Whew!

In the sixties, we didn’t go over our friends’ houses to play PS2 or Wii. We dropped by with cardboard sleeves under our arms, we were there to listen to music.

And listen is what we did. We weren’t IM’ing, weren’t texting. We were sitting in front of the largest speakers we could afford, silently nodding our heads, as the sound washed over us.

In this era of beats and boobs, you’d think that experience was gone. But just tune in to Jeff Beck’s performance of "Led Boots" at last Saturday’s "Crossroads" festival and you’ll be jetted right back, to those days of yore.

Talk about making a deal with the devil. Jeff looks only a decade or two removed from his heyday. With rooster-hair exceeding the coif of Rod Stewart, and a ripped body betraying all those hours spent working on cars, if not practicing.

Does Jeff Beck practice?

God, I’ve never heard the guy miss a note. It’s like he’s running on instinct, fired by God, mistakes are not in his repertoire.

I bought "Wired". During the summer of ’76. In that nasty window between Utah and law school, when I had the world’s worst case of mononucleosis. The only thing that got me through, that kept me optimistic, was those records. I was a regular at the record store.

And at this point, I prefer "Blow By Blow", with "Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers". Or maybe I just haven’t listened to "Wired" enough recently. But, experiencing Jeff’s playing on my computer I’m reminded that this track is classic. Mood accompaniment. For when you come home from work and need to be set free. When you need to be soothed.

And this live take… It’s every bit as good as the original.

How does he do it? He doesn’t use a pick. He employs that whammy bar all his contemporaries shove to the side. And what comes out of the Stratocaster is quintessential Jeff, he sounds like no one else.

Fire this up. You’ll be schooled.

Even if you’re not a picker, you’ll be wowed by the technique. More exacting than explosive, more to your soul than your belly, more human than all the machine-made sounds of today’s "musicians".

That’s what they were. Musicians. People who didn’t stay up all night surfing the Web, but honing their skills. In order to compete.

It wasn’t about tricks, but execution.

Listen to that tone!

And how about that little girl in the background, playing the bass! She’s got the music in her, more than all the girls on TMZ!

They tell us everybody wants to be an "American Idol". That all they’re interested in is fame and fortune. That no one’s willing to pay his dues anymore.

But this Tal Wilkenfeld is the anti-Jordin, the anti-Britney. God, if you weren’t watching, you wouldn’t know the bass player was under twenty and a woman.

Is it any wonder the generation that reveres Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd wants to follow in the classic rockers’ footsteps? That they want to play?!

Watch this video. All the way through. Til Beck picks the notes with his slide! Tapping the sound out. A sound that can only make you exclaim, I love rock and roll!

I recommend using FireFox on a Mac. In order to be able to blow the frame up as large as possible. But it will work in Safari. As for PC’s, I don’t think the browser you use makes a difference.

Go to: http://music.msn.com/crossroads. Then scroll down to track 14, "Led Boots", click on it. A player will launch, give it time. And sit through the thirty second commercial. It’s your payment for the experience, you’ve got no choice. And, while you’re watching the ad, click in the lower right hand corner of the frame, right below the video, to the right of the time elapsed counter, on the icon that grows the window, so you can be up close and personal.

I saw Blind Faith in Chicago. I wanted Clapton and Winwood’s rendition of "Can’t Find My Way Home" to be the keeper. But no, Beck steals the show, as per usual.

So Felice and I are sitting with John McBride in catering, catching up.

THIS guy’s a character. Martina McBride’s husband has got his hands in seemingly more enterprises than Warren Buffett. While he’s on the road with his family he’s overseeing his Blackbird Studios, where the White Stripes cut their last record, Clair Brothers Nashville, and he even finds time to mix Martina’s live sound, with a smile on his face!

And with a baby on his hip, John’s telling us his life story. The son of a lawyer turned Ph.D. who taught at Wichita State, John was fascinated by stereo magazines. But when he got wind of "Modern Recording", he became a gearhead, he found his life’s work. And when Martina came through from her farm on the range, to rehearse in his room, they joined forces and at her insistence moved to Nashville, where within a year he was out with Garth Brooks and she had a record deal.

Ambition. You could taste it when Martina took the stage. She needed this, she wanted this. And she got it. THAT’S the American dream. Employing your bare hands and intellect to claw your way up the ladder. As we agreed after the show, talent is only fifty percent of it. Martina’s got the other half, RAW DESIRE!

And I figured John was a crusty old bastard, a good old boy. Based on his e-mail and a couple of late night phone calls. But this guy waiting for us in the parking lot was wearing a T-SHIRT! He hadn’t put on his look. It was what was on the inside. I felt he was a KINDRED SPIRIT!

And they used to eat what was served. Now they take along a caterer. And, as I was scarfing up some lamb, from seemingly inches away, I heard a sound… And I knew I had no choice, I had to jump up, I had to get closer, I was GOOD AS GONE!

The room was about three quarters full. Well, if you consider a shed a room. And now I know why everybody’s down on these outdoor venues. THEY’RE SHITHOLES! In a land where everybody’s gone upscale, where even kids pay five bucks for a cup of coffee, where you can’t buy a car without electric windows, sheds look like they haven’t been updated since they were built. The color scheme…I don’t think you can BUY THAT ANYMORE!

Not that the place wasn’t clean. But, the room didn’t matter. Because what was pouring from the speakers was MUSIC!

Music. You remember music, don’t you? Stuff played on real instruments. With untreated vocals. Without staging histrionics. Little Big Town were direct descendants of every act that played the Fillmore all those years ago. It was solely about the music. The only difference being the sound was so much BETTER!

Yes, P.A.’s are quality now. And the level of playing is absolutely stellar. Listen to so many of those "live" recordings of the sixties and seventies. Especially the bootlegs, that haven’t been cleaned up. You had to be there. But if you got a soundboard recording of Little Big Town’s show on Saturday night, you’d feel like you WERE there!

And who wasn’t there was Kim. One quarter of the band. Who, rolling into Phoenix a couple of nights before, lying in her bunk, felt her water break. She went into the bathroom and confirmed it and the bus pulled into the nearest town, where she entered the hospital and had her baby, three weeks early.

So what’s a band with only three members supposed to do?

Get really depressed, but carry on.

Oh, they’re thrilled that Kim’s delivered. But they’ve got such intricate harmonies. But you could barely tell the difference even if you knew the record, they covered so well.

After the show the band told me how they’d had to alter the gig. They usually start a cappella, kind of like "Seven Bridges Road" on the Eagles live album. But they scotched that…

Not that I knew I missed it.

And the sun is still setting. The full moon is waiting for Martina’s set. So, the gig has got the feel of a lazy afternoon rather than an intimate evening affair. But it was intimate. Because this was my favorite album of the year, COME ALIVE!

And you’re probably wondering what a boy from Connecticut is doing listening to this shitkicker music. Well, the drummer was wearing a Skynyrd t-shirt. And the bass player sported one from Aerosmith. This ain’t your father’s country… This is one step over from Crosby, Stills & Nash. If you remember that mellifluous sound and blend it with a dose of Fleetwood Mac, you’ve got Little Big Town.

And they actually played "Go Your Own Way", referencing their duet on CMT "Crossroads" with Lindsey Buckingham. But I wasn’t interested. I wanted to hear the originals. The songs from the album.

This ain’t no iTunes. This ain’t a hit and shit. This isn’t one song you hear in rotation, this is something you want to sink your teeth into, you want the WHOLE THING! Not because the songs flow together and tell a story, not because each song on the album needs the other, but because they’re so damn GOOD!

And that’s what the band was…GOOD!

And the vocals.

Listen to the Woodstock album. CSN were more right than wrong, but they weren’t always right. Little Big Town was right.

And the range of emotions was complete. There was the heaviness of "Bones", bringing us right back to the seventies, when we had more questions than answers, when drugs accompanied every move. And the fuck you for dumping me feeling of "Good As Gone". And the pure joy of reveling in one’s identity of "Boondocks".

I feel no shame
I’m proud of where I came from
I was born and raised in the boondocks
One thing I know
No matter where I go
I keep my heart and soul in the boondocks

I was not raised in the boondocks. Anything BUT!

I was raised in a land of sophistication. But my life took a left turn when I heard this MUSIC! All those courses in school, not only high school, but COLLEGE, they didn’t matter. I was only interested in the MUSIC! The music not only set me free, it pulled me, strongly, right off the anointed path.

And it’s been a rough road. Following your dream is scary. Because there’s no manual, no mentor, no one to tell you how to do it. You just go by instinct, fly by the seat of your pants.

And then when you finally get some traction, you oftentimes find what you were heading for no longer even exists.

Used to be there were six major labels. The men who ran them were gods. Everything flowed from the label. Agents and promoters followed their direction. As did we.

But then too much money got involved. It became about how you looked, not how you played. And suddenly, the labels merged and cried for help and the music you wanted to listen to WASN’T released on a major label.

Like Little Big Town’s "Road To Here". The majors rejected it. The band had failed once. They were too old. They’d blown their chance.

But, with sheer persistence and the belief of an indie label they made it to the top of the chart. And what did it was the MUSIC!

I’m sitting next to Felice in a box by the soundboard and she asks me if I know these songs. EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM EXCEPT THE NEW ONE!

That’s a fan. However long the band plays for, it’s too short.

You want to know each and every player’s name and story. You want to get closer, to the people who made the music. You want to know everything about the act, you NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THE ACT!

Not whether they flashed their cutie patootie in the back seat of a Bentley on the way to a Hollywood nightclub, but how they GOT HERE!

Little Big Town wasn’t discovered in the Mickey Mouse Club. Kim and Karen went to college together. And ended up in Nashville pursuing their dream. Doing day jobs.

You remember day jobs, don’t you? The gigs that ALLOW you to pursue your dream. You don’t need a check from a label, you don’t need an investor, you just need your wits. And hard work. "The Road To Here" was recorded on favors. And to have favors, you’ve got to have friends. And when you succeed EVERYBODY is happy. As Karen told me after the show, they were doing it for all the struggling musicians of Nashville, their peers.

Peers…

When I hang out at the rock show, I feel like a voyeur, a watcher, not a participant. But Johnny McBride was a guy who could be a friend in high school. And Little Big Town. They were sans all the airs and attitude prevalent throughout the music emanating from north of the Mason-Dixon line. Where hangers-on are necessary to produce the show, where you need a stylist as much as a guitar tech.

I sit at home in front of a computer monitor, I don’t need to meet these guys. The records are enough. I worry about meeting these people. I don’t know how to act, what to say. But that was not a problem with Little Big Town, these were regular people! Not accountants with retirement plans, but musicians. You know, those guys who pick and play, who are constantly fucked over. Because this is all they know how to do.

Not the punks who come into your office and recite a ten year plan. Who’ve micro-analyzed the market. Little Big Town are about playing, and seeing where the music takes them.

The music took them clear across the country Saturday night. And this boy had a smile on his face, not a care in the world, as their acoustic-based music washed over me, cleansing me of the bullshit of life and leaving just the pure core, that resonates with greatness.

Even without Kim, Little Big Town were great.

Starbucks said 470,000. This is the actual SoundScan figure.

After seven weeks in the marketplace, Paul McCartney’s "Memory Almost Full" resides at number 34 on the chart, having sold 20,097 copies last week, a 24% drop from the previous week’s total of 26,300.

Is this a success?

Depends on who you talk to. Paul McCartney must be happy. He was the beneficiary of a media campaign heretofore unknown. And, I’m sure the deal was financially rich for him.

Starbucks? Great for the coffee company. They’re now established as a viable record label, about to release records by Joni Mitchell and James Taylor.

The music business?

Well, that’s a more daunting question.

Paul McCartney’s previous album, "Chaos and Creation In The Backyard", sold 533,000 copies. I expect "Memory Almost Full" to exceed this number, but not by much. The album’s falling down the chart. So what have we learned here? That a rich company not in the music business can overspend to sell just about as many copies of an album as the old system did back in 2005. It seems that we’re not even treading water. We’re falling backwards. We’re spending and blitzing more, but to much less effect. What happened?

Well, it’s hard to get the public’s attention.

And once you’ve gotten people to notice, it appears that it’s even harder to get them to lay down in excess of ten bucks for an album. They just don’t care.

Oh, so people are sick of music. They’ve moved on. To movies and video games.

No, demand for music is high. Just not in the format/sales paradigm the record business has employed for the last half century.

100 million iPods have been sold. A billion tracks are traded P2P a month. People are in love with music. They’re just not in love with buying it as a collection of ten or so tracks, at the present price point.

Are they against albums?

Not necessarily. If they’re convinced all ten tracks are good, they want them. But usually the only way to know all ten tracks are good is to buy them first. That’s a no-go. People want to hear before purchasing. But that’s not the way the business has done it.

It’s time for the business to do something different.

Internet technology delivers the ability for more people to own more music at a cheaper price. The Starbucks paradigm references this concept not at all. The only thing new and shiny about the Starbucks formula is that it provides a new retail outlet and a seemingly bottomless wad of marketing cash. Starbucks is positively last century. When is the music business going to arrive in this century?

Are only 500,000 people interested in a new Paul McCartney album?

No, only 500,000 people are interested in ten Paul McCartney tracks sold at once for in excess of ten bucks.

Music is too expensive. It’s seen as a raw deal. Labels can try to prop up the artificially high price or succumb to the fact that in order to sell more, they’ve got to make it cheaper. And while they’re making it cheaper, why don’t they sell a bunch of it at a time.

That’s the future. That’s what’s going to happen. That’s the cell phone model. Make everybody a consumer of music.

So if you’re an artist, in search of a deal, is it about finding the best marketing partner, someone who’ll put up the best campaign? Or is the campaign secondary to the way people acquire the music.

That’s what’s wrong with the Starbucks model. Purchasing CDs in a coffee shop just isn’t innovative enough.

You’ve got to start with the goal first, and then work backwards.

And the goal is to get your music into the hands of the most people possible.

In a country of 300 million, selling half a million copies of a known quantity is piss poor. No, don’t lower your expectations and say that’s all that can be moved, question your business model!

Paul McCartney just asked the wrong question. He wanted to know how he could sell the most albums, he didn’t ask how he could get his music in the most hands. Asking this latter question is going to lead to the answer. Prince asked this latter question and came up with an innovative solution that worked for everybody (except the old wave businessmen).

Instead of an ever-diminishing music business, instead of labels encroaching on touring and merch income to make their bottom line, acts and labels have got to think how can they get music in everybody’s hands.

Computer companies did it. Dell lowered the price, the Net blew up, and now many people have multiple computers.

I don’t know anybody without a cell phone.

And everybody didn’t acquire an iPod until you could get one for under a hundred bucks.

What don’t the labels get here? You lower the price and you increase the volume. That’s the formula, not raising the price.

The days of ten dollar plus albums are over. The only people who don’t know this are those controlling the labels. Everybody wins if more people own more music. And the way to do this is to lower the price.

The people who acquired Prince’s "Planet Earth" with the "Daily Mail" paid for it. But it felt free. It came with the newspaper.

That’s the formula. Make people feel music’s free. Build the cost in elsewhere. Or sell them buckets of tracks cheaply. But don’t try to sell them ten plus dollar albums. If Paul McCartney couldn’t succeed with this formula at Starbucks, who can?

Greetings from the Disinformation Nation.

Our broadcaster this week is Social@Ross, funded by Warner Music, telling us what a big fucking success their elitist concerts are. Oh, you read the reports, didn’t you?

Utterfuckingbullshit.

And for them to think that word wouldn’t get out.

Another instance of the Internet ferreting out the truth. If those purveyors of unwanted $3000 tickets didn’t want to know what a bad idea this concert series was, they shouldn’t have allowed the following e-mail to fly into the ether:

"Greetings from the Warehouse:

We are pleased to invite you to join Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds for a once-in-a-lifetime concert experience this Saturday evening, July 28 in East Hampton, NY. As many of you may have heard, Dave and Tim are performing a semi-private benefit for the Ross School in East Hampton. We have just been offered a limited number of specially priced tickets for the benefit concert which we are offering to Warehouse members that have purchased Randall’s Island VIP tickets. The all-inclusive ticket includes luxurious seating, world class food featuring the BBQ stylings of executive chef Adam Perry Lang, a top shelf open bar, plus pre and post show entertainment. The tickets are extremely limited and will be sold first come-first serve at $250 per ticket/$500 per pair. All proceeds from this special ticket sale will benefit charity with half of the proceeds to benefit Dave Matthews’ Horton Foundation and the other half to benefit Ross School. Dave and Tim tickets may be purchased by calling (800) 803-6644 and mentioning the access code "Trax". For more information about the concert, please visit www.discoversocial.com."

Mmm… With all the truth outing on the Net these days you’d think we’re in the midst of a revolution, with the people ferreting out the facts and demanding that they be included in the equation, that they be considered, that they not be dictated to, that it be understood that they COUNT!

Oops, that’s exactly what’s happening.

If you want to maintain your elite position, better not interact with the public. Better not commit a single thought to print/e-mail. Better function in your own little hideaway. Because the hoi polloi is out to GET YOU!

As for fans having no problem with their favorite acts selling out, let me include the prelude to the above e-mail that was forwarded to me:

"I guess they cant sell any tickets!! i am against Dave doing this concert, so I have forwarded you an email that I received from the Fan Club"

An army of disinformation ministers can’t hold us back.