http:\/\/www.peterhimmelman.com\/PHMD\/PHMDTr_v3.mov<\/a>.)\u00c2\u00a0 Before I left the house I put it in a plastic bag, along with a bunch of other DVDs people have sent me that I’ve never gotten around to watching.\u00c2\u00a0 But when I went to retrieve the disc at Felice’s house, I found out I’d pulled the WRONG DVD!\u00c2\u00a0 I’d taken the documentary on BENNY MARDONES!<\/p>\nLike I give a fuck.\u00c2\u00a0 All I know is Tommy Nast always foams at the mouth about him.\u00c2\u00a0 I was frustrated.\u00c2\u00a0 We’d just gotten through watching the end of the Jean Harris story on HBO, which had more stars than a THEATRICAL movie, and I was in the mood to sit back and be entertained and I had the WRONG DISC!\u00c2\u00a0 I explained the situation to Felice.\u00c2\u00a0 I asked her if we could take a chance.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing yes, I inserted the disc into the DVD player.<\/p>\n
She had no fucking idea who Benny Mardones was.\u00c2\u00a0 But, just a few minutes in, I heard this vocal…she was singing along to his big hit, "Into The Night".\u00c2\u00a0 You KNOW this?\u00c2\u00a0 I mean I don’t see this as being up her alley, shit even I hardly know it.\u00c2\u00a0 But Felice smiled and said OF COURSE!<\/p>\n
The sound was terrible.\u00c2\u00a0 We were laughing at the documentary.\u00c2\u00a0 And then we got hooked.<\/p>\n
We’re used to the stories told by VH1.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, band rises to the top, does drugs, gets ripped off, and is now happy and back together.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, this documentary didn’t have quite the same FLAVOR!<\/p>\n
Benny had the character of someone you didn’t want to run into in a blind alley.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t grow up solidly middle class, rather LOWER class.\u00c2\u00a0 His father went out for a pack of cigarettes not long after he was born, and then…well, eventually, an abusive stepfather came into the picture.<\/p>\n
Yet I still wasn’t interested at this point.\u00c2\u00a0 What hooked me was Bill McGathy.<\/p>\n
I mean here’s the king of AOR promotion, right on Felice’s LG.\u00c2\u00a0 And then Tommy Mottola.\u00c2\u00a0 And the aforementioned Tommy Nast.\u00c2\u00a0 And Doc McGhee.\u00c2\u00a0 You could tell they were doing it as a favor.\u00c2\u00a0 Because once upon a time, they BELIEVED in Benny Mardones.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like old home week.\u00c2\u00a0 The TRUE inside music business.<\/p>\n
And Benny turned out to be an uneducated hothead.\u00c2\u00a0 Who eventually got hooked on drugs.\u00c2\u00a0 But boy could Benny SING!\u00c2\u00a0 Even a disbeliever like me was convinced as the footage rolled on.<\/p>\n
Today’s America is one of winners and losers.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re either on the top or the bottom.\u00c2\u00a0 What about someone in the MIDDLE!\u00c2\u00a0 In BETWEEN!\u00c2\u00a0 Getting BY!<\/p>\n
Benny Mardones had one gigantic hit on one of the worst labels of all time, Polydor Records.\u00c2\u00a0 He made a million dollars.\u00c2\u00a0 Instantly blew it.\u00c2\u00a0 And when his second record was released, there was a regime change, and all his supporters at the label were gone, PFFFT, just like that.<\/p>\n
God, how many labels has Benny been on?\u00c2\u00a0 SEVEN?\u00c2\u00a0 And not all secondary.\u00c2\u00a0 He was even signed to Mariah Carey’s CRAVE not even a decade ago.<\/p>\n
But Benny has never come back.<\/p>\n
Why, you ask?<\/p>\n
Was it because his labels kept folding?\u00c2\u00a0 Was it the luck of the draw?\u00c2\u00a0 Or was Benny Mardones just too uncontrollable, too much of an ASSHOLE?<\/p>\n
There’s the story of him kicking in the computer screen of the bigwig at Polydor, and then flipping over his desk when said exec wouldn’t give any cash to another artist on the label whose million selling albums were behind him.\u00c2\u00a0 The company had made their money, they didn’t TECHNICALLY owe the artist any more dough, but it was the RIGHT THING TO DO!\u00c2\u00a0 Labels don’t do the right thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Never have, still don’t.<\/p>\n
So, Benny descends into drugs.\u00c2\u00a0 Until Tommy Nast reaches out from Syracuse, where he’s playing every track on his album, and believes he can SELL OUT!<\/p>\n
And that’s how Benny Mardones becomes a star in upstate New York.<\/p>\n
That’s what this business is built upon.\u00c2\u00a0 Fans.\u00c2\u00a0 Believers.\u00c2\u00a0 The people running the labels don’t acknowledge this.\u00c2\u00a0 They think it’s THEM!\u00c2\u00a0 Self-anointed legends like Clive Davis massage the tracks and deliver them to bought and paid for people from on high.\u00c2\u00a0 They sell today, but the artist can’t be arrested in a year or two.\u00c2\u00a0 Because one key element is missing.\u00c2\u00a0 The FAN!<\/p>\n
It starts with the artist.\u00c2\u00a0 The label is just the midwife.\u00c2\u00a0 And then it goes to the deejay, the connector, the person who sifts through the pile of releases to anoint ONE for a push, to become a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 Today deejays have no power, and tracks are not picked for their merit, but for their marketing campaigns.\u00c2\u00a0 The soul is gone.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why the audience is gone.\u00c2\u00a0 Because when the deejay believes, when HE picks out the good stuff, you listen.\u00c2\u00a0 The relationship is based on trust!\u00c2\u00a0 Now there’s no trust.\u00c2\u00a0 How can there be?\u00c2\u00a0 When every step in the food chain someone is PAID OFF!<\/p>\n
Benny Mardones ends up becoming a star in Syracuse.\u00c2\u00a0 He plays to over 10,000 people a gig.\u00c2\u00a0 He does about ten shows a year.\u00c2\u00a0 And he’s NEVER HEARD OF OUTSIDE THE METRO AREA!<\/p>\n
Records need to get started somewhere.\u00c2\u00a0 Based on reaction.\u00c2\u00a0 And then you spread the word.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a GRASS ROOTS EFFORT!\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s all top down marketing.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no discovery.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about reaction, but DICTATION!<\/p>\n
Watching this documentary, you’ve got no doubt that Benny could have been a national star.\u00c2\u00a0 If only someone had gotten behind him.<\/p>\n
Then again, even he admits he was a prick.<\/p>\n
But not a prick with NO success.\u00c2\u00a0 He was good friends with Roy Orbison.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s STILL living off his one hit.\u00c2\u00a0 Which he believes, rightly, will outlive him.\u00c2\u00a0 If this isn’t the American dream, I don’t know what is.<\/p>\n
I’d like to tell you this is a great movie.\u00c2\u00a0 But, like I said, the sound is bad.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s a feel good ending, which is superfluous.\u00c2\u00a0 But inside this documentary beats the heart of rock and roll.\u00c2\u00a0 From the underprivileged musicians who see this as their only way out to the fans who see their music as a reason to live.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody who wants to get into this business should see this movie.\u00c2\u00a0 Because this is what it’s about.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll laugh, but you’ll be touched.\u00c2\u00a0 Benny’s trying.\u00c2\u00a0 And we care, because he’s got that great voice.\u00c2\u00a0 No autotune or tapes are necessary, you can hear it in the live performances.<\/p>\n
This is why I love rock and roll.\u00c2\u00a0 The root honesty.<\/p>\n
TV and movies are made for the man.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re homogenized.\u00c2\u00a0 Filtered.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas the records USED TO BE straight from the musician’s heart to yours.\u00c2\u00a0 Expect more honest flicks, now that the public has the means of production in its hands.\u00c2\u00a0 And, expect better music now that you can make a record on your computer.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to cut out the middle man.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got to be just artists and fans.<\/p>\n
If Benny Mardones had been on Columbia or Warner Brothers instead of two bit Polydor, he’d be a household name today.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s not let the system prevent the next talent, the NEXT Benny Mardones, from reaching desirous fans.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wanted to watch the Peter Himmelman documentary. You’ve got to know.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s selling SOMETHING!\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s looking for notice.\u00c2\u00a0 And they seem to find me.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, they find anybody who can reach thousands of people, people they can’t reach. I wanted to watch this Himmelman movie because the trailer was funny.\u00c2\u00a0 Seemed to be made […]<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-5o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","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=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}