We were living in a hip-hop nation.  What happened?

The Internet.

Hip-hop evolved into a marketing juggernaut.  The sound of the people made by performers who would endorse any product, tie in with anybody willing to pay them.  And the marketers paid them.  And the mainstream media covered the shenanigans.  And then suddenly nobody wanted rap records anymore.

Of course rap became a caricature of itself.  Then again, if you were cutting edge, you got no airplay.  And with no touring business to speak of, and with disc sales declining, you needed that airplay.  So ever more bland hip-hop was foisted upon the public on MTV and radio and…suddenly people had somewhere else to turn.

This is the broadband story.

Broadband begat not only YouTube, but the demise of Don Imus too.  If it weren’t for Media Matters, and its posting of the Imus clip, this story would have blown over, it would have been business as usual.  But the Net kept the story alive.  The Net MADE the story.  The Net fanned the flames.

The major labels believe the Internet is synonymous with theft.  Sure, a lot of stealing goes on via the pipe.  But a lot more is exchanged between people.  Information.  New music.

The old system was built upon control.  We decide who to sign, we decide who to promote, you choose from our slim pickings.

But suddenly there was more choice.

But you weren’t supposed to like those new choices.  They didn’t sound like the mainstream, they didn’t have the same traction, they weren’t UBIQUITOUS!  And that’s exactly why the public embraced these new acts.  They hearkened back to the days of the late sixties and early seventies, when the man had AM and we had FM.  And the labels purveying the music were icons we wanted to work for, when they were doing their best to midwife the cutting edge, what we wanted to hear.

You know that doesn’t describe the major labels today.

We’ve been reading over and over how Americans are bombarded with marketing messages, which are ignored.  What makes the music industry believe it’s immune?  That when it hypes something it hasn’t got the feel of Procter & Gamble trying to convince us to try out a new soap?

And with so much money at stake, the usual suspects ramp the hype up even more.  Jay-Z is EVERYWHERE when his new album comes out.  But that doesn’t sell it.  Because people can see the sell.  And the sell has nothing to do with the music.

And didn’t the labels cry that CDs have to cost so much because of the MARKETING COSTS?  The HYPE costs?  It’s exactly these costs that are putting their acts in the ground.  Only the lowest common denominator is interested in the tripe they’re selling.  Doubt me?  Then why do the Shins sell more albums the first week than the vaunted J. Lo?

Most albums sell a pittance.  They’re far from ubiquitous.  It’s the HYPE that’s ubiquitous.  Suddenly, with a fraction of the marketing budget you can reach enough people to sell more albums than those of the scorched-earth policy overhypes.  Think about THAT!

In other words, there’s more money in the niche.  Not only are niches selling a lot of records, they’re doing so for a fraction of the cost.  And people want the album, since they believe in the act.

We’re in a new golden era.  Pay no attention to what the major labels are saying.  Don’t worry about iTunes and DRM and lawsuits.  They’re the detritus of an old world.  What’s fascinating is that those who desire music are pulling it on the Web.  They’re going out and finding it, they’re searching for great new stuff.  And when they find it, they buy it, and go to see it live, they BELIEVE in it.  And it sounds anything but formulaic.

In reality, this is less of a revolt against hip-hop than a setting loose of music lovers in a vast candy store.  Why eat the same thing over and over again when you can try something new?

If you’re playing only the hits, you’re missing most of what people want to hear.

Then again, to get most of those people you’d have to play ALL KINDS of music.  Begging the question of whether broadcasting is even the model.  Whether it’s more about niches.  Whether satellite’s tens and tens and tens of stations are necessary to fill the need.

You complained about the lack of melody in today’s music?

No problem, you no longer have to listen to it.  You can find something more appealing on the Web.  Friends help.  But even solo surfing turns up all kinds of appealing stuff.

We’re seeing a great democratization of the landscape.  Dictation is no longer the norm.  It’s not about strong-arming someone into liking your wares, it’s about trying to do something so great, so appealing, so honest that people will flock to you, and sell it for you.

The landscape will never be the same.

No one knew what satellite radio was until Howard Stern signed on.

And people hate Howard.

Suddenly satellite radio went from something cool, the new iPod, into the same old thing, but you pay for it.

I mean who wants to pay for Howard Stern?  Oh, his show is better than ever, but it’s all about freeing HIM, not servicing YOU!  He was constrained by the FCC, not you.  And suddenly you got the same old thing, except it cost you $12.95 a month.  Sure, diehard fans were happy to pay.  But most Stern listeners were not.  Only a fraction followed him to satellite.

Great way to build a business.  Giving the middle finger to your audience.  Telling people you need to feel free to make $100 million, but really you’re all in this together.  Bullshit.

And those not into Howard Stern, they were happy to stay away from the stink.

But what about XM?

X what?

Suddenly, satellite became synonymous with Sirius.  Howard hyped it everywhere he went, for a year before he could even be heard on the service.

And then Mel Karmazin followed him there.

Mel Karmazin is the number two poster boy for everything Americans hate about radio.  Number one, of course, is the Mays family/Clear Channel.  But wasn’t it Mel who turned CBS Radio into an advertising juggernaut?  And everywhere he went after signing on to Sirius, Mel babbled about how he was going to sell so much advertising.

Suddenly, satellite radio was Howard Stern with commercials.  And you had to PAY FOR IT!  People were turned off.

Most people have never heard satellite radio.  They’ve got no idea of its charms.

Then again, if you listen to Sirius, it doesn’t sound that different from terrestrial.  The deejays are jive and the records are repeated endlessly.  But you’ve got STARS!  Curious, don’t you think.  In an era where the stars on television are the hoi polloi, where everyman is what most people want to see, they suddenly want to PAY to hear the bloviations of people who have no previous history in radio?

Now if you need Howard, Sirius is the only place to go.

And if you buy a Sirius-ready car, you’ll find the service is superior to terrestrial, so maybe you’ll keep up your subscription.

But where’s the growth?

Suddenly signing up satellite subscribers is a grind.  The kind Mel Karmazin works with his salesmen.  Instead of people flocking to buy it, like Windows switchers to Macs, you’ve got to convince people.  And that’s tough.

XM had it right.  The service was growing organically.  Its best salesmen were its subscribers.  But you can’t sell XM to non-subscribers anymore.  They know all about satellite.  Losing money and desperately begging for a merger.  Battling with terrestrial and iPods.  Shit, does the iPod cite the Walkman as competition?  But we’ve got Mel all over the media saying Sirius and XM have no choice but to merge, because of all the competition.  Does U2 have competition?  Even Coldplay?  Great bands generate their own desire.  It’s only crap bands that have to fight for their spot in the marketplace.

I’m getting a bad feeling that the Sirius/XM merger is a fait accompli.  That all of Mel’s whining is going to convince the regulators.  And this is sad.  Because what’s lost in translation is satellite radio’s PROMISE!

Oh, don’t tell me about Net radio.  First and foremost, you can’t get it in your car, and won’t be able to for a while.  Never mind that too much of it is unlistenable.  And HD radio?  The amount of money thrown towards programming wouldn’t keep XM or Sirius afloat for minutes.  No, satellite radio is the answer, if only they could make it cool again.

I don’t think Mel is interested in making Sirius cool.  He’s just interested in the bucks.  Which is why satellite is being dragged down.  But XM?  Can XM be cool again?  Can XM be saved by a repositioning, a separation from Sirius?

XM is not terrestrial without the commercials.  It’s a different philosophy.  The deejays don’t talk jive and the playlists are varied.  Not that anybody but subscribers knows this, because nobody has told them!

The future is about filters.  XM is a filter today!  But it’s been positioned so poorly, it’s dying on the vine.

While Hugh Panero focused on car deals, he did no soulful marketing.  And, didn’t plan for car owners to switch the service off, because the vibe on satellite is so bad in the community.  Buying satellite is like buying a Zune.  What kind of chump lays hard-earned money down for crap?

First and foremost XM has got a perception problem.  Sirius does too, but it’s going to use this merger to triumph.  But what if the merger doesn’t happen?  What if regulators finally see that competition is best?  Can XM sell itself again?  Can it get people to believe and spread the word?  That’s its challenge.

Just when you’ve got a good thing
It seems to slip away

"Another Park, Another Sunday"
The Doobie Brothers

Actually, it all started on a Sunday.  In the trees not far from Mammoth’s Chair 25.

It’s been a shitty ski season.  As in lack of snow.  We traveled up to Whistler, which has all the white stuff, but it was so wet, enjoyable is not the word I’d use to describe sliding down.

But then it rained in Southern California.  And when it rains in L.A., it snows in the Sierras, prodigiously.  So, days before I was supposed to go to Toronto for Canadian Music Week, Felice and I jaunted up to Mammoth.

It was by far the best skiing of the year.  The kind of soft snow you dream of.  We were challenging the Cornice, making laps on Dave’s, and then we went over to Chair 25.

A year earlier Felice had had a meltdown on its lift line.  But two days earlier, she exorcised the demons, she’d killed it.  So we decided to venture into the vegetation, the trees to the side of the lift.  Oh, they’re not exquisitely tight, and it’s not unbelievably steep, but the snow was a bit sticky, the sun having baked it all morning long.  And we’re taking it section by section.  And about halfway down, I hear a little yelp, not one of agony, not one of despair, but mostly of disappointment.  Felice holds herself to high standards.

I was only thirty or forty feet away, across the slope.  I turned around and climbed up to her, released her left ski, which was behind her.  But Felice couldn’t stand.  She wasn’t in excruciating pain, but she knew something was wrong.

Try getting a toboggan in the trees.  God, I could barely see my phone in the sunlight.  Finally I scooted over into the open slope and flagged a ski patrolman.

Felice is having surgery next Friday.  To repair her torn ACL.

As one does in any medical crisis, I got ahold of Irving Azoff, who told me exactly which doctor Felice should see.  He was right.  I have total confidence.  A full recovery is expected.  But as Felice would say, this really fucked up our plans.

You see we were supposed to go to Vail.  And then Vail again.  And skiing in New Zealand at the end of the summer, after I speak at this conference in Australia.

Of course that all pales in comparison to the injury, the ordeal, the rehab.  Which takes a toll on one’s physicality, emotionality and the underlying relationship.  But we’re trying to manage it.  Sometimes better than others.

Right now Felice is in New York City, tonight is the annual teacher awards Guitar Center sponsors at Carnegie Hall for the foundation she runs.  I was supposed to be there too.  But I’ve been sick.

Actually, I’ve been sick most of the past six weeks.  The antibiotic killed the sinus infection I had, but some head pain remained.  And then last week…I fell off the edge.

In hindsight, I blame the sushi bar, that we went to with Lisa.

No, this has nothing to do with my sinus infection, nothing at all.  But I searched for answers for days, and none showed up until Tuesday morning, in the stool sample.

So Saturday night I’m extra-tired.  But I’ve got to do my April 1st issue.  Got to send it after midnight, and before people get hip to the date.  But I’m suddenly feeling so wasted.  But I write something anyway, which I’m not happy with.  But it’s a once a year gig only.  I let it go.

It’s just that the feedback wasn’t spectacular.  Oh, extremely good, but not over the top.  And that’s when I decided to write another, Sunday afternoon.  Stunningly, all that time later people fell for it.

And after a going away party for Jennifer at Ginny’s apartment, I went to KLSX to do my radio show.  I was curiously tired the last half hour, really tired, noticeably tired.  Then again, I’d had that sinus infection, I figured it was the aftermath.

Now it’s not like I did anything stressful the next three days.  Hell, for forty eight hours I was home doing this kidney urine test (don’t ask).  But when I woke up on Thursday, I was wiped.  And when I walked slowly down the avenue to meet Yahoo’s Ian Rogers for lunch, the world seemed to spin.  And when I returned home, to retrieve my iPod for podcasting at Rhino in Burbank, I felt that I just couldn’t go, just couldn’t make it.

But I went anyway.  That’s my constitution.  I pride myself on my constitution.

Thank god for Tylenol, I was falling apart on the freeway.

And when I finally got home that evening, sitting on the pot, I realized, I was sick.

I had no idea.

The next day I had chills at the shrink.

Then I slept from three to ten, too tired to get up.  Too tired to even watch TV.

I slept in my ski underwear, sweat pants, sweatshirt and fleece.  And I kept having to get up to go to the bathroom, even though I hadn’t eaten anything, even though almost nothing came out.

And it got no better on Saturday.  I had Felice come and pick me up (she can drive, it’s her left leg).

And now I’m getting scared.  You’ve got to die of something.

And Saturday night it gets worse.  I can’t go more than half an hour without venturing to the bathroom.  There’s blood.  I’m afraid of falling asleep for fear of not waking back up.

So Sunday morning I call the doctor.  Who won’t go on record.  You know modern doctors, they’re not like fifties doctors, they won’t give you a reading, they’re afraid of liability!

But I get no better all day.

Finally I decide it’s time for the emergency room.

But when we finally get there, I’m just not bad enough for a five hour ordeal, I figure I can wait until the next day, when my doctor can see me.

And I went first thing Monday morning.  Where I was given every test known to man.  Everything from ultrasound to blood to him sticking his finger up my rear.  Nothing.  They couldn’t find a fucking thing.  Well, on some level that’s good.  That means it’s viral.

And then comes Monday night…

I felt like I’d been on "Survivor".  Eating nothing, drinking to stay hydrated, alive.  But suddenly, I was thrust into "The Exorcist".  No, my head didn’t rotate, but I had night sweats so bad you could take a bath in the puddle that resulted.  I was frightened.  It’s five days in and I’m getting sicker?  Then it happened again.  And again.

I woke up and immediately dialed the doctor.  But, after speaking to the receptionist, I looked at my BlackBerry and I saw there was a phone message.  From him.

Something showed up in the stool sample.  Which had come back a day earlier than scheduled (thank god!)  I had campylobacter jejuni.

It’s like salmonella.  It comes from chickens.  And I ate no uncooked chicken, but it’s so volatile, that if you eat anything prepared on the same surface, you can get it.  And I’m thinking I got it back at the sushi bar.  Not that it matters.  You take the Cipro, and you get better.

Am I back?

Today’s the first day with no diarrhea.  My mind is still fogged.  But I can finally think, music sounds good again.

This is the second time I’m writing about this today.

The first time the story was how the mainstream press was completely out of it on this one, how this was truly a Web phenomenon.

Now the story is how Alanis herself is completely silent, how the story is the story, what exactly happened here?

Was it an April Fool’s joke?  Did she get permission?  Hell, you need permission to synch music with video.  Or do the Black Eyed Peas not even care?  Then again, the RIAA issued take-down notices to sites that NIN leaked its songs to.

Where’s the press conference?  The late night TV appearance?  Shit, even lonelygirl15 went on "The Tonight Show".  Then again, that actress needed the publicity, she was a nobody, whereas Alanis Morissette is a somebody.  A badly tarnished somebody who’s seen as a one hit wonder.  Aren’t unknowns supposed to use the new tools?  Aren’t the stars always guilty of manipulation?

This video appears on YouTube out of nowhere?  How did people find out about it?

E-mail.

Have you gotten the one about the Turtles video?

It’s astounding to those who haven’t seen it, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan reciting their managerial woes laughingly, in an honest way so different from today’s pampered media-savvy rock stars as to single-handedly show why the sixties were so magical

Turtles

But I’ve seen this video.  God, was it January 2000 when I went to a screening room in Beverly Hills to see Rhino Films’ Turtles movie?  What ever happened to that movie?  Harold Bronson stopped updating me on it.  But suddenly, an excerpt is a hit on the Web, it’s gaining momentum.  I get an e-mail link every day.

But this "My Lumps" thing is a juggernaut.

Earlier today, during my first unpublished attempt at delineating this phenomenon, there were only 64 references total on the Google News.  And not a single one of them was in a mainstream print publication, or its Website, until hours previous, days after the video phenomenon broke.

But if you did a straight Google on "Alanis lumps" there were references to the Websites of VH1 and other entertainment media.  Then again, who pays attention to that media?

Hell, the very first link, the very first news story, was on April 2nd, from the Wired News.  Who reads the Wired News?

Believe me, I seem to consume more media than anybody I know.  And I often feel like I know nothing.  There’s no one place to go to graze and get a hit of everything.  Hell, the mainstream press didn’t cover this "My Lumps" story until today.  You rely on your peeps.

It’s all a matter of how many friends you have.  Not fake friends on MySpace, but real friends, whom you trust, who’ll you follow a link sent by.  Have no friends then you’re out of the loop.  Have friends and you don’t even need to leave your house to be part of the community, on the pulse, to the degree anybody can be on the pulse anymore.

In other words, we no longer live in a top-down society.  The mainstream comes to the party last, after the public has delineated what’s important.  Hell, we saw this a year ago when the blogosphere made Stephen Colbert’s appearance at the White House Correspondents’ dinner a story, which the mainstream press previously ignored, and then ran with.  Same deal with the firing of the U.S. Attorneys, in fact.

As of this writing, Alanis Morissette’s "My Humps" video has 2,120,369 plays on YouTube

Alanis Morissette "My Humps" video

It’s not on her Website, which hasn’t been updated this year.  Who knows if it’s on MTV.com,, who wants to wade through the Flash and search through the ultra-busy site to look for what one can find instantly on YouTube.

I can’t find "My Humps/Lumps" on Yahoo Music.  I could search AOL Music too, but how many places do I have to go to when I can go to the one where they have everything?

So what was her intention?  Does she hate the Black Eyed Peas?  Does she want to make a statement about the vapidity of today’s pop music?  Was she just having a laugh?

And she could have shot this on the cheap and had the same effect.  But a ton of money was spent.  Whose was it, hers or the label’s?

And if you step into the public eye, you’ve got something to hawk.  That’s why you’re on TV, that’s why we see you in all the magazines.  But we haven’t heard about a new Alanis album.  And she’s not swooping down to claim her crown and maximize the effect, profit on this publicity, it’s just sitting there.  And the less she does, the bigger the story is.

I don’t actually find the song and video that great.  But the conception!  Great art is all about conception.  It’s what’s in the mind more than what’s in the fingers.

If she’s smart, Alanis will never tell us what went on here, what she was thinking, what she was intending.  Kind of like Bob Dylan wouldn’t explain his songs.  Oh, maybe months down the line, a year.  But now, she’s suddenly got momentum.  The doors are open to her.  The public is primed for a comeback from someone it had already forgotten.  There are already parody videos, and radio airplay…

Meanwhile, check this out: Sad Kermit – Hurt