Who’s a bigger rock star, Bono or Obama?<\/p>\n
I saw U2 on Letterman, and what struck me was it was Dave’s show.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like U2 were members of the peanut gallery, brought up on stage at the end of the telecast to perform for the children.\u00c2\u00a0 How the fuck did we get here?\u00c2\u00a0 How the fuck did rock and roll as renegade become I’m gonna do whatever the fuck it takes to try and sell my album.\u00c2\u00a0 And STILL it doesn’t sell!<\/p>\n
Are you stunned that U2 is predicted to sell 450,000 copies of "No Line On The Horizon" this week?\u00c2\u00a0 You should be.\u00c2\u00a0 Because despite all the exposure, despite all the banging on people’s heads, most members of the public have shrugged their collective shoulders and moved on, they just don’t care.<\/p>\n
U2 is BEGGING us to buy their album.\u00c2\u00a0 As did Bruce Springsteen a month ago.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not working.\u00c2\u00a0 Bruce’s album still isn’t gold. Marketing is dead.\u00c2\u00a0 Because people see it for what it is, a push to close you so the perpetrator can get rich.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no message, no hope, no reward, just a coin in the pocket of the "artist".<\/p>\n
Where in the Springsteen hype was the declaration that listening to his new album was gonna change your life?\u00c2\u00a0 U2 moves their corporation out of Ireland to save taxes and President Obama says the rich must pay their share, so that our country can get back on its feet.\u00c2\u00a0 Who does the rank and file support?<\/p>\n
It ain’t Bono and the Edge, no fucking way.<\/p>\n
Rock blew up because it existed outside the system.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a commentary on society.\u00c2\u00a0 Those who made it were not privileged, it was a way to raise yourself by your bootstraps out of the gutter you were destined to live in.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, that was the essence of rap.\u00c2\u00a0 I may have dropped out of school, I may be a drug dealer, but if I can rhyme really well and get a deejay to lay some cool beats beneath me, the public will gobble my shit up.\u00c2\u00a0 AND THEY DID!<\/p>\n
I believed in rap after the L.A. riots.\u00c2\u00a0 I said to myself, SHIT, EVERYTHING ICE-T SAID WAS TRUE!\u00c2\u00a0 What do I know about police brutality, I’m a middle class white living in the leafy suburbs.\u00c2\u00a0 We all want truth.<\/p>\n
People perceive Obama is telling the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 Not everybody.\u00c2\u00a0 Not everybody loved the Beatles, to this day some people think the Liverpudlians sucked.\u00c2\u00a0 Same deal with the Eagles.\u00c2\u00a0 Owners of the best-selling record in history.\u00c2\u00a0 You can get tons of people to testify they suck.\u00c2\u00a0 So when Rush Limbaugh and Fox News castigate Obama, I laugh.\u00c2\u00a0 Because any denizen of popular culture will tell you it goes with the territory.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about the haters, but the believers.\u00c2\u00a0 The haters don’t go to the show, they save their money and stay home.\u00c2\u00a0 Believers go for the religious experience.<\/p>\n
People laughed at the Obama candidacy.\u00c2\u00a0 HE’S BLACK!\u00c2\u00a0 And speaking of black, they booed Prince off the stage when he opened for the Stones.\u00c2\u00a0 But soon, it was all "Little Red Corvette" and "Purple Rain" and the diminutive Minnesotan was the rage, he’s still touring on those hits today.<\/p>\n
But there was a core who perceived Prince’s greatness.\u00c2\u00a0 I bought "Dirty Mind" on a review, it wasn’t even the genre of music I liked, but the beats hooked me and I got hooked on "When You Were Mine".\u00c2\u00a0 I went to see him at Flipper’s roller disco on the night of the Academy Awards, there were maybe forty people there, Prince bounced on the bed, did the full-on arena show and those in attendance were blown away.\u00c2\u00a0 I became a believer.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to tell everybody about Prince.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, I’m telling you about the show DECADES LATER!<\/p>\n
Obama spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention.\u00c2\u00a0 That was his debut gig.\u00c2\u00a0 Most people don’t watch that shit.\u00c2\u00a0 But this is where he got his initial believers.\u00c2\u00a0 Who couldn’t stop talking about the man when he started his campaign for the Presidency.\u00c2\u00a0 The rest of the public laughed, or said WHO?\u00c2\u00a0 Conventional wisdom said it was Hillary’s time.\u00c2\u00a0 But not only did Obama bewitch Hillary and pull ahead, he never lost his temper, he didn’t do it the way YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO!<\/p>\n
That’s the essence of a rock star.\u00c2\u00a0 Doing it your own way.\u00c2\u00a0 Not worrying about what everybody else tells you to do.\u00c2\u00a0 An "American Idol" twat listens to Clive Davis, a rock star gives the septuagenarian the middle finger.\u00c2\u00a0 Rock stars do it THEIR way!<\/p>\n
I wanted Obama to go for Sarah Palin.\u00c2\u00a0 What a fucking idiot!\u00c2\u00a0 Rock stars aren’t part of the fray, THEY’RE ABOVE THE FRAY!<\/p>\n
How about Obama telling the Republicans who chastised his stimulus package at the White House I WON!\u00c2\u00a0 This is like Led Zeppelin owning their Greek God identities and leaving New York City without all that Madison Square Garden money.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re a rock star, you make the rules.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t fight the little battles.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, I don’t agree with everything Obama has to say.\u00c2\u00a0 I think the stimulus package is too light.\u00c2\u00a0 Clean coal?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that an oxymoron?\u00c2\u00a0 The war in Afghanistan?\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t the Russians prove you can’t win there?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s a rock star.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t love everything about them, they’ve got warts.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re not playing to the media, they’re charting their own path.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s what we respect them for.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s who we want to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone who listens to his own drum and follows his instincts.\u00c2\u00a0 Who changes course when he sees fit as opposed to putting his finger to the wind first.<\/p>\n
If you want to make it today you’ve got to focus less on the sell and more on your essence.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t be our friend, if you’re our friend how can we respect you?\u00c2\u00a0 You must be better than us!\u00c2\u00a0 We want to put you on a pedestal, assume the throne and fulfill your destiny!\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t go on a million TV shows trying to corral every last person into paying attention to you.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to have an inner glow, that draws us to you!<\/p>\n
The old ways are done.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to make it today, study the English musicians of yore, or the rappers.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re probably better off if everybody hates you.\u00c2\u00a0 Know that you can’t be a star overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 Wasn’t Obama a community organizer?\u00c2\u00a0 He paid some dues AND STILL one of the big issues of the election was whether he was experienced enough.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re still flogging the same debut album made with the usual suspects twenty four months down the line, hoping someone in Des Moines will finally pay attention, you’re missing the point. First and foremost you must be an artist.\u00c2\u00a0 More music and less hype.\u00c2\u00a0 Artist development is not something a record company executes, it’s something the artist himself does!\u00c2\u00a0 He keeps writing and playing, searching for that Holy Grail.\u00c2\u00a0 And when the general public finally pays attention, it finds an embarrassment of riches in the act’s catalog, that can be listened to and examined.<\/p>\n
Pirates didn’t kill the music industry.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the bands.\u00c2\u00a0 The bands drank the kool-aid.\u00c2\u00a0 That if they did what their handlers told them to, it would work.\u00c2\u00a0 Sell out, don’t say anything that isn’t nice, take the corporate money, do the TV show, make that endorsement, you’re a brand, you’re a corporation, look to Jack Welch for instruction.<\/p>\n
Utter bullshit.\u00c2\u00a0 If this was the case, how come Leonard Cohen, a seventysomething guy who can barely sing, owns the biggest tour of the year?\u00c2\u00a0 Because he’s AN ARTIST!\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s FLAWED!\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t he go to the mountaintop looking for enlightenment when Bono was trying to save the world?\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t he spend years out of the spotlight?\u00c2\u00a0 Last I checked his music isn’t on "Grey’s Anatomy", he isn’t hawking the latest evanescent product.\u00c2\u00a0 No, people see Leonard Cohen as an artist and they’re drawn to him.<\/p>\n
Some things never change.\u00c2\u00a0 Great artists are not part of the system, they exist outside of it.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re complicated, often unlovable, but their work, we hold it close to our hearts, we treasure it, because it contains a truth absent from our everyday world.\u00c2\u00a0 What did Mr. Cohen famously say\/sing, EVERYBODY KNOWS?<\/p>\n
Everybody knows that U2 will do anything to sell a record.<\/p>\n
Everybody knows that Bruce Springsteen hasn’t made a great album in decades.<\/p>\n
Everybody knows Mick Jagger can no longer sing.<\/p>\n
Everybody knows the rappers are now more about lifestyle than truth.<\/p>\n
Everybody knows that our country is fucked up economically.<\/p>\n
Everybody knows that people are hurting.<\/p>\n
But the Republicans refuse to admit this, hewing to an ancient, expired doctrine.<\/p>\n
Does Obama have the answers?\u00c2\u00a0 MAYBE NOT!\u00c2\u00a0 But he’s TRYING!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what we want, limit-testers, who are willing to change their minds, do something new, all in the service of pushing the envelope.<\/p>\n
An artist is not afraid of taking the road less-traveled.<\/p>\n
And the fan is willing to follow him down the path.\u00c2\u00a0 If he believes the artist is genuine, making his own decisions, and just isn’t another money-hungry asshole trying to make his nut.<\/p>\n
And if you’re not willing to risk your entire career by taking experimental left turns, you’re not an artist.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ask Bob Dylan or Neil Young.<\/p>\n
An artist’s career does not just go up, it follows a jagged line, sometime up, sometimes down.\u00c2\u00a0 As Bob Dylan so famously sang:<\/p>\n
Took an untrodden path once, where the swift don’t win the race,_<\/span> Try to find truth, try to be worthy, don’t worry about fans, they’ll find and follow you if your journey is worthwhile.<\/p>\n (And check out Dylan’s "I And I" from "Slow Train Coming".\u00c2\u00a0 Great lyrics, great delivery, but what puts the track over the top is the mellifluous piano of Barry Beckett and the guitar stylings with the timelessness of the Bible played by Mark Knopfler.)<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who’s a bigger rock star, Bono or Obama? I saw U2 on Letterman, and what struck me was it was Dave’s show.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like U2 were members of the peanut gallery, brought up on stage at the end of the telecast to perform for the children.\u00c2\u00a0 How the fuck did we get here?\u00c2\u00a0 How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[1,2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-sd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1751,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It goes to the worthy, who can divide the word of truth.<\/span><\/p>\n