I’m not breaking any new ground by saying the music industry has seen some pretty rough times as of late, I know. I’m also not breaking any new ground by saying “today’s music-buying public doesn’t pay attention to the radio or MTV”. But, therein lies what I’m getting at. WHY don’t people pay attention to new music avenues? My argument : because there ISN’T one worth paying attention to in the first place.

Radio, Radio, Go Away

I stopped listening to the radio around 2002, when I had a car stereo installed with an MP3-CD player. MP3-CDs can hold about 100 songs, which was more than enough to hold me over from point A to point B. On road trips, I could pack 5-10 such CDs and be good for the whole trip. My Faith No More and Nirvana complete discography MP3 CDs alone pretty much did it, frankly.

In 2005, I got the 60GB iPod and the Alpine head unit w/the iPod controller. That changed my life, and ever since, I’ve only used iPods in my car. 60GB is roughly 10,000 songs. That’s almost a solid MONTH of non-stop music.

I know I’m not alone. I can’t even remember the last time I got into a friend’s car and heard a radio. Some of my friends listen to so-called “internet radio”, but it’s actually Pandora – which is personalized streaming music. No commercials, no whacky DJs, no stupid contests and commercials for the local Guitar Center, and no hearing the same Top 20 tracks everyday for 2 months solid. If you don’t like what Pandora’s picked – hit a button and you skip it. Hit a different button and you’ll never hear that track again.

Radio existed on a basic premise that stayed along the same path for most of its existence. I’m 99% sure it’s still the same today. Each station has a particular demographic, and a certain style of music – pop, rock, metal, rap, oldies, etc. – and they stick to a playlist that will provide the largest amount of income from the labels that provide the rights to the music. That doesn’t work today for a few reasons.

1. Because WE want to choose the entertainment being provided
2. we want to choose WHEN we consume the entertainment
3. we want a VARIETY of entertainment to choose from

Growing up, we had about 12 channels on over-the-air TV and about 40 via Cable. Now, there’s over 500 channels – not even including pay-per-view and On-Demand services.

So, some loud-mouthed DJ “spinning the hits” 24/7 (without the ability to skip shit you don’t like and a very small selection of songs rotated through) is just bullshit. It’s dead, and worthless. Interestingly, talk radio has seen something like a 500% increase in their audience in just the last few years. Why? It’s constantly fucking different. Every single second.

Why MTV Ruled

Not to sound like one of those aging “in MY day……” fogeys but uhh… in MY day, MTV was the shit. If a band had even semi-regular airplay via MTV, they’d be superstars over night. I saw Marilyn Manson in 1995 at a small venue called Club Rio in Phoenix, a mere 3 months before Smells Like Children (and by extension, their video for Sweet Dreams) was released. The following tour, they were rocking full-sized arenas and have been ever since. When I saw Nirvana play at an arena in support of In Utero, they said “the last time we played Phoenix was at Club Rio.. which 20 of you were there?”. That’s right… in the early days of Nevermind’s release, Nirvana was touring 100-seat venues. A scant 2 years later, they were playing to a sold-out crowd at the America West Arena in Phoenix (that’s where they held the Phoenix Suns games).

What MTV had that radio never did, and why it would still work today, is variety. There was only one MTV. And, among the possible 24 hours of programming, you would catch a “top 40″ show, a hip-hop show, a rock show, an alt-rock show, a metal show, a blast-from-the-past show, and then music news and a rotating list of weird/alternative non-music programs (like my all-time faves : The State, Beavis and Butthead, and Liquid TV). You never really knew what you’d get from MTV, but you knew it was the pulse of America. It was definitively what was going on for the 12-20 year old demographic. If what they were doing wasn’t what you were into – you knew you could check back in about 20-30 mins and have a whole different experience.

To this very day, MTV is the only station I was ever able to watch for 6 hours straight and be entertained the entire time.

Fuck you, MTV

At some point in the 90s, and it was a gradual change but I can still remember when it happened, MTV decided to get in bed with Bunim-Murray productions to put the abomination of society that was The Real World onto your TV set. Looking back, MTV was that really fuckin’ hot chick that you just couldn’t believe was that cool to you, and you fucked her everyday and you LOVED IT. Then, one day, you find out she gave you herpes. And she’s like “ohh… I thought you knew? It’s no biggie…”. Yes it is, hot chick. Yes it is.

I mean that sincerely. MTV gave the world herpes when it gave us The Real World. We can all pretend it isn’t there, but The Real World gave birth to 90% of the TV programming out there, and the rise of a culture of self-obsessed jackasses who have no concept of embarrassment cause “OMG LOOK! I’M ON TV!”.

Since Cash Rules Everything Around Me, and apparently no one believes in having a fucking soul or doing something wonderful for the world, MTV said “Hey! This reality TV thing gets big numbers every time there’s a fight between two hairbrained shitheads!” and commissioned enough reality TV to take over most of their programming schedule. Goodbye The State, Goodbye Liquid TV, Goodbye Beavis and Butthead, Goodbye 120 Minutes, Goodbye Alternative Nation, Goodbye Headbanger’s Ball, Goodbye YO! MTV Raps, Goodbye fucking everything. They even killed off the ONLY remaining music video show – Total Request Live – even though… who the fuck is going to request videos they have no way of knowing even exist?

Bringing it all together

So, we’ve stopped giving a shit about the radio, MTV gives us nothing but vapid hams having scripted fights, and we’re left with…… what? Pretty much nothing. To discover new music, you must actively seek it out. For my part, I just keep my ears opened. Thankfully, I’ve got Shazam on my iPhone so if I happen into a club here in Hollywood that’s playing a particularly interesting track – I can find out WTF it is. Beyond that, unless I get a trusted review from a friend, I not only don’t know about new bands – but I’ve no easy way of finding out about new albums released from bands I already enjoy. What I do, normally, is check Amazon.com’s upcoming releases.

What confuses me, though, is how bands “make it big” these days. How did you people hear about Lady Gaga? MGMT? Kings of Leon? For me, I heard about Lady Gaga because friends of mine mentioned her from time to time. MGMT I found out about through an interview I read on Patton Oswalt talking about his “best albums of 2008″. Kings of Leon, I found out about because I was trying to watch Faith No More play a reunion show at a festival in the UK, and KoL was headlining, so I thought I’d check them out.

But, seriously, how does a band make waves in this new world? I honestly don’t know. Moreover, since there’s no easy way to find new music outside of a small sampling (via radio and MTV), many people just go ahead and download a whole album and then decide if they like it. Conveniently, if you listen to 12 songs from a band and end up liking 3 or 4 of them, you’ve got a much more favorable opinion of them as a whole than just really liking the only track you’ve heard of theirs.

This is why live acts are making more money than ever before — once you dig that band, you’re more likely to go see them live. In the past, you could safely sit on the sidelines and wait for that next single to drop in a few months, and maybe never make up your mind about the band. To this day, I still don’t own a single Alice in Chains album, and I still have no feelings about them one way or another. Meanwhile, I like MGMT more every time I listen to Oracular Spectacular, despite never having heard them on the radio or seen them on TV.

The future?

Who really knows what’ll come of the future. I know a lot of people are working on it, and I doubt I’ll have a say one way or another. I’ve got a million proposed solutions, and some of them I could prove would work, but I’m just some lowly comedian with a big mouth. We’ll see where it goes from here, but I hope MTV dies a painful death in short order. Shouldn’t it be illegal to call yourself Music Television when there’s no Music on your Television?

Assholes.

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Goddamn they were fucking amazing. For the entire first song ("Downsizer" from their latest album The Greater Wrong of the Right), OhGr wasn’t even on-stage. Having never seen the dude in person, I assumed he was hiding somewhere on the stage. But, there was a mic stand in the center of the stage, with no singer. Still, he sang from backstage. He finally came out for the next song ("Immortal", also from their new album) in this weird white almost-KKK-like outfit. The hood had 4 points on it, like demonic bunny ears or something, that flopped to the side and then there was this huge spear-like "nose" on it. He wore this thick white coat, with this strain of simulated blood and gore ripping out of the center of it, from top to bottom.

Throughout the next 4-5 songs, he removed various parts of his outfit. From tearing the hood off of his head, to then his shades that he was wearing, then ripping his coat-like shirt in two, then he tore off his bandana… it was insane how many parts he had to his costume. They never did shine a direct light on him, so he was always cloaked in darkness – lit up from the huge video screen (and 4 TVs below it) behind him. The screen was doing live video effects of the video feed running off the camera on-stage, occasionally switching to videos of war, suffering, hunger, pain, death and a million other disturbing things I can barely describe. It almost reminded me of a Gwar show at times, like when OhGr pulled out this blood-squirting gun and shot blood all over himself and the crowd. Then, when the gigantic video screen showed a slow-moving shot of G.W. Bush saluting soldiers, OhGr turned towards the screen and simulated shooting him w/the gun. That’s some ballsy shit. But then, the Puppy are Canadian, so I guess they’re not too concerned.

I was also amazed that they reproduced, with perfection, all of their songs on-stage with little or no DAT usage. They had their live drummer (with an insane kit, it was just massive in size and complexity), a guitarist with a plethora of guitars (including one of those 2-necked guitars, which he played most of the time), their keyboardist (cEvin Key) had enough fuckin’ electronics around him to start his own Mars Music shop. I grabbed a quick video of the last 30 seconds or so of "Hardset Head". Had I known this video was going to turn out so well, I’d have grabbed a lot more footage.

Anyway, here it is for your enjoyment.
If you get a chance to check out the Puppy – you should. The only thing I would’ve asked for differently is that during the encore they’d have played Killing Game.

NOW CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

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