Do you know the song "River Boulevard"?<\/p>\n
Walking down the road this morning<\/span> It’s the fourth song on the Pointer Sisters’ debut.\u00c2\u00a0 But it wasn’t an original, it was a cover of a song by Lamb.<\/p>\n I never purchased any of Lamb’s albums.\u00c2\u00a0 But I never forgot "River Boulevard".\u00c2\u00a0 They did a killer version in the Fillmore movie, the chronicle of the venue’s closing days that hit theatres in 1972.<\/p>\n It didn’t make the boxed set.\u00c2\u00a0 But last night, combing the Net, I found Lamb’s 1971 album, "Bring Out The Sun", and finally got to hear the original "River Boulevard".\u00c2\u00a0 Brought me right back.<\/p>\n To the point where I searched for the "Last Days" boxed set.<\/p>\n It came down via a screaming connection.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I started to play it, getting the titles right, I was brought right back to that afternoon in New York City, when I saw the film, and then purchased and listened to the boxed set, which was uneven, but contained a couple of killer numbers.<\/p>\n My favorite from the set was "Poppa Can Play".\u00c2\u00a0 Sons of Champlin never broke through, so Bill Champlin ended up joining Chicago.\u00c2\u00a0 But this number has the energy of…THE FILLMORE!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the venues were about, a vibe, an excitement.\u00c2\u00a0 It was about the power of music.\u00c2\u00a0 And when it became about the power of money, the acts moved on to arenas and Bill Graham closed his theatres.<\/p>\n An evening of music wasn’t about dancing, not about production, not even about hits.\u00c2\u00a0 It was akin to our parents going to hear the Philharmonic, but our music wasn’t dead, it was fully alive, freshly written by musicians following their muse more than the money.\u00c2\u00a0 The money came later.<\/p>\n But the best cut on the Fillmore "Last Days" boxed set is Santana’s cover of "In A Silent Way".\u00c2\u00a0 I got into this almost eight minute number by playing the boxed set discs over and over again.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d seen Miles Davis, but it took Santana to make me aware of the power of this number.<\/p>\n And loving Santana’s take so much, last night I downloaded the original Miles Davis classic.\u00c2\u00a0 With one track per album side.\u00c2\u00a0 With a band made up of Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Tony Williams, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Dave Holland.\u00c2\u00a0 I was stunned.\u00c2\u00a0 This music was incomprehensible to me forty years ago, but now it cut like butter.\u00c2\u00a0 You could listen to it over and over again.\u00c2\u00a0 If I’d bought it back in the sixties, I probably would have.\u00c2\u00a0 But last night I didn’t even get all the way through it.\u00c2\u00a0 I was enraptured by these old Fillmore tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 I was downloading Derek and the Dominos "In Concert".\u00c2\u00a0 I was finally getting my own copy of the Blues Project’s "Projections".<\/p>\n I own the Fillmore boxed set.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s somewhere in my house.\u00c2\u00a0 But none of the other LPs mentioned above.\u00c2\u00a0 And you might castigate me for stealing them, but I’d never pay for them.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t pay for them years back, and I’m not about to now.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only because I’ve got a limited amount of money, but because I’ve got a limited amount of TIME!<\/p>\n You can only listen to one record at one time.\u00c2\u00a0 You can watch multiple television shows, but you can only listen to one record.\u00c2\u00a0 But today, everything is available, almost instantly, at your fingertips.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a surfeit of wealth.<\/p>\n I downloaded that entire Lamb album.\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t played anything but "River Boulevard".<\/p>\n I’m not gonna play every track on the Fillmore boxed set, certainly not more than once.\u00c2\u00a0 Because there’s so much other stuff I need to hear!<\/p>\n This is so different from the pre-Napster era.<\/p>\n Prior to Napster, I spent all my money on records.\u00c2\u00a0 But I still had very few.\u00c2\u00a0 And, since I’d invested in them, I played them!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how I know every lick on the Fillmore boxed set.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d laid down my money, I had to get my money’s WORTH!<\/p>\n You sampled music on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 But, even though you could flip between stations, you were exposed to very little.\u00c2\u00a0 And you bought even less of it. You knew songs by heart that you never owned.\u00c2\u00a0 And a big collection in the seventies was less than fifty albums.\u00c2\u00a0 Way less in most people’s case. Which is 500 tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Kids today, barely pubescent, own THOUSANDS of tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 So, what do they listen to?<\/p>\n This is very important.\u00c2\u00a0 Here we have the huge disconnect.\u00c2\u00a0 You want to keep the construct of the album.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only the labels, but the old musos. The album is sacrosanct.\u00c2\u00a0 But the reason the album is sacrosanct is because you owned so few and played them INCESSANTLY!\u00c2\u00a0 At most, today, you play a track or two incessantly.<\/p>\n Do you really want to criticize the kids?\u00c2\u00a0 For grazing, only wanting to hear the very best?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, they might not ever get to that delicious cut deep on side two, but there’s no longer a side two and albums aren’t ten cuts anymore either.\u00c2\u00a0 Just one long, over an hour collection with fifteen tracks. Longer than yesteryear’s criticized double albums.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s too much to digest.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially when there are more great tracks than you can listen to.<\/p>\n So we have two kinds of listeners.\u00c2\u00a0 Those who go vast and wide, and those who go narrow and deep.\u00c2\u00a0 And the former are winning in the marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to cut a song so good people want to put it on their iPods.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re planning on getting a non-fan to sit down with your overlong opus, playing it multiple times to understand it, you’re living in the sixties, and that was FORTY YEARS AGO!<\/p>\n We live in a track world.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe because there’s been too much filler, not enough good albums.\u00c2\u00a0 But mostly because now people can pick and choose the very best tracks from the history of recorded music, and there’s a PLETHORA OF THEM!\u00c2\u00a0 You may not be able to buy Lamb’s "River Boulevard" on iTunes, but a ton of recorded history is there, and the obscurities can almost all be obtained for free, never mind the big hits.\u00c2\u00a0 In the old days, it was hard to find a record store that stocked the old records, now EVERYTHING’S available.\u00c2\u00a0 So why listen to the overhyped substandard new metal band when you can just go online and get AC\/DC?<\/p>\n A few acts get traction, people want everything they’ve ever done.\u00c2\u00a0 But most acts can’t sell anything more than their hit(s), and then they’re forgotten.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can’t build a business atop these hits.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no soul.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not the audience’s fault.\u00c2\u00a0 This would be like asking television viewers to stay with the network shows, watching them in real time, with all the commercials intact, not surfing, not watching the reality programs on cable, not firing up their DVRs or Hulu or…<\/p>\n One way to establish a career is to have a series of hit singles.\u00c2\u00a0 But even that won’t guarantee a string of sellout dates.\u00c2\u00a0 Mariah Carey can’t do multiples in arenas, but jam bands can sell out venues year in and year out, without hits, without any new recorded material.<\/p>\n It’s about fans.\u00c2\u00a0 And the fan bond is created on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s about the music, not the production.\u00c2\u00a0 And although good tracks will get people into the building, it’s more about word of mouth, people dragging their friends down to the hall, to experience the music washing over them, the secret society.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, if you’re swinging for the fences in the old way, fighting the gatekeepers, you’re doing it THE HARD WAY!<\/p>\n Everybody’s looking for short cuts.\u00c2\u00a0 An instant road to fame and riches.\u00c2\u00a0 Fame is easy.\u00c2\u00a0 Just look at those bozos on the reality television shows.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re not rich.\u00c2\u00a0 And their fame is fleeting.\u00c2\u00a0 And their fame is still pretty narrow, the reach of a television show is a fraction of what it was in the sixties and seventies.<\/p>\n This is a golden era for listeners.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re never going back to restrictions.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is plentiful, and if you don’t offer a cheap business proposition, all they want for a low price with no locks, they’re not going to be corralled, they’re going to go around the fence and get it their own way.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like trying to keep a nation of drug addicts from shooting up.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve experienced the magic of music, its entire history, they don’t want to be restricted, if held back, they rebel.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to help the listener.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only give him what he wants, but point him to new stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 And this must be done with trust.\u00c2\u00a0 Kids reject radio because they consider the stations to be dishonest and the music to be crap.\u00c2\u00a0 They won’t listen to anyone they don’t trust.\u00c2\u00a0 And right now, they only trust their friends.<\/p>\n You’ve got to gain their trust.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to establish detente with the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Know your new music is competing not only against what’s on the chart, but the Beatles and Pink Floyd and Frank Sinatra.\u00c2\u00a0 It may be new, the singer may be young, but is she in the league of Joni Mitchell? Because Joni’s easily available online, and the Net says she’s the best.<\/p>\n I don’t even want to listen to the album.\u00c2\u00a0 Because that means I can’t surf through a ton of new music.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to play your CD in the car, that means I can’t surf my way through satellite radio, discovering all kinds of new tracks on dozens of stations.\u00c2\u00a0 If I hear a great cut, I play it to death. Sometimes I explore deeper.\u00c2\u00a0 But oftentimes I wait until I stumble upon another great track by the same act.\u00c2\u00a0 My fandom might be only one song deep, which is why I don’t want to see you live.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 To hear a ton of stuff I’m unfamiliar with?\u00c2\u00a0 I only want to see someone I’m a fan of, someone who enraptures me with all their music, and this is fewer acts than ever before.\u00c2\u00a0 A challenging environment for purveyors, I know.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s reality.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you know the song "River Boulevard"? Walking down the road this morningThe sun was in my eyesThe smell of the sweet sweet blossomsSteppin’ through my mindAnd I sayIsn’t it just a beautiful dayIsn’t it just a beautiful day It’s the fourth song on the Pointer Sisters’ debut.\u00c2\u00a0 But it wasn’t an original, it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-mC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The sun was in my eyes<\/span>
The smell of the sweet sweet blossoms<\/span>
Steppin’ through my mind<\/span>
And I say<\/span>
Isn’t it just a beautiful day<\/span>
Isn’t it just a beautiful day<\/span><\/p>\n