Greetings from the Century City Apple Store!

I made an appointment at the Genius Bar to get my keyboard replaced.  The original white plastic Apple keyboards have a tendency to stick after a while, which is about a year if you’re a mad typist like myself.  I was worried I might be late, there’s a monster protest in front of the Mormon Temple regarding Prop. 8.  Do we need a new California proposition?  No outside agitators?  Turns out Prop. 8 was funded by the Mormons, famously of Utah, and people are coming from all over SoCal to protest today.  The TV trucks and helicopters are out in force.

But I made it.  Would they be on time?  Would they honor my 3 P.M. appointment?

There was a concierge for the Genius Bar!  Who took care of me right away!

We live in a service-oriented nation, where everybody wants to be treated like they’re somebody, but we end up pumping our own gas, going through phone prompts and writing e-mail to deal with the fuck-ups of America’s largest corporations.

But here at the Apple Store, you feel like you count, like they want to be there for you.

And there are a lot of us here.  It’s a Thursday afternoon in the midst of a recession, the public is too scared to spend and the economy is tanking.  But you’d think computers were impulse items for all the people in here.  There’s a pulse.  Akin to a twentieth century record store, but with respect and trust.

What makes the Apple Store so successful?

1. Design

In a nation consumed with fashion, you’ve got to have eye appeal to sell.  Audi’s sales jumped with their new designs.  The fact that they’ve had a slew of engine problems hasn’t seemed to dampen customer appeal.  What looks good counts in America.

2. Service

We all want to pass through the velvet rope, we all want to be an insider, we all want that treatment the rich and famous receive.  At the Apple Store, you feel like you’re staying at the Four Seasons, driving a BMW or Mercedes-Benz, one of life’s winners.  You may get fucked by TicketMaster, but Apple is a haven of reasonability, not a company passing off its problems on someone else!  (Well, WE didn’t cancel the tour, you’ll get face value of the ticket back, but not fees…)

3. Trust

I’ve been fucked over by so many corporations that when I ask for service I expect an adversarial relationship.  I start building my case before I leave my house.  But after demonstrating my problem, the Genius Bar agent asked me for my phone number, so she could call me when my new keyboard came in.  Sans price.  An Apple extended warranty really works!

Business done, I decided to make the rounds at the mall.  Where I encountered empty shop after empty shop.  Sales agents staring into the distance or speaking amongst themselves, their wares lonely on the rack.  I was drawn back to the buzz of the Apple Store.  I was going to write this at home, but why not employ their free Internet?

And once I returned I felt like an attendee at the Whisky, seeing the arena band before it blows up.  I feel like a member of the club.  I can touch everything, I can use everything.  The help is here to help.

And there’s a ton of help.  A consultant would say to downsize, by about three quarters.  People wait everywhere, why shouldn’t they wait here?  But that’s what makes the Apple Store special, the difference between it and the rest of the retail establishments.

You might think I drank the Kool-Aid.  But I’m an evangelist because I love the products.  My BlackBerry is falling apart after only eighteen months of use.  Who am I going to contact?  Who is going to take care of me?  I can wait for half an hour at a Verizon outlet for an uninformed salesman who just started yesterday.  There’s no BlackBerry store, no one to complain to that I just paid $40 to replace the track ball and now one of the keys is stuck.  Shoddy product.  But who runs RIM anyway?  There’s no Steve Jobs of RIM. But there should be.

Give Sprint credit.  They made a guy the face of the company.  He said feel free to complain.  If the connections were better, they’d survive.  First and foremost, you need a great product.

Does all of the foregoing apply to the music business?

Interesting question.

Music retail is on its last legs.  Wal-Mart is reducing floorspace, replacing CDs with DVDs.  Indie shops are selling tchotchkes.  And the front runner IS Apple, with a cleanly designed, efficient iTunes Store.

As for treating your customer right…  If you’ve got a fan club, deliver more than the right to buy a shitty ticket for the membership fee. Give away free tracks.  Delete the FBI logo from your physical product.  Trust your customer.

As for design and looks…  They’re not key in music.  Because music supersedes computers, it trumps every other art form out there, it’s better than TV, movies and video games.  Doesn’t matter if the guy making it has zits or the girl singing is overweight.  Music when done right is about lasting truth.  You don’t want a twenty year old computer, but you might treasure a twenty year old album.

Apple delivers the tools to make that music.  Utilize them to create something magnetic, that draws people in just like the aluminum bezel with the embedded Apple logo makes people lemmings at the mall.  There are no rules in music.  if you think there are, break them, that’s a great avenue to success.

But at the nexus where the music meets the fan, respect the customer.  We need people saying they LOVE the venue.  That TicketMaster is their FRIEND!  That the band gave them something for free.  Treat every fan like he’s Oprah, like he’s someone special.  Because when you do this, your fan will tell everybody they know how great you are, just like I’m telling you about the Century City Apple Store right now.

Last Sunday night I went to the Wiltern to see Ray LaMontagne.

I am not a fan of the act, but I am of the manager, so as a favor I went.  I wasn’t closed.  But the throng in attendance was.  It was a veritable babeathon.  I saw Joey Lauren Adams downstairs by the bathroom, I LOVED her in "Chasing Amy.  During the break I saw the sex addict from HBO’s "Tell Me You Love Me" with her posse on the next couch over.  And Lisa was swooning over Tom Brady’s baby mama Bridget Moynihan in the lobby, although I thought she had a tiny head and Eric thought she was nowhere near a 10.

But women only made up half of the audience.  The guys were out in force.  And they didn’t look soft.  And the assembled multitude ROARED not only when Ray hit the stage, but after every single number.  And what did Ray have to say about all of it?  NOTHING! Other than the obligatory "Thank you" and band introductions.

It was truly strange.  We’re used to assaults.  Productions.  Shows.  The music hasn’t stood alone for oh-so-very long.  Blame MTV, blame Top 40 radio, blame Tommy Mottola, but where we are today is so far from where we once lived.  Used to be the acts and the audience were in it together, celebrating the music.  The acts of yore didn’t wear stage outfits, they came on stage in their regular clothes, like Ray LaMontagne, wearing his flannel shirt, well-worn jeans and work boots.  But when they hit those notes, you got this inner joy, you looked to the heavens and sang along as the music inhabited your soul.

On the way back from Beverly Hills just now, I heard "Statesboro Blues" on Outlaw Country.  The Allman Brothers version.  Do you know it?  You could be lying somnambulant on the couch, even stoned out of your mind, and when you hear Duane’s slide you’ve got no choice but to jump up and start dancing around the room.  Your mood is instantly changed.  You feel positively alive.

In a long conversation with Alex Hodges at the Greek Saturday night he told me he booked EIGHTEEN stadium dates for the Allman Brothers in the summer of ’74.  EIGHTEEN!  There isn’t an act extant that can sell out eighteen stadium dates today.  Not even U2. They gave up on that kind of trek in the U.S. after the "Pop Mart" tour.  The Stones may book ’em, but they don’t sell ’em out.  Kenny Chesney tries, but he books a whole slate of acts, he alone is not enough.  The Allman Brothers were enough.

Conventional wisdom is no one wants to go, no one wants to sit that far away.  But we went to the stadium shows the same way people went to Obama rallies.  We wanted to show our solidarity, we wanted to unite with our brethren against the forces of evil, WE WANTED TO HAVE A GOOD TIME!

And it’s nice to be able to be up close and personal, to be able to see the acts full-size, but that’s secondary to the music.

We haven’t sold music that infects the audience in so long.  Let me change that, music sans artifice hasn’t dominated the national conversation in far too long.  The machine wants flash, it wants gossip, the music is just a platform upon which to build a personality. Even though so many of the great musicians were verbally impaired and could only truly speak through their instruments.

Talk to a promoter.  Ask him or her what sells.  They’ll talk about bands you barely know that come back to their market more than once a year and never falter, even though they haven’t had a new record in eons.  It’s like there’s a private network supporting these acts.  Reported nowhere but in the grosses.  Like that Ray LaMontagne gig.  He sold out TWO Wilterns!

But it wasn’t his first album.  His music wasn’t jammed down America’s throat.  It was allowed to percolate, it was owned by the public, not the media.  And suddenly, SUPERNOVA!

And it’s only about the music.  He didn’t party with an Olsen twin, he’s not involved in a big scandal, he’s just writing his truth, and the audience has responded.

We’re in a new era.  There hasn’t been this big a divide between the Top 40 and what’s real since the late sixties and the advent of underground FM radio.  The Top 40 acts of that era might be able to play the lounge in Vegas, but Eric Clapton still plays arenas.  If Led Zeppelin reunited, THEY could sell out stadiums.  Their success was based on the music.  Personalities came second, if they figured in at all.

If you want instant fame, record a Top 40 hit.  Flog it to high heaven.  If you want a career, create great music.  That makes people jump up and participate.  Worry less about staggering statistics than the rabidity of the audience you do have.

I discovered the Allman Brothers in January of 1970, smoking dope in Dave McCormick’s dorm room, downstairs in Hepburn Hall, at Middlebury College.  If you haven’t been high and nodded your head to the guitar figure in "Midnight Rider", you haven’t been stoned.

Bill Graham booked the act without a national profile to close the Fillmore East.

Shortly thereafter, the double live album, sans any hits whatsoever, was unleashed upon the marketplace.  It became the soundtrack to dorm life, even though the mainstream media was completely out of the loop.

Then Duane died.

But the band didn’t.

"Eat A Peach" shored up the base.

But it wasn’t until the fall of ’73, YEARS after the band had been formed and started recording that they broke through, with "Ramblin’ Man".  Even though I’d seen them the summer before, blowing the Band and the Grateful Dead off the stage at Watkins Glen, it wasn’t until months later that the rest of America stood up and took notice.  And not only bought "Brother & Sisters", but went back and purchased the catalog.

This is the way it used to be.  This is the way it’s gonna be now.  The mark of your success will be how many tickets you can sell, not how many discs you can move.  Casual listeners are satisfied with the track, fans want to go to the show.

Like Barack says, we’re all in it together.  It’s time for the music business to heed this lesson too.  We’ve got to bring the audience in. And the way you do this, the way you keep people coming back, is not through production, flash and sets, but music.  Top 40 stars are only as big as their last hit.  Whereas the Allman Brothers, even absent multiple key players, can still do bang up business on the road forty years later.

Maybe we do.

The hoopla surrounding the sales of AC/DC’s "Black Ice" at Wal-Mart has superseded the scary underlying fact.  That even including digital downloads, album sales last week were down 25% from the equivalent week in 2007.  And 2007 SUCKED!

If the major labels didn’t have the power known as their catalogs, we’d have a different music business today.  They’ve been using this asset, along with their publishing companies, to generate leverage and collect revenue, insisting time and again that they’re just about to turn the corner.  I’d love a referendum, I’d love to vote Doug Morris out.  Because he and his consigliere Zach Horowitz are holding back the future of the music business.

How about a competition between Doug Morris and Steve Jobs.  Let the public vote.  It’s winner take all.  If Doug wins, he gets the iTunes Store.  He can bundle tracks as albums, raise the price, he gets free reign.  And if Steve is victorious, he gets to purvey Universal music however he sees fit.  And as goes Universal, so goes the music business.

The labels don’t have Hilary Rosen to protect them anymore.  She was paid beaucoup bucks to take the heat.  But when she was finally gone, scooting off to punditland, she said the labels’ failure to license Napster was their downfall.  And to this day the labels refuse to license P2P in the U.S.A.  And Mitch Bainwol cannot protect the arrows of the public shooting straight for the heads of the labels.

To the degree the public still cares.  Jimmy Iovine may no longer go on record, doing his best to fly under the radar, but Nine Inch Nails leaving Interscope is a bigger story than any band the label has "broken".  All the money’s in live because the labels won’t authorize sales in a form that the public desires.  A lot for a little.

It’s like the labels are landlines holding out against cellular.  Losing connections along the way.  With the public desiring mobility, the labels are selling physical discs, trumpeting their superiority, which is akin to stating that sex can only be had in the bedroom. Whereas where you do it, sometimes even in the great outdoors and office buildings, is frequently the special sauce that makes coitus exciting.

In the seventies, to work at a label was the ultimate goal, and you sometimes got there through the farm team known as retail.  And a job at a record store was only marginally easier to get than one at Warner Brothers.  But today everybody under the age of thirty has been laid off at the label, or is working for bupkes with no upward mobility.  And Tower Records has closed and the geek at Best Buy knows less about CDs than you do about LCDs, and you’re not even working there.

If America can elect a black President, we can have a nation where music files are easily acquired, sans copy protection, and easily transferred.  Don’t say "No way", instead cheer YES WE CAN!

The record business is mired in a quagmire as sticky and without future as Iraq.  And its recipe for success is to double down, the equivalent of a surge.  Suing more people.

But suing people didn’t work in the first place.  The army wasn’t big enough.  The insurgents would not let go.

This war against consumers is unwinnable.  And it’s ruining the business’ economics.  The only people who won’t admit this are those with the power, trying so desperately to hold on to it.

But holding on to the old ways, aligning with despised power, got the Republicans neutralized in Congress, going from the majority to the minority.  And caused them to lose the Presidency.

John McCain tried to throw the long ball.  He signed Sarah Palin.  Just like the labels made a deal with MySpace.  But just like Sarah was the wrong female, MySpace is the wrong social networking site.  And Sarah may be a female, but she was not the woman the female electorate was clamoring for.  Women wanted Hillary.  They wanted intelligence and experience.  Someone who’d fought her battles not by her looks, or through flirting, but hard work.  To the degree MySpace is shiny, it’s definitely not what the public wants.

Nor is the music being purveyed.  All those simpleton Top Forty hits?  If not being tuned out in droves, all that’s selling is the track. Labels lamenting single track sales on iTunes is like the Republicans decrying early voting.  The tide has turned.  Change has come.

Power is being bled by the old powers at the labels as we speak.  Bookers no longer focus on SoundScan, but ticket sales.  They don’t care if there’s a record on the chart, just whether fannies will fill the seats.  And the best way to get people to pay is to have a career act, that doesn’t focus on extravaganzas, scorched earth publicity campaigns, but their long term viability.  People want to believe in acts, but the labels keep selling singles.

It will take a while for new behemoths to rise.  Developing and selling music.  But one thing’s for sure, the day of the major label dinosaur chairman is dead.  Overpaid as his staff gets laid off.  Selling what most people cannot relate to or don’t want ninety days after its peak.  New executives will put their heads to the ground, listen to the audience and build a new coalition between acts and the public.  That’s where the nexus is.  Contrary to the majors labels’ belief that it’s between them and radio.

Radio is dying.  Barack Obama’s campaign would not have been victorious without the Web.  Obama used the Internet both to get his message out and raise funds.  Knowing that a little from a lot is better than a lot from a little.  Anybody who hopes to thrive in the recorded music sphere in the future needs to learn these lessons.  YouTube is your friend.  As are blogs and iTunes.  You don’t battle the masses, spread into nooks and crannies, you entice them, you bring them in.  Music should not be free, but a fair and equitable sales proposition must be proffered.

We need unity in the music world.  We don’t have it today.  And we must blame the old white men, wedded to antique business models which haven’t worked in the twenty first century.  It’s a new dawn.  Only when we all come together will our great national nightmare of declining revenues at record labels and traders’ lives being ruined by lawsuits end.  We need leadership.  Right now we’ve got none.  But it’s coming.  Because the public DEMANDS it!

Do you know the song "Sand In My Shoes"?

It starts with an ethereal figure, like something off the great "Moon Safari" by Air, then slowly penetrates the atmosphere, comes down to Earth with an acoustic guitar and Dido starts to sing:

Two weeks away it feels like the world should’ve changed
But I’m home now
And things still look the same

Have you ever been on vacation and pondered what you’ve missed at home?  And then get back and find out nothing’s changed, and wanted to immediately jet back to your vacation location?  That’s what "Sand In My Shoes" is about.  But with the added twist of wanting to connect with that person you thought was a fling but now realize might be real, maybe even the love of your life.  When Dido sings "I want to see you again" her almost whisper-like voice becomes emphatic, you’re reminded of every love connection you’ve ever had, when your feelings, your desires, have been mirrored.

I didn’t get into "Life For Rent" via "Sand In My Shoes".  "White Flag" brought me there.  I wasn’t a Dido fan, but driving my mother’s Lexus in November 2004 on a week-long journey to clean out my possessions from the family home which my mom was finally abandoning, I heard "White Flag" on the radio incessantly.  I’d been listening to the satellite for almost two years, I was not used to this repetition.  By the second weekend, I was hooked.  And when I got back to L.A., I searched through hundreds of CDs until I found Dido’s latest opus.

There are so many great cuts on "Life For Rent".  The title track ponders one’s future.  Do you miss out if you never make commitments?  If you haven’t had the relationship in "See You When You’re 40", you’ve never been involved with a man with Peter Pan syndrome, and they’re rampant.  "See The Sun" is great.  But "Sand In My Shoes" is brilliant.

The album’s lyrics contain the intimacy, the wisdom of a woman.  These aren’t platitudes, but insights, and truth.  And it’s been years since I’ve encountered these in such a sleek, attractive package.  "Life For Rent" is a modern day Joni Mitchell album.

So you can imagine how much I’ve been looking forward to Dido’s new record.  I’ve been waiting for four years.  My heart’s been aching.  And finally a release date was set and a single was released.  Which was not as good as "White Flag".  "Look No Further" took too long to reach the hook, it was a dirge, but with strangely happy lyrics.  It wasn’t exactly bad, but it wasn’t magic.  I was disappointed, but I still had hope.

I no longer have hope.  I’m drenched in disappointment.  I’ve listened to Dido’s new album "Safe Trip Home" and I’m deflated.  It’s just not the same Dido.

There are certain sacred cows in the music business.  One is Jon Brion.  We’re supposed to love him, he’s so talented, a genius.  I’ll say if he’s so great, how come there’s never been a commercial breakthrough?  It’s an insider’s game.  Which is fine, but now he’s treaded in my territory.  I won’t say he’s ruined the new Dido album, but his production is second-rate compared to the one employed on the first two albums.  Instead of English electronic, it’s merely at times ethereal.  Dido’s voice is up front and center.  Which is an utter mistake.  She used to be in the mix.  A perfect place for someone with little projection, someone whose voice is just a couple of steps above a whisper.  Jon Brion has made an early Joni Mitchell record, sparse, with Dido featured, whereas her previous records were aural landscapes which we luxuriated in.  I think that’s even him singing on one of the tracks, the ultimate producer faux pas.

I’m not sure, because I don’t have any label copy, no liner notes.  You see "Safe Trip Home" isn’t going to be released commercially for another two weeks.  But I found it on RapidShare Monday.  I played it on my iPod as I hiked in the mountains.  Just me and Dido Armstrong.  One contemplative individual with another.  And as the album progressed I realized something was wrong, it was the difference between Fiona Apple’s first album and her second, between greatness and good enough, between something you couldn’t wait to listen to again and something you never needed to hear again.  I waited four years for this?

What am I saying here?

That I don’t understand release dates anymore.  When you can get the album weeks ahead online, why are we married to physical dates?  This album should have gone live on iTunes the day it appeared on the blogs.  If Metallica can forsake the first week mantra by releasing "Death Magnetic" on a Friday, why do we need giant first week SoundScan numbers?  So executives clueless in digital can slap each other’s backs as their business implodes?  It’s about the long haul.  And Metallica put out a good record, the band’s fans like "Death Magnetic", and as a result the collection has legs.

Why do I have to wait four years?  In the old days a misstep could be just that.  But now, by time Dido has another album, I could be dead.

Why do you have to change your sound?  AC/DC has proven this.  A formula is fine if it’s yours.  The Faithless sound of Dido’s first two albums was the underpinning of her career, it was the magic element.  Without it, "Safe Trip Home" is just another album for fans at best, for collectors.  You can’t e-mail a track and infatuate someone who’s not already indoctrinated.

There’s got to be a backstory here.  Involving romance, involving a fight.  Why did Dido work with Mr. Brion?  Couldn’t anyone have said it wasn’t working, certainly not well enough?

I could wait until I play the album more to weigh in.  But, I’m not sure I’m going to.  It’s far from awful.  The opener, "Don’t Believe In Love", is decent.  "Never Want To Say It’s Love" is growing on me.  I was enraptured by the lengthy final track, "Northern Skies".   But I wince at some of the cuts, and others do nothing for me.

But they’re gonna ramp up the machine and try to flog this album like it’s a key element in Dido’s canon, another cornerstone in her foundation.  But it’s an aborted side trip.  This is one of those rare situations where I’m glad I’m back in my flat, with the comfortable old numbers.

Dido, I want to see you again.  The old Dido.  The English chanteuse, not the SoCal wannabe.