Music Biz Vet Yells At Cloud

It was in the early 90’s that my colleagues in the music business started to have a crisis of confidence. We were the taste makers, the purveyors of what was cool in music, what should be lauded, what should be dismissed. We were the ones who as teenagers had the biggest album collections, or we were in that band that didn’t quite make it. We came from different backgrounds, mostly middle class, but we shared a passion for music. We went to shows, hung out in bars and consumed music like hungry wolves, circling the racks at Sam’s with a few bucks in our pockets and a terrible choice to make; which album to buy? But now, in our 30’s and 40’s, music didn’t seem as good as it had been throughout our teenage and early adult years. Not as good and not as cool. But what is cool? Ever try to define it? How about this. If class is doing and saying the right thing at the right time, then cool is saying it and doing it before anybody else and abandoning it for something new once the masses catch on. And music by the late 80’s, early 90’s was not something we really wanted to get behind and testify about.

It was a creative mid-life crisis. We looked at each other and asked, Is it us? Had we crossed some invisible Rubicon where suddenly the cool switch had been flicked to ‘off’ and we no longer had the gift of musical discernment? Certainly some of it can be attributed to rap and hip hop. Having grown up with pop and rock, it wasn’t music we automatically gravitated to or understood. But it was more than that. We had just survived a decade (the 80’s) of Flock of Seagulls, Howard Jones, Platinum Blond and Culture Club (who I kinda liked at the time). I kept thinking of those measly 12 notes songwriters were forced to deal with and wondered how many permutations could be turned into genius. Perhaps the tap had run dry.

It took a few more years, as we approached the 2000’s, when we took a collective sigh and affirmed that it wasn’t us. The music we were being forced to promote, the artists we were trying to elevate, did not compare with what had come before. Come on now, how can any generation of new musicians compete with this tiny sampling of album releases from 1973?

• Pink Floyd — Dark Side of the Moon
• Stevie Wonder — Innervisions
• Allman Bros. — Brothers and Sisters
• Elton John — Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
• Bruce Springstein — Greetings from Ashbury Park
• John Lennon — Mind Games
• David Bowie — Aladdin Sane
• Eagles — Desperado
• Steve Miller — The Joker
• Billy Joel — Piano Man
• Steely Dan — Countdown to Ecstasy
• Wings — Band on the Run
• Todd Rundgren — A Wizard, A True Star
• ZZ Top — Tres Hombres
• Queen — Queen

There is a fourth dimension and it is called time. You know, for every time there is a season… And for every season there is the music of its time. Mozart was of his time. The Beatles were of theirs. It is worth noting that youth music, music made for teenagers and by teenagers, or slightly older versions of themselves, is a recent phenomena. The precursors to rock were Swing orchestras and crooners like Sinatra. Kids screamed for them too. But it was subversive rock ’n’ roll music (a not too subtle sexual moniker) and its preoccupation with winning, loving, cheating on, losing and sometimes killing the opposite sex that riled parents and authorities and gave its audience a means by which to break with the established reality of their parents. Rock ’n’ roll was coming for your children. And every time those same established authorities attempted to rein in this nascent music form it morphed, it shook the shackles meant to contain it and further corrupted its audience. Alan Fried was fired, Chuck Berry arrested, Jerry Lee Lewis shamed, Dick Clark co-opted, the airwaves made safe for the likes of Pat Boone and Fabian. But then The Beatles came along and the jig was up. Rock music and its subsequent iterations would not be contained, not by the authorities, not by parents or educators or religious leaders. But one group did manage to put a sea anchor on creativity, to stall it long enough that the iconoclastic nature of this music disappeared. Accountants. You heard me.

I remember when it started. I was at a music conference and there was a new seat at the table. The radio programming consultant. What? These were people who knew better than DJs what to play on radio. They codified radio formats and created formulas for how many impressions it took for a listener to get off their butt and buy something. They restricted play lists based on focus groups and arcane formulas. They took away the curation by your favourite disc jokey. They removed those deep tracks we learned to love from play lists. They prevented a station from playing Joni Mitchell next to Foghat. That probably wasn’t a bad idea.

Here’s the second thing that happened. Actually it started first. The industry had been built by ‘colourful’ characters, men with mob connections, dubious resumes and cut throat ambitions. They ripped their artists off and skirted the law. But they let artists be artists. They were fans. They may have treated their artists like pets but they were pampered pets who produced the kind of music I grew up with. And the big companies like Warners knew how to develop artists. It was a simple formula. They kept their hands off. They let artists fail with one album, two albums. Born To Run is Bruce Springsteen’s third album. Dark Side of the Moon is Pink Floyd’s eighth album. Highway 61 Revisited is Dylan’s sixth album. You get the idea. Record companies were run by the people who founded them. And the big labels owned by multinational media companies were poor-cousin profit centres that paled financially in comparison to the more lucrative subsidiaries, namely film and television. So they were left alone. But then something happened: the British Invasion, followed by burgeoning music scenes in Laurel Canyon and Haight Ashbury. The Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 introduced the world to Hendrix, Joplin and The Who. Woodstock (1969) anointed our heroes as cultural icons. And the money came rolling in. And when that happens, you need accountants. The major record labels began showing up in corporate financials as a significant (finally) revenue source. And once you deliver profits you are expected to deliver more the next year. And the year after that. I’m not really blaming the accountants. The bean counters just count. But the CEO’s and CFO’s started making quarterly then monthly then weekly demands on their marketing units, aka labels, and the music business just doesn’t run like that. Artists don’t create to a strict timetable. Coupled with MTV’s evisceration of the radio star, labels began operating on the thin edge of the wedge, pouring their resources into pop acts that looked good on TV and had the moves. Music took a back seat to quarterly results and slick, marketable artists.

Is this completely true? Of course not. We had a blip of creativity during the Seattle scene glory days and bands like U2 and Radiohead managed to remain true to their artistic selves, at least for a while. But by and large, the industry became focused on acts who debuted at number one. Soundscan saw to that. Instead of a Billboard chart which, by some alchemical process, methodically moved an album up the charts to the top 10, the chart became a slave to the cash register, and music was judged as films had been, by opening week sales. All of this served to push serious musicians to the side.

About those musicians. I like to jokingly say that no one is willing to die for their art anymore. But there is more than a grain of truth to that. Like it or not, misery spawns good art. The works of tortured souls fill museums…and our record collections. Let’s take The Beatles as an example. If you had to list them from most tortured to least it would probably come out like this: John, George, Paul, Ringo. Who’s dead? Who’s still with us. Hendrix. Joplin. Morrison. Mercury. Cobain. Great music. Painful existence. And I wonder how much pain the modern musician is willing to accept into their life. The trope in the industry now is that musicians aspire to have the lives of the executives who run the joint. Instant success. Riches. Path of least resistance. They treat their careers as if they were start ups. Come up with an idea. Fail quickly. Move on. Where’s the sacrifice? Where’s the craft? Where’s the ingenuity? No, no, please do not martyr yourself on the alter of music. But maybe quit your day job?

Oh but I do go on.

I like plenty of today’s artists. Hozier. The new Ray Lamontagne album blows my mind. But the reason makes my point. It’s Pink Floyd reincarnated. Vance Joy is enJoyable. Kaleo. Adele. George Ezra. Taylor Swift makes me doubt the existence of god. I mean, would a caring god give one person all of the gifts? Each of these artists is a solid singer-songwriter. But something’s missing. Not missing. Vacant. There’s a hole and its name is the next big thing. Rap and hip hop have been on top for a while now. They’re getting old and comfortable, like a sagging couch you once could bounce off. We’re ready for something so new we can’t imagine what it is. I know I don’t know what it is. I’ll probably hate it. But you won’t.

I wish you’d been around when The Beatles hit the scene. Partly because you’d be as old as I am. But mainly because you haven’t experienced first hand a music revolution. It’s a wonderful thing to be part of. You’re in the middle of history and you don’t even know it. And no one dies in this revolution, well, see above. So you innovators, those of you with ideas for for the next big music business idea, you who have thought up incredible services and ways to get music to its audience. You will not create the next music revolution. But you should be on the look out for it. Be vigilant. For that’s when you will strike and jump on board and own it. And it will be your time to be part of history. Long live rock ’n’ roll. In whatever form it may take. It’s more than a genre. It’s an attitude, a lifestyle, a lens through which to see the world.