Could it be that Dr. Dre is so credible, the godfather, the most respected man in hip-hop, because he HASN’T SOLD OUT?  Hasn’t endorsed champagne, hasn’t had a clothing line?

$400 headphones.  I hope Monster is writing him a fat check, because they’re certainly not going to sell many.  Can you say PRICE POINT?  You have to spend $400 to get bass?  Shit, most people’s STEREOS don’t cost $400.  Never mind their iPods, which they use to listen to music.  The only people who can afford these are the boomers, who hate rap.

As for branching out into speakers and surround-systems…  That’s what I think of when Dre comes to mind, TECHNOLOGY!  I can see Dre at home, reading old issues of "Popular Electronics", doodling, coming up with new ways for music to sound better, a regular Henry Kloss, or Amar Bose.  Isn’t this like Steve Jobs making a record because he sells a shitload of tracks at the iTunes Store?

I’m not saying you can’t grow from music into another business.  It’s happened.  Occasionally.  Sure, Jimmy Dean sold sausage.  But what about the Beastie Boys and their clothing line and magazine and…  And could it be that turning themselves into corporations, with non-music elements, has killed the big time rappers’ careers?  Have you looked at Jay-Z’s sales figures?  People aren’t showing him the love, not in prodigious numbers.

Would Jay-Z have sold more albums if there were no Internet?

Probably.

But that wouldn’t solve his radio problem.  Radio’s a closed shop that no one listens to controlled by people beholden to advertisers who say they care about music and the public.  Hogwash.

So Dre’s got a new album coming out.  I fear for him, in light of his label’s best efforts to destroy compensation for recorded music.  Yup, Universal has single-handedly held back the future.  Doug Morris has even gone on record about it.  He couldn’t FIND someone to help him!  They’ve employed talent scouts forever, to find hit acts in nooks and crannies, but they can’t find one fucking technologist, one fucking geek?  Hey, ASK YOUR CHILDREN!

But it seems that Jimmy Iovine has gotten out of the recorded music game.  Thrown up his hands and declared they must monetize elsewhere.  As if Tommy Hilfiger suddenly decided to create an airline.  Or Britney Spears decided to compete with Amgen.  Seems Jimmy only cares about money.  Art?  That was back in the twentieth century!

Dre’s a musician.  A fabulous producer.  You’ve got to focus on your assets.  License your tunes if you want more money.  Don’t go into areas you’re unfamiliar with.  The public’s not going to follow you.  Certainly not at these prices.

I think it’s hysterical that the major labels are so fucked up that they need 360 deals encompassing the world.  Wanting to whore their acts out to anybody who’ll pay.  Decimating careers in the process.

If Dre’s pissed about economic conditions, he shouldn’t go into business with Jimmy Iovine, he should SUE HIM!  For restraint of trade.  Throw the book at him.  A cartel fucked up music monetization.  That’s the story, not that consumers are thieves and everybody in music must find a new line of work.

But what I find most hilarious here is that years ago, this story in the L.A. "Times" would have been news, everybody in the music business would have known about it.  But not one person forwarded it to me.  Because mainstream media doesn’t have the clout it used to.  So, when you say equivocal things in a fawning press, which loves access, your business partners may be happy, but the public remains ignorant, out of the loop.

Fuck branding.  Fuck turning yourself into a corporation.  Focus on music.  There’s a ton of money to be made in music.  If only you’d stop listening to the usual suspects who’ve got no idea what’s truly going on because they don’t have Facebook or MySpace pages and they don’t surf the Web 24/7.  They don’t have their ears to the ground.  But the people do.  And they’re looking for good music.  They want to own it, they want to remix it, they want to sync it to slideshows and videos.  They want to see it live.  They will adore you and give you all their money if they believe in you.  If you’re in bed with the man and not them, odds are they’re gonna give up on you.

Don’t listen to the usual suspects.  Music is healthy.  There are opportunities galore.  But they’re different from before.

And let’s start by stopping lawsuits and licensing everybody with an idea.  Monetizing as we uncover what the public wants.  Stop trying to get the people to buy music the way you want to and try selling it to them the way they want it.  Stop fighting Apple.  If you think licensing DRM-free tracks to Amazon is gonna hurt Apple, still selling locked tracks, you know nothing about convenience, you know nothing about stupidity.  Hell, look at the tens of thousands of people who paid for the Radiohead album online this week when they could have gotten it from the band itself, months before, essentially FOR FREE! 

Come on.  Stop saying your hands are tied.  Start seeing the future as opportunities instead of closed doors.  Hell, if you want revenue from those draconian 360 deals then you’ve got to make the acts hit.  Which requires that people be able to acquire and hear the music cheaply.  Which side are you on, the future’s or the past’s?

New lines of work for Dr. Dre, Iovine

So I’m surfing god knows where and my computer starts to go BALLISTIC!

I mean it starts trying to send e-mail, have a conversation in iChat, all the while actually speaking to me and opening up Terminal, to fuck with my system.

This is not supposed to happen on a Mac.

I can’t get a menu to work, so much is happening so fast, I can’t force quit any of the apps.  So I shut down the entire machine.  It takes forever to reboot, under Mac standards, maybe a minute and a half, and then…MAIL’s totaled.  Says I’ve got nothing.  Seventy odd thousand e-mails…  Pfft.

I’m in shock.  This is not what I had planned for today.  I started researching online, found nothing and ultimately called Apple.  Where the dude was very friendly, but seemed more interested in documenting my alien attack than actually helping me.  But eventually I was transferred to a security specialist.  You know what it’s like to actually to speak with someone who knows what he’s talking about?  I mean I’m no dummy, I know what a plist is, I know how the machine works.  And we’re having an intellectual discussion about Macs, security…  I’d like to tell you I have such wise discussions in the music business, but instead I’m usually the victim of bullying and hype.  No wonder the techies are taking over the world.

Having installed Leopard and Time Machine, I was able to…go back in time and put my machine where it had been at noon.  Turns out to be easier to do than I thought.  As was installing the extra 500 gig hard drive.  Although the dude at Seagate got confused telling me which one to buy.

And then I decided to download MissingSync, for my Blackberry.

I got an iPod Touch as a gift.  It’s the greatest ad for an iPhone ever.  Everything just works, INSTANTLY!  Not a perfect iPod, since you have to wake it up every time you want to adjust volume or change songs, but surfing the Web is cool.  If only I lived in a larger house and I couldn’t take my laptop wherever I wanted.  But I’m NEVER switching to AT&T.  "Consumer Reports" just trashed their service, deservedly.  I call you, I can’t hear, we can’t connect.  Would you switch to Verizon so you can see that cell phones actually work?  Not as well as in Europe and the rest of the world, but good enough.  But being on a BlackBerry on Verizon leaves me using the execrable PocketMac.  Which doesn’t sync half of half of the contacts.  So, after updating my address book using the new Mail menu that allows you to instantly add the people who’ve e-mailed you, I went to purchase MissingSync and COULDN’T FIND MY WALLET!  I’m calling the grocery store, I’m freaking out.  Not quite as bad as having a car accident, but talk about ruining your whole week…  After an hour, after reality had to start to set in, after I turned the house upside down, I found it under my bed.  How it got there…

What else is on my mind?

They say it’s the greatest country in the world, but if you believe this, you haven’t left home. I was on a plane, the fucking bathroom door didn’t work.  Talk about SMELL!  And there was a kid coughing.  THROUGHOUT THE FLIGHT!  I’ve got a cough now too, asshole.

And I’m reading an interview with David Frum, who plays for the wrong team, i.e. the Republicans.  And they ask him what his problem is with Laurie David.  And he says ANYBODY WHO FLIES AROUND IN A PRIVATE JET PREACHING GREEN DESERVES NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.  I agree.  You e-mail me to tell everybody to use fluorescent bulbs, but your carbon footprint is the size of Exxon’s.

And Steve Jobs is gonna announce iTunes movie rentals Tuesday.  Am I the only one who doesn’t give a fuck?  That these same rich assholes want to preserve a business making these horribly shitty pictures?  It’s us versus them.  And they are rich, they’re wealthy hedge funders paying capital gains rates on their guaranteed income.  They’re people who believe money triumphs over everything.

And while I’m at it, although the mainstream and cool merged in the late twentieth century, I’m here to tell you COOL IS DONE!  No one cares anymore.  For cool to triumph, there’s got to be a mainstream.  THERE IS NO MAINSTREAM!  Just a zillion different niches.

Hey, my favorite e-mail of the week is the one from the guy who works at Bank of America Securities giving me shit that my listening habits aren’t cool enough.  YOU WORK FOR THE MAN!  I can listen to music all day long, I’m not a slave to the grind.  But you’ve got your money, so you think you’re a big swinging dick.

And what does this have to do with music?

If you like something, SO BE IT!  People hated the Carpenters in the seventies, now everybody says they were great.  Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.

Which brings me to this two disc free download album Bruce Hornsby is giving away on his Website.

Didn’t work for me at first.  The unzipping hung.

But when I ultimately got it, and listened on my iPod, I was stunned.  THEY COULD ACTUALLY PLAY!  Remember when being a musician meant that you were schooled, you practiced, you had talent?  When how you looked, your image, your endorsements…weren’t even part of the picture?  Well, looks always counted, but that didn’t stop Jerry Garcia and Pigpen.  But it would stop them today.

So these are not my favorite Bruce Hornsby MP3s.  My absolute fave is his rendition of "Tangled Up In Blue" with Bela Fleck live at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.  Still, there are moments of magic here.  Listen to the very first track, "Country Doctor".  Not as a hit, but while you’re doing something else, reading the newspaper.  You’ll be HYPNOTIZED!  You’ll find yourself tapping your fingers involuntarily.  That’s a reaction to music, not buying the merch.

What a fucked up business this is.  It’s about money, not music.

But when Bruce segues from "Fortunate Son" into "Comfortably Numb", you remember who you are.  All those times you heard the Pink Floyd track on FM radio.

If you want an adventure, buy Bruce’s "Spirit Trail".  You’ll become enraptured.

I want another double album like that, of new material from a guy who got on a run, who didn’t labor so much as get INSPIRED!

And there’s inspiration on this free download.  You can hear the joy, you marvel at the musicianship.  It may not be your cup of tea, but that’s not the point.  The point is you can listen to this, you don’t have to see it, you can be taken away by the notes.  And, right now, I want to be lifted on a magic carpet above the bullshit, and this music works.

Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers

You’ve all been reading about the plunge in album sales this year, a total of 15%. But if you think sales are dropping across the board, on a strict percentage basis, you’re wrong. The best sellers are taking a disproportionate hit. In other words, they’re just not selling THAT WELL!

Sales in 2007, including both physical and digital, topped out at 500.5 million albums. The peak year was 2000, when 785 million units were sold. So, you’d expect sales of best sellers to drop by approximately one third, or 36.25%, to be exact.

The best selling albums of 2000 were:

1. "No Strings Attached/’N Sync: 9,936,104
2. "Marshall Mathers LP"/Eminem: 7,921,107
3. "Oops!…I Did It Again"/Britney Spears: 7,893,544
4. "Human Clay"/Creed: 6,587,834
5. "Supernatural"/Santana: 5,857,824
6. "Beatles 1"/Beatles: 5,068,300
7. "Country Grammar"/Nelly: 5,067,529
8. "Black & Blue"/Backstreet Boys: 4,289,865
9. "Dr. Dre 2001"/Dr. Dre: 3,992,311
10. "Writing’s On The Wall"/Destiny’s Child: 3,802,165

The best selling albums of 2007 were:

1. "Noel"/Josh Groban: 3,699,000
2. "Soundtrack"/ High School Musical 2: 2,957,000
3. "Long Road Out of Eden"/Eagles: 2,608,000
4. "As I Am"/Alicia Keys: 2,543,000
5. "Daughtry"/Daughtry: 2,497,000
6. "Soundtrack"/Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley: 2,489,000
7. "Minutes To Midnight"/Linkin Park: 2,099,000
8. "Dutchess"/Fergie: 2,064,000
9. "Taylor Swift"/Taylor Swift: 1,951,000
10."Graduation"/Kanye West: 1,892,000

So, the drop from number one over the past seven years was a whopping 62.77%!
Number two: also a 62% drop.
Number three: 67% drop.
Number four: 61% drop.
Number five: 57% drop.
Number six: 50% drop.
Number seven: 58% drop.
Number eight: 51% drop.
Number nine: 51% drop.
Number ten: 50% drop.

In other words, best sellers aren’t selling tonnage! They’re outpacing the decline of the industry SIGNIFICANTLY!

The major label scorched earth policy of overexposing an album to ubiquity seems to be less effective than EVER!

It’s not like Josh Groban didn’t get TV exposure. Hell, he was featured on Oprah. But it was not like ‘N Sync being all over MTV, back when the "M" stood for music and the outlet banged videos AND PEOPLE WATCHED THEM!

Eminem was a cultural phenomenon. But today you’re famous for your antics, not your music. And your antics don’t sell records. Just ask Paris, Lindsay or even Britney. TMZ and PerezHilton will reach a lot of people, but they’re not about music.

Funny, vapid rock still sells. Creed was at number four in 2000 and Daughtry is at number five in 2007. Anybody who says rock is dead… Well, meat and potatoes rock is alive and kicking. But Daughtry is no Creed, able to sell out large venues from coast to coast.

There’s only one hip-hop album in the Top Ten in 2007. And the boy band genre is kaput. But is this steep sales decline amongst best sellers about the lack of fads, or of stars, or just an indication that society has changed, that in the Net era, everything is niche. You’re lucky to gain a foothold. Hold on to your fan base, maximize the revenue there, because it’s going to be damn hard to convert the casual fan…BECAUSE HE’S JUST NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

You’ve got hundreds of TV channels. Endless movies in the theatres and on NetFlix. The infinite Web and hand-held mobile devices. It’s just impossible to reach everybody. Marketers realize you can have an ad on network television and a great percentage of the public can be IGNORANT OF YOUR PRODUCT!

People still want music. In prodigious amounts. They just don’t all want the same thing.

This is bad news for the major labels. Starting in the seventies, with the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Boston, the labels counted on the breakout superstar to make their numbers, to pay for all the failures. Well now that paradigm is done. You just can’t sell that many of ANYTHING! Albums have to pull their own weight. Saturation marketing moves very little. You’ve got to find something that resonates with a portion of the public and then hope people spread the word.

Piracy is hurting the record business. But that’s not the only thorn in the side of the major label. It’s not 2000 anymore. We don’t live in one homogenous society, everybody paying attention to the same thing. We live in an era of endless narrowcasting. Although the majors still believe we live in an era of broadcasting. And that’s hurting them.

So, if you’re operating on a smaller level, if you’re not swinging for the fences, there’s still a market out there for you. Don’t overspend, know it takes time for people to catch on to you. And know that being as big as the Beatles, even the Backstreet Boys, is presently an impossibility.

All the structures built upon superstardom… The majors, LiveNation… They’re in trouble. Their only hope is to go niche, to try and find quality that resonates and build slowly for the long term. But they don’t want to do this. Because it’s too hard to earn money this way. Leaving the field wide open for entrepreneurs.

The old game is done. Superstardom is within almost no one’s grasp. Be happy that ANYBODY cares about your music!

If you’re planning to meet me down on Peachtree, you’re in for a rude surprise.

Sometimes your brain says one thing and your fingers say another.  Or maybe it’s that you know something, but forget it.  Or just don’t dot your i’s and cross your t’s.  That’s not a cover of Little Feat’s "Oh, Atlanta" Alison Krauss does, but BAD COMPANY’S!

"Oh, Atlanta" appeared on Little Feat’s 1974 album, "Feats Don’t Fail Me Now", about the time Lowell George’s influence was beginning to wane.  Oh, I’m a big Billy Payne fan (listen to "Gringo" off "Hoy-Hoy!"), but Lowell was the genius, and the key albums are the two before this one, especially "Dixie Chicken"…with its incredible cover of Allen Toussaint’s "On Your Way Down" and the weary "Fool Yourself".  Play "Fool Yourself" for a musician today and he’ll look at you quizzically, or say EUREKA!

But this isn’t about the SoCal boys at all.  But that band from England.  Led by the singer with one big hit with Free and the guitarist who was an afterthought in Mott The Hoople.  On Led Zeppelin’s label, Swan Song.

Things were going in the wrong direction for Bad Company.  "Burnin’ Sky" had the title track and "Leaving You", but not much else.  It looked like the band was headed for expiration.  But they modernized the sound and returned with a vengeance, with "Desolation Angels".

Ray Davies wrote the ultimate "Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy", but that track is cerebral, it ultimately pulls at your heartstrings.  Whereas Bad Company’s classic goes straight to your genitalia.  There’s all that rock and roll swagger, when it was still about how you sounded, as opposed to how you looked on MTV.

Still, I love the second track, "Crazy Circles", more, with the acoustic guitar, straight off a Zeppelin album.  But Rodgers could "hmmm" better than Plant.  This is an incredibly vibrant track from a band that had seemed to devolve into plodding.  Still, there’s more swagger in "Gone, Gone, Gone".

The rest of side one kills too.  A tour de force, akin to the band’s perfect album, "Straight Shooter".

And just like "Straight Shooter", side two starts off with a tear.

You needed to deal with the preacher if you were a rock and roll fan, but this side opener on Bad Company’s second album made you give up your old deity for a new religion, ROCK AND ROLL!  STILL, "Lonely For Your Love" BETTERS IT!  Eclipses "Deal With The Preacher".  Mick Ralphs intros the song with a swinging groove that makes you realize what an integral part of the Hoople he was (they went downhill after he left).  But what truly stuns is Paul Rodgers’ vocal.  He sings the whole song like some woman is squeezing his balls, he’s in the upper register, you can feel the intensity as the guitars swirl.  As for the rhythm section…ROCK SOLID!

Side two has the disco-infused "Rhythm Machine", which you wanted to hate upon first listen, but then got hooked by.  Just like you loved the Stones’ "Miss You" and Rod Stewart’s "Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?" (yes, we loved it before we hated it, and Rod).

And right smack dab in the middle of side two is the original "Oh, Atlanta".

I’m not on my way back to Georgia.  But there must be something there…  Didn’t EJ buy a condo in Hot ‘Lanta??

And it’s this English rocker that Alison Krauss covers.  Faithfully.

Gretchen Wilson has gone on record that "Back In Black" is one of her favorite albums, that it was on every jukebox where she grew up.  You see the country musicians know their rock.  The influence is not only in one direction.

Meanwhile, Bad Company reunited a few years back…and almost no one cared.  Not sure exactly why, maybe because it was just about the music.  Not the drama.  There were no legendary personnel fights, there was no dating of starlets.  They can’t get back together again, Boz Burrell has passed to the other side.  But the records live on.

I’d say to start with the very first.  Flip over the disc, start with the first track on side two, not the legendary "Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love" that opens side one.  "Bad Company", the title, eponymous track, is the best thing the band ever did.  A complete western in under five minutes.

And be sure to listen to "Seagull".  And the remake of "Ready For Love".

From there go on to the second record, the aforementioned "Straight Shooter".  "Shooting Star" is as good a song about stardom as any.  And, the opener, "Good Lovin’ Gone Bad", is a tear.  Still, the classic retains its power…FEEL LIKE MAKIN’ LOVE!

Baby, when I think about you…

They’re waltzing through the desert, and then they…what can I say…WHIP OUT THEIR DICKS!  It’s not date rape, it’s your fantasy come alive.  They’re being all tender, and then they’re being completely MANLY!  That guitar kicks you in the gut.  Makes you wake up and pay attention.

And there’s the instrumental interlude.  How do you WRITE a song like this?

I’d go straight to "Desolation Angels" from there.  But, do stop for my second favorite Bad Company track along the way, from "Run With The Pack", "Simple Man".

It’s got the distant feel of Blind Faith’s "Can’t Find My Way Home".  The down home swagger of the Allman Brothers.  Still, there’s that one line that resonates, so simple, yet the essence of rock and roll, my credo:

Freedom is the only thing means a damn to me!

That’s what we’re fighting for.  To look at our porn on the Internet.  To get our abortions.  To be free from a government run by people who’ve abandoned their party’s principles.

Life is about getting along.  First in school.  Then you’ve got to watch out for cops, for the IRS.  And, I believe in obeying the law, but I understand why people drop out, and move to Alaska, or Montana.  They’re looking for elbow room, they’re looking to get away from prying eyes.

I am just a simple man working on the land
Oh, oh, it ain’t easy
I’m just a simple man workin’ with my hands
Oh, baby believe me

That’s what I’m doing, working with my hands.  It’s not that complicated.  I just heard all these records and they changed my life.  I don’t want you or anybody else to forget it…  The power of music, the power of rock and roll.