I want you to watch this video.

Danish woman’s one-night stand ‘a hoax’

Unfortunately, you’ll see right atop the page that this clip has been revealed as a hoax.  But before it was removed from YouTube, the first time I saw it I thought it was real.  Almost.  Before forwarding it to anybody, I did some Googling and came up with this page:

Danish Mother Seeking – Could It Be..??

And now, you can see, from the original link, that yes, this is a complete fabrication.

The question arises, was Kanye’s interruption of Taylor Swift at the VMAs planned, was it a stunt concocted by MTV and Kanye to boost ratings and the artist’s profile?

I don’t think so.  First of all, Kanye apologized, which he never ever does, and he seemed to evidence true remorse on Jay Leno.

But my inbox says otherwise.

The public has been manipulated so many times, that when something extraordinary happens, that becomes instantly viral in our networked world, many people cross their arms and say not fucking real.

Who’d blame them?  What with Borat and Eminem at the previous MTV awards show.

Sure, the ratings for the VMAs were comparatively good, up from last year.  But isn’t focusing on the immediate bottom line, going for instant results, what fucked up not only the music industry, but the whole economy?

You can’t have it now.  Maybe at McDonald’s, but not in music.  An act has to suck before it gets good.  Unless it’s not really an act, and there are professionals behind the scene pulling the strings.  Ever since J. Lo, no one believes you need to have talent to make it.  J. Lo couln’t sing.  Now Jay-Z raps about auto-tune and there’s even an iPhone app.  So the public might like the actual track, but has no belief the underlying act has any merit.  As proven with Ms. Lopez.  After her moment, driven by expensive, sexy videos, her career fell off a cliff, she couldn’t sell a record and couldn’t perform live.  Oh, that’s right, she couldn’t really perform live to begin with!

They say that the public is cynical…  But not as cynical as the string-pullers.  Manipulating ad infinitum to the point where the public just isn’t buying.  They’ll purchase that Shaggy tune, but Universal couldn’t see it was a novelty, that there were no Shaggy fans.  There are no fans of almost any of those charting singles.

In order to truly make it today, you’ve got to be honest, you’ve got to have the goods, which have been honed over years.  Otherwise, you’re just another scammer trying to make a buck.  And the public knows.  Major media companies are complaining about the audience, the mistrust involved.  Well, if you were manipulated so many times would you still play along?

Reality TV is no longer about reality, but seeing how misfits behave in the midst of other misfits or money-whores.  If you think reality TV has a long shelf life left, you believe Miley Cyrus instantly sells out every gig. Networks manipulated reality, to make it even more palatable, more sexy, killing the essence in the process.

If you want to make it today, focus on marketing last.  And know that online, greatness spreads.  Could take a while to catch fire, but if you’re great on a sustained basis, you’ll make it.  Although making it might mean being known by a coterie, not everybody, and having one house, not three, still…who’s entitled to all that?  The days of more, more, more are over.  It’s just that those in the media haven’t realized it yet.

WINNERS

MTV

It happened on MTV.  It burnishes the brand’s image, that it still happens there.  The fact that an artist was sacrificed in the process?  WHO GIVES A FUCK!  This is what MTV has been doing for eons.  Like some "Twilight Zone" aliens with a book entitled "To Serve Acts", MTV has convinced "artists" that brief television exposure is good for them, when we all know it burns out careers, uses up performers even quicker than sitcoms.

Jay Leno

That’s why you’ve got to stay in the game.  You never know when serendipity will deal you a ratings bonanza on your most important date, in this case, the debut of your show.  Everybody’s making a big deal re Jay’s question about what Kanye’s mother would say.  Who would ask such a question?  I’d say who’d answer it, but Kanye didn’t.  Not that Kanye didn’t ask for it…  He’s living his life in the media, he gets no time off, he fucks up, he apologizes, it’s endless grist for the mill.  As for it affecting his career…  There’s a dearth of hip-hop superstars, and no pop or rock stars to fill the void.  So, expect Kanye to come back bigger and better than ever, Kanye 2.0, who is humble, who apologizes, and makes music that doesn’t sound radically different from what he made previously.  We love resurrection stories more than destruction stories.  Look at Whitney Houston.

Kanye West On Jay Leno: Apologizes To Taylor Swift

Twitter

Without the microblogging service, would we know that Obama called Kanye a "jackass"?  As for it being off the record and Terry Moran tweeting it anyway…  In a "me" society, who can expect anybody to behave properly, with humility.  Isn’t that how we got Kanye to begin with?

Obama’s Kanye Jackass Comment Continues Wave of Gaffes

Obama

You mean you watch the VMAs?  You mean you know what’s going on in the world?  After legions of old farts in the White House, this is positively stunning.  But even though the media and the Republicans may use this expletive against him, it does more for the President in the minds of young voters than any speech to Congress or appearance on "60 Minutes".  Makes you think if you ran into him you could have a conversation, he’d know what you were talking about.

Taylor Swift

Yes, Kanye did hand the mic back to her, but like the 19 year old she is, she was so overwhelmed, she couldn’t speak. Cementing her status as the teenage naif with the singing diary.  What happens when she grows up?  Well, I guess she’s listening to Joni Mitchell records right now.

Vince Romanelli

I’d never heard of him either, but his parody of Taylor Swift’s "You Belong With Me", remade as "You Don’t Belong On MTV", displays creativity unheard on Top Forty.  We don’t get humor, any analysis in music, just endless pap parading as important so fat cats can get rich.

You Don’t Belong on MTV

LOSERS

The American Public

A real story can no longer get traction.  Health care is too complex.  It’s like studying in class as opposed to flirting in the cafeteria.  We’ve become a nation of gossip, and misinformation.

Furthermore, who didn’t know Kanye’d been acting like a jackass previously?  It’s like his jackassness was a musical career, waiting for the tipping point for everyone to celebrate.  He acted poorly at this awards show, said bad things at Bonnaroo, now, finally, when so many were watching, he fucked up one more time.  Now he truly is a superstar!

But he was already.  And most people piling on weren’t paying attention to begin with.  Then again, I must admit the music community and fans are piling on too.  Because they like to.  Like the above-referenced high school society, exacting its own justice.

I’m not saying frivolity has no place, I’m just saying that we revere in popular culture almost nothing of value. Everything’s grist for the mill.  Either you’re smart, starting Facebook, writing an iPhone app, or you dropped out of high school and became a lowest common denominator twit like Paris Hilton, focusing eyes on you.

Everybody wants to be rich and famous, everybody wants the attention.  Doesn’t matter how many "Behind The Music" shows are aired, people think stardom will solve all their issues.  So, the inherent fabric of our country becomes ripped and torn, dilapidated.

I know you think I’m on overkill here, but…

People go into finance to get rich, even though this finance doesn’t build our country, only tears it apart.

People can’t get high tech jobs because they’re not educated enough.

People who do go to college study business, those dreamy liberal arts majors who used to create the culture we reveled in are seen as pussies.  It’s about cash, baby.

We spend our money living like rappers, going to the Palms in Vegas to splash in the pool while consuming overpriced liquor.

I’m just saying we need a readjustment here.  Gossip must be the underbelly, not the primary.  We seem to carom from one celebrity event to another, from Michael Jackson’s death to Kanye, and since the news media sees itself as stars, they throw logs on the fire.  Twenty four hours on kidnappings, not twenty four hours on explaining bills in Congress, or Supreme Court decisions.  But they need the ratings!

That’s what Kanye is, ratings.  For everybody and anybody who’s got something to sell.  And we’re buying it.  So the laugh’s on us.

Madonna was narcissistic, Kanye demonstrated he knows no limits, the Michael Jackson tribute was lacking oomph, a neutered Russell Brand was strangely unfunny, but none of that truly mattered.  What we saw last night was a television network that was once different, playing to a disenfranchised younger generation, employing the same damn playbook as the networks.  And have you caught the networks’ ratings recently?

In an era where the niche is king, where the mainstream is shrinking, MTV tried to be all things to all people.  Like a cheerleader being nice to the nerds for a few hours.  But didn’t MTV get the memo, THE NERDS RULE!

MTV established a monoculture.  There was no longer an underground, there was no FM to compete with AM, it was what MTV played and everything else, winners and losers.  And to think it was about music is to believe visual stimulation holds no weight, that seeing Britney Spears shake her hips titillates you not a whit.  MTV was the paragon, driving hell-bent into the distance, defining youth culture, for those truly young and those who desired to be young.  But, MTV never saw the cliff ahead, never saw the nascent Internet, a village off to the side.  Hell, the whole entertainment industry didn’t see the Internet and still doesn’t.

Suddenly, we’re back in the sixties.  You’re either with us or against us.  Either you’re wired or your irrelevant.  Either you can tweet, update your social networking site and text all at the same time, or you’re hopelessly out of date.

Facebook and Twitter are tools.  Frameworks wherein individuals place their content, not for everyone, but for their accumulated mass, which could be two or three or a few thousand, but which is rarely millions.  If Whitney Houston can be all over mainstream media and only sell three hundred thousand albums in a country of three hundred million, do you really think the mainstream counts?  The mainstream has become a sideshow!

We had VJs fawning over irrelevant pop stars.  Lady GaGa changed outfits so many times she insured she was perceived as a joke.  Hell, she could barely talk with her neck propped up in a medieval torture device and one eye covered like the Phantom, and when she won her damn award, she had to pull off her Spider-Man mask to speak.

Green Day and the house band proved that music doesn’t work on TV.  And Muse was just a joke.  Real band, trying to merge old with new, refuses to lip-synch so ends up sounding terrible on TV.  Did Muse really need this opportunity? Does anybody need TV?  Don’t they see that you’re inherently subservient to the medium?  That television flattens everything, that all content is grist for the mill?

Madonna, barely looking like herself, made her Michael Jackson tribute about her.  Like we still care about what she has to say, like we’re still in thrall to her throw it all out there, be naked, manipulative persona when millions are revealing their truth online, girls are e-mailing topless photos, it’s like grandma showed up to scold her grandkids, telling them you’ve got to do it her way, dammit.

Kanye…  All the celebrities castigating him today.  You won’t stand up for health care, you won’t risk alienating a single potential fan, but you pile on Kanye when the audience knew he was an egomaniac with no limits years ago?  This is news?

No, this is the kind of moment MTV lives for, the unscripted.  But we used to have RuPaul in a tete a tete with Milton Berle.  Now, we’ve got someone who loves the spotlight so much I’m stunned he doesn’t go door to door, telling everyone how fucking great he is.

Janet Jackson…  Explain what your talent is again?  You shook your surgically enhanced breasts and shapely body to beats crafted by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, you’ve got no innate talent.  As for those dancers replicating Michael Jackson’s moves to the big screen presentation of "Thriller", it reminded me of nothing so much as a screening of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show".

And the closing moment with Jay-Z?  This is supposed to drive patrons to the live gigs?  Explain to me how this works in an arena again?  People go to share what the albums mean to them, feel the energy, but what comes out of the speakers…is barely comprehensible.

And Green Day complaining that MTV should play more videos?  Even Tom Freston, who ran MTV, told me years ago that MTV was never going to play more videos, that clips were an on demand item on the Web.  He got fired, but do you really think people are going to sit in front of the box and wait for their favorite video to appear?

Kings Of Leon were nominated, but they didn’t win.  Because they’re not visual enough, on MTV it’s about train-wreck, not music.

Wilco, the critics’ band, they were nowhere in attendance either.

Rather this was a party.  A made for television event.  With sponsors woven into the script (Verizon Wireless anyone?) so a big bad corporation, Viacom, can add to its bottom line.  But have you checked Viacom’s bottom line recently, it’s awful!

If you thought the show sucked, you’re right.  But what you fail to grasp is the silver lining inside all this crap.  Yes, if it’s this bad, what are the odds something better will appear?

EVERYBODY knows the show sucked.  It was just a Sunday night diversion.  With trained seals clapping at appropriate moments to give you the impression that what was going on was important, like on a game show.  But it had nothing to do with music.

MTV is about fame.  For a while there, the two merged, music and fame were interwoven.  But then fame came to rule. Look good, be a pawn in our game and we’ll hook you up with songwriters and stylists, we’ll create a product that will make you famous!  But is that really why anybody picks up an instrument?  For fame?  Is there no reward in music?

Today, when the fame game pays fewer dividends than ever before, we’ve got whores who are trying to hold on to the little that’s left of the old paradigm, and newbies who’ve chucked it all, who are trying to make it on what comes out of the amplifiers, not what you see on the screen.  The only people who have not caught on are those in the mainstream media, flogging each other’s products like they truly matter.  But if NBC is putting Jay Leno on in prime time, and can make money and will be satisfied with a 1.5 rating, which is fewer than 2 million households, does it really make sense to overpay to produce this tripe that so few are truly interested in, that generates less revenue than ever before?

It’s about music.  It’s about generating an audience the old-fashioned way, through hard work and what comes out of the speakers.  Getting lucky on TV doesn’t work, because no one’s paying attention, the active audience is in front of the computer screen, or focusing on their phone as opposed to passively sitting in front of the box.

That’s the revolution the oldster media just doesn’t get.  The days of passivity are done.  We’ve got an active audience. Which is engaged by truth.  All we saw last night was phoniness, an irrelevant train-wreck with the nutritional value of Froot Loops.  You didn’t miss a thing.

The two best Bonnie Raitt albums were produced by Don Was.

My favorite is the second, "Give It Up", released in 1972, it’s got an intimacy that was squeezed out of recordings thereafter.  Slick became the norm.  Rough edges denied you airplay.  Just like you had to be beautiful to get on MTV, your music had to sound like it was fashioned by a machine.  What finally blew up Bonnie Raitt was the humanity of "Nick Of Time".  But the piece de resistance was the follow-up, "Luck Of The Draw".  "Something To Talk About" was the hit.  "I Can’t Make You Love Me" became the standard.  But the heart of the album is track 7, "One Part Be My Lover", cowritten by Bonnie and her then husband, Michael O’Keefe.  There’s an intimacy in the track, like you’ve just woken up your lover in the middle of the night.  Not made for the masses, deeply personal, it ends up being universal. As for the lyric…  Maybe you married your high school sweetheart, maybe you’ve never known troubled love, but experience enough relationships and you run into people with problems your parents never told you about.  How can they love you and tell you they can’t live without you, but then leave you?  I used to say my favorite Raitt track was "Too Long At The Fair", but "One Part Be My Lover" eclipsed it.  And then there’s the album’s title track, "Luck Of The Draw".  Maybe you went to graduate school, maybe you’re a professional, you bought insurance and are living off the proceeds.  But for those of us who decided on a different path, we know dead-ends you’re unaware of.  Sure, we’ve got highs that have been extinguished from your dreams, but the whipsaw of emotions, from the victories to the losses, takes an extreme toll.  Yet, we still keep on keepin’ on.  "Luck Of The Draw" is about just this.

I didn’t expect Delbert McClinton’s new record to be good.  I figured one listen at most.  Because not only have my heroes disappointed me, I haven’t loved anything Delbert has done since he worked with the Muscle Shoals players, released music on their long defunct label, decades ago.  But I was curious, because of my relationship with Don Was.  I told him I’d check it out.  Didn’t tell him to have the company send me a CD, or to e-mail me a track, I’ve got Rhapsody, Napster, Spotify…I live in an attention economy, the key isn’t to sell me something, but to get me to pay attention to something.

I found "Acquired Taste" with a bit of research.  At this point, Rhapsody has better inventory than Napster, but at least Napster lists albums in order of release.  Delbert’s new album was atop the list.  I clicked to play it now, and went about my business.  The raucous opening cut sounded like Delbert McClinton, the Texan that the Englishmen fell in love with, but barely tuned in, catching up on e-mail, I wasn’t prepared for what came next.  An intro sound straight off of those twenty year old Bonnie Raitt albums.  Soulful, like someone lived here, that we don’t exist in a world inhabited by machines.  Then came Delbert’s voice.  Like honey dripping on your tongue, I was immediately enraptured.

This is not music the major labels sign, nor know what to do with.  This is the music that made the medium number one in the public’s heart back in the seventies.  In a track you could find humanity, honesty, truth, you had to buy the records to know what was going on, not only in the world, but inside yourself.

For the last few decades we’ve listened to music thinking about marketability.  Where could we expose it, where could we sell it.  And wanting the widest audience, we ended up with the most homogenous music, it meant nothing, if you wanted truth, you tuned in HBO.

But "Starting A Rumor" reclaims what once was.  Put it on, and even though you might be alone in the house, you feel warm, wrapped up in a blanket, part of something, connected with the singer, the song and society.

I could go on, describing it, but just listen.  If you were around back then, you’ll get it.

Track 2

Meanwhile, even more fascinating is this YouTube clip from something called Dayton RiverBlast.  With people speaking in the background, Delbert does a killer version despite so many not paying attention.  This is the life of a musician.  Believing in yourself, your material, not letting the audience, the response, get you down.  Delbert looks like your next door neighbor, a guy just emerged from his pickup truck, overheated, going inside to down a few beers.  But underneath it all, is years of experience, talent, he delivers, more than Madonna ever could.  It’s not about outfits, it’s about the music, how it touches you.

Delbert McClinton Starting A Rumor