You want to hear about it from someone else.

The first thing I do each morning isn’t read the newspapers, or surf the Web, I check my e-mail.  Oh, the first time through isn’t in depth, it’s a cursory survey, to see if there’s anything important, to take the TEMPERATURE!  And today’s review told me…Trent Reznor was giving away the new Nine Inch Nails album, free, on the band’s site.

I heard mostly from people I didn’t know.  They weren’t telling me so I would write about it.  I didn’t get e-mail from Trent himself, nor Jim Guerinot or someone else at Rebel Waltz.  But from people who were just so damn excited, they had to spread the word.

And what is the word?  That Radiohead seems to be balking re the future (although the press has twisted Thom Yorke’s words, he didn’t exactly say they would never do a Web giveaway again…), while Trent’s moving headlong into the future.  While the majors are rushing albums into release before the leak, Trent’s releasing albums we’ve never even heard about…we’re finding out first from HIM!  Or his minions.

I’m not sure you need a publicity agent anymore.  Someone with relationships with newspapers and TV.  That’s fine if you want to be Mariah Carey…  But remember "Glitter"?  No one wanted to see her thereafter, until she was resurrected by L.A. Reid…  Whereas Trent’s not dependent on singles, not hits…he’s got FANS!

Mariah watchers may fill up the message boards, looking for recognition in their celebutard world…  But when someone posts to a Trent board, it’s not as simple as I LIKE NIN!, rather there’s something cogent being said or discussed.  Yes, fans like to dissect the music as well as every move of an act.

How do you get to be Trent?

Obviously not by creating radio-friendly music.  You’re better off doing something unique, that fans can grab hold of, and then spread the word on.  Then, you wait for serendipity to play a part.

With Trent, it was Woodstock ’94…  When he performed and the audience threw mud.  THEN the major press picked up on the story, not because they were fed the news by a press agent, but because THERE WAS A STORY!

And immediately, the usual suspects came ‘a calling.  You know, you become an instant star and you hear from not only CAA, but "The Today Show", Regis & whomever he’s paired with that day…  All the news magazines.  You’re fodder for them.  They want to chew you up and spit you out.  David Letterman talked night after night about getting Nine Inch Nails on his show…but the band never appeared.  Because NIN was owned by the FANS, not the SYSTEM!

That’s how you grow it…

Marketing is not an element.  Nor is hair and makeup.  The focus is on music.  And you can’t get people to believe in a Diane Warren/Clive Davis clusterfuck…  There’s no one HOME!  You’ve got to write the music yourself, as a band, or with band friends.  You’ve got to look like you came from nowhere, not owned by the usual Hollywood suspects.  If you’re good enough, and available enough (i.e. play live), maybe after YEARS you’ll have your serendipitous moment.  That you won’t even see coming.  You’ll put a lot of effort into one gig, thinking it’s the breakthrough, when something thrown off casually will make the difference.

And once you do make it, you’ve got to learn to say no.  The major media is not on your team.  They play for themselves, in their own league.

As for Trent dropping another album…  I wouldn’t do it this way.  Maybe he sees the record as a cohesive whole.  But the key in the future is a little bit on a regular basis.  Because this is what fans WANT!  New music, more info, they want to feed their addiction.  Rather than drop a load on them infrequently, give them something they can ponder for a few days or a week, then leave them hungry for a MONTH FROM NOW!

It’s not about free music.  And it’s not about piracy.  It’s about the democratization of access.  About the rising power of the audience.  Don’t pay attention to the mainstream pundits.  They’re just looking to save their jobs, no different from Universal Music or Sony BMG.  They want it the way it’s always been.  But it’s never going to be that way again.

Felice wants to buy a flat panel.  She was set on a Sony, but "Sound & Vision" said Samsung made the LCD with the best blacks.  So we drove down to Best Buy.

We didn’t see a salesman and couldn’t make sense of the inventory.  I don’t want to buy what’s available in your store, I want to see EVERYTHING and make the right choice!  It’s like you’ve got to shop with Web access, to check the veracity of the salesman’s spiel, assuming you can get hold of one.  And eventually we did, over at Ken Crane’s, where the dude neglected to tell us the 7 series Samsung was imminent.  But that’s not what I fired up Microsoft Word to tell you about.  I’m here to tell you about GTA IV.  That’s "Grand Theft Auto IV" for you snobs out there.  Those too superior to purchase a gaming console.

We needed another controller.

My friend Jeff bought me a second Rock Band guitar for my birthday.  And I found a TicketMaster giveaway USB hub, I think it came in the MusiCares goody-bag.  But the PS3 only comes with one controller…  If Felice and I want to compete in Gran Turismo, or in that skiing game we want to buy from the PlayStation store, we’ve got to have two.

So I hoofed it over to the video game department.  Where this inner city dude was monopolizing the sales clerk.  I needed to know, which controller should I buy?  The one with or without SHOCK?

And I’m waiting and waiting, as this guy quizzes this woman endlessly about accessories for his PSP.

Finally, they’re done.  And when I pop the question, HE jumps in.  Lord only knows why this dude was speaking to the clerk, he could run circles around her, she knew essentially NOTHING!  Whereas this guy LIVED TO GAME!

We needed the shock controller.  Soon, they wouldn’t even sell the one without shock.  Here, look at the back of this game, you see where it says: SHOCK?  The guy’s eyes started rolling backwards into his head as he waxed rhapsodic what a cool effect this was.

I was convinced, I picked a shock controller off the rack.

But what about games?  What did he think of the new Gran Turismo?

He was into shooting games, not driving games.  But he started pointing out his favorites, delineating their qualities.  I figured he was going to invite me over to play.  Thank god I HAD a PS3…otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have spoken with me at all.  But suddenly, I’m a member of the club, I’m a GAMER!

And what about GTA IV?  Had he played it?

No.  But they had it upstairs.

So we ascended the escalator…and it was nowhere to be found.

So, asking the cashier, he said it was behind the counter…  And it was SIXTY BUCKS!

I’ve never even bought a boxed set for sixty bucks.  And I was already in fifty five for the controller.  But if ever I was going to play the game, I might as well buy it NOW!

It’s kind of like going to the multiplex the first weekend.  You want to participate when everybody else does, when it’s still fresh in everybody’s mind, before the hoi polloi move on to something else.

And let me tell you, we’ve already earned cred.  Last night, at Felice and Monica’s birthday party in Malibu, when we let out to the twenty year olds that we had not only purchased GTA IV, but PLAYED IT, they looked at us completely different, we were hip, we were part of their posse.  Of course, the oldsters asked us what we were talking about.  We ignored them…how do you explain something to people who won’t get it anyway?

And I’m quizzing the cashier as he’s ringing me up…  He seemed to be waiting for this moment.  In a matter of minutes, I got a survey of the PS3 gaming landscape.  I knew what he liked, what was good…  ALL SANS ATTITUDE!

This wasn’t some longhair who’d rather be practicing guitar barely giving me the time of day.  This was a geek.  Probably on his way to Stanford, to change the world.  This was the modern record store.

I know, I know, all you indie store geeks are gonna e-mail me…  Tell me about Record Store Day or something…  That’s like going to the trolley museum.  Or a radio convention.  It’s just not where it’s happening.  And it’s not only me…  Consumers, people who lay their money down, they want to be where it’s HAPPENING!

I had to update the damn console.  Third time this week.  And it’s not like my Mac, it’s DAMN slow.  But you feel good.  This ain’t no toy…  The PS3 is speaking to the Internet wirelessly.  It’s keeping itself up to date.  It’s state of the MOMENT!

Turns out GTA IV can’t be played by two.  So we didn’t need the controller right away.  Oh, you can play with your brethren ONLINE, but we didn’t want to let on what newbies we were.  Which we are.  I SUCKED!

You see you get off the boat, in Liberty City…  And you’ve got to…

Who knows what the fuck you’ve got to do…  You know how video games are, THEY COME WITH NO INSTRUCTIONS!  And, unlike most baby boomers, I read the instructions, I like a heads-up, a leg-up.

Not that the DVD came with nothing…

It came with…  A map of the city.  That’s Liberty City to you.  With a bunch of boroughs…  Like New York.

And…an instruction booklet that told you what all the controller features were for.

So, I tried to drive off the dock…

I hit a concrete barrier.

Eventually, I got out on the main drag…  But I missed a turn, the car flipped over and we had to start all over again.  So I passed the controller to Felice…

FELICE IS AN INCREDIBLE DRIVER!  Not only did she make it off the dock without denting the car, or killing the headlights, like me, she got out on the freeway, she was driving from borough to borough.

We went to the airport…  Even stopped at the gas station.  But it was getting boring.  I told her to get out of the car.

And she’s walking around the deserted landscape and…  She can’t get in anywhere, all the GTA IV features, THEY DON’T SEEM TO WORK!

It was then that I figured out there is some linearity to the game.  That you’ve got to follow the instructions.  The map in the lower left-hand corner…  To ROMAN’S HOUSE!

But once we got there, I couldn’t find Roman again.  I kept bumping into walls.  Eventually I made it down to the street.  But I kept getting in fights.  And I couldn’t run away.  I ended up in the hospital, twice.  I was even shot by the police.  Things are rough in Liberty City.

And that’s when I figured out, despite its difficulty, I had to follow the map in the lower left-hand corner again.  EVENTUALLY, I could reach Roman.

And when I did, I passed the controller to Felice.  She drove to a card game.  Like I told you, she’s good.  Then she got Roman on the cell…  THE LOAN SHARKS!  They were here, they had to DRIVE AWAY!

Oh, what a shitty getaway driver Felice was.  She’s methodical, she doesn’t like to make mistakes.  She ended up getting cornered, shot to shit, she ended up in the hospital!

I did little better.  I was caught by the police and shot at.

Meanwhile, every time you get in the car, there’s a radio station playing…  And you can change stations, there’s more worth listening to than on the terrestrial dial (meanwhile, there’s TV too…but we didn’t have time to watch, we were on a MISSION!)

And although sometimes annoying, because it fucks up your concentration, what comes out of the speakers is UTTERLY HYSTERICAL!  It’s irreverent and hip in a way big time music is not.  Like an advertisement for health insurance that says after you reach a $10,000 deductible, all your future expenses are FREE!

The game respects the player.  It’s not dumbed-down like "American Idol".  It’s not two-dimensional like music.  It’s like "The Simpsons" or "South Park"…why is it only cartoon characters can speak truth in our country?

It’s everything music used to be.  A hip cult that the movers and shakers, the moneymen, the rich, the baby boomers, are unaware of.  While music industryites are lauding commercial possibilities, getting on "Grey’s Anatomy", tying up with the energy drink of the hour, RockStar Games has created an artistic enterprise that NO Fortune 500 company will tie up with.  It’s just too dangerous.  And you wonder why kids flock to it?  Hell, the more you hate it, the more they’re drawn to it!

Not that a record can’t be broken on GTA IV.  But there are many stations…  Repetition is not as incessant as it is on Top Forty.  The track’s got to be GOOD to catch on.

I invite you to the world of GTA IV.  Come on, shed your inhibitions.  You loved music once…isn’t it time to be stimulated again?

Go to: GTV IV

You’ll experience the dark vibe of Liberty City immediately.

Go inside.

Click on "Recreation & Entertainment" on top.

From the list on the left, click on "WKKT TALK RADIO"…  It’s almost not a parody, this is what the Democratic candidates only WISH they could say…about the right wing fear mongers on talk radio.

Check out some of the other stations along the left side of the screen…  You’ll get it…  If you don’t think this is hip, YOU’RE DEAD!

If you’re anti GTA IV, you were a member of the PMRC, protesting Prince lyrics.

Now Prince plays the Super Bowl, the ultimate in American wholesomeness.

Don’t criticize GTA IV…  This is what art is all about, challenging conceptions, speaking truth.  This is why GTA IV will outgross Mariah Carey, the Stones and Madonna…  Quite possibly COMBINED!

See you in Liberty City…

My iPod Nano only holds two gigs worth of music. Sometime two years ago, I synched it up with some smart playlists in iTunes, so I never know exactly what it’s going to contain. I just let it play. If I’m looking for something, it’s usually not there, after all, two gigs is just one thirtieth of my iTunes library.

Usually I just fire up a "recently added" playlist. I have them in multiple configurations, fifty, seventy and one hundred tracks. It’s a good way to familiarize myself with new music, what I’ve just downloaded, just ripped, just been turned on to. But sometimes that’s jarring. Sometimes I’m not in the mood for the unknown, I want familiarity, I want solace, I want comfort. So, I scroll through the artists’ names until something hits me emotionally. That’s how music is. What sounded good five minutes ago, now is like nails on a blackboard. Hell, this was supposed to be about the New Riders’ "Dirty Business", which blew my mind when I heard it on XM’s Deep Tracks earlier today. But, as the afternoon wore on, after a phone call with a friend, I was no longer in the mood to recall early summer days at my college roommate’s house on the Cape, I was kind of depressed.

What do you play when you’re at loose ends?

Well, when you’re truly down and out, nothing sounds good. But when you’ve got more questions than answers, what do you put on, what makes you feel rooted, what makes you feel good?

I don’t need to know. That’s just the point. It’s personal. We’ve all got acts that we own. We wish others joined us in the club, but somewhere over the years, we’ve given up on converting new fans. We’re just happy our favorites are still doing it, still making music, still playing live. We can’t explain it, but we need every track they cut, we need to see them in concert, it makes our lives complete.

Scrolling through the names on my Nano in reverse, from Z up, I came across Wendy Waldman. I wondered, which of her tracks were on the device?

Only two. From her album of lost tracks, that never made it to albums, entitled "Seeds and Orphans". And when I pushed the button, "Restless In Mind" started playing through the headphones.

When did the business become bastardized? Was it with corporate rock? Or the advent of MTV? Hair bands? Boy bands? When did it become about the hit? Sure, I love "I’m A Believer", even enjoyed hearing Backstreet Boys’ "Larger Than Life" on the satellite last night. But those are everybody’s tracks. And I don’t always feel like everybody, I don’t always feel like I belong. And when I feel this way, I listen to the artists that I own, like Wendy Waldman.

I thought she was going to break through. Her first album was a gem. It contained her composition "Vaudeville Man", which Maria Muldaur so famously covered. But none of the first four albums made a huge sales impact, and then after working with Mike Flicker, who made the exquisite Heart debut, Wendy Waldman was dropped by Warner Brothers.

Four years thereafter, she emerged from the desert on Epic. With a stellar cut, " Loving You Out Of My Life", but I’ve never found anybody else who’s heard it.

Then another chance in the late eighties on Cypress, with "Letters Home"… The title cut and "Renegade Side" are classics in my ears, but seemingly my ears only.

But Wendy Waldman is not making candles. She didn’t get her MBA, she didn’t become a lawyer. She kept making music. That’s what an artist does, an artist can’t help him or herself.

She went to Nashville and became a producer. Moved back to L.A. Even downsized to make sure she could cover her nut. But none of this is done out of frustration, there’s no angst… She keeps following the path. You could say it’s about dedication, commitment…but those are inherent, in anyone who’s ever achieved greatness. Raw talent is a small piece of the puzzle. It’s matched and trumped by raw desire. How bad do you want it? Not bad enough.

I’ll give it two years, and then if I don’t make it, I’ll go to law school. I get those e-mails.

Hell, I went to law school first. What a mistake that was. Other than becoming familiar with copyright law, which is so important in this Internet era. I don’t want to help you with your case, I just want to listen to music and let my mind drift, I don’t want to live for the bills.

Everyone’s focusing on theft. But that just obscures the underlying truth. That superstardom is dead. It’s a construct for a different era. When mass media herded all the ears and eyeballs, when you could create a ruckus, alert the press and get everybody to pay attention.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve had a facelift if you’re playing for 250. They’re there for your music, not your looks. And, as you get older…is it really about looks anyway? We don’t want our artists to stay forever young, we want them to get older, to continue to explore, to reveal more truth.

If you’re fighting aging, if you want to be young again, I hope you feel bliss in the resulting ignorance. I don’t want to give up the knowledge of years gone by. I want artists who can help me understand where I’m at now, who just don’t want to appeal to an evanescent audience of teenagers.

"Restless In Mind" changes my mood the instant it starts to play. It’s like I’m in a fantasy novel, I’ve gone down the rabbit hole, but it’s not scary, it’s a better place than above ground. And sometimes I need to be in that space.

I was trying to steal Carrie Underwood’s new album, "Carnival Ride". Now I know why the Nashville establishment was up in arms, angry that she didn’t get more recognition by NARAS, her music is actually GOOD! She can sing, and is the beneficiary of the best material in Nashville, the end result is a product that rockers of yore can identify with. Especially, "Last Name". It’s got the heaviness of the woman belters of thirty five years ago. Still, the track is not as good as Miranda Lambert’s "Gunpowder & Lead"… If "Gunpowder & Lead" ever crosses over to Top Forty, you’ll see a star bigger than Taylor Swift being born. I wanted to find out if the rest of "Carnival Ride" was as good. I fired up my P2P program and tried to download it.

A couple of the singles came down via screaming connections. So I searched inside the hard drives of these traders, but couldn’t find the entire album!

This was so non-baby boomer. We’re collectors. We’re completists. If we take more than one track, we want them all! But many people had four, maybe five Carrie Underwood cuts, but not the entire "Carnival Ride", or the previous album, "Some Hearts". This seemed unfathomable to me. And tons more work, I had to search for the entire album track by track.

Unfortunately, when I finally got Carrie’s material on my iPod, I was struck by the sameness. The more tracks I listened to, the less enthused I was. Maybe the public knew something I didn’t. Maybe you ONLY needed the hits!

Fuck saving the album, maybe the public just doesn’t want it!

They say today’s kids have a short attention span? Utter bullshit. Ever watch them play the same video game for twelve hours straight? They’ve just got an unbelievable SHIT DETECTOR! They only want what’s good.

The old paradigm, of saving your pennies to buy an album to play it to death, ultimately liking the whole damn thing? That’s GONE! There’s too much music out there, and it’s all available for free. And I believe P2P should be licensed, people should pay for music, but whatever the ultimate paradigm, people will have the history of recorded music at their fingertips, be allowed to graze at will, and will only want what they believe is good!

We can debate the economic impact ad infinitum, but the more interesting angle has to do with careers. Are you about the singles, or lifestyle? If you’re living and dying by the single, you’re in rough shape. People don’t want to dig deeper. They might come out to see you once, but after your single falls off the chart, they’ve moved on to something else. This does not bode well for Live Nation (AEG only scoops the cream off the top, so it’s less of an issue). How can you make someone a fan of the act, not only the track?

Just putting the music out is not enough. You must establish community, a relationship. There has to be a bond between fan and act. The bond can’t be with radio or TV, because neither of them buy tickets. You’re better off bypassing them and going directly to the fans. Like the jam bands. It’s a culture, the music is paramount, the listener is respected, so fans come out year after year, they support their acts. Maybe not in as prodigious a number as those going to hear the flavor of the moment at the arena, but when that moment is done… How many people want to see Rihanna? Hell, last time around she played CLUBS!

Which brings me to this Snow Patrol track.

Eighteen months ago, stuck in traffic on the 101, I got hooked on "Make This Go On Forever". I heard it on Sirius Spectrum. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, I contemplated the disappearing October sun. As soon as I got home, I downloaded the track. My iTunes library tells me I’ve played it 15 times, but I’m sure I’ve listened many more times than that on my iPod. And loving this cut so much, I searched through hundreds of CDs, I knew I had the album somewhere, I had TWO OR THREE CDs!

I finally found one, but when I inserted it into my computer, I didn’t play it all the way through, I got distracted.

But something inspired me to steal some Snow Patrol tracks two weeks later. They’re in my iTunes library. And a seventh track, that I downloaded last August, on what inspiration I’ll never know, because my library tells me I’ve never played it. This is "Shut Your Eyes".

I was driving down Chautauqua late last night, and just where it merges with PCH, I heard Snow Patrol’s "Shut Your Eyes", on the Sirius Spectrum once again. Wow did it sound fantastic. This is a KILLER!

I whipped out a pen and wrote down the title. And just when I was about to fire up my P2P program to download it, I discovered I already HAD IT!

Still, I’m not gonna listen to the album. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s true, I’m just being honest. I tried once, but it didn’t hook me. I needed the deejay to extract the right track, to spoon-feed it to me. With SO MANY things to discover, with so much great stuff, I don’t dedicate an hour of my time to anything that doesn’t grab me immediately.

Rail all you want, but this is how the younger generation does it. You’re better off releasing a handful of EXQUISITE tracks than an hour-long album. It’s too much to digest. And, in order to get me to go see you, to WANT to go see you, you’ve got to have six or eight tracks that I know, that have seeped into my consciousness serendipitously.

I’d say this is the future, but this is the now. Accept it.