Do you know the song "River Boulevard"?
Walking down the road this morning
The sun was in my eyes
The smell of the sweet sweet blossoms
Steppin’ through my mind
And I say
Isn’t it just a beautiful day
Isn’t it just a beautiful day
It’s the fourth song on the Pointer Sisters’ debut. But it wasn’t an original, it was a cover of a song by Lamb.
I never purchased any of Lamb’s albums. But I never forgot "River Boulevard". They did a killer version in the Fillmore movie, the chronicle of the venue’s closing days that hit theatres in 1972.
It didn’t make the boxed set. But last night, combing the Net, I found Lamb’s 1971 album, "Bring Out The Sun", and finally got to hear the original "River Boulevard". Brought me right back.
To the point where I searched for the "Last Days" boxed set.
It came down via a screaming connection. And when I started to play it, getting the titles right, I was brought right back to that afternoon in New York City, when I saw the film, and then purchased and listened to the boxed set, which was uneven, but contained a couple of killer numbers.
My favorite from the set was "Poppa Can Play". Sons of Champlin never broke through, so Bill Champlin ended up joining Chicago. But this number has the energy of…THE FILLMORE! That’s what the venues were about, a vibe, an excitement. It was about the power of music. And when it became about the power of money, the acts moved on to arenas and Bill Graham closed his theatres.
An evening of music wasn’t about dancing, not about production, not even about hits. It was akin to our parents going to hear the Philharmonic, but our music wasn’t dead, it was fully alive, freshly written by musicians following their muse more than the money. The money came later.
But the best cut on the Fillmore "Last Days" boxed set is Santana’s cover of "In A Silent Way". I got into this almost eight minute number by playing the boxed set discs over and over again. I’d seen Miles Davis, but it took Santana to make me aware of the power of this number.
And loving Santana’s take so much, last night I downloaded the original Miles Davis classic. With one track per album side. With a band made up of Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Tony Williams, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Dave Holland. I was stunned. This music was incomprehensible to me forty years ago, but now it cut like butter. You could listen to it over and over again. If I’d bought it back in the sixties, I probably would have. But last night I didn’t even get all the way through it. I was enraptured by these old Fillmore tracks. I was downloading Derek and the Dominos "In Concert". I was finally getting my own copy of the Blues Project’s "Projections".
I own the Fillmore boxed set. It’s somewhere in my house. But none of the other LPs mentioned above. And you might castigate me for stealing them, but I’d never pay for them. I didn’t pay for them years back, and I’m not about to now. Not only because I’ve got a limited amount of money, but because I’ve got a limited amount of TIME!
You can only listen to one record at one time. You can watch multiple television shows, but you can only listen to one record. But today, everything is available, almost instantly, at your fingertips. It’s a surfeit of wealth.
I downloaded that entire Lamb album. I haven’t played anything but "River Boulevard".
I’m not gonna play every track on the Fillmore boxed set, certainly not more than once. Because there’s so much other stuff I need to hear!
This is so different from the pre-Napster era.
Prior to Napster, I spent all my money on records. But I still had very few. And, since I’d invested in them, I played them! That’s how I know every lick on the Fillmore boxed set. I’d laid down my money, I had to get my money’s WORTH!
You sampled music on the radio. But, even though you could flip between stations, you were exposed to very little. And you bought even less of it. You knew songs by heart that you never owned. And a big collection in the seventies was less than fifty albums. Way less in most people’s case. Which is 500 tracks. Kids today, barely pubescent, own THOUSANDS of tracks. So, what do they listen to?
This is very important. Here we have the huge disconnect. You want to keep the construct of the album. Not only the labels, but the old musos. The album is sacrosanct. But the reason the album is sacrosanct is because you owned so few and played them INCESSANTLY! At most, today, you play a track or two incessantly.
Do you really want to criticize the kids? For grazing, only wanting to hear the very best? Sure, they might not ever get to that delicious cut deep on side two, but there’s no longer a side two and albums aren’t ten cuts anymore either. Just one long, over an hour collection with fifteen tracks. Longer than yesteryear’s criticized double albums. It’s too much to digest. Especially when there are more great tracks than you can listen to.
So we have two kinds of listeners. Those who go vast and wide, and those who go narrow and deep. And the former are winning in the marketplace. You’ve got to cut a song so good people want to put it on their iPods. If you’re planning on getting a non-fan to sit down with your overlong opus, playing it multiple times to understand it, you’re living in the sixties, and that was FORTY YEARS AGO!
We live in a track world. Maybe because there’s been too much filler, not enough good albums. But mostly because now people can pick and choose the very best tracks from the history of recorded music, and there’s a PLETHORA OF THEM! You may not be able to buy Lamb’s "River Boulevard" on iTunes, but a ton of recorded history is there, and the obscurities can almost all be obtained for free, never mind the big hits. In the old days, it was hard to find a record store that stocked the old records, now EVERYTHING’S available. So why listen to the overhyped substandard new metal band when you can just go online and get AC/DC?
A few acts get traction, people want everything they’ve ever done. But most acts can’t sell anything more than their hit(s), and then they’re forgotten. And you can’t build a business atop these hits. There’s no soul. This is not the audience’s fault. This would be like asking television viewers to stay with the network shows, watching them in real time, with all the commercials intact, not surfing, not watching the reality programs on cable, not firing up their DVRs or Hulu or…
One way to establish a career is to have a series of hit singles. But even that won’t guarantee a string of sellout dates. Mariah Carey can’t do multiples in arenas, but jam bands can sell out venues year in and year out, without hits, without any new recorded material.
It’s about fans. And the fan bond is created on the road. And it’s about the music, not the production. And although good tracks will get people into the building, it’s more about word of mouth, people dragging their friends down to the hall, to experience the music washing over them, the secret society. In other words, if you’re swinging for the fences in the old way, fighting the gatekeepers, you’re doing it THE HARD WAY!
Everybody’s looking for short cuts. An instant road to fame and riches. Fame is easy. Just look at those bozos on the reality television shows. But they’re not rich. And their fame is fleeting. And their fame is still pretty narrow, the reach of a television show is a fraction of what it was in the sixties and seventies.
This is a golden era for listeners. They’re never going back to restrictions. Music is plentiful, and if you don’t offer a cheap business proposition, all they want for a low price with no locks, they’re not going to be corralled, they’re going to go around the fence and get it their own way. It’s like trying to keep a nation of drug addicts from shooting up. They’ve experienced the magic of music, its entire history, they don’t want to be restricted, if held back, they rebel. The key is to help the listener. Not only give him what he wants, but point him to new stuff. And this must be done with trust. Kids reject radio because they consider the stations to be dishonest and the music to be crap. They won’t listen to anyone they don’t trust. And right now, they only trust their friends.
You’ve got to gain their trust. You’ve got to establish detente with the audience. Know your new music is competing not only against what’s on the chart, but the Beatles and Pink Floyd and Frank Sinatra. It may be new, the singer may be young, but is she in the league of Joni Mitchell? Because Joni’s easily available online, and the Net says she’s the best.
I don’t even want to listen to the album. Because that means I can’t surf through a ton of new music. I don’t want to play your CD in the car, that means I can’t surf my way through satellite radio, discovering all kinds of new tracks on dozens of stations. If I hear a great cut, I play it to death. Sometimes I explore deeper. But oftentimes I wait until I stumble upon another great track by the same act. My fandom might be only one song deep, which is why I don’t want to see you live. Why? To hear a ton of stuff I’m unfamiliar with? I only want to see someone I’m a fan of, someone who enraptures me with all their music, and this is fewer acts than ever before. A challenging environment for purveyors, I know. But it’s reality.
