Radio Radio

The world is changing. In some ways it’s for the better, in some ways for the worse, and in some ways, it’s just change, neither better nor worse.
I am selling some of my beloved CD’s. Music is my life. I’d hate to think how much money I’ve spent on it in my lifetime, but I’ve always lived for the next great song, the next great record, or the next great tour. But reality hits. I don’t have time to listen to all these CD’s first of all. Between working my day job for 10-11 hours a day, attempting to be a decent father and husband, and good ‘ol sleep, there is rarely a whole hour in a day where I can sit and listen to a record beginning-to-end. I still love music, I still get all tingly listening to a great song I’ve never heard, but there is the time factor. There is also the space factor. It’s much easier ripping them on them onto my hard drive, or downloading them. That way I get my music without tripping over it when it is dark.
It’s changing for the ‘ol radio too. Congress, with bi-partisan support seems to be pushing through a bill called the Performance Rights Act, which would force terrestrial radio to not only pay songwriter royalties, but also to pay those who actually performed the song. That way, the twelve people who wrote the latest Britney hit wouldn’t be the only ones getting paid, but Britney and her backup musicians would get paid, also. Most of the other music platforms already pay this out, but for whatever reason, terrestrial radio has been spared. It sounds pretty logical to do something like this. It’s hard to debate the fact that singers and musicians should be compensated when their music is played for profit. If you understand, however, the condition that terrestrial radio is in, perhaps this debate isn’t so black and white.
I grew up listening to top-40 radio on the car speakers, and from the radio at home. In my 'tween years, I was able to discover FM radio, where I was turned onto Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and Pink Floyd. It was also where I discovered alternative music toward the end of high school on KROQ. In college, I began to seek out little college radio stations like KXLU and NPR where they played, and continue to play cutting-edge music. I loved the radio, but somewhere between now and then, it changed. The few Los Angeles area-stations that aren’t talk radio or Spanish-speaking are more tightly formatted than an Imodium AD capsule. No one gets played if they’re not some Jordin Sparks-type flavor of the month. Classic rock and alternative stations are as tightly formatted as the Top 40 stations. It’s a guarantee you will hear “Whole Lotta Love” or “Bohemian Rhapsody” at least twice a day, or if alternative is your taste, let’s just hope you’re a Foo Fighters fan who likes the same four songs. In between this, there are tons and tons of commercials, and more on the way.
Yes, I know free radio has to pay the bills. Commercials do this, so does (hopefully) playing songs that they know connect with people. The fans of terrestrial radio are declining. Some fans are turned off by the extensive commercials or the force-feeding of music programmers. Others are into XM or Sirius, which have more choices and fewer commercials. There is also internet and cable radio. Music fans are also becoming increasingly balkanized. Each type of music has their niche, and fewer and fewer people wish to step outside of it. As a result artists are increasingly marketing to the already converted, as opposed to preaching to a new audience who probably doesn’t care. Look at Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead. Both release records over the last couple of years that were quite successful with little or no free radio airplay or mainstream promotion. There are many others like them, and it is hurting traditional radio.
The passage of this bill, while perhaps not a death knell to terrestrial music radio will cost them more, and the listener will have to deal with more commercials, even tighter programming, and less stations that play popular music. Some will go dark, some will go ranchera or nortena, some will go talk, and others will go dark. The radio people are fighting this tooth-and-nail.
"It's a bad idea in a good economy. It's a horrible idea in the economy we're facing right now," said Kris Jones, a spokesman for the broadcasters' association.
Dennis Wharton, the association's executive vice president of media relations, called the Performance Rights Act "the biggest threat to radio in 50 years."
The millions — and probably billions — of dollars in annual performance fees could prompt stations to lay off workers, decrease charitable donations, convert to all-talk formats or go dark, Wharton said.
To the musicians and record companies, it is an issue of fairness. In virtually all other formats, the performers do get a cut of the royalty pie. It has its share of big name supporters- Sheryl Crow, Nancy Sinatra, will.i.am, Herbie Hancock, Billy Corgan and others have appeared in front of Congress to support it.
Corgan, the leader of The Smashing Pumpkins, told Congress what a fan of radio he was. “I was able to find an audience, in no small measure, because of the long support of my music by terrestrial radio. I am a big fan of radio, and am interested in its continued health and well-being.”
While he acknowledged that songwriters were compensated, it was his thought that the performers should get their cut also.
“If the performance of a song has particular value to a terrestrial radio station in its airing, I believe it is only right to compensate those performers who have created this work. Simply put, if a station plays a song, both the author and performer should be paid.”
It’s by no means a done deal. Over 200 lawmakers have signed on to the Local Radio Freedom Act, a non-binding resolution that declares opposition to "any new performance fee, tax, royalty or other charge on radio for music airplay."
Every story has more to it than it seems. While many of us still rely on traditional radio for their music, it is in decline, and it has its issues. For instance, there is no way on God’s green earth that radio programmers would take a chance on a band like The Smashing Pumpkins these days, but on the other hand, bands like The Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, and Radiohead, along with countless other artists, have fine, lucrative careers without traditional radio exposure.
Should we dodge the fairness question to prop up a fading dinosaur? Or should we also subtly help another fading dinosaur, the large record companies, who stand to score big bucks if the resolution passes through. Many of these performers have record contracts where the record company scoops up a large percentage of the profits. It is not as easy as it seems to answer this question.
The one thing is certain, though, times are changing. Whether you are some middle-aged guy trading in his CD’s, a radio programmer scared for your job, or a country singer whose sole mis-fortune was not writing his own songs, the times are changing. Some ways for the better, some ways for the worse, some ways neither.

Wilco- Retreat or Re-affirmation?

Jeff Tweedy should win the award for “most restless guy in rock”. Nobody in recent memory, except perhaps an early 80’s Neil Young has changed so much release-to-release. Wilco’s albums range from the indie country rock foundation of A.M., to the tortured atmospherics of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, all the way to the de-constructed jam rock of “Sky Blue Sky”. Aside from bassist John Stirratt, there are no other original members of the band, whose lineup changes slightly record to record. “Wilco- The Record” may signal a change. Not only is it the same band that recorded the predecessor “Sky Blue Sky”, but the music represents a sort of full circle for the band.
As far as Wilco goes, this is the most straightforward collection since “A.M.” Take out the guitar noise workout of “Bull Black Nova”, and it sounds like a deeper, richer, more mature version of the band that recorded the debut record. “Wilco- The Song” rocks to an old Velvet Underground riff, while “You Never Know” has a barroom boogie feel to it. “I’ll Fight” would be a radio-friendly song if there were actually a radio station that would play it. This is their most song-based record they’ve made since “Being There”. Guitarist Nels Cline, while he does have some great guitar interplay with Tweedy and Pat Sansone, is more or less reined in, in favor of tighter song arrangements.
It’s truly a band record. The rhythm section of Stirratt and drummer Glen Kotche sounds comfortable and self-assured. Cline, whose guitar playing was the centerpiece of “Sky Blue Sky”, adds more atmospheric touches to the songs. The band’s playing is very self-assured, one of the advantages of actually staying intact over the course of two records. “Sky Blue Sky” also had a band vibe, but that record was more of a deconstruction of the singer/songwriter motif, than the more barroom approach of “Wilco”.
Tweedy is still far from a happy-go-lucky songwriter, but now he often turns his pain into the humorous Lou Reed-styles toss-offs on “Wilco- The Song” or to rockers like “Sonny Feeling”. Laying off the painkillers and alcohol will do that, along with less inter-band drama. The question posed here is whether a happier and more content Tweedy leading a stable band is a good thing for the music, too.
One can’t begrudge happiness, and this happiness shows through musically, if not lyrically on the record. Tweedy doesn’t seem as restless or driven as he did on “Foxtrot” and “A Ghost is Born”, and seems happy being in a band. The result is a record that has some of the best melodies he’s ever written, but lacks the cracked genius of “Ghost” and “Foxtrot”. You can’t deny the chops of “I’ll Fight” or “You Never Know” or the quiet beauty of “You and I” but you can’t help a slight feeling of longing for the baroque pop guitar workout of “Impossible Germany “or the demented Beatlisms of “Kamera”.
Is it a retreat? Perhaps not. A re-affirmation of their classic sound? Perhaps. One hopes that that this record, strong as it is, doesn’t signify the band entering a middle-aged comfort zone. Instead, the hope is for a new blueprint for a stable, yet still creatively restless Tweedy and Wilco to venture into some new realms.

Michael Jackson Long Live The King

My first encounter with Michael Jackson came in the late 1970’s when my friend’s brother put “Off The Wall” on the record player. I won’t say that I was immediately bowled over by his music, but I did like it much better than most of the other post-disco stuff that was on the radio in those days, and some of the melodies were amazing. I couldn’t keep “Rock with You” or “Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough” out of my head, even though I told myself I wanted to. Next came “Thriller”, and the only word for that was “ubiquitous”. It was everywhere. The songs, the videos, the press, and everyone were caught up in it. Even my longhaired stoner friends and I liked it, and we were brought up on the 1970’s singer/songwriter stuff and hard rock of bands like Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. He had that certain “something” you can’t define easily with words without running at the mouth, and he went on to dominate the 1980’s and into the 1990’s with his music and persona. He was our Elvis. And while he succumbed in an eerily similar way as the King, he influenced everything culturally the process. Music, dancing, fashion, and the video worlds were all influenced by him, and continue to be influenced by him.
In the late ‘seventies, there was “black” music and “white” music. Top 40 radio and to a larger extent disco were exceptions to the rule, but outside of the club scene, that was the case. Jackson changed this. My chain-smoking friend’s older brother played “Off The Wall” endlessly, while my pot-smoking friends and I eventually bought up “Thriller”. We weren’t the only ones. “Thriller” is still the best-selling record by anyone, and that means middle class, conservative white kids like me bought it. It opened up some huge doors. Although Prince is a contemporary of Jackson, it is hard to argue against the fact that “Thriller” opened up doors for him to make “Purple Rain”. One of my memories was my friends telling me in 1980 about Rolling Stones fans throwing bottles at Prince when he opened for them. Four years later, many of those fans were buying up “Purple Rain”. It is also not hard to believe that Jackson helped pave the way for white fans to enjoy black music. It was white kids who helped propel MC Hammer and Boys 2 Men to prominence in the late 1980’s and also who made hip-hop such a huge selling sensation it continues to be today. You can trace that all to Jackson. While “Thriller” was artistically not a huge jump, it caught the world’s attention at the perfect time. The rest is history.
Another way Jackson changed the world was through video. While as a medium video is not as huge as it once was, it was a precursor to the internet, where music seems to be retreating these days. MTV was gaining popularity when Jackson came around, and the argument can be made that that MTV helped Jackson as much as he helped it. Either way, his well-produced videos succeeded in expanding on the listener’s musical experience, as opposed to the medium basically being a three-minute ad for a record. Jackson’s videos, especially “Thriller” added elements that weren’t in the song, and added nuances that made fans yearn for his new videos as much as his new songs. It did have the unfortunate effect of making videos the star, where photogenic artists like Milli Vanilli became stars of videos where they didn’t really sing or perform. Many others went on similar formulas, and the result was some MTV stars that couldn’t really sing write or perform. Jackson was never guilty of this. His videos added a cinematic touch to his songs, and added dancers and elaborate effects, as opposed to lip-synching and simple storytelling other artists favored. It also opened up other avenues for Jackson to influence.
MTV taking off turned the whole world on not only to music, but also the fashion and performance the videos featured. The dance moves and the fashion weren’t just for the big cities anymore. Now everyone in the world was turned on to these things. The whole world was now part of the Michael Jackson craze, with the videos leading the way. They not only helped sell records, they created a creative new medium for fans to enjoy music, and made it accessible to all. Not long after “Thriller” took off, it pushed the envelope for fashion around the world. Now you could walk into a department store anywhere and find clothes and music that were once only found in the New Yorks of the world. Now it was universal.
Nobody, not even Elvis has had the effect on popular culture that Jackson has. He created a revolution in music, where what was once considered “black” music is now enjoyed by all. Nowadays, I see my white servers singing to Usher songs, while the Mexican cooks are cranking the hip-hop in the kitchen. We haven’t got to the point where the African Americans are buying up Matchbox Twenty albums, but the revolution Jackson started with “Off The Wall” and “Thriller” endures. He created a similar but shorter-lived revolution in video, where he forced musicans to push the envelope and turn videos from shallow lip-synching ads to a necessary component to newly released popular music. The hugeness of video was a precursor to the internet, which replaced video as a medium of choice for music lovers. There will never be another Jackson or Elvis. The music world is way too overly-balkanized to allow it. There are now many little clans that have their favorite style of music and do not step too far out of it. There are still big stars out there, but their influence will never match that of Jackson. Madonna who is almost as influential as Jackson is aging, and there is nobody coming up that has the talent and charisma to capture society’s zeitgeist the way Jackson did.