BILLY JOEL WEARS YELLOW STAR OF DAVID ONSTAGE
… Post-Charlottesville

One of the most horrifying things you see in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam is a roll of Jewish stars, the ones needed to be worn during the occupation. Straight from the factory, before they were cut up into individual stars for Jews to wear.

It illustrates the scale of the operation, the horror of the Nazis.

Billy Joel is beloved by lovers and haters. Like every superstar. When he started, his audience consisted of lefties. But over time some boomers turned rightward and now our country is divided.

And artists are silent.

They may tweet. They may put out execrable songs, like Wilco, but their statements are drowned out.

Then someone says no words and has a greater impact than all of them.

I decry the country acts, Taylor Swift, all those who refuse to take a stand. Hell, Taylor Swift has created an entire career based on pushback on hatred and shaming, but she’s silent on the big issues, when they affect everybody else. And if you don’t think entertainers have power, you know nothing about media. Entertainers are more powerful than any news outlet, when they make a stand and stick to it.

Billy Joel has waffled on religion. Said he even attended church. But when the Nazis come…

He’s gonna have to wear the Jewish star.

All you people who think you’re in the clear, who are Catholic despite having a Jewish parent, you’re gonna go too. Everybody thinks they’re immune, but they’re not.

Now the ethos of the sixties was to stand up and be counted. And I applaud those who showed up in Boston, illustrating the miniscule number of neo-Nazi haters. We need to push back and show them that we are the majority. Or else their message grows.

And I don’t see Trump vacating office anytime soon, but if you don’t think the pushback is getting to him, you’re not a celebrity. Celebrities read their socials. They see the hate. It bugs them. And for those insecure who need love to fill them up the disapproval prevents them from sleeping at night. Believe me, Trump is in a state of discomfort. Although I won’t quite say we’ve got him on the run.

And if you’re a Trump supporter, I don’t want to hear it.

Because the truth is they’re coming for you next.

Used to be protests were built around music. You couldn’t have one without performances. But music was not an element in Charlottesville and Boston, we did not see superstars lining up to make a stand, no, they weren’t even in the wings.

To be Jewish is to have experienced anti-Semitism. It’s not quite like being black, but when you wear the Jewish star it is.

African-Americans gained status and power when they owned their identity, even taking the N-word back. As James Brown sang, “I’m black and I’m proud!” Illustrating the power of music to change minds right there.

And white people liked James Brown the same way country artists rap.

You see we are all in it together, even if you don’t want to admit it.

We all pay taxes. We all drive on the roads. We all partake of services. And the more educated our populace, the better it is for society at large.

And I’m not gonna dive deep, so you can find an opening to defend the President’s execrable statements and beliefs, I’m just gonna point you to Billy Joel’s picture, he’s owning who he is in a world where entertainers are cowering.

Let him be a lesson to you.

P.S. If you haven’t seen it, and you should, watch the documentary on Billy Joel’s family in Germany:

Billy Joel – The Joel Files

Do you know anybody on the spectrum?

Then you will be unable to turn off “Atypical.” Not because they get it so right, not because Keir Gilchrist embodies an autistic kid perfectly, but because they made this show at all!

It’s your own private hell. Oh, I know parents will talk about the benefits, and they are there. But I’ve come to learn having a normal kid, a “neurotypical” as they say in this series, is a great blessing, because…

I’m not talking about a scion with ADD or ADHD. Seemingly every kid has a learning disability these days, if they’re not gifted. But kids who mean well but just don’t fit in, oftentimes don’t have friends, who struggle and unfortunately know it…

Now if you’re one of these parents, you’re probably yelling at the screen right now, saying how I got it wrong. And I probably did, but this is reflected in the scene where parent Michael Rapaport accompanies his wife to the support group and is ultimately defeated and shuts up after being interrupted time and again for not getting the nomenclature right. He means well, but he just can’t play by the rules, which frustrates him since he’s so frustrated by his kid to begin with. But that’s America today, you’ve got to obey the rules to fit in, but every group has a separate decoder ring so we retreat into our niche or we argue, togetherness is rare.

And Rapaport is a revelation. Is this the same bozo who can’t stop ranting and raving on the Stern show? He’s soft here. The reviews say too soft. But there’s still that gulf between father and son, and daughter, how often could you have a heart to heart with your dad? I certainly couldn’t, it was rare.

But the star of the show is Brigette Lundy-Paine, she’s a revelation! She looks too old for the part, and she is, she’s 21, but she inhabits the role, you think she’s real. The track star who stands up for her brother while putting him down, whose whole life is impacted by his condition. She’s always #2, she’s always in the background, it’s her cross to bear, and it’s heavy.

As for vaunted star Jennifer Jason Leigh, you can’t stop staring at her wondering exactly what work she’s had done. I think it’s fillers, in her cheeks, but she just doesn’t look the same. Why do people do this? Is that the world we live in, where no one can get old, where we revere the youth and to show a line or a sag makes you irrelevant? I’ll tell you the truth, if you’re over 50 you ARE irrelevant, AND IT FEELS SO GOOD! You can detect the b.s. Know it’s all crap. It’s good to be ignored. And what’s so great about being young and stupid, knowing so little about how life works. He or she who believes beauty is exterior-only has not lived long enough. He’s a shallow man competing with his brethren who truly don’t care. And if all you’ve got is your looks, you didn’t do enough personal development. I always wonder what these aged men with supermodels talk to them about, or are they robots, destined to act as instructed, for the benefit of the money.

And some of the plot twists work and some of them don’t.

And I can’t say this is a great show. And I was unsure about watching it because of all the so-so reviews. But the world we live in today is one wherein we look for peaks. Those moments that resonate. Like the therapist convinced her boyfriend is cheating on her. We’re all suspicious, and can we know one another anyway?

We live in a world of television. We want to know our characters in depth. We’re less interested in plot than emotion, but story is king in America today, it links the emotions together. And where you get story is on television. And it’s not the small tube of the last century, but a large flat panel akin to a movie theatre, only in this case it starts when you want it to and there’s no talking and no overpriced snacks.

That’s one of the things I liked best about “Atypical.” That after getting hooked I could devour one episode after another. Go deep.

We all want to go deep and we all want to be known. And if they made ‘Atypical” as a film there’d be one dramatic scene where the star was flustered, or he won, there wouldn’t be the ups and downs of regular life, the boyfriend with a past wouldn’t even appear. Turns out we like our stories extended.

Ain’t that interesting in a world where we can’t stop reading about short attention spans.

Television is doing its best to capture the zeitgeist, the real experience of life. “Atypical” is just another show on the continuum. But you’ve got to watch something. You cover all the greats and then…

You dismiss all the losers.

And then you stumble on imperfection that is satisfying.

Like love.

Like life.

Atypical

You just can’t get the word out.

This is an important story. Just last week I got a call from a major news outlet asking me if major labels were over.

They’re not.

We live in a cluttered society where it’s impossible to reach everybody with your message. The internet explosion which we watched for twenty years has crested and the new normal is…

The established companies rule and good luck competing with them.

This is primarily seen in tech. Five years ago we were still excited by breakthroughs, seemingly every week there was a new site or app or product that became part of the discussion. But now we’ve just got Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google and if you try to compete with them you’d better be ready to sell out, because if you hold out, you become the rapidly failing Snap.

That’s right, ignore the financial press. IPOs are a way for initial investors to get their money out, they are not an indicator of future success.

So for a while there, back when “The Long Tail” was our bible, it looked like if you made it, they would come, at least in enough quantity to keep you alive.

But that was before you could post your song on Spotify and never get a listen. Back before there were so many marketing messages that if you don’t have dollars to spend and relationships to lean upon, your story does not travel.

So Steven Soderbergh is one of our foremost filmmakers. He decided to do it on his own. Isn’t that what technology and the internet promised? You could make and market all by your lonesome and leave the big boys and gatekeepers behind?

But despite great reviews, “Logan Lucky” failed. It did not meet expectations.

#1 was the poorly received “Hitman’s Bodyguard,” which grossed $21.6 million. It scored 39% on RottenTomatoes.

Whereas “Logan Lucky” scored 93%, but grossed only $8.1 million in approximately the same number of theatres, just over 3,000.

So what went on here?

Well, Soderbergh thought he was smarter than the industry, he only spent half the usual marketing dollars, $20 million instead of $40 million. And he’s going on about how the film is in profit and other hogwash but the truth is his experiment failed.

And artists always want to reach the widest audience.

It turns out longevity matters. Catalog/library/backlist carries you through. And being in the marketplace every day is important.

That’s right, you think you can succeed alone. But you only come to bat every year or so at most. Whereas traditional companies are competing every damn day.

So what this means is we are in the great consolidation, where fewer players have more power. I’m not saying you can’t eke out a living on the bottom, but that’s where you’re going to reside. Either you’re a winner or a loser, the middle class of art projects has failed, just like the middle class of life.

So we live in a marketing economy.

First and foremost your wares must be excellent. Shy of that, forget about it. This is an absolute rule, especially in an open marketplace. Theatrical distribution is a closed world, there is not an unlimited number of cinemas. But there is unlimited real estate online. And when that is the case, the public flocks to the winners. And even in limited marketplaces it’s a winner-take-all economy. Usually only one, maybe two of the films of the thirty released every week succeed.

So the powers-that-be are getting more powerful.

This is a byproduct of the age of clutter.

And it’s no different in entertainment than it is in tech.

You’ve got to gain traction as an individual. But once your project has legs, you’ve got to make a deal with the devil to push it over the top. Otherwise, you stumble, you plateau, because you just don’t have the muscle and reach to get your message heard.

Look at it from the customer’s perspective. Who has time to listen to all this dreck? You expect me to wade through millions of songs, scores of playlists, to find what I like? No, I gravitate to the winners, that which is known.

So, you want to sell out.

There, I said it.

The internet promised independence.

But today independence is death. Because you’re just another jerk with a megaphone and even if your product is great it’s being drowned out by the hype for that which is not.

So you need someone who can huff and can puff and can blow the house down.

And that’s a major movie studio, a major record label, a major book publisher, a major tech company.

Don’t focus on the exceptions. There are always examples that break the rules.

But the trend is opposite. The door is closing. You want to get in before it shuts.

And you do this by aligning yourself with the usual suspects, the winners with power, they may not be able to dominate like they used to, get everybody to experience/purchase their wares, but the wind is in their sails and you’re living in an airless aerie if you don’t align with them.

“‘Hitman’s Bodyguard’ is No. 1, as ‘Logan Lucky’ Disappoints”

“45 RPM (Recollections Per Minute): The Morrell Archives Volume 3”

He shits on Clive Davis.

I received this in the mail with a note from a friend saying “Arista Part, MUST READ!”

So I did.

Didn’t take me long. Hell, I finished the whole book in less than two hours.

But I did read it, because I remember when.

I’ve got no idea who Dave Morrell is. And to tell you the truth, the book is not well-written and the mistakes will make you wince, but I could not help but turn the pages, because the stories are from my era, when music ruled the world and radio was the midwife.

Most labels still believe this to be true. Now I don’t want to shit on the majors that much, they’re more clued-in than you think they are, but they believe in taking the path of least resistance, which is radio. Radio’s got the most mindshare, it’s the easiest way to break a record.

For now.

So Morrell’s friends with John Lennon and tells tales of doing dope with Mick Jagger and much less famous people but if you’ve been around the music business you know this guy, if not this particular one. The truth is the guys, and it’s almost always guys, running these labels get all the press, and the people who get the work done don’t. Furthermore, after dedicating their lives 24/7, they get kicked out, go independent, rely on scraps, if they didn’t get out early and go into the video business, now defunct, or real estate, where the promotion person’s skills really shine.

They can sell anything to anybody. They’re always upbeat. And they’re always up for a good time. They’re a special breed. One which needs little sleep that delivers on deadlines and is always working.

Used to be it was a free-floating party, with players moving from label to label, but that was before the great consolidation. They’d change the label head and he’d fire everybody and most, but not all, would find jobs at a new company. It was a game of musical chairs, with the most networked ending up with new gigs.

So Morrell is a singles promo man at Warner Brothers. He goes on how James Taylor and Maria Muldaur and America all had hits with him, but none after he left. And this is factually true, did he make the difference? Possibly. You’d have to reconstruct history to prove it, and no one’s gonna do that. You see history is left to those who write it down. And generally speaking, no one is telling the tales of the worker bees. Except for every outcast who believes they’ve got a book in them, I receive them all the time, self-published, available on Amazon, and none of these people can write, which is a prerequisite for a book, but they all have amazing stories, like Morrell.

But this is less of a starfucking adventure than a business tale.

He talks about the acts that are willing to work, like Melissa Manchester, who calls Bob Dylan for advice after Clive insists she record a song she doesn’t want to, and John Denver, who sends him a personal note, and rags on pricks like Lou Reed who gets him to toke up and then reports him for it, but mostly it’s about the slog, working for the man, and the points he puts up on the board.

He references Rick Sklar, the most powerful man in radio, whom I saw at the Century Plaza at four AM after staying up all night with promo people, Rick said he kept himself on New York time, wearing a suit and a smile, just months before he died on the operating table. Morrell got records on WABC and got no thanks. And I know how hard that was.

Took Scott Muni out with Bobby Bare to get the former to add the latter’s country novelty song and Muni did, after bonding all night over alcohol and military tales.

It’s all people I tell you.

And most of them are forgotten.

Unless they insist on being known.

I’m shocked at all the people in this book I know and wonder where they are today.

And I’m shocked at all the people with big gigs I never knew, like the guy who got fired by Clive in the northwest… Did the guy ever get another job in the record business?

That’s what’s so strange. The acts remain, the workers do not. Except on the live side, where everybody’s a lifer. You get your picture taken with household names, share a joke and a toke, and then you’re out on your ass with no access shortly thereafter, even though you were a big part of their success.

But successful acts know the game, they’ll kiss up to anybody who can get them ahead.

So Clive is clueless. He drones on and on, boring his troops while unaware of their achievements.

What’s the truth?

I don’t know and it doesn’t even matter.

But what does matter is you cannot believe everything you read.

But usually you only read it from the winners, who’ve been working their reps. Like Jimmy with “The Defiant Ones.”

Morrell is playing on a smaller scale. He brushed up against greatness, but it didn’t stick. He worked Elvis’s records, but never met the man.

And all this happened decades ago. When music drove the culture and we all knew it and wanted to be in in it.

Those days are through.

Music still remains.

But it’s not like it used to be.

Morrell is talking about what once was.

And if you were there, you will remember.

And feel old.

P.S. Morrell quit Arista for a job at Capitol, so this isn’t the usual sour grapes, or is it?