Did you catch Brian Wilson on the Kennedy Center Honors?

Robert DeNiro testified for Martin Scorsese.  Even Francis Ford Coppola.  How great was the "Godfather"?  Certainly better than "Raging Bull".  "Godfather II" is my favorite movie of all time, it’s even better than "Citizen Kane".

Steve Martin had to endure an abusive father.  Who wrote a negative review of his son’s debut on SNL for his company newsletter.  They showed a clip from "All Of Me".  A truly classic performance.

Diana Ross didn’t write the tunes, but she was a star.

As for the pianist…  He was so into the tribute performances.  He was not passive, he was an active teacher.

But none of them held a candle to the Beach Boy, the man seemingly locked in his body, who wrote the best American music of the rock generation.  He took us from the beach to cars to love.  His music is the soundtrack of our lives.

All the way from Hawthorne, California, ladies and gentlemen, THE BEACH BOYS!

Brian got a Standing O for his tribute film.  No other clip-fest got anybody out of their seats.  When the musicians started playing his tunes, the audience stood, swayed and SANG!

If this wasn’t a joyous occasion, WHAT IS?

We live in a fucked up country.  Overrun by an inept Administration and the financiers they’ve enabled.  Our values are completely screwed up.  Money is king.  But money can’t buy you love.

Love is something that’s in the air, enabled by a sound, that reaches through the ether into your eardrums.  You can be penniless, you can be sans love, you can think the world is against you, but then you hear "Good Vibrations" and you forget about all that, you’ve got hope.

Lyle Lovett did a decent job on "God Only Knows".  Hootie & the Blowfish can’t get arrested, but somehow they got this gig to do bar band versions of some of the greatest music of all time.  Then there was a boyhood choir, from all the way across the pond, and they sang "Love And Mercy".

From Brian’s very first solo album.  The one in 1988 that was so hyped, yet ultimately disappointing.

Still… Isn’t love and mercy what we need tonight?

Who’s gonna send this message other than a musician?

You wonder why corporations have no place in music.  Because their values stink.  Those entities throwing dollars at your act are trying to get a free ride on your elixir, which their products will never contain.  They want part of your unadulterated truth.  Which can only exist in art.

And no art form touches people like music.  It can penetrate any soul.  It requires no sit-down viewing, no particular attention.  A tune can catch you when you’re not paying attention, and grab you by the hand and take you to a land where love and happiness rule.

Brian Wilson knows this land.  He just wasn’t made for our times.  He was gentle in a world that demands you be ruthless.  Maybe that’s why he checked out.

But before he left us, he delivered the secret of life, that inspired not only the lads from Liverpool, but seemingly every living soul in our country.  The Beach Boys live on Radio Disney, ten year olds know Brian Wilson’s music, because it’s timeless.

I live in California because I had to get closer to the myth.  Of having fun, fun, fun in the little deuce coupe.  That world may not really exist, but it doesn’t have to, it’s in my mind, it was put there by Brian Wilson.

Brian, I LOVE YOU!

Can you buy shares in a company when everybody knows the inside dope, that the corporation is firing on all twelve cylinders, that it is a fountain of innovative products?

Yes.

I remember my old friend Robert, buying Disney stock after the company issued a stellar earnings report. Didn’t he want to wait for the dip? But before Eisner’s megalomania got the best of him, Disney just went up, the company was doing everything right when everyone else had it wrong.

Same deal with Google. Despite IAC and Yahoo’s efforts, Google’s share of search has only gone up, as has its share price. Is Apple going to continue to go up too?

Yes.

Let us look at the drivers.

iPods. They’re synonymous with hand-held music players. It’s a generic moniker, akin to "Kleenex", but there’s really no competition. And you no longer have to pay a premium. There’s an iPod for every wallet. If you can’t afford a $79 Shuffle, then you’re homeless. Actually, many consumers have multiple iPods. The big capacity one for travel, and the Shuffle or Nano for exercise. And if you believe that music is going mobile, as in wireless, as in cell phone, Apple’s got a solution there too. Not only are iPhone sales red hot, the device represents a pathway to the future. Therefore, the stock has legs, it will not dip.

Then there’s the Mac. Dedicated users know that Leopard was not ready for release. Steve Jobs rushed it out to avoid missing the deadline twice, disappointing analysts. But analysts tend not to use Macs, they had no idea that in many cases Time Machine didn’t work after installing Leopard because the OS couldn’t communicate with attached FireWire drives. Comb the Net, the number of people with Leopard installation problems is legion. Furthermore, certain "improvements" were actually steps backward. The 3D Dock, the glowing ball open app indicator within said Dock… Leopard ain’t Vista, it ain’t a piece of shit, but it’s not Tiger either, a rock solid operating system that never crashes with amazing utility. Supposedly, the next update, due in January, will solve some of Leopard’s problems, but this hiccup by Apple is significant. It raises the question whether the company has enough engineers.

But, as stated previously, most analysts, most drivers of the stock, don’t know about Leopard’s problems, so the stock has not been hurt. Furthermore, like a baseball fan who can’t believe Roger Clemens took steroids, the Apple faithful are still selling Macs. This is the phenomenon, not the iPod or the iPhone, but the rapidly increasing Macintosh installed base. Not in business, but in the consumer world. The combination of the iPod and evangelizing by the faithful has not only made the Mac a reasonable choice, but in many people’s minds the ONLY choice. New users want the iTunes/iPod usability. And the Mac is cool. So, they want to join the club.

And this brings us to Macworld. This January, Steve Jobs is going to release more desirable products. Rumor has it, a flash-memory based tiny laptop is finally ready for prime time. The cognoscenti, the intelligentsia, are going to snap this thing up immediately. Then, there will be the 3G iPhone.

The iPhone success is stunning because those who buy it are not BlackBerry users, they’re new to SmartPhones. And they too are evangelists.

Apple is everything the record companies are not. It has a great bond with its customers, and its products are desirable hits.

Apple is the new IBM, crossed with Mo Ostin’s Warner Brothers Records and BMW. The polish upon the fruit is amazing. Don’t be a naysayer, get on board. Just like all the companies who make iPod accessories. Most shareholders are not aware of the company’s future roadmap, and the products in the pipeline will only dazzle them upon release.

When I told you to buy Apple a year ago, it was under $100. Today, in the afternoon, the stock eclipsed $200, closing at an all time high of $198.95.

So what have we learned here?

Success is not about consensus. It’s about excellence. One charismatic, draconian leader is worth more than a boatload of consensus builders.

Marketing is no longer king. Great products not only sell themselves, those who purchase them sell them too.

People want to align with a winner. And when stars are sold out to corporations, people would rather believe in the unsullied products of the corporation itself.

This is not Facebook, Apple is no longer run by a mercurial twentysomething unskilled in business, rather it’s ruled by someone twice that age who although mercurial, is now experienced, he’s learned from past mistakes.

The consumer is king. Apple plays not to the business community, but end users. Its online help is the best in the business. "Consumer Reports" rates not only its products the best, but its service. You can buy a PC for under $500, but people will pay more for a Mac, because they want functionality. Apple sells no crippled products, no sports cars with four cylinder engines.

If you play the market, and I don’t, I possess not a single share of Apple Inc., buy stock. It will probably dip after Jobs’ speech at Macworld, it always does, when insane product expectations are not met (flying computerized cars anyone?) But then, it always bounces back. Recently, within twenty four hours. CONSIDER THIS A HEADS-UP!

U.S. concert business slumps despite reunion tours

Another one bites the dust.

The major labels blamed Napster/P2P…what is the concert business going to blame its nosedive on?

Concert promoters cleaned up on the efforts of record companies.  Labels built the bands and promoters sold the tickets.  If you want creativity, innovation, don’t look to the concert industry.  It’s the appliance business once removed.

If Van Halen, the Police and Genesis can’t bring in the bucks, who will?

Oh, I know… Led Zeppelin.

A good payday for promoters, but not the answer to their problems.

You see there just aren’t any other superstar baby boomer/classic rock acts out there to come back and clean up.  Barbra Streisand’s tour was a near-disaster, scads of unsold tickets that were ultimately given away.  Genesis didn’t sell out.  Even the Police didn’t go clean at every date.  It seems the boomers just don’t care as much as they used to.  They’re more into vacations/second homes/lifestyle than overpaying to go to the gig.

Yes, the classic rock tours are EXPENSIVE!  Kids don’t go, not unless they’re brought by their parents.  Who can afford the cost?  And it’s not like you’re going to be sitting anywhere close.  And all of these acts are running on fumes, not one of them is putting out new material, it’s not like there’s anything to hook a fan.  It’s pure nostalgia.  For a time when music mattered, when it counted, when going to the gig was more important than…almost anything.

Concerts are no longer edgy affairs, rather they’re corporate extravaganzas, and they feel that way, with their sponsors and rip-off ticket fees and merch.  The concert promoters have killed the golden goose.  Ticket prices keep going up, but grosses are going down.  The fan has been fucked in the ass to the point where he just doesn’t care anymore.

Of course that’s an overstatement.  But concert attendance is not a regular monthly event anymore, more like a once a year outing.  And the real problem isn’t the tickets so much as a lack of acts people want to see.

Sure, there’s an occasional instant success like Hannah Montana, but most of the old arena acts were built over years.  And now it takes even longer, to build that mindshare based on quality and credibility!

Train-wrecks will get people to come once.  But this business can’t survive on one time affairs.  Whether it be Ms. Montana or the classic rock reunion.  Where’s the investment in the growth of our business, its bottom line health?  Who is going to break acts?

It’s hard to get people to pay attention.  The best avenue is quality.  But quality doesn’t go nuclear instantly.  So, those with Wall Street bosses look for something quicker.  They throw shit on the wall and see what sticks.  And now, not much.

So who’s going to make Live Nation’s bottom line?  Sure, they can make some money on ticketing, but people have to want to see the acts!  And even though AEG does a good job of promoting superstars, we can see that there are very few superstars left.  Who is asking the tough questions?

Fuck radio hits.  You need something that feeds souls.  That’s why Dave Matthews is so successful.  And even Nickelback.  You might hate Nickelback, but the band’s rock is more akin to the heyday of the concert business than any of the beat-infused tracks whose purveyors can’t sell out much more than clubs.

The good news is that music will survive.  Like a forest after a fire, there are seedlings that will grow into tall trees.  But these seedlings are not being planted by major record labels or the usual suspect concert promoters.  Rick Rubin hasn’t got the answers.  And neither does Michael Rapino.  They’re trying to make the old numbers work.  They’re looking at their operations backwards.  How do they get to the same numbers as before?  YOU CAN’T!  Sony can only survive by selling 10,000 of this and 15,000 of that.  Everybody’s got to make a lot less money.  And, over YEARS, some of these acts will blow up.  Sony needs to look a lot more like Jac Holzman’s Elektra than Tommy Mottola’s juggernaut.

As for LiveNation…   Does anything this company does resemble the efforts of Bill Graham?  Where does the audience fit into the equation?  Where’s the development of new talent?  Regional promoters weren’t only about the bucks, they loved the acts, the music!

There are people who still love the music.  Some of them even with fat cat salaries.  But the business can no longer support these salaries.  These people either have to make a lot less, or they need to be wiped clean from the slate.

That’s reality.

If you’re not willing to starve, if you’re not doing it for the love, you’ve got no place in the future of the music business.  Because the economics dictate you can no longer support a rich lifestyle.  Get an MBA, go work for a hedge fund.  Or follow Marko Babineau into real estate.  But there’s no way you can jigger the numbers to make them work under the old paradigm.  The days when music drove the culture are done.  The custodians of the sound fucked up so badly, based on their greed, that the public has moved on.  Music can regain its force, but not through the efforts of those now in charge, their priorities are all screwed up.  Wall Street, stock options, bonuses…  Quite different from Herb & Jerry, Chris Blackwell and the aforementioned Jack Holzman.  They all sold their companies for a ton of bread.  But that’s not why they got into the business.  They worked, sweated blood, for years before they cashed out.  Let them be a beacon for all those now getting into the business, not these pricks with the ink who are trying to prop up a decaying castle.

David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars