Fleetwood Mac was an English-based blues band whose manager put a faux version of the act on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what I remember from "Rolling Stone".\u00c2\u00a0 It was kind of like a fake Savoy Brown, or another band that gigged incessantly but had never broken through…\u00c2\u00a0 Who cared?<\/p>\n
I’d seen their albums in the bins.\u00c2\u00a0 How many labels had they been on?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, I knew "Oh Well", even "Albatross", but many bands had one or two great tracks. Like Blodwyn Pig.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, Blodwyn Pig’s tracks were even better!\u00c2\u00a0 A great English blues band was not solely about the blues, they broke through!<\/p>\n
But Fleetwood Mac never did.<\/p>\n
Then suddenly, Fleetwood Mac was the biggest band in the world.<\/p>\n
Watch this video.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s going to make you feel incredibly good.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s going to give you hope.\u00c2\u00a0 Gladwell gets a few of the facts fucked up, but they’ve got nothing to do with his point.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is that Fleetwood Mac experimented for a decade before they got their sound right.\u00c2\u00a0 And the companies involved with the act, most especially Mo Ostin’s Warner Brothers, were cool with this.\u00c2\u00a0 They believed, they supported the band and then they finally broke through.<\/p>\n
Gladwell posits that the previous 16 records before "Rumours" were not very good.\u00c2\u00a0 That didn’t feel right, but it used to be after every hit record you went out and bought the catalog, and although I love the title track, thinking back on it, "Heroes Are Hard To Find" is not exceptional.\u00c2\u00a0 And I can listen to "Station Man" off "Kiln House" incessantly, but the rest of the album leaves me cold, it’s unnecessary.\u00c2\u00a0 But put me in a dark room and play "Gold Dust Woman" and I get goosebumps.<\/p>\n
Gladwell says there are two kinds of creators.\u00c2\u00a0 The conceptual and the experimental.\u00c2\u00a0 A conceptual artist is like Picasso.\u00c2\u00a0 He gets a vision and executes it, sometimes just that fast.\u00c2\u00a0 But an experimental artist has to weave his way, to find his greatness.\u00c2\u00a0 Listening to Gladwell I thought of the Talking Heads.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing on the first album made me believe they could come up with anything remotely like their cover of "Take Me To The River".\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing the track in my mind now, I must say I’ve never heard that exact sound on any other record.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, where they’re pulling on the guitar strings and each note sounds like the plop of a gumdrop in a giant underground pool.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it was a synth.\u00c2\u00a0 Who knows.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was this sound and the groove and David Byrne’s vocal that made the track so infectious, so perfect, such a reworking of a classic that it still sounds fresh every time you listen to it.<\/p>\n
Gladwell states that in the modern era, most creators are experimental.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got to go down blind alleys to get to the crunchy goodness.\u00c2\u00a0 But today a label will can you after the first single, never mind a whole album.\u00c2\u00a0 Labels believe that only kids buy records and go to gigs and that youngsters don’t want to see old fucks perform, so they latch on to young ‘uns with desire, but very little else.\u00c2\u00a0 And you wonder why the public no longer cares.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the public can’t relate!\u00c2\u00a0 The music just isn’t good enough!\u00c2\u00a0 Or it satiates someone truly into the scene, but a casual listener is left cold.\u00c2\u00a0 A great track crosses boundaries, it doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of the genre.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t say I love hip-hop,\u00c2\u00a0 but "Can I Get A…" is one of my absolute favorite downloads.\u00c2\u00a0 The groove, when the chicks come in and answer, putting Jay down, asking him how he’s gonna get around on his bus pass…\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like the Beatles.\u00c2\u00a0 They sounded like nothing that came before, but we were instantly converted.<\/p>\n
Watching this video gives me hope.\u00c2\u00a0 Because like Leonard Cohen sings, everybody knows.\u00c2\u00a0 That the music business is decrepit, run by fat cats who just want to hold on to their money, purveying evanescent shit that slides right off your back.<\/p>\n
You want to make it today?<\/p>\n
Be able to sing.\u00c2\u00a0 Put in a melody.\u00c2\u00a0 Have a catchy chorus.\u00c2\u00a0 A bridge would be nice.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about revolution so much as evolution.\u00c2\u00a0 What I’ve just described is the music of the greatest group of all time, the Beatles.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s nothing wrong with being able to sing on key and being able to play your instrument.\u00c2\u00a0 And once you’ve got the basics down, you can truly experiment.<\/p>\n
The Beatles didn’t create those classics overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got tons of demos and false starts from the band.\u00c2\u00a0 They honed their chops and experimented.\u00c2\u00a0 They had to get it right.\u00c2\u00a0 And when they did, we responded.<\/p>\n
Just like you’ll respond to Gladwell’s speech here.<\/p>\n
You see we’re sick of celebutards who’ve got nothing to say.\u00c2\u00a0 Somehow, over the course of many speeches, Gladwell has refined his presentation to the point we’re hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 We like wrestling with new ideas.\u00c2\u00a0 We like being stimulated.\u00c2\u00a0 It makes us feel alive.\u00c2\u00a0 The same way listening to those Fleetwood Mac tracks did thirty years ago.<\/p>\n
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