{"id":3488,"date":"2010-11-04T16:40:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T00:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3488"},"modified":"2010-11-04T16:44:44","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T00:44:44","slug":"re-stacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2010\/11\/04\/re-stacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Re: Stacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard about Bon Iver from Nigel Grainge, who&#8217;s enthusiastic and has impeccable taste.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn&#8217;t quite get it until today, when Robin Millar sent me a link:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-right: 0px;\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<div style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><a title=\"Bon Iver - Re: Stacks\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ePatJIwB-sI\">Bon Iver &#8211; Re: Stacks<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It was playing in the background as I was chomping through the e-mail, reading about Ticketmaster, be sure to read Steve Knopper&#8217;s comprehensive story in &quot;Wired&quot;: <\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-right: 0px;\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<div style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><a title=\"Everyone Hates Ticketmaster \u00e2\u20ac\u201d But No One Can Take It Down\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/magazine\/2010\/11\/mf_ticketmaster\/\">Everyone Hates Ticketmaster \u00e2\u20ac\u201d But No One Can Take It Down<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And then there was that story about the &quot;Daily Show&quot;&#8217;s ratings:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-right: 0px;\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<div style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><a title=\"'Daily Show' Beats Leno, Letterman for First Time\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/blogs\/live-feed\/daily-show-beats-leno-letterman-35776\">&#8216;Daily Show&#8217; Beats Leno, Letterman for First Time<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Ultimately, I clicked to Deadline.com, which gave a bit of a qualifier\/explanation <\/p>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px;\">\n<div style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.deadline.com\/2010\/11\/change-of-the-guard-daily-show-tops-all-late-night-shows-for-the-first-time\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"'Daily Show' Tops All Late-Night Shows For First Time ... Sort Of\">&#8216;Daily Show&#8217; Tops All Late-Night Shows For First Time &#8230; Sort Of<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>but still, it&#8217;s fascinating how the mainstream media got it wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 We don&#8217;t love Leno.\u00c2\u00a0 Letterman did come back.\u00c2\u00a0 But everybody&#8217;s ratings are lousy.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet doing a show he inherited and made his own on basic cable, Jon Stewart is a king, years on.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn&#8217;t that how it used to work in the music business?<\/p>\n<p>Credit Tommy Mottola with creating the modern marketing paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 You get the mainstream media to sell your story for free.\u00c2\u00a0 It used to be acts were dependent on radio, suddenly not only was MTV important, but the &quot;Today Show&quot;, &quot;Oprah&quot;, anybody with ratings.\u00c2\u00a0 But musicians are not TV stars.\u00c2\u00a0 TV stars are two-dimensional vessels.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean Jennifer Aniston&#8217;s one of the biggest TV stars in the world, but if we got her one on one in real life, what exactly would she be like?\u00c2\u00a0 We&#8217;ve got no idea!<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s not a musician alive who doesn&#8217;t have an element of his songs inside him.\u00c2\u00a0 That doesn&#8217;t mean he can&#8217;t be antisocial, that he can&#8217;t be difficult, but in order to write this stuff, it has to come from somewhere.\u00c2\u00a0 And it&#8217;s this inside stuff that draws us in.\u00c2\u00a0 They call it humanity.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m confronted with the news of the day, the disillusionment of the political landscape, and this Bon Iver song, &quot;Re: Stacks&quot;, is playing in the background, it&#8217;s an antidote, it&#8217;s soothing me, it&#8217;s a warm blanket making me feel like I&#8217;m not alone, that I&#8217;ll make it through.<\/p>\n<p>And Bon Iver is not new.\u00c2\u00a0 That initial conversation with Nigel was years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 But like an electrical circuit missing a few links, oftentimes the power doesn&#8217;t pass through until every connection is soldered.\u00c2\u00a0 Today I got Bon Iver.<\/p>\n<p>And I went online and researched and learned about the connection with &quot;Northern Exposure&quot;, the episode with the first snowfall.\u00c2\u00a0 I saw that!\u00c2\u00a0 I can&#8217;t connect to &quot;California Gurls&quot;, never mind so many of the rap tracks, but the concept of lying on the couch watching this quirky drama&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like the mainstream has got the pedal to the metal.\u00c2\u00a0 Powering headlong towards the cliff.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess the drivers are planning to eject just before the precipice, but I don&#8217;t understand why they think we want to go along for the ride.\u00c2\u00a0 No one likes to be a passenger, with no control in a disaster.\u00c2\u00a0 That&#8217;s why we hate being in the back of the plane.\u00c2\u00a0 We want to be in charge of our own destiny, we want to drive, we want to be in control.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s what the Web is all about.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody piloting their own ship, at their own speed.\u00c2\u00a0 Discovering music is like going to a new country, one that&#8217;s existed for years, that others may have visited, but that you&#8217;ve never been to.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn&#8217;t matter when &quot;Re: Stacks&quot; was released, it&#8217;s new to me.<\/p>\n<p>But the key element is how different &quot;Re: Stacks&quot; sounds from what the mainstream is purveying.\u00c2\u00a0 &quot;Re: Stacks&quot; is a tune-out on Top Forty, even Hot AC. Active Rock is too hard.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe on AAA, but if you think anybody&#8217;s listening to that format, you still believe Alternative is burgeoning.<\/p>\n<p>And maybe Bon Iver works on Jools Holland, but that&#8217;s the U.K., where they still believe in the power of music, as opposed to the U.S., where money is paramount.\u00c2\u00a0 If something sells, it&#8217;s good, if it doesn&#8217;t, it&#8217;s crap.\u00c2\u00a0 But is that really true?<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Re: Stacks&quot; is music.\u00c2\u00a0 It touches my soul.\u00c2\u00a0 And isn&#8217;t that what it&#8217;s all about?<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard about Bon Iver from Nigel Grainge, who&#8217;s enthusiastic and has impeccable taste.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn&#8217;t quite get it until today, when Robin Millar sent me a link: Bon Iver &#8211; Re: Stacks It was playing in the background as I was chomping through the e-mail, reading about Ticketmaster, be sure to read [&hellip;]<\/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":[2,9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-media","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Ug","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488","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=3488"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3493,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488\/revisions\/3493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}