Timing
I’m trying to decide why music is so irrelevant.
In "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell talks about timing being a key element of success. It wasn’t enough to be a Jewish lawyer in Manhattan, Joseph Flom was successful because his practice coincided with the phenomenon of hostile takeovers.
I’ll give you a personal example. My father owned a liquor store, but fashioned himself a commercial realtor, an owner and developer of properties. Only one problem, it’s hard to be a real estate mogul when you’ve got no money. That’s why he opened a liquor store, to support his mother whose husband had died and left all his money to his first family in Pittsburgh. But suddenly, in the mid-sixties, my father got a call from his friend Maurice Magilnick, an attorney in Bridgeport. Maury told my father that no one knew more about local real estate than he did, and the government was about to do a ton of redevelopment in Southern Connecticut and if my dad became a licensed appraiser, Maury would hire him on his eminent domain cases. My dad went to a summer program at the University of Connecticut. A winter program at the University of Chicago. And finally got his license. And then ended up costing the State of Connecticut so much money that I overheard one attorney general say they’d have been better off paying my dad a million dollars to go away.
Actually, it’s the lawyer who makes all the money in an eminent domain case. One third of the increase beyond the state’s offer. My father made attorneys so much money that even the white shoe firms, the anti-semitic firms, hired him. They wanted in on the cash. Under law, my father could only charge a flat fee, but he ended up doing quite well, making the income of a doctor or lawyer himself.
But it wasn’t only my dad who benefited from timing. I realize I did too. I was issuing a printed newsletter by subscription every two weeks. Made possible by the desktop publishing revolution, there was still tons of non-writing effort involved, and printing and mailing costs were high. And reaching potential subscribers was difficult. But then came the Internet, and I could reach people all over the world for free.
My father was brilliant. He spent 10,000 hours checking out Southern Connecticut real estate. But he only became successful because he lived through the sixties, when redevelopment burgeoned. If he had been born thirty years earlier, he would have worked in his liquor store until he died. Not quite penniless, but close.
Maybe rock and roll owes its genesis to the baby boomers. A generation that questioned authority, that saw no reason to do it the way their parents had done. People say that the Beatles exploded because the country needed some optimism after the assassination of President Kennedy. Hogwash, I was there. The Beatles were not only talented, they were fresh. Cheeky in a way the Four Seasons and Beach Boys were not. They were not regular entertainment. And although you could eventually see John, Paul, George and Ringo on "Ed Sullivan", you could hear them hour after hour on your transistor radio.
Yes, I believe that’s the key to the music explosion of the sixties, cheap, Japanese transistor radios. Every kid wanted one, and eventually got one, just like kids today pray for and get wiis. First you listened to the baseball game, falling asleep with the radio on your dresser, or under your pillow. But they didn’t play sports 24/7, eventually you graduated to music. Especially after the Beatles hit.
You did your homework with the transistor on. You rode your bike with your transistor dangling from the handlebars. It was your music. This was not your parents’ era, where the family had to sit in front of a piece of furniture and agree on programming. This was yours.
And then the FCC said the same signal could not be broadcast on both the AM and FM bands. Thus we saw the burgeoning of acts from Hendrix to Cream to the Doors. FM allowed you to expand. There were few commercials, no one wanted to buy time. Not at first!
Furthermore, you had to listen to the radio to hear the music. No one could afford to own everything. Music was scarce. Radio stations became ever more powerful. Not only breaking bands, but telling you about concerts. Everybody knew if an act was in town, they heard it on the radio! You couldn’t even get a ticket, everybody wanted to go. You had to line up hours before tickets went on sale, just to get in the building.
Eventually corporate rock killed the golden goose. Disco reigned. And then after complete decimation, MTV reared its head and another golden era appeared. With a ton of money for purveyors. Not only was television the best exposure medium extant, you had to buy the album on an overpriced CD.
Then came the boy bands. Kids of the baby boomers got the mania. Furthermore, the Backstreet Boys were good. You may have hated them, clinging to your classic rock, but they had a lot of what the Beatles contained, great voices, very good songs, the only problem being that the material was meaningless, the whole effort was a concoction. Eventually, as a result of this, the phenomenon died.
Oh, Justin Timberlake continued to record. As did Britney Spears. But instead of recording a smash like "I Want It That Way" or "…Baby One More Time", Justin and Britney went rhythmic. They followed the mainstream. The excitement was gone.
And now as a result of the Internet, we’ve got a zillion acts. All searching for one thing, fame. Well, money too. They all want to make it. They’re not escaping poverty and drudgery like the British Invasion acts, rather they’re on a lark, before they go to law school, before they go to work on Wall Street. They don’t NEED to make it, they’re just taking a flier.
And radio was turned into a cash cow, with so many commercials and such bland programming that it was no longer the heartbeat of a nation. The labels tried to hold on to the paradigm of scarcity, by killing Napster, but as a result fans just went on to other, more interesting media. Like video games. Or social networking sites. People were looking for that hit, of daring excitement. Which certainly wasn’t in music. And still isn’t.
You work in this business, you’re passionate about music. But music is far down the line in the public’s consciousness. Sports, television, movies, they trump music. Cable saved TV. Maybe Napster could have saved music, then again, cable is a finite universe, with a limited number of channels.
As for the concert business… It’s like Broadway. Overpriced spectaculars. As for developing acts, bars don’t feature live music the way they once did. There’s very little upward mobility. Just classic acts and train-wrecks. Music’s power built concert promotion. Now it’s the reverse, Live Nation is just trying to make its numbers look good for Wall Street, the institution has trumped the musicians. Just like the head of the label became more important than the act.
Can we ever return to the sixties and early seventies again? Doubtful. But we’ve got to realize fighting the future is futile. It’s the little changes that make the huge difference. Songs at a buck apiece help neither labels nor the scene. In order to grow new acts, their music must be easily acquired, cheaply.
But what are these acts going to say? Give me an endorsement deal? Who am I going to whore myself out to? We loved John Lennon because he was beholden to no one. The acts today are in cahoots with the corporations we despise. Bruce Springsteen does the Super Bowl for the exposure. As if we were all in it together. In the sixties we weren’t one big happy family. It was us and them. And we had the music.
Sure, it’s always been about the money. But the money wasn’t everything. Now it is. And the public knows it.
So right now there’s a music business, but it’s a sideshow. It’s not vital like "Slumdog Millionaire", the deals are more exciting than the tunes. To ask a country to be excited about the musical effort of Axl Rose this far down the line is like trying to fill a stadium by reuniting Joe Montana and Jerry Rice to play against the Giants in the Super Bowl. And isn’t it interesting that the Giants feature the wrong Manning. Not the one the press loves, but the working man. Our heroes used to be ignored by the mainstream. Now the first thing the label wants is to sell out to the man.
I can’t predict the future. But one thing’s for sure, the usual suspects doing it the usual way is never going to bring music back to prominence. I fault Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine as well as the acts. As for AC/DC’s sales… Most of the public could care less. If they want to hear that sound, they’ll go back to the thirty year old "Back In Black".
Where is the new "Back In Black"? Something left field, that you thought you didn’t like, that blows you away? Music is no longer the only way out of your hometown. It’s not the only way to get rich, not the only way to see the world. Sure, music’s been around forever, but it blew up because it was the sound of a generation, that not only loved its honesty and experimentation, but had very few entertainment choices.
In order for music to triumph again it must be BETTER than the alternatives. It must demand attention the same way Alice Cooper did. It must test limits, be beholden to no one. And then, just maybe, a technological or societal revolution will transpire and bring it back to prominence.
