U2 put out a single no one liked.\u00c2\u00a0 Radio rejected it, and so did casual listeners.\u00c2\u00a0 Only a small coterie of fans thought it was good.\u00c2\u00a0 What was the point?<\/p>\n
U2 had an impression that we still live in a monoculture, that everybody’s paying attention to the game.\u00c2\u00a0 I GET IT!\u00c2\u00a0 You want to do something left field, so you can’t be pigeonholed.\u00c2\u00a0 You want to be known for risk-taking.\u00c2\u00a0 But who’s paying attention?<\/p>\n
Very few.\u00c2\u00a0 I know you hate to admit this.\u00c2\u00a0 But EVERYBODY’S a niche today.\u00c2\u00a0 There are no mass cultural events other than the Super Bowl.\u00c2\u00a0 Citizens might like to go to Coachella or Bonnaroo, but most people are just fine missing them.\u00c2\u00a0 No one’s lying about attending the first Coachella, most people don’t even know what year it took place.<\/p>\n
As for radio and the conventional "Billboard" chart…\u00c2\u00a0 You saw that nonexistent lineup for the Rick Ross signing.\u00c2\u00a0 Hysteria exists at most in the hearts of your fans, just play to your fans!<\/p>\n
I played the new Dave Matthews Band album, "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King".\u00c2\u00a0 I won’t say I hated it, but I found it torture to listen to.\u00c2\u00a0 It sounded like Dave Matthews, it had all the elements except memorable material.<\/p>\n
Then I hit track 7, "Spaceman", and every cut thereafter was really good.<\/p>\n
Huh?<\/p>\n
Who did the sequencing?\u00c2\u00a0 Who picked the single?<\/p>\n
A non-fan who hears "Funny The Way", the track they’re promoting, is going to laugh.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s everything they hate about the DMB, there’s no risk.\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s risk in "Squirm", cut 8, and unlike "Get On Your Boots", it’s not bad.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone not enamored of the DMB could hear it and be drawn in.<\/p>\n
In other words, what’s the purpose of the single?\u00c2\u00a0 To deliver something radio will play that won’t move the public?\u00c2\u00a0 Top Forty is for tracks, not credible, career artists.\u00c2\u00a0 So, you deliver something "in-your-face", obvious, radio doesn’t play it anyway and everybody but the hard core ignores it.<\/p>\n
And if it’s truly about the hard core, how about the cut that’s going to reach them most, the one that will penetrate them and cement their belief?<\/p>\n
"Alligator Pie (Cockadile)", cut 8, starts off like the soundtrack of "Deliverance", it’s got no place on terrestrial radio, but it gets your toe tapping more than "Funny The Way".<\/p>\n
"Seven", ironically cut 10, has got a lick straight off of "Exile On Main Street".\u00c2\u00a0 It twists in between repetition of this riff, but the cut’s got a creativity closer to the Stones opus, something from side 3, than what’s conventionally aired on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 "Seven" is what you play when you’re tanked up and raging, whether in the frat house in the early morning hours or at the gig.<\/p>\n
"Time Bomb" has got that magical "Dreaming Tree" quality, like it was cut by a folkie living in a hut deep in the northern territories of Canada.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the kind of music that made me a DMB fan.<\/p>\n
The quiet feel is replicated in the following, incredibly intimate, "Baby Blue".<\/p>\n
In other words, the tracks hitting the conventional DMB notes rubbed me the wrong way.\u00c2\u00a0 I know that sound, when the band fires on all cylinders and the crowd erupts.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s about party, fandom comes from the cuts that you play alone, in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n
I realize DMB still has a major label contract.<\/p>\n
But I think this album should have been an EP.\u00c2\u00a0 Four, maybe five tracks at most.\u00c2\u00a0 It would have been more digestible.\u00c2\u00a0 And I would have focused on the music that REACHES people.\u00c2\u00a0 The classic albums oftentimes weren’t successful out of the box, it was only when the collective universe all found out they were listening and united that the anointment took place.<\/p>\n
I advocate releasing YOUR BEST track in advance.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the one that’s most workable in the media.\u00c2\u00a0 Are DMB fans paying attention to mainstream media?<\/p>\n
Bono is playing to the grandstand, he needs worldly acclaim.<\/p>\n
Dave Matthews is more humble, more understated, and it’s when he makes music befitting his identity that he’s most successful.<\/p>\n
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