What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where an Internet shoe company is hipper than any band?

Have you caught this story yet? How Zappos pays people to QUIT?

It’s been burning up the Net for almost a week now. There was no press release, no in-store, no campaign, just some dude from the Harvard Business Review weighing in on another "dot com" company. Took almost a week for the story to show up in the straight news

Shoe Seller’s Secret of Success

and you wonder why print is dying, why new media is eating newspapers’ lunch…

Bottom line, you go to work for Zappos, there’s a four week training program, and if you decide after a week or so the job’s not for you, THEY PAY YOU $1,000 TO QUIT! Zappos doesn’t want any half-assed employees, people who are going to cut and run, they want BELIEVERS! So, in addition to being paid your salary for being trained so far, they cut you this additional check and say SAYONARA!

How fucking great is that?

What’s even better is Zappos is not capitalizing on the buzz generated. If Zappos were a band their fucking publicity agent would send out a press release asking for MORE press. And the sheep that are in old media would run it, and kill the story. It’s the viral nature that people are attracted to. They don’t want to be banged over the head, they want to DISCOVER! You’ve got to make something so great that people will find out about you WITHOUT YOU TELLING THEM ABOUT IT!

That’s the power of the Web. And you wonder why the major labels are being marginalized.

A great product? Shit, how long has it been since the business has offered that…

A money back guarantee? Shit, why would you want to return the CD IF IT WAS GOOD??

Great customer service… You can’t get anybody at the label on the phone, Live Nation, AEG and TicketMaster aren’t helpful either. You end up HATING EVERYBODY IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS!

The Zappos reps take as much time as necessary with customers. They’re empowered to make decisions. If you think you can make a decision at Interscope without asking Jimmy first, YOU DON’T WORK THERE!

I heard about Zappos a few years back, when a friend ordered a pair of shoes from the company. Last week, Felice ordered a bunch of shoes… Not to keep, she tried them all on, looking for just the right pair… You see, they’re wholly returnable! At the company’s expense! You love Zappos… It’s hard to love a band after you’ve been raped with ticket fee extras, never mind their label who’s gonna SUE YOU!

The music industry believes it’s invulnerable. People need entertainment, music, costs and troubles are irrelevant. But that’s wrong. Not today, with so many distractions. Music’s got to be great and the customer has to be respected.

Shit, at Zappos the employees are Twitter crazy. I’d bet my left nut that each and every record company CEO HAS NO IDEA WHAT TWITTER IS!

Can you feel my excitement?

I used to feel this way about bands.

Before everybody involved was doing it for the jet, before the acts were whored out to the Fortune 500, before there was more creativity evidenced by tech entrepreneurs than musicians.

Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too

Over the weekend I read that David Cook dominated the iTunes Top Ten.

The "Idol" finale didn’t help Donna Summer, Seal or George Michael, they’ve got no tracks in the iTunes Top 100. As of now, Bryan Adams’ "Summer of ’69" is sitting at 97, ZZ Top’s "Sharp Dressed Man" is 100 and David Cook’s got the number one track.

There’s something here, and it’s suddenly coming clear.

We live in a rock nation.

They’ve been telling us for years that we live in a hip-hop nation. If we ever did, if it wasn’t a media fabrication akin to the grunge revolution, it’s over. And we’re back to rock. That’s why Bon Jovi can do arenas, people want to hear "Livin’ On A Prayer" and "Wanted Dead Or Alive". As the business fractured at the top, with weenies like Clive Davis constructing ever more vapid product sold by two-dimensional items that weren’t only airbrushed, but auto-tuned, and the hipsters went for esoterica, championing fringe indie rock artists, the public decided it wanted something straight down the middle, otherwise known as Nickelback.

Wince all you want, but this is a different "American Idol" season. The predicted champ, the one all the analysts said was going to win, the lowest common denominator, David Archuleta, LOST! It’s kind of like the election… A black man couldn’t win, Hillary had it sewn up. How could the prognosticators get it so WRONG? The media is out of touch with the public, the only way to figure out what is happening is to do your own survey, feel the vibe. And the vibe is that David Cook is not just a pretty face, he REPRESENTS SOMETHING! Hope. That music can be reclaimed, that we can return to the golden era, when all those classic rock acts were hatched.

Oh, of course I’m a bit on the edge here, if David Cook wrote songs that good, he would have already made it. But people don’t want to hear rhythm or pop, they want to hear rock. Maybe rock ballads, but rock. Sure, it might be a karaoke version, but isn’t "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For" better than ANYTHING on Top Forty radio? There’s a hope, an exuberance, an otherworldly, UNCALCULATED MAGIC in the track. It can’t even be denied in Cook’s take. And people want it. Hell, U2 benefited more than any of the classic acts on the finale, and THEY WEREN’T THERE!

It all comes down to your material… Is IT classic? If it is, then you’ve got longevity. You’re on "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero". People put their heads into the air and yelp like dogs, your songs inhabit them!

Fuck an album, fuck the profits. I’d say if Bryan Adams really wants to come back, he should sit down and WRITE A SONG with David Cook, THIS WEEK! Have it out NEXT! How come the "Idol" songs can be on iTunes the next day, and the live shows of superstars can’t? Could it be that "Idol" is more in touch with the zeitgeist than the major label music business? Could it be that Guy Hands should close down artist development over at EMI and throw in with a television contest?

It’s a lonely alienated world we live in. With no center. "Indiana Jones" sucks. And Madonna does too. There’s no center. We’re looking for a center.

I can categorize all day long what’s wrong with "American Idol", but it represents what our hit movies, records and TV shows used to. A RALLYING POINT! Something we can discuss in the agora of life. Being a shoegazer who hates everything mainstream is no longer a calling. Because no one cares what you say, there is no center. Your outside opinions only count if THERE IS A CENTER! The point is, can you be mainstream without selling out? Put another way, is it BAD TO BE MAINSTREAM? To create a song that can be played at the ballpark? Something that puts a smile on your face at the beach?

Not only did David Cook sing "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For", he did "All Right Now". And "Baba O’Riley". When all the female contestants are imitating Mariah Carey, tarting up their look and vocalizing like frogs on Adderall, this guy sings straight ahead rock and he WINS! David Archuleta goes all sappy, he pulls at the little girls’ heartstrings, but he LOSES! Badly! Because the little girls might understand, but they don’t rule. People liked where Cook was coming from, they wanted to give him a chance, they wanted a new Daughtry.

Hell, even Simon Cowell didn’t get it. He wants someone cute, who he can mold. Get some hack to write a song for. Whereas rock records tend to be written by sleep-deprived drug addicts. With enough personalization and grit for the audience to relate.

It’s a crazy, fucked up world where the winner of "American Idol" is our biggest hope, but that’s the truth. Today, the biggest act in America isn’t Mariah Carey, he’s a scruffy rocker, whose traction is based on renditions of decades-old songs.

You see we want to believe. We’re sick of cynicism. We’re sick of being told what we think, to buy the shiny new construction by thieving old men.

It benefits us to have a center. It makes us better as a society.

If you want to make it today, don’t work with Timbaland, don’t strip in "Vanity Fair’, WRITE SATISFACTION! Hell, even Collective Soul’s "The World I Know". Simon Cowell castigated David Cook for this choice, but the audience remembered this magical track from the last century. Cook’s rendition of "The World I Know" is number 19 on iTunes. Ahead of Gavin DeGraw, Maroon 5 and the vaunted ESTELLE!

I’m not even sure it’s ABOUT David Cook, the individual. I’d tell him to fuck the album and continue to put singles in the marketplace. These songs on iTunes are not even AVAILABLE on CD. Get modern, go with the audience. But, I can say I’m interested. I pooh-poohed "Idol" for years. But Cook winning isn’t much different from Obama getting the nomination. Instead of playing it safe, Cook did what he wanted, he didn’t repeat a safe rendition of "Imagine" like Archuleta, he took a risk, AND IT PAID OFF!

This is the best thing that could have happened to the "Idol" franchise. The most legitimate, the most pedigreed person won. But it’s also good for music. Just like Carrie Underwood’s victory was good for country, Cook’s victory is good for rock. It brings focus, definition…

Sure, the great rock acts write their own material. Cook’s career hangs in the balance. But I feel like we’re suddenly living in the U.K., where one can be EXCITED about what’s popular, what’s on the chart. Maybe we’ve found what we’re looking for.

ABANDONED LUNCHEONETTE

The eighties hits were the comeback.

I’m sick of the rewriting of history. The fiction that Hall & Oates have to be plucked from the trash bin of history, that this is a reclamation project, that we finally have to admit Hall & Oates were cool. They were cool from the very BEGINNING!

They signed with Atlantic Records, run by Ahmet Ertegun, the coolest dude in the business. They even made an album with the ultra-cool legend, Todd Rundgren. But they couldn’t score a hit. And they shuttled off to RCA, where they single-handedly resurrected the worst label in the business. That’s like winning the Preakness on Mr. Ed. THEN, after breaking through big time, they fell back to the bottom, went back to clubs when most people would give up, climbed back up BEFORE MTV and then had a seeming endless victory lap on the music television outlet and NOW people say they were CHEESY, but we have to admit they made good music? HORSESHIT!

RICH GIRL

The midseventies were a heyday of radio. L.A. had five rock stations. And I’ll never forget exiting the law school parking lot when this one track came out of the speakers.

You’re a rich girl, and you’ve gone too far

This was "Fun, Fun, Fun" one step removed. An update of Brian Wilson’s classic track, ONLY BETTER! The girl was no longer in a T-Bird, she was driving a Benz, shopping on Rodeo Drive, we knew exactly who she was, and we couldn’t stop singing about her.

The track had no intro, no set-up. Daryl Hall immediately started singing. Almost a cappella. Then, a guitar flew in like Telstar, a Philly soul band emerged and we were OFF TO THE RACES! If horse races were run on roller coaster tracks. The strings swooped in and out, hands clapped and conductor Daryl Hall lorded over the whole concoction. Done in less than two and a half minutes, you pushed buttons incessantly in the hope of hearing it again. Shit, I bought the album AND I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE A STEREO!

"Bigger Than Both Of Us" is a classic. Listen to "Crazy Eyes" and the late night burner, "Do What You Want, Be What You Are", with its Earth Shoes reference, but marvel at "Rich Girl", the legendary single. Hacks listen to the radio and try to replicate what they hear. Geniuses come up with something brand new, something we’ve never heard before, but immediately gravitate to when we hear it. Shit, "gravitate" doesn’t connote the essence, that we LOVE FROM THE VERY FIRST TAKE AND CAN NEVER BURN OUT ON.

Then nothing…

DON’T CHANGE

Hall & Oates didn’t play it safe. They expanded upon their rock and soul premise…and no one cared, even though "Beauty On A Back Street" was released only a year later. The only flaw of the album opening "Don’t Change" is it’s more rock than soul, radio didn’t know what to do with it. But listeners, the few who bought the album, were ENRAPTURED! But my absolute favorite cut was deep on side two, "Winged Bull". More like Alice In Chains’ "Rooster" than anything cut in Memphis or Philadelphia. At some point in the future, my generation is going to die, will all these magnificent album tracks evaporate from consciousness too? If I had a radio show, I’d play "Winged Bull" and you’d say WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Majestic, piercing, all with Daryl Hall’s pure voice atop. He wasn’t whored out to his soul success, he still had his rock roots. Maybe that’s why the system was so confused. You had to be one thing or the other.

ALONG THE RED LEDGE

Album after album, no hits, no one cared. I went to see the band at the Roxy. Previously they’d played the Universal Amphitheatre. It was like seeing Willie Shoemaker give riding lessons to your next door neighbor. Give it up, get a day job, this is just too creepy.

But musicians can’t give up.

And stunningly, Hall & Oates CAME BACK!

To tell you the truth, I thought covering "You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’" was pretty desperate. That’s what you do when you’ve run out of options, are ruled by frustration, cut a cover. The opener of 1980’s "Voices", "How Does It Feel To Be Back", gripped me. But I can’t say that I gave the album a good spin. Just another stiff by a band I loved so much once that could no longer get traction. Then, long after I’d given up on the record, when I’d probably bought twenty more by other artists, this keyboard started exploding out of the radio.

YOU MAKE MY DREAMS

What I want you’ve got

This was not sold by a glitzy video. With a chick with big tits. This was a RADIO RECORD! Remember those? You’d hear them and stare at the dial, stunned that something so exquisite could come over the airwaves.

Hall & Oates did "You Make My Dreams" last night at the Troubadour. I was up jitterbugging, like I’d digested Mexican jumping beans, I couldn’t help myself. That’s how the great eighties Hall & Oates hits are. They infect you, make you jump up and PARTICIPATE! Make you believe there’s nothing better than being alive, that you must SURF THE ZEITGEIST!

Hall & Oates lost their label deal long ago. Bands like this feel forgotten. When you see them live, they’re going through the motions, selling nostalgia, pissed that they’re not who they once were. But not Hall & Oates. They showed up with eight pieces, including the duo. They were as well-rehearsed as a traveling jazz band of the forties. But better yet, THEY WERE ENJOYING THEMSELVES!

This was not the Police, not Genesis, doing it for the money. I’m not even sure the show was for the fans. Daryl Hall was having so much fun, it was INFECTIOUS! Shit, he was having MORE FUN THAN ME!

And, even though 62, his voice was fully intact. Oates was doing the "oohs", playing the guitar, and the music that emerged was VITAL!

They played numbers off "Abandoned Luncheonette". They came back for two encores. And, if they hadn’t turned on the houselights and cranked the background music, the audience would have demanded a THIRD!

SHE’S GONE

This track was in the can, on the racks, for YEARS before it was a hit. I’m sure Hall & Oates were frustrated. But if you’re dedicated, if music is your calling, you don’t give up. Even if the radio is dominated by melisma floating over rhythm. Mariah’s spouting her inanities, but like old jazz musicians, Hall & Oates have not given up. They don’t have the rep, the history of the Stones, but they’re not letting it get them down. Because it’s about the music more than the success, the sound more than the dollars. And you hear this, you FEEL IT when you see them live.

Sure, you can go to the show and relive your MTV memories. And there are plenty of them…enough to make sure Daryl Hall never has to get a day job. But that’s just icing on the cake. This duo has a thirty five year catalog, a body of work. You’re not seeing stars, you’re watching MUSICIANS!

FAMILY MAN

Where did this come from? Who even knew Mike Oldfield wrote more than "Tubular Bells"? What possessed them to cut a cover, once they were fully back, when they were on a roll?

We’re all part of the family. Not those buying an occasional track on iTunes. But those who need this music, devour our albums. When we hear these tracks, a string is drawn, our lives can be seen as a continuum, our histories make sense.

We’re part of the family of music. Started sometime around the Beatles and died sometime after Hall & Oates stopped having hits. That MTV success was just the cherry on top, for not only Hall & Oates, but Steve Winwood, ZZ Top, all those other acts that had been in the game for eons. Their greatness could finally be SEEN, by ALL! But then it only became about how you looked. The music was not about experimentation, rather safety. We ended up scratching our heads…where did our music go?

We’d go to the stadium show, we’d see our memories, but not feel them. Mick Jagger was not really on stage, but at the bank, counting his dollars. The vitality was absent.

The vitality was in full force last night. It was palpable. We’re gonna get older, eventually we’re gonna die, but we’re gonna be able to listen to our music until we pass to the other side. It may be static on wax, even MP3, but it positively breathes on stage. When those playing it stop treating it as dead, but as a vessel they can blow life into. The songs were not new, but last night was not an oldies show, the players, the music, WE WERE TOTALLY ALIVE!

I was gridlocked on the freeway listening to Sirius. That’s when I learned they had a Neil Diamond station, and it was going to expire in a matter of days. I immediately switched to Channel 3 and heard an oldie. Then the middle-aged dream came on and explained the backstory to the song "Forgotten" from his new album.

That’s how Neil Diamond felt. Forgotten. Weird to think a superstar feels forgotten. But when you’re not on the pop chart, when your name is not in the news, you feel left out of the loop. You think the industry no longer cares about you. Even though you think you’re still valid, still doing some of your best work.

Although most acts are not. They can’t seem to get back in that original space. That’s what Rick Rubin specializes in…getting you back to where you once belonged, when you wrote all those hits, when the people came to love you. You’ve got to let go, let him intimidate you, bring you down, tell you your material is not there yet, to rejuvenate you.

I played the single from the new album. It didn’t reach me. I didn’t bother to play the rest of the album, I didn’t want my illusions of greatness, Neil’s legacy, ruined. But this song…

It was stripped down, like Rick’s work with Johnny Cash. It was almost like a demo. And okay, until deep into the track, Neil got into this groove, he played the guitar just like in "Holly Holy", but it was different. He wasn’t ripping himself off, just recapturing his essence. It was like someone reached out of the speakers in my car and grabbed me. Took my hand. Led me to a better land. Where I used to live, when music existed sans trappings, when music was an oasis unto itself. I realized this guitar part wasn’t the only magical element of "Forgotten", the verses had Neil’s essence too. But when that guitar ascended, I couldn’t stop smiling, on the inside, I was brought right back to the midsixties.

Neil’s album entered the chart at number one. But it sold a pitiful amount. Almost no one’s heard it. It’s kind of creepy. There’s all this ink, every newspaper known to man did a story about his comeback. But it was a silent comeback, under 200,000 purchased the record. How do we get more people to hear it?

I think the link here is Sirius. We’ve got to be fed by a middle man with an investment. Sirius’ investment is in your subscription fee. They’ve got to make radio interesting, fulfilling, or you’re going to cancel your subscription. Think of it like HBO…

If you’re not hooked on radio, if you think satellite radio is a rip-off, that’s fine. I just ask you, who are you going to put your faith in, to turn you on to new stuff? The computer at some Net radio service? Do you let a computer fix your meals too? Don’t you need a human being? One not sold out to the system?

Where are these outlets? The public is waiting. On one hand we’ve got music, the other a desirous public, and between them a great gulf.

Meanwhile, Rick makes this record, talks about new media in the "New York Times", but you can’t hear the entire record online. You should be able to at least stream the whole album.

And there shouldn’t be a whole album.

How come the Cure can get it right and Rick can’t? Hell, he’s the head of the label… Maybe four cuts at a time… I couldn’t wait to fire up "Home Before Dark" after hearing "Forgotten". The first two tracks didn’t reach me at all. Then the next two did. But I still had eight to go. Repetition breeds intimacy, breeds likability, generates a bond. An LP side was less than twenty minutes, you flipped over the album again and again, the songs seeped into your brain. I can’t digest this entire hour long album. Because there are too many mediocre tracks amongst the winners… Doesn’t anybody have an editor? I mean if this shit was free on the Web, the public could weed through the good stuff. But to make us buy this stuff first to try and ferret out what we like so we can go to the show and hear..? This is just too inefficient.

Don’t tell me about artistic statements. Old acts must be revitalized. They must create new music, their audience must hear it, must want to experience it live. It’s the only hope for our industry to thrive. The new. We all crave the new. We like the old, but we want the new.

I think you’ll like "Forgotten". If you like Neil Diamond to begin with. All the schmaltz has been shaved off. What’s underneath is so honest, so human, that you can’t stop playing it. It’s not about the perfection, but the life contained within. The cheesy organ. That guitar riff.

Unfortunately, everyone’s so interested in the money, people only care about the money. It’s keeping the music from the audience. If it gets there, endless riches can pour out of fans’ wallets. But it also requires the middle men, the filters, to be in it for the love too. I’d take a music blogger over a terrestrial radio station any day. They do it because they believe. I believe. Do you?