Rock Stars

Did the Beatles plan on dominating the world?

No, they just wanted to escape a life of drudgery in Liverpool.

But their music became a mania. Suddenly, not only were they rich and famous, they had innumerable groupies beckoning.

Like Tiger Woods.

When the Beatles hit, even into the heyday of Led Zeppelin in the seventies, if you wanted to get rich, you were a rock star. Baseball's reserve clause had not yet been broken. The NBA did not yet have Magic and Bird, never mind Michael Jordan, it was almost a sideshow. As for golf... Arnie Palmer was a swinger, but he was more about endorsements than lifestyle, and at the time, nobody wanted to be icy, pudgy Jack Nicklaus.

No, you wanted to be like the English cats. Or the players from San Francisco. Who'd practiced for years so they could now get up at noon, do drugs and get laid seemingly whenever they wanted.

It all came down to the music. Jimmy Page didn't pick up the guitar with a desire to be famous. No, music was a calling. And after seeing the Beatles on "Ed Sullivan", boomers picked up instruments, took lessons. They did not get plastic surgery to appear beautiful, take media training so they could expose themselves well. It was all about the tunes.

It hasn't been about the tunes in eons.

Sure, there were starmakers all the way back to the days of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis. But what drew us to the stars of the classic rock era was the seeming lack of manipulation. Playing by no rules, creating opuses sometimes an album side long, these musicians put the music first. Unlike athletes shilling for Aqua Velva.

Things turned bad with corporate rock in the midseventies. Too calculated, it was supplanted by disco and then in late '79, the whole business imploded, only to be resurrected by MTV, which evidenced completely different values from the FM radio that preceded it. Suddenly it was all about image.

And now MTV might be dead, but conventional wisdom is image triumphs. That's what TV wants. That's what the magazines want. That's what TMZ and Perez want. Radio was something you listened to. All the foregoing media enter through your eyes.

So right now, Mariah Carey might be parading around Aspen, but she's not staying there based on her new album's sales, they stink, she's living off the past. Even Alicia Keys. All these heavily-hyped artists, the Cliveisms, they're built for stardom, but today stardom doesn't permeate every nook and cranny, and so many are turned off by the hype, and music sales suck. And seemingly the more popular you are on the hit parade, the fewer people want to see you live. Dave Matthews hasn't had a radio hit in eons, but he was the biggest tour grosser of the decade.

But, of course, Dave Matthews has been around for fifteen years, he was the beneficiary of the old game. What about new artists?

What about new artists?

If you want to be a "rock star", be an athlete. Or a tech entrepreneur. That's where the money is. And groupies like money.

If you want to be a musician, you must flush image down the toilet, be three-dimensional, write from the heart and make yourself accessible to fans.

Yes, today's musicians are the opposite of the titans of yore. As opposed to being crafted with no edges, sculpted to perfection like Janet Jackson, who also can't sell a record, they're lumpy, with warts, they're completely human. And they write about their humanity. And they make themselves available on Twitter and other social media.

I'm not talking marketing. This isn't so much about selling as a redefinition of what a musician is. Sure, first and foremost you play music. But how do you get an audience?

How do you get friends? Real friends?

It's very difficult staying alone in your room, not interacting online. If you want to be part of the community you must venture out, whether it be into the real world or cyberspace. You must make yourself available. You must be ingratiating. You must be open and willing to share.

Who does it right?

Taylor Swift. Her songs couldn't be more personal. They're not bland statements denuded to the point where they can be sung by and related to by everybody, rather they're distinctly her.

John Mayer tweets his personality. Go to http://twitter.com/jOhnCmAYer and read, you'll end up thinking you truly know him. Furthermore, on his blog he stood up for James Cameron, who called a fan an asshole (http://www.johnmayer.com/blog/permalink/5379). Mayer didn't believe it was a fan, but an e-Bay whore. But the point is, Mayer took a stand. That's how you grow your audience, by having a personality, just like them.

Will musicians ever become rock stars?

Not like the athletes. The athletes have got all the money and all the TV time. If you want to get rich and screw, start shooting hoops. And isn't that fascinating, no one thinks they can play in the NBA without a wealth of court time, but people think they can succeed in the music game without paying their dues whatsoever.

And athletes don't succeed by revealing their inner lives, they make it via their robotic skills. The opposite of musicians. And did you ever think that whoring yourself out to corporations works for athletes but not musicians for this very reason? Because it's not about who athletes are so much as how skilled they are at their sport?

In other words, if you're pursuing the rock stardom that's bandied about in public today, you're pursuing artistic and commercial death. A "rock star" today is someone who's winning in the commercial world, which is the opposite of art. A true rock star is beholden to nobody. Hell, these athletes play for a team, or their sponsors. Which is how the major labels killed music. Because you were playing for them instead of playing for yourself.

Sure, eventually new acts will grow and dominate. But the ascension will be very slow. The rocket to outer space paradigm of MTV is history. Shit, isn't that the point of reality TV? Anybody can be famous for fifteen minutes?

You want to be famous for much longer than that.

Old thinkers will use the old tools. Radio and TV.

You're not opposed to those, but you focus on a direct connection with your fan.

Do your friends abandon you willy-nilly?

Of course not.

Then again, you think twice before you screw a friend, before you cancel plans.

So put your fans first. Establish trust. And practice!

Because it begins and ends with the music.

Detroit Breakdown

Image via Wikipedia

If you know where to surf on the Web, you can find downloadable concerts.

Conventional wisdom is young people don't care. Maybe that's only because they've never seen an act as vibrant as the J. Geils Band live.

Before they shortened their name to "Geils". Before they switched labels and started making MTV fodder. Before they sold their souls and went extinct.

It was a local thing. Nothin' but a party. Nothin' but a house party.

But back in the early seventies, a party wasn't enough. You needed a record. On wax, the J. Geils Band rarely triumphed. But live, they kicked ass. Would the J. Geils Band be gigantic today?

I was surfing my usual sites and I found a live recording of the J. Geils Band from April 25th in Detroit this year. This I had to check out.

I downloaded the cuts from the Who's 1969 fall tour first. Then I took all twenty four live cuts here. From the second show that evening. Which, according to the blurb, sold out in fifteen minutes.

Is this true? Who knows, Detroit was always a rockin' town, a big J. Geils market, and there's no label hype. Meanwhile, who even knew that J. Geils was on tour?

If you Google, you find a band site that hasn't been updated in a decade. Literally.

Search a bit farther, and you can see they're playing a casino on New Year's Eve. They opened a new House of Blues in Boston earlier in the year. Funny how time makes those memories fade away. Of how you hated each other, of how you disagreed. But the good memories, the good times, they remain. When it was all about the music. Before money fucked the whole thing up.

Now I know the big thing on Hollywood Boulevard these days is clubs. You overpay for drinks to bump asses to records. Huh? What would happen if the assembled multitude saw a great live band?

I'm not talking about Phish. I'm not talking about the Dave Matthews Band. I'm not talking jam. I'm talking sharkskin suits, I'm talking sunglasses, I'm talking R&B. If you were a great R&B band today, could you make it?

Used to be about the records. You needed an album and hopefully a hit single in order to make it. But if you've got a killer live show today, would that be enough?

I think so!

The energy is enough.

This is the opposite of canned music. This is pure power, pure sweat. This is the kind of event you drag your friends to. It's just that prior to the Internet, it was hard to spread the word. You had to rely on in-person conversation, the telephone, but today you can testify online and ZILLIONS can hear you. And we're all looking for something great. And when we find it, we tell everyone we know.

In other words, does the hit single NO LONGER MATTER?

Let's be clear. A hit pays dividends. But it won't get hardly anybody to come see you live. Even if you've got a string of them, people don't consider Top Forty artists to be credible. Which is why you're better off with one Michael Buble than anybody in the Top Ten. People go to see Buble to hear a crooner. He's nailed this market. How about R&B? Do you think it can't be replicated?

You can't get players who know more about technology than music. You've got to find people who live to listen, who don't know html, but can transpose keys on their instruments on the fly. People who know the history of music, not the history of Apple products. Oh, there's nothing wrong with bleeding in a bit of technological know-how, it's just that if this is done right, IT SELLS ITSELF, THE MUSIC COMES FIRST!

People want to get closer. A beautiful girl doesn't have to advertise. Boys flock around her. She may be an airhead, there may be little substance, but true greatness draws people in. And R&B is a proven genre. Mix it in with a bit of rock and roll, and you've got the J. Geils Band.

If J. Geils were starting today, they'd be monstrous. Word would spread from campus to campus. Their live business would be amazing. And who'd care about the record business...you can't make any real money selling records anymore anyway! And, this type of music doesn't get any radio play. And it's only idiots and casual music fans who listen to the radio. The hard core is on a personal adventure, a quest to find something great.

I'd love to tell you this show kills. But it's just a bit off. Could be the recording. Maybe I can't hear the organ enough, maybe J. Geils' fills aren't mixed up front. But OH THE ENERGY! You wouldn't walk out, you'd move and groove.

"They're dancing on the ceiling
They're dancing on the floor
People everywhere comin' through the door They know there's a party goin' on Do the dancin' romance all night long I know it's cold outside C'mon baby, I'll keep you satisfied All you gotta do is move Every time you feel that groove

It ain't nothing but a party
It ain't nothing but a party
It ain't nothing but a party
It ain't nothing but a house party"