Somehow Eric Clapton has become known for a quiet song about his deceased son and a lame, slowed-down version of "Layla".  One has to give him credit for his longevity on his 64th birthday, but the fumes he’s living on are not three-dimensional.  Not that we need to blame him so much as his audience.

When Eric was God, most people didn’t know who he was.  By time Cream announced it was breaking up and embarked on its victory lap the masses had been alerted, but they were celebrating what had already been, and Clapton had his mind on something new.

Like Blind Faith.  And Delaney & Bonnie.

In retrospect, the finest moment on Blind Faith’s one and only album belonged to Stevie Winwood.  "Can’t Find My Way Home" is a rock classic that has lost nothing in the ensuing forty years.  But it was the now rarely heard on radio "Presence Of The Lord" that indicated where Eric Clapton was going.  To a place based less on his guitar wizardry than his soul.  Stevie Winwood was singing, but Clapton had composed the number.  Afraid to step up to the mic and sing his own words, Clapton was looking to arrest us less with flash than meaning.  It’s like he’d been constructing Corvettes, and now he wanted to make Jaguars, all soft and sensuous.

Then Delaney Bramlett convinced Eric to sing.

Eric was a sideman in the man’s band, and then he employed the southerner to produce his first solo album.  Which was looked forward to by fans, but Eric had a limited number of acolytes at this point..  The masses were fans of Cream, maybe of Blind Faith, the demand for Eric Clapton’s solo record was only marginally greater than that for his Delaney & Bonnie and Friends cohort Dave Mason’s initial unaccompanied outing.

Released almost simultaneously with Eric Clapton’s solo debut, Mr. Mason’s "Alone Together" is a masterpiece, which suffered for being on the independent Blue Thumb label.  On Columbia, it would have been a monster.  But Dave moved to Big Red after this initial release, and has never equaled it.

Then again, that debut is why Dave can still tour today.

We don’t see Eric Clapton’s debut as his apotheosis today, that would be the "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" album.  The solo debut was seen as a bit of a disappointment.  It started off as a slow seller.  Eventually "After Midnight" became one of his standards, "Blues Power" garnered significant airplay, but neither of them are the album’s gems.

The second best track on the album closes it.  The unmitigated joy of "Let It Rain" is infectious.  If you put aside the expectations of heaviness evidenced in Clapton’s previous bands, you could romp in this joyous escapade that rendered smiles on the faces of all who heard it.  The riff, with the waterfall bass notes and piano adding accents, created a three-dimensional tableau that invited one inside.  The break was even reminiscent of the one to come in "Layla"’s title cut.

But the best track on Eric Clapton’s solo debut is a direct descendant of "Presence Of The Lord".  "Easy Now" has an intimacy, sans the heaviness, but with Eric’s thin, but genuine voice, the listener is enraptured!

Holding you, you holding me
Everyone could see we were in ecstasy

That’s what "Easy Now" radiates, a release from the burden of being a guitar god, a guitar hero.  You wonder why they break up the band…  So the members can stretch in new directions.  You’d have never heard "Easy Now" in Cream, it couldn’t be performed in the context of Blind Faith, not in a group containing the superb voice of Stevie Winwood.

But alone, on a solo album, Eric Clapton’s foray into full realization evidences a humanity absent all those Cream classics.

I’ll agree that the debut solo album is not the definitive statement.  But it eclipses so many of the comeback albums. "461 Ocean Boulevard" had its "Let It Rain" moment with "Mainline Florida" and its "Easy Now" track, "Let It Grow", but there was a confidence on that album lacking on the very first one, it was harder to feel close to the music, and the artist.

The very first solo album by Eric Clapton was a lark.  "Easy Now" radiates the intimacy of "McCartney".  I’d rather hear this track live than that lame remake of the Bob Marley classic.  I feel sorry that Eric lost his young son, but "Tears In Heaven" is hobbled by Will Jennings’ lyrics, they’re a bit too heavy, a bit too overworked, whereas "Easy Now" is what a new love would sing upon accosting you in the rain, in the middle of the forest.

Please remember that I want you to come too

Clapton was inviting us in.  Suddenly John Mayall, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker became minor figures, Eric Clapton was now truly a deity, based not solely on his fretwork, but his compositional skills and voicings.  The best music touches us.  "Easy Now" taps us on the shoulder lightly and then wraps itself around our heart.  It may not be known by most, but it’s not only the essence of Clapton, but music itself.

‘Cause nobody knows how I’m feeling

I discovered Peter Frampton the last week of May 1971.  That’s when I purchased Humble Pie’s "Rock On", in preparation for seeing the band open for Lee Michaels at the Fillmore East.  This was regular procedure.  I bought Fairport Convention’s "Full House" the year before, when they opened for Traffic at the same venue.  I didn’t want to show up unfamiliar with the material, I wanted to enjoy the experience.

I’d like to tell you I loved "Rock On", that I played it incessantly after seeing the band and hold the disc close to my heart, but this would be untrue.  "Rock On" begins with a killer cut, and then fades thereafter.  But that opening track…

"Shine On" burst opens with a flourish, and a patina of distortion akin to the Small Faces’ "Itchycoo Park".  But this was not a Steve Marriott number.  "Shine On" may have featured the backup chicks who graced the Frampton-less follow-up, "Smokin’", but "Shine On" didn’t feature the bluster that Humble Pie became known for, rather "Shine On" was the kind of rock that made nerdy white boys feel powerful.

Not that I went to that gig alone.  But we’re all self-conscious at heart, that’s what draws us geeks to the music, it completes us.

And the following fall, when I was on a college road trip to Boston, I saw a double album on the floor of a music store in Kenmore Square and bought it.  That album was "Rockin’ The Fillmore", a document of the shows from the spring before, that I attended.

Humble Pie broke through, they became a giant band.  But without Peter Frampton.  Peter Frampton had already decided to leave Humble Pie before the band hit the Fillmore East, it was well-publicized, and kind of hilarious… What musician leaves an act on the verge of its breakthrough, after paying all those dues?

And I never found another soul who owned "Wind Of Change", Frampton’s solo debut from 1972, until years later. But I bought it instantly, and loved it.  The opening has got the feel of a placid lake just before sunset.  But "Fig Tree Bay" does not equal the opener on the other side, "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)".

"All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" starts off as a peek into a studio.  Listening, you get that feeling of being a fly on the wall.  This is music made for the musicians, not the audience.  This six and a half minute epic has got too many twists and turns to ever be played on AM radio.  As for FM?  Playlists were becoming consolidated under the guidance of Lee Abrams, and there was no room for this unheralded guitar player.

And that was the added bonus.  Sure, Peter Frampton was pretty, but this was long before little girls knew who he was, he was dancing on the fretboard in "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" the same way Mick Taylor added that dollop of intensity atop the Stones classics of the same era.

But from there the albums got worse.  "Frampton’s Camel" from the following year was serviceable, but not phenomenal.  1974’s album, "Somethin’s Happening" verged on unlistenable, I gave up.

And I figured Frampton and A&M would too.  Everything was going in the wrong direction.  But then came "Frampton Comes Alive!"

But something came first, an eponymous fourth solo album, which I never bought, because I felt ripped off.  It wasn’t as good as the solo debut, but "Frampton" was a return to form.  It laid the groundwork for the ultimate live album. Yes, "Frampton" contains not only "Show Me The Way", but "Baby, I Love Your Way".

I’m confused.  Sure, it’s the financial crisis.  But the change of centuries has pulled the wool over our eyes.  With no name for this decade, we’ve been unaware of the passage of time.  1990 was almost TWENTY YEARS AGO!

Let me make this clearer.  When I discovered "Frampton", it was in a friend’s apartment on Dorothy Street, in 1975, in Brentwood.  Down the building lived a hot single mother with no visible means of support and her high school student daughter.  That little girl is gonna be 51 this year.  Not that I’ve seen her in decades, but I remember.  We all remember.  The accumulation of mental detritus slows us down.  The baggage prevents us from being early adopters, we can’t square Twitter with getting our own phone in our parents’ house.  Texting?  Most of us never learned to type.

And then there was that reader who came to visit me in the early nineties.  When she first made contact, she was a nineteen year old college student.  Today she’s a thirty six year old mother of two.  The Brat Pack is approaching fifty!

I know none of this is new.  But our math got screwed up.  If it were still the last century, say 1999, and something had happened in 1980, we’d see that as a long time ago.  But it’s like the clock got reset at midnight January 1st, 2000, and time has marched on unnoticed ever since.

There’s gonna be a day of reckoning.  When we finally hit the next decade, and people refer to it as the "teens".  Then we’ll realize how much time has passed.

Napster was ten years ago.  "Thriller" twenty five.  The boy band peak was a decade ago.  And it seems like we’re just beginning, but no, this era of chaos has been our lives for a long time.

And I’m overwhelmed.  There’s too much music to listen to.  Almost none of it sealed with the imprimatur of someone trusted.  Do I listen to it all, do I try to appear hip, or do I listen to what I already know?

When I’m at loose ends, I dial up the old stuff.

And this morning, I got an inkling to hear Peter Frampton.  Not the latter-day lost period, after his manager Dee Anthony told him to play to the little girls, but before that, when he was playing to us, the musos.

I thought of "Wind Of Change", but it seemed too downbeat and depressing.  I felt "Frampton" would be a bit more upbeat.

And it was.

"Day’s Dawning" had that 10 a.m. groove, when you finally realize you’ve got to get in gear and face the day.

I can tolerate the original "Show Me The Way", without the screaming meemees, with the fuzzbox part of the song as opposed to the dominant factor.

But then came "One More Time".

"All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" made it to the live album.  Albeit in an acoustic, castrated, yet satisfying version. But "One More Time" didn’t get recut.  It wasn’t overplayed, it wasn’t the song of choice of newly nubile girls.

When an artist does something great, he knows.  He doesn’t have to hype it, he doesn’t have to set it up, he just needs to play it.  And he’ll watch conversation stop, he’ll see people’s heads lift towards the sky, when the song is over, someone will ask to hear it again.

We know great.  Because we so rarely hear it.

By time "One More Time" came over the Sonos system this morning, I’d already tuned out, the music was background.  But suddenly, I had to stop typing, stop surfing, I could only listen.

The intro is like mid-period Beatles, but played through a seventies filter.  The verses are informal, Frampton is not trying to convince us, he’s not working hard.  But then comes the change…

And nobody knows how I’m feeling
Just not healing_
We’ll do it again one more time

That’s the conundrum, the human condition.  We’re surrounded by other human beings, but quite alone.  Nobody knows how we’re feeling, they can’t read through our uniforms, through societal preconceptions.  One cannot see the guy covered in tattoos wearing engineer boots loves to cook.  One cannot perceive the woman with prim and proper attire loves metal music.  We’re looking to connect.  But it’s almost impossible.

But there’s a halfway house.  And that’s music.  The music seems to understand us and give us the power to bond with others.  That’s what going to the rock show in the seventies was about.  Bonding with the others in attendance. The music broke down the barriers.

We’ll do it again one more time

That’s what I yearn for.  That one more time.  Just like it used to be.  When acts didn’t shrug their shoulders and say they had no choice but to tie in with corporations.  When tickets were cheap enough that you could go to the show on a regular basis.  When music was the most powerful art form.  When journeymen could play for years, and when they seemed completely lost in the wilderness, suddenly break through to almost everyone.  Based not on a marketing plan, but the intimacy, the sheer joy of their music.

Peter Frampton – Frampton – 03 – One More Time

Heard anybody talk about "Black Ice" recently?  How about "Long Road Out Of Eden"?

Those albums were made for the paycheck, not the music.  Upon delivery, the parties involved got a huge sum from Wal-Mart, a guaranteed payment for a certain number of albums that the retailer gave up the right to return.

This is not the way it always was.

Used to be the single was the linchpin of your career.  You needed a steady stream of product, to remain in the public eye, so you could work live and continue to record.  Those who only reached the heights a single time were labeled "one hit wonders", and the literature and VH1 are littered with updates about these individuals.  Working day jobs, no different from you and me.

Then came the Beatles.  Instead of being a collection of tripe, the album became a statement, and generated a ton of revenue.  We suddenly had ALBUM ARTISTS whose music was featured on the FM band.  These acts didn’t need hit singles, their entire oeuvre was a hit.  Radio stations went tracks deep, sometimes played the entire record. Furthermore, the cycle was brief.  Compressed into one year.  You put out an album, radio played a few cuts, you went on tour, and then went back into the studio and cut another album.  You were absent from the scene for a very brief period of time, you remained in the public consciousness, at least the mind of your fans.  You had a career arc, your music meant something.

But then radio slowed the process down.  Radio research said listeners wanted the familiar, they wanted hits, they wanted no tuneouts.  And labels realized if they moved slowly, in lockstep with the stations, they could sell the same album to many more people.  Rather than spend all that money to reach the same hard core fans, take the product you paid for to new people, the profitability of each subsequent copy increasing dramatically.

Then, in the last ten years, radio refused to commit to even the new product of "stars".  If a new track didn’t hit immediately, the station would drop it.  Killing the albums dependent upon radio play.  Radio and record labels were no longer joined at the hip.  Radio made no apologies about focusing on advertisers and profits, ergo 20 plus minutes of commercials an hour.  By this point, only Top Forty radio could truly break a record wide.  But with Top Forty becoming a lowest common denominator wasteland, listeners tuned out in droves.  About the same time MTV stopped playing videos.  So you were left with no outlet to expose your wares.  Yet mainstream acts continue to play the same game, like it’s the last century.

1. Decide on your game plan.  Is it about reaching your core audience, or the masses?

Widespread Panic shouldn’t play to those not already committed, it’s not about garnering a whole new fan base, but satiating that which already exists.

Meanwhile, Kelly Clarkson has a very limited core audience.  So, in order to make her numbers, she’s got to have a hit and spread her story far and wide.

2. If you’re satiating the core, you’ve got to maintain the relationship.  Not only blog updates, but live releases too.  It’s about a steady stream of access.  Whether you’re on the road or not.  If you let up, your core becomes disappointed and frustrated and moves on to something else and then you have to convince them all over again.  Interesting point about U2.  Supposedly they have another album in the can.  The core audience is ready for it now.  Why wait?  The only reason is to increase the payday, it can’t be about fostering the fan bond.  If U2 were smart, it would release a single a week, at least one a month, once they start their tour, to maintain the buzz.  Because believe me, it’s not 1972 anymore, when the Stones barnstormed across America.  ANY band touring the States is not that big a story anymore.  You’ve got to continue to make it an interesting story, assuming you want to keep people’s attention.

3. If you’re trying to reach listeners outside your core, not only must you create a hit, you must spread the word far and wide.  Let’s use Jessica Simpson as an example.  She hasn’t generated a hit in a long time, nothing a casual listener can hook into and get excited about.  Sure, her core likes her new country album, but she’s got such a tiny core that it won’t sustain her.

So you need the music, and an ongoing story.  You need to be on "American Idol".  You need to make friends with Perez Hilton (Did you see all the acts that kissed his ass on his birthday last weekend?  Everyone from the Jonas Brothers to Christina Aguilera.)  That’s how low you’ve got to stoop if you want to play the mass game.  You’re not in control of  your own destiny.  You can’t write your own material unless it’s a hit…thank you, Kelly Clarkson.

And there’s a cost for playing the game, your credibility.  And the less credibility you have, the more dependent you are on momentary hits and train-wrecks.  You’re living from moment to moment.  And that’s tough.

4. Career acts must accurately assess the landscape.  A check might do something for your pocketbook, but it will do nothing for your career.  It’s like "Long Road Out Of Eden" never came out.  There’s no radio to bang the title track, the way both FM and AM spun "Hotel California" endlessly.  No track on AC/DC’s "Black Ice" got enough spins to become a classic, people just want to go to the show and hear "Back In Black".

5. Top Forty acts are beholden to the machine.  Career acts are beholden to their fans.  The machine is voracious, it eats up info and spits it out every day.  Almost nothing lasts.  But relationships last.  But relationships take a long time to build.

This is where all those online business tips come into play.

A personalized note from the guitar player.  A Twitter feed.  All that stuff that’s meaningless to TMZ and the "New York Times" is gold to a fan.  Just like getting career acts mainstream press doesn’t pay significant dividends.  The review in the paper better be for a Top Forty act, because fans of career bands are getting their information elsewhere.

6. So, the system moves slow and society moves fast.  No wonder we’ve got a problem!  Radio wants to spoon-feed, labels want to milk albums, and the audience is constantly saying NEXT!  How can you satisfy those who want more? This is the path to riches.

7. Beware of crossing lines, this is where you get in trouble.

Bruce Springsteen is a career act.  His fans pay attention, they know his story.  They’re pissed that he made a deal with Wal-Mart, and his Super Bowl appearance didn’t move the vast majority of viewers, because they just don’t care about Bruce.  If Bruce wanted to play the mainstream game, he should have thrown the really long ball.  He should have licensed one of his classics to a corporation for endless banging in a commercial on television.  Or one of his new numbers, that was good.

Same deal with Mellencamp.  You can’t make a deal with Chevy and then complain about the system.  You can’t have it both ways.  Either you’ve got to be an old bluesman, married to your instrument, willing to work a day job to get by, or you’ve got to go all in, whoring yourself out to the man, knowing there’s a long term cost.  Nothing in between works, because there are two audiences, two strategies.

So, almost no one knows the new Eagles and AC/DC got a lot of ink, but very little airplay.

Both of these bands got a paycheck.

But iTunes doesn’t cut these kinds of advances.  And Wal-Mart is shrinking CD floorspace every day.  This is a limited model.

You’ve got to focus on the long term money.  Or go the opposite way and try to make it all now, like Miley Cyrus.

But don’t lie in between, that’s nowhere.

Stop lying.

The Web has a zillion sleuths just waiting to be activated, like that worm on your computer delineated on "60 Minutes" last night

The Conficker Worm: What Happens Next?

(PC-only, in fact), in order to verify the veracity of your statements.

Latest example?

Microsoft’s new "Laptop Hunters" TV campaign, in which an uber-attractive girl professes she’s not cool enough to buy an Apple laptop and goes for a cheaper Windows machine.

Within moments, it was revealed that "Lauren" was not an average person, but a member of SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild) recruited from Craigslist

Some thoughts on the new Microsoft ads

Then, it was revealed that the computer she purchased was an old model

Fact-checking Microsoft’s Latest Anti-Apple Ads

with bad reviews:

Microsoft’s new anti-Apple ad: Hardware is cheap!

Then a Mac user offered to GIVE HER his own Apple PowerBook so she could see what she was missing:

Lauren, We Have Someone Who’d Like to Talk to You

In other words, if you think you can pull the wool over the public’s eyes, with your lame excuse denying the truth, you’re wrong.  The twenty first century is about transparency.  Reveal the facts, admit the truth and move on.  People today know life is complicated, mistakes and failures are part of the game:

Totaled?

Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion