The tour was trash. A likable guy telling all the stories you and I already know.<\/p>\n
But upstairs, after you pay your money to the tattooed clerk, after you wait until the half hour for the tour to begin, you enter a museum, a veritable history of not only Sun Studios, but recording itself.<\/p>\n
It’s funny. We’re in an era where everybody with traction wants to stay in the past. They want us to listen to Top Forty radio and buy CDs. Of the same music they’ve been selling for years.<\/p>\n
Whereas the history of music is about entrepreneurship, illegality and technology.<\/p>\n
Let’s start with the last first.<\/p>\n
You should have seen some of the machines Sam Phillips recorded on. With names like "Presto". It looked incredibly crude, but it was cutting edge stuff.<\/p>\n
That’s where we’re living today. All this back to analog shit. Go into a recording studio, use the traditional suspects, spent six figures on a record. Don’t you get it, those days are through! The innovators are flying by the seat of their pants, using the technology to create something new.<\/p>\n
You know what the number one musical instrument is today?<\/p>\n
THE LAPTOP! It fires electronic music. Without the laptop, Deadmau5 is nothing. And you might think that’s a good thing, but the history of music is littered with old farts who think the new thing sucks. And what happens to these people? THEY’RE FORGOTTEN!<\/p>\n
Want to last?<\/p>\n
Embrace the new technology. In both recording and distribution. Then you might stumble into success. Sam Phillips was barely making a living, he took chances. And that’s how he stumbled into Elvis Presley, who came by to spend four dollars to make his own record, with Sam’s SECRETARY!<\/p>\n
Illegality.<\/p>\n
Sam cut a hit record with Ike Turner, "Rocket 88", it’s considered to be the first rock and roll track ever. Kudos to both Sam and Ike.<\/p>\n
But Sam had no record label. The track came out on Chess.<\/p>\n
So when Rufus Thomas cut "Bear Cat" at Sun, Sam decided to put it out on his own label, make all that money for himself.<\/p>\n
Which he did.<\/p>\n
And it became a hit.<\/p>\n
Only one problem… It was a direct rip-off of Big Mama Thornton’s "Hound Dog" and Sun was sued for copyright infringement. And LOST! To the tune of $25,000. That’s still a lot of money TODAY!<\/p>\n
And speaking of money, Sam sold the remainder of Elvis’s contract to RCA for 30k. A pittance. But it was the only way to keep the studio doors open. Only Elvis’s last single had made any money.<\/p>\n
But that’s what an entrepreneur does. Not what his accountants say to do, but what he feels inside, in his gut.<\/p>\n
This big label era, this era of institutions, it’s very recent. And the fact that those running these enterprises want to maintain the status quo is no surprise. When you’ve got something, you don’t want to risk it.<\/p>\n
But when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.<\/p>\n
Which is why all innovation comes from individuals, who have no safety net, who either do it their way and succeed or return to a life of drudgery. And the public admires this risk-taking. It’s sick of pabulum, it wants edgy and new.<\/p>\n
Adele sold 729,000 albums last week. A Grammy record bounce.<\/p>\n
That’s supposed to be impossible. Didn’t Napster ruin the record business?<\/p>\n
NO!<\/p>\n
Adele has sold seven million plus albums in the U.S. because she touches people’s hearts. The rest of the dreck sells much less because people don’t care.<\/p>\n
"21" is about honesty.<\/p>\n
There’s very little honesty in most of the Top Forty, just crass commercialism.<\/p>\n
My heart did not palpitate when we went downstairs into the studio. I unlocked the door to the control room and felt something, this is where Sam sat. But despite the room being the same, you didn’t get the vibe, there were too many tacky museum elements.<\/p>\n
But the one thing that impressed me was the acoustic tile. The original stuff. Not the kind you see in studios today. That was cutting edge back then.<\/p>\n
Everything Sam Phillips did at Sun was cutting edge. He foraged in the wilderness, came up with not only Elvis, but Carl Perkins and "Blue Suede Shoes" and Johnny Cash and "I Walk The Line".<\/p>\n
But before those big successes, he cut records with prisoners. Literally, in jail.<\/p>\n
Sam was flying by the seat of his pants.<\/p>\n
The big music business is in trouble. Because it’s looking backward instead of forward. It’s your parents, telling you what you can and cannot do.<\/p>\n
But the new music business is flourishing. It’s being built day by day by people whose names you’ve never heard of, making records that you might think amateurish, but connect with niches which have more power than ever before.<\/p>\n
And to a great degree, it’s not even about records. It’s about the live gig. Which is the way it was and always will be.<\/p>\n
Sam had a very brief run at Sun. Ten years in this studio, another decade in the one down the block.<\/p>\n
That’s a long time in rock and roll.<\/p>\n
That’s how fast it moves. From wire recorders, to tape to eight tracks and "Sgt. Pepper".<\/p>\n
And now you can cut your album on a laptop and shoot an HD video on a smartphone.<\/p>\n
And seemingly everybody who had success before laments the passage of the good old days.<\/p>\n
The good old days weren’t so great. Most people couldn’t get exposure, it was frighteningly expensive to record.<\/p>\n
These are the good old days.<\/p>\n
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