YouTube: bit.ly/3vTi7f4
Did you watch "New Rules" on Friday night? Bill Maher excoriates the wannabes. Turns out people only want the best. And if you're not, GFL! (I just made that up. Don't think it'll be embraced by the mainstream, almost nothing is these days, which is kinda my point. As for the meaning, let's just say the middle word sends this missive to your spam folder, the last is what you need in Las Vegas and the first is the opposite of bad.
"New Rule: Equality of Outcomes": bit.ly/3lIxu5s
Every day people e-mail me that streaming is unjust and Spotify is the devil and that user-centric payments are the key to equality. Turns out that Spotify itself addressed all these issues last week: loudandclear.byspotify.com All the questions are answered, but too many would rather live in darkness believing that they've been unjustly persecuted, that their millions have been stolen (I refer you once again to Bill Maher's "New Rule" above.)
Anyway, if you read Spotify's "Loud & Clear" you'll find out that Spotify is not going to allocate any subscription revenue to podcasts, that it's all going to music. As for having a million streams, which almost none of the complainers even has, it turns out 207,000 songs had a million streams last year, 550,000 songs have more than a million streams and over a hundred songs have a billion. So, put your act in perspective. And, oh yeah, one more thing, revenue is divided up per country. And another, studies show that outside the top 10,000 artists, user-centric payments would only generate at most an extra few euros. But Spotify will try it, if the labels approve it. Once again, a lot of the blame Spotify keeps getting should be directed at the labels, who are taking most of your streaming money if you're signed to them.
But it just doesn't FEEL RIGHT! You're working so hard, where's your money? Well, check out the two links above and you'll have answers, but we live in a country where people cannot only not handle the truth, they don't even believe it!
And then you hear Van Morrison's "Latest Record Project."
All day long people send me music, more than could be listened to in a day. And I'd say finding a great one, one that stands above, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but the truth is finding that needle is easier.
You know it when you hear it. Even if it's in the background, even if there's conversation, other noise, amazing how greatness perks up your ears, primarily because it's so damn rare.
I'm not sure I can forgive Van Morrison for his anti-lockdown songs, especially when Covid variants were ravaging the U.K., then again he's always been insane, so many artists are, everybody can't do everything, politics is a skilled job, as is music, and it's the lifers, the professionals, who can deliver.
So, now that there's nowhere for Van Morrison to reach the masses, he's not like the classic rock acts touring every summer playing the same old damn hits, now he's making MORE music, albums galore. And unlike David Crosby he's not complaining, he's just composing and recording.
"Have you got my latest project?"
Huh? A legend speaking the vernacular in a song, coming down off his throne and selling himself like some social media influencer?
"Not something that I used to do"
Ain't that the truth!
"It's not something from long ago
It's not something that you might not know
It's something that I wanna grow
In the present, in the moment"
Van is not working in a bubble, detached from reality, then again, we can question his perception, i.e. Covid-19, but unlike all the oldsters, and the youngsters thinking Spotify is ripping them off, he's not looking back, he's living in the present, and he wants you to too!
Come on, if you go to the show and they don't play the classics you feel ripped-off. There's nobody as calcified as a baby boomer listener.
And at first you might think that "Latest Record Project" is pedestrian junk, and then you hit the change AND IT FEELS SO RIGHT! If anything, it sounds like the work he did with Them back in the sixties. It's simple, with the nonsense backup vocals, there's nothing extra, it's not laden with effects, it's raw and human and alive, so uncomplicated that a computer couldn't come up with it, it wouldn't be programmed for something so simple, in the pocket.
So I'm flicking through new songs. From someone addressing my taste. And I'm stunned that all the music is reasonable, but when I think about hearing it again...nah, it's not that good. And then I come across this Van Morrison track!
There's nowhere in the business for a record like this. It couldn't be further from what Top 40 radio plays, and unlike all the country acts playing the rock of the seventies, it's not pandering to the audience.
And the truth is Van Morrison has made so many records, and not all of them spectacular, that very few are tracking his new work. But that does not mean he should stop, after all, isn't this what a musician does, write and perform music?
Van Morrison is 75 and he's more alive than most of the acts on the chart, singing their written by committee, overwrought records. When done right, music can be so simple, why does it have to be encrusted with all this junk, all these features...BECAUSE IT'S JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
And Van Morrison comes back and teaches us all a lesson.
Come on, if you were alive back then, you can hear this in your ears at the sock hop, in that basement, at that house party. Yet it doesn't sound retro, but FRESH! Even with the hokey, untreated organ solo, come on you don't hear that on records anymore, if it's a keyboard it's a synth, or it's treated nearly beyond recognition.
This is what excited us about music so long ago. It wasn't something you could explain, it was something you felt. And instead of playlists, we had 45s, which we played ad infinitum.
You can play "Latest Record Project" ad infinitum.
YOU SHOULD!
Scratch that, YOU'LL WANT TO!
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