VINYL

If one more print publication, on its way to extinction, killed by the Internet, does another story about the vinyl renaissance, I’m going to EXPLODE!

Vinyl sounds better than CDs. I’m with you on this. Some people are buying albums for their artwork, others as fan totems, still others are actually listening to them. BUT MOST PEOPLE DON’T GIVE A SHIT!

If you’re an indie retailer and you’ve been fucked by the major labels and you can now make a profit on vinyl, which can’t be replicated on the Internet, can’t be digitized, I’M HAPPY FOR YOU! But people want convenience. In a format that’s relatively indestructible. A portable item that’s either unbreakable or easily replaced.

Do we need a new, higher quality audio format? A new standard? YES! BUT VINYL ISN’T IT!

WAL-MART

It’s about the fucking price. Enough already.
You get three discs for $11.88? That’s quite the value proposition. Old Journey, new Journey and video Journey. And do most people care? NO! What, they sold 100,000 in a country of 300 million?

I’m happy for Neal Schon, that somebody cares. But they don’t really give a shit about your new music, they just want the classics. Maybe, if you’re lucky, they’ll spin the new disc… But not enough people own this new product to drive your concert business, where the real profits are.

As for the vaunted promotional value of Wal-Mart deals… HORSESHIT! Most people are not paying attention. This is not 1965, when we were limited to three networks and young people were thrilled to get junk mail, ANY MAIL!

Albums at Wal-Mart are impulse buys. You’re there, you’ve heard of the act, THEY’RE CHEAP!

But these albums are like trees falling in a forest… THEY MAKE NO SOUND! Other than for the people who buy them, listen to them once and then go back to their greatest hits on their iPods… (Come on, do you really believe the new Journey material IS ANY GOOD??)

FAME

Has got nothing to do with being a musician. Shit, if Nicole Richie and Kim Kardashian are famous…doesn’t that show you THERE’S NO TALENT INVOLVED?!

Celebrityhood/fame is a new art form. You create a train-wreck, and TMZ and PerezHilton and the inane TV shows report on your exploits. Just like these no talents can’t sell a record (Paris Hilton anyone?), real talents’ careers are not enhanced by entering the gossip fray. It’s about laughing at these idiots. And if you’re a musician and someone is laughing at you, your so-called career is going to be VERY brief!

So learn how to play… Create a fan base. Thank your lucky star you have fans. And THANK GOD you’re not famous in the world at large, then you’re just fodder, grist for the mill, you’re here today, gone tomorrow.

360 DEALS

Irrelevant. The major labels don’t have enough infrastructure to pull them off!

It doesn’t matter that Rick Rubin was hired at Columbia. Doesn’t matter what Edgar Bronfman, Jr. has to say. Do you read press releases from Rambler? Have you purchased stock in Wham-O? Do you comb the newspaper looking for stories on transistor radios? DO YOU STILL LISTEN TO MUSIC ON CASSETTE?

The major labels squandered their power. It was based on control of distribution. Now anybody can make and distribute their music…have you heard of MySpace and Tunecore? The majors are consolidating their efforts in just a few acts… They don’t understand, the great mass, the minor acts, in aggregate, will end up with the vast majority of the pie. Just like in the TV business. Network share continues to slide… No one cable channel dominates, but all together, THEY DWARF THE NETWORKS!

So what did the TV networks do? THEY BOUGHT THE CABLE CHANNELS!

The only hope for the major labels in the future is to control ALL THE MUSIC! They’ve got to be in business with everybody, involved in every transaction, interested in the act that sells 1,000 copies. Providing services to EVERYBODY, and with this mass, controlling the market…

Look at Irving Azoff and Front Line… Does he sign one act? Or two? NO, 250! And then he leverages these!

Don’t listen to anything the major labels say, they’re on the way to extinction.

RADIO

Not about music. And the public knows it.

Do some people listen to the radio? Does it break some acts? OF COURSE! But every year fewer people tune in, and the only format that seems able to launch careers is Top Forty, and those acts are so whored out, so phony, as to have careers that barely register in years.

APPLE

Are you following the debate on Steve Jobs’ health? That’s how we used to analyze rock stars. Now, technologists are rock stars. Young kids don’t want to work in the music business, they go into tech, WHERE THEY’VE GOT A FUCKING CHANCE!

They’re respected in tech, for their coding skills, for their ability to suss out the young demo. Fat cats in the music business just put their boot heels into young ‘uns… They fire them so they can maintain their lifestyles.

Some young ‘un is going to come in and steal the majors’ lunch and they’ll end up as licensing houses, making money on their catalogs. But new business talent will not be fostered inside the system…especially not at the irrelevant labels.

As for Mr. Jobs… The iPhone transcends music. So you can bitch all you want about how he fucked the record business in the ass, but whereas an old iPod is only good for sound, the iPhone and iPod Touch don’t depend on music for their sales appeal…it’s an AFTERTHOUGHT!

Isn’t that brilliant… Steve Jobs doesn’t worry about the inane, insane record business, he doesn’t worry about licensing songs, he creates A NEW PARADIGM! A MOBILE COMPUTER!

God, what’s the new record label paradigm?

And did you notice he DROPPED THE PRICE OF THE iPHONE? (See Wal-Mart above.)

RAPINO/COHL

Brilliant job by Ethan Smith. All I’ve got to add is Cohl is about creating a mirage so he can lay the enterprise off on some ignorant fat cat. Whereas Rapino is aware of the credit crunch and is worried about running out of money before an ignorant fuck can be found.

This was a game of musical chairs… Starting with Sillerman. Live Nation is now stuck… Do you try to make the trains run on time or…throw the long ball? Do you side with Rapino or his old mentor Cohl?

I’m with Rapino on this one, since after signing Madonna, the company’s stock tanked by almost half. Seems that the money men are no longer so ignorant…

FESTIVALS

I’m not saying that the producers of Woodstock weren’t interested in profits, but that appears to be ALL today’s festival producers care about… Otherwise, why would they all book Jack Johnson?

Festivals, like acts, must have credibility, must have a core, that people can believe in… If the American granddaddy, Coachella, doesn’t come up with a killer indie lineup next year, it’s toast! What has Prince got to do with today’s white boy alternative music?

And I thought Bonnaroo was a jam band thing… Rather than continue to try to grow that, they book Metallica? Great band, but hippies hate metalheads. Sure, there’s some crossover…just like some fans of Ozzy Osbourne liked the Carpenters, but not much. The producers thought they were buying insurance.

Insurance is for pussies. Aren’t we angry when our own acts PLAY IT SAFE?

COLDPLAY

I’ve got to give Chris Martin credit, he’s doing his best to poke fun at both himself and his act. And he worked with Eno, that’s cool. But couldn’t he find A NEW ENO? A thirty year old Eno? That’s playing it a bit safe in my book. Anyway, my point here is…the media owns the act now, overpromoting it, chewing it up and spitting it out. Everybody knows there’s a new Coldplay album, we can’t avoid it, AND THAT’S WHY WE HATE COLDPLAY! Get in bed with the media, which beats a story to death, and you’re going to get backlash, no matter WHAT your music sounds like.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON

We used to save our excitement for TOM WAITS, not the people who COVERED Tom Waits! Where’s the NEW Tom Waits? That’s what I’m interested in, not the musical musings of an actress whose career is fading fast.

ZUNE

They even fuck up buying Yahoo… Do you really think they can get a music player right? KILL IT!

KINDLE

Lacks the elegance of an Apple created device, but don’t let that lull you into believing that digitization of books is never coming.

It’s about the STORY, not the delivery method. Just like great songs make it, are desirable, even if the production sucks. Whereas great production and lousy songs…leave you with a stiff.

THIS is a mistake.

Have you heard the new Eagles album? I’m guessing no. Even though 3 million copies were moved by Wal-Mart, it was an impulse item for baby boomers. Sure, some hard core fans purchased the disc too, but if you don’t care about the Eagles, it’s like the album didn’t even come out, like it doesn’t even exist. There was some airplay for the initial J.D. Souther-penned song "How Long", but who listens to music radio anymore anyway? The Eagles/Wal-Mart deal was about the money. A way for the band to get a ton up front, guaranteed, and the retailer to drive customers into its stores to hopefully buy a washing machine or another big ticket item.

But I ask you, is a kid going to go to Wal-Mart to buy the new AC/DC album?

This is a head-scratcher. You see AC/DC is still signed to a major label. But you know why they made a deal with Wal-Mart? For the MONEY! Majors don’t give a shit about an act’s career, they just want their dough up front. To limit AC/DC sales exclusively to Wal-Mart is akin to limiting bubblegum sales to Tiffany. There aren’t many outlets and kids aren’t going to go there anyway!

Sure, there are oldster AC/DC fans. But if the band were only interested in the geriatrics, why did they wait eight years to make a record? They could have just recorded some power chords or goose farts and the oldsters would have picked up the CD at a discounted price at Wal-Mart. This is not educated buyers, listening to cuts on the radio first, this is out of it cretins who are shopping for detergent and giant boxes of corn flakes. Your hard core rock and roll audience? Give me a break.

Not that AC/DC doesn’t attract a blue collar audience, that might be its core, but why in HELL is the band leaving all the kids out? Does it just figure teens will steal the new album and is writing them off?

AC/DC is the biggest band still alive in the minds of teenagers. Pink Floyd vows to never tour again and Led Zeppelin ain’t hitting the boards soon, so that just leaves Angus and his crew, as the torchbearers of rock and roll. Oh, you say, what difference does it make, the band doesn’t offer its catalog on iTunes ANYWAY!

If METALLICA can make a deal with Apple, AC/DC certainly can. Is the band just that out of it? Having spent too much time Down Under? Kids want files, for their iPods, to take with them everywhere, to play at parties… And they want vinyl, as a badge of honor. And some even want the CD, to evidence their addiction. But AC/DC cares not a whit about all this, about the new generation. It’s like they’re having a fire sale, trying to get everybody’s dough one last time. They don’t understand what they MEAN TO PEOPLE!

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a band won’t let its fans buy its record? One where the only thing that matters is money? Where music takes not even a back seat, but rides in the trunk?

And I’ve got news for you Angus… Everybody listens to cuts now, everybody listens to his iPod on shuffle. To deny this is to appear as demented as the major labels themselves. If people want singles, let them buy them. You know how it works, don’t you? If you love the single, you buy more… Isn’t that the essence of fandom?

iTunes is not a perfect solution. But we live in a digital age. The album is dead. To keep one’s head in the sand, to stand on ceremony, is just fucking stupid. Who’s managing this band anyway?

The key is to make the music easier to access, easier to buy… Owning "Back In Black" should be so awe-inspiring, that you choose to experiment with earlier tracks. We want experimentation, don’t we? We want people to check things out, don’t we? So why do you have to drive to fucking Wal-Mart to buy the whole fucking album when all you want is the damn thing on your iPod?

And you wonder why recorded music sales are in the crapper. Not only the labels, but the acts are so out of touch with how people acquire and listen that the gulf may widen to the point where it’s ultimately impassable and music is truly free. AC/DC is BEGGING people to steal this album. The closest Wal-Mart to me is almost twenty miles away! Assuming there’s no traffic, that’s an eight dollar fuel surcharge on the disc. But at least I’ve got wheels… Kids, home from school, music addicts, but without their driver’s licenses, are inured to getting their music online. And if you won’t sell it track by track, they’ll steal it that way. If you don’t know this, you’re still living in the twentieth century, still waiting for
Napster to come along and blow your mind.

Metallica arrives in 2008, tries to dream up new paradigms, tries to satiate the fan

Metallica Repents, Sort Of

and AC/DC wants to fight the same damn battle Lars lost years ago. Utterly ignorant. And despicable.

With a couple of hours to kill before our flight, the concierge recommended we go up to Johnston Road, to check out the outlet shops on the boulevard and delve into the market on the narrow streets behind.

What amazed us at first was the bamboo scaffolding. This time going up DOZENS of stories. Would you place your life in its hands?

And the decrepit buildings. From afar, they look pristine. Up close, they resemble bombed-out Beirut. Each with laundry hanging out the windows.

You could find Polo knock-offs, and Croc imitations too. Plenty of brand names deep in the confines of the market behind the main street. Along with those stores that sell Chinese medicine. Herbs and items that look like dried oysters and smell even worse. These stores are not for Anglos, and they’re EVERYWHERE!

Then, just when we thought we’d seen it all, we saw the chickens. LIVE chickens. Cages and cages of them. Ready to be taken home, slaughtered and eaten. We read about this stuff in the western world, see it in movies, but we can’t fathom it up close and personal, I couldn’t stop staring.

But on our way back to the main drag, desperately in need of a/c, we went agape. They were selling fish. LIVE fish. A well-dressed matron pointed out this red fish that looked like it had SARS, or was an albino, it was so pinkly pale, and then a woman in rubber boots scooped her hand into the styrofoam container, retrieved the struggling fish and handed it to her compatriot, who put it on a scale, placed the fish in a giant baggie, and handed it to the customer…STILL FLOPPING AROUND!

How do you get it home? Do you have an aquarium in the trunk? A cooler in the back seat? How the hell do you kill it?

And then there were the chicken/duck stores. With pig hoofs too. Giant pig carcasses. Men cleaving off bits for customers. Putting raw chickens in styrofoam for the way home.

Then another fish market. Where I was mesmerized by the selling of giant pieces of what looked like tuna, but could be buffalo meat for all I know, and Felice couldn’t stop staring into this bucket top. Where she pointed out to me chopped up eels were SQUIRMING! Squirting blood, shimmying from side to side. Their faces looking pissed, as the tubes of their bodies inflated and contracted. I didn’t want to get too close. I figured the damn things would jump up and bite me. Or taint my guilt with blood.

But having thought we’d seen it all, a few paces down, a stall was selling shrimp. LIVE shrimp. These giant gray prawns were all poured into a shallow round container, and were JUMPING FOR THEIR LIVES! Six inches in the air! While we watched, a couple even made their escape, to the sidewalk!

Down by the seaside, it’s all modern skyscrapers. But behind the giant steel and glass edifices, there’s an underbelly, our conception of the east…but even more vivid. It’s riveting. To view this way station between the twenty first century and the nineteenth.

So we went to dinner last night at an establishment called the China Club. It is a club, quite private, but our hotel got us in. It was on the thirteenth floor of a high rise. Hong Kong is an insiders town. If you don’t know someone, you’re out of the loop!

Fascinating place… Kind of a high rent Y, where you can sup if you’re in from out of town. Ralph got there early and sussed out the library. We checked out the upstairs environs with him after dinner, laughing at the artwork of the dictators… We couldn’t name them all, but the doorman certainly could.

John and I talked politics, Felice and Paul talked Broadway, and Harvey Goldsmith regaled us with stories. Quite the character, I saw the exhibit about his two magazines, "Oz" and "International Times", at the Victoria and Albert before I ever met the man. Harvey started promoting concerts to make up the shortfall from his publications… This was before the days of internships at Live Nation. Harvey fell into the business, by accident, and his pure passion has carried him through.

The funniest thing I heard today at the conference was about this guy’s in-laws, in their seventies, who dressed in the appropriate attire to play Wii golf and tennis. That was one of the best panels, the one on gaming. Gaming’s got all the sexiness that music used to have. It’s the land of visceral excitement…and profits.

The live panel was fascinating too, since Michael Chugg is so irreverent. Funny to think all the U.S. promoters were rolled up into SFX/Clear Channel/Live Nation, since they’re all such iconoclasts. No wonder they’re all gone, you could never control these guys.

Meanwhile, the panelists were all bitching that you won’t bring your acts to Asia, not for a reasonable price. They want you to get them started over here, not ask for your usual exorbitant fee. Chuggy wants the promoters to band together, to build a circuit. There’s money to be made in Asia, you’ve just got to pay your dues and build slowly.

After this evening’s closing party, Felice and I entered the humidity and walked up to Hennessy Road. It was utterly fascinating.

Once you get out of the high rent district, the modern skyscrapers, you can see the warts of Hong Kong. The buildings were not constructed with central a/c, so wall units are penetrating buildings’ skins willy-nilly. And the structures are missing patches of stucco. But what was happening on street level was even more interesting.

It was 9:30 PM and there were guys giving haircuts. Furniture stores were open. Jewelry establishments. It was long after dark, but you’d think it was five PM. The sidewalks were full of people. Escaping the heat inside? Looking for some excitement? I don’t know! Some were ensconced in an off-track betting parlor. Others were playing video games. Some were sipping kudzu soup, a green concoction that’s supposed to help you with phlegm and sleeplessness issues. But what was most fascinating to me was the computer marketplace.

We took a narrow escalator into a low ceilinged bazaar. At first I thought it was all one store, a la Circuit City, or Best Buy. But it was dozens and dozens of independent operators, all crammed into tiny stalls. And there were multiple levels. And as you got higher and higher in the building, the merchandise changed. On the first floor, which was the second floor of the structure, you could buy hard drives. By time you got to the third, you could buy dildos, and pictures of little girls. There are no skylights, there’s minimal air conditioning, it’s like Hobbit-world or something. How can these people stand to be holed up here, not only all day, but all night! Still, I wished we had one of these emporiums in L.A. Anything you needed, a keyboard, a cable, a video card, a cell phone case, they had it. How all the establishments stay in business, I’ll never know. Do you comparison shop? Is there some slight difference between each business, the quality of the help?

And then back to the street. With twentysomethings, oldsters and babies, all shuffling along, on either side of streetcars that looked straight out of the twenties. The density alone would freak an American out. And hovering over the streets are the endless signs. A tall enough truck comes through and it’s going to destroy property.

But it’s all so exciting. As the women grill shrimp on the electric barbie and the lights shine so bright that it’s like daytime, you get the distinct feeling of humanity, that people are living here, buying stuff, eating, exchanging money. It’s so compressed, you almost feel claustrophobic. But it’s so exotic, you can’t stop paying attention.