I spent an hour today checking out the cams.

You see they got two feet of snow in Vermont yesterday, actually, it’s still snowing.

First I went to Mad River Glen, just over the hill from Middlebury, albeit a treacherous journey. Mad River still has a single chair, it’s locked in the past, and it’s intimate, sans the real estate b.s. of the last century that put ski resorts in the dumper, now it’s all about lift revenue. Anyway, I go to the cam every day, and Mad River makes almost no snow, but suddenly…

It’s SNOWVEMBER as they say in Vermont. It’s blowing and snowing and the cam is frosted over and I only want to be there, where they got nearly two feet of snow in the past twenty four hours. Being out in the elements… You’re alone, no matter how many people are with you, it’s private, you feel alive, and when you get back inside, you feel like you endured something, you accomplished something, you’re smiling.

Turns out Stowe, which is further north, got less. But the temperature had been warm, how far south did the snow go?

They got it at Sugarbush right next door. And over the pass, at my alma mater… The Middlebury College Snow Bowl was open for the very first day, I don’t ever remember it being open in November.

And Killington got hit. But I know the further south you go, you get rain, but at Bromley, my home mountain, where I grew up, they literally got twenty four inches, TWO FEET! This is so rare. It hasn’t happened in November since 1968. That was a great year, ’68-’69.

And then I wondered, did my alma mater now have cams? It’s at a much lower elevation, but the campus was covered in snow.

And it was blowing and snowing in Mammoth. Most of this year’s precipitation has been in Colorado, Vail rarely opens the Back Bowls this early. And California has gotten stiffed. But not today, it’s happening.

And then it started to get gray outside. As if…

It was about to rain.

Now you’ve got to know, rain is rare in Southern California. But it happens. But it wasn’t supposed to start until long after dark. But I checked the app and now it was coming early, which is so unusual.

So I put on Elton’s “My Father’s Gun.” I’m not sure what the inspiration was, something I read in the newspaper, and then I needed to hear all of “Tumbleweed Connection,” which I listened to every day of January 1971, after getting back from the slopes. And “Come Down In Time”…remember when music could be beautiful?

And I’m reveling in my mood but also thinking about a return to what once was. That’s what fascinated me in Reykjavik, everyone came back, no one left. And then I thought of Connecticut, so many people I grew up with stayed in New England, but not me. I’m in a better place, both literally and figuratively, but I yearn for what once was.

Saturday we finished “House of Cards.” It’s so bad, I wanted to throw the remote at the screen. Speaking of the power of one person, without showrunner Beau Willimon the program is useless.

But scanning Netflix for something new, I came across “Deadwind.” Felice wanted to start a new series. I don’t usually do it like this, I go to the computer and triangulate, I want to find the best series to watch. But the synopsis of “Deadwind” intrigued me, so I asked her to pass the iPad and when I saw it got a great rating on Rotten Tomatoes, we dove in.

It’s a murder mystery. Shot in Finland. In October.

And it never gets light and bright. It’s always gray. But the people live on, everything they do seems more important. And the lead never brushes her hair, her son says she’ll never find a new man, but she doesn’t want one. But it draws me to her, because she’s like me, how she looks, what she wears, is secondary to the mission, to the drive.

And I’ve been thinking about it all week. That’s where I want to go, back to “Deadwind,” to Helsinki.

And I’ve actually been to Helsinki, for one afternoon about five years ago. To the Rock Church and the Cathedral on the hill. I saw the Cathedral in some of the aerial shots!

But mostly I wanted to not only go there, but be there.

Funny world we live in today, no flight is long enough to disengage, you can be anywhere in the world on a whim, and many people take advantage of these flights. Then again, some people are ensconced in their domain, they never leave.

I left.

But I want to go back.

Students of the game know that Jeffrey interviewed Irving at the “Billboard” touring conference. I was in Iceland, but I just watched the tape, and a number of things stood out.

1. Don’t take it personally.

Jeffrey said Irving always told him this.

Now I’ve got a hard problem with this, especially in deals. You agree on one thing, and then the attorney comes back with another. It messes with my notions of fairness and trust. But really, it’s just a game. With an underside of duplicity. The attorney wants to claw back some of the money, lock you up even more and it all comes down to how much leverage you’ve got, whether or not you can say no. If you can’t say no, you’re never gonna get a good deal. Stand up to them and they hem and haw, but if you’re willing to forgo the entire deal, you can usually get most of what you want. But are you willing to pass? It’s scary being talent, you may not get another chance. But if you’re a true artist, you must go with your gut. If they won’t give you what you want (or need!) now, good luck getting it in the future, the same way they send a limo while they’re wooing you, but you Uber on your own dime after the deal is done.

2. Time passes.

One of Irving’s main skills is transitioning to the future. He embraced the internet earlier than anybody of his age and power. Jeffrey said how Irving now even texted with acts, even though he didn’t always know the lingo of the medium. He got STFU, but missed LOL. Does anybody still remember texts were SMS, i.e. “short message service”? And texts go via the cellular network and iMessages go via the internet but the point is the landscape changes and if you don’t adjust to it you’re left behind.

3. Time passes 2.

Jeffrey asked Irving what the best label was.

Irving answered “Giant”!

And there were crickets.

It was a good joke, but Giant, which started in 1990, was sold to Warner in 2001, almost twenty years ago. Meaning, a student of the game would have to be fortysomething to get the reference.

It was scary.

But the truth is the business is comprised of wholly different people with wholly different perspectives these days. If you’re thirtysomething… Chances are you were in high school during Napster. If you’re twentysomething, you might have never owned a CD. Meanwhile, oldsters look through their own lens and miss the market.

4. Artists first.

We’re all beholden to the artist. Irving has always been on the side of the artist. That’s his bitch with “Billboard,” for the industry “Bible,” it’s not always artist-friendly. Without acts, you’re nothing. You could be the best manager in the world, but with nothing great to manage… Artists need representatives, people on their side. Since the advent of the Mottola era, the business people have been in cahoots with the artists left outside the circle. You see the business remains, the acts come and go. That is changing with the younger generation, if for no other reason than the label is not the big daddy it once was, advances are lower and attorneys and managers have to make their bank in other places. But this business runs on artists. We admire artists. We need more people on their side, defending them, giving them good advice.

5. Songs.

That’s why the Eagles survived, Henley says it every night on stage. Great songs can live forever. If you write them… And Irving’s philosophy is to always write the song you’re gonna close your set with. A manager’s job is to inspire the artist, to push them just a little bit, like a coach, but without all the b.s. testosterone.

6. Nepotism.

That was one of the questions from the audience. Which was reluctant and unimpressive. One manager asked if the Azoffs would come see his K-Pop band. As my friend Jake Gold says, if you’re the manager, if the act’s already got a manager, WHY SHOULD I COME? It’s business, it’s money, time is valuable. The Azoffs said they’d be on the road on that date, but it made me laugh how the asker was a wanker. As was the person asking about her career. You always get this question at presentations, what advice do you have for ME? How can you help ME? Those on stage roll their eyes and try to escape. Meanwhile, re nepotism, Jeffrey said he was at his first settlement at 11, that when he went to work for Jordan Feldstein at 21, he knew things others his age did not. And Irving said that Shelli told him that Jeffrey was a drug dealer, why else did he have all that cash on his bed during high school. Turns out Jeffrey was doing after-prom parties. Irving winced and said WITHOUT INSURANCE! Jeffrey said he had insurance, who knows what the truth is.

Watching this interview, before the audience questions, was the college education I never got. Sure, I went to a liberal arts institution, where business wasn’t even taught, but the truth is I wasn’t interested in a single subject. And they always wanted to study classical theory whereas I was interested in my own theories! Those who work for themselves, like managers, get to act on their own feelings and insights. Some people just cannot be held back. Irving was making more money than his parents in high school, he paid for his tenure at college himself.

You see some things interest me, and some things don’t. And when I care, I cannot get enough. And to sit at the feet of giants and experience their lessons is…PRICELESS!

P.S. If you weren’t there, the interview will be broadcast on SiriusXM Volume 106 on Tuesday December 11th at 8 PM east and 5 PM west.

I just read in MusicAlly that Fortnite has 200 million registered users.

It almost made me want to play. Because I want to check out every phenomenon, and I want to belong. Never underestimate the power of membership. We are social animals, and we feel best when interacting, when in the flow of life, not sure what is going to happen next.

But Fortnite is truly a phenomenon. Kinda like “Game of Thrones” or “Black Panther.” Where is our phenomenon in the music business?

The last one we had was in 2002, when Kelly Clarkson won “American Idol.” Insiders, aficionados, excoriated the show, but the public tuned in in droves, and anointed Kelly and Simon Cowell stars.

Simon was different from network TV, he had an edge and he was honest. And he didn’t seem to be bothered by disdain. He was an exotic animal, and he’s worked this personality for over fifteen years, in a world of too much me-too, especially in music.

As for Kelly Clarkson… She could SING!

Sure, oldsters pooh-poohed this, they wanted someone who could write, but it turned out she could do this too. And when she hooked up with Max Martin and Dr. Luke she produced a track so powerful that it became iconic, ruling the world at the end of 2004 into 2005. That’s the power of a hit single, that’s the power of “Since U Been Gone.”

Since then?

We used to have phenomena in the music business on a regular basis. Genres changed every three years. But no more. We’ve got new acts, but to a great degree they’re doing the same old thing. It’s not exciting.

And the public is not involved.

I know, I know, the concert business is booming. But so much of that has to do with the social media era. Going is an event unto itself. Hanging with your friends, demonstrating you were there. Which is why festivals have burgeoned.

But as for the talent on stage…

We always had a medium to push the message further. FM paved the way for album rock. MTV paved the way for English new wave. And the internet paved the way for hip-hop.

But that was eighteen years ago.

What now?

This business is driven by talent. Outsiders who do it a little bit differently. Who plot their own course. Isn’t it funny in 2018 we’re still talking about “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Is it because we haven’t come up with a replacement?

It’s kind of like the Dark Ages, we’ve lost the plot.

I know everybody’s bitching about recording revenues, but if you’re a hit artist you’re making more money in adjusted dollars than ever.

Is the bar to entry too low? Is there too much product? Is the creative community demoralized?

Music was always the most immediate medium.

I think it’s about the song. We’re too far from the garden. We need more melody, more you can sing along with. There’s your participation right there. Way back when we got together and strummed guitars as we sang the hits of the day. Nobody does that anymore. Is it that they can’t play guitar or the songs just aren’t worth singing?

Country’s been sanitized.

Hip-hop is only about the bleeding edge. If you don’t have face tattoos and get arrested you can’t gain any attention. What’s next, dismemberment?

For every adolescent who thinks facial mutilation is cool, many more people think these “performers” are freaks who have lost the plot. You want to bring everybody along.

This is the opportunity.

Song camps should be doing just that, writing songs.

The breakthrough is gonna come from outside the major label system. Because the major labels are moribund, running on fumes, they’re GM in a world of Tesla, they don’t believe in risk.

We’re talking about art, we’re talking about conception. Devo couldn’t play that well, but they came up with a hit concept. Frank Zappa could play very well, but couldn’t resist commenting on society and its foibles.

And then there were the Doors and Queen and Led Zeppelin, who didn’t sound quite like anybody else, who the establishment pooh-poohed upon release, before these acts became icons.

Maybe Simon Cowell had it right. Maybe it’s not about a competition show, which both Apple and Spotify have tried and failed with, but edge, tension, music.

Music should be the great unifier, music should be pushing the envelope. This is our game, we invented it!

But somehow we’ve lost the formula.

They’re preparing for the future.

Unlike the record companies. The labels and the artists berated not only the techies, but their own customers, demanding that everybody jet back to the past. When people drove cars and the rest of the world was not going electric.

Clayton Christensen wrote the blueprint in “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” You disrupt yourself, before somebody disrupts you.

And I could criticize our President for being ignorant and not getting it, but this is not a political issue, this is pure business, and GM wants to survive.

The labels survived, but only because of their catalogs. They wielded them to extract power in the future, then again, the center of power has shifted to the live side. Think about it, which came first, performance or recording? You’re better off being a great performer than a great recording artist. In this mechanized society we’re looking for something honest, with edges, that breathes, that we can get hooked by, not something seamless and shiny without mistakes.

But automobiles are completely different. We want them to just WORK!

Which to a great degree they now do. They’re too sophisticated to work on at home. And with a little maintenance, you can get ten years and one hundred thousand plus miles out of them. Which was unheard of when the baby boomers were growing up. Before the days of minivans, before the days of four wheel drive, back when the only people who owned a truck were manual laborers.

But they’re not really trucks anymore. They’re really cars with truck-like bodies. Yes, yes, some rich geezers are buying glammed-up pickup trucks, but the real money is in what’s called an SUV, a sport utility vehicle, and there’s a dose of fashion involved, but really it’s about that utility, you can squeeze a lot more inside than you can with a car, and you sit up high.

As for that higher center of gravity…

In many cars electronics make it so it’s less of a safety issue.

As for gas mileage…the so-called SUVs get about as much as cars.

So this ship has sailed. The public has spoken. They want SUVs.

Just like they no longer wanted CDs.

You want to live in bizarro world, read the SoundScan Top Ten, where albums are boosted by ticket inclusion and the sale of physical product and downloads when the truth is anybody who’s a fan has given up on those formats. It’s all about streaming baby, and if you believe otherwise, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.

That’s right, some have to be dragged into the present. Others decide to sit the future out and be left forever behind. Ironically, those are the ones who scream loudest and should be ignored.

GM can see the looming crisis coming.

Not only does nobody want to buy a car, soon many won’t buy an automobile at all! You won’t need to own one. Never mind Uber, self-driving automobiles will show up when you need them. Insurance will be built-in, as will be fuel. And we’ll need a whole hell of a lot less of them.

Kinda like the Apple stock drop.

Huh?

People don’t need a new iPhone. If you read the papers, you’re always a few years behind. It’s all about stock going up and up. But to tell you the truth, my iPhone Xs Max is unnecessary. Its camera is a bit better, otherwise it’s a needless upgrade for most. So they don’t. Phones are now mature, like computers. But that did not stop the press from trumpeting Apple’s trillion dollar value. Apple’s got a product problem. Sure they can make some dough with services, but the company’s a one-trick pony, whereas Microsoft not only has software, but the cloud.

You’ve got to diversify, you’ve got to sleep with one eye open, you’ve got to contemplate the future.

It’s not like car companies can’t crash. Just look at 2008!

Meanwhile, plug-in hybrids are a concept that has passed, so Chevrolet is axing the Volt. The music business refuses to get alta kachers to stream, even though streaming saved their ass. Get those oldsters to subscribe to Spotify, or Apple or Amazon, it benefits the entire music business. But the labels don’t want to kill their cash cow. But Adobe went from boxes to subscriptions and their business went through the roof. The transition is always painful, but if you play it right, at the end you reap rewards.

Yes, people are gonna lose their jobs. But if the corporation dies, EVERYBODY loses their job.

And our myopic populace doesn’t realize that China and Europe have already gone green. The WSJ bitches about Tesla and electric car subsidies, meanwhile those selling gasoline automobiles will go bankrupt in the future, there will be no demand. Electrics have more torque and accelerate more quickly and are more efficient and pollute less. And yes, electricity has to be created to power them, but LESS! But you don’t want to deal in science, but emotion. Emotion is good for art, but not business. Like they say, WHAT’S THE BOTTOM LINE?

The bottom line is Mary Barra is preparing for not only Tesla, but BMW and Mercedes and Uber and… She’s doubling-down on electrics and driverless to win in the future, to EXIST in the future. As if Warner Brothers hadn’t refused to license Spotify in America for two years, allowing YouTube to become a streaming music powerhouse. You beat the alternatives to market, you don’t deny them or try to shut them down. Especially when the public wants them.

Those who prepare for the on demand, driverless future will win in the end.

Government is always hampered and gets it wrong. Because government doesn’t understand. The representatives know all about running for office, they know little about industry. They hold hearings to no effect. I’m not saying government is irrelevant and powerless, I’m just saying it categorically cannot see the future. Like the effects of Article 13 on the Internet.

Lyor is hated, but Article 13 is gonna hamper the net. Just listen to Seth Godin’s podcast below.

But Google is big and artists are warm and fuzzy and the past must be protected, even though it doesn’t square with the future.

How do you lose your business?

Very slowly, and then all at once.

That’s what happens in tech. That’s what could happen to Apple.

It certainly could happen to GM.

But GM is preparing, trying to turn the battleship.

Meanwhile, the President and the emotionalists are mad.

God, if these people are mad at you you must be doing something right!

Imagine a world with no Spotify, where you still had to pay up to twenty bucks to hear one good track on a CD so artists could get rich from recordings. We saw how that worked out, they called it Napster. And right now automobile giants are fighting over the future, but you don’t know this unless you’re paying attention. But ain’t that America, where the uninformed babble ignorantly about that which is beyond their pay grade. Where expertise is excoriated. Where being smart and experienced holds no value. Where a woman trying to save an industrial power is crapped upon for threatening the old boys’ world.

Seth Godin “All Rights Reserved” (start at 14:15 to hear about Article 13, or listen to the entire podcast to further understand the issues)