Tracks-2/28/18

The first rule of recommendation is you send me something you think I will like, not that YOU like!

“Best Friend”
Sofi Tukker

I know, I know, it was in the commercial for the iPhone X, but Strasburg iMessaged me about this yesterday and I pulled it up and felt the sense of recognition and then the bass started to burble and I was hooked, that’s the power of a subwoofer. First and foremost, music must be hooky, it must lodge itself in your brain to the point it turns into aural dope, without it you cannot function, you want to put it on endless repeat to get the high.

You can analyze this to death but you’d be missing the point, it’s how it makes you FEEL!

25,343,067 streams on Spotify

Wanna be my new friend? We got a lot in common
We can talk ’bout nothin’, shoot the shit, we got shit to shoot

Took me a few times to catch these lines. Shooting the shit, that’s my favorite thing to do in life, after skiing, ahead of reading, maybe behind. That’s what bonds people to you, makes you friends, SHOOTING THE SHIT!

“Be Mine”
Ofenbach

This original iteration has got 123,482,751 streams on Spotify.
It’s subtle, like a drive late at night in a Mercedes through a tunnel in Paris, but not speeding like Lady Di and Dodi. You’re somnambulant, yet alive. You know that late night feeling, when you believe you’re the only one awake and proud of it.

There’s a plethora of remixes of this cut on Spotify, check them out, just let them play, you’ll be in the mood.

“Katchi”
Ofenbach vs. Nick Waterhouse

This is a bit faster, late afternoon going to the next destination.

This has got 52,722,596 streams.

“Feel It Still”
Offenbach Remix

What I like about Spotify is they list the act’s most popular tracks, you can see the play counts, so you can see what everybody else has gotten excited about. But sometimes I click on a track and get busy doing something else and Spotify slips into the next track and I get hooked on that. This is a remix of Portugal. The Man’s gigantic hit but it’s just a little bit different and resonates on its own level.

“Come To Me”
Ofenbach Remix

I’ll be honest, I don’t know the 2013 Lily & Madeline original. Which got 3,438,171 Spotify streams in its initial incarnation, whereas this Ofenbach remix has 31,718,046.

This was the next track after “Feel It Still.” It’s a bit ethereal and otherworldly, it reminds you of nothing in today’s crazy, mixed-up, shook-up world, which is maybe why it feels so good… It’s a world in which music is not mindless, but the alterna…

And after that, came…

Ofenbach’s remix of Robin Schulz’s “OK” featuring James Blunt. Hell, I thought Blunt was a one hit wonder, deep in the past, but “OK” was a huge hit overseas this past year and made it to #1 on the U.S. Dance Club chart, which is equivalent to being #1 in Bismarck, North Dakota, i.e. almost no one heard it. This is the world we presently live in, one in which hip-hop gets all the press, the rockers complain and everybody else is ignored, but when you listen to this and the other Ofenbach tracks you get excited about music without feeling like you’re slumming it, this is not calculated pop and it gets your body moving while setting your mind free and you wonder how you can hear more stuff like this.

I’m privileged to have people e-mail me about this stuff, but if you’re on the outside, not deep in the scene, it’s just too overwhelming, there’s just too much choice.

Every time I pull up Ofenbach on Spotify I go deep, I never click off, suddenly it’s an hour later and I’m still listening to them.

He’s President North America of AEG Presents. He started off as a fan, became a drummer, ran the concert program at UCSB and ended up working for Bill Graham Presents in SF and then LN in L.A. and now AEG.

So, if you want to know how to climb the ladder in the concert business…

All the money is on the road, but it’s the label people who are still venerated, which is kind of questionable. Rick’s been doing it for decades. He signs and steers tours as well as scouting for new venues. Not that he doesn’t have an entire team helping him out, but if you want to know what’s going on in the touring world today…

LISTEN!

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The Joke – Spotify

The Joke – YouTube

This rubbed me the wrong way the first time through.

The second I tolerated it.

The third I LOVED IT!

That’s the power of radio, that’s the power of repetition. But every time they play an oldie on the Spectrum I flip the switch, I know where to get that stuff, I’m hungry for the new, but too many of those on the Americana playlists on the streaming services are tune-outs, BUT NOT THIS!

And there’s the conundrum. People are making new music but most of the potential audience is not hearing it. Hell, although Brandi Carlile’s album just came out this month, this lead track, “The Joke,” has been out since November, with YouTube views far under a million. HOW CAN THIS BE?

Brandi is someone whose name has been bandied about for years. But that’s today’s market, either you make an immediate splash or you get down into the weeds and do your work, make fans one by one, waiting for the big break that may not ever come, even though you’re getting bigger. I mean are we ever going to hear “The Joke” on the Spotify Top 50, on Top Forty radio? Probably not. Top Forty is not what it once was, now it’s all hip-hop/urban, there’s very little pop. As for Spotify, that chart is what people are actually listening to, so it’s hard to get started if you’re not already famous or working in popular genres.

And the problem with Americana/AAA is the audience. Aged and insular. So proud of their acts that they don’t want to share them, and they don’t want to embrace new technologies. Believe me, the audience for “The Joke” is much wider than it’s gonna be, unless Brandi Carlile gets one of those TV moments, like Sugarland or Kellie Pickler. When all eyes are upon you and you deliver…

But most acts never get a chance, even though they’re already good.

Now I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this track was produced by Shooter Jennings and Dave Cobb, the Don Was of his generation, specializing in getting the essence of his acts on wax. Funny, we’ve become so inured to Svengali producers we’ve forgotten the greats don’t leave their fingerprints but allow their charges to shine.

So “The Joke” starts quiet, with piano and strings, the antithesis of today’s modern music, it’s alive, it breathes, it stretches out.

And Brandi’s not belting, she’s not a TV contestant, she’s servicing the song, not overpowering it.

And then there’s that change, too much of today’s music is repetitive beats. Brandi’s alternately climbing the song mountain and taking a detour and then…

Comes the big anthemic chorus, with its unexpected triumphant ending.

And then the strings and everybody else in the kitchen sink chimes in and you’re hooked.

And she starts singing again. With the drums starting to pound and you remember what music once was, this is like the seventies, someone taking the form but stretching it. This is not shoegazer music, one thing’s for sure, Brandi can SING! And like a Lowell George production the track breathes, there’s not too much on it.

Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them

Remember when music was the other, the refuge for those who just didn’t fit in, who couldn’t march in the preordained steps, who had a different vision, before we all became automatons marching to the dollar beat?

That’s what’s going on here.

This is music to wake up your inner power. Not some Katy Perry ditty.

And when the strings come back in and the song ramps up you feel powerful, you’re standing, conducting the band, a star in your mirror, feeling with this song in your ears you can conquer the world.

You might just.

ODESZA – Spotify

I heard them on the Sirius XM Spectrum. The vocalist was Leon Bridges. The song was entitled “Across The Room” and it was hooky and anthemic and I needed to hear it again. So I pulled it up on Spotify and did some research and learned that ODESZA had played Staples Center. HOW DID I NOT KNOW?

Last week I was talking to Chris Zarou, manager of Logic, he told me to promote the album they’d wrapped a bus in the album artwork and dropped in on fans across the country. I WAS UNAWARE! Even though I knew that George Thorogood criss-crossed the country to promote an album decades back.

Peter Paterno remarked that Metallica sold out stadiums across the world last summer and no one knew. Furthermore, their double album did good business. BUT NO ONE KNEW!

Welcome to the new world, where you’re in your own vertical and you may never break out. And this is so confounding for those of us who were brought up in the old world, where you climbed the ladder to world domination. But now it’s impossible to reach everybody, but you can do excellent business reaching just your core audience. After all, Logic is going on an arena tour. Then again, that’s the power of the single, “1-800-273-8255” was everywhere, and Rick Mueller says a single is now enough to sell tickets, you can listen to his story on tomorrow’s podcast.

But that Leon Bridges cut is from an ODESZA album, and stunningly, it’s playable throughout, with peaks, it reminds me of the mood of Air’s “Moon Safari” from twenty years back, an electronic-based LP that you can put on in the background and drift away, dobie gray.

“Across The Room” has got this languorous groove, with a simple melody, and then it explodes into “State Of Independence” majesty, whether it be the Donna Summer original or the Moodswings remake, I guess Quincy Jones was right about the influences, I only wish he’d refused to apologize, what kind of world do we live in where someone can’t speak their truth with impunity.

Then I was intrigued and wanted to hear the Regina Spektor cut, a woman whose name was on everybody’s lips a few years back and seems to have fallen off. But “Just A Memory” could bring her back.

But it was the cut after that which was my favorite, “Divide,” featuring Kelsey Bulkin… WHO?

I fired up the Google Machine and it turned out I had not missed the memo, she was not already famous, she had a career, but was just stepping to the mic with ODESZA, to create this song that sounded like it was being pulled by a Zamboni that was alternately waxing and stuttering.

How is this happening? How is this palatable, exquisite music sitting right alongside the hip-hop nation and getting so little attention even though so many know about it, after all ODESZA is second to closing at this year’s Coachella.

That’s the world we now live in, one in which greatness can be hiding in plain sight.

Thank god Howard Stern was on vacation, thank god I stumbled upon this.

But even more it rekindled my belief in music. This was not retreads, this was something new, not something just made in the mold of the old, and it was GOOD!

You take the building blocks and you try to push the envelope. And today you can be college students in Washington with laptops and start a career and make it to the zenith without the usual suspects.

And it’s not only rappers who are collaborating.

ODESZA will either float your boat or it won’t. If you’re a fan of Little Steven’s Underground Garage you might pooh-pooh it, wonder where the guitars are.

If you’re a fan of Lithium or Octane you’ll wonder where the edge is.

Then again, if you’re old enough you’ll remember when we could love different kinds of music, when we could love AC/DC and Joni Mitchell.

But ODESZA is neither. It’s certainly reminiscent of what came before, but it’s definitely brand new.

After you get hooked, put “A Moment Apart” on when hosting a party, it won’t be long before people ask WHAT’S THAT?

LIKE ME!

P.S. ODESZA’s “Corners Of The Earth” was featured in NBC’s promo for the Olympics:

2018 Winter Olympics – Corners of The Earth – ODESZA

P.P.S. ODESZA’s “Sun Models” (feat. Madelyn Grant) has 99,666,143 streams on Spotify. The tracks from “A Moment Apart” are all in seven digits.