In the cool of the evening when everything is gettin’ kind of groovy

I didn’t think the Classics IV were cool until I discovered the Atlanta Rhythm Section had morphed from this prior group.  I always thought they were some studio concoction from L.A., not a real band, whose hits were written by committee by the usual suspects. But it turns out that J.R. Cobb and Buddy Buie, ARS’s guitarist and producer respectively, added lyrics to a regional instrumental track to come up with the Classics IV’s original hit, "Spooky".

It did sound spooky.  Not quite like anything else on the radio.  And I knew everything on the radio.  Underground FM had finally taken hold, but automobiles were still definitely AM, our transistors didn’t have the FM band.  And, we hadn’t given up on the hits yet, we’d become addicted when the Beatles took hold and didn’t give up until they broke up.

Today, minivans come with multiple audio systems.  The kids in the back seat can listen to their music while their parents indulge in their favorites in the front seat.  If the kids are not watching a DVD, listening to the soundtrack via their headphones.  Families are Balkanized in the twenty first century, but in the sixties we were all in it together, in the station wagon.  Would our parents let us listen to our music?

My father did not have a long fuse.  We knew that he got to control the radio dial.  Listening to either NBC’s "Monitor" or Beautiful Music stations.  Every once in a while, he’d be singing along to a rendition of one of our favorites, like Stevie Wonder’s "For Once In My Life", but when we pointed this out he wasn’t amused, he just ignored us and continued to sing along.  But when it was a long trip, like the three and a half hour journey to Vermont, somewhere during the ride our dad would indulge us.  Usually with WDRC in Hartford.  Sometimes we’d listen until the station faded out, but usually, Dad would freak out, utter an expletive and switch the station while the signal was still strong.  He’d had enough.  And unlike today’s children, we didn’t argue, we didn’t talk back, not unless we wanted him to reach over the seat and smack us.  I’m not sure what frightened us more, getting hit or worrying that he’d run the car off the road while his eyes were averted.  Ultimately there would be crying and the radio would be turned completely off.  Then normalcy would return.

I remember so many of the Top Forty songs from those drives.  Steppenwolf’s "Magic Carpet Ride", "Love Is Blue" and "Spooky".

"Spooky" wasn’t the Classics IV’s only hit.  It was followed by the similarly titled, yet just a tad different "Stormy" and ultimately "Traces", which was just too MOR for us.  Oh, we know every lyric of this song, but it was records like this that made us pledge allegiance to FM.

But it sounds so good today.

But not as good as "Spooky".

I’ve never seen it this windy at Vail.  Felice and Chris only made one run.  But I cut my teeth in Vermont, bad weather doesn’t faze me.  I kind of enjoy it, makes me feel alive.  But completely frozen sometime after two, I skied to the bottom.  And when I was taking off my skis, I heard "Spooky".

They’re tuned to Sirius XM’s "Sixties On Six" at the bottom of the hill.  We’ve been hearing one classic after another at the beginning and end of each ski day.  But "Spooky" really got to me.  Because of the groove.  Because of the death of Dennis Yost.

Oh, every paper had an obit.  But no one e-mailed me about his passing, his death seemed to elude the collective consciousness. Kind of weirded me out.  Are we now expecting our sixties stars to die?  Were those hits so long ago, so far in the past that we’ve forgotten what an integral part of the cultural fabric they once were?

Funny thing about those sixties hits, they still resonate just as much today.  You might wince when you hear "Ice Ice Baby", but you feel warm and fuzzy when you hear a sixties classic.  You’re immediately jetted back in time to exactly where you were at when you hear tracks like "Spooky".  Going to school.  Feeling awkward at dances.  Believing the radio could get you through.

Yesterday my mother was 82 years old.  She just told me she hadn’t expected to live that long.

We sent her flowers.  You just dial up a Website, click on a picture and it’s done.  Ah, the greatness of the Internet.  My mother uses the Net too.  My sister originally insisted she get a Windows machine, back in the nineties.  Wendy got bitten in the ass for being such an expert.  My mother called her incessantly for tech help.  But when my mother moved to her new apartment, I told her to get a Mac.  She hardly calls, but when she does the questions are so funny.  The printer, it doesn’t work!  Is it plugged in?  No.

My mom surfs the Net.  She’s pretty modern.  But she still has characteristics representative of her generation.  She loves to go to the movies, she sees everything, hardly ever watching TV.  And she reads the newspaper.  From cover to cover.

She’s infatuated with Bernie Madoff.  The Town of Fairfield invested $32 million!  What was the Town of Fairfield doing with that kind of money, taking a risk like that…  And then her friend in Westport told her she should invest with the guy from Fairfield Greenwich, who lost everything.  Like some people she knows in Florida.  Their investment counselor…  They’ve got nothing left.

My mother went into New York to buy a new winter coat.  She went to Lord & Taylor.  The coat was $260.  Calvin Klein.  She paid $47.  The woman at the desk in her building bought boots for $60.  My mom remarked how we weren’t shoppers, but if you go to the store it’s positively frightening, they’ve got to get rid of the inventory!

And speaking of inventory, there are half a dozen apartments up for sale in her building.  But the heirs can’t move them.  Because in order for someone to buy one, they’ve got to sell their own house.  And you just can’t sell a house.

That’s what happens.  One person dies, another sells the house they raised a family in and moves into the building.  But, believe me, it’s not so bad.  It’s like endless summer camp.  My mother’s got a bridge game every day.  She constantly gets phone calls for dinner.  And she doesn’t have to get in her car to arrive at her friends’ domicile.

My mother’s father came to the States from Russia.  He worked in the leather factories in Peabody, Mass.  He was a member of the Worker’s Circle.  He used to refer to the salaries of fat cats as telephone numbers.

Did you see that story in the "New York Times" about Wall Street bonuses?  If Merrill Lynch employees coughed up the bonuses for the last twenty years, it wouldn’t make up for the losses.

There’s a home for sale near Felice’s family’s condo in Vail for $14 million.  Who can afford a vacation house for that kind of money? My mother saw that someone was selling a condo in New York City for $27 million.  Used to be in the sixties, if you saved your money, you could do anything, you could live like a king.  Today, we’ve got a huge gulf between the rich and the poor.  And I’d like to say the rich contribute to society, that they make our nation better, but these Wall Streeters just churn money while our nation gets poorer.

Felice’s father contributed to the collective consciousness.  His music is heard around the world every day.  He earned his pay.  My father didn’t make that kind of money, but he never owed a dollar.  And he raised three children.  Isn’t that the American way?

My mother lived through the Depression.  Now, at the end of her life, it seems we’ve made little progress.  Times are bleak.  So bleak that sometimes it’s hard to keep on keepin’ on, especially if you follow the news.

Used to be entertainment was recession-proof.  But that was when it existed outside the conventional realm.  When it truly was an upbeat escape, or a salve to your sores.  Today, it’s just part of the endless profit-taking.  The productions are soulless, those purveying them say they’re just giving us what we want.  But what we want is a way out of this mess.  We want leaders.  We want people to believe in.  Because we’re sad, and confused.

It’s a little too little
It’s a little too late

"Little Too Late"
Pat Benatar

Am I scared of ISPs becoming rogue enforcers of the law…  OF COURSE!  But, it appears for now that the RIAA agreements with ISPs are all bluster.  And Cary Sherman admitted that issues of "due process" have not yet been worked out.  Yup, that’s the record business for you, they don’t want to fight in the marketplace, they want to go all the way to the Supreme Court, they want to argue issues of constitutional law!

Press scuttlebutt says that only 19% of the public is downloading.  If this is true, and one accepts Michael Eisner’s theory that ten percent of the audience will NEVER pay, we’re fighting here over nine percent of the population.  When really, we should be focusing on the other eighty one percent!  Most people will pay for music, if a reasonable offer is made.

Today’s news that the RIAA is dropping their lawsuits just shows that the labels have no strategy, that they’re so busy playing catch-up that they’ve squandered their business.  ANYBODY could have told them that the lawsuits wouldn’t have worked five years ago. But these assholes had to prove something.  That they owned the music and you’d better consume it their way.  Obviously didn’t work, their revenues have tanked.  You don’t fight the consumer, you FOLLOW the consumer.  Instead of charging a buck a track at the iTunes Store, you realize that iPods have thousands of songs on them and you figure out how you can get paid for the installation of each and every one.  You don’t fight consumer behavior, you embrace it.  And if you’re truly intelligent, you’re one step AHEAD of the consumer.  Pundits said that the original iPod was too expensive, 5 gigs for $400, most people didn’t even know they wanted one.  But now, the iPod is the de facto music player.  The magic connection slot is even installed in clock radios, there are hookups in cars, how come the major labels can’t stop driving us back to overpriced albums sold on physical discs and give us what we didn’t even know we wanted?

What people don’t know they want is instant access to the history of recorded music.  It’s thrilling when you experience it, via today’s Sonos/Rhapsody world, however imperfect that system might be.  Let people own tracks now, because believe me, they won’t want to in the future, convenience dictates that.

So, sell buckets of tracks to people today.  They want a deal.  Entice the people not downloading P2P, not buying at the iTunes Store or buying very little there.  Have the equivalent of a fire sale.  Maybe a going out of business sale.  Because that’s what the labels are doing.  Generate some excitement.  You know people will end up buying the same music over again in a higher quality format, and that they’ll want new music, but don’t even tell them this.  Just give them the greatest hits today, for a cheap price.

We’ve come to an era where the major labels have been marginalized.  No one goes to the concert for free, but people acquire music for nothing.  Superstars don’t even bother with labels, they go directly to retail.  They make much more money.  What is the major label for?  To combine with its brethren to sue people?  To hold back monetization for indies?  To represent the past, like the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution)?

If the majors want to have relevance in the future, they must focus on what they do best.  Which is producing music and getting people to pay for it.  Suing people was a sideshow.  Refusing to license tracks is like refusing to sell your product to Macy’s.  This go slow strategy has not worked.  Suddenly, the business is falling off a cliff, there won’t be any place to buy a CD, and the majors will be relics selling catalog, at best.

Acts need money.  Great creators tend to be lousy businessmen.  Instead of seeing themselves as big kahunas, who the artists should worship, record executives should see themselves as servants, as expediters, as the link between artist and fan.  The conduit should be opened wide.  Deals and prices must be fair.  Accounting must be transparent.  There must be trust.

Remember when the RIAA was the most hated organization in America?

Most kids today have no idea what the RIAA is.  The organization squandered its capital.  Actually, people shouldn’t know what the RIAA is, but they should love record labels, just like they love artists.  But it’s hard to love these pompous fucks who get their music for free, or are so rich that music prices are irrelevant to them.  Somehow today’s surviving execs think they’re royalty.  That they are entitled to supreme rule over the land, forever.  But this is patently untrue.  At heart, they’re businessmen.  Lousy ones.  History will see them as out of touch despots whose power was stolen by the proletariat in a revolution that they weren’t even aware was happening while their assistants printed out their e-mail.

You can live in the present, or be destined to the past.

Arista just had a reunion.  At some point in the future, the other labels will too.  Kind of like a summer camp get together, these convocations represent a lost era, when everything looked better.  But times change, people move on, and those who are locked in the past end up staying there.

The customer is absolutely living in the present.  He’s not watching commercials on TV, he’s TiVo’ing his shows.  Better yet, he’s watching prime time fare on Hulu.  People want a lot of music.  If you don’t sell it to them in a way they want, they won’t buy.  As for cutting off their service for stealing via their ISP…  As my mother always says, what a way to make friends and influence people.  And if you think you can willy-nilly cut off someone’s Internet service without a hearing, without due process, then you probably think that General Motors can suspend a person’s right to drive.  Internet service is a utility which all depend upon.  If you think the government is going to let the RIAA cut off this lifeline in order to save its decrepit business, you don’t understand the legal system.  

That’s the problem with the RIAA…  They just didn’t realize how small they were.  Silicon Valley was bigger.  The government moved slowly.  You don’t fight the system, you join it.  Which the RIAA seems to be doing a little bit by forgoing lawsuits, but it appears the system they want to join expired years ago.  Come on, can’t anybody with any power live in the present?

Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits

RIAA president: No talk of blacklisting file sharers

"I bought three or four to give to friends!"

We were sitting inside the cafeteria at Mid-Vail during the blowingest snowstorm imaginable and struck up a conversation with the sixtysomething gentleman who sat down at our table.  Turned out he was a restructuring specialist from Dallas.  He’d booked this trip long ago.  If he hadn’t been talking with us, he’d have been checking his BlackBerry.  Business was raging.

After hearing what he did for a living, this bloke asked us about ourselves.  And when he heard what I did he asked me, did I get into concerts for free?

Then I asked him, did he go to a lot of concerts?

Not really.  Just the Eagles.  "Hell Freezes Over", the opening of the new building and just recently, for "Long Road Out Of Eden".

Then this guy starts testifying about the album.  Says he wasn’t enamored of Timothy B. Schmit’s contribution, but loved Joe Walsh’s. And he thought the title track was a CLASSIC!

And he said the tracks the band played live from the new album were the exact right ones.

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.  The audience for classic acts is supposed to go to the bathroom during the new material. Conventional wisdom is the audience doesn’t want new material.  But if this is so, how did the Eagles sell in excess of three million copies of "Long Road Out Of Eden" at Wal-Mart?  THE PRICE!

All the salespeople at the major labels have been pooh-poohing the Eagles numbers, saying Irving is lying.  But did they ever think of the value?  Two CDs of new music for $11.88?

God, the industry didn’t only fuck over the artists with high CD prices and low royalties, it also screwed the fans.  Music was no longer a casual purchase, but something you debated.  And when you paid fifteen or seventeen dollars for a turkey album, you swore off.  But, if music was a deal, like the Eagles’ project, you’d buy packages for all your friends.  I’ve heard this again and again over the past year, people went to Wal-Mart and bought multiple copies of "Long Road Out Of Eden"…  They’re not buying multiple copies of Rihanna’s album, or anything purveyed by the major labels.

Pricing is out of whack.  The only way to grow this business is to lower prices.  To the point where people make multiple purchases, maybe not of the same album, but different ones.

The CD era killed experimentation.  Experimentation has been rekindled in the Internet era, it’s just that the purveyors have not been paid.  Stop trying to sue the public into submission, start offering them enticing deals!

Ninety nine cents a track works for no one other than Apple.  It’s too much and people buy too little.  Raise the price point and deliver more.  That’s what the Eagles did.  Twice the amount of music for about the cheapest price you could find for a single CD.

Somewhere along the line, everybody became convinced that music is a cash cow.  That acts were entitled to be millionaires and executives could live private jet lifestyles.  So, all the calculations are worked in reverse.  How can we reach this financial milestone?  Well, we have to charge x.  But the public thinks x is too much.

Think of computers.  What’s the machine you’re reading this on truly worth?  Come on, it’s a technological marvel…  Twenty thousand dollars?  But you can buy a computer for $400.  Because they sell so fucking many of them.  Sure, costs have come down, but costs have come down in the music industry too.  It’s cheaper to record and cheaper to distribute.

Stop telling me about the value of music.  If it’s so fucking valuable, why don’t you find a way to price it reasonably, so everyone can partake, filling your coffers along the way.

Open the doors, let people experiment cheaply.  Then they’ll become fans.  And fans will give you ALL their money.