Recreating the Sound: The “Ramble On” Acoustic

We used to be gearheads.

I’ll admit this quarantine lifestyle is getting to me. It’s not that I’m not busy, it’s just that every damn day is the same. Get up, read the news, answer the e-mail, check up on the news and…

Well, maybe record a podcast, or my radio show, depending on the day. And then at night read and/or watch a streaming series.

But the strangest thing is I’m a late night person. And what I love is to be so burned out, overworked, that one night I stay up until I’m caught up, until I’m relaxed, knowing that the next morning I have nothing scheduled. But now, since every day is the same, I know if I stay up until four that just means I screw up my schedule, wake up later…it doesn’t pay to stay up.

Oh yeah, I love the nighttime. Oh, I’m gonna bitch when the light fades, as autumn arrives, but it’s only when it’s dark that my brain starts to light up, that the creativity sparks, that the pressure of the world fades away and I can be myself.

Now in the old days, let’s say twenty years ago, I had less on the schedule. And it’s much better being busy, but back then I could surf the web long enough to become relaxed and get inspired. Sometimes that happens again today, during the Covid-19 era.

So, I read the new news, today’s news on my phone. Answer all the e-mail. Check all my sites…skiing, music, straight news. And then…what am I gonna do with the rest of my time? I start thinking of these YouTube skiing videos I want to watch and I go to the site and staring me straight in the eye is the new Rick Beato video.

I’ve got major problems with YouTube. Not the ones musicians have, usage, how much they’re getting paid, but primarily the fact that you cannot turn off autoplay. Oh, you can turn it off, but then it slips back on. I’ve researched online, it’s a known problem, which Google doesn’t want to fix, they want you to watch more. And then a couple of weeks back, they put a scrim over all the videos, with an ad, making you click more to see what you want. Drives me nuts. They’re just trying to drive subscriptions. Oh, that’s another thing, you have to constantly click that you don’t want to pay for their service, don’t want to subscribe. I’m not giving them my money on principle. I like that Google/YouTube hosts all these videos for free, but these bumps in the road are akin to the fees at hotels and on concert tickets…just make your offer, tell me what you need, and let me decide whether to partake or not. Otherwise, you’re just pissing me off.

As for the suggestion to watch the Rick Beato video…

I don’t believe in the algorithm. I never use Netflix’s. Drives me crazy. I wanted to check out the Sam Jay comedy special but since I hadn’t watched any standup comedy recently I no longer had a bar for that. To tell you the truth, I research before I watch anything, otherwise it makes no sense. Streaming series are a commitment, I don’t want to watch for hours and realize something is junk. Oh yeah, I’m also pissed-off at Netflix because they got rid of their star rating system, now everything gets a high rating, absolute b.s., I’m already paying, can’t you help me out?

But Beato has been in the news lately. Most notably the “Wall Street Journal.” He gets recognized, he sells t-shirts. And there’s something self-satisfied about the guy, but I must admit it’s hard to click off his videos.

Most are gimmicks, top twentys. But today’s is different, Beato is trying to reproduce the sound of “Ramble On.”

Now, of course, we’d prefer to have Jimmy Page tell us. But the truth is it probably wouldn’t be as good. He wouldn’t nitpick like Rick does. And the fan experience is quite different. It’s a treasure hunt. One of the few in this Google world where there are no rare records, where everything is available…how did Jimmy get that sound?

Oh, you know the sound. There’s something about “Ramble On.”

Sounds. That used to be a big part of making records, getting sounds. These sounds made some of our favorite records so. Like that wailing guitar in the intro to Supertramp’s “Bloody Well Right.”

Now this video, which only launched yesterday, hasn’t broken a million views yet, and there’s one, “Top 20 Acoustic Guitar Intros Of All Time” which is bubbling under ten million. And I don’t think “Ramble On” will come close to that because it’s for a different type of listener, not a casual fan, but someone who needs to get closer, like we did, in the sixties and seventies.

Funny thing about rock and roll, it’s passé. Oh, people are making rock music, it’s just a caricature of itself. But the classic sound… If you’re infected, there is no cure. You can only get Led Zeppelin one place, and there’s nothing quite like it, the sounds, the playing, the vocals…the same band which did “Black Dog” did “Ten Years Gone,” never mind “Ramble On.”

“Led Zeppelin II.” I prefer the debut. Not that “II” isn’t good, it’s just that the initial LP is darker, more straight ahead, less obvious. Now Jimmy and the gang made up for this by going totally left field on “III,” but we’re talking about “II.” I burned out on “Whole Lotta Love” in a week, if I never hear it again that’s fine with me. I bought the album the day it came out and within a week I was done with it and never really returned to it until I was in a condo in Mammoth in ’75 and it was on the 8-track, and I remembered how great the album was.

In the early days, my favorite cut was “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman.” But even back then it was obvious that the acoustic numbers were the heart of the LP. Right after “Whole Lotta Love” came
“What Is And What Should Never Be,” which eventually exploded, but this was Zeppelin’s trademark, from quiet acoustic to explosive electric and then back again. But even better were “Thank You.” And “Ramble On.”

“Thank You” was majestic, as if it were being performed in the king’s castle. Or out on the plains with no one around. But “Ramble On” was different, it was positively alive, not reflective so much as marching forward, back when being in your twenties wasn’t about selling out but finding yourself.

So, Rick Beato is trying to recreate the acoustic guitar intro to “Ramble On.” He starts with a photo of Jimmy Page in the studio. The chord he’s playing. The guitar, the mic. He’s trying to put it together, how did Jimmy get this magic sound?

And he’s in the studio.

The studio, that used to be the holy grail, where the music was made. To get inside meant you were a member of the club, or at least a provisional one. Most people could not get inside. To this day I’m mesmerized when I go inside. All that gear! All of Rick’s guitars!

And the engineers, all the rest of the help, never treat you right, this is their job, you’re an outsider. Who got you in…the player or the producer will be friendly, if it’s someone else, you’ll soon have to leave. But we are in Rick Beato’s studio for the duration.

So, it’s a Vox acoustic guitar. With a bolted-on neck. From ’69. All of this is important to the sound. Which Rick and his engineer now try to capture.

And they don’t get it. Now I’m nitpicking. It’s close, but it’s not the real thing. And then Rick starts to tweak the sound in Pro Tools. So many options. He’s getting close, very close, but still no cigar.

And then Rick goes back into the studio and VOILA! He figures it out, he’s got to play the guitar closer to the bridge.

And now he’s strumming and I’m smiling, I can’t believe it, he’s replicated the sound of “Ramble On”!

He didn’t write it. And he’s not getting paid for this video, Jimmy and his mates are. Rick’s cool with that, but he is angry that his videos are taken down when he’s making no money and the acts are. He’s got a whole extended clip about it, that’s how I became aware of his videos, someone insisted I watch it. And I had a bit of sympathy for Rick, but the truth is…the rights owners rule. Then again, if the rights owners, the players themselves as opposed to their hired intermediaries, knew what Rick was really doing with their work they’d okay it, since their efforts are being respected and they’re getting paid for their use.

But I’m watching this clip and I feel at home.

It’s hard to feel at home in the music business today. There’s just too much music and too many special interests and too much blather. Someone sent me that article about the guy who went on vacation and got overwhelmed with new music and went back to the oldies:

LISTENING ANXIETY: Struggling With An Overwhelming Flood Of New Music

I get it. It just takes too much effort to check everything out, can’t someone lead the way? So far, no one’s been able to do this.

I know, I know, a similar paradigm exists today. You try to get the beat. You get a topliner. But it’s different. Forget even judging. They’re two trains running on two different tracks. And today’s music is social, a club, whereas back then the creation involved very few people, the band and the studio hands, to get the sound down that affected us all. The reach of a hit was unbelievable, the tracks were burned into our brains. Come on, you can sing “Ramble On” to yourself right now! And much of the rest of the Zeppelin catalog, whereas most people can’t do that with any hit of today, never mind an album track.

What we’re talking about in this video is the source of creation. Jimmy had the inspiration, how can we get closer to that?

That. You can’t buy it. It’s not for sale. Oh, you can purchase the end result, the record…but the journey to it, no way. It’s a better plot than most movies. How do we get to genius. How do we recreate something that was probably done spontaneously. And when Rick gets there, your day is made. At least mine was.

Lawrence Lessig is one of America’s preeminent legal scholars, a law professor at Harvard, he also ran for president in 2016. Listen as we address the legal issues surrounding the presidential election, social media and antitrust. This is up-to-date legal analysis that is a must listen!

iheart

apple

spotify

stitcher

“AWAL says ‘hundreds’ of its artists now earn $100k+ a year from streaming”

Daniel Ek spoke about the number of artists making bank on Spotify and he was excoriated by seemingly every musician over the age of 50 and the wannabes who probably never will be.

Welcome to 2020, where it’s all about groupspeak. God help you if you say anything negative about Biden and Harris, you’ll be ostracized by people who say we must defeat Trump and you’re a stupid person who must shut up and get on board or leave the community.

A good example is this article in today’s “Washington Post”:

“The convention shows Democrats don’t care about young voters – The way to lure young voters into a Democratic coalition is to include people who genuinely appeal to them”

Read the comments, they’re full of vitriol dismissing the writers’ words, stating that the convention is wonderful, despite ratings being down, and we must rally around Biden and stop saying this nonsense. But how can we get to truth if we do not have a discussion? Talk to anybody in tech, anybody in the recording studio, it’s oftentimes the most left field ideas that bear fruit, despite most of the left field ideas being justly disregarded. So now it’s not only the right that requires full adherence, but the left too. If you need a trigger warning to go to college maybe you shouldn’t be there.

So, the fact that some people are making money on streaming and others are not is not sexy. It’s kind of like Lake Wobegone, every artist is above average and entitled to a comfortable living. What next, everybody should be able to play in the NBA and earn seven figures?

AWAL also states that “dozens” of its artists make more than a million dollars a year on streaming. Think about that, translate it to the major labels…do these three conglomerates have dozens of artists making seven figures a year in streaming royalties? Actually, that’s doubtful. Which shows what a major statement AWAL’s is.

Then again, AWAL’s model is different. The artist owns his or her rights and gets the lion’s share of the income. This is the new paradigm. Kind of like Kobalt and its dashboard that single-handedly brought publishing into the twenty first century. Old entities are opaque, new entities are transparent. If the company you’re with won’t give you access to the data, maybe you should be with a different company.

So, if you’re signed to a major label, you’re coughing up at least half of your royalties, and if you have an antique deal, probably much more! But the used-to-bes are the ones who are bitching loudest. But it’s their own damn fault, they’ve got lousy deals, or they were just born at the wrong time. But don’t extrapolate the experience of these oldsters to today, it’s apples and oranges.

Furthermore, there are different kinds of streaming that pay different amounts. On demand and radio are different. So, a paid-for stream on Spotify is much higher in value than a radio stream on Pandora.

And then there’s ownership…

If you wrote a sixteenth of a song, but don’t even own the publishing, your slice is probably 1/32nd, and if it’s a radio royalty…that’s how you end up with all those bogus columns online about low payments.

But, streaming comes down to popularity. Do people really want to listen to your music? If not, you’re gonna be broke. Come on, how many records did you buy in the physical era you played once? How many overpriced CDs did you buy to only hear one track? Don’t blame the public, people are paying for music, they just might not be paying YOU!

As for the media outlets…if you expect them to understand streaming economics, you also expect the U.S. Congress to understand ticketing. Ticketmaster must be the enemy, otherwise I’d be able to sit in the front row for $50!

But these, once again, are not sexy stories. So, you make music and you made 100k a year from streaming. Who wants to print that? News focuses on the negative, ever notice? You want to believe you’re lucky, that some poor other sot got hurt or killed. You want to believe someone else is at fault for your situation. No one wants to accept responsibility.

Once again, I’m not saying you’re not entitled to a roof over your head and food on the table, but you are not entitled to a successful career in the arts. You need no degree, you just say you’re an artist. Imagine, should I just say I’m a BMW mechanic and am entitled to six figures? Or a doctor entitled to more? Or a computer programmer? You need no skill to be a service worker, and that’s why those jobs pay so poorly. Everybody’s dreams can’t come true!

Read this MusicAlly article, it’s like the Antichrist, it’s opposite everything you’ve heard, opposite the popular narrative. AWAL artists are making twice as much on recording as they are on touring. And revenues are going up! More artists are making more dollars from music. HOW COULD THIS BE A BAD THING?

But the system MUST be broken. I’M NOT GETTING RICH!

So, what happens is what always happens. The system breaks, it bifurcates, into insiders and outsiders. Do you expect Daniel Ek to reach out to the creative community again, painting a rosy picture of revenues? OF COURSE NOT! He’s now music industry enemy #1, because he had an idea and made a billion. How come Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre had an idea and made the same amount and are lionized? And isn’t everything about ideas? When it comes to art, execution is secondary to conception, that’s what an artist is, someone who expresses ideas. Which is why you can make money covering the work of these artists, people want to hear their music, but they may not want to hear yours.

Then again, in a world where facts are fungible, most people won’t believe the AWAL numbers either. It doesn’t feel true to you so it can’t be.

And it gets even better!

“‘If you have $100k and control your rights, the value of the masters is a million dollars in the saleable value of your rights,’ Kobalt chairman Willard Ahdritz told Music Ally, adding that by this calculation, AWAL already has some artists with catalogues worth $100m+.”

But since you’re left out, the system must be rigged. They do call it MUSICAL CHAIRS, however in this case it’s not about luck.

Streaming saved the recorded music business, plain and simple. The numbers demonstrate it. Just like MTV saved the recorded music business back in 1981. But people would rather cry in their beer. They can’t adjust to the new system, maybe the new system doesn’t have a place for them.

THIS IS GOOD NEWS! READ IT AND REJOICE!

“Notre Dame cancels classes for 2 weeks after Covid-19 spike”

“UNC-Chapel Hill fall semester going online amid COVID-19 outbreaks, one week into classes”

This is what happens when you live in fantasyland. When you’ve got that American optimism, but none of the can-do spirit.

Who’da thunk college kids would get infected? After all, it’s an educational environment where kids go to learn, to attend classes and then stay in their dorm and study. WRONG! College is about partying, getting high, having sex. If it weren’t, I’d have never made it through. I learned much more outside the classroom and so does everybody else. You live apart from Mommy & Daddy…they may check in every day on your smartphone, but they don’t know you stayed up until 4 A.M. and puked over the weekend.

The truth?

The colleges need the money. That’s why they’re open. Despite being bastions of learning, they’ve learned nothing.

And we’ve got this same optimism from our president. If we just ignore it, put our heads down and do what we want, everything will be fine, everything will go away…we’re a nation of OSTRICHES!

And if you say otherwise, if you deflate the balloon, you’re a hater. America can’t handle the truth, it doesn’t want to hear it. About seemingly everything. Upward mobility is higher in Canada and Europe. Life expectancy is down and infant mortality is up. But isn’t this the greatest country in the world! What’s next, a NASCAR driver who says he’s gonna win after his engine blew up?

It’s like America failed the marshmallow test. It can’t sacrifice, not a whit. It wants what it wants and it wants it NOW! And nobody can suffer. And if you do, it can only be for a brief period of time. Imagine telling that to cancer, I was sick and stayed home for a month, now it’s over, forget medication, I’m gonna live my life. Hilarious!

And the big story today is not the Democratic Convention, but the words of our supreme leader, Donald Trump:

“‘It will end up being a rigged election or they will never come out with an outcome,’ Trump told reporters on Tuesday. ‘They’ll have to do it again, and nobody wants that.'”

“Trump floats idea that fraud could lead to re-do of November election”

WRONG! That’s exactly what Trump wants. A tarnished outcome that allows him to continue to rule, despite him doing the tarnishing.

And forget politics, this disavowal of the truth, this disbelief in facts, permeates all sectors and both the left and the right.

SPOTIFY IS THE DEVIL! When the truth is Spotify gives 70% to rights holders and its business model is based on such slim margins that it often loses money.

TICKETMASTER IS THE ANTICHRIST! When the truth is Ticketmaster does nothing the acts don’t tell it to do and the primary profit in concerts is in the ticketing, and the fees don’t all go to Ticketmaster anyway, but are split with the building, the promoter and sometimes even the act!

It just doesn’t feel right!

But science doesn’t run on feel.

Trump said he had a feel for the coronavirus. Like you have a feel for the law. You believe you could argue the case better in court, not understanding there are underlying principles, a structure the attorneys and judges are functioning under. WHEN DID AMERICA GET SO DUMB?

So, we could have been planning how to integrate these college students into society at home. Where they’d live, where they’d get jobs, how much they would pay for online schooling. BUT NO! The institutions refused to come out of their bubbles. They flew on a wing and a prayer. And now that classes are cancelled…if I’m not living in the dorm and I’m not eating the food don’t I deserve a discount? That’s a legitimate question!

And then there are the wankers who believe concerts should start back up. After all, THEY’RE NOT SICK! Thank god the heavyweights in the industry realize this is untenable. But when Marc Geiger said no concerts until 2022 it made national news. As if people could combat the virus by wishing it away.

Now the ski areas are saying they’re gonna open. They’re gonna do social distancing. But they survive on international business, and if they don’t let outsiders in they can’t make their numbers. So, what’s the plan? New Zealand just had a few cases and shut down the ski fields. The odds of skiing before a vaccine? DE MINIMIS!

Don’t plan on doing anything for a long time. Because all indicators say it’s going to get worse. With the cold weather and flu season. But you just won’t believe it, that’s just opinion. Yeah, BY EXPERTS! But expertise has been denigrated.

Can’t somebody speak English?

We used to rely on musicians, before they all sold out to the man and bitched about their income. But now their reach and credibility are so low that no one’s listening to them anyway. Meanwhile, a bipolar rapper is running for President and everybody watches the reality sideshow with their hands off when the truth is the man is sick and needs medical attention. What happened to our compassion?

It’s bad and it’s gonna get worse. And so far, the system hasn’t saved us. And the chances of it doing so in the future are slim. Trump told hospitals to report Covid cases to his people as opposed to the CDC, now we’ve got no idea what the real numbers are. And local leaders are afraid of their constituents, so they don’t take action either.

Test, trace, vaccine. It’s the only way out of this.

As for business reopening…NO ONE WANTS TO GO!

As for Amazon…why is everybody bitching about Bezos, imagine what life would be like without his service! So, his wealth went up, SHOULDN’T IT? I don’t know about you, but the delivery person is at my house seemingly every day, obviating my need to go to a retail establishment and put my life at risk. We shouldn’t be tearing down Amazon, we should learn from its success and drive MORE E-COMMERCE! Oh, but we’ve got to save Main Street, the department store, when the truth is the public avoids them as soon as they’ve got a cheaper alternative. BUT SHOPPING IS THE AMERICAN WAY! Didn’t George Bush tell us to do shop after 9/11? But the truth is the younger generation is not into shopping. Yes, you hear all about the retail adventures of the Kardashians, but oftentimes today’s kids don’t even get their driver’s license. If Mommy & Daddy won’t take them, there’s Uber. As for goods…THEY WANT VIRTUAL GOODS! Hell, that’s what the war on TikTok is all about, selling within the app, but you believe it’s just about evil Apple. Apple may be evil, but the lesson here is today’s youth are into ethereal purchases if they buy anything at all, it’s about experiences, not physical items.

Of course there are exceptions. If what you write or say isn’t 100% true, if there’s even the slightest inaccuracy, YOU GET EXCORIATED! Our country lives on gotcha, it’s the new American sport.

Meanwhile, Jared Kushner goes on CNN and says the President is doing a great job:

Wolf presses Kushner: 1,000 deaths a day isn’t success, right?

But why are we listening to this nincompoop whose father bought him a seat at Harvard, who made one of the worst real estate deals in New York City history and only got his job through nepotism.

Trump doesn’t divest his holdings. Trump has the military stop at his golf resorts. Trump keeps pushing it and pushing it and constantly gets away with it. But the Democrats keep telling us…they’re going to beat him with the SYSTEM!

Do you believe in the system? Where there is not enough money for school supplies? Where you’ve got no job but can’t get relief? Where you can’t even make ends meet when you have your low-paying service job?

Forget the Trumpers, they’re delusional, getting their info from Fox and a Facebook algorithm that keeps them ill-informed. As for Zuckerberg…he fought America’s corporations and won, a much bigger victory than Bobby Fuller’s. You see Zuckerberg IS the law. And despite the blowback, nothing is changing at Facebook. As for the post office, what about the damage that’s already been done?

This is not a time for celebration, this is time for reality. Now is the time for experts with no financial investment to tell us the truth. What next, you go to the doctor and with a tiny chance of survival they tell you you’re gonna live? A track not on streaming services becoming a hit?

Sling your arrows all you want. And tell me I’m wrong when one thing is not as I predicted it. Who knows, the coronavirus might not come back with a vengeance this winter, but isn’t the Boy Scout motto BE PREPARED? Oh, that was before the organization was controlled by the religious and admitted it was a bastion of predatory behavior. Priests couldn’t be at fault. Trump can’t be at fault. It was inevitable, it was baked-in…WRONG!