TRENT’S TWEET

Relaxed camera / recording policy for the upcoming NIN/JA tour

I was astounded when I clicked the link and I found a policy long enough to codify a divorce.  Yes, I felt the presence of lawyers, and you don’t want them anywhere near the act/fan interface.  But then, in reading the camera policy, I detected a sense of humor, the post evidenced a real person.

This is key to success in this industry today.  The acts must not be kept behind walls, media ops vetted by publicity agents, their image perfected for gatekeepers.  Rather, the acts must put forth a three-dimensional image, as intimate as a conversation between two buddies in math class.

SPEAKING OF TWEETING

Why doesn’t Doug Morris’ assistant do it?

Record labels have a horrible image.  As does Ticketmaster.  They need a mole inside the game to honestly report what’s going on.  Sure, they have to filter out privileged information, but how much of that is there anymore anyway?  Rather than depend on the press to get the word out, you need to do it yourself.  Forget newspapers, forget "Entertainment Weekly", you’re your own publication these days.

The key is to create a bond.  This bond will deliver benefits.  The entertainment business is a home sport today.  Anything you can provide to allow those at home to help their fantasy team will be greatly appreciated.

THE BOB DYLAN ALBUM

I heard George Harrison’s version of "If Not For You" on the satellite yesterday, and thinking about Bob’s take on "New Morning, I decided to play the new album.

"Life Is Hard" just might be the least appealing cut on the record.  Which is good.  Not fantastic, good.  Play it all the way through and a fan would want to hear it again.  It exists in its own rarefied world, one in which music is something you stumble upon as you walk down the avenue.  Kind of like being in Nashville, hearing something interesting wafting out a doorway and entering the bar.

Start with "Jolene", it swings.

BEN FOLDS ALBUM

"American Idol" succeeds because of hit music and drama.

I’m not sure exactly where the drama comes in with a show about a cappella, but I’m sure Simon Cowell could manufacture some.

In case you don’t know, Ben Folds today released an album of college a cappella versions of his music.  I’ve been hooked on a cappella since the original days of Napster, when I stumbled upon it.

How about a TV show akin to the old "GE College Bowl", teams from different institutions of higher learning competing.  The key here is to give them a brief period of time to come up with an arrangement, a week at most, hopefully just a few days.  And then the public tunes in not only to hear classic music, but the way the groups rearrange it.

The backstory is the college experience.  Maybe the groups fly home every week to campus and cameras follow them, as they go about their studies and social life.  Rather than focusing on high school dropout wannabes, put the spotlight on those trying to pull themselves up the ladder, by going to college.  This will ring true in Obamanation.

Sure, they can play for scholarships.  Actually, maybe that’s a big enough incentive in today’s economy.  But maybe there’s a twist, the best team gets to transfer to Yale or sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl or…compete on "Dancing With The Stars"!

Yes, dancing was not seen as hip, and neither is a cappella.  But it’s heartwarming, sans danger, it appeals!

As for judges, we certainly want a vocal coach, but writers and producers should be the judges.  People with true pedigrees.  Start with Elton John, think big.  He’s opinionated AND a music lover.

Start as a summer replacement show, when expectations are low.

OWEN VAN NATTA

Did you see this?

Owen Van Natta’s Infamous Tenure At Project Playlist

MySpace is doomed.

I’d hit the delete button and start over.  They need a new interface.  And have you noticed how long it takes for the music on pages to come up with the latest player redesign…  Does anybody use this shit?

LOS ANGELES TIMES

I’m thinking of cancelling my subscription.  And I’ve been a steady reader since the seventies.  There’s just no reason to get it.

The hard news is better in the "New York Times".

Who gives a shit what the faceless opinion people have to say, they’re not part of the national debate.

Sports is on the Web, and I’ve given up following the contests anyway.

There used to be the California station, the local news, which I didn’t always read, but liked was there, since I never watch TV news.

Business?  Better in the "Wall Street Journal", these stories break all day online, and the news hole of the paper is so small.

So that leaves the Calendar section.  Which is 25% reprints of online news from the day before, sometimes TWO days before.  Then a bunch of articles that are essentially hype by the studios and…

There’s almost nothing there.

HUFFINGTON POST

How come they can get interface so right, and all the newspapers get it so wrong.

This is the Apple secret.  Present it in a way that is easily used.

I can skim the info on the HuffPo almost instantly, whereas both the L.A. and NY "Times" sites are almost unfathomable.  WSJ is a bit better.

As for blogs on the "Times" sites…they’re like speaking to yourself, buried so deep that they have no voice in the debate.

The vaunted 360 deal is basically a land grab.  Challenged financially, major labels are forcing acts to fork over interests in ancillary rights, most notably touring and merchandise, and delivering almost nothing in return.  The future company will have in-house or subcontracted companies that deliver these services.  What was seen as a label today will be a quarterback tomorrow.

This is why Guy Hands is so stupid.

Guy Hands can only see capital.  There’s an asset, primarily EMI’s catalog.  How can he maximize revenue from this, at the same time breaking new acts cheaply.  But no one wants to sign with a label that’s cash-poor, with few employees.  Musicians want a full service stop.  And that’s Irving’s play.

Irving wants to turn the business upside down.  He wants to put all the power in the hands of the acts.  The press is focusing on ticketing fees.  That’s like analyzing the Iraq war based on the food shipped to the troops.  It’s an important consideration, but not the essence.

At risk in the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger is not Seth Hurwitz and the other independent promoters, nor the ignorant ticket-buyer who doesn’t realize that all the best seats are NEVER available, but the labels.  If this merger goes through, the labels will become second-class citizens essentially overnight.  Sure, Irving will do a deal with Interscope or Sony or…whoever ponies up a ton of bread.  And believe me, the labels will pay, they need talent for their pipelines.  Which is why they should shut down and become licensing companies.  Because the path they are on is one of destruction.

In order to compete with Irving, you’ve got to become Irving, you’ve got to become a manager!

Sure, you need marketing and promotion people.  But what you need most is vision, of a team that is in business with the act, that shares in the upside and is not guaranteed compensation.  Right now, the label and the act are adversaries.  If the act hits, the label gets rich and the act becomes famous.  In addition to this fame, you used to be able to make bread on the road.  Now the label wants a piece of that!  Not an attractive deal.

But what if the label took a percentage.  And had a merch company.  As for being the agent, there is a finicky California law, but there are ways to get around it.  Yes, labels must be reconstituted, as opposed to being fat cats they must be headed by people like Irving, Cliff Burnstein and the myriad of indie managers like Bruce Allen and Gary Borman.

That goes for indie labels too.  If all you’re doing is putting out records, you’ve got me scratching my head.  If you need to make the band’s manager a partner, so be it.  You’ve got to have all the rights to make this work.  In order to be nimble, in order to make a profit.

Terry McBride had the theories right, he was just too early and sans enough hit acts.  Furthermore, how happy can an act be if its manager is flying around the world playing the role of star himself?

Rather than being forces of nature, heads of labels/managers must be relatively faceless.  To the average Metallica fan, Cliff Burnstein is a credit on the album.  He’s not making pronouncements.  Even Irving is not grubbing for publicity.  The act is the star, not the handler!

We’ve got to move away from the record being the prime driver.  This does not mean music should be free, but sometimes it has to be, to help spread the word.

A new partnership would look like the one Trent Reznor has with Jim Guerinot.  There’s no need for a traditional label.

But not every act is a visionary like Trent.  So you’ve got to stock your company with people who can provide these services, everything from iPhone apps to exotic online marketing initiatives.  You must invest money, managers always do, but there cannot be a huge advance and the act cannot be screwed.

This is where we are going.  Are you smart enough to get on the bus?

Last night on "Celebrity Apprentice" Donald Trump said it was all about passion.  That he’d seen plenty of smart, educated, competent people, but what turned him on, what made people shine, was passion.

On the freeway this morning, I heard Rod Stewart’s "Handbags &  Gladrags".  I flashed back to my dorm room at Middlebury, listening to the first two Rod Stewart albums, which I’d ordered blind from the Record Club of America.

You can only imagine dropping the needle on that voice.  I thought it was a joke, I thought I’d been punk’d.

You’ve got to dial up "Gasoline Alley"’s title cut.  You hear a great Ronnie Wood slide, and then this guy who sounds like he’s had too many drinks and has decided to step up to the mic after the bar has closed starts to sing.  You think you know twenty people who can sing this good and then…

Going home, running home
Down to gasoline alley where I started from

You might not be old enough to remember the comic strip, but most of us come from nowhere.  We’ve got our dreams. Our lives are about the challenge of trying to make them come true.  Some make excuses, about upbringing, and slights, and end up woulda coulda shoulda been contenders.

Then there are others, with pure desire and a modicum of talent, who almost will their success.  They need to get out of the hole they’re in, they need the adulation, they just can’t settle.

This is the common denominator of all great artists.  Not talent, but desire.  The 10,000 hours Gladwell speaks of.

And when done right, their  music resonates with us not because of its sheer sheen, but its intimacy, its truth.

That’s what crossed my mind when I listened to "Handbags & Gladrags" on SiriusXM’s Bridge.  Some people want to go to the show to hear the hits.  I want to go to hear the tracks that touch my soul.

The casual listener needs the hits.  The fan needs to hear that song that he listened to in his bedroom that made him feel like he was not alone.  Sometimes the two are one and the same, but rarely so.  It would be like meeting someone at a party and immediately telling them your innermost thoughts, your victories, your losses, how you’re down because your relationship ended.  You just don’t do that.  You put on your best face.  That’s what a hit is.

A hit puts a smile on your face.

"Handbags & Gladrags" puts my life in relief, makes me think not of parties, but solo experiences years back, when the song in my head got me through.

And this morning I’ve been checking out some recommendations.  Empire Of The Sun is pretty good.  So is Gazpacho.

Then I checked out Berton’s recommendation.

There was just a link, I figured it would be something snazzy and brand new.  But it was Laura Nyro.

And what immediately reached me was the joy in her playing.  It was effortless.  She wasn’t concentrating on getting it right, she wasn’t playing for the back row, she was setting herself FREE!

You can go to Berklee, even Julliard, they’ll never teach you passion.

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop will teach you how to craft a story, but it certainly can’t teach you how to tell it in a way that resonates with others.

There’s just something here.  Laura Nyro is not the most beautiful girl on the block, I’m sure you can find someone who can play the piano better, someone with a better voice, but the pure banshee wail of a bird in flight draws your eyes like a rocket blasted into the universe, you just can’t stop watching, you’re titillated, you feel strangely alive, you’ve got to play the clip AGAIN!

It’s almost impossible to delineate, to describe, you’ve just got to EXPERIENCE it.  That’s what they always want to do, take you to the gig, so you can truly get it.  But rarely is what is being purveyed truly great.

That’s what sold Springsteen.  I saw him and the entire E Street Band scrunched onto the tiny Bottom Line stage in the summer of ’74.  When he debuted "Jungleland", a song that wouldn’t see wax for another summer, I could envision the entire tableau, not only because Springsteen was so talented, his words were so good, but because he needed to tell this story, he needed to convey what was in his head to those in attendance.

It’s kind of like what Clive Davis says, he’s looking for stars.

It’s just that the definition of a star has changed.  Now it’s someone good-looking, with a talent at melisma, who is totally malleable.  It used to be someone unique, who not only made us marvel, but made us feel human, and connected.

Laura Nyro was never that big a star.  But her songs were.  What seemed so personal when she performed it was positively universal in the hands of the 5th Dimension and Barbra Streisand.

But no one performs a song like the writer.  They’ve lived through the birthing process, the pain and the joy.  When they sing, it’s from deep inside, from the depth of their souls, we’re shocked and riveted, we can’t pay attention to anything else.

Music will exist forever.  Acts will top the chart.  But that doesn’t mean there will be any stars.  Agents and labels can build an act, advertising can make them look big.  But too often you end up with something serviceable, like Grand Funk Railroad.  A blip in time that greased the skids of life for a while, but was forgotten when its time was done.

Then there are artists with music that survives the passing of its creator.  Because of its uniqueness, because of its vision.

The system is stacked against this kind of artist in the traditional world.  And in the independent world, there are too many acts with fans, but not chops.  They appeal to a group, but not everyone.

Not that Laura Nyro appealed to everyone.  But no one could see her perform and walk away and say she was trash. Because you could see her testing the limits, because you could see she needed this, because you could see yourself inside her music, your better self, who was not self-conscious, who was brazen enough to throw off his shackles, jump off the cliff and try to fly.

We all want to soar.

But most are too scared to take a chance.

So we revel in the flight of artists.  That’s what brings us to the show, that’s what makes us go back.  We want to see that performer in the sky telling us how great life can be, that if we’re willing to dream and work hard we can live unfettered, fully-realized lives.

Laura Nyro – Save the Country

Have you watched this movie on HBO?

I was flipping through the On Demand opportunities when I stumbled upon it.  I’d read a review, it stated that Muhammad Ali was an asshole, that Joe Frazier had been mislabeled.  I had an urge to see it.  But can you convince a woman to watch a boxing match, supposedly the most brutal of all time?

That’s one thing that really struck me.  The fight was ultimately ended by one of Smokin’ Joe’s handlers.  Asked years later, this gentleman said he had no regrets, he’d seen eight men die in the ring.

Eight guys?

What is it about boxing that makes us flinch, but leaves us unable to pull ourselves away?  Maybe it’s the primal level. Shorn of our educations, our wealth, our societal status, how would we fare?

Felice was riveted.  And so was I.  Because it was my era.

I can’t get over the fact that it’s 2009.  Something that happened in 1990 occurred almost twenty years ago.  We’ve been asleep, thinking the millennium just passed, but the twenty first century’s been plowing along for almost ten years.  Soon, it will be the fiftieth anniversary of the SIXTIES!  The most turbulent decade of the twentieth century, when the younger generation wrested control of our nation from the establishment, when everybody woke up and asked himself, what are the limits?

They showed that black and white footage from Vietnam. We used to watch it on the Admiral set in the living room, after my father had come home from work all wound up and was sipping a whiskey sour.  We became numb.  The body count was featured every night, but it was ultimately meaningless.  Other than to indicate we didn’t want to go, we couldn’t go, we had no beef with the North Vietnamese, was the Domino Theory truly valid?

That’s what Muhammad Ali said.  That he had no problem with the Viet Cong.  But it wasn’t his idea, the concept was fed to him by the Nation of Islam.

Muhammad refused to stand up.  I remember watching the footage on television on a family trip to Washington, D.C., just like I remember hearing Cassius Clay had knocked out Sonny Liston from the car radio on an early morning drive to Vermont.  We lived through this history, but it didn’t seem like history then.

But watching this footage you know it’s the past.  Everybody’s wearing clothes you used to see on the sidewalk.  Back when "Saturday Night Fever" was the rage, when we were finally breathing after the end of the war.

The seventies were a decade of release.  Derided at the time, barely focused upon today.  They were the years before MONEY!

That’s what Reagan ushered in.  The baby boomers stopped licking their wounds and went out to make their fortunes.  If anybody was in their way, they were losers.  And suddenly, we had a nation of winners and losers.  And today, the winners are whining, aren’t they ENTITLED to be winners?

I drove past Milken’s high school yesterday.  It was his lieutenant that brought down AIG.  Those trying to rehabilitate his image were wrong.  He was that bad.

But Smokin’ Joe was not.

Smokin’ Joe was just another dirt poor soul from South Carolina.  Who used the fighting game to pull himself up by the bootstraps, to a better life.

Joe was the one with the hard past, working in the fields from age 13.  Muhammad’s life had been comparatively easy.

But after being stripped of his boxing license, it was Frazier who lent Ali money.  But when he we was back in the game, Ali called Joe a "gorilla", the tool of the white man.

There were three fights.  All of them interesting historical episodes.  But what’s most fascinating is that Muhammad Ali ended up a legend, and Joe Frazier a footnote.

I too was susceptible to the hype.  I didn’t see Joe lose in Manila, but I wanted him to.  I was disappointed when Ali lost his comeback fight years before.  Because Ali and the press had convinced me.  Joe was the white man’s pawn, only Ali stood up for the plight of the African-American.

Years later, almost forty, with emotion stripped and hysteria dead, we can see that our perception back then was wrong.  Joe Frazier might not have been a saint, but Ali certainly doesn’t deserve his lofty perch.

Kind of like the Carpenters.  Loathed at their peak, but revered today.

Kind of the way Britney and Justin will be seen as irrelevant in years to come.  The same way Bon Jovi is a joke to everybody but fans.

Getting older is strange.  You feel no different, but in our youth-based society you’re shunted aside, deemed a has-been, thrown upon the scrapheap.  Your wisdom is not respected, because your skin is wrinkled.

Yet with so many years under your belt, you can see the changes.  The television and newspaper media that played into Ali’s hands?  Suddenly, they barely matter.  Who cares what the reporter has to say, out with his notebook trying to get the story.  Online is someone who LIVES the story, who can tell you the truth on instinct, no reporting necessary.

But the old guard wants to retain its power, via intimidation and subterfuge, if necessary.  Radio promotion men still want their spiff if your record is added to a station they control, even if they had no part in the transaction.  The fact that radio is on hot rails to oblivion?  Irrelevant, we’re going to hold on to what once was.

What once was.  Music drove the culture.  It was less about glitz than substance.  But the youth of today say what’s happening now is just as vital, that they don’t want to hear the old time stories.

But only by knowing the past can you understand the present.

As for Smokin’ Joe…  He takes solace in the fact that Ali’s got severe Parkinson’s and he’s still mobile and alert.  Joe’s not following the conventional wisdom, he’s not forgiving, he remembers.

All that pop psychology, about forgiveness…  Is it truly accurate?  Can you wipe from the map all the derision, all the pain?  I say no.  You try not to focus on it every day, but you retain that box you store your memories in, to open and peruse on an irregular basis, to remind you of man’s inhumanity to man.

Thrilla in Manila