Christina Aguilera needed a protector, someone who would allow her to follow her own vision, she signed with Irving Azoff.

Phish was a band up from the streets, er, frat house floor, they ended up being managed by John Paluska.

Would Phish have been better off with Azoff?  Would Aguilera have been better off with Paluska?  No.  Each had the perfect manager.  Which one do YOU need?

By time Irving got ahold of her, Christina Aguilera was already a star.  But it appeared her career was being run by her label.  She wanted to call her own shots, she needed a buffer between her and her record company.  Also, someone connected enough that they knew all the players and were owed big time favors.  Is there an awards show Christina DOESN’T play?

Phish needed to belong to the people, not the system.  They needed someone who could build them from the ground up.  Their game was the road, not discs.  They liked to improvise, it was about the concert experience.  If they had played an awards show early in their career it would have killed them.

In other words, you don’t need the heavyweight, well-connected manager to make it.  Unless you’re playing the traditional radio/TV hit single game.

If you’re playing the old wave game, sign with someone who’s got the chops, who knows the ropes, who isn’t reinventing the wheel so much as applying what they know to your situation.  You might grow, but your handler, he already knows the game.

Whereas if you’re not signed to a major label, don’t want to get signed to a major label, don’t make Top Forty singles, then you don’t need a manager connected so much as one who is savvy and HUNGRY!

The established management players are akin to mini-conglomerates, they’re the new labels.  They want to get paid, right away.  If you’re not delivering cash, if they sign you, you’re not getting much attention.  Or, you’re getting attention from the untested newbie.  If that newbie is truly great, break off and do it yourself, as Irving Azoff did with the Eagles.  Otherwise, you’re probably going to get lost in the shuffle.

If you’re starting from ground zero, no name manager will probably be interested.  But that won’t hurt you.

What do you need most if you’re a developing act?

Gigs.  You need someone to get on the horn, go down to the venue, and cajole and connive ’til they get you a shot.  Then you must deliver, but it’s the manager that creates/midwives the opportunity.

Where are you going to find such a bloke?

Look around you, he’s probably already a friend.  Or that dude who comes to each and every show and hangs backstage and won’t leave until you do.  THAT’S your manager.

Oh, don’t throw out your instincts.  After all, Paluska went to Amherst, he’s no dummy.  But find someone committed who will do the job for you.

So much of what Phish did, they did first.  Or their spin on an event made it unique.  They did their destination festivals.  They released live albums of their shows, and then downloads.  Elektra didn’t deliver these, rather their manager and agent, Chip Hooper, did.

Yup, Chip saw the numbers, he wanted to represent Phish.  He didn’t care about record sales, but TICKET COUNTS!  Most agents feel the same way today, but fifteen years ago, the focus was on the label.

Yes, after you get your manager, and he gets you gigs, he tries to get you an agent.  And the agent you want is not the one with the name, the one who wines and dines you so much as the one who BELIEVES in you.

As for music…  In today’s market, you’ve got to allow recording and trading, you’ve got to give the music away for free, you’ve got to let the seed grow into a tree.  If you can’t get significant airplay, THIS IS THE ONLY WAY!

It’s not the way of the major label, and not the way of the old line manager.  But it’s your way.  You know the Net, you’ve got friends, both online and offline.  You have to create something incredible and give your peeps the tools to spread the word.  Not through fake incentives, you’ve got to trade purely on their belief, your honesty.

It’s all about the music when you’re doing it yourself.  Everything must be subservient to the music.  And you must create the best situation to experience the music.

When Phish played the Santa Monica Civic ten plus years ago, the police frisked the attendees.  Paluska vowed to never play the building again, and his band DIDN’T!  He didn’t shrug his shoulders and say he couldn’t do anything, that it wasn’t his fault, he took matters into his own hands, to defend his band’s relationship with its audience.

And when Phish started selling its music online, it offered FLAC files, so its fans could own the best sounding versions.  Isn’t it funny that EMI is offering 256 kbps AACs supposedly sometime in the near future when Phish sold CD quality YEARS AGO!

So don’t lament that the manager with the name isn’t interested in you.  There’s a good chance he might not be right for you.

Inexperience is no longer the handicap it used to be.  Drive and appreciation of the band/fan relationship are paramount for today’s touring acts.  That’s more about instinct than big time experience.  Furthermore, you want someone who can develop on the fly.

Maybe you outgrow your manager, you end up signing with one of the big boys, who wrings out every last dollar for you.

Or maybe you stay with your guy, who delivers for you.

Or maybe your guy makes a deal with Irving, and uses Frontline’s power to get you what you want and need.

It’s a new game.  It’s the sixties all over again.  The wheel is being reinvented.  Don’t be hamstrung by the old wave players and the old wave rules.

Where are the discounts the Internet was supposed to deliver?

On the front page of today’s L.A. "Times" is an article about new startup airlines.  Sans frills, they sell tickets as cheap as ten bucks.  Sometimes even one cent.  How do they do it?  Skybus has no telephone service center, everything is done on the Web. 

Airline ticket: $10; pillow: $15

How come if there’s no production, no shipping, no physical product whatsoever, no salesman, little or no artwork/liner notes, an online track costs just as much as a physical one?  Furthermore, it SOUNDS WORSE and comes with COPY PROTECTION!

The public isn’t ignorant.  If there are such efficiencies in translating their business online, why do the record companies want to RAISE prices?

To meet their bottom line.  But isn’t that like Smith-Corona making one last electric typewriter and hoping someone will buy it for ten million dollars?

Prices have to drop.  Argue with me all day long how this is done, but it’s got to happen, and will.  The artists have already conceded, they’re getting the same damn rate as that on physical product, even though there IS NO physical product.  Their cut is drawn down by packaging and other discounts that don’t apply in the cyberworld.  Furthermore, the public KNOWS IT!

How come the public knows the artists are being ripped off, and those who ARE ripping them off don’t wake up to reality and right the wrong?

Publishers have to go to a percentage rate.  So prices can be fluid.  And labels have to be fair regarding the slice of the pie they retain as their own.  But one thing’s for sure, prices have got to drop.

So, for one week only, EVERYTHING online is forty nine cents a track.  Or a dime.  Let’s see what price point generates the most traffic.

Oh, you might say people will show up to buy at a low price and then disappear.  Well, maybe you’ve got to entice them to spend MORE!  Maybe you can buy a coupon for a hundred tracks at a quarter.  Maybe you have to buy a hundred to GET that price.  Maybe the more you buy, the lower the price.

God, the labels are playing pricing games all over physical retail, but online?  They just want the price to go up.

Oh, they pay lip service to the price dropping, but you know the stuff under a buck will be deep catalog or crap.

How about if you can buy ALL of Led Zeppelin for twenty five bucks, this weekend only?  Or the Beatles.  Or fifteen for not only Justin Timberlake solo, but everything he did with ‘N Sync too.

Music is not the Maybach business.  Wherein you make one overpriced car and try to sell it to someone who needs to be above the riff-raff.  Rather, music is for EVERYBODY!  So it must be priced so not only everybody can afford it, but everybody WILL BUY IT!

Revenue will not go up until the per track price goes down.  This is immutable. 

Gentlemen, start your engines.

"Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales," Mr. Sinnreich said, "and then everything goes kaput."

Plunge in CD Sales Shakes Up Big Labels

Love it or hate it, the "New York Times" is the paper of record. If for no other reason than most news organizations no longer DO any reporting, they just rely on wire services and print commentary/opinion. "The New York Times" sets the agenda. And when they go on a story, it has legitimacy. Wall Street, the business community, they now know what active music consumers know, that the CD is headed for extinction. With everybody clued in, its death will be hastened. THEN what?

1. Indie Retail

Survives. Just like vinyl has never gone completely away, there will be people who will want to own discs in the future, whether they be CDs or vinyl. Most of the indie stores that have weathered the crash will continue in business, assuming their owners still want to keep the doors open. Most have diversified, they don’t rely solely on music to make money. They will be kept alive by collectors. But they will not matter. Just like vinyl doesn’t matter. Disc sales will be a sideshow. If you make a business out of it, more power to you, but most people just won’t care.

2. Big Box Retail

Best Buy and its brethren are going to kill the CD. They’re gonna shrink floor space and titles and one day they’re just going to stop selling discs completely. This will happen long before record labels desire to give up on the physical format. Retail is in tune with its customers’ whims, it has to keep moving forward to survive. Soon CDs will be evidence of the past, and these stores want to be the future. Big box retailers will kill the CD the same way the industry killed the cassette and vinyl. They’ll just stop stocking them, and the consumer will go elsewhere.

I think Aram Sinnreich’s prediction is right. After this Christmas, big box retailers will start folding their tent. Oh, maybe they’ll sell a few titles. But so do supermarket chains.

3. Radio

Radio hasn’t given a shit about CD sales for years. Radio exists in its own little backwater, where the advertiser is king and the music is just part of the sausage. Hey, so many of the records that zoom up the chart are not available at ANY price! With indie promo essentially gone, radio groups are not worried about losing the relationship with labels, there are no more perks left to acquire. As for radio station shows and other give-backs, you don’t need the label for that, just the manager. The manager will be more powerful than ever before.

4. The Promoter

When the CD dies, Live Nation is going to be in even deeper shit.

Oh, AEG will be too, but they tend to only want to be in the blockbuster business.

You see forever, the road took its clues from the labels. The labels signed the acts, promoted them, created DEMAND! Now the promoter has to create demand himself, and so far, he’s shown no talent for it. Oh, he could cede this development process to Net radio and other developing exposure media, but that just means he’ll have to settle for smaller shows, and less revenue. Doesn’t bode well for your stock price.

5. The Agent

Will have to work in concert with the manager to help create demand. This won’t solely be the province of the promoter. The label did the heavy lifting for seemingly EVERYBODY in this business, what happens when the label goes KAPUT!

6. The Manager

It starts with the manager. He creates the original demand. But the goal used to be to sell to the highest bidder, to get the label to COMMIT! And that commitment yielded exposure, which could earn you money on the road, and in the old days, royalties. NOW WHAT?

The manager has to piece together all those new media strategies, to try to get his band traction. MySpace, music blogs, it’s not about grand slams anymore, not even home runs, but BUNTS! Spreading the word, building demand, is like starting at the bottom of the minor leagues, working your way up to AAA, and then entering the bigs. First in KC. Or Seattle. Some secondary market. It’s gonna be tough. And the manager is going to be starving all the while, because fifteen or twenty percent of nothing is nothing. Which is why the established managers only want established acts, and a vacuum has been created for new managers to develop new acts. But there will be starvation along the way, and only the fittest will survive.

7. The Act

Has to get a manager. That should be your goal, to create enough noise to get someone to commit their money, time and effort to growing your act. You can only go so far by yourself. After all, you’ve got to write the music and play it! So, the act lights a fire, which burns up through the manager, agent and promoter. As for the label?

8. The Label

There will be no labels if you can’t get paid.

The online business presently doesn’t deliver what the consumer wants, which is ownership of a ton of unrestricted music for a low price. Those wishing to sell recordings only have six months to solve this problem.

It ain’t iTunes. Even Steve Jobs says most people who buy iPods buy almost no music at the iTunes Store.

Thoughts on Music by Steve Jobs

It’s not Rhapsody or Napster… You’ve got to get a new player, when iPods rule. And the public is not ready for rental.

So…

The only solution is some kind of legal P2P. But the labels and publishers are not ready for such. Therefore, stasis and infighting will kill the recorded music business.

Sad, if you think about it. People should pay for music. But the owners won’t LET THEM! Not in the way they want to.

It’s not about mergers, or laying people off, the solution is on the other end, delivering a lot of cheap music. But no one is prepared to do this. It’s fascinating watching the movie. As fat cats inured to an old way of doing things proceed to destroy their business.

9. Publishers

Will survive. And thrive.

10. The Public

We haven’t had that spirit here since… Well, if not 1969, then 1979, or ’89 or even ’99. But 1999 was almost TEN YEARS AGO! The public thinks that most mainstream new music is crap. And if the labels die, GOOD RIDDANCE! In other words, most people just aren’t paying attention. They’re not only not buying discs, they’re not going to overpriced shows with exorbitant ticket fees either. In an era where it’s about getting the masses involved at a cheap price, the music industry has catered to an ever shrinking few willing to overpay for crap.

Joe and Jane Public want music. But they’ll just steal it. Or listen to the radio.

As for new stuff? You’ll hear about it from your friends, if you’re INTERESTED! Otherwise, you’ll just fire up your home theatre and watch one of the 500 channels or a DVD.

Music has turned itself into a second class citizen. Via greed, via an inability to wake up and admit we’re living in the future.

It’s not like this inevitability, the impending death of the CD, was sprung upon the executives in the middle of the night. It was obvious at LEAST seven years ago, when the original Napster gained serious traction. The only person who saw the light? Steve Jobs. And he made his money from selling iPods, and now iPhones. If the iTunes Store never goes ga-ga, he just shrugs his shoulders and moves on. As for the music industry??

There will be a new music industry. But it will not look like the old one. It will be run by youngsters, with different values, spreading the word amongst their peers. They won’t sell out to Madison Avenue because Madison Avenue won’t have any idea what they’re doing. When the new acts do get traction, will advertising even LOOK the same? Will anybody be watching the commercials on television? Will we live in a Google ads world?

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are duking it out online. Even AOL. You wonder why AOL went free? For the EYEBALLS! There wasn’t enough money in selling online access to compete with the big boys focused on ads.

Same deal in music. By catering to a select ignorant or addicted few, willing to overpay for discs, the music business ignored the mainstream, failed to see what the people wanted and where they were going.

The people are digital savvy. It’s in their DNA. Selling McCartney discs at Starbucks is the last Hail Mary left. Whether it’s successful or not, you won’t be able to do it during Christmas ’08, Starbucks won’t be able to stand the hit to its credibility, its customers will LAUGH at them, DISDAIN them.

The disc is dying, are you prepared?

What if your dream doesn’t come true?

I wanted to be a baseball player.  My parents humored me, took me to Yankee Stadium, but as the years passed, I got the subtle message that this wasn’t a reasonable occupation.  I thought it was because my parents were judging the players, long before they made twenty mil a year, but really they wanted to protect me, wanted me to earn an educational insurance policy, so after I was gone I wouldn’t be working a menial job, wouldn’t be destitute in the alley.

But not everybody’s got parents like mine, watching out for them.  Many mothers and fathers are so overwhelmed by life that they allow their children to dream, and try to achieve that dream.

I don’t know what made Arthur "Killer" Kane want to become a musician.  But I bet it was the Beatles.  When they appeared on "Ed Sullivan" we not only started growing our hair, we began taking guitar lessons.  We needed to get closer.  We wanted to live the lives of these young lads from Liverpool.

You wake up one day and realize you’re just not talented enough.  You don’t stop playing, you read "Rolling Stone", and eventually "Billboard", but there are others still forming bands, still trying to make it.  That was Arthur.  And he got a good shot, in the New York Dolls.  They got a recording deal, and a ton of press, but when the band didn’t live up to commercial expectations, it imploded from within.

You don’t give up overnight.  Just ask Krist Novoselic.  You think you’re an integral part of your previous band’s success.  But failures, lack of traction, they eventually convince you to give up.  Years after your peers have passed you by on the economic gravy train.  You shot for the brass ring…  If you missed?

Arthur Kane missed.  He moved to L.A.  He worked as a movie extra.  He hocked his guitars.  He became despondent when his wife left him and he jumped out the window.

Too many of our citizens jump out the window.  Because nobody cares.  As kids we’re corralled by the school administration, the police, we’re under surveillance.  Hit our twenties and we’re on our own, there’s no hand-holding.  If you can’t make it?  So be it.

Recovering from his suicide attempt, a canopy having broken his fall from the third floor, Arthur Kane answered an ad for the Book of Mormon in "TV Guide".  Expecting a Bible to show up, instead missionaries knocked on his door.  After reading on his own, he had a religious experience, and converted.  Eventually he won a gig at the Mormon Temple, you know, the giant edifice on the green grounds just west of Century City.

Three times a week Arthur would take the bus from Hollywood to the Temple, where he worked in the archives, where reading obituaries he learned his own father had died.  Making him an orphan, his mother having died before he was twenty.  All Arthur had was God, and the church.

Thank god he had that.

"New York Doll", the 2005 Arthur Kane biography, is an incredible ad for Mormonism, Mitt Romney should sponsor screenings.  You see the clergy and the believers in the film cared about Arthur Kane.  Does anybody care about you?

If you’re lucky, yes.

But so many music fans feel otherwise.  It’s the music, and its makers, that gets them through.  That’s why today’s focus on image and sponsorship by corporations has eroded sales.  The essence has been eviscerated.  Rock and roll was the most popular church in America.  People prayed in their bedrooms, went to services in arenas, sometimes even stadiums, because it was this music that got them through.

But when the music goes, where do you turn?

To the window in Arthur’s case.  Thank god, he was rescued by Mormonism.

Not that Arthur forgets where he came from, who he was.  His life is one of nostalgia, telling tales of the way things used to be.  Angry with David Johansen because David made it, and Arthur did not.

But through the intervention of Morrisey, the Dolls are reunited, at a festival in London in 2004.  Johansen greets Arthur with open arms.  The gig is triumphant.  And then Arthur "Killer" Kane dies.

Oh, he doesn’t O.D.  He’s not hit by a car.  After returning to L.A., Arthur doesn’t feel well, he goes to UCLA Hospital, he dies mere hours later, twenty two days after returning from the U.K.

I went to see the Dolls at the Whisky, on the Sunset Strip, in the summer of ’73.

I’d driven my sister cross-country to graduate school.  I’d never been to the Mercer Arts Center, but I’d read about the scene in the press.  Before the days of the Internet, when the only way you could experience a performance was to go to the venue.

I drove that LeMans through downtown to get to the Whisky, not knowing you just jump on Sunset and drive east.  I was using a map, I was a tourist.

The venue wasn’t full.

And the songs were not that easy to pick out.

But the energy, the energy was unmistakable.  The band was trying to impress us, and it did.

I bought the debut when I got home to Connecticut, and the second album when it was released.

But I preferred David Johansen’s initial Blue Sky effort.  With "Frenchette".

Then David, not wanting to sink into the workaday world, became Buster Poindexter and I stopped caring.  Everybody’s got to make a living, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got to pay attention.

And my memories are frozen in time.  Not only of seeing David do his Animals medley at the Roxy, but of listening to the Dolls’ "Lonely Planet Boy" late at night in my college dorm room, as a senior, dying to get out but not sure where I wanted to go.

Some people want to go to the reunion.

I don’t even want to see the Stones.  It’s just too sad. I’d rather live on my memories.

And it turns out I’m not alone.  Bob Geldof’s kids won’t go to see the Dolls.  Even though they weren’t even alive when the band was together the first time.  But those records…they don’t want to see old, decrepit men, playing those records.

And the three remaining members are worse for wear.  Sylvain may not have lost his happy-go-lucky personality, but he’s constantly seen in headgear…  And Johansen comes to the first rehearsal straight from the stylist, in his old Levi jacket and pouffed hair.  This is not only Arthur’s chance at redemption, but David’s too.

And Arthur, the man known as the "Killer"?

He’s the kind of guy you probably wouldn’t know if he lived in the same apartment building. He’s got none of the danger rock stars are supposed to possess.  He’s got a halting voice.  He’s a nice guy.  And what do they say about nice guys?  They finish last.

Arthur "Killer" Kane is no longer with us, like three other Dolls and too many of our other players.  Some were killed by drugs.  Sometimes testing the limits, but oftentimes trying to numb the pain.  Others were felled by broken hearts.  But leukemia took Arthur.  If he’d had health insurance, if the disease had been caught earlier, would he still be with us today?

I’m no doctor.  But despite how the old song goes, we all need one.  Help.  Not only medical.

But it’s not easy to help people who are incorrigible, who won’t listen to reason, who’ve got to do it their way.

And that’s what rock stars are…  Incorrigible.  They’ve got their inner tuning fork, they’ve got to follow it.  They’re willing to give up education, safety, all the elements that those who own and RUN the business now possess, in order to follow their dream.

Sometimes their dream is a leg up from poverty.  But usually it’s love.  The musicians want love.

But most times there’s not enough love in the world to make them feel good.

But their efforts make us feel good.

One of the great things about technology is the loosening of distribution.  Used to be you had to see the movie in the theatre.  Then you could go to the store and rent the video.  But I doubt Blockbuster has "New York Doll".

But scanning through Time Warner’s On Demand service last evening, under "Free Movies", I found "New York Doll" and I watched it.

And it made me sad.  And it made me happy.  Just like the best rock music, the great albums of yore.

That’s why everybody’s still listening to the old stuff.  It possesses an unsullied honesty that we yearn for.

Tune into "New York Doll", you’ll get a hit.

New York Doll Movie

New York Doll Trailer