“Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones”: https://bit.ly/3sZEcYo

This guy must have never worn a condom. He fathered six kids out of wedlock and he died at 27!

Then again, Brian Jones was famous for being amoral, mean and manipulative. And when you mix these characteristics in with someone who cannot say no to any drug and who is incorrigible…you can understand why Mick and Keith took over the band and ultimately kicked Brian out.

Now if you’re under forty and you die and they do a documentary on you there’s gonna be tons of footage. Your parents have been shooting video from the moment you were born, and you’re posting pics to social media, but this was the sixties, cameras meant film, which was expensive and needed development, and most of what happened in that era has fallen through the cracks. So, the truth is there’s very little footage of Brian Jones in this movie. It’s really just an oral biography, but in movie as opposed to book form. Should you watch it? Yes.

If you don’t have a documentary on you you were never a factor in the music business. It’s astounding. And most are amateurish and barely watchable, for fans only. I watched the Bill Wyman doc because it got great reviews. Did I need to watch a movie on Brian Jones that I wasn’t even sure I’d heard of? Well, compared to the other music documentary offerings…I decided to give it a few minutes, especially since the blurb said the filmmakers were experienced and looking for the truth, although I took that with a grain of salt, but it costs nothing to dive in, in this case on Amazon Prime.

So the first thing you notice is Brian Jones lived a long time ago and the people who’ve survived are OLD! And they live up to the English rep, they have bad teeth. And then you’re watching the story unfold and you realize that these guys were all in their twenties. Look back from beyond that and it’s flabbergasting, they were babies, at an age when a breakup can devastate you, Anita Pallenberg leaves Brian for Keith and Brian can’t recover, and Keith was hanging with Brian and Anita because he was devastated that he’d been dumped. And you think being a rock star you always call the shots, never!

So Brian figures he’s gonna give it one more shot. He wrote film for this movie that Anita is starring in that’s opening in Cannes so he flies down with his buddy to steal her back, and she’s all lovey-dovey, but she’s not returning, so they fly in a babe from the U.K. to make Anita jealous, and this new woman, Suki, is about as good-looking, but she doesn’t have Anita’s personality, a limit tester who drags people into trouble and feels she’s invulnerable, making great conversation along the way. People are people, as Depeche Mode sang, and if you can’t understand why John Lennon was with Yoko Ono, you’ve never hung with a six foot tall cover girl with nothing to say.

Brian doesn’t suffer fools. He wants the stimulation of conversation. He wants to talk about blues records. So he’s mostly silent until he feels the resonance and then… He was the Stone hanging with John Lennon. He met Bob Dylan and then called him every day, he was so thrilled to CONNECT!

How do you make friends in this world? You know when you have that resonance, and the older you get the harder it is to find. And the truth is music and celebrity culture are not known for their intellectual rigor, so if you’re looking for that…

So Brian is born into an upper middle class family. He’s learning to play the piano, the clarinet, but then he discovers jazz, and his parents can no longer keep him on track, he’s all in. So they pack a suitcase, put it on the front stoop and lock the door, Brian is now on his own.

And he mooches and is broke but he follows the music.

But contrary to so many of the stars of that era, Brian knew how to play, so he was the focus. He started bands. The Stones were his band. Talk to Andrew, he’ll tell you. Brian was the spokesman, he was the one who negotiated. But then Brian took a secret five pound commission on gigs and the rest of the group never forgave him. But then it got worse, he lost control because he didn’t write, a friend testifies he was categorically unable.

So not only is there little footage, there’s absolutely no Stones music, they couldn’t pay for it, never mind whether it would be licensed to them. But it’s not really necessary, because this is a character study, of someone who’s been left to the past. And yes, his friends defend him, but just when it starts to slip into hagiography they talk about what a pain in the ass Brian was, a girlfriend says he was “a shit”…

So the film paints the Stones as dangerous, and the government out to get them. Which is hard to believe in today’s hip-hop world where porn is a cottage industry that you run out of your home. The Stones were blues purists, but then the Beatles blew it all up and you needed your own songs and…

The flourishes Brian added made so many tracks hits, like the marimba in “Under My Thumb”… Sans the marimba, it’s not a hit. And the sitar in “Paint It, Black.” And then when he’s fading, intransigent and barely showing up, he lays down the slide in “No Expectations,” which makes that track too. That was Brian’s calling card in the beginning, he could play slide.

But for every positive aspect, there’s a negative one. He would push people to the edge just for the hell of it. He would disconnect.

And the truth is Brian Jones has faded into the rearview mirror. He who writes history owns it. And all that happened over fifty years ago, all we’ve got is these geezers who testify, and so many, like Anita Pallenberg, are already gone. So now Mick and Keith are lions, and Brian Jones is a footnote. Proving, if you’re a budding musician…WRITE YOUR OWN SONGS!

Then again, musicians used to worry about publishing rights, now they don’t really care because it’s all about building your brand and cashing in elsewhere, where the real money is, so if you’ve got eighteen writers on a song, who cares? And they’re used to the labels not paying, so they believe they’ll get screwed on the publishing anyway. And who knows how long they’re going to live?

But everything today is an extension of what was developed in the sixties…EVERYTHING! Which is why if you were around back then, so much of it seems boring today. Concert promoters were like app developers, and just about as honest, didn’t Sean Parker steal the names from one app for another that went bust anyway? You cut corners in rock, as you did in tech, but not anymore…LIVE NATION IS A PUBLIC COMPANY!

So you’ve got to be into it for the music and the lifestyle, and these guys were primarily in it for the music, they’d sit around and listen to records all day. Life was slower, you weren’t interacting with everybody you know on a handheld device all day long. There were long stretches where nothing was going on, where you went deeper into yourself and your surroundings, ergo the music renaissance. Albums were not for listening together, but listening alone, they kept you company!

Unfortunately, the last fifteen minutes or so are an investigation into Brian’s death. And I hate to say it, but who cares? Dead is dead. No one has ever brought anybody back, and I’m doubtful about Jesus, but if you believe he did they killed him anyway. It’s kinda like the coronavirus. Other than blame, what would we achieve if we find out it was leaked from a lab? It’s not like China is gonna give a mea culpa. That’s one thing being a lawyer teaches you, being right oftentimes doesn’t pay.

So it was a long, long time ago. Almost all of the images are in black and white. You get the feeling of dark, damp England back then. The world these musicians wanted to escape from.

And I don’t want you to think that Brian Jones was a saint who was solely responsible for the band’s success, because that’s patently untrue, but he was a guy who was infatuated with the music, who lived to play the music, who was always exploring before the drugs got the better of him.

So it appears Brian was killed by his just-fired contractor. But the contractor is dead and…

The funny thing is the records remain. There may not be images, but we’ve got the records. Pull up “Paint It, Black” or “Under My Thumb” or “No Expectations.” They’re magic. I only had to hear “Under My Thumb” once to get it, and I can tell you where I heard it, in Howard Johnson’s on Mount Washington…”Aftermath” was literally the only album that was there.

And Howard Johnson’s was just a hut halfway up the mountain, it shared nothing with the orange-roofed enterprise that sold fried clams and ice cream. And I’d love to have video of the week we spent there, when our tent blew over, just below where the highest wind speed in history was recorded, but it’s all in my brain, it’s just memories.

But memories have feelings.

Watch “Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones,” that’s one thing it will evoke, feelings. You’ll feel the passage of time. You’ll marvel that you weren’t as hip or experimental. And even though it’s not on the soundtrack, the music will play in your head, it’s there forever!

Spotify playlist: https://spoti.fi/3jmOoHf

I was listening to the Top 100 of the 1964 “Billboard” chart on shuffle.

And I heard “Baby, I Need Your Loving.”

Now the truth is 1964 was absolutely dripping with hits. Go back and you’ll be astounded. To the point where you were not starving for great new music, it was constantly being heaped upon your table. And not only was 1964 the year the Beatles broke in America, it was the year Motown truly crossed over to white Top 40 outlets. It started with the Supremes, with three number ones that year, “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Baby Love” and “Come See About Me.” I always associated “Where Did Our Love Go” with the Shangri-Las’ “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand),” they were hits at the same time. I thought they both hearkened back to the pre-Beatle era, I thought neither act would last. The Supremes certainly did, the Shangri-Las not so much. Today the Shangri-Las focus is all on “Leader of the Pack” and “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” but “Remember (Walkin’ In The Sand)” was always my favorite, still is. Ditto on “Where Did Our Love Go,” it’s always had a special place in my heart, but during the nineties I started to cotton to “Come See About Me” which I now prefer, but when I hear “Where Did Our Love Go” I think of the summer of ’64 whereas “Come See About Me” is not rooted in time. And there’s always power in being the progenitor.

But through the door the Supremes opened came an outpouring of Motown acts. And I’d be lying if I told you I loved all that music in that era, it took away radio time from the Beatles and the British Invasion, it seemed to be looking back as opposed to forward, I needed years to go by to gain perspective. And over the years the greatness of Levi Stubbs has been extolled, and I always love hearing “Reach Out I’ll Be There” with him testing the upper limit of his range. And the track is so dramatic, urgent, it’s like it all matters SO MUCH! Nearly as good is “Standing in the Shadows of Love.” The rest of the hits I know by heart, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)” and the positively exquisite “Bernadette”! But I never think of “Baby I Need Your Loving” and never listen to it, but in context, with its brethren from 1964, it reached me in a new way. “Baby I Need Your Loving” swings, it’s smooth in a way the latter hits were not, less urgent, more subtle, but equally meaningful.

And I’m sitting on the couch late at night grooving on the Four Tops. Luxuriating in not only the music, but my detachment from the news. It’s just me, I’m having a private experience, I’m loving it! I’m not scrolling on my phone, only searching to do Four Tops research, did you know that Levi Stubbs not only refused to put his name in the act’s moniker, he refused to go solo, he stayed with the act, he was so loyal. Unlike not only so many Motown acts, but Phillippé Wynne of Thom Bell’s Philadelphia soul factory. Phillippé Wynne was just a member of the Spinners, then went solo to little acclaim and then died on stage at 43, but there’s a huge cult of insiders who testify as to his greatness, check out this performance of “Rubberband Man” on “The Midnight Special”: https://bit.ly/3kzdMcc You can’t believe this is totally live, you think about how much money the label spent, you’re wowed by the synchronized dancing, but what is most impressive, what is positively amazing, is Phillippé Wynne’s voice, his voice seems to transcend humanity, that tone, that delivery, singing but almost sounding like shouting, you just want MORE!

And I check out all the streaming services, I oftentimes listen to two or three at once. I was listening to the Four Tops on Amazon, and researching on Apple and Spotify. And then I saw this playlist, made just for me on Apple Music, entitled “New Music Mix.” Spotify was first, I didn’t even know Apple had this product, but Spotify’s personalized new release playlist is laden with reissues, it doesn’t deliver on the premise, which is new music. And I was excited about new music when I saw the first track was “Lifting You” by Jungle. I’m really into their work, was about to write about them. The second cut was from Jackson Browne’s new album “Downhill From Everywhere” which has gotten tons of press but is barely more than listenable. The playing is fantastic, Jackson’s voice? Not so much. But the third track was by…THE DOOBIE BROTHERS?

I hadn’t heard they had new music, Tom Johnston had told me he was eager to go into the studio, but I didn’t know there was finished product. So I clicked and I was stunned…IT SOUNDED LIKE THE DOOBIE BROTHERS! And I’d be lying if I listened and thought “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” sounded like a hit single, then again there’s no station that plays this music anymore. Certainly not Top 40. Not even Adult Alternative, the Doobies are not hip enough. And Active Rock is too hard. This music lives in a vacuum. But then nearly two-thirds of the way through the guitar started to WAIL! And after a repetition of the chorus, that lead axe went back on its roller coaster ride, dancing all over the fundamentals of the band, and this is certainly a band, unlike today’s lauded compositions created solo in the bedroom. And then when the track suddenly faded out, I had to hear it again, and then again, AND AGAIN! Usually I can’t get through even thirty seconds of the new work of ancient bands.

And it turns out “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” is one of four tracks released on August 6th from the album “Liberté,” coming out on October 1st.

So I cautiously decided to play the other three released cuts. And the truth was none were as good as “Don’t Ya Mess With Me,” especially the two non-Johnston tracks, the man with the signature sound of the Doobies. But I liked “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” so much that the next afternoon I decided to listen it on the big rig, and then played the three other cuts again. And after a couple of plays through I had to admit the opener, “Oh Mexico,” was actually superior to “Don’t Ya Mess With Me,” I guess I was turned off by the title and subject matter, seemed redundant to me, but the picking, the vocal, the sound… It sounded like the band was having fun. Knowing how good they were and smiling while delivering what they knew their fans would appreciate.

And make no mistake, this new Doobies music is only for fans. Don’t even bother if you don’t like the Doobies, it’s not for you. As for hating on this uber-successful act of the seventies, don’t waste your time, that was forty years ago, they, and you, are in the rearview mirror, but it appears the Doobies want to go out in a blaze as opposed to fading away.

It’s a cliché, make an album of new music and play any of it live and the audience starts talking and goes to the loo, no matter how much they love you, no matter how big a fan they are.

Then again, old acts making new music oftentimes are too cerebral about it. Forget those putting out product for ink, to sell tickets, that’s all calculation with forgettable product. I’m talking about acts trying to match their classic work. They get self-conscious. Feel they must test limits to prove they’re not dated and even worse the power struggle often gets in the way. Yes, everybody in the act wants a song or two on the record, irrelevant of their quality, they want the attention, they want to get paid, even though there’s so little cash in these projects, you can net more in one night of live performance.

But some acts are so self-conscious or defeated or both that they don’t even bother recording new music. They know the eras have changed. It’s all too depressing, they’d rather just go on the road, play their hits, collect the money and pay their bills. Sad, but most of these acts are in their seventies, or close to it. And then there are those who made so much on recordings back when who bitch about streaming payouts when the truth is few are actually listening and you’re lucky people can hear your new music at all, if we were still in a physical world there’d be room for nothing more than your greatest hits in the record store.

So the Doobie Brothers started out as a bar band. The lineup changed. Michael McDonald became the lead singer and there was a second round of hits, as a matter of fact Johnston and McDonald are on tour together with the band this fall. Then again, at this point the band is only Johnston, Patrick Simmons and Clover refugee John McFee, brought aboard to play the parts others couldn’t and shine and he’s the secret sauce here, his picking goes straight to your heart, makes your body twist, just like this music did back in the seventies, and that’s a good thing.

But my point here is the Doobies started out in the bars, where you honed your chops, something no one does today, there aren’t even places to play, if there’s music at all it’s provided by a deejay. One can argue this entire paradigm is on life support, along with rock music itself. Turns out rock is too expensive to make and support, four or five people have to be fed and housed and hopefully paid. And it takes money to record this stuff and… Today rock is anything but mellow, today it’s in-your-face and hard edged, but if you close your eyes and let your mind drift you can see yourself nodding your head in the low-ceilinged bar listening to this new music, getting up and dancing, having a good time. Now the only way to have even a facsimile of this experience is to go to the overpriced gig, and at those prices you believe you DESERVE to hear each and every hit, you want to know every track by heart.

But the funny thing is if the Doobies played “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” and “Oh Mexico” live nobody would go to the bathroom, they’d be grooving just like they were to the hits, because these two cuts hit the sweet spot of the band, they may not be innovative, but they’re not repetitive, they contain the essence of the Doobies’ magic.

But they won’t be on “The Midnight Special,” never mind “In Concert.” So many members of this audience listen to podcasts and the news, they’re not driving down the highway in their Dodge Dart with the windows down banging their arm on the side of the car in unison to the beat. In other words, everything’s moved on but the music itself. Everybody’s gotten older, but there’s this shared sound from way back when that meant so much that the bands purveying it are still on the road playing to thousands. You can’t get this hit anywhere else. Kids aren’t looking for this sound, the Led Zeppelin renaissance is in the rearview mirror, the classic rock acts are fading away, at least in listening power, check the Spotify numbers, then again the oldsters are not spinning these nuggets ad infinitum on streaming services, if they’re even subscribing, Spotify is for youngsters, who wants beats more than melody, who see music as participatory, as background to not only videos, but partying. The music is evanescent, it’s just temporary grease enabling you to have a good time, then it’s discarded.

Not classic rock.

And I predict a renaissance at some point in the future, could be twenty years from now, maybe fifty, the music is just too good, like that of the bluesmeisters who inspired it, the tunes are hiding in plain sight, even more accessible, and when music becomes more about the essence than the trappings people will seek it out.

Are they gonna seek out the Doobie Brothers?

Well, I wouldn’t put them at the top of the list. But if younger generations find themselves still driving, still going into the hinterlands with no internet access they’ll discover how much this music resonates, how it rides shotgun and inspires.

And “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” and “Oh Mexico” continue the tradition. They’re in the pocket. And that’s where all the great music resides, right?

YouTube-“Don’t Ya Mess With Me”: https://bit.ly/3mOyiIN

YouTube-“Oh Mexico”: https://bit.ly/3sYceMT

“The Quiet One”: https://bit.ly/3mJmjw0

I thought it was me.

I have a hard time watching television alone. If Felice is there with me it’s no problem, but if it’s just me in front of the screen my mind drifts and I usually turn it off. I’d been trying to watch the third episode of “The Chair.” RottenTomatoes numbers are not that good, but buzz is very loud. Ignore it. Jay Duplass is always great. Ditto Sandra Oh. But the show is just too stupid and unbelievable. The tone at times is nearly slapstick. And some of the characters are two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. There is a series here somewhere, but this isn’t it. I stopped the episode twice before punting, but I had a sneaking suspicion it might be me.

Until I pulled up “The Quiet One” on Hulu.

We live in a world too often disconnected from the customer. These “auteurs” make their movies which play at film festivals for attention and deals and then they’re released to theatres and reviewed in the major papers and…do you really expect me to get in my car and drive and then sit through the trailers to watch not even ninety minutes of film for twenty dollars? It’s a bad proposition. But by time these movies finally hit the flat screen, there’s so much else to watch and I oftentimes don’t get to them, if I even remember them.

So I course through the platforms’ offerings on a regular basis, I want to get a feel for what’s offered. And on Hulu I noticed these documentaries that had gotten good reviews that, like I said above, I’d never go to the theatre to see. Like “The Donut King.” But I rarely watch movies, I find series so much more satisfying. But with Felice out of town I decided to delve into “The Quiet One” for a few minutes before I shut down the flat screen and got back to my book.

I was riveted.

“The Quiet One” is the complete opposite of the traditional music documentary, which is all about fame and hell a’blazin. People living a life unlike yours who got rich and had opportunities and who garnered not only fame, but wealth. “The Quiet One” is quiet. Its focus is Bill Wyman the man, it’s his story, as a person, as opposed to a rock star. And it wasn’t done on the cheap. And it does not start off dramatically, but there was no way I was going to turn it off.

You see Bill Wyman is from a different generation. Nearly all of the English rock stars, the British Invasion, were born during the war, in the early forties, but Bill was born in 1936. He remembers the bombing of London. He talks about it, was affected by it. And his father disdained him so he hung with his appreciative grandmother and did well in school until…

Well, I don’t want to tell you too much, because there are some surprises here. Some bad situations and bad choices, but Wyman soldiers on. Not like a hippie with an upbeat disposition, but a denizen of the lower working class whose attitude is that if you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will.

He joins the armed forces.

He changes his name.

He gets married and has a child.

And he starts playing the bass.

Now if you know your Stones history, you know that Bill Wyman slept with more women than any other member of the band. And that he is the archivist, he’s got a copy of almost everything. One would believe that’s a result of his fame, but the truth is he was a collector as a kid, his aforementioned grandma got him into it. And so much of the material is from said archives, but the filmmakers don’t hammer you with it. There’s no Geraldo Rivera Al Capone’s Vault hype. But you do see Bill in front of his computer, going through his assets quietly, and this is the complete opposite image of the rollicking rock star.

So Bill is in the Stones, but he’s somewhat removed. He’s not busy chatting everybody up, but he’s fully capable of talking. He let the others lead, he was just playing bass. How good was he? Let’s just leave it as good enough. Then again, Bill says his philosophy was not to shine, not to dance on the bottom, not to play lead on the bass, but to create a foundation, along with the drums of Charlie Watts.

And all the history is here, with none of it being belabored.

There’s insight into Brian Jones.

And there are tales of exile in France, the supposed debauched year when “Exile On Main Street” was made.

Bill didn’t live in that mansion where they recorded, Keith did, and they only cut the record there because otherwise Keith wouldn’t show up.

And while in France, Wyman hangs with famous artists, like Marc Chagall. That’s right, while some of the band were shooting up, Bill was taking advantage of the cultural perks of being in the country across the channel.

Bill’s not drugging, he’s hardly even drinking. It’s like he’s in a completely different band, having a completely different experience.

Although the mania is chronicled. As is the music. You watch “The Quiet One” and you see the starting Stones as blues purists, unlike anybody else in the landscape at that time, not dressed in suits, dangerous because they would not conform, they were doing it their own way.

And then Bill quits.

You can’t understand it until you see this film. He wanted to have a life! He’d missed it being in the band, on the road. He wanted to stop and smell the roses before it was too late. He was sick of waiting for seven years for Mick and Keith to make up and work, and after the Steel Wheels tour he gives notice.

He catalogs his possessions. Then he starts to play. He leverages his fame to create groups of other great players. He plays music for the love of it more than the fame, money and acclamation.

“The Quiet One” is a great film that you should seek out and watch. It’ll have you thinking, it’ll stick with you.

There’s just not that much money in it anymore.

I wish the problem was streaming, I wish there was a single oppressor keeping players from scraping by. But there’s not. Times have changed, the cultural landscape is so different that anyone from the pre-internet era would not be able to fathom the business. Anyone who stopped paying attention in 2015 would not recognize the business.

Ever since Elvis Presley, ever since the baby boomers came of age, music has been an avenue to get rich. If you just practice your craft, pay your dues, get better, both in recordings and on stage, a major label checked you out and if they signed you you were on your way. The label made a commitment, usually multiple albums, they paid for you to go on the road, they promoted you to radio and the press. And you had a good chance of becoming successful, even without a hit record, the machine got your name out there, people would buy your records, there are old acts still touring today who never had a hit. You see it was a club, with a heavily guarded gate, and most people couldn’t get in. The internet demolished the gate, and now the lunatics are running the asylum.

So if you’re paying attention and up to speed, and the truth is there’s not a soul who knows completely what is going on, major labels are only interested if you come with an audience, demonstrated by social media numbers. But now it’s gotten even more specific, it’s about TikTok numbers. So what we’ve got is zillions of youngsters making very short videos to try and garner a fan base. And if they do, they’ll get a major label deal. Doesn’t matter what the music sounds like, if they’re any good, it’s an economic proposition.

Used to be labels could make stars, that’s completely untrue today. You build the fire yourself as an individual, and then the label pours gasoline on it and see if the flame sustains. And this is so expensive that very few acts are signed. Making the music is the cheapest part, selling it is where all the money is spent, in the marketing/promotion. Of course musicians don’t understand this, they don’t understand the problem with Spotify is not the service, but the labels and their heinous deals. The English government held hearings and that’s what it concluded. But we live in a post-truth era where it’s all about emotion and mob mentality rules, irrelevant of the veracity of the opinions held and proffered.

Now the truth is if you’re totally independent, and work hard and connect, you can make a living via streaming and playing live. You get the money instead of the label. You just can’t get rich. And this is why you got into it. Be clear, back at the advent, the heyday, post-Beatles, musicians, mostly male, did it to get laid and get rich, not to make the same money as the guy working at the gas station. So now when you’re in the game and making bupkes, you feel someone must be at fault, but that’s patently untrue, the game changed and you’re not aware of it.

The most important story you can read today is: 

“The Social-Media Stars Who Move Markets”: https://on.wsj.com/3jp21FM

It’s behind a paywall, so if you’re not laying down, forget about reading it. Complain all you want, but the joke is on you. You’ve got to spend to make it. For years you could do it essentially all for free, but not anymore.

So the bottom line is self-styled financial analysts, with little to no experience, have YouTube channels and they’re making bank. Three are featured. Kevin Paffrath, 33, has 1.7 million YouTube subscribers and made $5 million in just the first three months of the year. Rose Han, 32, has 522,000 YouTube subscribers and makes $2 million a year. Casey Adams, 20, has 7,860 subscribers and makes $300,000 a year. In all three cases the purveyors net more than almost any musician. You may gross a lot, but the expenses are stratospheric in music, to net $300,000 a year is a huge achievement.

And it’s not like the above three are experts giving totally accurate advice. They have to be positive 24/7. Mr. Paffrath said despite AMC going up 10% this day, hedge funds were shorting it and therefore he expected the share price to collapse.

“After the live stream ended, Mr. Paffrath started shedding thousands of subscribers, he said. Most videos with positive titles garner more than 200,000 views, he says, while videos that have negative takes on a company or an industry in the title rarely get more than 60,000 views.”

So don’t tell me how great a musician you are, how the successful have no talent, IT’S NOT ABOUT THE TALENT, IT’S ABOUT THE NUMBERS!

So, if your business is on YouTube, you’re directly connected to the money. YouTube is owned by Google, the company pays, like a slot machine, better than any club owner, better than so many promoters. The deal is clean, it’s just a matter of whether you get the views. So why would anybody want to go into music? Where the odds are long and you don’t make much?

Now the truth is the traditional financial outlets like Goldman Sachs  and Morgan Stanley, as well as hedge funds, got the memo:

“Wal Street Is Looking to Reddit for Investment Advice: Deep-pocketed banks and hedge funs now take their cues from the armies of Main Street traders”: https://on.wsj.com/3BkgMzV

They’re not complaining, they’re going where the action is. If the market is moved by punters, they’re diving in. The small investors may be irrational, but if they’re moving markets you’d best chase the game or be left out. Like the major labels. Their systems are worse than financial institutions, they leak money, but the truth is the labels understand completely where the cash is these days. Just like the big investment houses, they’re following the money. Paying attention to what moves markets, like TikTok, not judging the tunes, just the eyeballs.

For the status of the TikTok music world today please read this:

” TikTok… Boom – The app redefined what it means to break as a musician. But could a host of new challenges threaten its dominance?”: https://bit.ly/3yo6jli

I found the above article on the “Entertainment Weekly” page on Apple News+, for which I pay ten bucks a month. But not only do I pay, I read, multiple times every day. But that’s my business, information. If you’re a player you might be out of the loop, at home busy making music, complaining about the landscape, how you can’t make any money, but the joke is on you!

As for those playing the new game, read this:

“Meet 14 TikTok artists and music curators who are making a splash”: https://bit.ly/3gHVnJ1

Now if you work at a major label, none of this is news. This is what you do every day. But you’re a businessman, the musician is not. But I would say a musician needs to be a businessman today to know the field they’re inhabiting, or want to inhabit.

But it gets worse, much worse. A hit is not as big as it once was. Because there’s so much in the landscape, everything has less reach than ever before, not only musical acts, but TV shows, movies… But the old media doesn’t cotton to the new world, so it just prints the metrics of the old world. If you took high school chemistry you know how it is…they teach you about how electrons orbit around the nucleus. And first they tell you it’s circular, like the planets, but when you grasp that concept they then tell you it’s untrue, that the electrons fly in 3-D space and there is no regular path. Confused yet? The media still is. They want you to think entertainment content is limited and it’s all radiating around them, the nucleus, in a perfect orbit that they can divine. Meanwhile, you know this is untrue, wading through the chaos is your everyday job, never mind some people focusing on inaccurate information. But the media is trying to make order out of chaos in a faulty manner. First, the outlets don’t understand everything that is going on, their model is flawed. We don’t need reporters asking, we need natives, living in the vertical, testifying. If you’re asking who, what, why, where and when, you’re already behind the curve, you’ve already lost. Reporters call me all the time and they have no idea what is going on, NONE, and then they write and almost always get it wrong. So, you can codify tracks in a chart, the manipulated “Billboard” one, or the Spotify Top 50, but they don’t accurately reflect what is going on. You can be nowhere near the chart and have a big audience and make a good living. Which you can see when you look at the touring numbers.

But it gets even worse. People go where the money is. And in the sixties, seventies and eighties that was music. You didn’t need a college degree, you just had to be good at what you did, playing, singing, or both.

But then all these people in tech started making billions. It’s essentially impossible to make that money in music. And the billionaires lived rock star lifestyles, going where they wanted and spending untold monies, the way rock stars did in the last century, destroying hotel rooms, getting laid. But it turns out money is a bigger force than fame. If you’ve got cash you can get a partner, people are doing their best to cling to you. Fame? Think of all the famous social media stars that are a joke or broke or both!

Yes, being a social media star is a full time job. It burns you out.

But somehow musicians believe they can relax, smoke dope, and if it doesn’t work out it’s not their fault.

And the social media stars are all about the marketing. Which young musicians get, and then realize the marketing is more important than the music, so that’s where they put their focus. So if you’re complaining about subpar popular music…you’re right!

And then there are the creators. They go where the money is. And since it’s not in music…

And the script has flipped, it’s not about stars, it’s about the hoi polloi, the individual. On Robinhood, on TikTok and YouTube too. Everybody is a star today, almost no one is passive, they want to create more than partake. And this is why if you’re refusing to allow your music to be synched willy-nilly on YouTube and other social media sites the joke is on you. These homegrown creators are the link to your audience, they’re the ones keeping you alive. Hell, it happens on a regular basis, especially on TikTok, creators pick an old song and then it gets traction seemingly out of nowhere!

And the most successful “musicians”? They’re all into brand extension, because that’s the only way you can make big money, have the perch in the hierarchy you used to be able to have back in the sixties and seventies. You want to be a billionaire yourself, for a seat at the table. So Rihanna doesn’t make music for five years but joins the ten figure club. And the story is everywhere! Because money is the hook. As for “People” and “Us” and the rest of the gossip rags…the faces are in on the game, it’s their way to stay in the public eye, and if you’re not there, you’re usually forgotten.

Like I said above, you can make a living in the music business, and you don’t even need a label to do so. But get rich? Even if you have a label deal relatively speaking you won’t be rich compared to those with money in the world today. And the truth is most people are driven by money. Music is just a place for those without portfolio, no education, no experience, to make it. Concomitantly, if you have an education and experience you don’t want to go into music, because it’s so much easier to make big bucks elsewhere. Of course there are exceptions, but just dealing with the wankers in the music business turns off most potential business stars. It’s still cottage industry in an era of streamlined outfits that know where every dollar is, run by MBAs.

Now if you read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” you know the first criterion of success is to be in the right place at the right time. Right now THAT IS NOT MUSIC!

It was in the sixties and seventies, and when the old paradigm was dying MTV came along and saved it. But the internet blew it apart.

This has got nothing to do with how good you are at your instrument, how many dues you’ve paid, how good your record is. As a matter of fact, you can put out a positively great record and few can hear it today. That wasn’t even true ten years ago. Used to be if it was great, people would find it. But now there’s so much in everybody’s channel they can’t keep up with everything. Which also means if you want to stay top of mind you have to release music and interact online 24/7, otherwise you’re forgotten. I know you hate this, but if you’re complaining you’re not making enough bread, this is the only way to go!

We’re still in transition. No one involved wants to speak the truth, for fear of cracking the edifice. The streaming services are beholden to the labels who want to maintain their power at all costs. Like outfits in Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma,” ripe for disruption. Turns out most of the young audience wants to make clips with the tunes and what tunes they are is not as important as the catchiness of the final product. Never have the major labels had less power. Without their catalogs they’d be moribund.

The public is in control. The same public that is not 100% vaccinated and does not even agree on the same vaccine information. It’s like that in every sphere today. Music is the same way. There are people who wholly reject the Spotify Top 50 and are deep into their scenes of whatever and are totally happy. They are in control.

But it used to be the business was in control. And it depended on talented artists for an audience always eager to greet the new via a limited system. As limited as radio was, MTV was even more shaved down. Only a few acts got exposure and they were bigger than all the rest. Now there is no unifying force, only disorder. And you study the game and find your place or you’re a square peg constantly trying to fit into a round hole.

So if you want to play music for a living, go ahead. If you’re smart, you’ll stay small, you won’t have dreams of ubiquity, you’ll focus on the music to bond fans to you.

That is not the mainstream game, where the music itself is secondary, where the makers are personalities, and it all moves so fast that unless you’re truly interested, probably a young fan, you don’t even scratch your head and complain, you just inhabit the niche you want to. And you find like-minded people online. What’s not to like?

The public is happy. People consume what they want when they want.

The musicians? They’ve lost control! At least the labels are trying to keep up, the complaining players are not, they’re just waiting for it to return to what it was, and that’s never gonna happen.

A good analogy is television. Do you really think we’re going to go back to three networks, even cable with a few pay services and limited product? Never!

Adjust or die.

Or don’t start playing the game to begin with. Why go into music? It’s like being a painter, only you’ve got to constantly travel to do it. If this is your calling, go for it. Or start on TikTok. Or just go where the action really is, follow the money, which once again isn’t in music. Oh, there’s cash, just not the big cash you’re dreaming of!