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1

Many people believe this is a KISS song.

Argent released two albums to crickets before they broke through. No one was waiting for the band, today they would have gone out as the Zombies, just like Led Zeppelin started out as the New Yardbirds, sans name recognition you’re starting at zero.

As for the Zombies?

They’d had legendary hits, but they were years before, except for “Time of the Season” from “Odessey and Oracle,” which Al Kooper rescued from the dustbin and made a hit after the band had broken up. Meanwhile, Rod Argent may have written “Time of the Season,” but Colin Blunstone was the frontman, the vocalist, then again all of the Zombies’ success occurred prior to the explosion of rock rags, back then most people hadn’t even heard of “Rolling Stone,” which might have launched in 1967 but truly didn’t hit critical mass until the seventies.

But Argent was a different band. In this case, the frontman was Russ Ballard, who was also the primary songwriter. And the end result sounded nothing like the Zombies, but there was a certain magic, which eluded the public.

The first album, the eponymous “Argent,” contained one of the best records of all time, “Liar.” Doubt me? Pull it up, the dynamics alone will close you. A year later, Three Dog Night” covered “Liar” and made it a hit, and that take is pretty good, but the dynamics, the ethereal sound, is absent.

As for the second Argent album, “Ring of Hands,” a year later Three Dog Night included “Chained” in their 1972 LP, “Seven Separate Fools,” but it wasn’t a single and…I’d see Argent albums in the bins, but I never ever knew anybody who owned one.

And then came “Hold Your Head Up.”

1972… Let me see, that summer also saw the release of “Thick as a Brick.” In the U.K., T.Rex was dominant, and David Bowie was exploding with “Ziggy Stardust,” never mind the debut of Roxy Music…but those acts took a long time to cross the pond. Interesting how they’re all English.

And so was Argent.

Now by 1972, every hamlet had an FM rock station. And free-form was history, the music was programmed. And what they were looking for was instant smashes, tracks people would get on one listen and clamor to hear again.

That was “Hold Your Head Up.” The ethereal squeal of the intro followed by the pounding drums entranced you immediately, and then when the guitar riff was introduced, you were completely sold. And then Russ Ballard emerged atop it all and the cake was baked, the whole concoction rose.

This was the era of the extended track. The album version was six minutes and seventeen seconds long, it was cut down to just over three for AM radio after it had such an impact on FM, it blared out of car windows ALL OVER THE WORLD, this is the rock that has been pooh-poohed by the critics, those rewriting history, but this was the music that dominated back then, when it became about bigger and bigger shows, when politics was fading and only the sound remained. All Argent had to do was follow it up.

2

“God Gave Rock and Roll to You”?

The title alone will swear you off the track. Sure, the Jesus movement had fomented, but tying in religion and self-congratulation, the power of rock and roll…it was all just a bit too over the top, to the point of appearing ersatz.

Needless to say, the track stiffed. And since Argent had little commercial history to speak of, so did the album, “In Deep.”

The act made two more albums on Epic, even one on RCA, but it was almost like they didn’t come out, there was no attention, no radio action, and Russ Ballard left after “Nexus,” the band’s 1974 follow-up to “In Deep.”

Ballard went on to be a songwriter, he also recorded, not that anybody seemed to know, but he’s got enough classics in his catalog to be living on royalties. Yes, in addition to “Liar” and “Hold Your Head Up,” he also composed “New York Groove” for Ace Frehley, “You Can Do Magic” for America, “Winning” for Santana, and even “I Know There’s Something Going On,” from my friend Frida’s first English solo album, produced by Phil Collins.

Rod Argent went behind the scenes to work with Tanita Tikaram, who had a big MTV track “Twist in My Sobriety,” and then promptly disappeared.

Argent’s cousin, bass player Jim Rodford, decamped for the Kinks.

And drummer Rob Henrit ultimately followed him, after doing some session work.

But then something strange happened, in 1989 the stoner comedy “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” was released and succeeded smashingly. And then there was a sequel, “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” in 1991, and this being the twentieth century, there were attendant soundtrack albums for both flicks, and the one for “Bogus” featured cuts from Slaughter, Megadeth, Primus and KISS. And the KISS track was a cover of what was now called “God Gave Rock ‘N’ Roll To You II.” One can argue quite strongly this is perfect KISS fodder, over the top bombast, subtlety is excised, Paul Stanley is singing with all the power of his lungs, the band sludged through this forgotten song and gave it the attention it deserved, it was ultimately released as a single and also included in a subsequent KISS album. Today everybody knows “God Gave Rock and Roll to You”… Well, not Gen-Z. Maybe some millennials. This sound is out of fashion, but it still had dominance until the turn of the century.

3

So I was driving on the freeway today, twisting the steering wheel of my four-wheel drive car, not able to avoid the influence of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” and I’m listening to the radio.

The news is scary and too often repetitive.

Howard’s on vacation, although I did enjoy hearing them beat up Memet again.

So ultimately I switched the channel to Classic Vinyl. And “Roadhouse Blues” started pouring out of the speakers, the subwoofer thumping as Jim Morrison got himself a beer and I contemplated how great this basic song is, played constantly on classic rock stations today, even though the album it opens, “Morrison Hotel,” was pooh-poohed by critics.

And then…maybe I switched to Deep Tracks, but on one of those rock stations, after pushing some buttons, I heard the inimitable sound of Argent’s “God Gave Rock and Roll to You.”

And now I’m really in the groove, I turn up the stereo, not only does this original version of the song sound fresh and exciting, I’m gaining new insight, even though the cut is almost fifty years old.

Yes, God gave us rock and roll, or maybe he didn’t, but we’ve certainly got it, but it doesn’t mean what it did back in 1973 when this cut was released.

As for loving our friend and our neighbor…a sixties hangover back then, an impossibility today, peace and love are out the window.

But it was the second verse that truly resonated.

“If you want to be a singer or play guitar

Man you’ve gotta sweat or you won’t get far”

That’s how it was, it’s not how it is. We saw the Beatles, we all wanted to be one, but the lift for almost all of us was too heavy. We had to learn to play, to write and we needed to be good-looking, we got guitars but most gave up, or turned into hobbyists, but not everyone…

The best song about this is AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll),” but art is not a competition, these tracks exist side by side quite nicely, both ultimately coming from the same spot, the same feeling.

But it was the line thereafter that stuck out.

Funny you can know a song by heart and then you hear it again and it reveals itself even further…

“‘Cause it’s never too late to work nine to five”

YES! You can sell out whenever you want. McDonald’s is always looking for workers. Never mind low level office jobs. If you want to give up, go straight, the world is ready for you, you’re not losing a step, because if you’re working nine to five there’s no upward mobility, there’s no career. And in truth, most of the English musical stars were facing work in the factory, that kept them focused on their careers. So why not stay the course?

“And if you’re young then you’ll never be old

Music can make your dreams unfold

How good it feels to be alive”

I don’t feel 68. I was in a Zoom conference with the immunologist yesterday and he mentioned my age and I thought to myself…THAT’S NOT ME! When someone verbalized it, I internalized it, I’m old, how in the hell did that happen.

But I only own one suit. One pair of real shoes. I’m living my fantasy life. Sure, the music business might have moved on, to dreck, but I haven’t, nor have so many of my brethren.

And I’m zipping along beyond the speed limit, not a cloud in the sky, enveloped in this wonderful sound and all I could think was how great it was to be alive.

Because someone gave me rock and roll. Maybe God, maybe Ike Turner, we can debate the origin story all day long, but it’s here…

And so am I!

Jonathan Taplin started out as the road manager for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and Judy Collins and then he became the tour manager for the Band. Along the way he worked with Bob Dylan and the Band at the Isle of Wight and helped produce the Concert for Bangladesh. Subsequently, Taplin produced Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” and brokered the sale of Disney and… Tune in to hear what was really happening in Woodstock with Bob Dylan and the Band and so much more!

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/jonathan-taplin-84270471

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/id1316200737

Maybe the pendulum has swung too far.

Data is ruining baseball. Turns out it’s best to only let starting pitchers go five or six innings. And have fielders adjust position based on the batter’s entire history of plate appearances. And since the pitchers are speeding the ball at 100 MPH consistently, the batters are employing upper cuts to try and hit home runs.

There have been a record number of strikeouts. Innings go by with no one on base. It’s turned into a game of home run derby. An already slow game is getting slower because of more pitches. Baseball is being ruined by data. New rules could possibly effect change, infielders would have to stay on the dirt, moving the mound back and lowering it…but to a degree you’re messing with the essence of the game.

The twentieth century was all about modernism in architecture. The frills were eliminated and you got very efficient, square boxes. But people got tired of square boxes, and as a result frills returned, most notably the arch with the notch at what was then known as the AT&T building. As for painting… The minimalism of the sixties has now been superseded by post modern artworks. Whether frivolous, like those of Jeff Koons, or… We had no pictorial images, now we do again. Is this what needs to happen in the arts in general?

The data has to be interpreted, but right now it’s believed that we need to pay attention to the spikes. If people go to see superhero movies, that’s what we’ll make. End result, the human pictures, all of the rest, went to streaming, with a different model. It’s not about the heat, the numbers of an individual show, but the collective, as long as enough people continue to subscribe, they’ll make a vast cornucopia of product.

The same thing has happened in the music industry. If you’ve got streams, hits, data that can be gleaned online that illustrate you’ve gained attention, then you get signed and pushed and the focus is on you, irrelevant of the content/style/quality of the music. Independent objective judgment has been thrown overboard for data points, all in pursuit of end dollars. What this is doing to the music industry at large is never addressed. More eyeballs, more money, good. Slow start, little data, bad. But now the music industry is turning into the superhero world of the movie studios. And the truth is despite the grosses of those cartoon pictures MOST people never ever see them! In fact, many people have sworn off the theatre-going experience completely, never mind the sticky floors, the talking and cellphone use, the overpriced concessions and the endless advertisements and trailers. It’s not a great experience and the pictures are not worth it. But the film industry never analyzes the product, it just looks at the grosses, the data.

It’s much harder to promote a musical act that has quality but no data. It’s an uphill climb. So, record labels no longer do this. Furthermore, the three major record labels are all publicly-owned companies. The end result being that everyone who works there is an employee, and they’ve got short term thinking, this is very different from the Jerry Mosses and the Chris Blackwells who signed what appealed to them and then worked to spread them. Hell, Blackwell single-handedly blew up reggae into a worldwide phenomenon. And the truth is the Marley slog was not easy, there was press, but the first three albums didn’t sell that well, the live album injected some excitement but it wasn’t until the turn of the decade, into the eighties, that Bob Marley became the icon he is, with the attendant reverence and continual raining down of dollars, even after his death!

Or then there’s the Grateful Dead, overanalyzed, but it was known as a road act and it wasn’t until “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty” that the public at large got the message, multiple albums into their career, never mind these record sounding different from what came before.

Just because it sells that doesn’t mean it’s good. We’ve always known this, but now data has skewed the production of music. You don’t practice an instrument alone in your room for a decade, struggle with multiple acts before you find the right formula and gain traction. No, teenagers are stars, those who’ve paid no dues. They employ modern technology to create something their cohorts, other young people, react to. As a result, labels sign and promote them and most of the world scratches its head asking itself WHAT HAPPENED TO MUSIC?

And the tracks are constructed on an assembly line, the bolt of inspiration that created some of the best tracks of all time has been excised.

So if you want to build a factory, a distribution system, data is extremely helpful. But when it comes to art, and baseball is art, you can get to the point where data hurts the product to its ultimate detriment. Who wants to go to a boring endless game? Who wants to listen to mindless tripe, especially when the acts come and go nearly instantly and they’re all whored out to corporations, or corporations themselves. The Weeknd is a big success and then he goes to work with Max Martin. And the truth is Martin is so good that he can make a hit for almost anybody, you or me. And my point isn’t to criticize the brilliant Martin but rather the vaunted Weeknd… You did it yourself, you made it yourself, but to continue this way would be too risky, so you bought insurance, you employed Max, you shaved off the edges of your identity to make sure you had the data, i.e. the streams.

If we looked at the data they never would have made almost all of the shows representing the golden era of television in streaming. If you look at the numbers, it’s the high concept dreck that gets all the views, don’t think just because a show wins awards that most people watch it, that’s patently untrue! But at least there’s high quality stuff for the rest of us. And the truth is not everything Netflix or Amazon produces succeeds on either an artistic level or a data/views level, but unless you’re constantly pushing the envelope, you end up with bland product and you lose the public. Kind of like network TV. Trying to appeal to everybody, i.e. the data, they appeal to fewer and fewer.

This is a big issue. And disruption always comes from outside. With Netflix. With the publishing companies buying catalogs. Universal may have bought Dylan, Sony may have bought Simon, but without Hipgnosis and the rest of the indies these deals never would have happened.

The music industry keeps on believing it can hoover up anything that is successful. But not only is this untrue, many people are not making music at all, because the lift is too high, they get no respect, certainly no help, all anybody wants to know is the numbers, the data, and the truth is everything that starts outside starts with low numbers, and change can take decades to take effect, like the legalization of marijuana.

Yes, the data is killing baseball. And movies.

And music too.

It’s just that those drinking from the trough of data don’t want to question themselves, it’s anathema to speak negatively of anything making money. It’s all numbers, there’s no soul, and certainly in music, that’s what attracts listeners, soul. But that’s gone.

You’ve got to watch the HBO “Generation Hustle” episode on scam rap, on Teejayx6. The music is terrible, he can’t rap on the beat, yet he signs a big deal with Atlantic Records. Why? BECAUSE OF THE DATA!

Used to be record labels developed talent. They scoured the landscape looking for skilled people and then nurtured them, recorded them, promoted them and then repeated the process until the act either broke through or didn’t, and was dropped.

That’s not how the music business works today.

The business changed twenty years ago, with the advent of the internet. Then all talent was available to all people. You couldn’t find someone no one else was aware of. Then it became about signing talent, not only the best deal, but enthusiasm and…

All that still counts, still applies in fact, but now the music is irrelevant, it’s how can we capitalize on what the individual has already created!

Forget Spotify, if you’re uploading tracks to Spotify you missed the memo, the joke is on those placing 60,000 cuts on the service every day. The truth is no one is listening, and if they are, it’s in very small numbers. And the data is totally transparent, everyone can see that no one is listening, so you’re dead in the water. Which is why today everybody gets started on social media.

Social media is fluid. It changes every day. It’s not so much about creating a track that everybody listens to ad infinitum, but something so outrageous that people take notice, train-wreck value is the most important criterion, you want something the viewers can tweak to their own advantage, utilize to garner views for themselves. That old saw that you don’t want people messing with your music? Completely out the window! If they can’t mess with it, if they don’t mess with it, you’re never going to make it.

So, the best place to start is TikTok. The beauty is you don’t even need a complete song. You need thirty seconds at most. Just the hook(s). And the old paradigm of polishing until you get it right? That’s history too. If something doesn’t work, you just make something new. It’s amazing how many people don’t get this, keep beating a dead horse. If there’s no reaction, then change direction, the public controls success, and if it’s not interested, forget about it. Doesn’t have to be a big number, the number just has to keep on going up.

But forget those caught up in the past. We’re living in the future baby.

So, if you get some traction on TikTok, or Instagram, or one of their many clones, you must make sure you’ve got additional places for people to lay their hat, to spend their time. The number one place is YouTube. That’s where you post the complete song. Yes, if you’re in this to break big as a recording artist you might only need a clip for TikTok, but you’ve got to be ready with a complete song in case someone is interested. And let’s be clear, the song itself is irrelevant, it’s all about THE DATA!

Record companies don’t care whatsoever what they release, just as long as it makes money. And if they believe they can make money with you, they’ll sign anything, literally anything.

Actually, this paradigm started in the eighties, credit Doug Morris. He’d take a record, get it airplay in a market, and if it sold at the store, he’d double down, if not, he’d move on to a new record. Because it’s all about sales/streams/money, never forget that.

And then, Morris instituted a research department. Where employees looked at what was selling in a market, and if they found something unsigned, they’d go deeper, they’d check it out, possibly sign it, like 2 Live Crew. No one thought that Luke Campbell and his buddies were especially good, but they created controversy, got attention, they could sell product, and did. The fact that it was essentially one and done? Atlantic didn’t care, it just moved on to new acts.

After infecting Warner with this process/thinking, Morris went on to Universal and Sony, and in case you’re not a student of the game, that’s all three major label groups, they all think this way now.

But now it’s on steroids. Because the public can create the noise itself, the tools are at people’s fingertips, and labels can hoover up the data. So there are many more potential acts and a hell of a lot more data, and if you’ve got the numbers you’ve got a deal!

Every other musical avenue has been marginalized. If you go to a label and try to get a deal based on the strength of your tunes, you’re SOL. Even if they’re good, it’s too hard for the label to break you, to spread the word, to get a fire started, that’s your job. And the truth is what gets started online is that with train-wreck value, so if you want to make it in today’s music business…

Of course there are other genres, they just don’t put up the big numbers, generate the data that hip-hop and pop do, and therefore the major labels aren’t interested, it’s just too heavy a lift. Sure, try to make it by playing live, but there aren’t that many places to play, the idea of going to the local bar to hear a group play their original music is almost nonexistent. In an on demand world where only the great survives, people don’t have the time, never mind the interest.

But there are scenes, focused on festivals, which then generate heat for acts that can tour alone or together in multiple markets. And sometimes there’s good money there, but the labels don’t care, because they only want to generate streams, that’s where their money is generated. They do call them RECORD companies, as in RECORDING!

On the other side we’ve got the public. Kids don’t see music as manna from heaven, the ten commandments of life, they see it as grist for the influencer mill. And everybody wants to be an influencer. And it’s very fly by night. Who’s big today probably won’t be big tomorrow. You generate a lot of product to make bank now and…you whore yourself out along the way, the scammers in the above episode partner with a household name artist to promote their scam, she took the money, why not? Well, she lost the scammers’ number after the people who got ripped off complained, but…there’s so much noise in the channel and she’s dependent on the hit so it all doesn’t matter so much.

As for Teejayx6 himself? I’m not sure he’s a scammer at all, I think it’s all a hype, a promotion, a way to gain attention, generate data and get a record deal. The attention is more important than the music.

So that’s the game. If you’re scratching your head wondering who cares…that’s just the point. The music business is still running on the aura of the power of music from decades past, that’s not the music business today. Not that you’d expect the labels, or the media, or anybody else eating at the trough to blow the whistle, no, that’s your job. And forget getting consensus and overthrowing the game, you can’t get enough mindshare to do that either. So, chances are you’re at home watching television, or going deeper into your own hobbies. Meanwhile, music, at least mainstream music, has become laughable.