You never want to be upstaged.

Justin Timberlake was selling entertainment.

The NFL was selling drama.

Once upon a time the game was lousy, it was about the commercials and then the halftime performance. As for new groundbreaking commercials, that paradigm is dead. Steve Jobs and Apple established it, a few others rode on the coattails, and then it was done. Kinda like Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” promotion/release, once you’ve seen the trick it can’t be repeated. Kinda like SNL. It pushed the envelope forty years ago, with its original cast, when we all lived in a monoculture and television was safe, but now almost no one gets the references, there are no punch lines and the only ones who care are in the mainstream media trumpeting efforts the rest of us don’t care about. That’s the story of today, how the younger generations have broken free of the constructs of the older and the older just don’t get it, despite convincing themselves how hip they are by using iPhone X’s and driving Teslas. Just ask them how to use Snapchat, which is already passe. As for Instagram, which they’re bragging on, they don’t know it’s cooler to have a private account, and argue with me all you want but never has the older generation been so out of touch with the younger one since the generation gap back in the sixties, only now the baby boomers are holding the wrong end of the stick.

As for football itself, when the right wing, establishment paper of record says that millennials don’t care, then you know it’s spiraling down. Read the below if you’ve got a WSJ subscription, but it’s oldsters who are cheap, who don’t want to pay, youngsters know everything costs, and if they want it, they pony up, otherwise they ignore it.

So you’ve got a 37 year old Justin Timberlake trying to sell tickets and a new album. What you must focus on here is his age. You think he’s young, whereas he’s a married over-the-hill dad selling a formula that dried up years ago. Pop is dead. Better off to have a hip-hop act. But that would offend too many viewers. But that’s what art does, make you feel uncomfortable, make you question your preconceptions, make you wonder if it’s you or them.

In this case it was definitely Justin Timberlake. If you thought his performance was significant you must be a young ‘un who never lived in an era where music drove the culture as opposed to being a sideshow. Timberlake was a highly rehearsed cheerleader, but the last I checked none of the sideline jumpers has ever become famous. He ran around on a field populated by coached “fans” and it was noisy and raucous and if this is your idea of entertainment, so be it. If you want to go to the show and jump around and feel good, so be it. I mean we all need an escape, but the truth is we live in challenging times and he or she who speaks to this wins in the end, those who play it safe ultimately lose out. This ain’t sports, this is art.

And when art is done right there is drama. That’s why you listen, to uncork feelings, to follow the story. There was no story in JT’s performance other than I’m cute, I’m rich, LET’S CELEBRATE!

I’m not in such a celebratory mood, Most of our country is not. That’s how we got into this mess, Trump appealed to the left out. So did Bernie, but Hillary and the establishment refused to believe times have changed.

But I know this is true. Which means no matter how much you said you liked JT’s performance I’m sticking to my belief that it was meaningless, other than the Prince interlude, especially when they overlaid the “symbol” atop Minneapolis. That had gravitas. But that only reminded me how Prince came to kill, and did. Anybody who followed him had to live up to him, and so far no one has. Even Bruce Springsteen looked small, even though first and foremost the Boss is about story and drama, the whole kit and kaboodle that cause triumph in music, that work irrelevant of hits.

So it was a great game. With a great story. Backup quarterback defeats the big bad Brady. Bellichick doesn’t smile. It’s almost unbelievable. But when done right, that’s what sport delivers, it’s a metaphor for life.

But like I said, too often this has not happened in the Super Bowl.

But this year it did. It made Justin Timberlake look small. Like our entire music business. The Grammys, the institutions, they’re all in peril.

What makes hip-hop work is it’s not beholden to any of it. Radio, major labels, press, it can succeed as a result of its own culture. Not so different from when classic rock triumphed in the first place. Hit? What is that?

Last I checked choreography has nothing to do with music. Just because they danced on MTV that does not mean your record is worth listening to.

Justin Timberlake never should have done this show. But his manager couldn’t down turn the offer, to be in front of all those people, to sell tickets.

And that’s where music resides, in the marketing era. Where salesmanship eclipses art.

Go to the show if you want to. Drink your tequila, shake your booty, but when you come home I’m gonna ask you what it was all about.

And you’re gonna say “a good time.”

But music used to be more than that.

“Ahead of Super Bowl, Poll Shows NFL Is Losing Its Core Audience”

“Ratings for Grammy Awards Drop 24 Percent”

It’s the end of the monoculture.

There’s a fiction we all care about the same things.

We don’t.

The ascension of the importance of the Grammys coincided with the MTV era, and that ended nearly twenty years ago.

So why did viewership then go up?

First of all, there was the hangover.

Secondly, there was the Twitter era.

Now no one notices and no one cares. That’s not to understate the importance of hip-hop and women, it’s just that we’re all in our own niches, and old people don’t listen to new music and young people don’t care about old music and ergo, a Grammy ratings flop.

The show was constructed for an old era. For when the show and its awards counted. Furthermore, we live in an on demand era, one wherein you don’t have to watch SNL because the good moments are all online shortly thereafter. If anything happened on the Grammys you’d find out about it. But by playing it safe, the show had no water cooler moments, in an era where so many work from home or are freelance entrepreneurs and there is no water cooler.

Playing it safe is anathema, isn’t that what music has taught us? That the new and cutting edge wipes out the old? Which is why we don’t want to see Sting, Bono and Elton. The Beatles and the British Invasion wiped out Bobby Rydell and so many more, the kids stopped paying attention.

And the kids drive the culture.

So what now?

The truth is as dominant as hip-hop is, there’s a whole swath of the public that is not paying attention and doesn’t care. Hip-hop won because it embraced new technologies, i.e. Spotify and Soundcloud and new distribution methods, i.e. mixtapes and singles…this is the future, when are the other genres gonna wake up?

They will, but they’re so inured to the past, like the Grammy show, that they’ve been left behind. Rock is a marginal enterprise where outside of the radio format, i.e. Active Rock, the bands are meaningless, they barely pop up on streaming services, it’s as if in the old days their records were unavailable in chain stores.

Country has made inroads in streaming, but the powers-that-be don’t want to break the hegemony of country radio, they’re like religious zealots who don’t want to find out their children are atheists.

As for pop… It’s so busy trying to reach everybody that it reaches nobody. Formula never works in music, not for long, and it even stopped working in movies, sequels killed the summer box office.

So where do we go now?

Realize we live in a Tower of Babel society, we’re all speaking a different language. The odds of someone listening to the same music as you are de minimis.

Second, it’s nearly impossible to get the message out, there are too many news sources. So either you’re a nobody or someone who believes they’re a somebody who is not. Meanwhile, traditional markers don’t account for this. There’s still a “Billboard” chart, there are still record reviews in the paper, it’s like it’s still 1989, no one wants to catch up with the present.

As for the Grammy Awards and the telecast…

First and foremost the Grammy organization needs a rethink. Neil Portnow was a placeholder after Mike Greene, who made the Grammys what they are/were and ruffled too many feathers. You see Greene was a renegade who stood up to the powers-that-be, Portnow is a tool of the labels and usual powers when they matter less and less. If the Grammys are to mean anything, they must be more independent. Now they rely on CBS and are so out of touch that the ratings have flopped.

As for the show itself…

The one they’ve been doing will no longer work. I know they’ve got a big contract with CBS, but that does not mean viewers care. To tell you the truth, they should make a deal with Netflix, wherein every nominated track, IN EVERY CATEGORY, has a video that the public can peruse and vote on. Then there’s a show, actually multiple shows, wherein every nominee performs said track live, and then an awards show that’s only awards, no music.

You might not agree with this formula, but the point is you’ve got to think outside of the box. You’ve got to go back to the basics, you’ve got to go back to the music itself.

Now we’ve got performers who are not nominated singing songs that are not nominated while only a few awards are given out. Who wants that?

The VMAs blew a hole in the awards show paradigm by knowing to create moments along with the music. There was irreverence, it felt like the show was on the pulse.

But then that show died.

Nothing is forever. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect to succeed. The world is constantly changing and you’ve got to change with it, otherwise you’re left behind, listening to your classic rock records thinking about the good old days.

Like the Grammy show producers and voters.

It can be fixed. But probably not by the old white men in charge.

We live in a rainbow world. Forget the orange man in power and his vocal fanbase, the truth is gay marriage is legal and everybody now knows a trans person and if you’re not looking forward you’re being left behind.

Like the Grammys and this telecast.

I saw him and Gordon headlining on the Steel Pier at Atlantic City.

What I did not know was the story of Paul McCartney finishing “World Without Love” for the duo.

Peter tells it here.

As well as going down into his family’s basement to hear the Fab Four’s “I Want To Hold Your Hand” played on the piano, can you imagine?

I certainly can’t.

Peter’s father codified Munchausen Syndrome. His mother taught music. His sister…

Dated Paul McCartney.

And after his fame with Peter & Gordon Asher got a gig as an A&R man at Apple and signed James Taylor, that’s still my favorite of his albums, with the definitive versions of “Carolina In My Mind” and “Something In The Way She Moves” as well as the exquisite “Circle Round The Sun.”

But when that didn’t work out, the two, in this case Peter and James, decamped to Los Angeles, made a deal with Warner Brothers and the result was…

“Sweet Baby James.”

And then the production success with Linda Ronstadt, who’d knocked around forever and had had a hit with the Stone Poneys and the solo “Long Long Time,” but was languishing. Then came “You’re No Good,” the part you like she hated at first, concocted in an all night session with Andrew Gold and Peter, but then she came around.

And so did everybody else.

Which begat a management career and further production duties and the astounding thing about Peter is he’s still working! When most of his compatriots can’t or won’t, he’s producing Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, as well as helping Steve out with music on his Broadway endeavors.

And more.

We go very deep here.

But not deep enough.

Then it would be four hours long!

TuneIn

Apple Podcasts

Google Play

Stitcher

Soundcloud

Overcast

#metoo: An Open Letter to Charlie Walk

I’m not sure this demands additional comment, but I will say the music business has been curiously quiet when it comes to #metoo and I wonder why, is it because it’s essentially an independent contractor business, one wherein everybody’s too afraid of damaging future relationships to speak up?

Of course there was the Penny Muck/Marko Babineau story twenty five years back, and recently L.A. Reid, but for a notoriously freewheeling business it’s been strangely noiseless.

Could it be that so much of the music is based on sex?

Could the classic rock records of yore, even the MTV rock records of yore, be released today?

So now what happens?

Does Charlie Walk get bounced from television singing show “The Four”?

One would think definitely, right?

Why is it men who make money feel invincible? Especially those who were shunned growing up. They leave morality behind and believe they’re entitled to their heart’s desire.

I’d be scared to be a woman. It’s like running a gauntlet every day.

Furthermore, where were these men brought up, and how?

And never forget that it’s the team/bro behavior, begun in sports and spread through fraternities and board rooms. There’s groupthink, you take one for the team, you stand up for the status quo and those in power. Irrelevant of sexual harassment this is a huge problem in our economy.

We need to teach people to stand up for what’s right.

And we need to ensure they’re not penalized for their behavior.