STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART

Bruce is always thinking. He sees careers as a puzzle. Or maybe a gauntlet. How does he get from here to there? How does he keep the arc from descending? He likes getting paid, but the satisfaction is in the victories, keeping his act’s profile on an upward trajectory. He’s not satisfied booking Bryan Adams in sheds, he wants more, he wants his charge to remain vital, to mean more than nostalgia. He abandoned his record deal in the U.S. Made a direct deal with Wal-Mart and is staging this solo acoustic show in tiny venues across America, trying to create buzz with something new, something akin to Ray Davies’ "Storyteller" shows, JT’s "One Man Band".

Back when my hearing was better, I had a ritual. As soon as I’d wake up, I’d drop a record on the turntable and crank it, while I listened in the shower. I remember doing this most with Bryan Adams’ "Cuts Like A Knife". Almost always the first side. By time I emerged from the water, my favorite track was playing, "Straight From The Heart". It spoke to me, it gave me hope. After living with my girlfriend for years, I had to believe romance was in the offing, around the corner, that I’d find someone else. Listening to "Straight From The Heart" I felt optimistic. And when the album’s title track came out of the speakers, I felt powerful. There was a bounce in my step, a swagger. I could win at this game called life. I was a fan.

But I was surprised when Bryan Adams became a superstar two years later with "Run To You". But that was the power of television. Matched with great music, an act could blow up. That was the paradigm employed for twenty years, use TV to blast your act into the stratosphere. Some people still believe in that game, but it’s done. If you’re lucky, now you’ve got a career. And the key isn’t expanding your brand, but satiating your core, it’s all about the core. The ones who come to every show, and those who know you, but haven’t been motivated to come previously. Forget trying to make new fans. You can’t do it, only your preexisting fans can do this. Your career is about lassoing who you can see, not going on a hunt for new pelts.

And this essay was going to be all about how Bryan satiated the core at the Roxy last night, by playing his numbers on an acoustic guitar. Playing gems I’ve never heard in concert, like "Into The Fire", from an album he seems to have disowned. And "This Time" came alive acoustically. And, at the end of the show, during the second set of encore tunes, before the third, his best friend and regular guitarist Keith Scott came out and they reminded us of the power of a band by nailing "The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You". But in the middle…something truly special happened in the middle. Bonnie Raitt came out and played slide guitar.

WHO WOULDN’T WANNA BE ME

Sunday night, I watched the ACM awards. Everybody played live, there were tons of guitars. If you want rock and roll, dial in a country station, it’s absent from the Top Forty outlets.

And about two-thirds of the way through, the man married to the movie star stood in front of the stage with his three supporting axemen and played his radio track. It was this man I ran into on the stairs backstage at the Roxy.

I had no urge to speak with Nicole. And I usually don’t speak to rock stars if I’m not introduced. But impulse took over. I was a friend of his manager Gary, I was the one who’d written that piece. I got the blank stare of a celebrity who’d met too many fans. Not wanting to be rude, but put out. So I explained a tiny bit more…and Keith Urban’s eyes lit up! He pointed at me. YOU’RE THE GUY! GOOD TO PUT A FACE WITH THE NAME! We were now old buddies.

And then Bruce took us back to the dressing room. To speak with Bryan.

But we weren’t the only ones there. Bryan introduced us to Jeffrey Katzenberg and his wife. And when Bonnie Raitt heard my name, she lit up and thanked me for what I’d written. I told her how much I loved "Luck Of The Draw"… And she said after I’d written about it, she’d gone back and relistened, and said to herself this IS a good album! She’s being so easy, so colloquial, not like a rock star, but someone you bump into on the street, waiting for the bus…a regular person. It was MESMERIZING!

And we’re talking movies, about Bryan’s participation in Jeffrey’s animated flicks, and I’m telling myself if ONLY MY MOTHER COULD BE HERE!

ROCK STEADY

So we’re sitting in the VIP area with Rob Light, Bryan’s an ICM client, but Rob booked him originally, before he jumped ship to CAA, Rob’s a fan. And Bryan’s singing and then he says he wants to bring out a friend. The roof almost blew off the building, the crowd was ECSTATIC!

But not as much as me. You’ve got to know… I had that morning ritual once before. I’d fire up Bonnie Raitt’s "Give It Up" while I was putting on my long underwear, getting ready to go skiing every day of January 1973. I treasure my vinyl, because it’s got the original speedy version of "Too Long At The Fair". That whole second side, with "You Told Me Baby" and her version of "Love Has No Pride", before every other chick singer got a hold of it. "Give It Up" is a classic, fully matched by "Luck Of The Draw", a masterpiece from twenty years later.

And, like I said, it was an acoustic show. Bonnie wasn’t wearing that worn out brown Fender. But she DID have that tube on her finger… BONNIE RAITT’S PLAYING ACOUSTIC SLIDE!

This was not baby boomers out on a Saturday night, having a polite reminiscence. This was gritty, this was down and dirty, this was rock and roll. They’re playing "Rock Steady" from her live album, and in the breaks, she’s WAILING!

But you only get one number with the special star… NO, then they break into "Little Red Rooster"!

Now she’s gonna be gone. But Bryan says it’s best with three, and KEITH URBAN COMES OUT AND THEY PLAY "NOT FADE AWAY"!

This went from an evening with one of your favorites…to an evening with three STARS! To an evening that was UNFORGETTABLE! To an evening that reminded you why you left the house to go to the show, why you loved music to begin with. This wasn’t about looks, this wasn’t about the recording, this was purely about music… Played by road dogs with many miles on them, who didn’t evidence dancesteps, who could lift their performance chops to an elite level with a wink!

HEAVEN

Yup, Bryan did that one.

But he didn’t play "Tonight".

When you become a fan of an act, you need to own everything they’ve ever done, you need more. After getting hooked on "Cuts Like A Knife", I bought "You Want It, You Got It". I knew "Lonely Nights" from the radio…but listening to the cassette I taped from the vinyl riding my bike to Redondo Beach every weekend, I found out my favorite cuts were "Fits Ya Good" and "Tonight".

Tonight, tonight
Let’s leave it alone
Leave it alone tonight

That’s what happens at a good rock show. You leave it all alone, all your problems, all your troubles. The music washes you clean. It scrubs away all the bullshit, leaving you pure for the experience. That’s why we keep going. That’s why movies cannot compete with music. That’s why the backdrop and the dance moves and what’s on hard drive are irrelevant. It’s not about the show, but the feel. It’s about the life emanating from the speakers. We love our stars, but what we truly love is how the sound goes straight to our hearts, electrifies us. Last night I was reminded of all this. In spades.

Howard Schultz got confused. He thought he was in the entertainment business.

Funny thing about money… It gives you access. To other people with money, with glamour, with power. There’s not a lot of glamour in coffee. You can make a lot of money purveying it, but Perez Hilton is not going to gossip about you, the hoi polloi are not going to know your name. And this is frustrating to the rich. So they start associating with the famous. The entertainment people. Who will take every dollar you’ve got.

CEOs tend to be educated, men who devour information more than gossip. Whereas entertainment honchos tend to be from the street, self-made men who’ve made it on their cunning, their wiles. These men have a history of ripping off those in other industries, those with money… How come these marks can’t see this… It just shows that they’re just not studying history. If you’re investing in film production, you’re just looking for a very expensive visit to the set, an invitation to the premiere, because you can’t make any money.

Howard Schultz has got more in common with Mark Hurd than David Geffen or Doug Morris. Sure, they’re all imperial, but in straight business the royalty factor is diminished. Other than in your own industry, people only respect your money. You don’t have much power. Entertainment figures have tons of power, where everybody is looking, in popular culture.

Howard Schultz got bit. After a couple of successful recording projects, those flowering him with praise, telling him he was a genius, set out to sell him everything he would buy. People just wanted access, to his store. They didn’t give a shit if the product sold through, until it got burned again and again, Starbucks bought the product one way! Sure, the company got a discount, but what difference does that make if you can’t sell the product at all!

It’s been well-documented how Starbucks’ foray into the music business has been a debacle. But more interesting is the story of how Starbucks itself has been collapsing, how its stock has tanked.

Howard Schultz has stopped hanging with the sycophants, the grifters, the thieves, and has gotten back to his core business, selling coffee. Will he succeed? I’m not betting on him. Starbucks is no longer new, it’s not the latest thing, how do you pizzazz up a classic act? But some of the wisdom he’s imparting, some of his style, illustrates how the entertainment business should behave, if executives focused on reality instead of trying to protect their monopolies.

I’m reading this story on Howard’s dilemma on the front page of today’s "Wall Street Journal"

Schultz’s Second Act Jolts Starbucks

and I come across the following paragraph:

"One of Starbucks’s biggest problems, Mr. Schultz says, is that its long success streak and huge size have left it cautious. So he is imploring people to be bolder. When an employee in Long Beach, Calif., complained that he could create better artwork than what was on the walls, Mr. Schultz told him to just put his pictures up. ‘Don’t ask for permission,’ he recalls saying. ‘Ask for forgiveness.’"

I wanted to jump right up and hit the keyboard immediately. Eureka, THIS IS TODAY’S ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS! Especially the music business.

For all of Guy Hands’ reorganization, he hasn’t done the one thing necessary, empower the newbies. Lyor Cohen makes a fortune and the underlings get fired. Rick Rubin discovers Sonos years after its debut and sees its marriage with Rhapsody as the future when statistics would tell him Rhapsody’s growth curve is modest at best. Where do they find these people? Who know nothing? So much into lifestyle, that they miss the point!

You want your entertainment company to survive in the future? Hire those under thirty five and let them make decisions. Let no one, including execs, make in excess of $100,000 or maybe $150,000. Let everybody be in it together, focused on results, focused on bonuses…THEN we’d see change.

You can’t do anything different at a record label. There’s always someone who’s saying no. Meanwhile, newbies, independents, are doing different things every goddamn day. The music business used to be about testing limits, now it’s more conservative than Fortune 500 firms. How did this happen? How did the world end up being run by the Mark Zuckerbergs?

Sure, Starbucks employees are looking for acknowledgement from their king, but said king is trying to fight complacency. YOU said no one was going to buy a $400 MP3 player and now Apple owns not only the portable music player market, but music retail too! You’ve got to look into the future!

1. Stop suing customers. All your arguments, that it’s theft/copyright infringement, that people need to learn the value of music, have not only not changed the hearts and minds of traders, they haven’t helped your bottom line. This is a suicide mission. Buy Limewire and enjoy the profits. Or at least authorize it and its P2P brethren.

2. Forget CDs and the album. CDs are on a road to marginalization and the public doesn’t want albums. Don’t listen to the vocal minority, listen to the silent majority. Statistics will tell you the above. Don’t prop up the CD, profit off it before it goes extinct and then move on.

3. Sign more acts. It’s your only hope not to lose market share. And as Steve Ballmer said, it’s all about market share.

4. Concert promoters… Establish training programs a la the William Morris paradigm of yore. Only kids know what the hot new acts are. You don’t, you don’t have time, you don’t have enough friends of the target concertgoing age. Admit you’re getting older, PLEASE! You will die sometime. Invigorate your company. Sure, you can still teach your young charges lessons, you’ve got so much experience, but you’re not staying up all night smoking dope on the couch watching zilches anymore, times have changed and the Stones can’t tour FOREVER!

5. Music publishers… Stop bitching that the record companies want to rip you off. Be activists. Approve deals. You’re holding up the future too.

6. License everybody with a new idea. Hell, it’s not clear who the winners are or how long the winners of today will dominate. MySpace is no longer king. And Universal fought with them for years? A MySpace music company is akin to an Ipana toothbrush. Or, if you don’t get that ancient reference… A MySpace music company is akin to an ENRON music company. Look to the future, not the past! It’s what’s coming DOWN the pike that matters!

7. Decide if you want to own the future or just cash the check today and retire. You’re saying you want to rule forever, but do you really just want to get paid for another five years? Fine, but think about the future. Either get out of the way, or empower people to take your place.

8. Read "The Wall Street Journal" before music blogs, ANY music site. Those writing on the Web are passengers. If you want to steer, you’ve got to go to a level above. Don’t pay attention to the screaming meemies, trust your gut. And know that you don’t know everything. And that it’s about finding the individuals who inspire you, who are in touch, to help you with your further success.

Schultz’s Second Act Jolts Starbucks

Not long after dark I found myself winding up the 405 listening to Mark Goodman count down the Sirius Spectrum top dozen of the week. Seemingly voted on by the listeners… Who calls a radio station? Who e-mails a radio station? Not me. But it was interesting, hearing the adult alternative favorites. Just shy of Mulholland, Mark got to number one, Death Cab For Cutie. I was digging the record and then I realized…I’D HEARD IT BEFORE!

I was lying on the couch in Lyor Cohen’s hotel room. Having listened to Lyor’s analogies and explication of the direction of the Warner Music Group for an hour, he then told me he was going to play me some music. I HATE THIS! These are not ideal listening conditions, in front of the purveyor. Let me listen in the privacy of my own home, I’ll give your music a chance. I told Lyor this. He said fine, then he wouldn’t play me some music, it was my choice. But he said it in such a distant, almost put-down way, that I said fine, fire up some tunes.

Got to tell you, the sound systems at the Beverly Hills Hotel suck. At least in this room. The CD player was balky, there was not enough power to fire the speakers at rock and roll level. And the first track Lyor played me…wasn’t crap, but it wasn’t MAGNIFICENT! Lyor had told me Warner was only interested in magnificent. And after hearing his rap, I saw no reason to be a sycophant, I told him, it wasn’t that good. You’d think he’d back off, take umbrage, refuse to play me anything more, tell me I’m a moron, that’s what most executives tell you when you don’t agree that their music is outstanding. But Lyor reached into his bag, extracted a disc and said LISTEN TO THIS!

I get it, I get it. He’s going to keep playing me music until I like something, until I agree with him, am I EVER going to get out of here?

But what flowed out of the speakers was completely unexpected. It sounded more like 1972 than 2008. More prog rock than Top Forty radio fodder. Dark like a Golden Earring record, but more musical. There was a long intro that reminded me of Bowie’s Berlin interlude, psychologically anyway. This intro went on seemingly forever. Eventually some guitars swooped in to play along with the bass. I was waiting for the track to falter. But I remained hooked, captured. The keyboard was a delicious flourish. The track slowly sped up and built like something from Kraftwerk. Then, nearly FIVE MINUTES into the track, someone started to sing. Without the melisma-riddled vocal of the era, but the thin, but mellifluous, voice of someone seeming to vocalize from outer space. I was now rooting for this number, keep it going, don’t disappoint me, don’t deliver a lame chorus. And I wasn’t. Disappointed that is. I was reminded of a great Porcupine Tree track. This number, it was TRULY MAGNIFICENT!

This is Death Cab For Cutie’s "I Will Possess Your Heart".

Lyor wouldn’t tell me who did it. Said it wasn’t the act’s first album. That I’d just have to wait. Which I did, until Saturday night. I never fired up the CD that came in the mail. I don’t hate Death Cab, but there’s never been this one track that’s taken me to the limit…and beyond.

If you want to know what the early seventies were like, fire up a doobie, turn off the lights, lie down on the floor and listen to "I Will Possess Your Heart". Not the short version, which Mark Goodman, played, but the full 8:35 track. You’ll be taken on an adventure. And isn’t that what great music does? Grasp your hand and take you somewhere you didn’t know existed? Leaving you somewhere completely different as a result of the experience?

Check it out at: MySpace Death Cab for Cutie

Or, listen, but don’t watch, video supplants the creation of your own mental movie, at:

imeem I Will Possess Your Heart (Album Version video)

AND CRANK IT!

What if you couldn’t hear a thing.

I’m not one for DVDs. I’m not a member of NetFlix, my DVD player gathers dust. If I find myself with a free hour or two, I fire up the TV and see what’s available on demand. I may not watch much, but I subscribe to each and every channel, I want the full cornucopia of offerings, and most of these are available on demand, at least those of the pay channels.

Last night I started coursing through the offerings, looking for something that caught my fancy, before settling on another episode of A&E’s "Intervention", which Felice and I have gotten hooked on. When you find out at the end that they’ve given up on rehab, that they’re back on the street, you experience a great counterpoint to the mainstream cultural fare, not everything works out o.k., even though sometimes on "Intervention" it actually does. What about that Bryant Gumbel sports show on HBO? Didn’t I read they were going to do something on the Patriots spying scandal? Showtime is the new king of pay TV, and for a minute there, we actually watched a comedy special on the outlet, but then I went back to HBO and fired up this documentary, "Hear and Now", which I’d read a review of in the "New York Times" a year ago… I needed some real life, something removed from the glitz and the glamour. And I got it.

What would you do if your child was deaf? Sally’s parents denied it. Even though both their fathers were doctors. They didn’t want to accept it, until at four years old an independent physician confirmed it, she couldn’t hear a thing. Paul’s mother just couldn’t cope, she cried as she pushed the stroller. Her child would never speak! But both sets of parents decided to send their children to a unique school, where by holding on to teachers’ throats, they could learn to speak by feeling the vibrations, they became functioning members of society, they were mainstreamed in their local high schools, and there they were confronted with the fact that they were different.

Paul expressed interest in a girl in class. A friend asked if he wanted her number. But what would a number do for him? He couldn’t use the phone. Sally stopped speaking at all, so others wouldn’t know she was deaf, so she would fit in. They soldiered on. Paul went to college and became an engineer, they reunited when he went to graduate school in St. Louis, they got married. And had three hearing children.

Can you imagine?

The film is constructed so well. The set-up is given, and just when we think we’re going forward, we go backward, in time, to the beginning.

Sally and Paul were once young. Their family came alive via home movies. Despite being deaf, they were full of life. Now, at age 65, they had decided to get cochlear implants, so they could finally hear.

These are not the 65 year olds of Hollywood. There’s no plastic surgery and dyed hair. Sally and Paul’s hair is white. Their bodies are a bit lumpy. They’re not denying their age, they’ve accepted it and are enjoying living, in retirement, on Lake Ontario, near Rochester.

They speak of being left out. Paul would like to be engaged, he would like to have a conversation. He and Sally went to the New York World’s Fair and saw the picture phone… They became elated. They never got one, but ultimately with the TTY, the telephone typing machine, suddenly, they could connect with people thousands of miles away!

They were doing this together. They had the surgery days apart. Sally had complications. But, eventually, they had their C.I.’s turned on.

And it was nothing like what they expected. For they’d never heard before, they experienced sounds, but what did they mean?

It was overwhelming. The background noise we tune out was deafening. Wearing the C.I. was tiresome. And although they continued to make progress, the audiologist told them at their age…there may not be enough time to remap the brain, so they could fully hear and understand.

It may sound like I’ve given the plot away. But this is no sci-fi production, no caper flick. This is real life.

Far from the glitter and the glitz real people live their lives. Coping with complications. Paul thought of running away, from college, from his family, but for what?

Sally loves the radio… She turns up metal music in her Jeep to experience the vibrations.

When Paul finally hears music, there’s an expression on his face that should inspire all musicians. He finally gets it, this is what it’s about!

I might see "Iron Man" when it comes to the small screen. Or on a transatlantic flight. But I’m never going to watch "Speed Racer", life’s just too short. You live and then you die. Watching the home movies and Sally and Paul in the present, nothing could be more evident. Every life has an arc, no matter how much we deny it. You can either face up to life’s hardships and soldier on or give up. But giving up leads to no satisfaction.

Helen Keller said it’s better to be blind than deaf. To be deaf is to be left out. Sally and Paul, despite their individual accomplishments, want to come in. They decided to have surgery to come in. Dial up "Hear and Now" on HBO on demand to experience their joy and their pain. You’ll see yourself in their eyes if you’ve ever had surgery. It takes such a toll on the body. But we want to get better, we want to live a full life.

Sally and Paul Taylor have. But they’ve got no desire to give up. They want more. It’s the human condition.

Watch the trailer via the link below… You’ll get the idea.

HBO – Hear and Now Trailer – Subtitled

For a longer excerpt:

Hear and Now