Bill Graham is rolling over in his grave.

If only they could come up with a new Dead, a new Santana, a new Airplane that would make these venues worth going to!

Irving Plaza.  What the hell was wrong with THAT name?  A long, storied history, a rich tradition that people believed in.  But no, it’s got to be remonikered in some business plan created by fucks at Live Nation who weren’t conscious when the ORIGINAL Fillmores were open.

I’ll grant you Philadelphia’s Theatre Of Living Arts wasn’t quite as catchy a designation, but what was wrong at this established venue, the NAME?

When BILL expanded he didn’t use the same fucking name.  Ever hear of Winterland?  Why didn’t he rebrand that one?  Because it would fuck with tradition, people’s memories!

If only Live Nation could come up with a NEW name.  Then again, these are the people who came up with…LIVE NATION!  What, are we living in the eighties still?  When the mainstream merged with hipdom and we were all in it together?  Live Nation my ass, I don’t want to be a part of any corporate group, collecting me and my so-called brethren under a tent of commercialism, endorsements/sponsorships galore, just so you can make your money.  Make me puke.

The original Fillmore started organically.  Bill Graham came up with the philosophies as he grew the business.  Hell, rock and roll was like tech, they made it up as they went along.  Now it’s just business as usual, managing a mature operation.  And you wonder why people only go to a show a year, why they don’t care.

How about NEW traditions?  NEW bands.  The major labels are in disarray, why doesn’t Live Nation step up and become the new label?  Why doesn’t it do something altruistic, as opposed to digging into its corporate past, trying to skate on the good will of an enterprise that CLOSED over THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO!

This smacks of Detroit.  They’re bringing back the Taurus, didn’t you know?  But the car’s not gonna be a breakthrough, it’s gonna just be a rebadged Five Hundred, a shitty boat that nobody wanted to buy in quantity.  The name would make NO DIFFERENCE if you played acts the people wanted to see at a fair price.

Fuck the Fillmore.  Why don’t you cut down the TicketMaster charge, or the facility fee.  That’s how you gain your audience’s trust.  Not by bait and switch, taking old buildings, painting them and giving them a legendary name.  Hell, isn’t it funny that the man who regrouped the Cars for the MONEY (hell, Todd Rundgren ADMITTED IT) is the opening act in Philadelphia.  That New Cars fiasco was just that.  And this new labeling of old buildings won’t hurt business, but it ain’t gonna help either.  You rename the building and suddenly people want to go?  Hell, it’s about the ACTS!

First there was the return to the old regional promoter names.  Now this spread of the classic "Fillmore" appellation.  This is just managers of an enterprise trying to scam the public to please Wall Street, it’s got nothing to do with turning on or satiating the customer.

How about free programs/playbills, like at the Fillmores of yore?

No, you won’t do that…who’s gonna PAY for it?

How about reasonable pricing?

Oh, your hands are tied by the acts.

Isn’t this EXACTLY why Bill Graham closed the Fillmores TO BEGIN WITH?  Because the acts were asking for TOO MUCH MONEY?!

Show me some innovation, show me something new, don’t try to mesmerize me by CHANGING THE NAME!  Do something REAL!

Lily Allen to Play Inaugural Concert at Newly Re-Named Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza

You have to know where in the food chain to charge.

Traditionally, labels were the driving force in music and they charged right up front, you had to buy the album after hearing a track or two on the radio.  Only problem was…were you going to like the whole album if you only liked the single?  Would the single be representative of everything else on the album (can you say Extreme?)  Oh, in the sixties you could just buy the single.  But if there even was a single in the nineties, it was deleted when the song got traction, you had to buy the whole album.  Sometimes people fell in love with the album and the act, but oftentimes there was no loyalty, buying the album was the only way you could get what you wanted, the single.

But then came Napster.  With Napster, you could listen first.

And even the legal iTunes Music Store allowed you to cherry-pick.  Suddenly, the labels’ business model was in the toilet.  They no longer controlled exhibition and distribution, and the buy-in price was no longer fifteen bucks.  Their revenue tanked.

Now the labels are pissed about this.  You would be too if you were losing sales at a double digit clip.  The labels somehow think they can port their old business model into the new world.  But that’s not how it works.  You’ve got to play by the new rules.

Now what are the new rules?

You can hear everything before buying it.  Even the most amateur of Web-surfers can hear four songs on MySpace.  You get a feeling for an act.  So, you either only buy the single, the song you want, or the whole album if you like most of the tracks.  Assuming you pay for your acquisition at all.

This is a problem.  Not only does the consumer want control over what he buys, he has control over the price too, which is free.  Not a good business model.  You’d think those in power would address this, for this goes to the core of their revenue stream, but they’d rather try to sue their consumers back to the twentieth century, and go on about the good old days.  There is a model for monetization of Web acquisition, by licensing P2P, whether an individual service or at the ISP level.  Then again, you can’t monetize hard drive swapping and IM transfer, so the boat leaks.  Bad if you’re in the recorded music business.  Not necessarily bad if you’re in the music business.

Creators should get paid for their work.  But this is problematic today.  So, musicians must turn to other revenue streams.  Like live and merch.  This is fact.  One can rail about the injustice, how it was better when you could live off recorded music sales, but that world is in disarray.

In the heyday of MTV, the way to get people to come to the gig was to get airplay of your video.  It was cause and effect, airplay begat attendees.  Not necessarily long term fans, but if you had a hit you could book short term revenue.  But now MTV plays no videos.  And radio listenership is down.  So it’s harder to drive revenue streams, not only recorded music, but live and merch.  So, you’ve got to go another way.

Some people employ corporate endorsements and/or advertising/TV/movie synchs.  Corporate cash is short term, it runs out.  And, you can only usually get it if you’re big already.  Advertising…it hurts your cred.  TV and movie synchs, not bad, but there aren’t that many slots, and there isn’t that much repetition.

In other words, it’s hard to get your music heard without selling out.  And even if you do sell out, it’s still hard to get your music heard.

That’s why when you’re a wannabe, when you’re starting out, you give your music away for free.  Forget the fact that you want to be paid.  The problem is, nobody knows who you are to buy your music.  Your free campaign is a way to get traction.  Revenue is down the pike!

Kind of like Google.  There was no revenue at first.  Just the truly great search engine.  They got eyeballs, and then they came up with their advertising model.  There’s already a business model in music, live, merch and the recorded music sales you can garner, but it pays to look at Google.  Google is constantly releasing new products, that are free to use.  Google News.  Google Earth.  Google Video, Blogs and a whole host of other features.  You see they want you hooked, they want you to be a member of the club.  They’ll figure out how to make money off you later.  Funny, but this strategy not only decimated Yahoo, it put a huge dent in Microsoft’s online strategy.

Once again, why was Google successful?  Because its search engine worked quickly and came up with the correct result right away.  And you didn’t have to wade through ads, you weren’t bombarded by come-ons.  You got what you came for, nothing more unless you so desired.  This is why the endorsement/commercial tie-in aspect of music is so problematic.  It undermines the experience and the trust.  Sure, it gets the message out, but it muddies the cred and the belief and the bond.  Google’s bond is so good that searchers see the ads on the side as a bonus, a benefit!

And isn’t it interesting that Google doesn’t sell the ads to the highest bidder.  Oh, they do at first.  But if a subsidiary ad gets more traffic, it ascends the ladder.

Insanely great thought and execution.  If only Yahoo could duplicate it.  It can’t.

There aren’t that many good bands out there.  It doesn’t matter if you sell out or play for cred, if you suck, you’re not going to make it.  But if you are good, manage your cred, and your mailing list.  Pay attention to the bond with your fans, nurture it.  People will do anything for you as long as you don’t trick them, if they believe in you.  Have great music, create a fan base, and then collect the money.  Yes, this does mean you’ll starve or leave money on the table at first.  But if you give it away for free up front, or cheap, it’ll pay dividends later.  This is the benefit of Arcade Fire staying indie, of having cheap shows, their fans love them.  It’s more than the music.  And it has to be more than the music to have longevity today.

Remember, bond first, money second.

I wasn’t sure if this thing worked at first.

I used to be a stereo expert.  I could HEAR the difference!

I remember after passing the bar exam, to reward myself I was finally going to buy a tape deck.  I went to Federated and A-B’d the Aiwa and the Nakamichi 582.  Even though the Aiwa was a grand, and more expensive, I was leaning towards it.  Because rumor was that whatever you recorded on a Nakamichi ONLY sounded good on a Nakamichi.  This turned out to be true.  I know, because I purchased (and still own!) that Nakamichi 582, which generated tones, which was the most fully adjustable deck extant, essentially a studio level cassette deck.  I had to buy it when we recorded the half speed master of "Crime Of The Century" on both decks and I heard that screaming guitar on "Bloody Well Right" on the Nak.  It was indistinguishable from the original.

I don’t know exactly when stereo died.  Maybe when every Japanese company known to man flooded the market with cheap all-in-ones, that didn’t DESERVE the appellation "stereo".  Then again, maybe it was the cassette itself, duplicated at many times its playback speed on shitty stock, it sounded terrible.  Who needed a good system to hear them?  It’s like owning a Ferrari in a third world country.  And then came the overhyped, less than perfect CD and the death of vinyl, and sound quality suddenly became irrelevant.

But now it’s even worse.  Because we listen to FACSIMILES of CDs.  Known as MP3s.  Compressed to shit.  But no one seems to care.

Now a stereo is the cheap speakers you purchase for bupkes with your Dell.  Or those tiny speakers you plug your iPod into.  Stereo shops are now home theatre emporiums.  I remember when my Sansui amp died and I went to Sound Center on Wilshire and told them I wanted a two channel NAD.  The salesman was incredulous.  You want STEREO?

And what shocked me about that amplifier was that it came without a phono preamp.  I had to lay down over a hundred bucks for that piece of gear.  But when I dropped the needle, it blew my mind!

But I don’t play much vinyl anymore.  It’s too much of a pain in the ass.  I just want to sit in front of my Mac and listen to my iTunes.  Through my Cambridge SoundWorks speakers.

They cost all of $150.  A fortune for the hoi polloi, almost nothing to a stereo freak like me.  And I’ve had them over six years.  I used to want to upgrade all the time.  Now, what’s the point?

And I’ve got these $1000 Italian jobs this dude sent me that I plan to hook up if I ever get the right cables, but time has been of the essence, and, really, I’m satisfied with the sound I’ve got.  Mediocre speakers for mediocre music.

But going through a bunch of equipment today, I came across this Xmod, which some Creative employee I met in Vancouver sent my way.

I don’t want to install any software, I don’t want to fuck up my system.  But the instructions said you just plug it into a USB port.

So I did this, and selected the Xmod in System Preferences…but I didn’t hear a fucking thing.

One thing I love about Apple products is you don’t have to read the instructions.  I don’t want to read the instructions.  Good products should be instantly usable.

Well, I had to crack the booklet.  And I found out that what I considered to be the button, they did not.  But even when I followed every word, I heard nothing.  So now I had to read the booklet from cover to cover.  All for this bullshit product I didn’t really want anyway.

Well, it turns out you plug the Xmod into a USB port, which I’d done, on the keyboard of my Mac, but if you’ve got external speakers, you’ve got to plug them DIRECTLY INTO THE Xmod.

So I went into the rat’s nest, unplugged the speaker cable, pushed it into the Xmod and VOILA, sound!

But I didn’t hear a difference.  Not a fucking thing.

I was expecting to be blown away, to be REVOLUTIONIZED!

I went back to the instructions.  I dialed the logarithm up and down.  To say the difference was noticeable would be charitable.

How could they sell a product that didn’t work?

Well, maybe they weren’t selling any.  I went on the Web to do research.

Cnet gave the Xmod a great review.  And the comments were…ECSTATIC!

Then again, these people bought the product.  Amazing how people will love what they purchase.

So I started fucking with different material.  And when I pulled up James McMurtry’s "We Can’t Make It Here" (the acoustic version), it was like he was right in front of me, he was much CLOSER and CLEARER than ever before.

So I did more Web research.  And everybody was raving about this product.  And it cracked me up, because the difference seemed SO subtle.  I decided to shuffle my tracks as I worked, to give it time.

And then I heard Patty Griffin’s "Long Ride Home".  It sounded like…MUSIC!  MP3s never sound like music.

And then, since only quiet stuff had resonated, I pulled up "Back In Black".  And the drums, and bass…they were more defined.

And I kept turning the effect on and off.  And the level changed ever so slightly, so it was hard to compare.  I mean there WAS a difference, but…

And then I noticed something, as the afternoon wore on, my ears had relaxed, everything coming out of my speakers penetrated!  I started thinking of going to the record store on Friday afternoons, and coming out and firing up the vinyl.  And then I heard Pablo Cruise’s "A Place In The Sun".

You see this song was featured in a movie I loved.  It doesn’t wholly hold up, but "An Unmarried Woman" made a big impression on me when I saw it in Westwood when it came out.  Mazursky digs deep.  And Jill Clayburgh was three-dimensional.  And Alan Bates!  And after her husband is gone, Jill comes back to the apartment and her daughter is blasting "A Place In The Sun".  And you get the sensation of horribleness being shrugged off, being BLOWTORCHED OFF!  You see "A Place In The Sun" is about joy, in this case REKINDLED JOY!  We all need to find our place in the sun.  And when you hear this record, you’re inspired to LOOK, you just feel so GOOD!

I don’t understand how people can want big rigs to listen to TV, but don’t care about what their music sounds like.  When you’re closer to the truth, what the record truly sounds like, when it’s warm instead of brittle, there’s an elation, a feeling that life’s worth living.

So, should you drop $60-$75 for an Xmod?

I don’t know.  Like I said, I got mine for free.  And my speakers only cost $150.

I guess you’ve got to ask yourself, does 10% make a difference?  Actually, the longer I listen, the bigger the difference appears.  It’s between sound and music.

Creative ain’t McIntosh.  Their claims about restoring stuff that wasn’t there to begin with…they’re hard to swallow.  And maybe some audiophile can explain why this product sucks, why it fucks up the music.  But it sounds pretty good to me.

Creative Xmod

I’m positively stunned at the blowback from business regulars about that chap giving his music away for free.  Oldsters can’t understand the economics!

I’ll clue you in, THERE ARE NONE!

This is your worst nightmare.  People who can follow their dream on sweat equity.  Who with their computer and the money from their day job or mommy and daddy can compete with you.  It’s like the North Vietnamese, all our military might couldn’t defeat individuals who would fight to the death.  Same deal in Iraq.

It’s an eye-opener.  That your model is IRRELEVANT!

YOU need to pay the mortgage.  YOU need to go on vacation to the Caribbean.  But the new musicians?  They’re willing to sleep on the floor and eat ramen.  Hell, they’re in their twenties, they’re not on the corporate track, they’ve got different ambitions!

This flummoxes the old wave.  Especially after the eighties and nineties.  You’re supposed to go through the usual filters.  Get a lawyer and a manager and then shop your demo to labels, who get to not only decide whether to sign you, but what your music should sound like.  But the music coming from said majors…it makes the new music-makers puke.  So they’re doing it their own way.  They care as much about the old system as snowboarders care about skiers.  In other words, NOT AT ALL!  They believe they’ve got a better system.

Popular music wasn’t always such big business.  Go back to the press of the British Invasion acts.  They were doing it on a lark, they didn’t expect it to be a lifelong career.  And they got ripped off and underpaid until they survived long enough to work on THEIR terms.

Don’t forget, the Beatles played multiple sets a night in Hamburg before they had any recorded music success.  They did it to get off the docks, to have some fun, to get high, to get laid.  But they were so good, that they broke through.

How many of the major label acts have paid those kinds of dues?  And are so good that people are clamoring for them?  The majors are looking for putty that they can mold and sell to the usual suspects, lame terrestrial radio and TV.  Whereas the new musician wants no part of that crap.  It used to be the only way to get any exposure, any traction, but no longer.

Yes, as the majors are trying to sustain a business selling discs, new musicians don’t give a shit about discs.  They’ve got an enterprise.  Based on their DEDICATION!  They’re doing it THEIR way, and if they never break through…  Well, they’re not willing to compromise, sell out to the man just to make it.

Come to think of it, that’s why the old music was so successful.  It was uncompromised.  It came directly from the heart of the makers.

You say kids can’t make it giving their music away for free because YOU can’t make it.  But they can outlast you, starve for years all in pursuit of their art.  They don’t want an expensive video, never mind a stylist.  They don’t want to play the game.  And, if you don’t play the game, I hate to tell you, it just doesn’t cost that much.

To believe that the majors will be the logical filters in the future is to be completely ignorant.  They’re only necessary if you want to reach the masses INSTANTLY!  Is that a good thing?  Furthermore, as every day goes by, it’s easier and easier to reach more people for almost free.  Hell, you post your stuff on MySpace, and if you’re any good, your friends will tell EVERYBODY!  You might not sell "Thriller" numbers, but "Thriller" was twenty five years ago, when we were all beholden to the box, to MTV.  Today everybody’s scattered in a million different directions.  The mainstream is the Top Forty joke of the seventies.  It’s a dying vine.  Hell, just look at SoundScan.  The "hit" albums sell ever fewer.  And the problem isn’t piracy, but the fact that so much of the theoretical potential audience has tuned out, isn’t paying attention.  Why listen to crap radio when you’ve got an iPod?

Why make an expensive disc and go on a tour-supported trek that has no traction when you can do it YOUR way, making all of your OWN decisions, and have a chance of making it.

You just can’t beat these kids.  Your only hope is to help them, not decry them or try to reeducate them.  Somebody’s gonna figure this out.  And it won’t be an old fart part of the decrepit system.  Sure, bands need managers, and agents, even labels.  But only if they’re honest, only if they can be trusted to help.  If you’re signed to a major label and you trust it, you’re an idiot.