The Weekend Roundup for Friday January 22^nd 2010

Records, Television, and Movies…

If you haven’t read last week’s Weekend Roundup and you would like to know what we’re talking about, click here to get yourself up to speed.

Okay? Good.

As much as newspapers and magazines have changed, and radio has seemingly morphed into a business based solely on revenue, common denominators, and formatics, (although some independent and forward thinking stations are taking some risks and at least attempting to combine radio’s business side with interesting on air personalities, local music, and attention to core music fans), records, and the record industry have become almost unrecognizable from what they were when I was a kid.

As a child it was all about music discovery. Everything was new to me. Radio was the only place you could hear the music being made without leaving your home and going to a club or concert, or catching a performance on the very new and fascinating television set. In our house, the radio was used mostly for the news, weather, and major league baseball.  I can still remember New York Giant Bobby Thompson’s home run that beat the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the 1951 National League Pennant. Actually, the story of that pennant race is riveting drama: Shot_Heard_’Round_the_World_(baseball)

After my grandfather gave me a radio of my own, I became addicted to the music that came tumbling out of the speakers late at night. Going to bed was a dreaded forced march into darkness, the equivalent of being tossed into solitary while the rest of the world carried on without me, unfair at best, unprovoked punishment at its worst. You don’t need sleep when you’re a kid in a world full of wonder and adventure. Your parents are the ones that need you to go to sleep. Of course, they ran the risk of producing another you, but I didn’t find out that risk was worth it until I became a teenager

Records…

First, let me make you younger readers cry.

The most I ever paid for a 45 or 78 single was $1.29. That was the most…and you got 2 songs, not 1. When I started buying singles, they were anywhere from 49 to 79 cents. Record stores had sales, too, and singles could be had as cheaply as 29 cents apiece. Albums were $2.99. 10 to 12 songs usually, a massive picture on the cover, and, if there were liner notes, they were big enough to read without a magnifying glass. Sometimes on Saturdays, when the stores would fill up with school kids like me, they had deals that let you buy 2 albums and get one free. Record stores, like radio, were all about the music, and each one stayed on top of what was new as well as what was popular. They even asked us what we liked, and were curious when we requested a record or artist they hadn’t heard of…just like radio was at the time. If they hadn’t heard of it, they took us to a big ringed binder the size of a Library Bible which contained information on every record company’s releases, adding new pages every week that the labels sent them to keep the data current.

Everybody that worked in the store loved music as much as you did. They knew the songs and who sang them, they turned you onto as many new records as you turned them on to, and you could talk music with them for hours. Record stores were destinations you always looked forward to reaching.

Today it’s a whole new ballgame.

If you’re lucky enough to be in San Francisco, Berkeley, or Hollywood, Amoeba is a throwback to the days when record stores were gathering places for musos and collectors, not soccer moms picking up the latest top 10 nursery rhyme for little Jordan or Dakota, or Boomers replacing their Zeppelin and Floyd CD’s that their friends borrowed and never brought back.

Other Indie owned and operated record shops are tucked away in almost every city, run by the same people for decades, and surviving because even though mainstream radio has all but abandoned them, lovers of music still need to get their fix, and have contact with other, all but forgotten, music fans. The big record store chains? Most of them are either gone or a shadow of their former selves. Their stock limited to the current hits and little else. Rarely will you find an employee that knows anything about the music or artists, even the current, revolving door, here today, gone tomorrow ones. Most of the people who do, work at used CD and vinyl stores, which always seem to have more shoppers in them thank places like Best Buy, whose staff…if you can find one…are more interested in video games or avoiding the customers. I went into a Best Buy a couple of years ago looking for a copy of James Taylor’s October Road CD. It was nowhere to be found. After looking around the CD department for about 15 minutes, I managed to snag a kid and asked him where the CD might be.

“Who?” he asked.

“James Taylor. Been around since the ‘60’s, had a lot of hits. Has a new CD called October Road”, I volunteered, helpfully.

“Is he hip hop or rock?”

“Neither.”

“Okay…I’ll go check in the store room.”

He never came back. For all I know, he’s probably still back there, hiding behind stacks of  Miley Cyrus returns, playing Halo on a PSP he hijacked from the game department.

You can’t read the information on a CD unless you have the eyes of a 13 year old, or a microscope. The sound quality has been shorn of all dynamics and nuance. Record companies seem to release only records that are aimed at existing radio formats, and if an artist doesn’t sell big numbers on their first release, look for them to be dropped before they can build a career. If the Beatles released Love Me Do these days, a record that only reached number 17 in England in 1963, they would be dropped from the label looong before Rubber Soul and Revolver.

I have witnessed record company executives who were unaware that an artist they were introduced to was on their label.

A music business legend recounts the time Neil Young submitted a finished album to his label without his name on it to test their music savvy, only to have it rejected.

I have no trouble believing that.

Records were treasures we took good care of and kept forever, the music part of the fabric of our daily lives.

Most popular music these days, is bought because it’s popular, and rarely because we want to hear what the artist has to say. Those artists who do have a lot to say are heard by far fewer people. Brian Eno put it one way earlier this week:

“Records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. The record age was just a blip. t was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.”

…and in a letter to Bob Lefsetz, bass player extraordinaire Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar said it like this:

“Fuck all this bullshit….
A message to the Killers…the Yeah Yeah Yeahs…Mgmt…Fall Out Boy…etc…try writing ONE song that has the power and truth of The Pretender, or Millworker by JT, or anything by Bruce or “Not Dark Yet” by Dylan or “Won’t Get Fooled Again…how ’bout it, “Monsters Of Folk? Do you have enough ass in your britches?
Don’t look like it…
The Supreme Court just decided to turn over the whole political process to the corporations…any one got any thing to say about that? Ting Tings? Killers? Lady Gaga? Anyone?
It’s not bad enough that our leaders are of no help…where are the “artists”?
If you have nothing to say except “look at me” then… fuck you…remember when music used to mean something? Get your head out your collective asses and write something that speaks to the hearts of men (and women) or go away…”

DK

You can call people like us Old Farts if you like, but records that brag about how much cash, pussy, Escalades, and Bling artists have, doesn’t come close to the Temptations having ‘Sunshine, on a cloudy day…”

Nowhere near close…

Television…

What can I say? Television leads a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde existence. On one hand, it has become the home of beautifully shot, well written, high concept drama and comedy, and on the other hand, it is a cheaply produced, badly conceived sideshow of tired, lame jokes, silly contests, and horrifically embarrassing programs that are anything but ‘reality’. It has gone from 3 networks to hundreds of specialty channels, and made sports a multi billion dollar business. In 7 decades, television has gone from a 2 inch screen with a magnifying glass cover that took it up to a whopping 8 inch black and white wonder, to a full colour, 100 inch screen you can hang on a wall and will soon deliver full immersion 3D images into your home. For guys like me, this is the golden age of television, but only if I ignore most of its most popular content. Has television changed much since its inception? Not really. Technologically, of course it has, but television’s content remains eerily the same. Models being released later this year have internet connectivity. Look for the networks as we know them to become content providers, (if they’re smart) or disappear completely as television finally merges with the internet. I do the majority of my television viewing online already…like everything else, my schedule doesn’t always jibe with theirs. Will we be able to subscribe to just the shows we want to see, or be able to order channels ala carte? Will cable companies just become internet connection providers, delivering everything to our home screens? Or will they price themselves out of existence? Will everything be available on You Tube, delivered to your television screen on demand? Damned if I know, but I am looking forward to Intervision or Telenet, or whatever they end up calling it.

Movies…

Let me be perfectly clear on this. I love movies. I occasionally like a film. There’s a difference. Movies are about risen from the dead cheerleaders who came from another planet, ride dinosaurs and release brain slugs in order to take over the world. Films are about orphans who teach the true meaning of love to a homeless man who used to own a bank. One takes me away from my everyday life, the other is ‘ripped from today’s headlines’ or is based on a human interest story at the end of a local newscast, and is as emotionally manipulative as an adorable 5 year old girl who wants to go to Disneyland. I admit I have had great moments watching a film that engages me with good characterization and well written dialogue, but most films just recreate life and expect me to be impressed. I am. With life, not a film that takes my money and then recreates the drama of life and calls it art. This may be an unpopular position, but unless it’s a biopic about someone I find interesting, or is an accurate depiction of an era and a place I am familiar with, I’ll be over there watching a mutated raptor pull the arms off a giant robot that is crushing tanks with its jaws and waiting for the saucers to bring reinforcements. If they can finally make a decent Superman movie, a real Spiderman flick, keep the Star Trek franchise alive, and Kick Ass, Green Lantern, Jurassic Park IV, Tron, and Hot Tub Time Machine live up to their potential, I have every reason to believe that movies too, are in a golden age, mainly because technology and story telling have caught up with my 12 year old boy imagination. And even if you find it troubling…I am not alone.

www.aintitcool.com

A&R Online

There is no A&R Online this week. Why? Frankly, nothing new came across my desk that sounded worth sharing. That doesn’t mean there weren’t some great releases this week, but I sure didn’t hear them. There were quite a few format friendly productions, but I’m sure the good ones are either already on the radio, or about to be. So…in keeping with the spirit of the last couple of Weekend Roundups, allow me to direct you to our good friends at Radio That Doesn’t Suck. Just scroll down to “Radio Zombie Episode 1” and hear a bunch of songs about radio, most of which didn’t get a lot of play ON radio.

You can hear this show by going to http://www.radiothatdoesntsuck.com/myWimpy.html Scroll down and click on ‘RadioZombie Ep 1’ A&R Online will be back next week.

Win of the Week

I don’t think Conan O Brien is all that funny, but I do think he is a gentleman and a class act all the way. He did the honorable thing by sticking to his defense of the Tonight Show’s sacred time slot, and he wasn’t afraid to man up and leave his beloved show. Not only that, he made sure his staff shared the wealth, negotiating for them in his meetings with NBC, and going into his own pocket on top of NBC’s severance to make sure his staff and crew landed on their feet. Now that is a good man. Look for him to surface (probably on Fox) sometime in September.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gB8ekrnAXQ

Fail of the Week

There isn’t much to say to NBC except…why do the guys that make these incredibly asinine decisions still have jobs? I mean this one alone has cost them over $75 million dollars (money lost on Leno’s prime time debacle and Conan’s pay off) you would honestly expect at least one head to roll out onto the Rockefeller Plaza Ice Rink.

Do the people who own the corporation that owns the people who own NBC even know this has happened? Probably not.

There hasn’t been a smart guy in a corner office at NBC since Brandon Tartikoff left back in 1991 to take over Paramount. If he would have been there, Letterman would be the host of the Tonight Show, like he should have been in the first place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Tartikoff

Parting Shot

It may be unpopular to say this, but I have mixed feelings about the music community’s rally to raise money for the people of Haiti. Drawing attention to the plight of these poor people is, of course, commendable and welcome, but the real heroes of the event are all the viewers who reached into their economically challenged pockets and gave what they could, which collectively turned out to be quite a hefty sum. What bothers me is the fact that the artists involved could have easily tripled or quadrupled that amount without making a dent in their bank accounts. If the urban artists alone, for example, would have given up one Hummer or a Bentley Continental each, I would have been impressed. What does impress me is the incredible amount of work that was done to make this happen in such a short amount of time, and the generosity of the public, who even in a battered and uncertain economy, found a way to contribute to those far worse off than they. In Canada, we are used to seeing people step up in times of need, and to see the America I know and love shine through the mire the country has been stuck in for a decade is more important than any song that was sung, any star that performed, any plea that was made, and for that, God Bless the people involved…especially the ones who gave what they could in such hard times.

Have a great weekend, see you on Monday…

That’s enough for now. Email me at segarini@fyimusic.ca with your comments, complaints, and thoughts…and remember…don’t believe a word I say.

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, The Segarini Band, and Cats and Dogs, and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now provides content for radiothatdoesntsuck.com with RadioZombie, The Iceage, and PsychShack. Along with the love of his life, Jade (Pie) Dunlop, (who hosts and writes “I’ve Heard That Song Before” on RTDS), continues to write, make music, and record.