“And Tommy doesn’t know what day it is…”

Actually, it’s Monday morning, 9:32 AM. Which is pretty strange, since I left L.A. on Saturday.

I flew Qantas. Didn’t Rain Man say it never had a crash? Well, I think since then they have, but if you think your aircraft is gonna crash, you probably shouldn’t fly to begin with. They say it’s the lack of control. I feel that when I’m not behind the wheel. Felice and I were driving, actually she was driving, to Glacier Point in Yosemite, and if you miss a turn, good luck, I was pumping the imaginary brakes, but on an airplane, you’ve got to have faith, even if George Michael himself is gone.

It was an A380. One of those double-decked thingys. They’re not gonna make any more. Turns out the flying paradigm has shifted, now it’s about shorter flights with smaller, more fuel-efficient aircraft. And now they’ve got these long-range 787s… As for the 737 Max, it’s not the MCAS that concerns me, it’s the whole concept. Rather than compete with Airbus’s new plane, Boeing gussied up an old one, the 737 launched in the sixties, when there weren’t even jetways at most airports. So, the Max had to fit engines on wings with a low height and then came up with software to accommodate the lack of balance…this is kinda like making digital vinyl records. Sometimes you’ve got to throw out the old to get started with the new. Or, as Dylan put it, “you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.” The times are certainly changing, but what’s weird is to a great degree they’re changing back, with populism reigning, a return to what once was that can never be regained, but that does not stop people from believing they can return to an era that wasn’t that good to begin with.

So they gave you pajamas. I shit you not. Was there going to be a rush on the bathroom, for changing?

At first I finished Elton’s biography “Me.” Wherein the music is barely mentioned, it’s all about interior dialogue and experiences, a revelatory music bio. Should you read it if you don’t like, care or know Elton? Probably not. But if you want to know what it’s like to be one of the biggest stars in the world… What’s amazing is how many people Elton knows and stays in touch with, at least when he wasn’t isolated in his bedroom on a coke binge. He talked to Ingrid Sischy every day! But at this point, most people probably have no idea who Ingrid was. But if you lived through the seventies, when Warhol still had impact… Think about that, a visual artist ruling the cultural world. Warhol sold out upfront, which constantly left you guessing, was it art or a joke, was it commerce or conception? That’s back when art was all about challenging perceptions, before it became a second-class citizen all about scrapping for cash. Were Brillo boxes art? Are Marvel movies art? One thing’s for sure, Marvel movies are all about the money, I mean has there ever been a comic book that has been anointed as great, key to the cultural fabric? Oh, I’m not talking about today’s graphic novels…the whole world has gone lowbrow, and the highbrows are so out of touch that they should be ignored. And where does this leave us? With no direction home.

So they had a lot of good movies on the plane. I wanted to watch “Booksmart” and “Yesterday,” but I never got to them, I was too busy reading. After I finished “Me,” I turned to Gary Shteyngart’s 2002 novel, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” written before social media, when everybody decided they were a winner. Used to be you graduated from college and then…who knows? You tried to find yourself, get loaded, have sex, try to identify yourself before you were tied to kids, a mortgage and car payments. The funny thing about “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” is the interior dialogue is much more intriguing than today’s art. You know, doubts, dreams, reflections on one’s parents, your upbringing, where you fit in the social structure… All of this has been wiped clean. In music, you have to boast or blast. In movies the characters aren’t even real. But there is hope in television, for now anyway.

So I changed into my pajamas and slept quite well. And when I woke up it was only forty five minutes till touchdown. So I went to the bathroom to change and…there was a line. So I ended up changing under the covers. I mean I couldn’t wear my PJs into the airport!

But I’d missed the instructions. And when I got to the machines, I didn’t know whether to use them or not. And just when I was ready to pull my passport, voila!, I got a ticket, allowing me to avoid the line.

Don met me and we got into his Audi and he told me how he was eager to get a Tesla. He talked about the acceleration. Yup, the upper middle class are the trendsetters in this case, and none of them are going back to gasoline cars. But what’s really weird is in Australia they drive on the wrong side of the road. I know, I know, it’s the right, but how come we can’t all get on the same page here? I guess for the same reason the U.S. never adopted the metric system, even though Canada did. It’s easy, like taking candy, from a baby. And we could switch overnight in the States but somehow that would be unpatriotic, we’d be sacrificing our freedom, to be ignorant, left behind. What kind of country do we now live in where up is down and vice versa? One in which the underclass is so far behind it has contempt for the educated and successful. Income inequality has consequences, but the rich don’t want to suffer, they believe they’ve earned their cash, as if they could have made it without customers, i.e. the hoi polloi.

So we’re driving away from Sydney, to Cronulla Beach.

You see it’s spring here. Which is so weird, having exited L.A. in the fall. You can feel the rebirth, even though there was a Christmas tree in the airport. But I guess they didn’t have snow in Jerusalem.

You feel the optimism, even though statistically more people commit suicide in the spring. Then again, what do we have to live for anymore? Art, baby. And sex. And art that explains sex. It’s all about the human condition, but we’re denying that.

So I’m here for Australian Music Week. Doing interviews, doing press.

Funny how you can go to sleep in one time zone, and then wake up halfway across the world. Where rugby and cricket supersede the NFL and MLB. But where football/soccer is making inroads, just like back home. Yup, just you wait, we’re all gonna be kicking the ball soon, it’s just a matter of time.

But no one thinks the future will ever come. Even worse, in the States, everyone wants to be inoculated against its consequences…I can’t lose my job, my standard of living… But just like yesterday’s music does not top the chart today, things change, and you’ve got to change with them or fall behind to your detriment.

Then again, learning, education, has a stain on it in America. You see it generates elites, who think they know more, who think they are better than the rest.

Only in America can bettering yourself be seen as a detriment.

Now I’m a big supporter of a social safety net, no one should starve, everyone should have a roof over their head. But the truth is while you’re busy denigrating the achievers, you’re falling farther behind.

How did this turn into a political screed?

I guess in an era of social media backlash, you can cower, protest that you are not worthy and get out of the way or…

There are more ways to get ahead than jumping through hoops. Believe me, I’m not in a hotel room overlooking the beach because I’m a lawyer, my SATs have got nothing to do with it, baby.

The truth is I went down the road less taken. Which most people are unwilling to do. I ain’t got no kids, I sacrificed. But that’s the only way to get to the unknown, to the pot of gold, which in many cases isn’t even cash.

You get there via art, via music.

There’s no degree that will get you there, you fly by your wits.

But the payoff… People don’t do it for the money, they do it for the experience, the learning. Then again, in a culture where cash is put first, it’s all gone to hell.

Keep your eyes open. Figure out how to go your own way, and not the one Lindsey Buckingham was singing about.

As Jim Carroll put it, “I’m just a constant warning to take the other direction.”

It’s those that do who change this world. Money has no chance against art, it’s all about hearts and minds, baby.

And as Bon Scott so famously sang…

“It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock n’ roll.”

There are two music businesses. The one you see in the media and the one that flies under the radar. You know everything about what Is happening with today’s stars, shenanigans are part of the sale, with it so hard to reach anybody these days, they appear everywhere, just so you’ll know their name, even if you’ve never heard their music.

We saw this once before. In the sixties. With AM and FM. FM was adventurous, played extended cuts, the new and different, it was fully alive with players who thought their music was enough. AM was about safety, pleasing all palates.

And when it was all united on FM by Lee Abrams it had a historic run and then cratered, when disco came along and killed it, or at least put a dent in it. Disco was new and different. And the funny thing is today disco has survived more than rock, there are disco beats everywhere.

And then MTV made it a monoculture. You were either on the channel or not. And if you were, you were making more money than anybody in the history of the music business, you could sell and tour all over the world as overpriced CDs flew out of the bins.

Until the internet came along and blew it all apart. Suddenly we had choice. And there were those who adopted the new systems and those who did not. Hip-hop embraced the internet ethos, they saw giving it away for free as a road to success. Rockers still rail at the net, last night Lucinda was singing the praises of albums, after referencing Sheryl Crow’s decision not to make anymore. Sheryl is right. She had a brief moment of sunshine on her new LP, and then it all disappeared, it’s almost like it never came out. The key is to be in the marketplace on a regular basis today.

But not yesterday.

And “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” was recorded yesterday, released in 1998, when recordings still resulted in revenue, when a hungry audience ate up CDs, when the scene was comprehensible.

It’s not comprehensible anymore.

You can be exposed to the tsunami of media and feel completely out of it and then…

You go to a Lucinda Williams show and feel superior, knowing this is where it’s really at, this is the epicenter, this is the sound, the music that hooked you in the first place.

Not that there were any youngsters there. As a matter of fact, the Orpheum was filled with boomers, who remember when. And these were fans, there was no in-between songs talking, not even many smartphones videoing and taking pictures, they were relishing the experience, being in a hall with nothing but the sound.

Oh, Lucinda had a backdrop, but the show would have been just as effective without it. How long has it been since the music has been enough? When it sounded live, not programmed, when the people on stage were just as alive as you in the audience, no different except they’d taken the road more challenging, with no guarantees.

Lucinda talked a lot about her upbringing. The mentally ill mother. The incessant travel. She was so honest, your eyes bugged out.

Now to be honest, I am not the biggest Lucinda Williams fan. I met her once backstage at Marc Cohn show back in the early nineties, when she was cruising on success of her legendary Rough Trade record, and if you listen to it you’ll know why it is, legendary that is, but she was struggling to make another album. She needed to get it right. Steve Earle said it was just a record, but she didn’t agree. Lucinda Williams is not a pushover, she’s got a backbone, she’s stood up to the men blocking her way again and again.

But Lisa is a huge Lucinda fan, and when it was announced Williams was going on the road to perform the entire “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” on its twentieth anniversary, she sent out an e-mail blast asking all of us if we wanted to go. I told her I could miss it, at this point in my life, I can miss anything, but she got a ticket for me and we went last night and I’m glad I did, it renewed my faith in music, made me feel I was with it as opposed to out of it.

It’s just a small band, like the Beatles, if the songs are good enough you don’t need all the trimmings, they’re superfluous.

Not that Lucinda Williams sounds anything like the Beatles, but there was a guitar, a bass, drums and her on and off strumming.

Now I decided to prepare for this show. Over the weekend I listened to “Car Wheels” over and over again. And the best place is in the car, because suddenly you’re taken away from this news-infested world, you’re just in a cocoon, you and this sound.

So I was ready.

Of course I knew certain songs well, like the title track and “Joy.” I’ve seen Lucinda multiple times, but she’s always been an opening act, last night she was the headliner.

So the evening opened with a video of her family packing up and moving from the States for a year in Mexico City. You see Lucinda as a teenager, and you instantly remember that era, when our lives were in front of us instead of behind us. Lucinda’s now 66, just like me. You always think of musicians/celebrities as being older than you until they’re suddenly younger than you, but Lucinda saw the world from my exact vantage point.

But we lived different lives.

Yet again, they were similar.

I wandered for two years after college, but I felt the urge to get back on track, even though you could live on minimum wage back then, I certainly did.

Lucinda went to Texas, she played, she had boyfriends, she lived her life, she drank. When she said the late seventies were all about drinking, I howled, I certainly lived that life!

I take off my watch and earrings
My bracelets and everything
Lie on my back and moan at the ceiling
Oh my baby

There’s more truth in that verse than anything on the hit parade, it’s honest, it’s real, you can relate.
That’s from the opening cut on the album, “Right In Time.”
But it was my favorite, the title cut, next.

Sittin’ in the kitchen, a house in Macon
Loretta’s singing on the radio
Smell of coffee, eggs and bacon

It’s about Lucinda’s youth, at least that’s what she told us. All about her father being a poet, apologizing after he heard her sing it at the Bluebird.

Yup, every song had a story.

And they were all told in this laconic southern style, not fast like a New Yorker. This is the speech style the elites consider ignorant, but Lucinda is not. If you hung in there, hooked into her rhythm, she always got to the point. It was like reading a southern novel, not about someone making it, but living her life.

The best story concerned “Metal Firecracker.”

Once we rode together
In a metal firecracker
You told me I was your queen
You told me I was your biker
You told me I was your everything
Once I was in your blood
And you were obsessed with me
You wanted to paint my picture
You wanted to undress me
You wanted to see me in your future

That’s a true story. He was a replacement bass player. They fell in love on the metal firecracker, what he called the bus. He was her soulmate. Only one problem, she was living with another guy. Who she told when they hit New York. He promptly destroyed the hotel room, and when the tour was over the bass player told Lucinda she didn’t fit his “agenda.”

WHERE DID THAT LEAVE HER? WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?

Some people don’t live their lives, they do what they’re told, color inside in the lines, afraid to take a risk. That’s why we look up to artists, they take chances we won’t, they’re truer to life, they come back and tell us what they saw.

Last night Lucinda told us what she saw. Clive, who loved to take road trips, cook, drink…he’s dead now. A lot of them didn’t make it. You see when you test the limits without a net not everybody survives.

And we’ve got all the women telling us what it’s like to work in the office, to be in business, but I can’t relate. That’s a giant game. Which the men play too, but with even less wisdom. But the main show is really the sideshow. You listen to Lucinda Williams and it makes you want to put on your jeans, throw out your razor, get behind the wheel and see what you encounter, not worried about what you left behind.

This was an adoring audience. Giving Lucinda time to stretch out. She evidenced no charisma, the charisma was in the songs. Played in that style of rock blended with Texas, you know with guitars with few treatments, but with tons of wail.

That’s what life is about, wailing. It’s what we all want to do. Which is why we were addicted to this music to begin with. We boomers remember when you didn’t take endorsements, when your credibility was everything, when you were channeling truth.

And just when you think that’s a dead paradigm, you go to see Lucinda Williams. Everybody should buy “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road,” play it three or four times and go to see Lucinda play it and tell her stories. Their ears will be opened, and their eyes. They will see there is hope, that music can regain its title as the most vibrant art form. When rock music is done right, IT’S LIFE ITSELF!

The manager of The Who, Judas Priest and…need I say more?

iheart

spotify

stitcher

apple

This is what happens when you try to protect legacy partners.

And when you let newbies run your business.

Music was the canary in the coal mine for digital disruption. Not that anybody paid attention to what happened. The music business is seen as a poor stepsister run by street hustlers purveying substandard content. Everybody forgets that the Warner Music Group’s profits built the Warner cable system, everybody forgets that music used to make more money than movies, Richard Parsons has never been held accountable for blowing out Warner Music at a rock bottom price, when it rose in value not long thereafter, and is still rising in value. That’s corporate owners, they play for the short term, not the long term. As for the music business, it’s doing quite fine, thank you. Turns out there was a lot more money in concert tickets than previously thought, prices have gone through the roof and customers have paid them. And more opportunities to partner with third party companies. As for recorded music revenues, they went up when rights holders stopped trying to bring back the past and admitted we live in a new era, and that the public wants on demand and that streaming satisfies this. Sure, recorded music revenues haven’t returned to their pre-internet level yet, then again, today recorded music revenues are a smaller piece of the pie than ever. Furthermore, music was in the right place at the right time when it turned out the younger generations were more interested in experiences than acquiring goods.

Never underestimate a founder. Steve Jobs came back and revitalized Apple and Reed Hastings pivoted Netflix from DVD by mail to streaming and created a monolith, one that traditional outlets sold to and derided at the same time and then decided they must compete with.

Credit Disney, they came out with a rock bottom price. They own modern movies, albeit superheroes, and they own children’s television, and they shocked the sphere by coming out with a product for $6.99 a month. That’s less than Netflix. It’s a shot across the bow. They’re here to compete, and they’re going to be in the marketplace in two weeks.

And then there’s Apple. It’s giving away its TV streaming service for free to people who buy its products. As for others…it’ll be $4.99. If Apple has a hit show, you can rationalize that amount, it’s certainly less than a movie. It’s barely more than a latte.

But HBO Max? Demonstrating its hubris, the price is gonna be $14.99, when the service launches in May. Ever hear of a first mover advantage?

One thing is for sure, at this late date the entertainment world still doesn’t understand the lessons of tech, wherein you give it away for free, grow your fanbase and then charge and then raise the price. Audience is key, audience is everything. And also-rans have a hard time generating mass. Try to compete with Facebook lately? How about Google? Even Microsoft couldn’t put a dent in Google search.

But HBO/AT&T can’t piss off its cable partners.

This is just like the record labels saying they couldn’t piss off their retail partners, those selling CDs who either went out of business or threw the labels under the bus. There is no more Tower Records. As for Best Buy? It didn’t mind taking back all that floor space to hawk other products.

You never protect your legacy customers, where are they gonna go?

Out of business!

The biggest threat to cable systems is not channel pricing, it’s not even streaming services, it’s 5G. I can’t wait to get rid of my cable provider. They charge a car payment for service and if you want to get rid of TV they just up the price of internet. It’s kinda like the record labels at the turn of the century. People were so pissed about one good track on an overpriced CD that they didn’t think twice about file-trading, acquiring MP3s. I’d love to see Spectrum go out of business.

As for AT&T…

Acquiring DirectTV? In an era of internet supremacy? That deal is one of the worst of all time. While they’re at it, why don’t they invest in diesel cars. If something is going in the wrong direction, you buy it at a rock bottom price, not a premium. But that’s what happens when wankers with no history, no understanding of another business, dive in, ultimately to their detriment.

We saw this movie already in music. With Andrew Lack. Yup, he came from television, he came from news, he must know more than the idiots in music. He instituted the rootkit and decimated the credibility of Sony Music, and then was blown out and returned to news. What does John Stankey know about entertainment…NOTHING!

This is what happens when you get the consulting companies involved, the bean counters, the accountants. They run on numbers, not instinct. And believe me, entertainment is about instinct. There are no numbers that will tell you what’s a hit. Furthermore, if you’re lucky enough to have one, you need relationships, honed over years, to make it one in the marketplace.

Of course AT&T would lose money if it lowered the price of HBO to cable systems. But it would be building towards the future, when cable systems die! And what is a cable system gonna do, keep HBO offline? Then customers will just sign up for AT&T’s streaming product! That’s right, AT&T doesn’t even have to lower the price to cable systems, they have nowhere to go! Did labels lower the price of CDs to retailers when people were stealing their product willy-nilly online? Of course not!

Everybody is not going to subscribe to every streaming service, no way. Right now I refuse to sign up for Hulu. I’m paying Spectrum for all the cable channels, I’ve got Netflix, Amazon Prime… It’s not like I don’t have enough programming, I feel insulted, ripped-off.

This is another thing purveyors of visual content don’t understand. Streaming music sites have everything. Why can’t there be the same offering in TV? They’re balkanizing the product to their detriment. Not to mention that those with little new product, like HBO Max, will experience churn…i.e. viewers will sign up and sign off based on hits. If you’ve got everything in one place, churn is reduced.

Kinda like it used to be on cable. If you wanted the product, there was nowhere else to go.

But now there are a ton of places to go.

Someone should roll up all these streaming TV channels for one low price. That’s what I want. Charge me $39.99 and I get everything, today and forevermore. Sure, you can raise the price, but not right away. Spotify is still growing its audience, now is not the time to alienate customers. When they’re hooked and have no other options, that’s when you stick it to them.

Netflix has first mover advantage. It has a plethora of new product. If you think people are going to disconnect because of Disney Plus and HBO Max, you’re wrong. Those two outlets have to convince customers to add their services, forcing viewers to make an economic choice. Do I need two cars? How many pairs of skis do I need? Am I really gonna feel left out if I don’t have your service, in a world where we’re all watching different product anyway, where ratings for shows are lower than ever, where the only club is in your house, in a Tower of Babel society.

You don’t price based on Excel, you price on gut.

Customers no longer expect new products to be expensive with kinks to be worked out, they expect it to be cheap and flawless, with the price rising when the market is stabilized.

The road is littered with legacy companies bitching their cheese has been moved. The key is not to placate them, but to put them out of business. And to survive, first you need eyeballs. In a world of cacophony, where there are so many options, that is difficult to do.

As for HBO Max’s launch, they couldn’t even get that right.

Apple launches to the public, via its keynotes. The public pays, not the scribes. Furthermore, the scribes mean less than ever before. Sure, it’s a business story, and the investors are eager for information, but this is the same press that went along with WeWork and… Facebook stock went down before it went up, the street is clueless when it comes to the value of a new business, the key is customers. And AT&T/HBO Max left them out of the equation, in an egalitarian society where the hoi polloi believe they’re equal to the titans.

I’m not saying that HBO Max will be a complete failure. But I am saying good luck reaching your projections, which come out of thin air anyway. Steve Jobs had no idea the iTunes Store would be a runaway success, neither did his suppliers, the labels. Predicting the future on a new product is like…making it up. Yup, that’s what they’re doing, making it up there is no data that can establish the success of HBO Max.

But everybody prints the story and moves on to the next.

But not me!

And not the customers.