"Ten Years Gone"

They never play it on FM radio, but diehard fans get wet just thinking about it. It’s about the dynamics, how the song goes from soft to loud and back again. Along with a descending figure that makes you nod your head like you’re on drugs, even if you’re straight. Listening, you feel like you’re in Robert Plant’s living room, in front of the fire, as he tells you tales of his travels to the east.

It’s not a ditty, but an opus. With different moods. A cornucopia of emotions. It’s my favorite Led Zeppelin track.

"The Battle Of Evermore"

Listen to the record, IT FADES IN! Like minstrels are arriving in your town, to ENRAPTURE YOU!

This alone would be worth the price of admission to a Zeppelin reunion show. Unfortunately, Sandy Denny is no longer with us. Not that she sang live with the band back in the seventies. Actually, her part could be sung by Ann Wilson of Heart, she kills it on the cover with her side group the Lovemongers.

You feel like you’re peeking in on a private moment. Robert and Sandy singing in the near-darkness, opening up their souls.

You’re in a folk number, then, four minutes in, the intensity BUILDS! It’s like Robert’s dick has finally gotten hard, that he’s inserted it into Sandy and as he sings about bringing it back again and again he’s orgasming. Listening, you want to fuck EVERYBODY!

Great music makes you lose yourself, abandon your environment and merge with the sound. By not trying to impress you, "Battle Of Evermore" draw you in, you need to spin it ENDLESSLY!

"Ramble On"

For years, I couldn’t listen to "Led Zeppelin II". It was the soundtrack of my senior year of high school. I drove up to E.J. Korvette with my newly acquired driver’s license the day it came out. I only had a week before "Whole Lotta Love" became ubiquitous on the radio and the hoi polloi adopted the band.

Some records are too perfect. They make it look too easy. That’s "II". It sounds instantly perfect, instantly familiar. You don’t need multiple plays to get into it, but as soon as you hear it, you want to hear it again.

"Ramble On" has everything. Acoustic guitar, loping bass groove, lilting vocal, explosive guitar solo, obtuse, otherworldly solo… Play "Ramble On" for someone and let them try to explain why they hate Led Zeppelin… IMPOSSIBLE!

(Meanwhile, how come Boston was the only act that nicked Zeppelin’s trick of going from acoustic to electric and back again? It’s what made "Long Time" so great!)

"Thank You"

The girls’ Zeppelin track.

What got me back into it was Tori Amos’ cover.

It’s the killer on Tori’s "Crucify" EP. She infuses it with all the mystery, all the majesty of Zeppelin, even though it’s quiet and understated. Listen to "Winter" from the same EP for more of the same groove. It’s not made for us, but for her, and that’s why we love it and her so.

Anybody who thinks John Paul Jones is superfluous needs to listen to "Thank You".

"Good Times Bad Times"

The track that got me into Zeppelin. All the elements of the band in two minutes and forty six seconds. There’s bombast, intrigue… They’re forcing you to pay attention, and it’s got nothing to do with physical image, it’s purely theatre of the mind. Jimmy’s solo is enough to hook you, still, there’s the cowbell, the devilish bass lines, the thundering drums and Robert’s vocal…

Robert sang about knowing what it means to be alone… And this one song insured that he’d never have to spend a lonely night ever again.

"Your Time Is Gonna Come"

For a long time, I considered the first album my favorite. Because it was so unexpected! You were drawn in by "Good Times Bad Times" and "Communication Breakdown", but soon you fell down a hole into the abyss.

Zeppelin was a club in ’69, prior to the October release of "II". They were not the world’s biggest band, they were purely cult. There was some FM airplay, but at this point, most people weren’t listening to FM, not every market HAD an underground FM radio station.

There was a darkness, a diversity in the debut, that was both fascinating and riveting. The more you listened, the more you liked the record. Even though it really didn’t sound quite like anything else.

As stunning as "Good Times Bad Times" was, the second track on the disc dumbfounded you. "Babe I’m Gonna Leave You" was slow and dreamy, it didn’t seem to be cut in London, but the hinterlands. After grabbing you, the band let you go.

We knew "You Shook Me", both the song and the sound employed. But the side closer, "Dazed and Confused", was positively creepy. It was like a bad drug trip. Did you sign up for this? Was it gonna go on FOREVER?

Such a simple intro, plodding bass, but then there were these guitar flourishes exploding in the sky… And speaking of exploding, this sexual Paul Bunyan suddenly emerged on the scene and even men were silenced.

It went on and on. The middle quieted down, almost akin to the Doors’ "The End", but much creepier. It got faster, then slower again. There was THUNDER! We’re not sure whether Robert is coming or being tortured. Then suddenly, it ends. The needle picks up, returns to the armrest, and you’re sitting in your living room feeling naked and alone.

At first "Dazed and Confused" is too dark to penetrate. But then you start smoking marijuana, you get into a trance, and you experience the foundation of every metal band since.

The last song on side two is faster, but almost as creepy. When "How Many More Times" finishes, when the record is done, you feel like you’ve been threatened. You’re not applauding. You’re stunned. The band is still on stage, staring you in the face. Finally, after the shock wears off, you get up and say MORE!

"I Can’t Quit You Baby" is the side two equivalent of "Dazed and Confused", just less threatening.

In retrospect, "Black Mountain Side" is ultra-important. It shows that the band couldn’t be pigeonholed, that they weren’t just about bluster.

"Communication Breakdown" is a tear. The single of all time in a radio universe that doesn’t exist. Still, I prefer "Good Times Bad Times". But my favorite song on the first Led Zeppelin album is on side two. It’s the opener, "Your Time Is Gonna Come".

Once again, the man without the accolades deserves the honors, with the long organ intro, bringing you down after the intense assault of "Dazed and Confused".

This sounds like the "Lord Of The Rings".

But it’s the lyrics that cement my affection.

Lyin’, cheatin’, hurtin’, that’s all you seem to do
Messin’ around, every guy in town
Puttin’ me down for thinkin’ of someone new
Always the same, playin’ your game
Drive me insane, trouble’s gonna come to you
One of these days, and it won’t be long
You’ll look for me, but, baby, I’ll be gone
This is all I gotta say to ya, woman:

Your time is gonna come, your time is gonna come
Your time is gonna come, your time is gonna come

Ever been dumped? It hurts SO BAD! Don’t they realize how great you are? Maybe they don’t. Maybe they’ll go on to someone better. No, that can’t BE! Won’t they come back?

When you finally realize it’s over, before you find someone new, you feel exactly like this song. One of these days they’re gonna hurt. They’re gonna get dumped, they’re gonna lose. Why the fuck did they TREAT YOU THIS WAY?

For some unknown reason, when I’m ecstatic on the ski slope, I start singing this involuntarily. Makes me feel rooted, makes me feel powerful.

"Gallows Pole"

When I was a freshman in college, there was only one record store in town, the Vermont Book Shop. It was overpriced. I refused to shop there, it was an insult to my addiction. But when "Led Zeppelin III" came out, I had to lay down close to list price the day it was released.

I don’t know another soul in the dorm who purchased it.

I was intrigued by the cover, with its spinning wheel, the key was to get one that wasn’t defective, that hadn’t been damaged in the box by the brass center ring. And there was amazing surface noise, Atlantic was notorious for this. I must have returned this album twice. Still, I ended up sitting in front of my stereo, dropping the needle again and again, learning to play "Gallows Pole" on the guitar.

I knew it from seeing the band at Yale Bowl six weeks before. I loved it. But I can’t say I loved the rest of the record, even though I gave it multiple spins. Oh, I really liked "Tangerine" and "Celebration Day", but I’d loved EVERY cut of what came before.

That’s when I swore off Led Zeppelin.

"Kashmir"

Today, kids go to college to learn a trade. They study business, they need a degree in something practical. I majored in art history.

And as soon as I was done, I drove to Alta, Utah to line up a job at the Goldminer’s Daughter.

But before I could start my job, I broke my leg. I ended up slinging hot dogs and scooping ice cream at the BirdFeeder on the Snowbird Plaza when I finally arrived somewhat healed in Utah two months late.

And that’s where I met Jimmy Kay and the rest of the freestylers, I curried favor by giving them ginormous ice cream cones. Maybe that’s why they allowed me to live in their condo in Mammoth during the month of May. But, in reality, they just wanted my fifty bucks for rent.

I was the outsider. But what brought us together was alcohol and Led Zeppelin. Every night we listened to "Physical Graffiti" on a home made 8-track. And one day on the chairlift, I got an urge to hear "Kashmir", I made Jimmy play it as soon as we got back to the condo.

Don’t ask me to explain it. There’s just this MAJESTY! Like a parade of elephants, who are never going to stop, who are going to continue their procession.

"Night Flight"

It starts side four with abandon. There’s no intro, and when Robert urges you to meet him in the morning, in the middle of the night, you jump up and say I’M READY!

"Boogie With Stu"

Ian Stewart, of course. Kicked out of the Stones for being too ugly. Even though he continued to play keys on their records.

This track just SWINGS!

"Down By The Seaside"

It’s the seemingly minor numbers that hook you on "Physical Graffiti".

Tori Amos covers this too.

It’s an amazing intro to "Ten Years Gone". It’s kind of lighthearted, if not quite upbeat. Then you’ve got the darkness of "Ten Years Gone".

"In My Time Of Dying"

There are three lengthy opuses ending sides on "Physical Graffiti". This one is forgotten, but it’s almost as good as "Kashmir" and "Ten Years Gone".

"When The Levee Breaks"

Funny how people talk about "Rock And Roll", "Stairway To Heaven" and "Black Dog"… I never play those, I never have to hear them again. They’re everywhere, you can’t avoid them.

But it’s the album cuts that make the fourth album so special.

I didn’t really know the fourth album. I was living in Vermont, there was no radio. I told you I’d sworn off Zeppelin. I didn’t get hooked until my Zeppelin jones was rekindled in Mammoth.

My favorite song on the album is the above-mentioned "The Battle Of Evermore". But I like "Going To California" almost as much, because of the acoustic intimacy. Still, no dissection of the fourth album is complete without a discussion of "When The Levee Breaks".

Jimmy’s fantastic, Robert is stellar, but it’s BONZO who’s the star here! It’s like he’s pounding oil drums. He’s a locomotive driving the whole band. Listening is like being pounded on the head, incessantly. And you LIKE IT!

Imagine hearing the master tape, in a cavernous studio. The raw power illustrates why John Bonham may be gone, but isn’t forgotten.

"Dancing Days"

You have NO IDEA how incessantly "D’yer Mak’er" was played on the radio in the summer of ’73. When FM finally ruled. Bad reggae if you ask me. Yet I LOVE the stupid-lyriced "Dancing Days".

In the oeuvre of Led Zeppelin, "Houses Of The Holy" is second tier. It contains the "Ramble On" extension "Over The Hills and Far Away", but not enough tracks that grab you. STILL, it’s the long, slow numbers that ultimately win you over. Like "The Rain Song" and "No Quarter".

Really, who could expect the comeback of the fourth album? At this point, Led Zeppelin was known for excess more than music. Maybe Jimmy knew this, maybe that was his inspiration for the completely diverse, no minute wasted "IV". Inspiration is funny, artists want to prove something. They want not only sales, but respect. Ultimately, Jimmy garnered both.

And it was Jimmy’s band. Maybe that’s why he’s had such a hard time moving forward. He was not just an element, he was the mad scientist.

"Physical Graffiti" was Jimmy’s "Tusk". But Lindsey Buckingham, although a great guitarist, is not quite in Jimmy Page’s league. In the seventies, no one was in Zeppelin’s league. Not that they were universally revered. They were managed by a wrestler who thought the law was at best a guideline. They were haunted by tragedy. They were considered misogynist before the women’s movement was turned on its head and five year olds started dressing like ho’s and high school girls gave blow jobs to be accepted by their peers.

Like Don Henley said, you can never go back. But today’s teenagers were never there. They realized Zeppelin contained something all the acts they were being fed by the machine didn’t contain. Zeppelin was bigger than the execs, they raped and pillaged in their own style, but it was all subservient to the music. The trappings were interesting, but the music was superior, and it ruled.

The band is as surprised by its resurgence as anybody. Hell, they sold their royalties eons back, they figured they had their moment in the sun.

But now Led Zeppelin is a rite of passage. Your parents might sing you Beatle songs, but somewhere between twelve and fifteen, you start to think for yourself, and you discover Led Zeppelin, they accompany your adolescence.

No one over the age of twenty five should be allowed to see Led Zeppelin. If you’re older than that and you missed them the first time around, fuck you. You were never a fan, you’re a johnny-come-lately. You’re going so you can boast of your attendance. It’s not that sheer excitement of experiencing something for the first time. Whereas if you’re a young ‘un, and you’ve been subjected to the modern crap, Led Zeppelin is a REVELATION!

It’s this younger generation that might inspire Jimmy and the band to create worthwhile new material. Because kids have a shit detector nonpareil. They don’t care if you were somebody sometime. They don’t read the mainstream press. They’re only interested in quality. And Led Zeppelin was quality. The very finest.

Have you been catching the Universal bashing by Trent Reznor and Josh Homme? Hell, Homme even mentions Jimmy Iovine by NAME!

Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone Age may not sell millions of records, but one thing they’ve got is fans. Both acts can tour until their leaders die. The Grammy nominees?

There’s a fiction that the Grammy nominated albums are the best of the bunch, the people’s choice. The TV show celebrates the major labels and everybody’s happy.

But in a world where Top Forty is a ghetto, and MTV plays no music, what makes anyone believe the mainstream is hip?

The biggest hit of the summer, according to mainstream media, is Rihanna’s "Umbrella". But most people have never heard it. Because they pay no attention to the spheres within which it is exposed. They’ve got other choices, and they’re taking them.

Same deal with this Grammy mess.

The Grammys were a joke. Late to the party on rock, more specifically, the Beatles and the Stones, they got no respect.

But then something curious happened. The mainstream merged with the hip. In the eighties, when everybody was glued to MTV. And a mercurial southern boy took over NARAS, and turned the Grammy show into a celebration of the single-minded focus of the American public.

Now, there’s a steward in charge, and no one but the self-congratulatory pricks cares anymore.

You’ve got hitsdailydouble dissecting the nominees. You’ve got multiple articles in the L.A. "Times". Really, does the general public give a shit?

The general public’s been tuning out all of this century. The powers-that-be have lost their hold on America’s consciousness. It’s not about theft, it’s about listeners going their own way, into nooks and crannies, to something more satisfying than the mainstream crap foisted upon them by the major labels.

The star model is history. Burned out by not only vapidity, but choice. People do like music, just not what those who used to be in control want them to like.

How does Universal make it with an act that sells 10,000 copies? Never mind one that does 5,000.

But an individual can live quite handsomely on the same number of albums sold. For he gets all the profits, and unlike the big guys, he keeps the costs down. His fans keep his career going, not Volkswagen, "Grey’s Anatomy" or Top Forty radio. He’s got the tools of production and marketing in his possession, and he’s utilizing them.

The Grammys are a mainstream show for a country that no longer is mainstream. And that’s why they’re irrelevant. The Grammys are about consensus. Whereas arguing with your buds over who’s good is now passe, you just ignore what doesn’t appeal to you and play in your own backyard, which you created.

I guess what I’m saying here is that not only was Doug Morris unprepared for the future, but network television, newspapers and radio too. We’ve seen no adjustment by any of them. Just a holding on to what they had before, however little is left.

Real music fans don’t watch the Grammys. Why would they? The acts they like aren’t on the show. And the production is phonied-up with TV stars and ass-kissing talent. Real music fans believe in their acts. They don’t believe in these people on TV.

So please, enough with the Grammy hysteria. The only people who care are the labels looking for a sales bump and the overpaid NARAS team.

How about covering something important?

Oh, that’s right, the labels and NARAS don’t know what’s important. They’re out of touch, they’ve got no idea what teens and twentysomethings think.

There’s a generation gap as wide as the one in the sixties. Only this time, it’s the boomers who are out of the loop.

There’s something happening here and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

____________________________________

Trent Reznor:

While the music industry is doing everything they possibly can to go out of business, can we all make sure to rid ourselves of the Grammys, too? Out of touch old men jacking each other off. _ENOUGH! _Have a nice day.

(posted at nin.com on 12/06/07)

____________________________________

Josh Homme:

Fuck the labels man, they suck. The last thing they’re stripping down is their own expense accounts and shit. I mean, Jimmy Iovine of Interscope Records takes a private jet or rides first class to tell a band they don’t get tour support. You know what I mean? Fuck that shit, I’m tired of it. And I’m not gonna be quiet because the American label, not Canada, not Europe, but our American label’s fucking us like crazy, so fuck them. Why should I not say anything, what am I afraid of? I’m not afraid of them.

Interscope Sucks My Dick:
Antiquiet Interviews Josh Homme Of Queens Of The Stone Age

17. Jay-Z "American Gangster"

Sales this week: 51,979
Percentage change: -40%
Cume: 694,954
Weeks on: 4

This isn’t about album vs. single on iTunes.  This is about the status of rap in America.  It appears that it’s not the ubiquitous sound of the nation that the mainstream media believes it to be.

One might say that Jay-Z is long in the tooth, that we’re looking for someone younger, but I don’t think that’s operative.  Somehow, just like when disco eclipsed rock in the late seventies, the bottom has fallen out of hip-hop.  Oh, there’s demand.  It’s just not stratospheric.

Would sales be higher if there were airplay on Top Forty?

Certainly, but Jay-Z is not present in the Mediabase Top Forty chart (which actually includes fifty records).  "Roc Boy" is number 15, sans bullet, on the Urban chart.  Which, I guess, is helping to keep this album alive to the point it actually is.

Quality perception is high, the album garners a 4 1/2 star average on Amazon, but footprint is low.

Turns out if you’re not a Jay-Z fan, you don’t have to pay attention.  Probably you’re not paying attention.

And there we have twenty first century America.  Nothing is dominant.  We live in a land of niches.  One of which is inhabited by hip-hop, and Jay-Z.

19. Keith Urban "Greatest Hits"

Sales this week: 47,493
Percentage change: -59%
Cume: 164,687
Weeks on: 2

Sure, it’s found money.  But I’m not sure the strategy is a sound one.  Do you cannibalize your catalog?

Or is it that people don’t even need the album anymore, they’ll just download what they want…

So, we had the death of the movie soundtrack.  Now the death of the greatest hits album.  What’s next?  The death of the superstar.  But that’s already happening.

33. George Strait "22 More Hits"

Sales this week: 36,118
Percentage change: -24%
Cume: 164,249
Weeks on: 3

I guess the hits weren’t that big.  Certainly not needed.

And this guy won the 2007 CMA Album of the Year Award.

Either country fans finally learned how to download, or George Strait is not quite the star the business thinks he is.  This is a piss-poor number.  Then again, it’s got the smell of Christmas rip-off.  And today’s consumer is sophisticated.  And would rather buy a concert ticket than a lame album.

43. Paul Potts "One Chance"

Sales this week: 25,967
Percentage change: +8%
Cume: 204,569
Weeks on: 11

Guess it’s an English thing.

In the U.K. people are sentimental, they love all kinds of music, they’re in it together.  In America, you like one genre, and that’s it.  There’s no Radio 1.

Furthermore, this demonstrates Oprah can’t sell EVERYTHING!  Then again, without her imprimatur, is this album a complete stiff?

49. Kenny Chesney "Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates"

Sales this week: 22,625
Percentage change: -42%
Cume: 823,703
Weeks on: 12

And this album contains a ubiquitous number one hit!  And he was CMA Entertainer of the Year!

Now the label will try to slug it out single by single, and the cume may rise.  But this guy is considered a superstar.  So, make no mistake, country sales are in trouble.

68. 50 Cent "Curtis"

Sales this week: 15,194
Percentage change: -30%
Cume: 1,140,482
Weeks on: 12

Suddenly, the whole country woke up and found out it didn’t like Fitty.

I was impressed with how smart Fitty came across in the VMA pre-game.  Maybe if he lost his bluster, and went on Oprah, we could learn to love him.  Everybody likes a comeback.  And it’s hard to love the boasting Kanye.

75. Goo Goo Dolls "Greatest Hits Vol. 1 – The Singles"

Sales this week: 14,699
Percentage change: -32%
Cume: 69,096
Weeks on: 3

Does anybody even know this album is out?

With so much clutter, it’s hard to get your message through.

Maybe you didn’t expect this to sell any more.  Maybe it’s not truly a disappointment.  But it does beg the question why they didn’t release this package sooner, when the band still had some buzz!

85. Santana "Ultimate Santana"

Sales this week: 12,929
Percentage change: -13%
Cume: 174,751
Weeks on: 7

Ultimately, people discovered they had all the Santana they wanted.

But this has the Columbia sides and the Arista sides in the same package!

Hint: Nobody interested in the Columbia sides WANTS the Arista sides!

102. Trisha Yearwood "Heaven, Heartache, and the Power Of Love"

Sales this week: 10,617
Percentage change: -32%
Cume: 59,407
Weeks on: 3

It’s not like the title track didn’t get a ton of airplay.

But airplay’s not definitive in country music.  You can have a hit record, but you’re not a star until the public anoints you.  You can’t headline your own shows, no one wants to see you.

These aren’t quite Patti Scialfa numbers, but this proves that who you’re married to doesn’t count.  Or maybe it counts against you…

110. Seal "System"

Sales this week: 10,003
Percentage change: -32%
Cume: 55,008
Weeks on: 3

At least he gets to go home to Heidi Klum.

117. James Blunt "All The Lost Souls"

Sales this week: 8,913
Percentage change: -22%
Cume: 269,309
Weeks on: 11

These sales aren’t too beautiful.

Even Christopher Cross had a couple more hits.  Maybe the label can get a track in a soap opera or as a movie theme…

Meanwhile, what about the guy who said he co-wrote all the original tracks.  Does his absence here make the difference?

120. John Fogerty "Revival"

Sales this week: 8,755
Percentage change: +10%
Cume: 190,555
Weeks on: 9

He’s back on Fantasy, his album has gotten good reviews, and nobody cares.

His old fans don’t want to buy new records.  Top Forty doesn’t play the music of oldsters.  He released this album and almost nobody knows.  Despite the publicity campaign.

Welcome to the dilemma of the classic rocker.  People just don’t want to hear your new music.

Of course, they want to hear the Eagles’.  But if you ever doubted that the SoCal rockers were a cut above, something different, now you know.   There’s a reason they own the greatest selling album of all time.  People care!  They might care about Led Zeppelin…if that band makes a deal with Wal-Mart or gives away its new music a la Prince.

Meanwhile, John kills live.  Why isn’t HE on the Super Bowl instead of Petty?  I love Petty, but Fogerty blows just about ANYBODY off the stage!

134. Little Big Town "A Place To Land"

Sales this week: 7,955
Percentage change: -19%
Cume: 67,063
Weeks on: 4

No hit single, no album sales.

I really like "I’m With The Band", but it wasn’t single material, and now the album is suffering.  Lead with your best!

148. Neil Young "Chrome Dreams II"

Sales this week: 6,946
Percentage change: -11%
Cume: 113,132
Weeks on: 6

Too many supposed comebacks, we stopped paying attention.

I’m not sure Neil cares…

Of course he cares, every artist wants not only respect, but notice.  In retrospect, Neil missed his moment when his protest album just wasn’t catchy enough.  It was coming from the right place, but it wasn’t listenable.  You certainly didn’t want to spin it again and again.  Does he have one more in him?

If he writes a riff as good as the one in "Ohio".

You can’t count Neil out, but he’s not doing his best work.

155. Jimmy Buffett" Live In Anguilla"

Sales this week: 6,691
Percentage change: +11%
Cume: 35,762
Weeks on: 3

Another live album?

Hey Jimmy!  People don’t want to hear OTHER people getting fucked up and having a good time, they want to do so THEMSELVES!

I’d say stay with the original double live album, "You Had To Be There".  It contains all the hits, since Jimmy hasn’t really written one since 1980 (oh, don’t tell me about that country shit, that was sheer stunting, selling on the names of his accomplices).

Funny that Jimmy can write hit books, with inspiration, but no good new music.  Maybe if we took away all his toys and he was forced to sleep on the beach his inspiration would return.

158. Duran Duran "Red Carpet Massacre"

Sales this week: 6,384
Percentage change: -40%
Cume: 46,114
Weeks on: 3

The Duranies want to still SLEEP with you, they just don’t want to listen to your new music.  And they don’t even know who Timbaland IS!

Rule one of music today, PLAY TO YOUR FAN BASE!  Don’t focus on expanding it, no one’s paying attention, they’re too busy overwhelmed with what already interests them.  Happy accidents will spread the word if you actually do something good.  Your fans will play the album for others, some deejay will bang it, it will become a theme song for some sporting event.

Fuck the big campaign, swinging for the fences, NO ONE’S AT THAT GAME EXCEPT FOR THE MEDIA SYCOPHANTS!

172. David Gray "Greatest Hits"

Sales this week: 5,757
Percentage change: -23%
Cume: 23,709
Weeks on: 3

Once he was destitute and desperate.  He made a record just for himself, "White Ladder".  Buy that album, it contains all his greatest hits.  The other stuff is for diehard fans only.

I’m wondering how big the check is. That’s Doug Morris’ new strategy. Pay enough, and he’ll entertain your music distribution idea. You might be bankrupted in the process, that’s usually why he makes you pay up front.

Microsoft won’t disappear. They lose money on every Xbox, they’re delusional, they believe everybody wants to join the social and share music on a Zune. The Redmond, Washington outfit’s philosophy is "we don’t want to be left out", they want to compete in every segment. Kind of like General Motors. And look what it did for them. (Toyota now too, their expansion has caused quality issues, causing "Consumer Reports" to lambaste them, hurting their image).

I would feel better if Doug Morris licensed a newbie, someone without an established entity to shore up, to maintain. That’s what Nokia is doing here, jockeying for position, not only with Motorola and Apple, but Vodafone and AT&T.

Turns out going for the deepest pocket is not good strategy in the tech world. Deep pockets play along, young ‘uns need to survive, so they don’t play by the rules. Unfortunately, many young ‘uns have left the music business, because they can’t get licenses. SpiralFrog got a license, but the payment was so heavy and the restrictions so draconian, that it’s fallen off the radar screen.

You’ve got to give Doug Morris credit. He’s trying new things. It’s just that he’s built his business on giving people what they want, and is failing to do this here.

Doug Morris would have the Atlantic promotion team work a record in a market. If it didn’t show up in retail reports after radio play, he pulled all efforts. Furthermore, he found new acts by researching retail reports, seeing what was selling out in the hinterlands. How could he get it so right in music, and so wrong in technology?

You’ve got to give the public what it wants.

The public wants unrestricted music, no DRM. On one hand Doug Morris knows this, selling MP3s at Amazon. But the Nokia initiative has DRM once again.

Doug Morris did get it right regarding the public’s desire to own a lot of music for a little price. That’s what the Nokia deal appears to offer, on the surface. But he’s forgotten the rule of Apple. That it’s about usability. That’s why the iPod succeeded. That’s why the iPhone is breaking through. That’s why Mac sales are soaring. Not because the products are cool, which they are. But because they’re good. Apple is the Beatles of technology. Nokia may be the Dave Clark Five. Microsoft is something akin to Cliff Richard, around forever, but not cutting edge.

You didn’t make headway in the sixties being a Beatle-hater. You had to join in. If Doug Morris wants to succeed, he’s either got to throw in with the Cupertino company or offer a product just as compelling.

It would be easy for Doug to do a test. Navigate a Nokia N Series and then an iPhone or iPod. It’s no comparison. People use Apple products because they can use them. And no offering is going to compete unless it’s just as usable.

Downloading and sync must always succeed, and be very quick. Navigation on the player must be simple.

Apple wasn’t the first in music, just the best. The dominant name in MP3 players when Apple entered the sphere, Rio, is now out of business. Creative vowed to compete, yet it has become an also-ran. Microsoft offered tethered subscriptions with bad software and the sphere is forever tainted, even though the software is now better, although it still is not seamless.

The war with Apple must cease. It’s not to Universal’s benefit. Universal must find a way to feed iPods, not to kill them. Everybody’s got one! Someday, a competitor might emerge, but an entrance is not imminent.

One thing Doug Morris does have right, sale by track is economic death. You need a plan akin to a subscription, a lot of music for a little money. But I’d tack a fee on the ISP. Allow file-trading. Try to enable behaviors the consumer has already endorsed. Fill those iPods, fill their successors. If the music is unprotected, it can go on any device. The best hardware player will win. And the best software player too. Until competing jukeboxes are as simple and savvy as iTunes, they’ve got no chance.