It’s a question I hate answering. Mostly because the response, whatever it is, somehow is never as cool as my inner-high school self thinks it should be. There’s a pressure to be wildly cutting-edge. To make a statement. To out-new the next guy. To stun with the unfamiliar, thereby provoking a sort of know-it-all garboil.

Yawn.

So when someone asks me the definitive “what have you been listening to lately?” I usually flounder. A long recall-pause, some stuttering… it’s a tough one. The reason being that frankly, there’s just so MUCH music — oppressively so; an over-saturated, unintelligible wash of noise that you’ve got to constantly wade through, ever-patient… because it is NOT easy and most of the time, FAR from fun. What’s worse is that almost all of it is shit — sorry to say, no gettin’ around it. Hence the bane of the human filter… the time-honored, guilt-laden, self-torturous ritual: a willing covenant to listen to absolutely ALL of it. A bit obsessive-compulsive but that’s the job.

What’s more is, you’ve got to spend time with the music, let it dig in a you, get a hold on you. There’s a relationship there, one that requires patience. Great music isn’t always obvious.

A question I hate answering. But here it is. A list of albums and songs over the past few months that I couldn’t stop listening to, for whatever reason… humor, familiar comfort, je ne sais quoi. Some of it new. Some of the new-ish. Some of it old. Some of it just because.

Under the Waves, Pete Droge
Pete was nice enough to send me his entire back-catalogue recently (including The Thorns, who I’d somehow completely forgot about, shame, shame) and while it was great to be reminded of old faves like “Eyes on the Ceiling,” etc. I kept returning to this one from 2006. I’d played it over and over again then and it still grabs me by the knees! “Electric Green” is my ringer, but really, it’s hard to choose.

What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding (Acoustic), Nick Lowe
Got to see him a few weeks ago in Albany. And even though I’ve heard the song a million times, this acoustic version has the kind of yearning that escaped me before. Hear it here. Buy it here.

The Odd Couple, Gnarls Barkley
I can’t believe I’m saying this… but this record is phenomenal. Outkast meets Fine Young Cannibals. Excellent for cleaning the house to. “Going On.” Uh-huh.

Tattoo You, The Rolling Stones

Altered States, Robin Danar
What a great freaking record. I can’t tell you how many times friends have come over and I’ve literally forced them to listen to Rachel Yamagata doing The Stones’ “2000 Light Years from Home.” And “Yell” is perfect for summer, which I’ve been in the mood for since January.

An Spéirbhéan, Gael Sli
Instrumental. Honestly, not a fan of the other songs but this one, otherworldly — in a Lord of the Rings kind of way.

Momofuku, Elvis Costello
Fantastic album. All those idiot critics…. It’s fun. It rocks. It sounds like the Costello we know and love. What more do you want?

Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Various
Currently, my favorite record of the year, no kidding. And not just because it’s funny. The songs are actually great. Parodies, of course… but still. Mike Andrews (a.k.a. Elgin Park, Greyboy Allstars) is a total genius. Not to mention Dan Bern and Mike Viola (The Candy Butchers). Everything these guys touch is gold. “Darling” really gets me. “Let’s Duet” makes me pee my pants. And even though it cost me a solid $20 (I did wince) it was worth every cent.

Are You Gonna Go My Way, Lenny Kravitz
Lenny gets a bad rap. His new stuff, not interested. But the older stuff, hell yes. I like my rock sexy.

The Alchemist Manifesto, Ocote Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada
Groovy, spacey, spicy. Good for after the barbecue when you’re still sitting on the porch in the twilight.

Blackbird, One Day International
I’ve had the precursor to this record for a while (a demo of sorts) and Blackbird is most of the same songs… superb. Coldplay (as in back to Parachutes) meets Thom Yorke plus a cello. “Little Death” is a damned good one.

Soap and Water, Chuck Prophet
Sexy, sexy, sexy. Chuck always comes through. Especially digging “Would You Love Me?” and “Small-Town Girl.”

Playback, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
I’ve been wanting this box set for a long time and simply forgot to buy it. There is no bad song. Checkout Disc 6, “You Come through” with Lenny Kravitz. Oh mama.

Yael Naim & David Donatien, Yael Naim & David Donatien
I realize I’m a bit johnny-come-lately to this but really, the whole pared-down, delicate singer-songwriter thing pretty much nauseates me at this point… however I loved this. “Paris,” “Too Long,” “New Soul,” “Far Far,” and of course “Toxic.”

Nothings Wrong, Andy Zipf
See him live.

You asked.

© Outlandos Music^TM 2008

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Stop with the single already. Make me an ALBUM. Not 11 shit-songs and an earworm. I want art. I want flow. I want craft. And I WANT to pay for it.

Singles are for casual listeners… a watered-down, comehither billboard, intent on not only getting your attention but manipulating it.

Paraphrasing/quoting Oliver Sacks:

Science dictates that music (a.k.a. singles) specifically designed to hook you in — an “endless repetition” regardless of “the fact that the music in question may be irrelevant or trivial, not to one’s taste, or even hateful — suggests a coercive process,” where music “enter[s] and subvert[s] a part of the brain, forcing it to fire repetitively and autonomously (as may happen with a tic or a seizure).”

Is this what we now require of every song, a calculated brainwash of sound, a “defenseless engraving of music on the brain” (Sacks again) that we literally can’t get out of our minds?

Creepy. And the sure way to mass-produced homogeny.

Oh wait. Kind of like the way radio is now?

Lord knows the last thing I want to hear is a string of singles. Even of my favorite songs. Talk about mentally exhausting.

Think of it like this. The single is a teaser, an aperitif, a taste… a free sample. The ALBUM is the main event, the SUBSTANCE. And albums are for FANS — INVESTORS in music, who stick with you long after the single has wormed its way out. Can you imagine Tattoo You without “Slave?” “Start Me Up” may have gotten you to the table but “Little T & A,” “Black Limousine,” etc. that’s the meat. Yum.

And that’s the model I’m talking about. The model of making ART and selling it because it has VALUE. That’s the model that works because it works for FANS.

Fans GET the album… they embrace the collective idea that music is dynamic; its impact relies on time, place, emotion, mood, memory, presentation, etc., i.e. CONTEXT.

Just think about how many times when you first heard a song, you didn’t like it… but another time, you did. Not exactly accidental. Contextual. And not the kind of thing that happens if you simply play the same single over and over again on YouTube.

But if you put an entire album on replay… you spend time with the songs, you give them room to breathe, you grow to love them. They take on MEANING.

Music surrounded by music that informs it has MORE meaning… the kind of meaning that only a group of songs, purposely arranged and comprising a greater product can create: an all-encompassing audio art-form that is, by its very essence, the bare-bones magnificence of music: a wondrous, sonically shared experience — exactly the kind of thing that fans are willing to pay for.

Because in a world where singles are incessantly everywhere and also free (thereby, inherently valueless) true, artful albums are RARE (thereby, somewhat priceless). And I don’t know about you but I don’t want what everyone else has for free… kind of the same way I feel about extra large, logo-emblazoned T-shirts. Keep ‘em.

But a compendium of great, interesting songs… dead-ringer singles, sleeper hits, introspective soundscapes, covers turned inside-out, indulgent guitar solos (please, bring those back)… that’s what I want. I want to actually hold it in my hand, open up the liner notes and rub my nose in them, inhaling that new-ink-on-paper-smell.

Limited copies. Frame-worthy artwork.

Raise the standard.

Charge me double the price.

© Outlandos Music^TM 2008

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Lately, every time I talk to an artist about achieving “success” (whatever that is these days) we inevitably end up talking less about the music business and more about the startup business. Which, initially, seems to terrify everyone. After all, change is scary. And creating change for yourself, a potentially lonely endeavor, can be even scarier. The trick then, is to convert said fear into excitement (as touchy-feely as this may sound) and to once and for all leave the laissez-faire milquetoast-you at the door.

Let’s start with a crash course in gonzo CEO-dom. Because although we’ve previously discussed the idea of “artist as entrepreneur,” breaking away from old-model ideals like getting signed, getting radio play, hiring a publicist, a manager, a booking agent, etc. requires a little nudge… call it inspiration. Hence, recommended reading:

1. Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start: I’ve mentioned him before. A bear-bones, layman’s-terms, step-by-step guide of how to kickstart/restart your career. For a quick preview, check out his “real bio.” Direct. Witty. No Bullshit.

2. Tim Ferris, The 4-Hour Workweek: Um, who doesn’t want a 4-hour workweek? Entrepreneurial irreverence and real-life application. As soon as I finished reading it, I read it again.

3. Donald Passman, All You Need to Know About the Music Business: Long and boring but with the least legalese-jargon possible. Mandatory for obvious reasons. Make sure you get the most recent edition.

Once you’ve read at least the first two (the Passman will take forever and you’ll probably only want to read it in small doses), do what they tell you to: take their ideas and make them your own, a.k.a. stealing.

Remember, only three things matter. YOU (your music, i.e. your product), your FANS (your core customers), and how you CONNECT with them. (Connection begets power, power begets profit, yada, yada, yada)

Recent inspiring examples of Connection:

1. Prince covering Radiohead: Not only is this cover freaking unreal but it allows him to cut across genres and generations, thereby reaching more potential FANS. I actually got goosebumps.

2. Tom Waits on ?: Quintessential Waits. PEHDTSCKJMBA! Hell yes. Let’s hope he makes T-shirts of that because true FANS will buy them.

Continuing with Connection, Myspace is for musicians and fans, for sure. But LinkedIn is your new best friend. And you thought it was just for businesspeople… it is, i.e. YOU. Who you know, who you know, who you know.

Think of it like this. Everyone’s a potential FAN, (read: dollar-sign). Not only do fans actually buy your music, if you connect with them, they’re more likely to tell other people about it, thus creating buzz. And buzz creates more FANS and eventually, more $$.

FANS (People Who Give You Money) + Connection = People Who Work for YOU for Free

Recent inspiring examples of FANS (i.e. People Who Work for YOU for Free):

1. SleeveFace: It’s cool, it’s artistic. It’s free publicity for all those albums.

2. Rock ‘n Roll Stories: FANS are so inventive! Again, cool, artistic. Real. More free publicity.

Aren’t these the kind of people you want working for YOU?

Be the ball, baby, be the ball.

© Outlandos Music^TM 2008

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When it comes to music-listening, like many, we have options: iPod, CD player, DVD player, phonograph, Tivoli radio, regular radio, satellite radio, Internet radio, etc.   For the most part, we’ve got the bases covered — or so I thought.  Lately, the one gadget I’d assumed I was through with forever suddenly became the most surprising of must-haves, the kind I absolutely could no longer live without.

We needed a cassette deck.  And bad.

Granted, over the past few years I have thought about it… there is that dusty box I almost never open, housing all my old tapes, stashed in storage, at the very bottom of a stack of other miscellania that require minimum accessibility.

But about a week ago, I picked up Eric Clapton’s recent autobiography from the stack of books I’ve been meaning to read forever and finally dug in.

To be honest, for $26, it wasn’t particularly enlightening reading.  The writing is overall subpar and the story lacked discovery.  After all, we pretty much know the deal… world-renowned guitar talent, infamous unrequited love eventually conquered and subsequently destroyed, tragedy upon unthinkable tragedy, and a seriously ungodly amount of drugs. For the most part, the book revisits Clapton’s well-publicized, 40-odd year elusive chase for happiness, from band to band, tour to tour, and lover to lover, all perpetuated by a sort of insatiable numbness fueled by the fog of heroin and alcohol.  In a nutshell: a life — that is, one hell of a life — sadly missed-out on by its owner.  To that end, a really, really, really fucking depressing read.  Nonetheless, I kept on, mostly driven by Eric’s seeming inability, even in retrospect, to have just one, singular “holy shit, this is my amazing rockstar life” moment, to recognize and connect with the magic in his own music that we fans feel.  And while the book ends warm and fuzzy with his hard-won sobriety, his selfless, successful efforts in helping others achieve the same, and the love of a devoted family (all truly miraculous, wonderful things), my desire went unfulfilled.

After 300 plus pages of Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie, D&D, etc., he’d gotten me all wound-up.  I went hunting for that box.

Longing to feel that connection, to re-live my own Eric Clapton “aha” moment, at first, I panicked.  The box wasn’t where I thought it was.  Three closets and a crawl space later, I found it.  Buried in a jumble of various mix-tapes, air-checks, and my earliest and occasionally embarrassing stabs at music-discovery (Bronski Beat Age of Consent, Yaz Upstairs at Eric’s, Alphaville Forever Young, The Ramones Loco Live, The Police Outlandos d’Amour, The Caddy Shack Soundtrack, etc.), was my first ever Clapton cassette: a two-sided compilation of favorites an old boyfriend had pieced together in a valiant effort to expand my at-the-time fairly limited tastes.

Now all I needed was a tape deck.

I’d long ago chucked my Fisher Price Walkman and lilac pastel Sony boombox.  My vintage Bang & Olufsen had been hopelessly busted for at least a decade.  Even the last holdout, my car deck, had been recently replaced with a CD player.

Situation desperate.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have access to E.C.’s music otherwise… there were CDs, records, and Internet for a quick fix.  But it was the ORDER of this particular mix that I’d listened to over and over and over again, indelibly committed to memory so that I expected each song to come after the next.  It couldn’t be any other way.

Side One:
Bell Bottom Blues
Slunky
Have You Ever Loved a Women [sic]
Let It Rain
Anyday
Key to the Highway
Peaches and Deisel [sic]
Watch Out for Lucy

Side Two:
I Shot the Sheriff
Promises
Knockin’ on Heavens Door [sic]
Wonderful Tonight
Cocaine
Lay Down Sally
Willie and the Hand Jive
After Midnight
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Let It Grow
Blues Power

This was how I’d heard it all first, how I’d first discovered the music in music.  How I’d fell in love with blues without even knowing it was blues.  How “Bell Bottom Blues” was the first song that I wished someone had written about me, long, long, long before I even knew what love was.  How at some point, I’d accidentally pressed the record button during “Key to the Highway” so that there was that inevitable irritating silence at the bridge.  How the last song on side one ended way before the actual end of the tape, requiring an impatient couple of minutes of fast-forwarding.  How I’d first heard “I Shot the Sheriff” and was eventually (actually!) bummed by Bob Marley’s original.

More than anything, a dedicated, uninterrupted listen to this cassette what I wanted, in part to feel as though my time spent reading hadn’t been wasted.

So.  It’s official.  I’m now the proud owner of a little Aiwa that we found online today for about 20 bucks in the next town over.  And later tonight, after we pick it up and get the whole thing hooked into the stereo, I’ll pour myself a glass of wine, put on the headphones, and nestle up to the hot, hot picture of Eric adorning the book jacket.  Happy Monday.

© Outlandos Music^TM 2008

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