"’Money was flowing, easy money.  Anybody could qualify–I mean anybody.’  He knew a bank teller with an annual salary of twenty-three thousand dollars who had received a two-hundred-and-sixteen-thousand-dollar mortgage, with no money down and no income verification” not even a phone call from a lender."

I don’t own my own home.  I haven’t even got any children.  Primarily because I don’t want to pay for them.  I was married once, reluctantly, but I resisted going further down the domestic path.  I was wary of losing sight of my dreams, becoming locked in an endless cycle of work and obligations, unable to pursue my passions.

Little did I know that you could have your cake and eat it too.

I thought I knew what was going on in America.  That lenders stretched the limits and borrowers overreached. Just a little.  But that was not what was going on at all.  In acts of pure greed, banking institutions lent money for the fees, not worrying about tomorrow, just like the ignorant people they gave the money to.

I’m not ignorant.  I have not only a college degree, but a graduate degree.  But oftentimes the borrowers of these gargantuan sums were high school dropouts, working blue collar jobs.  And now that those jobs, so often in the construction trades, have disappeared, they’re lining up with their brethren for minimum wage work that they can’t get, because the line is so long.

I’ve sacrificed.  Not that I’m proud of it.  It was just a necessity.  I saw limited funds coming in, so limited funds had to go out.  I believe in the American Dream, I wouldn’t have sacrificed this long if I didn’t believe in the potential for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but now I find out those making the rules don’t sacrifice at all.  I declare all my income.  I pay my taxes.  But those making the rules don’t?  How can this be?

When I grew up, anybody could do anything.  You just had to save.  A middle class citizen could stay at the best hotels.  Not every night, but if that was his desire, he could save up and splurge.  Now there are exclusive resorts with such prohibitive costs that you have to be making millions a year, tens of millions a year, in order to afford them.

We can’t park close, can’t get a seat in a good restaurant because someone who worked on Wall Street got there first, and owns that territory.  They’re regular customers.  We haven’t been happy about this, but now we know that so many of these Masters of the Universe were no different from card players in Vegas, and they not only lost all their money, actually, their clients’ money, but flew in on private jets to beg for more, which they instantly rewarded themselves with in the form of bonuses.

Actually, I have no problem with private jets.  If you’re paying the CEO that handsomely, and he has to go to an out of the way location, it’s plain stupid to fly commercial.  Wasting that much time is a terrible use of resources, in this case, brainpower.  But this is what sticks in the public’s craw.  Primarily because the general public is stuck in the airport, paying for its luggage to be stowed in the plane and being insulted in the process.

I don’t know the answer to our economic problems.  But lowering taxes is not it.  That can’t be the sole solution, otherwise the Bush economic policies would have been triumphant.  But Washington can’t handle change.  But Tom Daschle lost his job because he was out of touch, he didn’t realize that the average person doesn’t get a full-time car and driver, never mind not pay the taxes on it.

We live in scary times.  Sure, we might wonder how that inane Southern California woman is going to feed fourteen mouths, but what about the family whose breadwinners lost their jobs, and now have not only no money to pay the mortgage, but feed their kids?

No one seems to care about those people.  Everyone’s too selfish.  I’ve got mine, fuck you.  But what if you suddenly don’t have yours anymore?

You used to sell ten million records, now you can’t even sell two.  Those damn pirates!  But those pirates are real people.  Who overpaid to hear one good track on a CD.  They’ve got no sympathy for you.  And they may overpay to see superstars once, but not forever.  The Stones don’t sell out anymore.  Nor does Springsteen, not even Madonna.  The printed grosses are high, but that’s because of the inflated ticket prices.

Is the concert industry headed for a fall?  Just like the recorded music industry?

Music acquisition will be monetized.  But we won’t have the dominant superstars of yore, created and contained by a few conglomerates.  As a result, we won’t have many superstar artists playing live.  These new acts…  Will someone pay twenty five dollars for a ticket AND TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS IN FEES to see them?

Blame Michael Rapino.  Sure, Live Nation has got problems.  But first blame the acts and their handlers, the managers and agents, who have been so greedy as to force Live Nation to scramble for cash everywhere it can.  Since Live Nation can’t make money on the gig itself, it has to charge fees so it can make a profit.  Sure, the public might be too stupid to understand this right now, but just like the housing market fell apart, the concert industry might implode and the truth might be revealed.  That the acts are greedy.

Does Bruce Springsteen need to gross two hundred million dollars in a year?  Couldn’t he halve the ticket prices and gross a hundred million?  Wouldn’t that be enough?

Used to be the huge grosses were a badge of honor.  Evidence that the outsiders were winning.  But how much of an outsider can you be when you play the Super Bowl?

But we’re only piling on Bruce because we believed in him.  Yes, the Eagles were always about the money (but at least they turned the Super Bowl down…), and Madonna is ONLY about the money.  Is this a fashionable trait today?  When the customer is hurting?

If you’re a renegade and riches are rained down upon you as a result, you’re a folk hero, a millionaire winner like Jamal Malik in "Slumdog".  If you’re buying a fifteen hundred dollar wastebasket for your office, you’re just a scumbag.

The concert business thinks it’s immune.  But if the labels were not, if the public gleefully stole recorded music, just imagine the pent-up anger regarding overpriced concert tickets and abuse at the gig.  The concert industry is just one step away from implosion.

It’s time to circle the wagons.  It’s time for acts, managers, agents and promoters to get on the same page.  It’s time to get the industry’s house in order.  There must be a final ticket price, with no fees at all.  There must be reasonably priced shows.  The experience must improve.  All in the name of keeping the customer satisfied, so he’ll continue to come to the gig, so he’ll check out a new act that might ultimately develop into a superstar.

If you think the public has sympathy for the stars, you’re wrong.  And when you can’t pay your bills, when you’re going to lose your house, you only have sympathy for yourself.  As for this being a youth-oriented business, who do you think gives all that money to the kids?  They don’t work for it, they get their concert-attending funds from their parents!

The Republicans fiddled and lost control of Washington across the board.

The Democrats, although in power, have no idea who their constituency truly is.

It’s no different in the music business.  The labels think their customers are radio and retail.  Acts believe their customers are promoters.  And Live Nation and Ticketmaster think their customer is Wall Street.

Ignore the little guy at your peril.  Because the little guy pays your bills.  Just ask the car companies.  If people stop buying, you’re screwed.  Not that many people NEED a new car.  Not that many people NEED to go to a concert.  Remember this.

The above quote is from George Packer’s article "The Ponzi State: Florida Foreclosed" in the February 9&16 issue of the "New Yorker".  Read it.

Irving was raving to me about Jennifer Hudson.  He’d hooked up with Vijay Singh at the golf tournament and then gone to the Super Bowl.  But Irving, she was ON TAPE!  But he told me she sang live in the stadium, that Jennifer was in the league of Christina.

Yeah, right.

Last night I went to the MusiCares dinner.  This is one thing NARAS gets right.  I’ve got to give Neil Portnow credit for not only raising so much money, but giving it away.  This is their biggest event of the year.  It brings out a lot of looky-loos, NARAS members from the hinterlands, but just about every hitter in the business too, in town for the Grammys.

I talked at length to Rob Stringer.  He told me his goal was to have TWENTY acts like MGMT, who sold 300-500,000 albums every time out.  Sure, Amanda Ghost may not know much about the business, but his problem isn’t infrastructure, but records, he needs something the Epic team can work, he’s hoping she delivers.

Phil Ramone told me about this barely pubescent act he was working with who was blowing up north of the border, who was generating a bidding war down here.

I got Larry Vallon’s take on the Live Nation/Ticketmaster deal.  Even Rapino’s too.  As for Ethan Smith, who broke the story, I couldn’t get a peep out of him, other than he was frustrated they’d laid off the "Wall Street Journal" mailroom employee after twenty years on the job.  Why do the little people have to bear the brunt of the masters of the universe’s mistakes?

And I’m sitting way down front, at Jay Marciano’s table, with my back to the stage, discussing the status of the festival marketplace with Coran Capshaw, when I realize we’re the only two people still talking.

That’s what you do at these clusterfucks.  Business.  The greatest talent in the world can be on stage, and the assembled multitude is ignoring the proceedings.  They work with household names every day.

People had even put down their BlackBerries, everybody was focused on the stage.  Jimmy Kimmel had not commanded this level of attention.  I wanted to discuss Phish with Coran, but he too was beginning to be distracted, by this failed "American Idol" contestant gracing the stage.

The band was a collection of killers.  Everyone from Cretone Mark Goldenberg to Heartbreaker Benmont Tench to eternal Detroit hippie Don Was.  But they were mere background to the woman singing.

"Sweet Caroline" was the unexpected follow-up to "Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show".  "Cherry, Cherry"" and "Kentucky Woman" were enough, Neil Diamond had nothing left to prove, we were expecting more serviceable tracks that were not classics to fill out his career.  But then came the song inspired by the President’s daughter.  Funny how the truly great music endures.  In an era where underground FM radio was burgeoning, I smiled every time I heard "Sweet Caroline" on the radio during the summer of ’69.

Then came "Holly Holy".  Slow and burning.  It brings me back to riding the bus to school.

Yes, "Holly Holy" is part of the time capsule.  It hasn’t survived.  You hear it at Neil’s show, occasionally on oldies radio, still if you lived through the era, you remember it.  A soulful number that sounded just a bit ersatz in the days of Jimi Hendrix and Cream.

But what Jennifer Hudson was singing was something completely different.  It was the same song, but rearranged.  Slowed down, with emphasis.  This suddenly sleek survivor of traumatic stress stood on stage like Babe Ruth, like Barbra Streisand, like no singer we’ve had in this century.  It wasn’t about her, there was no diva element.  It was like watching Joe Cocker sing "With A Little Help From My Friends", an ultra-famous song he made his own.

Mariah Carey has ruined vocals for nearly two decades now.  It’s about melisma, it’s all about the performer, it’s not about the song.  I respect singer-songwriters.  The hard part is coming up with the material, anybody can sing.  But that was not what was going on last night.  Jennifer Hudson was not just singing, she was inhabiting the song.  It was like you were in a rowboat and the QE2 suddenly came cruising by.  She demanded your complete attention.  You were mesmerized.  And wowed.  She’s not supposed to be this good.  And she’s not imploring us to love her, she’s not manipulating us, she’s not grimacing, she’s just SINGING THE SONG!

If we were truly living in the twenty first century, if the rights holders didn’t have their heads up their asses and radio wasn’t beholden to research, Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of "Holly Holy" would have been mixed by Elliott Scheiner last night and been available on iTunes this morning.  She would perform her rendition at the Grammys tomorrow.  You’ve got to seize the moment.  You don’t overplan and overmarket, you just serve up what’s absolutely right, what’s absolutely necessary, when the whole world is watching.

The whole world was not watching last night.  Just a bunch of jaded industry insiders and wannabes.

But when Jennifer Hudson was finally finished, way too soon, you never want great performances to end, I shot to my feet, like so many others, and gave her a standing ovation.  Even though she was the first performer of the night.

No one else came close except for Neil himself.  Who hit "Cherry, Cherry" so far out of the park Felice and I couldn’t believe it was really him.  He sounded SO great he HAD to be singing to tape, there had to be some electronic trickery, because he sounded exactly like NEIL DIAMOND!

Music is just like love.  When you’re least expecting it, you come across a gem, that changes your whole day, your entire life.  We focus on the winners, but it’s the losers who boil our blood, who make our lives worth living. Kelly Clarkson is good.  Carrie Underwood is the beneficiary of the best material in Nash Vegas.  But suddenly, I believe the hype.  Jennifer Hudson is something else.  She’s not just a figurehead, a front for the creations of studio rats.  She’s got TALENT!

Dewey Martin died.

Hopefully that rings a bell if you’re a baby boomer.  He was the drummer for Buffalo Springfield, a band whose true greatness wasn’t recognized until Crosby, Stills & Nash broke through and the masses, wanting more of this incredible sound, went to the store and bought "Retrospective", Buffalo Springfield’s greatest hits.  That’s how many discovered Neil Young.  Via "Broken Arrow" on that album.  Don’t forget, Stephen Stills sang the hit,  "For What It’s Worth", conventional wisdom was Buffalo Springfield was a one hit wonder.  But it wasn’t.

But Dewey Martin is not the only one.  Sixties stars have been dropping like flies.  Maybe before their time, but not by much.  They’re all sexagenarians now.

The sixties were forty years ago.  But you can still hear Cousin Brucie on Sirius.  His voice a bit hoarser, but he does bring you back to way back when, when we were addicted to the transistor, when we lived for the Tuesday night countdown.

And the stars are not the only ones on the way out.  The baby boomers themselves are reaching their sunset years.  They thought they were going to rule forever, Gen-X was pissed they stole their thunder, but ironically it’s the boomers’ kids who are rejecting them, who are making them irrelevant.  If you find a boomer who’s computer literate, he’s the exception.  We could never understand our parents living through the birth of television.  But now we’ve lived through not only big screen HD, but cell phones and the Internet.  Boomers may text, but kids did first.  And kids don’t even send e-mail anymore.

But we’ve still got our memories.

Will the Doors live on forever?

Maybe.

How about Jay & the Americans?

Doubtful.

I heard "This Magic Moment" the other day.  And then "Come A Little Bit Closer".  And the Four Seasons’ "Sherry".  They’re in my DNA, they made me feel good.  But when the fifties channel spun the Coasters, I was flummoxed.  I didn’t know this.  This music was for oldsters.  But "Searchin’" was pretty good.  Do our kids think our music is pretty good?

The media says no, but iTunes libraries and concert ticket sales say otherwise.  Still, so many of the old acts are on their last legs.  Like the Ad Libs.

Is there even an original Coaster left?  Weren’t they suing over bogus Coasters back in the seventies?  Were there even any original Ad Libs?  Was it a studio concoction?

I hated "The Boy From New York City".  But I know every lick, I had to listen to it in order to get to the latest hit by those British Invasion acts.  Like Gerry & the Pacemakers.  I heard "I Like It" the other day.  But I know now it’s not as good as "The Boy From New York City"…

Maybe I was too young to understand.  The derivation from doo-wop.  Maybe Cousin Brucie and Murray the K talked over the deep vocal intro.  But when I just heard that solo vocal akin to a kid blowing into a Coke bottle, I was enraptured.

And when I used to listen to the song, I focused on the boy.  But all these years later, what caught my ear was the boys singing about COOL COOL KITTY!

Is that where the Boss got the name for one of his best songs?

She’s strutting down the avenue, parading for the neighborhood, telling her story.  She may not have much money, but she’s got something better.  She’s got LOVE!

They call them oldies for a reason.  Because not only are they not current, they come from a time way back when.  Which is now a LONG time ago.

This is our music.  So much the younger generation understands. But so much will be lost to the sands of time.  Like our parents’ music before us.  The doors are closing, we boomers are entering our time capsule.  Do we fight it, or own it.  Do we get up and dance in the retirement home when "The Boy From New York City" comes through the speakers or do we spin the latest hip-hop record in our painted-on jeans, just in case the younger generation takes a peek inside.

Actually, nobody’s looking.  Everybody’s living his own life.

Which is hard for baby boomers to understand.  We’re used to the attention.

This is a business of favors.

And only an emotional obligation would have gotten me out of the house this afternoon.  It’s pouring rain, and in L.A. it’s either wimpy drizzle or the end of the world bucket drops, and Jason Flom wants me at the Mint at 5?

Don’t schedule anything during rush hour.  Which at this point is seemingly from 6-10.  6 AM ’til 10 PM!  Traffic is so bad in Los Angeles I do my best to never leave my house.  It’s just not worth it, I’m wasting too much time.  I shop at the supermarket after midnight, or online.  I don’t want to while away my life gridlocked, no matter how much I love satellite radio.

It’s coming down so heavily that I’ve got my wipers on the highest speed.  You know, the one that makes you think you’re on meth.  I’m shy of Robertson Boulevard, and I’ve been in my car for an hour already.  I want to kill somebody.  The woman in the Mercedes trying to nudge in front of me, maybe myself.  There’s not a single band worth this hell.  Except maybe the Beatles.  I spent a good chunk of the afternoon casing out some of their videos on YouTube, there’s this incredible footage of the band in Germany.  You can see Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours in action.  They’re not self-conscious, they’re not uptight, they’ve played onstage ZILLIONS of times. They don’t need no stinking backup tapes.  They’re enough.  Watch a clip and understand why we needed to go to the gig, why music revolutionized the world.

As opposed to the drivel today.  Except for a few tracks.  Oftentimes completely meaningless, but oh-so-right.  Like the Backstreet Boys’ "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)".  Not that I was thinking of that number while I was stuck in traffic.  I was working my way up the Sirius dial from 1 on into infinity!  Actually, I ended up stuck at the country station.  Sounded like music to me!

And by time I reach the Mint, after the appointed hour, but before Jason has confidentially told me the act is going to hit the stage, it’s barely drizzling.  But I take my umbrella with me anyway, knowing that weather comes from the west, and I’d just emerged from a meteorological event that was the H20 equivalent of a conflagration.

And when I get to the front door of the venue, Jason says we can’t go in.  The gig was called for 5.  It’s 5:20.  She’s supposed to go on in 5 minutes.  But Jason says it’s a legal issue.  I’m a lawyer, do I know what’s going on?  Maybe a nightclub law, who the fuck knows.  But now, after racing here, afraid I’m going to miss the 25 minute set, I’ve now got to wait, outside?

I stand under the canopy and check my BlackBerry.  E-mail Felice.  I think about emerging onto the sidewalk to talk to Jason, but the guy next to him is smoking!  Didn’t he get the memo?  Does he want to die?  This little pipsqueak with the gay sneakers is killing himself and I’m not going to stand next to him and have to put my entire wardrobe in the wash when I get home, I’ve still got places to go and people to see tonight!

But Jason motions with his arm and calls my name.  And introduces me to this living chimney.

"Bob, do you know Max Martin?"

Supposedly Max Martin is an overweight fifty year old who never leaves his house.  Hated by the industry for his talent, unknown by so many of the masses.  This can’t be him.  This can’t be the pop svengali.  He must be an impostor.  I must have heard wrong.

And while my mind is bending, they’re asking me what’s up in my life and I can barely get it out.  This is Max Martin?!

Soon thereafter they let us in, and like a groupie I hang by the Swedish mastermind and begin to quiz him.  How long is here for?  What’s he doing here?

He must be nominated for some Grammy award.  But he tells me he’s here to cut a track with the Backstreet Boys.

Isn’t one of them gone?

Yeah, but he wasn’t a key vocal element.

Yeah, the only key elements were Lou Pearlman and this shrimpy little 38 year old.

That’s what he told me his age was.  I started getting his background.  He played in bands.  Then he went to work for Cheiron.  I had no fucking idea what he was talking about.  I just looked it up on Wikipedia.  It was a studio, there was this guy, who did Ace Of Base.  Max gave up singing and started writing and producing.

And this is where I come in.  I tell him the conventional wisdom is wrong!  People say everything is cyclical. There were kid hits in the sixties, the boy bands were no different, it’s just the passing of the generations.  I told him this was incorrect.  New Kids On The Block sucked.  Their material was less than memorable.  But "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)"?  It may be meaningless, but it’s a fantastic record!  Same deal with "I Want It That Way".

I tell Max Bruce has got it all wrong.  He needed to create one incredible track and whore it out.  Fuck an album.  That’s the old model.  That’s about money, not music.  If the Boss had just had one killer track, Top Forty radio would be forced to play it.  He could whore it out for commercials, sports shows.  The track could become a cultural institution.  Instead, he plays in front of ninety odd million people and moves a grand total of 250,000 records.  And if he’s lucky, 175,000 next week.

So what kind of music does Max listen to in his spare time?

Actually, he doesn’t listen to that much at all.  He’s a regular consumer.  He comes home and plays with his seven year old in silence.  He listens to the radio in his car. It’s an era of singles.

But I tell him it’s about careers.

And then, worried about monopolizing him, I let Max go.  He says we’ve got to continue the conversation, but is that just a figure of speech or..?

I catch up with Lee Trink, talk to him about his new deal with Kwatinetz, and end up watching the show right in front of Doug Morris.  And although Oliver Leiber and the band are killing it, and the first track by Jason’s protege is quite good, I can’t stop thinking about Max.  And then it hits me.  I just met a rock star.

I would have nothing to say to Britney.  Not more than a word to Kelly Clarkson.  They were just two dimensional vessels, marketed to the masses.  But what made it all work were the tracks underneath, so often written and produced by Max Martin.

I bought that initial Britney Spears albums.  "…Baby One More Time" is one of the best tracks of the nineties.  There’s as much sex as any hip-hop hit, but a sassiness and intimacy and a catchiness evidenced in the classic pop tracks.

And the reason anybody even cares about Kelly Clarkson is "Since U Been Gone".

I realized I wasn’t as jaded as I thought.  Max was unassuming, but I was still infatuated.  How did he do this?  How did he come up with this material?

Oftentimes in collaboration.  Hours were spent in perfecting the material.  But what was ultimately released, this was what was infiltrating the minds of the younger generation.

This was not a hack.  This was a guy working at the zenith of his abilities.  He took an oftentimes vilified musical form and created art!

On my way out of the Mint, Max caught my eye.  Told me he thought the girl had a great voice.  I told him what she needed most was him!  A great production by the Scandinavian wizard.  Who the mainstream wrote off, but the true cognoscenti knew was a genius.

The Beatles live in Germany