You’d think we were selling Mercedes-Benzes. Better yet, Lamborghinis.

Lambo doesn’t have to worry about the little guy. The Italian carmaker caters to a rich elite. Chevy-owners can only lust after the company’s sleekmobiles. They’re never going to be able to afford one. And Lambo doesn’t care, because they’re selling all they can produce.

But that’s not the concert business. Hell, we tried that in the concert business, with Social@Ross, and it didn’t work! Turns out the ultra-rich don’t want to party by themselves, there are no bragging rights. They want to go to your show and squeeze you out of the front row, so they can tell everybody what big swinging dicks they are for being able to attend.

I’m getting multiple e-mails from people complaining about the $250 tickets for Clapton and Winwood at the Garden. And you know what, I agree with them. It’s not like these two guys have been absent from the scene, it’s not like they’re even Cream. Hell, they’re not even billing it as Blind Faith, probably because they don’t want to share the money with Ginger Baker. And from everything I hear, the New York Cream shows didn’t hold a candle to those in London. Because they were no longer special, because they’d happened before. It was a one time event repeated.

I’m not saying I would have turned down Cream tickets. But I saw them twice, when they were Cream. Once before "Sunshine Of Your Love" hit and another time right before the final farewell tour. I don’t want my memories fucked with. Of the band going through the motions the first time, and blistering through a set that’s still indelibly baked into my mind the second.

As for Blind Faith, I saw them too. Pretty amazing to have been there, but the sound sucked. And as good as "Can’t Find My Way Home" was, as good as the first side of the album was, was there any excuse for "Do What You Like"? No wonder the band broke up.

But now they’re back together.

What’s next? Reunions of bands that didn’t exist in the first place? Is Eric Clapton going to go out with David Gilmour? Is Ozzy going to tour with Alice Cooper as part of the same band? We are really scraping the barrel here.

But that’s rock history for you. Everybody’s cleaned up. And now cleaning up. That old soul, that’s gone, been long eviscerated, and the only people who won’t admit this is those on the take.

Even the Stones don’t sell out anymore. Why should they? Each tour is never the last, and they positively suck most of the time.

So you take your kids, so they can be exposed. Not telling them as you stand in the crowd in your leather jacket that the band was too dangerous for you the first time around, that your mother wouldn’t let you go, that you preferred the Starland Vocal Band. And the people at this "historic" Clapton/Winwood show at the Garden will be just as bad. It will be about being there more than the music.

How do I know? Because of Winwood’s regular business. This guy’s available. Furthermore, he put out a new album light years better than anything Clapton’s done in eons, "About Time". With Jose Nieto. You can listen to it forever and go see Steve in a small hall, with no trappings, and have your jaw drop as he rips off "Dear Mr. Fantasy" on his guitar.

But that’s rock and roll.

Hell, nothing in an arena is rock and roll.

And soon there won’t be any arena shows. Not many anyway. Because we’ve got no stars. Everybody’s so whored out to the man that you can’t believe in them. There may be mania once, but then you’re over it, you don’t have to go.

But the dinosaurs? They’re still alive?

Why do they even play. Just put them in a museum.

But really, what irks me here is the price.

I get e-mail from people who are sitting out Neil Young and Bon Jovi this time. Because they just can’t afford it. And we need these people for a healthy business! We just can’t depend on the rich fucks… They’re only interested in what everybody else is. Hell, they’re not showing up for Winwood at a theatre.

So the concert business is like America itself. The haves and the have-nots. But nobody in the concert food chain cares. As long as someone lines up and pays, they don’t make any changes.

I used to believe in charging what the public would bear, but that was before there were people to whom money was no object and the rest of the people were counting pennies on their way to dinner at McDonald’s.

We can’t have a concert business catering to the haves. It doesn’t scale. We need a big tent. We’ve got to let the little people in.

I’m not sure the secondary market is even the problem. At this point, there are a zillion speculators, buying tickets in Oregon for gigs in New Jersey. Trying to make an extra buck. Bottom line? If you can wait until showtime, you get good seats for BELOW printed price.

I don’t think it’s about capturing the markup of the secondary market so much as getting the tickets into the hands of fans at a reasonable price.

I know, this is much more complicated. It’s easier to just charge what the market will bear. But what happens when no one wants to go anymore? You’ve got to nurture the concertgoing audience, you’ve got to keep them in the habit. We need people to go again and again and again. Concerts are not like Broadway plays, something you attend once every few years when you’re in New York, when you don’t care about the price. Music is not an elite art form, but it looks like only the elite can afford to attend, we’re leaving the little guy out.

Who’s going to recognize that what’s happening in American isn’t good for the concert business. The Iraq war is good for Blackwater, but not good for the soldiers in the armed forces. The concertgoing public is those soldiers in the armed forces. They can’t be abused forever, they need to be treated right. And the concert business hasn’t treated them right for eons.

How come Dave Matthews can get good tickets into the hands of his fans for a reasonable price and no one else can? Huh? No one else wants to put in the money, time and effort?

Who’s going to save the concert business?

Seemingly not AEG, taking the cream off the top.

Not Michael Rapino and Live Nation, assembling a catalog of assets so they can lay the company off once again.

Certainly not the superstar acts, who live lives that they used to rail against.

God, is everything phony?

We used to be able to believe in the music and the people who made it.

It’s hard to believe in Clapton and Winwood when they authorize ticket prices like these. Sheer greed, that’s the only explanation. It’s business. Whereas it used to be about the music.

Get out of the Maybach, stop drinking the champagne…do you have ANY idea how people listen to music anymore?

People haven’t listened to albums from start to finish since the death of vinyl. And, even in the vinyl days, we’d get up from the couch and needle-drop to skip lame tracks, to hear only what we wanted.

But then we were released, by the CD. Sure, we might have played the disc from beginning to end a few times. Back before seventy minutes of storage meant seventy minutes of music, and it was all so incomprehensible.

And then there only WAS one good track per album. Maybe two or three. But by then we weren’t even bothering to pay, we just stole what we wanted. But, if our conscience got to us, or we wanted the artist to get paid (heh-heh), we went to iTunes, and purchased what we desired for a buck. Or bought the whole album if we were so inclined. But even then we didn’t listen to the whole album again and again, certainly not in order.

My iPod is permanently on shuffle. How about yours?

And, I get into albums track by track.

I hate being dictated to. And so does everybody else.

Wow are you out of touch Jay-Z… You even want to tell people how to LISTEN to your record? Even though you’ve got no power to do this?

Yes, the only person Jay-Z is hurting by refusing to sell his album on iTunes is himself. As a record exec, you’d think he’d be aware of the incredible percentage of sales that are now files… But no, Jay-Z wants to live in the nineties, when he still counted.

He wants back in so desperately. He doesn’t want to be a suit, he wants to be a STAR! He got inspired, he cut a new album… That’s not gonna burn up the sales charts no matter HOW good it is… Because no one generates that kind of sales anymore.

You’d think he’d take a bigger view. That it’s about footprint. Getting as many people as possible to hear your music.

Where are we going to hear your music Jay? On MTV? Like anybody watches that channel for music.

And radio’s no longer your friend. Your last album proved that.

But blame Steve Jobs. He just ain’t selling it the way people want it.

As a matter of fact, he isn’t. Everybody should be able to check out your music with a low threshold, since you’re getting no airplay or people aren’t paying attention. They need to be able to hear your music on a whim. This is called authorizing P2P. Well, P2P is already authorized, it’s just that people aren’t PAYING FOR IT!

Why does the music industry want to exclude the casual user? We need the people scared away from trading to consume. We need the people who want legal files to be able to pay for them.

Instead of this hissy fit.

Where IS your album available Jay? We’ve got to go to our nearest physical retailer? Where exactly is that? There’s no record store in my neighborhood. And I’m not going to Best Buy for one disc, my life’s too short and I don’t need a refrigerator.

Oh, I get it, I’m supposed to go on Amazon, where you’re breaking Apple’s monopoly. By selling unprotected MP3s.

Is this about money or art? Is this about the whole album or getting people to pay for the entire album?

Beating up Steve Jobs is like pressuring cassette replicators. Or Gateway Computer. Neither is the problem! The problem isn’t Steve Jobs… Raise prices at the iTunes Store, make people buy entire albums, that’s gonna save the business? Are you DREAMING!

And, like I said, people are gonna cherry-pick your album anyway Jay. Why not an edict to every radio station that they can only play the entire "American Gangster". You’re not gonna let them play a single, are you?

So I’m standing in the shower and I notice this big black and blue mark on my left leg.

Last week was my week to catch up, to address all the health issues I’d let slide. I finally got my shoulder checked out, the one I injured in a freak accident almost two years ago. I went to the dentist and got a crown on that cracked molar. I even went to get my ears tested.

And now this.

Normally I’d do nothing. But that’s the old me, the pre-therapy me, the one who grew up in a house where it was illegal to be sick. Now I can call the doctor. Do I need to call the doctor? Didn’t even George Bush get lyme disease?

And I’m checking the Internet furiously before I go to physical therapy for said shoulder injury and I can’t quite find an exact analog, no picture of exactly what I’ve got. And when the PT thought it was just a bruise, that the two red dots at the center were made by contact, my anxiety subsided. We need to discuss these things with people.

And then I had to go to the dry cleaner. I was getting some pants shortened. You’d figure one visit was enough. But incompetence knows no bounds. I had to go BACK! Thank god the tailor himself showed up, because this Cathy Ladman lookalike was CLUELESS!

And from there to Discount Tire. After the Bridgestones on my car wore out in a little over ten thousand miles, I’m now religious about rotation. But the clerk was nowhere to be seen. A tech wrote me up. But when they called me and I returned, it was like my car didn’t exist. There was no paperwork…

And when I finally get home, they’re painting my garage door.

It was one of those days. Oh, I’m not looking for sympathy. You know the drill. You wake up with a plan in mind, and bullshit appears from seemingly nowhere. It affects your mood.

And writing is all about mood. Capturing how you feel. And if you feel downtrodden, beaten, even ultimately relieved, you just can’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.

So I decided to read the e-mail. There’s always endless e-mail. And this guy sent me this MP3. Which is why I’m writing to you now. You see the music changed my mood, set me free. Suddenly, I’m hanging on to a balloon, hovering above the Earth, or maybe driving an American car without air conditioning across Texas. But it’s not hot, it’s temperate. It’s perfect.

This is not the first time I started this. The false start began with Joe Cocker.

I didn’t buy the first Joe Cocker album. Sure, it contained a good cover of "With A Little Help From My Friends", but anybody can get lucky once. Still, there was this song off his second record, that I’d never heard before. The kind you have to hear again and again and again. It was entitled "Delta Lady". And it was written by one Leon Russell. I went out and bought Leon Russell’s debut solo album. I had to hear the WRITER play his song.

Oh, Joe Cocker’s initially released "Delta Lady" is a tour-de-force, a ripper with no defects. But Leon’s was completely different, even though it was identical. It had a different feel. It was ROLLICKING! This wasn’t made for the radio. This was made for the club! When you’d become inebriated, when you were ready to cut loose. There was a party on this record, with all kinds of players and vocalists. It sounded like Leon and the backup singers had had sex just the night before.

It was this same magic that made "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" so good. It was overdone, yet loose and perfect. Mad Oklahomans flourishing onstage. This was no "We Are The World", all twenty plus musicians on stage were on the same page. As they say, it was a wondrous noise.

I became a Leon Russell fan. Not only of the original "A Song For You" and "Roll Away The Stone" on the debut, but "Stranger In A Strange Land", the opening cut of his second record, and "If The Shoe Fits", which I heard over the P.A. at Watkins Glen, just after the concert had been declared free.

Can you get us in free
My girlfriend and me
We like the songs but we hate to pay

I cracked up.

And the reason I got into Leon Russell was the credits. You see I was a fan. Of music. Like you.

That’s how we discovered J.J. Cale, via the credits. There was a network of people, an endless puzzle, that we were doing our best to put together. Hell, Tom Petty had to be good, he was on SHELTER! Leon’s LABEL!

There’s an excitement in making this connection. You feel like an explorer, even if you’ve never left your chair. Then again, this is why we used to go to the record store…TO COLLECT INFORMATION! Look at the album covers, read the credits. Check out albums we wanted to buy, if we ever assembled enough cash.

But I don’t mourn the death of the record store. The soul evaporated long ago. Sometime between Nirvana and ‘N Sync. I no longer felt part of it. Didn’t want to be part of it. It was phony. Whatever was happening in tech was more important than music.

It wasn’t about networked songwriters and players, you could see the fingerprints of the executives all over the albums. In the type of people who got to make records (good-looking!), in what they sounded like, in what the players wanted…MONEY! Music was a business more than a culture.

But now it’s all imploded. It’s like we’re living in a post-nuclear world. Everybody’s in shock, the old institutions no longer count, we’re rebuilding.

You know things have changed when even Justin Timberlake, who owes his success to MTV, is railing that the channel doesn’t play enough videos.

Radio is the same as it’s been for the last two decades. Phony line-readers unlike anybody we know in real life playing music we don’t want to listen to between the endless commercials.

And the store… The store is GONE!

It’s positively wild west. Everybody who played by the old rules is complaining. But those who didn’t fit in in the old game are flourishing. It’s all about the music now, once again.

It’s not about endorsements. Not about corporations. Because most of the acts worth listening to aren’t being approached to sell out. They’re not even sure what they’d say if contacted, it’s so incomprehensible. They’re journeymen, eking out a living, getting by on drugs, alcohol, laughs and playing. It’s the playing that makes it all worthwhile.

And that they can do. Unlike all the posers of the last decade, the musicians of today have got chops. They don’t rely on studio trickery, their music is honest, directly from their heart to yours.

So, I hear Pat Green’s "Wrapped" on XM, and after listening to it for hours straight, after writing about it, I’m inundated with Texans telling me about the guy who WROTE IT!

I figured Pat had. But it turns out Walt Wilkins wrote "Wrapped. And he’s got a version. And one of these people e-mailed it to me.

It’s as different from Pat Green’s cover as Leon Russell’s version of "Delta Lady" is from Joe Cocker’s. It’s very much the same song, but it’s got a different FEEL!

Pat Green is a star. He’s close to Buffettland. Where everybody’s high on margaritas, celebrating! No one’s got a care in the world, they’re blowing the roof off the joint. Walt Wilkins is an unheralded journeyman. And his version of his composition sounds like it. You can hear him THINKING as he sings. The track is quiet, the vocal is nuanced, akin to that of Lyle Lovett. Instead of a party, it’s a bunch of friends, crossing the countryside on horseback, fearful that they might not get to the destination.

You’re not famous. No one’s paying attention to you. Oh, you can have a MySpace page, a blog, but unless you look like Tila Tequila, no one cares. You’re as lonely and friend-less as ever. Who’s writing music for you?

Certainly not the rappers. They’re portraying a fabulous lifestyle you’re never going to experience. The popsters are painting in rainbows. And the rockers? If they’re not gazing at their shoes, there’s such soulless bluster, you’re laughing. Where is the music for you?

That’s what the music used to be, for us. That’s why it blew up. Because we identified. No one thought James Taylor was going to become ubiquitous, but the public made him so, because of the honesty in his music, the simplicity. He wasn’t singing in 70 mm, but 16. That’s the appeal of YouTube, it’s not slick. Walt Wilkins’ take on "Wrapped" is not slick.

But not without polish.

This is something you can love. This is something that can change your mood.

These guys from Texas didn’t just start yesterday. They’ve got years invested. They’re not dreaming of stardom so much as just living their lives. And it’s so appealing. Because it’s three-dimensional, there’s someone home!

So, listening to Walt Wilkins’ "Wrapped" my mood changed. All the bullshit of today fell away. Because in the track I hear another human being. Someone else trying to get by.

And I’m reminded of who I used to be. That person addicted to music, wanting to know everything about it. Following the clues.

I’m ready to follow the clues again.

Richard Greenfield is at it again. In yesterday’s Pali Research report he said:

We had been assuming that US industry retail floor space devoted to CDs would contract over 20% in 2008, however, based on recent conversations with several music industry executives, we increasingly believe the reductions could be north of 30% with highly profitable catalog inventory likely to be dramatically reduced (only keeping high profile new releases as traffic drivers).

It’s very hard to sell CDs if there’s nowhere to buy them.

And most of the major labels’ sales comes from physical product, i.e. CDs.

So, we’re heading for utter disaster. If we’re not there already:

2007 Appears to be Ending Badly. The first four weeks of Q4 2007 have seen domestic physical CD sales down nearly 22%. While last week was only down 17%, the improvement occurred because of a change in the Soundscan/Billboard charts that allows albums released to only one retailer (in this case the Eagles went directly to Wal-Mart, without a label, and sold over 700K albums) to be included; however, excluding the album (as it did not help the labels), industry CD sales would have been down about 24%. Reported CD sales declines are accelerating coming out of Q3 ’07 (which was down 17%), whereas Q4 last year improved from Q3 ’06 (down 7% vs. down 11%).

Physical sales are not going to turn around. Digital, per track sales, are not picking up the slack. And rental revenue, so far, is a joke.

After the first of the year, that many more people will own iPods. Add in the shrinkage of sales space and you have another double-digit drop in revenue, just like after last Christmas.

We’re in a funny era. Unlike the mid-eighties, when the industry did its best to kill vinyl, to get people to acquire more profitable CDs, the industry is putting on the brakes here. Because it just hasn’t figure out how to make this new era profitable.

In the eighties, the labels gave up on a superior-sounding medium, i.e. vinyl, for the aurally-substandard CD, selling the CD’s ease of use, its lack of defects, its relative indestructibility. Now, the labels are saying the old medium, i.e. the CD, is superior, and convenience is secondary to sound quality. And you wonder why the public has lost faith in the labels…

And the profitability of CDs was based to a large extent on vinyl replacement, i.e. buying catalog product all over again. And this is what has historically driven P2P, the replacement of your favorite CD cuts with files.

The way out of this is to allow acquisition of catalog cheaply online.

But that’s all the major labels have. New product? How do you break new product? Who’s listening to the radio? We’re not even watching the same TV channels. If you’re not a fan of the Eagles, you haven’t heard "Long Road Out Of Eden". If you’re not a fan of Jay-Z, you haven’t heard "American Gangster". And chances are, you never will.

We used to believe ubiquity was just around the corner. That if a record was big enough, it would seep into the public consciousness. But you’d be surprised how many people have never heard Mariah Carey’s "We Belong Together", never mind Rihanna’s "Umbrella". You see these records trumpeted in trade publications, but unless you’re a fan of Top Forty music, and are addicted to the jive stations with twenty minutes of commercials per hour playing this stuff, it’s like it doesn’t even exist.

So, there are no more diamond albums. There’s no upside!

The business was built upon a few blockbusters making up for the misses. But now there are no more blockbusters. And everybody who created a blockbuster wants to go it alone. Like the aforementioned Eagles, never mind Radiohead and everybody whose contract is going to expire soon, like Madonna.

So the cash cow is dying.

And the labels have to scale back accordingly. Not only on personnel, but recording and marketing and promotion. And, if they cut back enough, why do you need them? What are they providing? Chances are you can outsource what they deliver from people who used to work for them, for a flat fee, and not only own your masters, but keep all the royalties.

So, soon their catalogs are going to be all the majors have left. They’re going to become licensing houses. Actually, Warner already kind of is. They’ve slashed overhead and costs to such a point that they have almost no albums in the Top 200. Why don’t they just fire everybody and change the name of the company to Rhino?

And once it is Rhino, a catalog operation, there needs to be more innovative selling. A lot of product for a low price. There needs to be convenience.

Or, the labels could continue to go 360. Only, if you pay your manager 15%, and your attorney 5%, and your business manager 3%, and your agent 10%, you can’t afford another revenue-sharer. You’re left with nothing! So, unless the majors suddenly become managers, they’re cost-prohibitive.

So, what are the labels to do in this death spiral?

License new methods of Net acquisition. Make everybody a customer of music. It’s their only hope. And, they’d better get moving on it, because soon everybody will expect music to be free and the labels’ revenue will drop through the floor.

The future isn’t mass market. The future is a zillion scenes. The majors haven’t wanted to play in this world, and entrepreneurs have moved in, who don’t want to sell out to the majors. It’s about your local scene, your online scene. Nurtured. Expanded slowly as opposed to jammed down the public’s throat. This is the opposite of major label culture. The opposite of what Lyor, Jimmy and Clive do. They create a storm and the public pays attention. But now the public is not paying attention, and if they do, they’re not buying product, and those who still wish to can’t find anywhere to lay their money down. And, if they’re going to settle for files… Why not get them from a friend, why not steal them?

Disaster is looming. You know it when the Wall Street analysts, who know nothing but cash, turn their backs on you. And that’s what Richard Greenfield has done. He’s lowering Warner’s target stock price to $5.00. GET OUT!