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Sacred Songs and Places: Inspired by George Harrison…

Martin Scorcerse’s new documentary, George Harrison: Living In A Material World, is filled to the brim with sacred places.

The Beatles rise is so well known, that most Rock fans over thirty probably can recite the stops by heart. The Cavern Club, Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, St. Peter’s Church, Twickenham Film Studios, India, Blue Jay Way, and of course, Abbey Road.

For a Beatles fan, Scorcerse’s biopic adds one more sacred location to the roadmap – Friar Park.

The documentary suggests that George’s most sacred place was his Friar Park home, which he purchased in 1970. George devotedly tended to his home and its gardens,while also recording and filming there. It is depicted lovingly on the front cover of his first proper solo album, All Things Must Pass, and mythologized in his video “Crackerbox Palace”.

All these images got me to thinking about my own musical sacred places:

1970: Record department at E.J. Korvettes department store, Brooklyn New York. I made my grandma take me here to buy Beatles records. First 45’s, then albums.

1971-1977: Lebiush Lehrer auditorium Camp Boiberik, Rhinebeck New York. Camp musicals, Friday night services and Gene Lewin & David Vogel “jamming” on Jumping Jack Flash. Yes, Gene and David played that song for six years straight.

1975-1978: Greenwich Village, NYC. Under the arches of Washington Square Park to be more specific. Walked through the snow on Bleeker street, and made believe I was Dylan on the cover of Freewheeling Bob Dylan.

1975-1979: Madison Square Garden: Floor Seats for Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, No Nukes, and many more. Don’t fight it; there is nothing as powerful as a arena or stadium-sized sing-a-long.

1975-1979: Disc-O-Mat record store on 59^th street and Lexington Avenue. $4.99 an album. Great stock, great vibe. It was Tower Records before Tower came east.

1979-1982: Club 57, Tier 3, and the Mudd Club. Trust me, “Dead Rock Star Night” was the PG rated version. Downtown Club Culture and all that it entailed.

1980-1981: 99 Records at 99 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village. I actually managed to spend $20 there for an import version of London Calling on New Years Day. You really had to work to spend that kind of money on an album in 1980.

1979-1982: On-Air studio and record library, WCDB –Albany. Today (10/11/11) is College Radio Day. Remember, If Al Gore really had invented the internet, he would have run a fanzine and programmed a College Radio speciality show in the early 80′s.

1980-1982: JB Scott’s Rock Club, Central Avenue Albany New York: Everybody played JB Scott’s, as Albany routed well with New York and Boston. U2, The Specials, The Jam, Lene Lovich, David Johansen, plus many many more. (Honorable mention should go to The Chateau Lounge, site of R.E.M.’s legendary 11/23/1982 performance)

1983-1987: Maxwell’s, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken New Jersey. The Bongos, DB’s, Raybeats, The Feelies, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, and a host of others on-stage. Steve Fallon, Glenn Morrow and Peter Buck at the bar.

1983-1987: The Ritz, 11^th Street NYC. The Replacements walk on-stage and ask for Boos. Par for the course. On the great shows, it always felt like that balcony would collapse.

1990: The Melody Ballroom: Portland Oregon, & The Off-Ramp in Seattle Washington. Watching the crowd of teenagers stream out of the Melody after Nirvana’s opening set …with flannel shirts wrapped around their waists, they looked like Children Of The Corn. Watching the Best Kissers In the World bicker on-stage at the Off Ramp. Good times.

1991: First Lollapalooza date in Compton Terrace Arizona. Rollins Band, Butthole Surfers, Ice-T, Nine Inch Nails, Living Colour, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Jane’s Addiction. Who knew?

1997: El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles. As the poster said, Bob Dylan and his band! Tiny room, massive legend. Dylan’s last truly great run?

2000-2001: Howard Blumenthal’s office, Media department CDNOW, Ft. Washington Pennsylvania. Late nights and a too early business model — rich media created before broadband was ready.

2003-2007: Sessions at AOL. Sigma Sound, Sony Studios, and a few more. AOL Music. Sessions with Kanye West, Paul McCartney, Al Green, Kelly Clarkson, 50 Cent, NAS, David Gilmour, Green Day and many more.

2005: Live 8 Concert, Outside of the Philadelphia Museum Of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia. Hello world, this is live music on the internet.

2007: Smoke Jazz & Supper Club, 2751 Broadway NYC. Jeremy Pelt, Bernard Purdie, Eric Alexander. Quintessential New York City jazz club within spitting distance of Columbia University. It is always happening at Smoke.

2007-2010: Artist Lounge, Warner Bros. Records, Burbank California. Randy Newman, Tom Petty, R.E.M, Jack White all stop by and ask us to listen to their new albums. Uh, “yes”.

2010-2011: Largo At The Coronet, La Cienga Avenue Los Angeles. A few hundred seats and incredible performances from Loudon Wainwright, Fiona Apple, Rikki Lee Jones, Randy Newman, Aimee Mann and the like. Inside the venue, it’s all about the music — no cell phones, clanking drink glasses, and idle chatter. Yet, the vibe is always warm, loose, and all about the music.

These places are sacred to me.

What are your musical sacred places?

Frank’s Living Room and The Birth Of Hipster Divebar Jukebox

I thought I knew drinking, and I thought I knew about music, but truth be told — I knew next to nothing. My idea of drinking was a 17 year olds technique of dumping out a third of a quart of Tropicana orange juice and replacing it with cheap vodka. Musically, I was up on the latest New Wave and Punk, but I wouldn’t know a George Jones tearjerker or a vintage STAX side if it sat down next to me on a rickety Frank’s Living Room stool, and bought me a snakebite.

After my first couple of visits, I was pretty sure his name was Leo, not Frank. Leo poured with a heavy hand. I remembered that he sighed and smiled when we called him Frank, serving us another round of Vodkas and Grapefruits, while flipping over a mixed tape. The tapes were Leo’s. He played them loud. Ear-shatteringly loud:

Nervous Breakdown

Get Off My Cloud

The Grand Tour

Holiday in Cambodia

September Gurls

After The Fire Is Gone

Lust For Life

Johnny Hit and Run Pauline (Leo had a thing for X)

Gardening At Night

American Music

Cry Like A Baby

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry

Mamma Tried

I’ll Take You There

Rise Above

Color Me Impressed

Time of The Season

Pale Blue Eyes

Sex Bomb

One For My Baby

Like I mentioned, at first we thought he was “Frank”. After all, he lorded over the place — Frank’s Living Room – a majestically squalid, 500 square foot, literally underground bar in the greyest city on earth — Albany NY.

Leo was my personal John Peel. Although he was probably barely 30, Leo was my elder statesman. He taught me about life, love and loss all through the power of a perfectly sequenced mixed tape. Leo trafficked in classic Country, Rockabilly, Soul, Garage Rock, and the most cutting edge, and hardest new Punk and New Wave.

Without knowing it, Leo changed our take on music.
All genres mixed together.
All eras counted.
As long as it was pure, it was on the Frank’s Living Room list.

Leo created the model for Hipster Dive Bar Jukebox.
This station is for the Leo in us all.

Classic Country. Vintage Soul. Select Punk, New Wave & Indie:

Hipster Divebar Jukebox: http://bit.ly/qalK1m

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21
Sep 11

R.E.M. Breaks Up: Glad & Sorry

After 31 years together as a band, R.E.M announced their breakup today.

Michael Stipe:

A wise man once said–’the skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave.’ We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we’re going to walk away from it.
I hope our fans realize this wasn’t an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way.
We have to thank all the people who helped us be R.E.M. for these 31 years; our deepest gratitude to those who allowed us to do this. It’s been amazing.

From my seat, R.E.M is arguably the most important band in the history of Alternative Rock. Part of their importance was certainly the high quality and innovative nature of their music. Their first 4 albums are nothing short of a revelation.

But equally important was R.E.M’s commitment to community, communication and a sense of shared purpose with their fans.

If you talk to anyone who played a part in the College Radio Era of 1977-1983, they will regail you with tales of fanzines, weak college radio signals, dirty clubs, couch surfing, kids as promoters and inevitably, — transcendent R.E.M. shows that brought a community together.

R.E.M hardly invented alternative rock. Other innovators and brilliant artists shaped the scene before, during and after R.E.M.’s heyday.

But if you were lucky enough to engage with them in their prime, R.E.M. certainly changed music, and being a music fan, for the better.

I’m glad to have known them and played a tiny role in their legacy, and I’m sorry to see them go.

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28
Jun 11

Not Blogging Lately — Blame The Fonz, Timmy von Trimble, Thelonious & The NY Times.

I have been slacking off from blogging. Time flies by. Here are 11 things I have been doing instead:

11- Understanding & Pricing Out The Cloud: If you are like me, and flit around from site to site streaming and buying — I’ll easily hit iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, RDIO & Rhapsody in a week — then the various cloud-music propositions presented lately will make your head spin. Keeping track of which one is $20 a year for 15GB’s, which one is $25 for a year for 20GB’s, which one rewards you for shopping at their store, which one matches and duplicates your existing content, etc. — is a crazy jumble. Heck, the Amazon, Google, iTunes options alone make the NY Times pay-wall rules seem positively simple. Jon Pareles from the NY Times on The Cloud That Ate Your Music here.

10- Testing Cloud Music Offerings: Wow. Has setting up something geared for convenience , ever been so inconvenient?! I tried Amazon (glacially slow), Google (makes Amazon look nimble) and what iTunes has to offer so far (you try finding the correct preference prompts to set up an iPad, iPod, iTouch & MacBookAir) — it takes the patience of Job to even experiment with the existing library options.

9- Obsessively Listening To A Reclusive Artistic Genius Who Locks Himself Away At Home: If I told you that I was listening non-stop to a morose, funny, poignant, cutting singer-songwriter who refuses to record with a band, make videos or tour — I’m sure you would say “Really, Paul Westerberg again Jack”. Well not this time, mister. FM Coronog is an incredible singer-songwriter, who in between his 9-5 slog at Home Depot, somehow manages to home-record a brilliant album every few years under the moniker of East River Pipe. Check out his page on Merge Records here, and an unofficial, naturally, YouTube clip below.

8- Thelonious Monk: Universal just put out the complete Riverside collection. 16 CD’s for $80 at Amazon. Redundancies and all, it’s just too much to resist. Details here.

7- Fighting with Anthem Blue Cross: Just how incompetent, obstructive and systematically infruriating is our health care system? Ladies and gentleman I submit to you, from the California Watch website – Anthem Blue Cross:

In its own way, Anthem Blue Cross became the Toyota of the news cycle yesterday. The company was credited with reinvigorating the health reform drive, stood accused of violating California law hundreds of times and was found to exhibit a prolific pattern of profit taking.
It was also linked to a denied liver transplant and a plan motivated by its famous 39 percent rate hike that, well, might not work….The Los Angeles Times reported that state insurance commissioner and former gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner accused the company of violating state law 700 times between 2006 and 2009.

I have spent countless hours on hold with Anthem, back-tracking through paperwork, and generally fighting for my families money. Yet I understand, interrupting my blogging is the least of Anthem’s moral offenses.

6- Driving: I live in (East) Los Angeles, work in San Diego, and have friends and business contacts clustered all across the west side of L.A. Have you ever tried to get to Venice Beach from Pasadena after 2pm on a weekday?

5- Turntable FM: If you are over 30, you no doubt remember gathering at a friends house and playing each other music. Chances are the M.O. was a variation on “OK, suckers…can you top THIS?” Turntable FM recreates this by layering a Social Media blanket over a full song streaming interface. God, that sounds like tech-speak gobbley gook. How about – Turntable FM allows you to go online, play songs for your friends, and is crazily addictive fun. They may or may not have a prayer of a business model, but you should check the site out now here.

4- Thinking about the New York Times: Last weekend I thought I could get some blogging in, but on Friday night I went to see Page One, the new movie about the NY Times. The movie covers a lot of territory – Wikileaks, the run up to the Iraq war, the recession, etc. — all unified by the Times’ struggle for economic stability in the age of the internet. It’s a great movie. My excitement about the film, lead to buying the book Hard News, which covers the history of the times through the prisim of the Jason Blair scandal, and reading the book took up much of Saturday. Next thing I knew it was Sunday, which, naturally, means it was time for the Sunday Times…

3- The NY Times iPad App: Back in March, I wrote about the NY Times pay-wall strategy, and theorized that the approach was just too convoluted and expensive to be successful. Now, after experiencing the total brilliance of reading the NY Times daily on my iPad, I am happy to have my Fonzie moment…

I WAS WRONG.

The digital version of the NY Times, with it’s elegant interface, and superb use of interactive elements like photo galleries, is spectacularly good. I find myself gladly paying for the full subscription, and consuming more content in both print and digital form during the course of a normal week. You can read more about how wrong I was here.

2- WFMU’s The Best Show hosted by Tom Scharpling : I came to this show late. It is tough to explain how a program this meandering, could also be this good. The best I can tell you is that if you could imagine a parallel universe where Howard Stern was 15 years younger, magnitudes hipper, and deeply immersed in indie-rock you would start to paint a picture. Add in recurring guests like John Hodgman, Patton Oswalt and Paul F. Tompkins, and a host of faux callers such as “Philly Boy Roy” (an unflinching supporter of all things Philadelphia), “Timmy von Trimble” (a genetically modified, two-inch-tall racist), and “The Gorch” (a senior citizen from York, Pennsylvania, who claims that the character of The Fonz on the TV show Happy Days was based on him) and you start to get the picture. The fact that all these callers are voiced by Superchunk drummer Jon Wuster just adds to the appeal.

Try the Music Scholar call, here.

1- Working at Slacker Radio: Between the natural arc of learning the intricacies of a new business, and diving into the complexities of music label licensing from the other side, working at Slacker is a time-consuming affair. I consider myself shockingly lucky to be enjoying it as much as I am so far, and can’t wait for everyone to see the things we are working on for the rest of this year. Today’s AOL/Slacker announcement is just the tip of the iceberg, read about that here.

So there you have it. My Spring of non-blogging, cataloged and perhaps a bit rationalized.

Blame the Fonz, Timmy von Trimble, Thelonious Monk, the Times, and gainful employment.

If I can tear myself away from these obsessions, then I’ll talk to you soon.

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8
May 11

Every Word Means No — Ultimate College Rock Video

In honor of the recently announced return of MTV’s 120 Minutes, I thought a flashback was in order.

What better than “Every Word Means No” from Let’s Active — the ultimate 80′s College Rock video?:

DMI Tip: Why is this the ultimate “80′s College Rock video” — I’m glad you asked:

1- This is Mitch Easter’s band. Mitch of course produced R.EM.’s Murmur, aka as the definitive College Rock album of the 80′s.

2- The band, Let’s Active, is simultaneously under-appreciated and legendary.

3- The ‘dancing in place” two-step move that bassist Faye Hunter employed is textbook. Belinda Carlisle took this move mainstream in the video for “Our Lips Are Sealed”.

4- The college-rock pogo is also in full affect. Note, this is a slower and gentler pogo than the 1976-1978 British Punk version.

5- The fuzzy sweater vests. This look certainly swept College Radio programming offices throughout the early 80′s. Kurt Cobain took it to a whole other level when he went full-fledged Cardigan in the early 90′s.

6-The eye-makeup. Many folks think Pete Wentz took “guy-liner” straight from the 70′s Metal and Glam acts; but College Rock certainly had its eye makeup run too. Pun intended.

7-Big hair. Big guitars. Small drum kits.

8- It sends signals of innocence and prolonged adolescence. Note the puppies.

9-The song, “Every Word Means No” put the J in Jangle.

10 – Let’s Active and ‘Every Word Means No” remains to this day, completely obscure. A College Rock necessity.

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5
May 11

This Is a Content War — BLT vs. Toast.

Who said these five things?:

1-A station van. Cool in ’71 when hippies carried their pot and guitars in vans… now a soccer mom symbol that defines not cool, drives a van.

2-Radio is on innovation autopilot at a time when, to prosper in the Google/Apple era you need to innovate DAILY. American media is getting beaten by the Phone and Cable companies in terms of innovation.

3-If the excitement in radio is all about the deals, where does that leave the listener who could care less about who owns who. Death by deal is a real possibility as media’s eye is SO far off the content ball, that we simply can’t compete in the Google/Apple era.

4-(Here’s a history of) THE STARS OF RADIO:
50′s- Deejays
60′s- PD’s
70′s- Consultants
80′s- Researchers
90′s- Group Heads
00′s- Bankers

5-We are at the most dramatic crossroad in Media History ….(the) denial and arrogance is frightening. It’s NOT OK…it’s war. You gotta pull out the weapons, kill the denial and start creating content that’ll win on 21st Century terms. The denial and arrogance is deafening. It’s worse in Radio/TV than newspapers where they still think it’s 1935.

If you guessed that it was one of our Silicon Valley digerati brethren, parked safely inside of a VC venture … you would be wrong.

If you guessed it was an anoymous Pandora exec, or one of my new friends at Slacker Radio … you would be wrong.

If you guessed that it might have been the insightful radio consultant Mark Ramsey … now you would be getting warm. Quite warm.

No, Mark didn’t say these five things. Lee Abrams did. But Mark captured them on his blog yesterday, in a brilliant post detailing a recent roundtable he chaired that included Abrams.

Lee Abrams is a legendary, often controversial, terrestrial radio and media consultant. He, arguably, invented the AOR/Album Radio format. Likewise — Z Rock, Radio Disney and the original programming roadmap of XM Radio all were driven by his vision. Most recently he worked for Tribune in the newspaper buusiness, as their chief innovation officer. You can do your own search and dig deeper into his history.

For now, though, I urge you to read Lee’s “We Are In A Content War” manifesto on Mark’s blog.

You can read the full piece here.

The Final Take: Lee’s comments are as applicable for new media as old media. Deals, data, and technology are all vital; but as Lee says, this is a content war. Content, to my mind, is now the full experience… at the risk of a mundance analogy, I think of it like a great BLT. The platform, interactivity, and social elements are the bread, and the “content” is the bacon, lettuce, tomato. And if you neglect the bacon, lettuce and tomato…what are you left with?

Toast.

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30
Apr 11

Roger Ebert & The Rush Of Human Knowledge

I have been following the film critic Roger Ebert on Twitter and Facebook for about a year or so.

Like many people, I was passingly aware Ebert had been struggling with a number of health maladies that had physically marred him. On the couple of occasions that I did see his image, I have to admit I was shaken.

Still, for the most part, I experienced Ebert pretty much in the same way I experienced any other trusted critic — through his published reviews, digital footprint on Facebook and Twitter and through links of reviews on Metacritic and the like.

That all changed this morning when I saw this incredible footage from the TED conference. Until now, I had no idea of the extent of Roger Eberts illness: thyroid cancer, multiple surgies, and no speech capabality at all of his own.

Watching this video is tough stuff, but it it is also very inspirational. It’s a great testamant to the power all humans have.

All that said; the reason I am posting it this morning is what Ebert says about technology:

For me, the Internet began as a useful tool and now has become something I rely on for my actual daily existence. I cannot speak, I can only type so fast. Computer voices are sometimes not very sophisticated, but with my computer, I can communicate more widely than ever before. I feel as if my blog, my email, Twitter and Facebook have given me a substitute for everyday conversation. They aren’t an improvement, but they’re the best I can do. They give me a way to speak. Not everybody has the patience of my wife, Chaz. But online, everybody speaks at the same speed.

“It is human nature to look away from illness. We don’t enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. That’s why writing on the Internet has become a life-saver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression. I have also met many other disabled people who communicate this way. One of my Twitter friends can type only with his toes. One of the funniest blogs on the Web is written by a friend of mine named Smartass Cripple.” (Laughter) “Google him and he will make you laugh. All of these people are saying, in one way or another, that what you see is not all you get.

So I have not come here to complain. I have much to make me happy and relieved. I seem, for the time being, to be cancer-free. I am writing as well as ever. I am productive. If I were in this condition at any point before a few cosmological instants ago, I would be as isolated as a hermit. I would be trapped inside my head. Because of the rush of human knowledge, because of the digital revolution, I have a voice, and I do not need to scream.”

I urge you to Read the full transcript of Roger Ebert’s TED talk here.

Watch the Ebert TED video (tech is a theme throughout, but if you are pressed start at the 13:00 minute mark):

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15
Apr 11

It’s April 15th….Sigh. Maybe The Beatles Will Help.

Hats Off: To Mike Jacobs for the tip. (The piece kicks in at about 2:30)

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14
Apr 11

Prince Kills It On Lopez — Allows Fans (Even YouTube) To Watch Online

Gearing up for his 21 night stand at the Los Angeles Forum, Prince played three songs on Lopez last night, including this version of “The Beautiful Ones”.

The Final Take: As many of you digerati know, and some of you have experienced first hand, Prince has a complicated relationship with the web. He is notorious for his anti-YouTube vigilance, and his aggressive stance on protecting his copyrights.

So, enjoy this clip while you can.

DMI Bonus Tip: Starting at the 3:30 mark, is this the greatest guitar solo of all-time? I especially like Tom Petty’s “now that is ridiculous” facial expression.