Hi Bob, just a quick email to say: you rock, I love reading your letters and thank you!

As an artist working in this crazy industry (Jem – ATO records), I am happy to say from the beginning I have always marched, actually I should probably say skipped, to the beat of my own drum. I am happy and proud to be following my heart and my musical calling without bowing down to the pressures of this often nonsensical bizness. (I have noticed this kind of attitude sometimes annoys, sometimes intimidates, and sometimes instills joy in music biz people).

After just one album cycle I had pretty much seen enough. When the art meets the commerce it’s not pretty, and is usually quite a struggle. At least for anyone with half a brain. Once I learnt not to take anything personally and not to expect logic to be applied in many situations, I became a lot happier..!

As for this current financial crisis, on a much smaller level, I was once apologised to at a radio convention by a lovely radio programmer who told me she felt terrible that my song ‘They’ had been taken off the air as it wasn’t ‘researching well’ with new listeners. (As you know I think that means playing 15/20 secs of the beginning of a song down a telephone to random people they call up. I did later get #1 for female listeners and #2 for male listeners for the same song in Salt Lake City so hooray for that!) She was frustrated because as she explained, apparently hoards of their loyal everyday listeners had been calling in every hour asking about the same song and requesting it. She felt bad as it was out of her hands, I had already implemented the necessary emotional tools of the previous paragraph, and like people, so I felt bad for her. It was a curious conversation. Anyway, that was years ago, but in light of the current chaos, I don’t think the public realise how often they/we are getting shafted.

How fantastic then, the revolution that is now made possible with the internet. How wonderful to be able to connect directly to the people who enjoy one’s music. As the guy in Grease says "the rules are, there are no rules". The unending possibilities of communication and speading of positivity, music, thoughts and messages makes me feel as free as a bird. I’ve never liked ‘standard’ practices, this is how an album is promoted – steps A, B, C. We all know just like with the movie industry there are channels you can follow, but thankfully there are always exceptions to the rule. It is a form of art after all, the energy around it should be fluid.

I’ve always known if I make good music that I love, everything will take care of itself, there’s no other thought process. And wonderfully, people help spread the word because I think they feel that. It’s genuine and honest and perhaps there’s not too much of that around. As you say, music with a heart, a soul that moves you is what we all want – along with some fun tracks for bumping and grinding to in the car, well, at least in my case 😉

All the best and have a great weekend,

Jem

A rock star is not someone who takes the temperature, who gauges the marketplace before he creates his "art".  A rock star is someone who needs to create and is willing to tolerate the haters along with the fans.  He’s someone who incites controversy just by existing.  That’s what we lost in the dash for cash.  Unique voices.  I’m not saying we haven’t ended up with some pleasant music, but it just hasn’t hit you in the gut, it’s the aural equivalent of Splenda, it might do the trick, but it’s not the real thing.  The real thing grabs your attention, drives down deep into your heart and lodges itself there.  A rock star doesn’t follow conventions, doesn’t go disco or add drum machines just because everybody else does.  A rock star exists in his own unique space, and if you met him you probably wouldn’t like him.  Because he tends to be self-focused to the point of being narcissistic.  Because he cares.  He needs to get his message out.

We’re angry, that’s what pisses us most off about this financial crisis.  That the fat cats took all this money and hosed the economy simultaneously.  They’re sitting on piles of cash while we’re struggling.  And now we’ve got to bail them out, we’ve got to insure the credit markets in order to get the economy moving.  And America is pissed.

America is pissed about so much.  And feels too often that politicians don’t care about them.  And there’s scads of ignorance, purveyed by biased talk show hosts and bloviating, supposedly neutral, TV talking heads.  And everybody’s afraid.  You get people saying Sarah Palin won the Vice Presidential debate and you wonder if you watched the same show.  When I didn’t answer the questions in school, I flunked.  And suddenly, by going to school, working damn hard, studying to get good grades to get into a good college, I’m an elitist, my opinion is to be discounted.  I shouldn’t have gone to public school, I should have gone to a parochial institution, to be indoctrinated in viewpoints that don’t square with reality. Worse yet, be home schooled.  That’s code for "Christian Right Education".

Hate me all you want.  Tell me you can get infections hanging with the underprivileged in regular high schools, that you can teach your kids better than those underpaid teachers.  But what about socialization, what about opposing viewpoints?  How can there be a dialogue when there’s not another side?

And that’s what we have in America today, only one side.  Everybody’s on his own side, only speaking to himself, like-minded people.  Who’s going to change the equation?  Certainly not politicians, elected officials.  Obama’s got to say he’s for drilling to get elected, because the person paying four bucks a gallon doesn’t know that it’ll take eons for said oil to reach the pump.  We’ve got the businessmen raping and pillaging, the politicians lying, at best being expedient, and the only people we can count on to speak the truth have abdicated their power, their duty, their role.  That’s what the job of the artist is.  To question authority, challenge convention, speak the unpopular, if it’s the truth.  And that’s what Art Alexakis and Everclear have done in "Jesus Was A Democrat".

Jesus Christ didn’t have blue eyes or blond hair
He looked just like all those people that you want to kill
Spin your hell into a heaven you can sell
Make it look like California with a bible belt
Jesus didn’t look like the boy next door
Unless you live in Palestine
I wonder what you mean by the golden rule
I think it is a scary play on words
I wonder what they taught you back in Sunday school

Them’s fighting words.  But Art Alexakis doesn’t care.

look, if this song offends you….then dont listen to it
if you think i am wrong in my convictions…..and this upsets you
then please dont come to the page
if you do not believe that everclear is the proper forum for political opinons,
then you havent been paying attention

That’s what he says on his MySpace page.

Music like this isn’t going to be played on Top Forty radio.  MTV doesn’t even air any videos.  You’ve got to give music like this away for free. Which is exactly what Everclear is doing.

Go to: Everclear

You don’t have to cough up your e-mail address.  You don’t have to wade through a shitload of Flash.  This is the promise of the Internet. Creating in a vacuum, without undue financial influence, and then going straight to the public.

If you like what you hear, tell others.  Not because I’ve got a financial interest, but because this is the only way we’re going to beat the traditional infrastructure, the only way we’re going to combat the profiteers who tell us we must make pop tunes so bland they can sell everything from toothpaste to movies.  If you believe this, you’re not an artist, but a businessman.  Nothing wrong with that, but people don’t believe in businessmen, they don’t want to see them ten years down the road, they use up their products like they’re deodorant and move on.  People get excited about ARTISTS!  People are loyal to ARTISTS!  People pledge fealty to ARTISTS!

John Lennon was murdered.  Tupac and Biggie too.  But their music lives on.  Played every day on the radio, spun in homes around the world.  Clive Davis still walks the planet, but we haven’t heard a peep out of him in months, the press has moved on.  David Cook is making his album without his supervision, Kelly Clarkson has no one to rail against, the old man seems to have vanished.  Along with his productions.  When was the last time you heard Milli Vanilli?  Even Whitney Houston?

1964 heralded a revolution.  The Beatles broke every mold.  Not only did their music sound unique, they wrote and played it.  Seemingly every kid in America picked up a guitar.  The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.  But that was before the explosion of Evangelical Christianity.  Before MTV and CDs.  Before there was so much money in music that big corporations swallowed up the labels and demanded they deliver profits.  Incessantly.  Which they did.  Time Warner’s cable system was built by Warner Music.  But eight years ago, the music business hit a speed bump.

Sales have declined.  No superstars have been born.  Executives have railed, but no solution has been proffered.  Shaking their fists at the consumer, the public has just shrugged, and moved on to video games, an art form containing passion.  Yes, that’s what Clive Davis and his cohorts surgically removed.  The essence, the spark contained in all those British Invasion hits.  The personality.  The excitement.  And with a heavy hand, employing song doctors and hack producers, they constructed music they believed they could sell.  That was Clive Davis’ expertise.  He was not the man with the golden ears, but a diva with a Rolodex containing the name of every media man in existence.  But this was back when the country was ruled by newspapers and television. When radio could generate ten million album sales.  Now the target audience gets its news on the Web.  There are 500 television channels.  And radio is a joke with declining listenership.  The old pros’ success was based on control.  And control has been evaporating since the turn of the decade.  And if it’s ever coming back, it’s not going to look the same, it’s not going to be the same game.

Clive Davis introduced his proteges at his Grammy party.  Featured them on the "Today Show".  Spent millions to barely make any profits.  And the core, the essence?  Nougat at best.  That’s what Clive Davis was making, candy.  Something the Beatles never were, not from their very first hit.

The success of the British Invasion, of the following San Francisco scene, resulted in the acts usurping power. They could record what they wanted in studios of their own choice.  Not only could they design their own album covers, their label could no longer sell competing product on the inner sleeve.  By the seventies, the act was king.  There was a sideshow over on AM, but all the money was in FM.  The career acts.  The ones making album-long opuses, frequently without singles, who could fill arenas, who can still fill arenas today.

Clive Davis would have told Ian Anderson that "Thick As A Brick" was an aberration, not to be released, the public wouldn’t stand for it.  But Jethro Tull sold out arenas in its wake.  Everything new and different, everything creative, everything out there, that’s what Clive Davis stood against.  He wanted control, when he himself was not an artist.  He wanted to squeeze out inspiration.  And without inspiration, you’ve got no art.  And without art, all you’ve got is business.  And kids don’t care about business.  And people don’t care about you when you’re no longer atop the corporation, your phone stops ringing, the "Wall Street Journal" writes about someone else, it’s like a genie has rubbed his magic lamp and you’ve disappeared.

Reminding us the future of this business is the acts.  And not commercial concoctions like the Pussycat Dolls. That’s commerce.  Commerce comes after art, not first.  Art is triumphant once again.  It’s just that the traditional media can’t see it, and the old label heads aren’t interested in it, because it’s not instantly salable.  The media wants a train-wreck.  The label wants something that can go double platinum on the first release.  But now superstars barely go double platinum.  The game has changed.

The new executives, today’s entrepreneurs, realize without the acts you’ve got nothing.  They will respect the act. They will be in service of the act.  They will encourage the act to experiment, to go for greatness.  Because they know that what makes Google so valuable isn’t a marketing campaign, but its sheer usability and its uncanny ability to generate the right result.  That’s what makes a great act.  The music.  Not its looks.  Jimmy Page is a soft-spoken man, who lived a dark life on the road and oftentimes wouldn’t speak to the press.  But Led Zeppelin’s manager protected him.  Peter Grant might have been a wrestler, but he knew that without the act he had nothing.  That he needed to remain in the background.  That he needed to let the act explore, even make mistakes, in order to achieve and maintain success.  Both artistic and commercial.  Unlike Clive Davis, Peter Grant was not currying personal favor with the press, he kept reporters at arm’s length.  And today, Led Zeppelin still burns up the airwaves and all those Arista wonders, with their Top Forty singles, have been forgotten.

But whereas Peter Grant oftentimes employed a blunt instrument, today’s executive uses a computer, knows how to reach his target audience.  Is less interested with the media filter than his act’s mailing list.  He wants to go directly to fans.  For newspaper writers and radio deejays don’t buy music, they get it for free.  You’ve got to stoke hearts and minds.  You’ve got to get people hooked.  And the only way to do this in today’s permission marketing world is to deliver the goods, great music.

All the trappings, the window dressing, if not completely superfluous already, soon will be.  All the tools employed by Tommy Mottola, Charles Koppelman and Clive Davis are becoming useless.  They don’t deliver the hits, they don’t deliver the money, one can ask if they ever delivered quality music.  The old game is archaic. Akin to the blunt tools of the Stone Age.  Today it’s about precision.  And music that touches people.  Makes them feel alive.  Makes them ask, "How the hell did they come up with this?"

Like "Strawberry Fields Forever".  On paper, a disaster.  In reality, a game-changing stretch the public warmed up to and embraced wholeheartedly.  It was not created on Clive Davis’ watch, and that’s why he and his music have been forgotten.  It lacks art.  And that is the essence of an artist.

And sooner or later
Everybody’s kingdom must end
And I’m so afraid your courtiers
Cannot be called best friends

Charles Goldstuck couldn’t save Clive Davis, he lost his job too.  As soon as you go to work for the company, the clock is ticking.  It’s just a matter of when you lose your job.

No man’s a jester playing Shakespeare
Round your throne room floor
While the juggler’s act is danced upon
The crown that you once wore

The king is dead, the king is dead
The king is dead, the king is dead
Long live the king

"The King Must Die"
Elton John

The business has not evaporated.  More people than ever are making music.  More music than ever is being acquired.  People are listening to music on their iPods and going to see it live.  They don’t care about the label, the old institutions, only the music.  We’re in a wrenching transition period.  Wherein power is wrested from old men who believe incorrectly that they’re the talent and is being redistributed to those who are truly responsible and those who protect and shepherd the careers of these titans.

Yes, the giants are the acts.  The performers.  The artists.  They’re the kings.  Never forget it.

You don’t have to wait until October 20th.  You don’t even have to drive to Wal-Mart!  Why waste all that gas and time when you can fire up your browser and download AC/DC’s "Black Ice" RIGHT NOW!  In superior 320 kbps quality!  With no DRM!

Record companies no longer care about customers.  They just care about business.  Extracting the most dollars possible. 

Labels don’t even give a shit about careers.  What’s a career?  My tenure at the label and my severance pay?  The acts?  We last longer than the acts.  The acts are grist for the mill.  Whatever it takes to meet our numbers, that’s our philosophy.  And you wonder why the manager is the new label.

Because the manager truly cares about all 360 degrees of the act.  In PERPETUITY, or at least until the cessation of his sunset clause.  The manager’s not going to do something expedient.  That would be like squandering your child’s college fund on a Cadillac.  Something with a distinct lifespan, whereas an education lasts a lifetime, with an education you can ADJUST TO THE FUTURE!

And what is the future we’re presently experiencing?  One in which there’s too much music, most of it crap or niche, and even the young ‘uns are turning to the classics.  Like AC/DC.  The Internet keeps aged acts alive. What would the Doors be without the Internet?  Better yet, PINK FLOYD!  All those kids hearing "Dark Side Of The Moon" for the first time…  Where do you think they got it?  Fingering albums at the record store?  In most towns, THERE IS NO RECORD STORE!  And Wal-Mart doesn’t carry "Ummagumma" and the rest of the catalogue.  Why can’t labels see that the hardest thing is to get people hooked, and they must do everything in their power to aid in this process?

Sure, you can listen to tunes on MySpace Music.  But you can’t take them with you.  Like you’re supposed to take the CD of "Black Ice" on a trip.  If you’re under the age of twenty and show up with a CD binder you’re going to be a social outcast, if you’re not one already.  Where were you that you didn’t get the memo?  Living under a rock? Even HOME SCHOOLED kids have computers.  That’s how you communicate with the outside world!

But the major labels know nothing about the outside world.  And to the degree they do, they want to deny it.

If you don’t want your album leaked, traded in advance before release date, then you cannot let anybody hear it. You can’t even let it be duplicated.  Then again, if you’re manufacturing, you’re asking for leaks…  Unless you get the FBI to police your plant.  Instead of putting useless FBI logos on CDs, the labels would be better off looking within.  The customer is not the enemy, the customer didn’t leak the album, YOUR EMPLOYEE DID!

Or maybe you need no physical distribution.  The day the CD is dead is not far off.  548,052 of Coldplay’s 1,773,932 albums have been sold digitally.  And they own the second biggest album of the year.  I’d say that’s a true indicator.  That soon people will only want the file.

But somehow, Down Under, AC/DC has not realized all this.  I’d hate to believe Angus Young is that dumb, but never underestimate the ignorance of a musician, some of the best live in a bubble.  But those days are numbered.  Today’s musician MUST BE TECH-SAVVY!  Because that’s how you make a record, with Pro Tools and hard drives.  Maybe even GarageBand.  And when the act comes to the label and the guy working there doesn’t know what they’re talking about, do you really think this new band is going to sign with the company?

I’ve got a question for you…  The four major label groups own a large percentage of MySpace Music.  WHO GETS THE PROFITS?  Are they going to trickle down to the acts?  What, did you just fall off the turnip truck?  With enough pressure, maybe they’ll kick some pennies to the performers, but I haven’t heard any rumblings yet. THERE IS NO MYSPACE MUSIC WITHOUT THE ACTS?  How come they’re getting screwed?  How come they don’t get the lion’s share of the profits of MySpace Music?  Probably for the same reason they get less than a dime for iTunes sales.  Isn’t that a laugh.  They took a hit to promote the CD, left their royalty rates low, and now there are no manufacturing and shipping costs and they’re STILL getting screwed.  Those 360 deals?  The ones the majors sign ignorant acts to?  Is the royalty rate still a pittance on iTunes?  Why?  The old logic was the label can screw you because they’re building your name and you’re going to make money elsewhere, they’re only profiting from music sales.  But if the label’s taking a piece of everything, shouldn’t the act get a fair shake for music sales?  Not in the topsy-turvy, Wall Street-like major label world.

Instead of mortgages, we’ve got acts who’ve sold their souls, who’ve profited from rocket trips to the stratosphere via MTV and have crashed back to earth and have been left with nothing soon thereafter.  Where are all the acts the majors have built in the last fifteen years?  Backstreet Boys play theatres, at best.  While AC/DC can sell out STADIUMS!  Yes, the acts got a raw deal.  In exchange for brief fame, they gave everything to the label.  And the heads of said organizations profited mightily.  Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine work for a public company, why are they so handsomely remunerated?  They presided over a drastic decline in the value of their operations.  They shouldn’t be rewarded, they should be castigated, FIRED!  For missing the revolution!

Just because AC/DC says their productions must be listened to as albums, that doesn’t make it so.  That’s like TV stations saying you’ve got to watch every episode of the season, that you can’t view "30 Rock" out of order.  The consumer gets to choose.  If you produce something incredibly good, people will want to hear it all.  If they don’t… Then maybe they’re just not interested, maybe what you think is so great is really a turd.

So what has AC/DC accomplished here?  The Internet kept their fame alive and they’ve decided to deny it.  They got in bed with the oppressor, the retailer who censors records.  Meanwhile, their fan base will just download the damn album for free.  The hypocrisy is stunning.  They don’t care about their fans, they just care about money. Their handlers should have drilled into them that their album should be sold on iTunes.  Hell, Kid Rock didn’t and interlopers covered his hit track and it went to the top of the chart.  That’s not smart business, that’s dumb.  It’s one thing if you’re Gucci, some high end manufacturer who wants exclusivity.  But the goal of a band is to be heard by as many people as possible.  So you’re going to keep your product OUT OF THE STORE?  Away from the future? Bottom line, people are going to steal it anyway.

And if iTunes is only about the singles, how come Coldplay sold all those fucking albums?  Because THEY’RE SEEN AS AN ALBUM BAND!  It’s about credibility and music more than the ability to cherry-pick on iTunes. Metallica’s biggest single track sits at number 90 on the digital chart, having moved 153,295 copies, but the complete album sits at number 4 and has sold 108,803 digital copies.  It’s not rocket science.  It’s only a singles world if you’re a singles band.  And the future is digital.  And kids want portability.  If you’re spewing this horseshit about CDs and keeping your albums from Apple to protect their integrity, you’re just signaling you’re a greedy fuck.  And this greed leads your fans to steal your music.  It’s like denying there’s a drug problem because you don’t sell dope.  That’s got nothing to do with the rest of the world.  The record business used to be the hippest on the planet. Now it’s completely backwards, and untrusted by the public.  The goal used to be to work at Warner Brothers, now you want to go north, to Google.  Where intelligence and innovation are rewarded.  Where they live in the present and care about the future, not the past, like the labels.