I noticed a puddle on the floor.

What did Paul Simon say? Everything put together falls apart? Turns out the water heater is kaput. Rubin just came to my house and confirmed it. But the most fascinating part of the exchange concerned the device attached to his hip.

I noticed the white headphones. But workers love iPods, they can listen to music rather than their customers, whiling away the hours in reverie. But the screen, encased in the leather pouch, it was FULL-SIZE! Supposedly iPods like this aren’t being released until next week. Did Rubin, the plumber from Santo Domingo, have an iPHONE?

You should have seen the smile upon his face when I asked him.

And how did he like it? He LOVED it! He now only had to carry one device!

Had he been with AT&T? No, Verizon. But, he loved the phone connections!

I’m not switching to the iPhone because I don’t want to be on AT&T. I’m a Verizon man. I’m sticking with my BlackBerry. But, if the iPhone was on Verizon, with 3G surfing, now that push e-mail works with my server (Corporate E-Mail on the iPhone). I’d be a goner.

I’m tempted. What about the rest of the public?

Scuttlebutt is the iPhone is a failure, that not enough people want to buy it. It’s no Wii, an item you can’t get, there’s no mania.

Well, there was no problem buying the original iPod. People said IT was an overpriced failure. Just about every tech analyst out there.

So, should you believe the insiders, or the PEOPLE!

People love their iPhones. They testify about them. And it’s this mania that’s going to sell them.

Most people don’t know they need an iPhone yet. Hell, I didn’t surf the Net on my pre-BlackBerry cell. It was too complicated and too expensive. But, Daniel Glass’ kid Liam used his dad’s iPhone to find desirable Webkinz in the wilds of Connecticut. He didn’t know you could do this previously! Most people don’t know they need a smartphone because they’ve never used one, certainly not one as good as the iPhone. But, when they’re exposed, whether it be at the Apple Store or testing out a gushing friend’s, they’re going to be tempted, they’re going to want mobile e-mail, they’re going to get hooked.

Yes, you might not know it, but owners, the public, are spreading the word on the iPhone.

This is not how Madison Avenue does it. They dictate. About shitty products.

It’s no different in the music business. You’ve got to get FANS! People who love your music who will evangelize not because you pay them, but because they LOVE YOUR MUSIC SO MUCH!

Sure, Apple now does some iPhone advertising. But the run-up, it was all driven by the press and the public. Kind of like how people talk about a new band. And, Apple releases almost no information, you can’t get an interview with anybody other than Steve Jobs, who speaks occasionally, and only says what he wants to. Stars should be mysterious, people you can believe in, not overexposed nitwits on TMZ.

But in order for a band to blow up, its music must be as good as the iPhone. And we haven’t had that quality since, well, if not 1969, a very long time.

Concentrating on the music… WHAT A CONCEPT!

It’s hard to concentrate on the packaging/image. Retail is dying, and CD covers are so damn small that unless we’re building a new race of Lilliputian stars, artwork has almost no effect anyway.

As for video… TV doesn’t play hardly any videos. Oh, you can pull them from the Web, but you’ve got to have the DESIRE! What builds the DESIRE! WORD OF MOUTH!

So you’ve got to create something great. And it doesn’t have to sound like anything else, it’s just got to fire on all cylinders within its chosen genre. Hell, if Apple were a major label it wouldn’t have put out the iPhone because there was nothing else like it in the marketplace, there’d be no demand for it. But a great band creates its own demand. And, it takes a while for it to catch on.

We’ve been focusing on instant. Ever since we learned video can blow acts up.

But those acts crashed back to Earth just about as fast. Turns out if you want something to last, it’s got to grow slowly. You need early adopters, who believe and spread the word. You’ve got to let your act percolate in the marketplace. True riches come down the line. And they last, because you’ve got a legion of believers.

Like a fading movie, losing its theaters and failing to eke out a high gross, Paul McCartney’s "Memory Almost Full" is sliding down the chart, plunging to number 104 last week, with 6,821 copies sold for a grand total of 511,488.

In other words, "Memory Almost Full" is not going to break 600,000. It’s going to do no better than "Chaos And Creation In The Backyard".

Would "Memory Almost Full" have sold as many copies on Capitol? Interesting question. I’d posit not, since album sales in general are falling. But does this number mean the Starbucks sales paradigm is a success? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Starbucks can’t justify advances like this for long. They can’t guarantee vast quantities of product one way in the future. Because they’re going to take a bath!

They couldn’t possibly have made money on "Memory Almost Full. That’s a five million dollar gross, and with the payment to McCartney and all the advertising and promotion they’ve done, they’ve got to be upside down.

But hey, they got started in the record business!

So, the new Joni Mitchell CD will go the equivalent of gold too?

Are you KIDDING ME? There will be essentially no airplay. She’s over sixty. There’s never been anyone better, but despite her protestations, she hasn’t cut something truly groundbreaking, up to her seventies standard, well, since the seventies.

James Taylor will do better. But any better than he would have done at a conventional label? Oh, HE might make more money, but will he sell more product? Based on the McCartney model above, he’ll sell no more than he did with his last release. Which might be more than a conventional label could sell today, but it will still be a pittance compared to the number of JT fans out there.

How many McCartney fans are in America? Just over 500,000?

Don’t insult him. God, everybody knows who McCartney is. They just don’t want to pay ten bucks for a new album by him. Because he hasn’t released vital new music in eons. That 9/11 "Freedom" song? Sounds like something a grade school class cooked up. He might be able to come back, you never know, but assuming he MAKES great music, how will the public know?

Reviews help with an older demo, but not that much. And there’s no airplay. So, you’ve got to cut out the middleman and go free.

Now let’s go back to that McCartney record. Let’s say he even got ALL the money. Five million bucks for 500,000 sales. How many gigs would he have to do to earn that amount? Not many. Isn’t it best to get the music out rather than use an antiquated model to make bupkes?

Forget charging with the concert ticket. Forget counting on SoundScan. That’s missing the point. Just make it free. And make it up in other places. Hell, Google doesn’t charge for the SEARCH! Which, believe me, is a lot more valuable than "Memory Almost Full". It’s the ads that cost money. In this case, nothing to the end user.

Truth is, all these old acts care about is the money. McCartney gets a check from Starbucks, one previously from Fidelity. The Eagles get an eight figure payment from Wal-Mart. They’ve ceased caring as much about their careers as their wallets. And stunningly, their wallets are ALREADY FAT!

Sure, all those companies do some promotion. But very few people end up with the music in their hands. All that hype ends up moving very few discs. It’s kind of like being on pay per view instead of network or basic cable. You might get a financial windfall, but your footprint is minimal. Now maybe if you’re a boxer, and a fight is a one time event. But these bands can tour until they die, and their records can be played FOREVER!

Assuming they’re good enough.

And conventional wisdom is that the new records of classic rock superstars just aren’t as good as those from their heyday. You used to buy the new record to be familiar with the songs in concert. Now you hope THEY DON’T PLAY THE NEW SONGS IN CONCERT!

It went from being a religious experience that was always in progress, always moving forward, to a calcified show no different from a movie. You go see these old rock bands and it’s no different from the year before. You get the hits.

Sure, I want to hear the hits. But I’m still alive, can’t the bands be too? Can’t they still try?

And maybe if they knew everybody was gonna listen, which all fans would do if the music was free, they’d put more effort into it.

You see they just can’t get motivated, they just can’t get their dicks hard, they’ve been to the mountaintop and wasn’t that enough?

Well, send them to the Super Bowl and they’ll rehearse, believe me. And if everybody was truly listening to their new material, a failure would hurt them emotionally.

The Stones burn up the Pollstar chart. But "A Bigger Bang" doesn’t even go platinum. Even with good reviews. This is a disconnect.

It’s great that Springsteen is giving away his single free. But the concept of getting a taste in order to be motivated to buy the whole enchilada is passe. People are just satiated with the taste. Ninety nine cents a track is TOO HIGH! How do I know? Because you had to pay to listen to McCartney’s "Coming Up", which I wrote about, and almost no one did. Whereas if the song had been on MySpace, people would have clicked immediately and told others if they thought it was good.

Music ain’t gonna be free forever. We’re in a momentary lull while the majors try to cling to an old business model. When everybody gives away their music for free, it’ll be hard to get attention. Do it NOW!

As for the future… In the future, it will feel like free. You’ll pay a little for a lot. And the idiots running the major labels will no longer control the recorded music business.

Springsteen’s new album should be free.

If you’re signing a long term contract with a record label, you’re a fucking idiot. Expect the music business to turn into the movie business VERY quickly. If you’re involved with a company, it’s going to be a ONE-OFF! Kind of like Garth made a deal with Wal-Mart and now he’s left them behind, the retailing behemoth no longer serves him.

What’s Bruce’s strength? LIVE! That’s what got Jon Landau all excited in the first place, when he saw Springsteen live. Hell, I had both the first and second Bruce albums, and even though I loved "Spirit In The Night" and "Sandy", it wasn’t until I saw him at the Bottom Line in ’74 that I realized he was the real deal, not a Dylan-imitator, but a whole new thing.

Bruce ended up selling quite a few albums. But that was back when AOR was king and rock music ruled the airwaves. Today? WHAT AIRWAVES?

Is Bruce Springsteen gonna get any airplay? Maybe for a minute or two. Hell, let’s say his album has got a new "Born To Run". Do you think even THEN radio is gonna play it? If you do, you don’t listen to radio.

Stunningly, "Time" and "Newsweek" might both still put him on the cover, but their power has diminished so much that I don’t know another person who reads the latter except me. And they’ve both become lifestyle publications, they can’t compete with the 24 hour news cycle on both TV and the Web.

We’re all getting our information from somewhere different. There is no center. And what the major labels are playing to is the center.

So if you’re young and you’ve killed someone, or you’re good-looking and you’ve exposed your private parts to the world, maybe there’s enough train-wreck value to get your track on Top Forty radio. Still, the album probably won’t sell. And almost no one will want to see you live. This whole game is the sideshow. The main affair is in the arena. And how is releasing his new disc via Columbia driving patrons to see Bruce Springsteen?

Oh, just by going on the road, people will want to buy tickets. But he won’t sell out. That’s a dirty little secret, that a bunch of E-Street Band gigs were papered the last time out. You need to drive people into the seats. How are you going to do this?

Of course, Bruce got a big check from Columbia. The deal helped Andy Lack lose his job. But was the money WORTH IT TO BRUCE? Hell, if I were him, I’d negotiate to give the money BACK! Maybe let Columbia keep the catalog. But the new discs? Bruce should be able to make the appropriate deal at the time of release. And a superstar selling a ten plus dollar disc of new material is now the wrong paradigm at the wrong time. Because, NO ONE’S GONNA HEAR IT!

That’s the goal, to get people to hear it.

Prince is the leader here. He looks au courant, he looks happening, he makes people think he’s valid and not just an oldies act by giving away his new material. Hell, everybody at the gig gets it. They got it with the newspaper. It’s all over the place in a way that Springsteen’s music won’t be.

Even the Eagles. They’ll get a ton of promotion from Wal-Mart, but imagine if the record was FREE at http://eaglesband.com/. A track a week, every week for twelve weeks. Oh, there are TWENTY TRACKS? Then for TWENTY WEEKS! If you’re LUCKY, radio will play ONE track for that long. As for going on another… If you’re a heritage act, GOOD LUCK!

It’s time to be innovative. It’s time to question the old game.

Right now, music is free. And dedicated fans expect to be able to hear EVERYTHING before they buy it. Oh, oldsters have old fans, but so many boomer concertgoers aren’t even interested in the new music. They just want to hear the hits that made them fans to begin with. You’re gonna charge in excess of ten bucks. A boomer isn’t like a kid, he’ll kick the tires FOREVER before purchasing a CD. He wants VALUE! BOOMERS complain about movie prices, not kids. Kids see a shitty movie and want to go to another flick the next night. A boomer sees something bad and he swears off movies FOREVER!

What does it take to get a boomer to buy an album?

First, he’s got to be aware of it.

It’s not 2002, when "The Rising" was released. Bruce Springsteen playing on the VMAs, in the rain? The VMAs’ ratings are off fifty percent this decade. And even Aerosmith, the perennial, doesn’t get a slot anymore.

As for VH1? Gossip central.

Oh, you can get print. But you just can’t get big time traction.

EVERY record released today lands with a thud. It’s not only those of the boomer acts, but Fitty’s too. And Kanye’s. If you think the public at large cares about the release battle of 9/11, you’ve been reading too many magazines. PEOPLE DON’T GIVE A SHIT! If they did, radio ratings would be through the roof, AND THEY’RE NOT!

Bruce Springsteen. What does he need the label for? To get on "The Today Show"? Letterman? All he’s got to do is pick up the phone.

And why did he make an album anyway. Who can digest an hour-long opus anymore, especially busy boomers. Why not a four song EP, all killers, that people can digest in twenty minutes and play over and over again. That they’ll sit through in concert, instead of making cell phone calls and going to the toilet.

Why should an album be an hour long? Why should it have ten tracks? If you’re not questioning why, you’re about to be left behind. Sure, if there’s mania, like with "High School Musical", people want the disc as a souvenir. They want EVERYTHING, the t-shirt, the tour booklet, the lunchbox. But there’s not this kind of mania for Elton John and Billy Joel.

Elton? His last album, an ill-conceived follow-up to "Captain Fantastic", was dead on arrival. Imagine if Elton gave away a cover a week for the rest of the year. Yup, Elton’s played covers. Imagine the reception for those tracks in concert! People want to hear what they know, and they don’t KNOW the new albums of the classic rock superstars.

Not that one needs to do covers. But WHATEVER you do, it’s got to be GOOD! It’s no longer about quantity, but QUALITY! Music isn’t scarce, it’s overwhelmingly present in the marketplace. The key is to rise above, to get people’s attention, to gain their trust. Selling an overpriced disc of tracks that don’t change people’s lives is not an enticing proposition.

Get the music in people’s hands. Don’t stream it on your Website, don’t just have four tracks on MySpace. Make your shit available EVERYWHERE! You get it with the aforementioned "Time" or "Newsweek", they’d make that deal in a HEARTBEAT! You get it at Whole Foods. You can download it from the band’s site. Along with artwork. You can participate in a discussion of its quality on the act’s Website. You can enter a contest for two tickets to paradise, front row seats in New York or L.A. Create community. Ever seen MySpace or Facebook? It’s not only teens that are lonesome, who want to belong, who want to connect and hook-up. But Bruce Springsteen is gonna sell an inert piece of product shrink-wrapped in a record store. How eighties.

It’s the twenty first century. If you’re a classic rock act, your bread and butter is the road. Think of how you can get the most tushies in the seats. Think of how you can appear current. Think of how you can whet the appetite of your fans for the show. Think of how you can get people talking about not only you, but your music. Forget the major labels, forget radio, they don’t give a shit about you. GO STRAIGHT TO THE FANS!

Too bad THIS wasn’t on the Starbucks album. If you want to know what it was like seeing Paul McCartney at Amoeba, buy THIS! At the iTunes Store. Could it be that after famously retiring from the road, Paul McCartney is our greatest live act? Better than not only Metallica and Al Green, but the STONES?

So I’m sitting here lamenting the death of my KLSX show, my hours having been sold for paid programming/an infomercial, reading "Rolling Stone", thinking that nothing matters anymore, and I see a review of a live McCartney EP. Who knew McCartney had a live EP?

And that was just my point. I was finally inspired to write. Doesn’t matter that the Eagles have a new album, nor Springsteen. It’s not a major event. There’s some supposed song of the summer, entitled "Umbrella", by Rihanna, and I haven’t heard it, and I don’t GIVE A SHIT! Just like I didn’t care about Mariah Carey’s "We Belong Together" or ANYTHING by the bizarrely photographed Maroon 5 adorning the magazine’s cover. But I HAD to hear a live version of "Coming Up"!

The original was a live take too. And it made it all the way to number one back when we’d counted McCartney out, after the brilliance of "Band On The Run" seemed to have evaporated, after we’d given up hope. Maybe our legends can throw the long ball one more time, but I didn’t EXPECT IT THIS TIME!

Paul McCartney’s in the midst of a heinous public divorce. He’s got to get his mind off his troubles. He decides to release an album of tunes Nigel Godrich rejected. There’s incredible publicity, Starbucks pulls out all the stops, but the record is lacking that essence that makes you TELL EVERYBODY YOU KNOW!

Same deal with the Eagles’ "How Long". Oh, it’s GOOD, but it doesn’t make your head explode, it doesn’t make you feel that it’s SO FUCKING GREAT TO BE ALIVE!

And the new Springsteen track has great energy, but none of the charm of "Tunnel Of Love", never mind "Human Touch". But McCartney’s live take of "Coming Up" has got that element that made you go crazy for the Beatles TO BEGIN WITH!

There’s no chick backup singers. Just an incredibly tight band. The kind you tried to be after you bought your Fender and started to rehearse with your buddies in the garage. You grew your hair out, you listened to the records and picked out the notes, you wanted to be rich and famous, but you didn’t have IT!

Paul McCartney has IT!

Oh, he’s 65. He’s less imposing physically than you might expect. But when he starts a pickin’ and a grinnin’, he’s possessed, he’s 23 once again. And so are you.

You can hear the crowd roar. McCartney exalts like Lennon from the Apple rooftop. And then the band starts to COOK! You can hear Liverpool, even Lonnie Donegan skiffle, in the track. Then, that guy who sang "Long Tall Sally", he’s BACK! He’s reaching out from the track to YOU! There’s an energy here absent from ALL of the Top Forty. It makes you want to BE THERE!

Paul is laying down the bass. Abe Laboriel, Jr. is pounding the skins. The guitars are wailing, and then, THEY START PLAYING FELICE’S FATHER’S SONG!

You might only be twenty years old. Your PARENTS might be too young to have experienced Beatlemania, to know why the whole world went music crazy, why the Beatles changed our lives. But, if you listen to THIS, you’ll GET THE IDEA!