My favorite Neil Young album is the very first, the eponymous one, the one that was re-released with a new mix not long after it hit the marketplace (you can tell the difference by the front cover, if the picture takes up the whole cover, it’s the old, wrong one, if there’s the name "Neil Young" in black letters on a white background atop the picture, it’s the new one).  It wasn’t the first Neil Young album I was exposed to, that was "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere", with not only "Cinnamon Girl", but the exquisite "Down By The River" and the almost as magical "Cowgirl In The Sand".  You see, with the explosion of CSNY, we wanted anything attached, and that’s how I ended up with this.  After hearing it first in the room of the son of the owner of the camp I was working at.  But I bought "After The Gold Rush" before the debut, I had limited funds, we all had limited funds.  But then I heard "The Emperor Of Wyoming" and took the plunge, it was so upbeat and JAUNTY!  And there are two absolute killers on the debut, the following "The Loner", whose sledgehammer riff is first played by an organ and the desperate "I’ve Been Waiting For You", which explodes in the sky like a supernova.  But the last track on the LP, which is quiet, dark and dank compared to "Emperor Of Wyoming", has been forgotten but is the essence of Neil Young, a tune written by a man one step removed from the rest of us.  It goes on for over nine minutes.  And good luck nailing down exactly what it’s about.  "Man Who Couldn’t Cry" is the analogue to "Last Trip To Tulsa", it’s its twin brother, separated at birth, raised by different parents.  Loudon’s family contained more humor, but there was that underlying resentment nonetheless.

Loudon Wainwright III was someone you were aware of but not enamored of.  Because you never heard his records.  Almost no one heard his records.  Loudon Wainwright III would have been a bigger star, a star in fact, if he emerged on to the scene today, when journeymen artists can find their own level on the Web, when they can park their tunes at a URL and the audience can do the work, spreading the word.  But decades ago, you were dependent on radio exposure, and Loudon got almost none, so almost no one knew his music, no one could just dial up some tracks on MySpace.

But Loudon survived.  Got married, had kids, appeared in TV shows, but his music just never got traction.  He became a curio.  And now he’s decided to re-record all his great tunes from the past.  Which is kind of stupid.  Because the originals are good enough, in many cases better.  But what’s a lonely rock and roller supposed to do?

That’s a reference to my favorite Loudon Wainwright track.  You probably didn’t catch it, because you don’t know it.  And neither did I until I heard "Motel Blues" on XM.  That’s why I downloaded "Recovery", the remake album, because I wanted to hear the latest iteration of "Motel Blues".

It’s not as good as the live take.  Which I downloaded from the Web and don’t know was ever even released commercially.  It starts with Loudon insulting a heckler, and then playing the tune…  An intimate late night ditty, about loneliness, about hoping a girl from the gig, not quite a groupie, will sleep with him…

In this town television shuts off at two
What can a lonely rock and roller do
Oh the bed’s so big and the sheets are clean
And your girlfriend said that you were nineteen
The styrofoam ice bucket is full of ice
Come up to my motel room treat me nice

Can you imagine this sex?  This is not a Plaster Caster, not even Penny Lane.  This is a tentative teenager from a small town, thrilled to be this close to "fame", but anxious nonetheless.  She sits on the edge of the bed, Loudon turns her head towards his, kisses her dry lips.

She’s so young she’s got no cellulite, nothing droops.  She’s so inexperienced she doesn’t get lubricated.  When he penetrates her it’s worse than masturbation.  It’s sex in name only.  For all he knows, she might be a virgin.

There’s a Bible in the drawer don’t be afraid
I’ll put up the sign to warn the cleanup maid
Yeah there’s lots of soap and there’s lots of towels
Never mind them desk clerk scowls
I’ll buy you breakfast, they’ll think you’re my wife
Come up to my motel room, save my life
Come up to my motel room, save my life

But, like I said, the remake isn’t as good as the live take, or even the original.  But, having downloaded "Recovery", I’m listening to it as I surf the Web, and the second or third time through, certain songs started to reveal themselves.

This is the experience we had when we used to pay for albums.  Our decisions were debated endlessly in our minds, impulse purchases were for casual buyers, fans plotted out their future collections like military operations.  And having decided on an album, we played it, until we liked it.  I started to like certain songs on "Recovery".

First, "New Paint", two cuts after "Motel Blues".  And then the song after that, "Be Careful There’s A Baby In The House", then the opening cut, "Black Uncle Remus", and then the last cut, the longest on the album, at 6:05, "Man Who Couldn’t Cry".

Actually, it’s entitled "THE Man Who Couldn’t Cry" in its initial incarnation, on "Attempted Mustache".  You see I downloaded that album.  I downloaded almost all of Loudon’s catalog.  It wasn’t that difficult.  Paul McGuinness might be raving against the ISPs, but since he doesn’t download, he’s got no idea how we now do it, he’s a couple of years and a couple of changes behind us.

The original is intense.  Loudon’s vocal is a bit more affected.  It’s naked, whereas the remake has been laden with production, there are even strings.  The first is from an angry young man who is trying to get his message across via emphasis, he’s IMPLORING us to pay attention.  Whereas in the remake, Loudon is doing it for himself, he’s not sure anybody is going to listen.  And most people won’t.  But I am.  Because of "Motel Blues".

There once was a man who just couldn’t cry
He hadn’t cried for years and for years
Napalmed babies, or the movie ‘Love Story’
For instance could not produce tears

I don’t think anybody under fifty even knows what napalm is.

As a child he had cried as all children will
But at some point his tear ducts all ran dry
He grew to be a man, the feces hit the fan
Things got bad but he couldn’t cry

This ain’t no Top Forty wonder.  This is a STORY song.  This is what the baby boomers wanted to do, take the essence of the novel and move it to music.  Sometimes, the sounds were enough, the note-bending of the English guitarists, but the greats had something to say in the lyrics.  Where is today’s Dylan?  He doesn’t exist.  Because that skill is not revered.  Computer programming is more important than being able to express yourself.  It’s not about learning how to think, but learning how to make money.

His dog was run over, his wife up and left him
After that he got sacked from his job
He lost his arm in the war, laughed at by a whore
Ah, but still not a sniffle or sob

What could be worse than being laughed at by a prostitute.  It’s like when your employees don’t respect you, but worse.  You can’t get it in real life, so you have to pay for it…but even that doesn’t work.

His novel was refused, his movie was panned
His big Broadway show was a flop
He was sent off to jail, yeah, you guessed it, no bail
Aw, but still not a dribble or a drop

Now you just self-publish, on the Web.  Critics, filters are irrelevant.  But, used to be you suffered to break through, and usually didn’t.  You were resigned to teaching in your home town.  And now, Broadway is spectaculars.  Just like the music business, if you think about it.  Something simple, something that can’t gross a hundred million, backers, the media, don’t care about it.  It’s not about content, but the gross.

In jail he was beaten, bullied and buggered
Made to make license plates
Water and bread was all he was fed
And not once did a tear stain his face

Jail was bad back then too.  The only difference is now everybody knows jail truly sucks, and we keep building more prisons to house the underclass without job prospects, who’ve resorted to smoking dope.

Doctors were called in and scientists too
Theologians were last and practically least
They all agreed sure enough, this is sure no cream puff
But in fact an insensitive beast

You don’t make fun of theologians anymore.  You need the votes.  And Christians are more dedicated music buyers than atheists.  They latch on to an act and support it.  Maybe that’s the key to Loudon’s future success, he’s got to be born again.

He was removed from jail and placed in a place
For the insensitive and the insane
He played lots of chess and made lots of friends
And he wept every time it would rain

Is this where the most sane people live?  Those who just can’t subjugate their true feelings and play the game?  You’ve got to go off the grid to find the honest.

Once it rained forty days and it rained forty nights
And he cried and he cried and he cried and he cried and he cried and he cried
On the forty-first day, he passed away
He just dehydrated and died

And here we have the absurdity of Neil Young’s "Last Trip To Tulsa", the non sequitur.  The unexpected.

Well he went up to heaven, located his dog
Not only that, he rejoined his arm
Down below, all the critics, they took it all back
Cancer robbed the whore of her charm

It’s kind of like that old joke, about country music.  What do you get when you play country music backwards?  Your wife returns, your pickup runs and your dog comes back.  I love that cancer robbed the whore of her charm.  But what I like most is the critics taking it all back.  Usually you have to die to be appreciated.  How fucked up is that?

His ex-wife died of stretch marks, his ex-employer went broke
The theologians were finally found out
Right down to the ground, the prison burned down
The earth suffered perpetual drought

You don’t die of stretch marks.  Theologians are found out, but religion plows on.  But what the outsider wanted most in the young adulthood of the baby boomers was retribution, the screwed over wanted their fucked up moment.  And that’s what Loudon Wainwright III is giving the public that ignored him, the middle finger.

But should he have been ignored?  Was his music mainstream enough?  When skinny English boys were wailing on their axes, when Bob Dylan had already given up protesting, were radio stations going to air the rantings of a privileged white boy?

You don’t get to choose your time.  It’s an accident of history.  If you’re lucky, at some point in your life, the stars align, and you’ll be in the right place at the right time.

I’m not sure this is Loudon Wainwright’s right time.  Loudon depends on a certain amount of education, a certain amount of reflection, and today those are for losers.  The loftiest profession is hedge fund manager, because you make all that money.  Just shut up and profit.

What’s a lonely rock and roller to do?

One who doesn’t like that today’s stars are in bed with the money, who are anything but anti-establishment, who are afraid to piss off anybody who might say something negative about their career.  One who is against groupthink, who would rather think for himself.  One who knows you need money, but once you have enough to live, maybe that’s enough.  One who wants to express himself.

We’ve beaten the individuality out of our country’s constituents.  Used to be a badge of honor to be an outsider, a self-thinker, now you want to get into the fraternity, you want to join the gang and abuse those less fortunate.  And make no mistake, Wall Street is a gang.  One more protected than those roaming the streets, whose enforcer is the government.  They decimate Bear Stearns and laugh about it, profiting all the way.

We live in fucked up times.  Used to be, when you had more questions than answers, you turned to music, to the unsullied artist to deliver answers.  Loudon Wainwright III tried to give answers, by examining his own life, those of the loose nuts and bolts surrounding him.  His music is not for everyone.  It’s not always for me.  But, when I listen to his tunes he reminds me of who I used to be, someone who felt the world was oriented incorrectly and wanted to tilt it back accordingly.  His tunes make me feel I’m more right than wrong.  Music is more powerful than the talking heads of TV news.  When done right.  And Loudon Wainwright, despite the goofy TV roles, sometimes did it right.  His music is there, frozen in time, for you to discover.  When you stop checking the SoundScan numbers, when you want to look inward, when you want a main course instead of a dessert.

If I hear one more time that commercials are the new radio, that no one cares about endorsements and sponsorships, I’m going to take my vinyl records and move to Tierra del Fuego.

Ain’t that a laugh.  Vinyl records.  Even though I’m a big believer in vinyl, that it sounds better than CDs, it’s not even a zit on the ass of the music business, it’s an imperceptible blemish trumpeted by indie record stores on their way to extinction and fanned into flames by a media so out of touch one can’t trust the presidential poll numbers bandied about, since they’ve been so wrong for the entire year.

Point being, conventional wisdom, what is jammed down our throats by people with an agenda, often bears no relation to reality, to truth.

Record companies, managers and agents want to make money.  They want their commissions.  They know that acts are disposable, they can get a new one in to generate cash flow, that they’re the establishment, that they last, and therefore they constantly goad acts to do endorsements, to do sponsorship deals, to take the short money, because they just don’t give a damn about the long.  They want their money and they want it now.  But is this good for the act? Is there truly no price to whoring yourself out?

Of course there is!  You sacrifice AUTHENTICITY!  And that’s what bonds the act to the fan, that’s what keeps the relationship going.  That’s why Crosby, Stills & Nash mean so much less without Neil Young.  It’s why AC/DC is the second largest catalog act.  It’s why Tom Waits has fanatical fans.  It’s why past winners of "American Idol" can’t go on the road and have to star as the umpteenth replacement in the revival of a Broadway show.

An old friend sent me this link:

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

I won’t say every minute of this video is riveting, but I will say it’s more enjoyable than the evanescent Top Ten.  All we hear from the fat cats is no stars ever broke online, but Michael Wesch says otherwise, that the Soulja Boy phenomenon was built on YouTube.  And more acts will gain traction online.  But the reason you’ve got to watch this video is the dissection of the YouTube community, its exploration OF WHAT IS HAPPENING ONLINE!

Rather than passively waiting to eat what is shoveled to them by the old guard, today people create their own content.  Spreading the word regarding its quality by themselves, employing no marketing, no advertising.  And what creates a YouTube sensation is authenticity.  Every commercial online video endeavor has flopped.  Turns out we don’t want Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz to create bite-sized TV shows for our online consumption, but people just like us to display raw creativity, to tickle our fancy through their humanity.

The reason why there’s no allegiance to today’s new acts, why they don’t have careers, is they’re lacking this key element.  They might be singing some vapid song created by Kara DioGuardi or Diane Warren that flows through the commercial sieve, but the audience knows this is pulp, that it’s got no weight, that the act is just a vessel for hacks to make money.  Therefore, they reject the act’s further endeavors.

People love the Hold Steady because they believe they’re authentic.

Fans were pissed at Wilco for taking VW’s money because it crossed with their belief in who Jeff Tweedy and his band truly were.  If Jeff needed the money THAT badly, THEY would have given it to him.  Just like a blogger puts a tip jar on his page to raise funds to go to the political convention, an act could beg for money from its fans AND THEY’D DELIVER IT!  Because they want to believe THEY OWN THE ACT, not the commercial concerns who abuse them on a daily basis.

Maybe synching a song to some TV show is not abhorred by your miniscule fanbase, they want to see you make it, and you’re not really endorsing anything (and probably not getting any real traction either, since this paradigm has been overdone).  But when you associate your music, your image with a COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE as opposed to art, you’re done.  Your career is frozen in time from the moment you make this deal.

Look at the Stones…  Has anybody cared about their new music since "Start Me Up"?  The tour for "Tattoo You" was sponsored by Jovan, now the public knew the Stones were only about the money.  It’s hard to enjoy the new tunes when it’s no longer a band doing drugs, searching for greatness, but a corporation as big and bad as any in the Fortune 500.  Artists are supposed to be PURE!

Don’t talk to me about athletes…  That’s not brain related.  Who an athlete is has very little to do with his performance on the field.  They work for the man usually, and they’ve got to perform their best or be demoted.  Alex Rodriguez doesn’t stand for anything.  Hell, what made Muhammad Ali a legend was NOT fighting, standing up for WHAT HE BELIEVED IN!

Michael Phelps sacrificed in the pool, but we’re not interested in his political beliefs, whereas we want to know everything about our artists, what made them who they are, how they came to this conclusion.  We want to BELIEVE in our artists!  Plaster them with logos and we no longer trust their utterances.  Whereas no one believes a race car driver performs worse because his car is stickered with logos.

Like Michael Wesch says, in a land full of rampant commercialization, we’re searching for authenticity.  You can make some quick money via commercialization, but if you want to have a lasting career, you’ve got to have principles, you can’t sell your audience out, you’ve got to draw people in!

They’ve got to believe your music is uncompromised, that you’re beholden to only one master, yourself.  That you took the road less traveled and you triumphed.  Fans don’t want to know you whored yourself out for the money.  That’s what THEY had to do.  You’re supposed to be BETTER than they are!

So, U2 can still tour and sell records.  Sure, they made a deal with Apple, but Apple is an exception, Steve Jobs is the definitive rock star.

Dave Matthews Band isn’t whored out, and they’re near the top of the gross list, year after year.

But all those other post MTV bands?  Shit, they’ve fallen by the wayside.  We can’t build new superstars, because the audience doesn’t trust who we’re purveying.  They can see the men behind the curtain, pulling the strings.  They see the choices based on money instead of career.  People might like a song, but they don’t believe in the act.

Future stars will build slowly.  They’ll say no more than yes.  And they’ll make money for decades.  While today’s fat cats are living in beach communities spending that CD/video cash.  MTV is not about music.  The CD is dying.  The old guard wishes it had control over the future, but it doesn’t spend enough time in the pit with the audience to see what people really believe.  Today’s exec has CONTEMPT for the audience.  If you want to survive in the creative fields, watch this video.  It will pay more dividends than reading trade publications or listening to demos or listening to Top Forty radio or…

Yes, this YouTube video is a hit.  Michael Wesch’s effort from the beginning of last year has had 6,349,080 YouTube views!  And he’s an ANTHROPOLOGY PROFESSOR!  But the community has embraced him.  And they’re not embracing your act.  And that’s the problem.

I saw the Dave Matthews Band open for Phish at the Santa Monica Civic.

I do what Chip tells me.  He’d told me I had to come see Phish at the Variety Arts Center and I’d watched them blow up.  The DMB was his new band.

I didn’t know that the Santa Monica Civic had a false floor, that it was suspended in such a way that when they started playing "Ants Marching" and the college-aged audience dressed in the same exact clothing as the band members themselves erupted and started moving up and down that the floor would too.  I’d never heard the number before, I haven’t forgotten it since.

During the break, before the headliner took the stage, I went with Chip to a side room, just east of the auditorium itself, that resembled nothing so much as an elementary school classroom, to hang out.  It was there that I met Boyd, Carter and LeRoi.  Maybe LeRoi, I can’t remember exactly, it was fifteen years ago…

This was before Dave became not only a TV star, but a cultural icon, before his humor became widely known.  They were just another band.  Who kept getting bigger and bigger, whose fanbase kept growing.  I followed them to the Palladium, all the way to Staples and the Hollywood Bowl.  And got to know their manager, Coran Capshaw, along the way.  Not incredibly well.  Which is probably why he wanted to have lunch on Tuesday.  To talk in an environment different from backstage.

On the way to the Peninsula, I heard "Where Are You Going" on No Shoes Radio, Kenny Chesney testified not only about Dave, but the band’s drummer.  I told Coran and Chip this when we sat down.  Coran told me Kenny had a place on St. John too.  They were buddies.

It was that kind of conversation.  Catching up, filling in the little details.  Telling me about the status of the band.  How they’d mixed it up, how they were playing better than ever before, with Tim Reynolds on the road with them and two replacements for LeRoi.

LeRoi had been in an ATV accident.  This I knew.  But Coran told me the details.  The four-wheeled vehicle flipped over backwards upon him.  He broke ribs, had a collapsed lung, his shoulder was hurt, they had him in an induced coma for a week.  And three days after he came to, LeRoi checked himself out.  Against the will of the doctors.

And after being home, he got an infection.  The nurse taking care of him had LeRoi readmitted to the hospital.  Where he was on both heart and lung machines.  But he pulled through.

The story was told with seriousness, but no drama.  There was no question, LeRoi was coming back.  Certainly by the first of the year.  We started talking about other things.  The challenges of maintaining a superstar act in these confusing times, ticketing, Music Today.  And an hour later, the phone rang.

Coran carries both a BlackBerry and a Razr.  He picked up the Razr.  He was listening rather than talking.  And after two minutes or so, he flipped the phone closed and became wistful, let us in on his mental soliloquy.  That was LeRoi’s assistant.  They’d called 911.  LeRoi’s lips had turned blue.  They were taking him to the hospital.  He had a blood clot.

Coran traced it back to the infection that had put LeRoi back in the hospital weeks before.  He’d had a hard time fighting back.  And he hadn’t gone into the process in the greatest shape, he had diabetes, other health problems.

LeRoi had flown to L.A. for rehab, he was staying at his house here, just miles away.  Suddenly the story took on a different feel.  Somewhere in the landscape visible from the Peninsula deck, this story was playing out.

Then ten minutes later, the phone rang again.

But this time, the call was longer.  Chip and I engaged in conversation.  For the better part of ten minutes.  And when Coran flipped the phone closed again, he said:

"He died."

A jolt just went through my body, writing this.  I’ve never been in a situation like this before.  I might have met this guy, but in a perfunctory way, I don’t know him.  But he’s part of the lifeblood of Coran and Chip’s world.  And he’s a human being, like the rest of us.  And he’s now gone.

Chip put his head in his hands.  Coran stared into space.  I was in shock.  Trying to decide the best thing to do.  Feeling that I needed to excuse myself, that they didn’t need an intruder, I was just about to stand when Coran got up, said "I’ve got to deal.", and walked off.

Chip asked, WHAT NOW?

I realized that I needed to stay.  As long as Chip needed to.

I figured this was L.A.  LeRoi had probably gone to Cedars.  The news would be on the wire, on the Internet, in a matter of minutes.  I told Chip that Coran was probably trying to beat the press to the punch, in addition to alerting the rest of the band.

DO THEY PLAY?

I didn’t know.  It could go either way.  Maybe they were too fucked up to play.  Or maybe they’d say this is what LeRoi would do.

Chip called Dan, founder of the agency.  Told him and asked him the question too.  The gig scheduled for that night, in Staples Center, only hours away, did it happen?  Dan said what I did.  Maybe, maybe not.

And then it became that moment in "Almost Famous".  The plane crash scene.  When suddenly truth passes between human beings.  Chip and I have a deep, honest relationship, but we touched on subjects we’d never delved into before.

Then, after about forty minutes, we left.

In the car to Felice’s house, the shock truly set in.  I realized why you needed the living around you when someone passed.  If you were alone, you drifted away.

Felice was on her exercise bike, watching "Oprah".  I could barely speak.  She realized something was wrong.  I ultimately got the story out.  It barely registered.  How could it?  You go to lunch and a band member dies, DURING LUNCH?  News like that bounces right off of you, it doesn’t stick.

And it seemed that only Coran, Chip and I knew.  I kept going online.  The band’s Website had not changed, there was nothing in the Google News.  I was in the loop, but no one else was.  This never happens in 2008, where everything is instant, where everybody knows everything all the time.

I spoke with my mother.  But I basically listened.  I called Chip two hours later, as we’d agreed.  He still didn’t know whether the band would play.  He said he’d call me back.  A little after six, he told me to come on down.

By time we got to Staples, the news had just broken.  Maybe by going to Hollywood Presbyterian, the vultures had missed the story.  Ambrosia had written a press release, the news was now out, Chip’s BlackBerry was going berserk.

The halls were almost empty.  Dave was talking to a gray-haired gentleman.  There were no festivities, there was no buzz, but in less than an hour, the band would take the stage in front of thousands.

Coran’s number two said the band had had a meeting, uttered "Back to the van.", their mantra, to remember where they’d come from, their brotherhood.

We went to catering.  Coran nodded his head, but stayed glued to his phone.  It was positively bizarre.

And twenty minutes after the time on the sheet, the Dave Matthews Band took the stage.

I don’t know how you play under those circumstances.

And being in L.A., the roar of the crowd was muted to a degree.  L.A.’s jaded, everybody plays L.A., a concert here isn’t just enough of an event!

But the band is firing on all cylinders.  Coran’s checking the set list as we stand behind the lighting board, he tells me they’re going to play my favorite, "The Dreaming Tree".

The ten minute number calmed my nerves.  Music is a magic carpet loaded with oils and other soothing potions, it’s just what you need when you don’t know what you need, when you’ve got more questions than answers.

And they played "Ants Marching", with even more ferocity than they had fifteen years before.  Their cover of "Sledgehammer" had more power than Peter Gabriel’s.  But the highlight of the evening was unexpected, a rendition of Talking Heads’ "Burning Down The House".

Only played for the first time live two weeks before, the number is unmistakable.  It starts with an ethereal guitar, the drum pounds and then…

Watch out
You might get what you’re after

Whatever the audience expected, this exceeded it.  I’d say the band was a freight train, but it was more like a 747, that had DRIVEN all the way from Charlottesville to Los Angeles and was burning rubber at the airport before finally coming to a rest…  THE TIRES WERE SMOKING!

And just like a modern jet, EVERYTHING was working.  It has to in order to move.  And boy was the band moving.  Musically.  There were no dance steps, everybody was almost rigid in his place.  But Carter’s arms were churning, Dave was spitting into the mic like he was seventeen, and he needed to show the bullies, who he was, where he was coming from.

I’m an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

This was not the hair band eighties.  The members of the DMB were wearing the same clothes that had covered them backstage.  They were not stars, they were MUSICIANS!

There was nothing on tape, no loops, no hard drives.  This night they’d had to conjure the fire from scratch.  They’d had to reach down deep and do it one more time, knowing that their brother was not only gone, but was never coming back.

EVERYDAY

Pick me up, love, from the bottom
Up on to the top, love, everyday
Pay no mind to taunts or advances
I’m gonna take my chances on everyday

The video of the hugger played on the hi-def screens.  The audience sang along, knowing every word.  That’s just what we’ve got, every day.  Until we don’t.

I don’t know what happens when people die.  Is this really the end?  LeRoi had called his business manager just that morning, left a voice mail before the crisis, did he know this was going to be his last day on this mortal coil?  And the recipient of this message, he didn’t receive it until after LeRoi expired.

The audience was cascading in a virtual wave, going up and down in place, not the artificial arena exercise, but something inspired by the music.  We were in unison.

Jump in the mud, mud
Get your hands filthy, love
Give it up, love
Everyday

Get up from that couch!  Go out into the bright sunshine.  Dial your crush and ask her for a date.  It may be messy, but maybe not.  Don’t be somnambulant, get out of your own way, don’t only embrace life, but eat it up.  Everyday.

Interesting rave here. File sharing. Hey, you cant put Pandora back in the box. I guess thats why some of the big acts charge 100-to 250 bucks a ticket. If you cant sell records like the old days might as well fuck everyone for the expensive ticket price right? Ok, its NOT all that way but you get my drift.

I think that "sharing" music is way cool. Its like loaning a record to a friend so he or she can dig it before they buy it. OR like taking a record and making a CD out of it. Mix tapes-Cd’s-MP-3’s are all good. It is just this is a dying business. It’s like the movie the Terminator. "It was all good till the machines took over". Yeah, the fucking machines. If you cant play or sing you suck. Bottom line. There is SO much cheating going on it would scare most of you. Yeah, I bought into that shit for awhile myself so *I* am full of shit too but NO more. It’s all real or I will kill myself. I am no longer with my old scene. I will die and would rather play in front of 500 people that dig the music than be a vibe sucking whore that FORGOT that music is an art form not just a fucking business.

You think Motzart ever got an ASCAP check?  ( no personal comparison of course)

As for young kids digging classic rock, well I have 2 kids in there 20’s that LOVE classic rock. Why? Because its fucking GOOD! The music stands up after all the years that have gone by. Machine/ pro tooled driven music is shit and we all know it. Unless you are so high on X that you dont care then whatever..

Even the Monkeys SANG on there records.

All this bullshit about "studio musicians" having no soul is just laughable. You think its EASY to be a studio guy? Do you know just how much "the guys" contrubted to the hit records of your life? It aint all about reading the little dots guys. There was creativity at the highest level with NO paper or notes! We were all co-writers on the hits we made and didnt see the extra $ taste. I remember working for producers that were not even in the ROOM when the music was being created and accepting there Grammy’s etc..  I know there are alot of muso’s on this blog Bob.

I was there and saw alot. Over 1000 records playing every style with the biggest names ever.

The Wrecking Crew deserves a little ego stroke. Those cats were AWESOME!

Hal Blaine was the drummer with every fucking band in the 60’s as were the rest of the guys whom we all look up to. Rememeber the Section?

All the NYC cats? Nashville, London, Munich etc..

Its all going to shit, much like the USA and the world for that matter. We are in tough times. God Bless our guys fighting a war we cant win and the cost of BILLIONS and no end in sight.

I just hada little baby girl, 11 months old. What kind of a world will she inherit? My older kids work and cant make the rent and pay all there bills cause shit is too expensive. I still gotta help out and I love my kids. What do you do? Life is too expensive. Poor Ed McMahon got thrown out of his house cause he got in too deep. When does it end?

I figure fuck it. File share and then I want EVERYONE to work for free no matter what your job is. That levels the playing field.

If musicians and songwriters dont get paid for what they do why the fuck should  anyone else?

Just an old fuck’s 2 cents.

Have a nice day. haha

Luke