Enough

Two times now I’ve seen you cry…

            Once in anger…once in love…

                        Both at I.

 

It occurred to me that our sight is misaligned.

            We’re searching for something that’s easy to find.

                        If we look ahead and not behind.

 

So, on those tears I make this vow,

            To forge forward and love you in the now…

                        Anyhow.

 

Enough with tears…let’s have more fun

            Fewer clouds and much more sun.

                        We’ve just got started, we’re not done.

 

I love you through the good times and bad,

            Happy and sad,

                        Even when you’re mad.

 

So if you’ll follow, I will lead

            Just one more line for you to read.

                        Remember the weed.

 

I love you.

GC

Time

One pure love went searching for a mate

And found it, not by careful planning,

Nor diligent unearthing…simply fate.

To Captain and maintain control and chart a steady climb

Is what we ‘ere and swear to, but is it

Simply Time?

And perfect love was made by this

And was not ready long before;

Through adolescence, prepubescence,

Puppy love and so much more.

And Time.

Instead of wedded bliss and perfect happiness

And all things bright and nothing blue,

It quickly turned to traps and nooses,

Little lies and more excuses,

Absent plot, no fault to find,

No blame to claim, none due.

It Wasn’t Time.

And now the circle’s come to full and he can look askance

And claim it was a perfect plan and not by idle chance.

The truth is somewhere in between,

Of luck and fate and God’s will deemed.

The perfect love, found, lost, then found again

Without a single sound is mimed

And starts afresh with explanation

Needed not, nor exclamation

 It Is Just Time.

The Goat

 

There was a man, now please take note,

There was a man, who had a goat.

He loved that goat, indeed he did,

He loved that goat, just like a kid.

One day that goat felt frisk and fine,

Ate three red shirts from off the line.

The man he grabbed him by the back,

And tied him to a railroad track.

But when the train hove into sight,

That goat grew pale and green with fright.

He heaved a sigh, as if in pain,

Coughed up those shirts and flagged the train.

Robert Frost

Gumbo

Cagle’s Cajun Gumbo

 

Ingredients:

 

10 pounds peeled and deveined medium shrimp

2 cans fresh lump crab (or 5 pounds lump crab meat)

1 ½ tbls cayenne ground red pepper

1 ½ tbls paprika

1 tbls salt

½ tbls white pepper

½ tbls black pepper

½ tbls dried thyme leaves

½ tbls dried oregano leaves

1 ½ cups margarine

5 cups chopped onions

5 cups chopped celery

5 cups chopped green peppers

2 containers gumbo filet powder

6 tbls (or more) Tabasco sauce

1 tbls minced garlic

4-6 cans tomato sauce

4-6 cans water (use tomato sauce cans to measure)

 

*Note: Make sure the onions, celery and green peppers are chopped similar in size, otherwise, the flavors will not be consistent. All should be small.

 

Melt margarine over medium heat. Turn to high and stir in gumbo file, Tabasco, garlic and seasoning mix. Stir carefully until spices marry. Add onions, celery and bell peppers. Cook six minutes while constantly stirring. Make sure to scrape pot bottom well with a spoon as the mixture will begin sticking. This adds to the gumbo’s flavor. Add tomato sauce and bring it to a boil, stirring constantly. Then reduce the heat and simmer for an hour, stirring occasionally.

 

While the gumbo is cooking, make a black or red roux. The proportion of oil to flour is 50-50. Heat oil to smoking. Stir in flour gradually, about 1/3 at a time, whisking constantly to avoid burning. When the roux reaches the desired color, toss in some celery, onions and green peppers and remove it from the heat. Stir another 3-5 minutes, then add to gumbo. This will thicken the gumbo noticeably and add to the flavor. Simple rule: If more thickening is needed, add more roux…or tomato paste if you’re lazy. The finished product should be thicker than soup, but not as thick as gravy.

 

After an hour, add the shrimp and crab, stirring occasionally. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer. Cook for 30-60 minutes. Serve over Cajun or regular rice with crackers or French bread.

 

Gumbo is actually better the following day. Store covered in refrigerator. Heat, adding water if mixture is too thick. Serve the same way

Sorry, Dawg, It’s A No

2/14/2007

I watched the Grammy Awards with, as usual, anticipation and trepidation. It’s Music’s big night and along with the highs, you can always expect the lows. It could be a rapper saying “thank you” with uncensored street slang or a diva unable to perform (and making a superstar out of her replacement in the process), but whatever, the Grammy Awards can be as unpredictable as a new PD.

 

This year, the Grammy Awards stooped to a new low.

 

How can an institution that honors past achievements in music hold open auditions during a telecast for some “hopeful” to get to sing with Justin Timberlake? Hopeless is more like it. The audience was inundated with promos to stay tuned for the “winner” of the competition. Other than the winners’ family and friends, who cared? Instead of more opportunities for viewers to hear or see “real” artists, we were hyped with the Grammy’s own version of “American Idol.”

 

Sorry, dawg, it was a little pitchy.

 

What kind of mentality orders more shots of three unknowns and less time for Mary J. Blige to thank her supporters? By the way, the Grammy’s should be ashamed for cutting any artist short on their “thank you’s.” Nobody would be watching this program without the artists. So if Mary J. wants to thank her 22nd cousin twice removed on her mother’s side, let her. But the Grammy’s chose to cut this superstar off so we could find out who to vote for in this ridiculous contest. The producers were more interested in generating ratings (didn’t happen) than honoring music.

 

Grammy, you should be ashamed.

 

I guess it’s just a reflection of the record business in general. It’s been style over substance for quite a while. And record company executives seem quite content to continue to do business as usual while record sales plummet to all time lows. These are the same executives who were convinced that traditional sales would return once pirating was deemed illegal.

 

Nice try.

 

The record business is too busy looking for alternative ways of presenting artists instead of concentrating on the music. A&R now seems to stand for “Always Wrong (with an R).” Artist development does not exist in the halls of very many companies. Why?

 

Simple answer: Record executives aren’t paid to find artists. They are paid to meet quarterly expectations. That’s easier done by repackaging The Beatles than by spending time and money developing a new artist. Why should a record company president look past his own future?

 

The true giants developed the record business because they owned the companies. They were less interested in short term profits than long term growth. That’s not the case today.

 

Thank God for Clive.

 

He’s the first to take advantage of new platforms while continuing to make sure the music is most important. That might take time, but it brings success. Isn’t it interesting that the oldest mogul in the business is the one who is looking far into the future? When he calls it quits, the record business is in big trouble.

 

May you live forever, Clive. And may the last voice you hear be mine.

Time Passages

12/26/2006

 

The passing of time brings the passing of people. It is no great secret that the older you get, the more people you know who die. It’s a fact of life…and death. Getting older doesn’t necessarily mean you get smarter, I’m living testimonial to that truth, but it does mean that your circle of knowledge widens. Put simply, you know more people, which means you know more people who die.

 

The death of someone you know can be tragic, life changing, terribly sad or a milestone, something which marks a particular phase of your life. The latter, to me, was the death of James Brown.

 

I’ve known a lot of people who have died…famous people…infamous people…and people who were important to me in one way or another. Because I have a forum, I’ve written about some of those deaths and shared the lives of those who passed on. But this Christmas marked a particular milestone.

 

James Brown, the self-proclaimed hardest working man in show business, Mr. “Please Please” himself, has passed on to the great theatre in the sky. His death touched me deeply.

 

As a white kid growing up in Mississippi, it wasn’t fashionable to like “R&B” music. If you didn’t like country music, by God, you just might be a communist. And if one showed a delight in Black music (of course, it wasn’t referred to as Black music in those days and times), you were a conspirator or a rebel. I guess I proved to be many of those things.

 

The growth, acceptance and wider marketability of the music of James Brown marked my growth as a person and solidified many of my beliefs in the process. Of course, I just thought it was the music.

 

Late at night, long after my family went to sleep, I used to turn on my radio under the covers and tune in exotic locations to hear music our local radio station would never play. I listened to Big John R on WLAC in Tennessee and Wolfman Jack skipping in from Mexico. Besides selling baby chicks and crosses “blessed by the Saints of Jerusalem,” these famous Dee Jays pumped in the latest from artists like Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Lee Dorsey, Little Richard, and, of course, James Brown. I was forever, wonderfully corrupted.

 

Music became the beat to which my life danced.

 

In 1963, I bought “Live At The Apollo” and my education continued. One year later, I attended my first concert. It wasn’t the Beatles (that would be my 2nd), but it was James Brown and the Famous Flames. I had no idea when I bought the tickets that I would be one of only five white people there. The concert at Jackson State University preceded the demonstrations on the campus by a year, but that evening, there was no racial tension…only R&B harmony as we all, black and white alike, were mesmerized by the music, the dancing and the antics of the Godfather of Soul.

 

Did the influence of James Brown lead me down the path that became my life? Without the influence of his music, would I have participated in the demonstrations a year later at Jackson State and in the process stand on the opposite side of the segregation question from many of my friends? Would I have become the flash point for the KKK when they burned a cross in front of the radio station where I was working as a Dee Jay because I played too much “black” music? Would I have made my mark in radio by the “crossing over” of many R&B records that my competition wouldn’t play?

 

I don’t know. It’s hard to argue that James Brown’s influence wasn’t great. I have no idea if it was the key, but it definitely was part of the pattern of the fabric of my life.

 

Years later, when I was programming in San Francisco, James Brown came to town. I took many of the people working at KFRC to see him live. Afterwards we went backstage. We all tried to connect with James, but he only had eyes for my assistant, JJ. For the next several months, James Brown was in the studios at KFRC as much as I was. He did all he could to convince JJ to marry him…he even asked for my intervention…but he couldn’t pull it off.

 

During those conversations about love and life, I watched my life come full circle as the man who had influenced me so much as I was growing up was now seeking my help. Unfortunately for James, he did more for me than I for him.

 

Perhaps that is the moral of James Brown’s life. He did more for us than we did for him, whether it was a listener or one of the many performers who claim James as an influence. And I’m sure James will continue to influence, both here and in the hereafter.

 

No doubt, Heaven just got a little funkier. I’m sure James Brown’s cape was waiting for him.

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year 2006

1/1/2006

 

2006 was a great year for the music business and an okay year for the record business. It is interesting how an industry that exists on such an exciting and hot product can be luke warm in its approach and down right chilly in the results.

 

 

Record companies are still struggling to grasp the future of digital downloads, while all signs are pointing to diminishing hard copy sales, fast approaching extinction. Brick and mortar record stores are becoming a thing of the past. Soon, they will be as difficult to find as a 45. Remember those?

 

Downloads rose 65% over last year. Although that is down from a 150% increase in 2005, there isn’t a business model in the world that would predict an increase of such drastic proportions. It’s growth other industries can only dream of.

 

Nielsen SoundScan tracks music purchases in the US exceeding 1 billion units for the second year in a row. 1.2 billion units were sold in 2006. That includes albums, singles, music videos and digital tracks. This reflects a 19% increase over the previous year.

  

A telling item in this multitude of figures is Album Sales. Albums, and this includes digital downloads, fell nearly 5% from a year ago. This, while individual downloads increased 40%. It proves that the audience remains unsatisfied with the quality of most albums. Record buyers still find their favorite songs, they just don’t find as many on individual albums.

 

It seems like such a simple thing: make better records. If it were just that easy.

 

Breaking records is much more difficult than in the past. With the restrictions on promotion now in place at all major labels, throwing product at the wall to see which will stick just doesn’t work any longer. Radio programmers are increasingly reluctant (if allowed) to go out on a limb and play new music. It’s a statement of fact that more new music is broken on the Internet than on radio.

 

 

However, there is a light, if only a vague one, on the horizon. Radio companies are cutting back (yet again) on expenses of individual stations. The biggest cutback this year will occur in the line item entitled: Call Out Research. The bane of both industries, call out research is going to be diminished significantly at most major chains. Some stations won’t do it at all for new music, only for oldies.

 

With the changing landscape comes the search for more information to provide a perfect picture for songs that should be programmed. That is why Music Biz is taking significant steps to better reflect the environment. Reporting industry news and gossip, although fun and entertaining, doesn’t really get the job done. What programmers want to know is, “Which records should I be playing.” What record company executives want to know is, “How do I get my message to programmers.” Music Biz will endeavor to do both.

 

With strategic partners unlike any other source, Music Biz will begin delivering a daily informational piece that covers sales, Internet activity, music in alternative medias (movies, TV shows, etc.), iTune action, BDS actual plays, uTube and myspace hits and downloads, plus a variety of other pieces of information to provide programmers with instant information that will help make decisions more informed, if not easier.

 

We welcome your feedback as we try to improve our resources to make Music Biz your source for information vital to the success of our industries.

Where’s The Beef

New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer has the radio and record industries humming with his payola investigation, but I see the end result as more of a paper add. To quote the bard himself, “… a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

 

So he’s wrung a clammy-palmed apology from Sony with a promise to swap no more TVs for adds. Gimmie a break.

 

Where was he when it was really going on?

 

With all due respect to the Attorney General, he’s about a decade or so too late and a hundred or so million dollars short.

 

Ah, the good old days…when record adds were bought and sold with hookers, cocaine and sex. It was drugs and sex for rock and roll…an out of control roller coaster with more highs than lows. Money was spent with abandon…records got played…careers were made. It was life in the fast lane…everything…all the time.

 

Today’s action? Kids’ play.

 

In the good old days, a big screen TV wouldn’t have gotten you one spin on Sunday after midnight. It was no limit poker, baby, and somewhere, sometime, somebody was going all in. You had to call the pot or be left holding the bag.

 

The one big difference between then and now…I mean as far as promoting records is concerned…is not the size of the payoff…although that’s considerable. The big difference is in the passion. Today, there is none. Time was, when a record executive was considering hiring someone in promotion, the key question was the prospective employee’s passion for music. Even in the wildest of times, there was a method to the madness.

 

Promotion people used to play records to radio programmers. And the programmers used to listen. Programmers once took pride in finding the hits. Now, most can only find the Selector.

 

“I broke that record,” was once a cry of pride. Now, does anyone know what it means?

 

Elliot Spitzer has shown a bright light on a part of our business that makes none of us proud. But what has he really uncovered?

 

Incompetence.

 

We’re all to blame. Radio programmers for succumbing to bribes to make their lives a little brighter. Radio executives for not rewarding programmers enough for their hard work. Record companies for promoting auctioneers instead of promoters.

 

For those of you who wish for a return to the good old days, buy my book PAYOLA! It’s a close as you’ll ever get. It’s over, baby. Passion has been displaced. Dispassionate programming has been perpetrated by all but the smaller radio companies. Call out research has developed take out radio…it’s certainly nothing you want to spend time with. And record companies haven’t forged new ways to make careers.

 

Radio didn’t believe it needed record companies. Radio didn’t believe in helping build careers. Radio didn’t believe there was a symbiotic relationship between the two industries. When radio took promotion people out of programmers’ offices, the dye was cast. Phone calls replaced personal visits. The emails replaced phone calls. Are anonymous chat rooms next?

 

It’s a shame that an industry that was once exciting and glamorous has turned into something that resembles a phone solicitation company.

 

It’s sad when the only people in our business who are making headlines are the lawyers.

What’s Next?

Radio is experiencing serious trauma and needs a complete transfusion if it is survive in the new world. We are suffering declining audiences brought on by the influx of new technology, changing lifestyles and boredom. Those in charge of the medium are responding with kneejerk reactions designed to keep losses (both in audience and dollars) to a minimum. Forget gains…it’s all about losing less than predicted. In today’s landscape, that’s a win.

 

How sad.

 

It wasn’t so long ago that owning radio stations was considered one of the most profitable investments around. I invested in three properties in the 90s and my return was four times the original. Today the larger companies are trying to “get small” and Wall Street doesn’t consider purchasing radio stations as a wise investment.

 

What to do?

 

I’m not sure the problem can be fixed. I’m not sure that radio as we know it is a thing of the distant past. The voice of doom? Hardly. More like the voice of reality. I’m not an old guy, yet I grew up in a time when AM radio dominated. FM wasn’t a factor. Music was the mantra and you heard it from your hometown AM station or from distant signals far away. When is the last time you listened to music on AM?

 

Is FM destined for the same fate?

 

Those special people who could save the world aren’t being called upon to do so. Large companies are being run by sales people. It never worked in the past and it isn’t working in the future. Sales people kill programming. It’s not intentional, it’s their nature. For the most part, they aren’t talented in anything except sales. The more they can sell, the bigger their paycheck. How can they make it bigger? Sell more spots. Kill off programming.

 

Idiots.

 

If you clutter up your station, the audience leaves and you have nothing to sell. In the past, when your audience left, they went to another station…or stations. To regain the loss, a smart programmer was hired, commercials were decreased, marketing and promotions were increased and the audience returned. Now, the audience has gone elsewhere…and they won’t return.

 

Is Jack Radio the programming solution to this problem.

 

Far from it.

 

The smart programmers, the ones who got into radio because of the excitement that surrounded it, were never excited. Those people are working for Microsoft. Or Apple. Or a thousand other computer companies that have developed a new generation of delivering music to the masses.

 

Most radio stations succeeded by delivering music to the consumer. That was the primary function…at least to the audience. More music, the best music, new music, old music…it was the music that mattered.

 

Music still matters to the audience, but the delivery system has a problem.

 

Figuring it out will take sharp programming minds. Look around. You can’t find them. The few that remain in radio are hamstrung by outdated parameters designed by sales oriented CEOs.

 

It’s sad.

 

It’s a reality.

 

The only hope is that when the bigger companies sell off their stations, they will be purchased by radio people…those who want their radio station to succeed because it’s their livelihood, not because it’s a good investment. The future of radio could lie in mom and pop operators…not the other way around. Maybe the savior of radio is to return to the days when everything mattered…not just the bottom line in the next quarter. Maybe the future of radio lies less with what Wall Street thinks and more with what the audience believes.

 

Maybe the secret is to go back…to the future.