)

My friend David Rubinson is incensed.  Couldn’t everybody see that the Susan Boyle phenomenon was manipulated?  That as a producer of "Britain’s Got Talent" Simon Cowell had to have already seen her act, and therefore he was feigning surprise, as he rubbed his hands together and plotted how he was going to turn this into dough?

If the qualifying age for "American Idol" ends at 28, how come General Larry Platt got an audition?

Come on, have you ever been on set?  The main goal is to go home!  You’re gonna waste time seeing someone who can’t possibly win?

Which is why reality TV is no longer seen as real.  And will have an ever-diminishing lifespan as a result.  Kind of like the music business.  Sure, people buy the Top Forty dreck, but they don’t love it!  And if they love something, they have no problem forking over their dough.  Just look at Taylor Swift!

But all this is to tell you that when my inbox started lighting up with parodies of "Pants On The Ground", I had no idea what they were talking about.  I had to resort to Google to get the story.

And I was up to speed just that fast.

And I applaud General Larry for protesting the backward slide in race advancement.  Kind of like the backward slide in women’s rights.  All those women burned their bras and refused to shave their legs so their progeny could dress like ho’s and trade on their looks.  Huh?  If I didn’t live through it, I wouldn’t believe it.

But the real reason I’m writing this screed is to get you to watch this clip, Jimmy Fallon’s Neil Young version of "Pants On The Ground".

Once again, I didn’t get hipped to it by watching Jimmy’s show, but by Howard Stern, who saw it and thought it was a new Neil Young song.

Sounds like it, wouldn’t you say?

And can we stop revering Neil and admit that he hasn’t done decent work in eons?  Oh, he’s done reasonable work, but not exceptional work.

Then again, it’s hard to beat up on Neil Young when I saw Eric Clapton in an ad for a Fender myTouch.  I bet he doesn’t even use this HTC piece of shit.  Just like John Mayer shilled for BlackBerry and is constantly talking about using his iPhone.

And I still think Jimmy Fallon is great in the basement, but not on TV, but I do respect his song parodies, going all the way back to the MTV Movie Awards, so check out this clip and tell me it doesn’t sound just as good as Neil Young’s recent material.

Pants on the Ground Jimmy Fallon

P.S. The reason we look the other way and allow ourselves to be manipulated by Simon and "A.I." is because we have nothing to connect us anymore.  Mass culture is dead.  Yet we yearn for social fabric.  Therefore, Brett Favre does a version of "Pants On The Ground", we can all laugh together.  And you’ve got to laugh, because if you look at your bank account and try to have hope for the future, you just cry.  Wall Street’s got the money, the Democrats are impotent and hope has been extinguished.

We’ve been beaten up, manipulated to the point where we’re tuned out.  We’re lucky for a laugh.  In a world where Sarah Palin resigns a government job to appear on Fox and is touted as leading a group that is ever-shrinking and we have a President who ran on Hope and delivered none of it.

"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."

Brian Eno
On gospel, Abba and the death of the record: an audience with Brian Eno

In his new book "Linchpin", Seth Godin says the factory era is over.  The concept of playing the game, tamping down your creativity in a social contract with the corporation for a lifetime job is history.

My uncle was a company man.

The only problem was the companies he worked for kept going out of business.

Is it companies going out of business, or has business irrevocably changed?

It’s hard to get someone to overpay anymore.  We can complain about Wal-Mart ruining downtowns, but blame the Internet too. Google any product and you’ll see offers for it at a rock bottom price in the ads on the right.

I still believe in overpaying for service, do it all the time.  But how often do you get service?  I go into a department store and after yelling for help, the clerk tells me I’m on my own.

So for all you people telling us to erect walls, to bring all the jobs back home, I ask you how do you feel about paying $5,500 for a flat screen TV?  Or three hundred dollars for a basic pair of shoes?  That’s what they’d cost if made in America.

Oh, don’t get your knickers in a knot.  I don’t want to get into a debate about protectionism and NAFTA and…

I’ll just say we can’t go backwards.  The public expects easy availability of high quality commodity goods.  I realized this when a VCR started selling for under a hundred bucks.  You no longer cared if it broke, you just bought a new one.  As for fixing it…where could you find someone with that expertise, never mind the fact that the resulting fee would be eighty percent of a brand new item.

It’s hard to compete with the behemoths unless you’re selling a unique item.  That’s Mr. Godin’s point.  To utilize your creativity to evidence your uniqueness, and ultimately climb up the ladder.

But even more interesting to me is his thesis that we’re not in a dip, not in a bad period we’re supposed to endure to get to the other side, but that things have irrevocably changed.

Maybe no one will pay for recorded music again.

I actually don’t believe that, but I will say that the major label model is history.  The idea of getting millions to pay a lot for more music than they want is passe.  Mr. Godin would say that by stifling creativity, the labels are signing their death warrant, and I agree, without unique music, without young people employed who are empowered to do things a different way, revenues can not return.  But what if it’s not about mismanagement so much as a paradigm shift?

Like newspapers.  Mr. Godin says that journalists all write the same story the same way and want to be handsomely remunerated because they’re doing important work.

He’s right.  Oftentimes I read the same story from different outlets.  And the AP, Reuters, L.A. "Times" and "New York Times" reports are essentially identical.  One writer would be enough.  More were necessary when we didn’t have such easy access to information, but now?  As for the "Wall Street Journal", it tends to be the exception.  Catering to an intelligent business crowd, the "Journal" shoots higher, which might just be why its residence behind a pay wall online works, financially.

But what if the Internet is not something to be stopped, but is something impossible to stop, like a tsunami, toppling not only music, but movies, news and TV in its wake.

You can’t stop a tsunami.  You can get out of the way, but you can’t put up your hand and tell it to cease coming forward and turn around.  As for building a wall…  A good idea years ahead of time, but when the wave’s on its way, it’s too late.

Maybe there was a way out of this mess for these media companies, Seth says the "New York Times" had an offer from Amazon that would have delivered billions, but was too afraid of pissing off Barnes & Noble to take it.  But it’s almost too late now.

We’ve got a press.  Reporting what it deems reality.  But is it?

Why should we trust the reporter, asking questions, when every topic known to man has an online expert with years of experience speaking the truth, explaining what’s going on.

And is something really important if I don’t have to pay attention?

Sure, the disaster in Haiti is important.  But I didn’t bother to look at the list of Golden Globe winners.  Why?  Nothing in there is going to change my opinion on the content.

It used to be if the "New York Times" said something was important, it was.

Today the "New York Times" reviewed the new Eels album.

Expect it to stiff just like the last one.

But at least the "Times" is bringing it to attention.

I say no.  I can’t read a review by someone whose taste I don’t know, who may not be a fan of the Eels to begin with.

I’m just saying that maybe you can’t beat back the march of progress, maybe the public has power it’s never going to give back. Not only to steal music, but to bite back, ruining your reputation online if you make a misstep.  We no longer live in a top-down society.  And no one has such a lock on the public’s attention that he’s guaranteed revenue.

Seth focuses on how to cope in this new era.  He tells you to embrace everything that’s been drummed out of you, all the creativity, all the risk-taking.  That uniqueness/insight/creativity is ultimately recognized and rewarded.  I think that’s great advice.

But more interesting to me is those on the other side.  Those who used to have the power.

It’s hard to make money on a commodity.  Pioneer stopped making flat screen televisions, Circuit City went out of business. Southwest Airlines is victorious, but the old carriers with legacy costs just can’t get the numbers right.

Point being that there’s always someone who will deliver the necessary commodity goods at the lowest price.  But what are the necessary goods, and what is that price?

Maybe arguing with online music distributors over free goods is a waste of time.  Maybe getting people to pay for music is about all the extras, a bundle at a low cost.  You might think the value of a hit record is a zillion dollars, but there’s absolutely no way to prevent the easy digital copying and distribution of that item, no way.  So why fight a war you can’t win?

Everybody’s trying to keep us in the past.

The record companies want us to buy overpriced CDs.

The movie companies want us to wait until we can see a movie in our home.  Then they’ll let us buy it, but not rent it.

Newspapers are stating they’re a public good and must be maintained, you must pay them for the news.

But maybe all this outcry is completely futile.  Maybe we’ve entered a new era.  Maybe the Internet killed the old paradigm.  Maybe it’s not worth crying about anymore.

What if I told you a stroke of genius, a relatively cheap video based on concept more than expensive special effects, could become an Internet phenomenon and you’d break an act.  Would you like that?

Of course.

To the point you’d see the value of Internet video and make sure that it never happened again.

Every day people e-mail me video links.  I’d say they go direct to YouTube maybe fifty percent of the time.  Which makes me believe those passing on the clips didn’t find them on YouTube, but at these other sites, where they’ve been embedded.  Yes, the miracle of the Internet, you can find something and share it with everyone, right from your own damn site!  Like allowing anyone to come see a TV program or hear a record in your home!

But not if someone won’t pay for it.

That’s how the Net works.  You pay for it first, then you figure out how to spread the word.

No, that’s not true at all.  You spread the word, then you figure out how to pay for it.  That was the genius of Napster.  And when it was adjudged that the site was guilty of massive copyright infringement, the major labels made a deal and we’ve been trading files via Shawn Fanning’s service ever since!

No, that’s not what happened.  The rights holders thought they could keep us in the past, but they were wrong.  And have almost lost their business as a result.

So here we have OK Go, proprietors of the treadmill video, trying to have another hit.  What are the odds?  Miniscule.  Especially if you broke on a novelty.  Hell, just ask Shaggy.  You’d think that EMI would do everything to help this act, which has already established a beachhead, be successful.

But no, like Scripps trying to teach Cablevision a lesson, EMI is disallowing embedding of the clip.  They don’t want to set a precedent.  First they want to work out the money!

Tell that to a band.  Which is hard to keep together even when everything’s going right, when the money is flowing.

Yes, we signed you to a deal, we locked you up, and now you’re caught up in our petty little wars.  If your career is sacrificed, that’s the breaks.

Huh?

Who’s going to sign with a label then?

With distribution flattened, doesn’t the label want to appeal to the act?  Show how hip it is, how it can help them?

Read Damian Kulash’s screed.  Who’d sign with a major label after that?

And unlike the pre-Internet days, this will not be an insider story, told by OK Go members at a bar twenty years hence, which will be perceived to be sour grapes anyway.  Rather, this is a real time response which already has traction.  I know, because not only has this story been bubbling online for over a week, I’ve been e-mailed Damian’s post ad infinitum today.

You see it’s just like Leno and Conan.  We feed off inequities.  We’ve watched enough "Judge Judy", we make judgments ourselves, fuck a court of law, EMI is guilty!

Which is exactly what Guy Hands wants, as he continues to lose money trying to maintain control of this sinking ship.

What if EMI became home to the artist?  What if EMI gave up fifty percent of all revenue to new acts?  What if EMI staked its future on being the solution as opposed to the problem?

But EMI is just the leading edge.  The three other majors are not far behind.  Ill will has been brewing for twenty years.  Unless they win in the court of public opinion, they’re doomed.

If the labels want to maintain control, they have to first get the hearts and minds of the artists.  But they’re losing those.

I think Damian is a little mealy-mouthed at the end.  That’s what dealing with the man will do to you.  You end up being nice, seeing the other guy’s side, instead of being vitriolic.  Isn’t it funny that the Internet is full of anger, but the usual suspects are duplicitous, kissing butt in the old world?

We want acts to own the truth.

The truth is OK Go’s fighting for its career with its hands tied behind its back.

Piss off EMI.

And never sign with a major label if you want control of your act.

Mmm…  You grew up with your own Web page, you made YouTube videos, and now you want to sign with a main line company and sacrifice not only control, but your integrity?

Never gonna happen.  The younger generation’s gonna go it alone.  They read horror stories like this and they say no way.  So, the usual suspect labels will only be able to sign the lamest and the most compliant.  That’s not a business model for the future, wherein major label control of radio and TV means ever less.

People want to be Radiohead, not Rihanna.

And Radiohead’s got no label.

Open Letter From OK Go, regarding non-embeddable YouTube videos