"Brevity is the soul of wit." - Lord Polonius from Shakespeare's Hamlet 1602
Everyone knows that the attention spans of people are getting shorter yet rock musicians (people who are appealing to those with the shortest attention spans of all), keep making songs that are getting longer. I don't get it. According to the website: Attention Span Statistics data: "The average attention span in 2000, 12 seconds. The average attention span in 2012, 8 seconds. " Yet, people keep making pop and rock songs longer and longer! Ever since "Let it Be" by the Beatles and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which BOTH were six minutes long, pop and rock musicians keep making songs over four, even five minutes! Is this counter-intuitive? Or just plain, well, "Not smart"?
No. This is NOT what I want!
I think it's not very smart. Let me tell you why... I used to program and select all the music for a very popular morning drive-time program in Tokyo. Our service area covers 42 million homes, so it's huge. I know that many people like me (I've asked) have agreed that the "perfect pop/rock song" is 2.5 minutes long (or thereabouts). Three minutes? Well, okay... Three and a half minutes? You're pushing it. Over 3:30? Hmmm, it had better be as good as the Rolling Stones, "Jumping Jack Flash" (which, I didn't look, but I believe is 3:48!) Still, with that, I will probably cut the last 30 seconds. Over 4 minutes? That's starting to get really difficult to use. Over 4:30 or 5? No thanks... Send me a radio-friendly version, will ya? (By the way, if I must be going to a commercial in, say, 1:40 from now, and I have to cover the time, will I play the 2:30 song and cut 50 seconds, or am I going to play the 5 minute song that has a 48 second intro? Easy call, isn't it?) Yet musicians keep sending us their new singles and the songs are all over four or five minutes. I hate it! Why? OK. It's simple. Did you know that there are ten times more listeners at 7 am than there are at 7 pm (due to people driving in the morning)? Let me repeat that: Did you know that there are ten times more listeners at 7 am than there are at 7 pm (due to people driving in the morning)? And the number of listeners rapidly declines after the morning driving time ends (in Japan, after 8:30 am). So that's why you want your song on before 8:30 am; there's many more potential listeners for your tunes if they are on early. Did you also know (at least in Japan's case) that the average listener listens to FM radio for only twenty minutes at a time? That's right. Now, morning shows (the ones with, by far, the highest ratings) need a quick tempo and a fast pace. We don't have time to screw around. We have to get lots of information, news, weather, sports, traffic, commercials and music shoved into the shortest time span possible. That means we play lots of short songs in the mornings (when, as I mentioned, the ratings are highest)... That means we (well, I won't) play any songs at all that push the 3:30+ mark (or I just lop off a few minutes - do you want that?) I greatly prefer short songs. If you send me a 2:30 song, then I will greatly consider that for airplay during the peak times... But, if you send me a 5 minute song? Yeah, later on in the show... Or never. Long songs are difficult to use. Of course, I'm talking about the fun shows that are on in the mornings (did I say the ratings = more listeners - were higher at that time? I did? Thanks.) That means, in my case, I will play short, up-tempo songs like early Beatles, Stones, Ramones at peak times to get the listeners pumped-up and ready to go in the mornings. We don't do easy listening... It used to be that, long ago, songs were always under 3 minutes. What happened? I don't know. But this "long song" business is foolish. It's simple; if you want your songs played when there are the most listeners, then make them short. If you can't say it in 2.5 minutes, then you need to work on it. Of course, there is a time and place for longer songs.... But generally not on the highly rated morning shows... I'm trying to wake people up in the morning and cram in as much as I can in the shortest space I can... But, then again, maybe people don't care about radio anymore... OK. I can understand that too. But, knowing this, and if you DO want radio airplay, why would you want to make long songs? Your call. NOTE: Oh, and PS: If you are a new musician, then make sure you "Like" the FB pages of the radio programs you are (or want to) promote to. Our FB page is here: https://www.facebook.com/MikeRogersShow/
NOTE TWO: THE PERFECT SONG? I don't know but it's a great example of what I'm talking about. Within the first 30 seconds, you hear the intro, verse, chorus and hook... If this isn't perfect, then it's damned close: The Beatles - Paperback Writer (if link doesn't work, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmVwo2DxkGg)
I can die now. I've gone to heaven. I never thought my band and I would be in a music video with the Talking Heads, Ramones, Monkees, Tearaways, David Bowie, Blondie, Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, the Go Go's and many others. (That's me and my band at 10 seconds!)
The original title of this blog post was: "Charles Bukowski, Gary North and Me - The Best Writers Don't Care What People Think," but I changed that because that makes it sound like I think I am one of the "best" writers.... I'm not... Top 10? Matbe (forgive the typo!) ;) Shit! I wish. I just hope I could become a fraction of what Bukowski or North are. They are great... They don't care what you think. The best writers, I mean; they don't care what people think. I read the famous ones a lot. I think, sometimes, I read new, young ones that could be really good or great someday.
Alas, I am not a great writer but I had a guy as a sort of teacher and advisor to me who is a great writer. In fact, I had two of them who really influenced me greatly. I'm not talking about some writer whom I have never come in to contact with excepting their written words in books I've bought, I'm talking about two who I have actually corresponded with who have written notes and letters to me. Those two guys really influenced me. Their names are Gary North and Charles Bukowski. Everyone knows Charles Bukowski today. He died a few years back. In the early 80's, he was a cult writer and few knew him. After he died, he became famous. Gary North is well known in political and historical circles. He is still alive. I expect that he will be very famous after his demise.
Gary North
Not to be too flippant, but dying is very bad for someone's health but I think it does wonders for an artist's or a writer's career... I will always be grateful that Gary North, years ago, would volunteer advice to me as to how to be a better writer as well as helping me to publish my book. I'll get to Charles Bukowski in a minute. One of the best pieces of advice Gary North ever gave me was something along the lines of "find your topic. Create a thesis. Study it well, write it and rewrite it. Rewrite it again after that. And finally, stick by your guns until someone can prove you wrong with facts or data. If new data comes up then rethink your position."
No, really. I don't give a shit if you buy this book or not. In fact, don't! The proceeds are supposed to go to a home for retired persons but my dad died a few years ago and these assholes from the publisher keep the money, I think.... I will put the entire thing for free online ASAP!
That was important advice for me. It was important because all writers want people to like what they wrote. All writers want to think that they are correct in their thinking. All writers want to be popular and for everyone to like them. But that is just dreaming and not realistic thinking whatsoever. The writer who writes in an attempt to please everyone - will be relegated to writing boring fiction and fantasy (which could be an honorable profession and much more profitable than writing nonfiction, by the way). The best writers, actually, are the ones who don't care what you or I think. The best writers know that readers really loving them or hating them with a passion is the best way to be. When people don't care either way, that's the death knell of any art. People must love you or hate you. That's what Charles Bukowski taught me. The following story about Charles Bukowski and me is pretty unbelievable - if you don't know me very well. I know my friend's will hear this story and say, "Yeah? That sounds exactly like something Rogers would do." I have lots of stories like this. Stories where I met the Ramones, Blondie, Arnold Schwartzneggar, George H.W. Bush, Phil Spector and a bunch of other people that I can't recall at the moment....
The underground 'zine: 60 Miles North
TRIVIA! That's my eldest daughter on the cover.
Anyway, here's the story about Bukowski and how he affected me... In the early 1980s my best friend, Jeff Hughart, and I started a free underground magazine in Southern California called Sixty Miles North. It was a punk underground rag that got pretty popular in a very short time. At that time, free underground magazines were a novel and new idea. Ours was one of the first. At that time, there was this old man who was a popular poet and writer in the underground who (pardon my French) didn't give a sh*t what you thought. He had written a few books about how crappy his work life was and Jeff and I thought those books were awesome. His name was Charles Bukowski. Since my friend and I were ex-punk rockers we thought everything in mass pop culture and modern consumerist society was horrible crap so we gravitated towards "dark" writers and artists like Joy Division and Charles Bukowski. Bukowski's novels, we thought, showed total disgust and contempt for modern society and modern life and we liked that a lot. It seemed it was obvious that Bukowski didn't care if people liked his writing or not. Bukowski thought everything was sh*tty and said so. That's why we thought he was way cool. Back in those days, Bukowski wasn't popular in the mainstream and was a cult artist. Bukowski lived in Los Angeles and it was well known that he liked the horse races. That was convenient for me because I lived near Los Angeles and so did my parents. In fact, my folks liked the horse races. They were horse race crazy too and, this is no exaggeration, by the time I was 15 years old, I had been to every race track in Southern California a hundred times. As kids, we'd run around the horse races areas and knew all the best places to hide and play. Great, eh? As a small child, my weekends were spent playing with other fucked up kids at the horse race track while my parents bet.... Now do you wonder why I am so screwed up today? Jeff and I spent a lot of time on that magazine. It was our release from our jobs and it was fun. It was our creative outlet. We thought that we could get Bukowski to write for our underground magazine. I got a photo of Bukowski and showed it to my dad and mom and asked them if they had seen this guy down at the track. They weren't sure. Since Bukowski was a published author, and pretty old, I figured that he'd relax in the horse track's "Club House." In the Club House it is not crowded as tables cost a few dollars and one can sit, relax and not have to deal with massive crowds of people. Bukowski wrote that he hated the humanity at the horse track. From being there hundreds of times, I knew exactly what he meant, so from that, I also knew he must have sat in the Club House. (If you've ever been to the horse track you know the "smell of humanity": sweat, sh*t and stale cigar smoke....) In the Club House you could have your space and not be pushed and shoved. The Club House was relaxed. Like I said, my parents were regulars so they knew most of the people in the Club House. There were lots of famous retired actors and actresses there. The most famous one that I can remember was Mickey Rooney. He and my dad would often sit at tables next to each other and talk. My parents saw the photo but couldn't remember if they'd seen Bukowski or not. So, I went to look for him. Seriously. If you don't know about horse racing, this might seem impossible to do, but if you go to the track a lot and know that certain race tracks are closed when others are open and that there is only one Club House where the regulars hang out, you'd know it shouldn't be so hard to find some old guy betting on the horses. It's be akin to walking into a huge bar with, maybe, 200 customers or so and finding your guy.
Mickey Rooney played Mr. Yuniyoshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's
So, I went looking for Bukowski at the horse racing track... I figured if I found him, I could give buy him a coffee and hand him a magazine, and a stamped envelope addressed with our mailing address (this was way back before the days of the Internet) and ask him to jot down some junk and send it to us for publication in the magazine. At the track, I showed his photo to some of my parents friends, the workers there and Mickey Rooney. People said they recognized him but hadn't seen him for a while. I tried a half dozen or so different times but I never found Bukowski at the Club House. I gave up. Jeff, on the other hand, tried an approached that I thought would never work in a million years. Jeff then sent him a letter out of the blue to his publisher and included the same sort of stamped envelope with the same tack that I tried. I figured my way at least had a small chance. I figured that if I could just speak to Bukowski personally, I could convince him to write for us. Jeff had other ideas. In Jeff's envelope he included a sample of the magazine and a letter asking for a short poem or submission with a "Thank you." Jeff sent it off and we forgot about it. Well, you can imagine our shock and surprise when the envelope came back to us from Bukowski two weeks later. We were thrilled... You can also imagine our disappointment when Bukowski hand wrote on our letter a "No thank you!" message saying he wasn't interested in writing for our magazine. We were, as Southern California people said back in those days, "Bummed out!" But not to be deterred and being two guys with a huge sense of humor (and this is the part where you'll think, "That sounds like Rogers"), we decided to run his rejection letter as "Bukowski's writing for our magazine." I think we called it, "Rejection from Bukowski." We printed his rejection letter as is and told the story. We bragged how our "zine" had finally hit the "big time" as even famous writers like Bukowski refused to write for us (remember we were a punk rock underground magazine so that was cool!) I have that magazine around here somewhere, stacked inside of some boxes so I'll have to find it and show it to you sometime. After that magazine came out, we, once again, sent one to Bukowski with another note. This time he wrote back to us something along the lines of, "I can't believe you guys are so hard up for material that you'd print my rejection letter." He then added two or three (I can't remember how many) short poems that we printed in the next issue.
U2's Bono is a wanker
From that I learned a great lesson in life and from Bukowski. The lesson in life I learned was anything is worth a try and you can't achieve the impossible until you try to do so and, you have to do what you want. Bukowski's writing, at that time, was very hard core and seemed extremely negative to me (OK. I was negative when I was in "punk mode.") I could have never guessed at that time he'd become so famous and popular. So popular, in fact, that wankers like Bono from U2 would try to increase his coolness factor by acting like he is a friend with Bukowski. Oh, and that reminds me. I do recall one poem he wrote much later, after our initial correspondence. Here is what Bukowski wrote about the time when Bono from U2 called him: (this is from my memory so it isn't word for word):
Bukowski: I got a call from Bono the other day...
He said "Hi!"
I said "Hi!" and asked how Cher was doing...
We didn't talk for
long after
that...
Isn't that hilarious? Bono from U2 is so conceited that he thinks everyone knows who he is so he calls Bukowski to kiss his a*s. But Bukowski is not impressed (or he really doesn't know) and puts him down with the comment about Sonny and Cher! Sensational! Today, I still read material by Gary North and Charles Bukowski sometimesand other great and famous writers. Now, thanks to the Internet and blogging, I think I can spot almost immediately some of those people with potential to be good or even great writers someday. In the day of print and paper, it was more difficult and costly for writers to say what they wanted to say. They had to tone down their message. Now, thanks to blogging, writers can say what they want. The best writers start off as arrogant and obnoxious. They have the raw material to become good someday. These are the young people, though, who need to read and study and refine and write and rewrite. These are the people who need to open their minds and realize that they have so much potential if only they'd throw away preconceived notions. It is as a famous Zen story goes:
A Cup of Tea
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
Fellow bloggers, especially you that are young, become great writers!
Here is my advice to you: Find your topic. Create a thesis. Study it well, write it and rewrite it. Rewrite it again after that. And finally, stick by your guns until someone can prove you wrong with facts or data. If new data comes up then rethink your position. Always, do not care too much what other people think... Good art is not democratic.
And, ALWAYS keep an open mind and realize that many of the ideas we believed at 25 we find out at the age of 50 are completely wrong.
Lastly, let me leave you with this quote (and get off my soapbox):
"We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 - and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?"- Arthur C. Clarke
Psst! Sonny and Cher (Bono) were way cooler than U2's poseur vocalist Bono could ever be! Bukowski was an old man in the eighties. He wouldn't know about U2. Here's the Bono he must have thought he was talking to...
And, when U2 Bono hung up the phone, do you think Bukowski cared?
"… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses" -(Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81)
RAMONES - I WANNA BE SEDATED
What does the nuclear accident at Fukushima have to do with the bombing of Libya? Unfortunately, when it comes to western media sensationalist reporting, quite a lot I suspect. I wrote about that sensationalism in these articles:
When I woke up this morning, I was VERY upset, but not surprised, that the USA has committed aggression, once again, against a Muslim country that posed no direct threat to the safety of the USA or its citizens, by bombing them. The USA is a criminal nation. But you already knew that.
You folks do know that companies like GE (who designed and manufactured the nuclear reactors that had problems in Japan), own the western mass media stations and are apt to promote the party line. Interestingly, and I'm sure quite coincidentally, concerning this particular subject, Libya, as it is, has oil.
Of course, if their #1 export were radishes, cabbage and potatoes, we'd still be bombing them. Why? Because we're the good guys. As the USA is the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh sure! When has the USA ever gone to war to protect the rights of the individual? We never have. It's the oil, baby. The winners write the history books. Do you actually believe that the North went to war against the South over the rights of colored people? Get real.
If you think so, then stop reading this blog immediately. I'm hoping my readers are at least 1/2 way educated and steeped into reality... But, then again, judging from recent events, I guess that that might be asking a lot.
Now, before you ask for me to be committed to an insane asylum, listen to this from a reader, Alex Kane, from the killer rock band Anti-Product, in Los Angeles who makes an excellent point:
"I can easily see that the earthquake and tsunami and the pain and suffering and loss that so many Japanese souls are coping with now could have been exploited as a distraction to get the bombers to Libya and start imposing some "democracy." At least these pigs are consistent in their arrogance and stupidity. "
Bingo! Fuxking A! That's why your band kicks ass and that's why your band will never be a success.... Because Anti-Product is not full of sh*t ! Anti-Product rawks!
ANTI-PRODUCT - BETTER THAN THIS
We've been snookered once again.
Just like when Bill Clinton bombed Serbia and Bosnia Just because a fat chick was giving him blow jobs at the Whitehouse; we have to bomb a bunch of sub-human Muslims... Sorry, to inform you of this, standard white person, but we've been snookered again. It sucks but that's the way it is.
If you don't see this and you don' agree with me, then you must be living like the cats with the Bee-Bop Hats as they are living in another world. They's living in the past... It's another world....
