The Zimmers "My Generation"

Used to be you couldn’t reach the old farts.  They didn’t go to school, they didn’t go out to clubs, they were positively out of the loop.  Isn’t that what selling CDs at Starbucks is predicated on?  Baby boomers being out of the loop?

But suddenly, baby boomers have learned how to use e-mail.  And they can surf the Net too.  They might not know the call letters of the Top Forty station in town, but they know all about YouTube.

"My Generation" is a novelty.  Not far afield from the jokes that used to cross the Net transom back in the nineties.  But the mania, the rabidity with which this story has spread, is utterly fascinating.

Sometime in the last week I started getting links.  Today I must have gotten five.  And I’ve yet to see a story in the straight press, yet to see a story on TV.  And aren’t those the media that break stories?  Isn’t it about massaging gatekeepers to get them to say yes, to get your story out?

Not anymore.  Now you can bypass the entire system, and go straight to the public, your target audience.  And if what you’re purveying is interesting, that audience will do all your marketing for you.

Face it.  Irrelevant of its staying power, irrelevant of the execution, the Zimmers’ rendition of "My Generation" was a brilliant idea.  That’s the essence of great art, conception.  That’s why Jethro Tull is more meaningful than Mariah Carey.  Oh, Mariah’s just a pretty voice singing a song, whereas Jethro Tull made one song into an entire album!

The concept of oldsters singing the anthem of the youth, presented without irony, is a mindbender.  Weren’t these the same people who used to hate rock music?  And what’s up with the joy of the chorus?  You don’t see that much joy in the face of a rapper in a zillion dollar video.

So the conception delivers the appeal.  Execution is secondary.  It’s not about gloss, or sheen, but the idea.  And the idea has stuck.  This story is spreading at light speed.  New acts benefiting from a million dollars in marketing and promotion oftentimes don’t even sell 10,000 albums.  Oh, they get on TV, but no one talks about them.  Whereas this homey video is the rage!

Novelty videos won’t be the talk of the town forever.  Heard anybody raving about a mashup recently?  But the underlying behavior, discovering something and spreading the word…that’s here to stay.

So what’s next?  If you’re a talented diva do you have to kiss Jay Leno’s butt?  Be misunderstood on "The Today Show"?  Or can you just post your video to YouTube and your target audience will tell everybody they know about it?

Oh, admit it, you wanted to spread the word on the Zimmers, you wanted to be the first to tell your friends.  You can’t be the first to tell you friends about "Spider-Man 3".  There’s almost nothing to talk about there.  All the buzz is media-centric.  But it’s people buzz that matters.  And the way you create that people buzz is by empowering individuals, making them feel like they count, that they have a say, that they have an investment!  And this investment begets fans.  Those in on the ground floor want to wear their badge of honor at the gig, in conversation.

Oh, the top-down marketing campaigns will not die.  But everybody will see them for what they truly are, manipulations.  Whereas the fan started phenomena, they’ll have soul, they’ll last.  These new fan started acts/creations are akin to the underground FM radio bands of the sixties.  AM wouldn’t play them!  They didn’t fit the format!  So, a rabid audience embraced these acts and made them stars.  Not only listening to them on the radio, but buying their music and going to see them live.  It was a whispering campaign that brought people to Monterey Pop and Woodstock, not a marketing assault.

This is the worst nightmare of the powers that be.  Because their power is based on control of the marketplace.  That’s why the major labels fought file-trading, not because they were wary of having their assets stolen, but because they were afraid their monopoly on distribution might be broken.  If you can get distributed and paid by yourself, what do you need the major for?  The marketing.  But is all that marketing helping you, or hurting you?

Everything I’ve said above is well known by  Web-surfers.  It’s second nature.  They can tell you what’s real, and what isn’t.  They can go on about discovery.  They believe the old ways are decrepit.  The only people touting and propping up the old system are those involved in it.

The Net changes everything.  It eliminates the middle man.  It begs different assets be promoted.  Train-wrecks get traction, but briefly.  Quality lasts, just as long as you don’t oversell it.

Bob,

Speaking of what we know…what’s your take on Brandi Carlile and her awareness strategy?

A year ago she was a "discovery" with big word of mouth following, and now she is everywhere.

2 weeks ago,  "The Story" was itunes free single of the week and then a week later ABC ran a "greatest moments" episode of "Grey’s Anatomy" that closed with a "music video" of "The Story" — Brandi and her band on a stage belting out the song, cross cut with a montage of all the Grey’s Anatomy clips we had just endured.  It’s actually not a bad song, but I’m wondering what effect this obvious big massive push is going to have on her cred?

Thoughts?

Michael in Toronto

I was turned off before I heard a note.  There were just too many MARKETING messages!

Funny business we’re in.  It’s like a gang.  You can’t say anything negative about it.  Oh, you can decry the shenanigans of the personalities, but you can’t question the underlying belief in the power of men to ram product down people’s throats.  It’s their birthright.  People need this stuff.  If they just would stop stealing, everything would be all right.

Wrong.

It’s not 1985 anymore.  Not even 1995.  When all publicity was good publicity, when the world was music hungry.

All publicity is no longer good publicity.  Doubt me?  Then why don’t you ask Britney Spears, never mind Michael Jackson.  Their images have been trashed.  Oh, maybe they self-destructed, maybe they asked for it, but each misstep was covered in the press, amplified for the world to see.

You see it’s not that hard to get the message out.

Oh, the wannabes will tell you otherwise.  That they just need a BREAK!  That they’ve been fucked by the system, unjustly.  And if they just got a chance…

They don’t deserve a chance.  They suck.  There’s more bad music than ever before.  There’s a GREATER PERCENTAGE of bad music than ever before.  But the people making it and flogging it, they don’t believe this.  If you don’t like their stuff you’re an old fart has-been who just doesn’t get it.

Well, it seems the whole country doesn’t get it, because they’re not interested in this crap either.

So on one hand we’ve got Top Forty radio.  Playing a very narrow selection of music over and over again.  Hell, that’s the story of TERRESTRIAL RADIO!  You know what’s number two on AC?  Snow Patrol’s "Chasing Cars".  Shit, has that been out for the better part of a YEAR?  And number three is the equally aged Fray’s "How To Save A Life".  Sure, AC’s notoriously calcified, but how can you have a vibrant business when records have such long chart lives?  Isn’t this inherently a tune-out?  When you hear the same damn songs on the radio FOREVER?

Yes, the average listener has tuned out.  The majors are in bed with terrestrial radio, which is in bed with advertisers.  No one cares about the audience.  But that’s the fault of the audience, RIGHT?  Wrong.

But what if you can’t get on terrestrial radio?

Then we’re gonna carpet bomb the audience into submission.  We’re gonna have so many marketing messages that you can’t miss out, you must be ensnared by the campaign.  We’re gonna have TV show tie-ins, and commercial tie-ins and…

Now maybe some oldsters are living under a rock.  But everybody under the age of 35 is surfing incessantly.  They’re EXPOSED to these messages again and again.  It’s a TURN-OFF!  But no one in major media, no one at a major label, no agent, will admit this.  Because these marketing techniques are all they know, and they’d rather take the easy way out.

We’ve lost our audience.  Because we’ve browbeaten people to death.

Oh, there are some casual buyers who’ll purchase the hits of the American Idols.  But all those people who used to follow the scene, live for the music, they’ve tuned out.  They’ve been sold expensive crap for too long.

We’ve got to bring these people back.  Doing the same damn thing over and over again is not going to achieve this.

You’ve got to start with trust.

And trust only grows person to person now.  NOBODY trusts the machine.  EVERYBODY knows it’s just about the bucks.  That any star will appear in any ad, sell his soul for exposure, to make it.  Advertising is history.  And product placement and overhype is the same.  It’s just the machine trying to convince us to buy.  And we don’t care anymore.

All of a sudden, in the last two weeks, I started hearing about Brandi Carlile over and over again.  Did she kill somebody?  Did she write the new "Jagged Little Pill"?  Did she do anything to deserve such attention?

Go to her MySpace page.  It ain’t very convincing.  A developing artist who doesn’t deserve this kind of attention.

But I only went to the MySpace page to prove my point.  I was boycotting her before this.  I don’t want to give the company my money, and most people don’t.  We live in a pull world, but the entertainment business is pushing harder than ever.

Hey, why don’t you check out this guy: Russell Chesham

Hi Bob.  Met you at the Strombo show (at the CBC etc.; you wrote back).  I spent part of my day off reading a backlog of your letters, because I could.  One of them made me want to send you this.  He recorded it in his apartment, on his mac, probably in his bathroom (I’d know because I talk with him).  He does this sort of thing full-time.  Gave up the day job and all…

Frank Salvino

I spoke with this guy for ten minutes in Toronto.  But he didn’t try to sell me anything, he’s not in the music business, just passionate, with a keen intellect.  So, I’m going to check out what he recommends.

He’s a fan of the last MySpace track.  But I’m more into the very first.  There’s an honesty, an immediacy that you don’t find in the overproduced crap.  This is the promise of the future, the tools, a computer and MySpace, allowing artists to reach the public.

You want to know what kind of new music I like?  This!  Not trendy stuff, but honest stuff.  Is this the best thing I’ve ever heard?  Absolutely not.  But, it’s on this side of the line, I want to hear it more than once, it touches my insides, it doesn’t just bounce off.

And there was no machine involved.  Nobody selling me.  If there was, I wouldn’t be telling you.  But since it’s all private, just between us, I am.

Don’t sign this guy.  He doesn’t belong on today’s major labels.  He’s not making radio-friendly music.  It’s not 1973 anymore.  Terrestrial stations don’t play singer-songwriters.  The form is still valid, it’s just the system that’s moved on.

So, you can whore yourself out to the highest bidder, like Brandi Carlile, and get your handlers, your INVESTORS, to try to convince us by beating us over the head, or you can just make your honest music, and if it’s good, it’ll find us.  We’re always open to something good.  But not interested in being sold.

What a crock of shit this is.  God, how can we save the earth when we can’t even save the MUSIC BUSINESS!

Maybe you weren’t alive back in ’69, but let me tell you, the reason Woodstock was so appealing, why everybody was enticed, why it went from who cares to a must go was the LINEUP, they had fucking EVERYBODY!  Joe Cocker is getting traction on FM radio with "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window"?  Shit HE’S gonna be there.  The Who, cresting big time with "Tommy"?  THEY’RE gonna be there.  The legendary Jefferson Airplane.  The outre Country Joe and the Fish.  It was a HAPPENING!

I wouldn’t cross the fucking street to see the lineup at the New York Live Earth show.  And phone me when Genesis and the Police hit the London stage, then I might tune in.

God, remember when music had power, when music could change the world?  How the fuck is the world gonna change with these lame acts:

Kanye West.  Oh, the press loves him, but we all know the only rapper with cred, the one everybody truly wants to see, the genius, is Dr. Dre.  And he ain’t on this bill.

AFI?  Well, if there were more superstars, I’d give this band a pass.  They’ve got a cult audience.  Then again, they were supposed to break through big time last year, and they didn’t.

Kelly Fucking Clarkson?  Where’s the cred here?  Who’s gonna follow this chick ANYWHERE?  Isn’t she the one who won the TV talent contest, and then sang a hit written by a fifty year old in Sweden?

Akon.  Hit of the minute, forgotten tomorrow.  Maybe forgotten by time this concert actually happens on 7/7.

KT Tunstall.  Love her, but she’s a club act.  She’s swallowed whole by a venue like Giants Stadium, her music becomes MEANINGLESS!

Alicia Keys…  An overrated hack.  Yup, she ripped off "It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World" for her one big hit and she’s only marginally more important than Whitney Houston, Clive Davis’ hype of a decade previous.  Come on, sing a couple of her original songs, I DARE YOU!

Ludacris.  Loved him in "Crash", but isn’t he ALREADY A HAS-BEEN?

Bon Jovi.  "Slippery When Wet" is the best hair metal album ever cut.  But Jon Bon Jovi is a smiling idiot, he’s WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS BUSINESS!  Never takes a stand for fear of alienating a potential audience member.  THIS is the guy who’s gonna deliver us from the sun’s rays?  I don’t think so.  I wouldn’t follow this guy ANYWHERE!

Sheryl Crow.  Come on, you knew she’d be on this bill.  God, she can’t be left out, she can’t be FORGOTTEN!  Who’s she appealing to here?  Soccer moms whose kids are already in college?  Like her audience is gonna tune in to this travesty?

Melissa Etheridge.  I liked her better when she was an alienated lesbian decrying the sad state of gays in society.  Then she became the poster girl for homosexuals, the one Bill Clinton trotted out again and again, and she lost her edge.  And a good deal of her fan base too.

Dave Matthews Band.  Stars.  Who don’t do endorsements.  Who people believe in.  Better it be JUST the Dave Matthews Band than the rest of these hacks.  Didn’t we learn that with the package tours of the late nineties?  That one plus one doesn’t equal three, oftentimes not even two, but one at most?  Put Neil Young or the Allman Brothers atop the hippie bill at H.O.R.D.E. and business goes DOWN!  Their fans won’t come out.  They don’t want to endure crap, and they think they’re gonna get a short show.  Yeah, like Dave’s gonna play for three hours here…

Rihanna.  That’s what we’ve got a RAINBOW COALITION!  MTV is history.  Yup, originally MTV was rock only, then it expanded to Michael Jackson and black music.  But now all the scenes are ghettoized again, people interested in Rihanna don’t give a shit about Dave Matthews, and vice versa.

Fall Out Boy.  Well, at least they’re big NOW!

Roger Waters…  Live 8 gets the whole band, and Live Earth gets the guy who can’t sing.  Laughable.

Smashing Pumpkins.  NOBODY CARES!  The band is not doing the promoters a favor, but just the opposite, the Pumpkins need EXPOSURE!

John Mayer.  Sheryl Crow once removed.  Like I’m supposed to believe in the guy fucking Jessica Simpson.

The Police.  The one certified killer headliner…

Hell, let’s fly across the pond to England:

Beastie Boys.  Maybe they’re playing in the U.K. to hide the fact that very few care in the U.S. anymore.  They peaked OVER A DECADE AGO!

Black Eyed Peas.  Make me puke.  They can only appear if Alanis comes out and does her parody of "My Humps".

Bloc Party.  Legitimate.  They’ve got traction in the U.K., they get a pass.

Corinne Bailey Rae.  Bloc Party once removed.  She has a career, but nobody’s gonna follow her ANYWHERE!  This is just another promotional performance, who can believe what a woman who writes such vapid lyrics has to say?

Damien Rice.  "Cannonball" was years ago.  He’s past his peak.

David Gray.  Damien Rice with a few more memorable tracks.  He’s over in the U.S., although he does have some fumes in the U.K.  But he’s not a stadium act.

Duran Duran.  Legitimate superstars.  And hipper than Bon Jovi, which has NO EDGE!

Foo Fighters.  Maybe if Dave Grohl reunited with Krist and Courtney Love sang.  Foo Fighters are a second-rate band that wouldn’t even be on a bill like this twenty years ago.

Genesis.  The Police of the U.K. show.  Coming back from retirement.  Stars.

Keane.  God, they’ve got no career momentum.

Madonna.  Surprising she’s not best friends with Sheryl Crow, she wouldn’t miss an opportunity to hype herself, she’s got to be at the PARTY!  Too bad her music is completely meaningless now.  Even Lourdes is more cutting edge.

Paolo Nutini.  There’s a story here.  How such a new act gets on this bill.  Someone was owed a favor here.

Razorlight.  Reasonable traction in the U.K., okay.

Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Stars.  Even bigger in the U.K. than the U.S.

Snow Patrol.  I dig them.

As you can see, the U.K. lineup far exceeds that of the U.S.  Still, it falls curiously flat.  You see we just don’t have STARS ANYMORE!

Oh, they could reunite the acts of the past.  But you’d have to pay Jimmy and Robert.  And too many of the oldsters are TOO OLD!

Yup, this is what the modern era has delivered us.  Few stars.  And even fewer you can believe in.  Only Bon Jovi seems to have survived MTV.  And in the modern file-trading era, no one’s bubbled up in the U.S. yet.

This ain’t no Live Aid, this ain’t no national holiday, this ain’t no stay inside and watch the tube all day affair.

God, just look at the Live Aid lineup:

Status Quo
Style Council
Boomtown Rats
Adam Ant
INXS
Ultravox
Loudness
Spandau Ballet
Bernard Watson
Joan Baez
Elvis Costello
The Hooters
Opus
Nik Kershaw
The Four Tops
B.B. King
Billy Ocean
Black Sabbath
Sade
Run DMC 
Sting
Rick Springfield
Phil Collins
REO Speedwagon
Howard Jones
Autograph
Bryan Ferry
Crosby, Still & Nash
Udo Lindenberg
Judas Priest
Paul Young – Alison Moyet
Bryan Adams
U2
The Beach Boys
Dire Straits & Sting 
George Thorogood & the Destroyers/Bo Diddley/Albert Collins
Queen
David Bowie/Mick Jagger
Simple Minds
David Bowie
The Pretenders
The Who
Santana/Pat Metheny
Elton John
Ashford & Simpson/Teddy Pendergrass
Elton John/Kiki Dee/Wham! 
Madonna
Freddie Mercury/Brian May 
Paul McCartney
McCartney/Bowie/Pete Townshend/Alison Moyet/Bob Geldof
Tom Petty
Kenny Loggins
The Cars
Neil Young
The Power Station
The Thompson Twins
Eric Clapton
Phil Collins
Robert Plant/Jimmy Page/John Paul Jones
Duran Duran
Patti LaBelle
Hall & Oates/Eddie Kendricks/David Ruffin
Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger/Tina Turner
Bob Dylan /Keith Richards/Ron Wood

Fuck the Live Earth lineup.  They’d be better off trying to recreate this TWENTY YEAR OLD SHOW!  Even the complete has-beens are better than most of what’s on today’s bill.  Come on, who wouldn’t rather see Ultravox than Akon or Kelly Clarkson?  And doesn’t Status Quo still tour?

Live Nation and Kevin Wall are operating under the illusion that it’s still 1985, that we live in one big happy world united by music.  We don’t.  You want stars, we’ve got ’em, they’re just not musicians.  Steve Jobs is bigger than any of the acts on these new bills.  And he’s STILL HOT!  He’s not on a nostalgia tour.

What a sad sad state of affairs we’re in.  When there’s no music to believe in.

I say wipe the slate clean of the labels, the video channel employees and Live Nation too.  They’re just trying to prop up what once was, even though the underpinnings are completely rotten.  We’ve got no belief in major music today.  Nothing that can sell a lick that anybody cares about.  So why should we follow these tools of the system when they stand up and tell us to fight global warming?  Aren’t these the SAME culprits whored out to the Fortune 500 companies who are PERPETUATING THE PROBLEM?

I saw the movie.  If you want to get me riled up, let’s all march on Washington, protesting the policies of George W. Bush.  Or stop buying SUVs.  Do something that counts rather than watch these idiots, slaves to the system, either live or on the Web.

Where’s John Lennon when you need him.  Gimme some truth.  Tell me that music’s been ruined, that there’s nothing to believe in, and we’ve got to start all over from SCRATCH!

The reason Imus lost his gig was not because he did something illegal, but because he offended advertisers.  Oh sure, one could say he offended listeners too, but how many of those ranting and raving about his language listened to his show to BEGIN WITH?

Bottom line, Imus has fans.  And now those fans are shit out of luck.

Maybe Imus will take his money and go home.  But that’s not the American story.  America is about rehabilitation.  And, Al Campanis had no fans.  There’s a market for Imus.  But where?

Not on terrestrial radio.  The usual suspects are too scared.

But how about the wild west of satellite radio?  It’s a natural home for the I-Man.

But all the spin says he’s not gonna go.  Because satellite has advertisers too.  But not enough to make a difference.  Who needs the FRIENDS of Oprah, who needs to build from scratch when you can start with a legend, who brings HIS OWN AUDIENCE!

That’s what Sirius did with Howard Stern.  And it was a master stroke, without Howard Sirius would already be bankrupt.

But now it’s XM that’s in trouble.  The service has got no buzz.  XM needs to be dangerous, it needs to leave a mark, it needs Imus.

Now chances are if Imus resurfaces on satellite, he’ll go to Sirius, after all he’s got a preexisting relationship with Mel Karmazin.  But if XM loses Imus and the merger doesn’t happen…  How is the service going to recover?  Read today’s "Wall Street Journal", there IS no radio talent left out there, nobody XM can put on the airwaves to counter Imus and his audience.  Imus is one of the last best players.  Along with Tom Joyner.  Put Adam Carolla on satellite and you’ll get a big yawn.  Put Imus on, and imagine the PRESS!

Oh, you know Mel will weasel.  Say it’s got nothing to do with content, but feeding demand.  And how can you battle with a service that’s got so many edgy voices to begin with, from Eminem to even Martha Stewart.  But can XM thread this needle?

Sirius is Howard Stern, XM is..?

This is XM’s final bite at the apple, will they fuck it up?

You know if there were no merger pending, they’d be all over Imus.  But this is what consolidation brings you.  BOTH services can keep Imus at arm’s length, since he’s got nowhere else to go.  Like Clear Channel’s gonna make a deal with him.  That’s the fallacy of Mel Karmazin’s theory about competition.  There’s no podcast market, Imus isn’t gonna make it on iPods, and he’s too dangerous for terrestrial radio conglomerates to make a deal.  Oh, he could syndicate station by station, but what hard work when he can instantly reach the whole country, MORE of the landscape than he presently does, if he goes to satellite.

And now you know why the satellite services got into trouble to begin with.  Competition, outspending each other.  That’s why they want the merger.  To pay people like Imus LESS!  Imus fits satellite the way "The Sopranos", "Entourage" and "Big Love" fit HBO.  Stuff so edgy that you’ve got to keep it out of the reach of FCC oversight.

These duplicitous fucks in satellite radio want to deny a fair price for talent, and want to deny listeners the content they desire.  That’s what this merger is all about.

But maybe there’s a chance that the merger won’t happen.  As insurance, Imus must go to XM.

It’s a natural fit.  XM is in D.C., where all those politicians Imus interviews are located.  They can move him down to Washington and build him a special studio, just like Sirius did with Howard.  They can get endless ink.  As long as they don’t wait too long.

The tide is turning on Imus.  The backlash has begun.  Sure, what he said was bad, but what about everybody else?  He can come back.  And everybody will be watching.  They’ll want to know what he has to say, whether he’s changed, whether he’s cleaned up his act.  This is not Howard Stern leaving terrestrial at the height of his popularity, this is a niche guy most of the public didn’t pay attention to who now is the biggest story in the media.  All eyes are on him.  You’ve got to CAPITALIZE ON THIS!

Oh, I wouldn’t bring him back on the air immediately.  I’d make the deal right away, but let him serve a suspension.  Then I’d rehabilitate his image, get him in "People", all over the TV talk shows.  Retaining his edge, his personality, but saying he fucked up and certain things are beyond the pale.  And then, he’ll be on XM and the media will cover everything he says.  And thereafter, XM will have an identity.  As the Imus station.  They’ll stand for something.  Sure, in a perfect world they could stand for something better, but they’ve fumbled the ball till now.  They could have been the music service, but they never got that message across.  Instead they’ve got Snoop who’ll play for anybody who’ll pay, an old coot fired from NPR and Oprah’s buddies and baseball.  Baseball’s a good one, but what if you don’t LISTEN to baseball?  You’ve got to have something more.  You’ve got to have Imus.  You’ve got to take the ball from Sirius.  You’ve got to get the mo.

This is XM’s defining moment.  If they don’t get Imus and the merger doesn’t happen, they’re toast, they’re a distant also-ran.

Now’s the time to throw the Hail Mary pass.  Does XM have the balls?