STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS — BOBBY COLE and BLOGGERS

"Sharing" entire albums and discographies? Copying? Bobby Cole didn’t even xerox sheet music to avoid buying it. If anything, he worked out the arrangement himself, suiting his key and his voice. Here, for example, is his working version of “Still Crazy After All These Years,” a favorite new song he added to the "Great American Songbook" stuff that his saloon audiences would come to hear. 

Back then, he might play a Leonard Cohen song, or Elton John or Procol Harum, and if a ringsider liked it...they'd ask Bobby the name of the song, and then go out and buy it. That's what it was about. You hear it on the radio or in a nightclub, you read a review of it in Creem, Circus, Downbeat, Rolling Stone etc., and you bought it. Kinda CRAZY what the situation is now: gimme it free, and I don't care who gets hurt. Artists should have a full time job or something. Itunes is rich. Recording music is cheap with Pro Tools. So fuck you and let me enjoy my FREE MUSIC.

February 19th, over a decade ago this, "the blog of less renown" premiered with a post of a BOBBY COLE song. 

He was already dead — and the music business was on the critical list. It’s pretty dead now, isn’t it? Ironically, a big reason is: BLOGS. Early bloggers posted a rare song to call attention to the artist. Soon blogging became a contest, dominated by the size queens posting discographies every day. These queens got so many “nice comments” they began to think of themselves as royalty, and stars. The Queen of Holland fought the Queen of Sweden for MOST comments and most discographies posted in a day. Forget about what the musicians wanted, or how it was hurting the music business. Some bloggers with their R. Crumb photos and Guy Fawkes masks fancied themselves real hipsters and revolutionaries. No, they weren't and aren't. Just jerks with nothing better to do. How easy, to pretend to be in show biz, or to be another asshole Assange, and up and re-up the music all day. 

Blogging was once an extension of music reviewing, with serious writing and a sample track, but it's turned into a literal free-for-all. Rationalizations were rampant:  record stores aren’t going out of business. Artists are rich. Music should be free and artists should tour and sell t-shirts. Like climate change, the deniers kept denying, even when record stores began going under, record labels could no longer afford to invest in new artists, and older artists were dropped by their labels, and dropping dead while on exhausting tours of small venues.   

Anyone telling a Blogfather or Queen of Sharing to have some sense and dial it back, got excuses: “I’m using mp3, it’s not like CD.” Then the items were offered in 320 bit-rate and FLAC. Another excuse: “The album is not yet on CD or mp3.” When it was: “The price is too high!” When the price came down: “We like FREE!” Some happily called themselves pirates, ahar, and were proud of it. Others insisted their piracy was “Freedom of Speech!” The chant: “Copyright is Copy WRONG.” And “This is SHARING." Yeah. Mommy always told me to SHARE, and now, look at me, I’m SHARING!  

When artists such as Gene Simmons and Prince complained, the response was: “You’re rich. Fuck you. We’ll hack your website. We’ll re-up. Google gives us free blogs and if one goes down five will go up. You can’t stop us, you bastards. We love your music, and we give you publicity! Don’t you get it? Why do you want payment?” Add hippie philosophy: “We’re stickin’ it to the music labels, man. To the RIAA. Go think up a new paradigm.” Huh? Like what, Spotify, which pays far less than radio stations did per play? 

It was crazy what most "colleagues" in the blog world were doing, and how they craved fame for themselves. Worse, today many crave royalties, and use Rapidgator and elaborate link-hiding to get money for themselves. This craziness means less good new music. It means less music from our favorite older acts because they don't want to just break-even with self-publishing and they resent the embarrassment of Kickstarter or being on a teeny tiny indie label and begging on social media to "please buy. Blessings."

Who is making money now? Not worthy musicians. Mostly a new wave of pop tarts and rappers and boy bands. They make it off mammoth stadium tours and accept that piracy means a "gold record" is earned by counting YouTube or Spotify plays and not SALES.

Quoting another Paul Simon song, "the music suffers, baby. The music business thrives." The business is no longer run by a Clive Davis or John Hammond guiding artists, or disc jockeys pushing artists by constant play, or by music critics. It's up to mass morons with no taste making Spotify playlists full of crap.

Instead of Tower Records, who published an in-house magazine called PULSE for people to enjoy, music is distributed by comrades at Yadi and in other Iron Country sites. It's distributed via shady "services" that want everyone to buy a premium account so that for $10 a month THEY can distribute hundreds of dollars of FREE downloads to greedy fools. The cry today is “Thank god for blogs in Iron Curtain countries, and the torrents and download services beyond the reach of Capitalist takedown attempts!" Forget that Putin put Pussy Riot in jail. 

Good news here? Well, anyone who wants to buy vinyl or CD music can find it cheap at thrift shops. On eBay, people who used to own record stores are now trying to move 20 or 30 albums for a few dollars and shipping. But they get no offers (not even a come-on from the whores on 7th Avenue...THEY want to be paid, after all, and ex-record store guys have no money!) Oh, too bad, some music lover opened a record store, spent 20 years talking music to customers, and now has inventory nobody wants and a future of unemployment or working at a Burger King. He sells off his stuff on eBay but nobody wants to pay:

Chances are if Bobby Cole was around today, he would be out of a job. Already disappearing in Bobby’s time were the number of hotels and restaurants able to afford a pianist/singer. Soon favorite pure music venues like The Palladium on 14th Street and The Bottom Line a short walk from there, were GONE. With people staying home with their external drives loaded with music and movies for free, “going out” and spending money is not a priority. Campagnola, Bobby’s last stop, no longer has a sign advertising a “name” musician. Most nights it doesn’t even have some anonymous player sitting at the piano for a few hours. 

Everyone has a huge library of music they never listen to, but their hobby is to muse “what do I want,” and then go online to find a blog, forum or shoutbox and get it or ask “anyone got…” followed by “best regards” or “thanks in advance, pals.”  At one time, Etta Jones was paid to entertain in a nightclub, and paid to make albums, and her biggest hit was something called, “Don’t Go To Strangers.” But that’s where people go for their free music. An irony is how anti-social most of social media actually is. Still crazy is the cry of, "We're SHARING!"

Funny thing, the people who SHARE music don’t SHARE their power tools, their "secret" recipe for a dessert, or let somebody drive their car. The blogger who SHARES music like it's a solemn duty doesn’t SHARE his wife. Why not? Sex is more important isn't it? Ian Dury placed it FIRST, with drugs and rock finishing second and third! How about if wifey confesses: 

“I’ve brought guys into our bedroom to bang me. What’s it to you? I’m SHARING. I like sex. Upload and download while you’re not looking. When you're around you get some, too, so SHARING is a GOOD thing. You're upset? Listen, you can't stop me. I'll have a zippyfuck in an alley. I'll take a mega load in a hotel room.” 

The guy says: “You took a marriage vow.” The wife replies “So? Marriage vows are like copyright forms. Just paper.” After a shower or a douche, you wouldn’t even know if I didn’t tell you. And I’m telling you because I believe in Freedom of Speech!” The Queen who keeps bragging about her gang bangs adds: "SHARING saved my life! At the orgy last night, several people...I don't know their real names...said "thanks, I needed that." I felt such love and friendship!"

“CRAZY” is what people were called when they sounded warning signs of disaster. “Still Crazy” is people still ignoring the hazards, and finding excuses to shrug off dangerous and anti-social behavior.  People yawn when they read about another lone gunman killing a bunch of people. It’s no longer a surprise to hear about a blistering heat wave. People don’t even think Internet downloading is questionable and they don't council their kids to be responsible online. 

Google, making billions off the piracy they allow on Blogspot and YouTube, has long abandoned their slogan "don't be evil." 

The bottom line with blogs is simple. Are you doing evil? By evil, I mean, would you tell the artist what you’re doing if you met him? “Hey Neil Young, I’ve given all your music away, in FLAC, on my BLOG. I'm a famous BLOGGER! Every time you paid Web Sheriff to remove my links I re-upped. My BIG BLOG gets hundreds of visitors every day. They love ME, and how I SHARE your music and everyone else's. Isn't that nice of me?”

GONE are most of the original bloggers who led by example, with the idea of keeping the spotlight on the artist. The noble idea of a music blog was to share insights, be generous with rarities you have, and do no evil, with your actions causing massive damage and hurting someone else's business. Too bad it became quantity not quality, and stealing quotes from All Music rather than saying anything original about the discographies upchucked onto the Net to be sucked down by "music lovers."Any respect is "thanks to the uploader." Hey, go ahead and offer the Aretha Franklin tune, in FLAC, and don't have the brains or morals to see the irony in it.

 Bobby Cole lived music and he was always coming up with ideas. Even doing sets at a bar, he improvised new arrangements and sought ways to freshen up the standards. He experimented with music for dance, and he thought up possibilities that might someday become reality. Rather than watch TV, he might grab a piece of paper and lose himself in the music of his mind, translated into...

During the tenure of this blog, a lot of artists have left appreciative comments on the posts. They knew and appreciated that the point of any SHARING here has been to call attention to the artist, not the blogger. The idea wasn't "here's every Dale Watson album" with a brag that "if you leave nice comments about me, I'll give you even more goodies." It was to be humble and respectful of the artist, and instead of swiping an All Music bio and throwing it down along with links, to write, from the heart and mind, something about the artist.

At this point, the word “blogger” has become synonymous with bandit. Thief. User. Egomaniac. Fool. A “blog” is now just free bandwidth for a conspiracy to get product without paying for it.  It’s guilt by association now, so why be part of it? The irony is Dylan sang “to live outside the law you must be honest,” and The Beatles sang “Love, love, LOVE,” and Billy Joel sang “Honesty” and The Rolling Stones declared “You can’t always get what you want…you get what you need.” And no music lovers/SHARERS listen to the lyrics. They just say, “Gimme gimme…in FLAC…I want this…help. Best regards.” Then comes the pious look to the heavens: "God bless us all for SHARING music! AMEN." 

Many artists have ceased to create because it’s not worth it. Others can't live without creating, so they do it and accept that they won’t break even on the cost of even a download album on CD Baby. They're helpless against the new morality which denies damage to the music world, to the climate, to the decreasing number of fish in the ocean, and to the increase in selfishness and fanaticism in people.

As Paul Simon sang it, “it’s all gonna fade.”
     
Really. No blog lasts forever, no person lasts forever, and no planet lasts forever. 

From a gig in Atlantic City, which at one time was a lucrative place for Bobby Cole to perform, here's 

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS