The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

Image by Pesky Library via Flickr

You can't buy it.

But the buzz is unbelievable. Readers feel triumphant, special, like they're members of a cult. Does this remind you of the way it used to be in the music business?

Start reading "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo". Just buy it. Don't check with your friends, the price is not outrageous, give it fifty or a hundred pages.

Actually, it doesn't take that long. Far before that, you'll be hooked.

There's no video, no outrageous outfits like Lady GaGa, none of the penumbra that saddles music today. Remember when music was enough? That's how it is with Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy", the story is enough.

As soon as you finish "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", you'll buy "The Girl Who Played With Fire". Nobody stops at book one, hell, they're thrilled there's a sequel. Kind of like buying the first album by a new act, spinning it to death, and finding out there's already a second, just as good!

But imagine that second album ending in the middle of a song. That's what reading "The Girl Who Played With Fire" is like. You've got to read the third book, "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest" to find out what happened to Lisbeth Salander. Is she alive, is she dead?

I'm not telling.

But I will say that for a book that's unavailable in the U.S., that needs to be ordered via subterfuge, from the U.K., it's astounding how many copies I see in my everyday life. People carry them around like trophies. And when you interrupt them, to ask them about it, they greet you with open arms, they want to talk about the trilogy.

This is so different from the way the music business has played out, which is now like the cocaine 80's. Who's holding, can I get in the bathroom with the cool people to partake? The stars are behind a wall, playing a game known as fame, which is separate from their music, just read the gossip blogs to find out. And if you want to get closer, you can't, you just can't get a good seat. Because you don't have an Amex card or you're not rich enough or even after joining the so-called "fan club", you're still offered overpriced, shitty tickets.

People love the work, even people who haven't read a book in years. There's just something about the story, which isn't lowest-common denominator, which is not solely plot, which requires some intelligence to juggle all the characters and scenes in your mind.

Imagine a band that's truly great, that is sans hype, that makes it solely because of the music. Which then releases its next album on the Internet, but doesn't allow you to buy it. Can you imagine how fast the music would spread?

But, but, but, I need to get PAID!

The musicians are as bad as Wall Street robber barons. Starting out with how much money they want to make in a year, they rape and pillage to get it, not caring that they add not a whit to the social fabric. Hey, it's my new album, you've got to buy it! And come see me in concert, where I prance to pyrotechnics at far too high a price!

Books aren't featured in the gossip columns. Stieg Larsson can't do interviews, he's dead. But the work he left behind is creating a frenzy. Which is not being fed by the mainstream media, but the reading public. If anything, it's seeping into the press as a result of reader fanaticism. The way the newspaper used to be last on a new act, as opposed to first, today being whipped into shape by the label, hyped to death.

We've all been hyped to death.

But the "Millennium Trilogy" is something different.

Join the cult. You'll be fulfilled, you'll be proud, you'll be titillated, you'll be thrilled, the same way you were when you attached yourself to the great bands of yore.

The Press

Image via CrunchBase

Did you read Frank Rich's column in the "New York Times" today?

Entitled "Obama, Lehman and the 'Dragon Tattoo', it's an indictment of the Wall Street robber barons via Stieg Larsson's best-selling book.

http://www.nytimes.com//2010/03/21/opinion/21rich.html

Here's the key passage:

"'A bank director who blows millions on foolhardy speculations should not keep his job,' writes Larsson in one typical passage. 'A managing director who plays shell company games should do time.' Larsson is no less lacerating about influential journalists who treat 'mediocre financial whelps like rock stars' and who docilely 'regurgitate the statements issued by C.E.O.'s and stock-market speculators.' He pleads for some 'tough reporter' to 'identify and expose as traitors' the financial players who have 'systematically and perhaps deliberately' damaged their country's economy 'to satisfy the profit interests of their clients.'"

Where are those tough reporters? Lapping up the spin of Timothy Geithner's public relations team?

"Geithner's major calling lately has been a public-relations tour, with full-dress profiles in The New Yorker, The Atlantic and even Vogue, which filled us in on his humble 'off-the-rack' Brooks Brothers suits. Last week he also contributed a video testimonial to the on-air fifth anniversary celebration of Jim Cramer's 'Mad Money.' Like the heedless casino culture it exemplified, that CNBC program has long been back to speculative business-as-usual, pumping stocks as if the crash were just a small, inconvenient bump on the road to larger profits and bonuses."

Then I turn to the Style section of the "Times" and find Patti Smith on its cover, in a dress.

Who gives a shit about Patti Smith?

The "New York Times", that's who. A bunch of self-congratulatory tastemakers who have paraded the work of this third rate artist ad infinitum for decades, even more so now, even though she hasn't done a worthwhile thing since the seventies.

I bought all the albums, save me the hate mail.

The point is, the papers are skewed.

I know, I know, it's complicated. I'm quoting Frank Rich at the same time I'm decrying the paper's efforts... But my point is, we've been dictated to by the mainstream press for years, have you ever questioned whether their viewpoint is accurate?

Take the Michael Jackson Sony deal...

I received the following e-mail from a powerful music business attorney:

"Have you seen that crap about the Michael Jackson deal? It's everything you talk about in lazy mainstream media reporting.

I've had 2 reporters call me and they seem to have no skepticism at all. I mean, I know it's more than a record deal, but if it's primarily based around records, they'd have to sell more than 50 million to come out of the deal--that will only happen in this market if Michael dies again.

Then in every report, you read about how Sony sold 31 million MJ records last year, 'almost 2/3 of them overseas.' So you check US Soundscan (which a few reporters actually did), and it's 8.3 million units (according to those reports). Multiply that by 3 and you get 31 million? Not in my math class. These guys are so lazy they can't even multiply.

Like I keep telling the reporters, every deal I've ever done that I've read about is wrong, so why should this one be right? Besides, I've inherited deals that Branca did and were reported at about 3 times what they turned out to be when I finally saw the contracts."

Whew!

The Internet is just a constant warning that the old players want to keep their cash cows, want no questions asked, believe they're entitled to their money.

One can argue that Stieg Larsson wasn't first, but a public that rebelled against a major label system that overcharged them for nine tracks they didn't want in order to get the one they did.

People are just as pissed about Wall Street. Unfortunately, it's a bit tough for many to comprehend. But maybe reform isn't as distant as the mainstream believes, as long as bloggers and those in the know online keep hammering away, revealing the truth.