{"id":199,"date":"2005-10-24T18:31:29","date_gmt":"2005-10-25T01:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2005\/10\/24\/nightingale\/"},"modified":"2005-10-24T18:31:29","modified_gmt":"2005-10-25T01:31:29","slug":"nightingale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2005\/10\/24\/nightingale\/","title":{"rendered":"Nightingale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here comes my baby
Singing like a nightingale
Coming my way down along that devastation trail
Well tell the lord above
She’s got a brand of love
That cannot fail<\/em><\/p>\n

Somewhere along the line Clive Davis convinced everybody it was a hit business.\u00c2\u00a0 Make no mistake, it’s an ALBUM business.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s why the business has tanked.\u00c2\u00a0 Chasing the septuagenarian every other exec in the business lost focus.\u00c2\u00a0 Pledged allegiance to Mr. Arista as opposed to Mr. Warner Brothers, Mo Ostin.\u00c2\u00a0 Mo fought Morgado.\u00c2\u00a0 In the Doug Morris battle.\u00c2\u00a0 HE knew that career artists beat flashes in the pan every day of the week.\u00c2\u00a0 But the ignorant Morgado was dazzled by the flash.\u00c2\u00a0 Of single chart numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 Of rolling revenue throughout the year.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas when Mo released his superstar records in the fourth quarter he eclipsed the year-long Atlantic numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 Mo had a secret weapon.\u00c2\u00a0 FANS!\u00c2\u00a0 Who believed in the acts that Mo and his team signed and developed.\u00c2\u00a0 While Doug Morris was constantly trying to reinvent the wheel, Mo Ostin was selling those who purchased the original automobile ACCESSORIES!\u00c2\u00a0 Mo was a BMW dealer.\u00c2\u00a0 Servicing customers along the way with greatness so that when they were in the market for something new they’d shop at HIS store.\u00c2\u00a0 Knowing that he was interested in quality, the consumer experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody in the mainstream business is interested in the consumer experience today.\u00c2\u00a0 As a matter of fact, the execs HATE the consumer.\u00c2\u00a0 For not buying their lame goods, for stealing what they want.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re so pissed, they’re SUING their lifeblood.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t we call this biting the hand that feeds you?<\/p>\n

The Eagles didn’t go gonzo, didn’t truly blow up, until the fourth album.\u00c2\u00a0 "One Of These Nights" was ubiquitous on FM radio during the summer of ’75.\u00c2\u00a0 The pump was primed for the eventual release of "Hotel California the following year.<\/p>\n

Somehow the band’s career has been divided into the country-influenced tunes before ’76 and the rock that came thereafter.\u00c2\u00a0 But not every track on those first four albums was "Peaceful Easy Feeling".\u00c2\u00a0 There was a broad range of COUNTRY ROCK!\u00c2\u00a0 That we bought and loved.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit it, I got hooked on "Take It Easy".\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S what got me to buy the debut.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s not what made me a fan.\u00c2\u00a0 What made me a fan was "Witchy Woman", "Earlybird", "Tryin’" and "Nightingale".\u00c2\u00a0 Songs that are never played on classic rock radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Songs that don’t even exist in the eyes of the business.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re godhead in the eyes of the consumer.<\/p>\n

Last week Mike Marrone played "Too Many Hands".<\/p>\n

I bought the second Eagles album because of the first.\u00c2\u00a0 And the third because I had an investment.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t love the third at the time, but "My Man" got me to buy the fourth.\u00c2\u00a0 I played that record EVERY DAY!\u00c2\u00a0 I know every track on that album, along with the skips and surface noise.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what being a fan is, that’s what having an investment in a band is like.\u00c2\u00a0 To hear "Too Many Hands" was to bring me back and unite me with the deejay at the same time.\u00c2\u00a0 That strange FM alchemy which now only exists on XM.<\/p>\n

And when I heard "Nightingale" this afternoon, I about plotzed.\u00c2\u00a0 Made me want to go home and play the whole damn debut.\u00c2\u00a0 It brought me right back to ’72.<\/p>\n

Oh, "Nightingale" doesn’t grab you at first.\u00c2\u00a0 It takes off like a shot.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like you’re on a galloping horse, or a chugging freight train.\u00c2\u00a0 But then it hits this CHANGE!\u00c2\u00a0 The one delineated above.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole song slows down and bends.\u00c2\u00a0 You wait for it.\u00c2\u00a0 After the second verse.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m driving down Western, trying to remember why I love this song so much, and when a young Don Henley started singing about his baby, oh, my body started to twist, I remembered why I was a fan of not only the Eagles, but music.<\/p>\n

Clive Davis would say the hook doesn’t come soon enough.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d bring in Diane Warren to punch the song up.\u00c2\u00a0 Make it sound like everything else on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 But what’s great about "Nightingale" is it sounds like NOTHING ELSE!\u00c2\u00a0 It sounds like the four guys in this band.\u00c2\u00a0 A bunch of renegades.\u00c2\u00a0 The coolest dudes in the pack.\u00c2\u00a0 Who the girls want to fuck and the guys want to hang out with.\u00c2\u00a0 They were individuals, doing what they wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 As opposed to the automatons bent to the will of the man.<\/p>\n

Genius comes from within.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t understand it if you’re not a creator.\u00c2\u00a0 The best you can do is RECOGNIZE IT!<\/p>\n

We, the audience, we recognized the genius of the Eagles.\u00c2\u00a0 I would never tell Don Henley how to write a song.\u00c2\u00a0 God, maybe he even has to write stinkers to get to the GREAT STUFF!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the mystery of the process.<\/p>\n

This business is all fucked up.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s lost sight of what it was based upon.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s become about marketing.\u00c2\u00a0 Whoring out crap to movies and commercials.\u00c2\u00a0 About the revenue, not the music.\u00c2\u00a0 Find a great talent.\u00c2\u00a0 Lock it up for a couple of months with a talented producer and flog the result.\u00c2\u00a0 If you believe, the people will believe.\u00c2\u00a0 Not every time, but more than now.<\/p>\n

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Here comes my babySinging like a nightingaleComing my way down along that devastation trail Well tell the lord aboveShe’s got a brand of loveThat cannot fail Somewhere along the line Clive Davis convinced everybody it was a hit business.\u00c2\u00a0 Make no mistake, it’s an ALBUM business.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s why the business has tanked.\u00c2\u00a0 Chasing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-199","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-3d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","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=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}