Sour Cream

Cream’s last live gig was in the Royal Albert Hall in 1968 and their reunion there in May was a huge let-down. Cream was supposed to be just that, la crème de la crème, the best guitarist, bassist and drummer in blues-soaked Britain, rich in vocals. Clapton had just come off John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and was reaching his peak.

I saw him in concert last summer and he was in great form. He played blues, better Cream stuff than I heard on this, Yardbirds, solo stuff, you name it. He’s as happy as he’s ever been in his life and he played that way, clear as a bell. He’s sober now, happily married, just put out one of the cheeriest albums I’ve ever heard off the guy.

He was simply not into this Cream Reunion stuff. I mean, it’s still Clapton, it’s not like he could play bad or anything… he just was not really grooving with the old buds, nor they with each other. They were tense, awkward and you could hear, as well as see it.

Anyone expecting to see Cream better get in their time machine, these are not young bucks excited about music, they’re gentry thinking about their prostates and how they’re going to use the money from the few gigs. Jack & Ginger should be facing Clapton’s estate five times a day cause that legend sure as hell doesn’t need them. He’s the only triple inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, deservedly so. Speaking of which, he wailed with BB King and Buddy Guy at the latter's induction earlier this year.

You can rent the DVD to hear Stormy Monday, Born Under a Bad Sign & Sleepy Time Time & well, just to watch God play the guitar, it’s an awesome sight. But then crank up Disraeli Gears if you really want to hear Cream.

And, if you get your DVDs through the mail, make sure you waste your time on both or somehow figure out which disk has all the great classic Cream songs. I got stuck with the practically worthless disk and although I love the blues classics I mentioned above, I wanted to hear the classic Cream songs, but not enough to bother requesting the other disk.

Power Of The Press

I recently noticed my Blockbuster story was the number two most read story on Slashfilm. Since the site got upwards of 50K hits/day, last time I heard, I'm encouraged by this, especially since that honor usually goes to Brad Pitt stories and mine usually don't show reader click through, which is what gets counted, as they're often so short the whole story appears on the main page. Also, my stories are not visual, they rarely run with pictures.

What this tells me is that internet readers, though they get sucked in by the same big star appeal as anyone else in our mainstream society, are actually quite hungry to make sense out of the current morass that is our entertainment industry. Don't ever underestimate the power of the media and the US entertainment industry. Other than a tech industry, which is reaching limits it never even foresaw, it's pretty much all we've got, except war, and people are getting pretty sick of even that.

As we've seen our media players get smaller, delivering better quality sound and picture, and more convenient, we've been lulled into a sense of trust toward the content and hardware suppliers. It's gonna take a little (a shitload of) doing to get the word out. The mainstream media didn't touch any of the Grokster story and I'm doubtful they'll even cover a Sony recall, which is unprecedented. The mainstream (or as Jon Newton at P2Pnet calls Lamescream) media is definitely part of the problem here. There is more exposure of Karl Rove than what Sony has been up to for the past few years, the consolidation of the industry to ludicrous proportions as Bush's FCC focuses on turning the internet into a monopolistic Big Brother version of our current TV model.

I was hoping that when they learned that one of the biggest hardware and content suppliers in the world has been caught red-handed going overboard with DRM that compromises PCs to within an inch of their lives, it would be covered, let's say 10% of the coverage we saw on the Peterson case. But, I'm watching Katie Couric now cover some deodorant commercial story in the first half hour of the Today Show. Sooo, at least my conscience is clear.

Time To Short Sony

Attention stockholders: you know, I remember a day when Sony stood for the best technology available to bring entertainment to consumers. Now this misguided giant stands for sacrificing its unwitting buyers to security breaches so severe that Microsoft has to step in to try and salvage its own sinking brand. It just keeps getting worse for this company who decided to bring in Howard Stringer earlier this year, who begat Andy Lack and a string of seven figure execs who felt tech’s day was done, it was a commodity business and the big money was in content.


Fed by the success of Spiderman…. they went to town. Now after one of their worst quarters, their music division in a shambles from infighting… we have the biggest scandal yet, and it worsens by the day. If you haven’t already heard, don’t buy any Sony CDs. They’re recalling them. Poor Neil Diamond, Rolling Stone was finally coming around to his schmaltzy rock. Anyway, if you put the CD on your PC, it opens a portal between your PC and Sony. that breaches your firewalls, that can be entered by anyone else, which will monitor your PC and extract information from it. You’ll be vulnerable to one of the many hackers already infecting computers and downloading personal info off of Sony’s former customers.

If you already bought and uploaded, look out for the class action notices that will soon be appearing. So, if this isn’t the death knell of the CD, I don’t know what is. Does anyone still buy those things? Yes, there are plenty of people in little towns all over the place with no broadband. They didn’t put it everywhere. Those folks are disconnected enough to vote for Bush, and now this. Karl Rove is gonna be putting flyers in the church parking lots warning about this one, except that access to all those computers is just what he wants.

I love this story because it will alert everyone to the issues surrounding DRM – Digital Rights Management. The studios, record labels and all major content providers are obsessed with it. They have little Expos to show it to Congress. They won’t let their product off of hard files until they have it. Problem is, digital files are easy to copy. Ultimately, there is no way to completely protect against copying. Until the mechanism exists, on a widespread level, to make sure content providers get paid on the basis of the popularity their product in a transparent, quantifiable way, we will continue to see these entertainment giants at odds with their own consumers.

Sick Of Faking It?

The WGA held a news conference this week calling the mounting number of product tie-ins “stealth advertising” and seeking pay for writing that crap into their storylines, as well as calling for upfront disclosure of the practice, to comply with FCC rules. Similarly, SAG members want pay for holding the crap up, driving it, eating it, maybe even acting as though it tastes good.

The best one I ever saw was the hungry Survivors practically clawing each other to death over a Dorito. I hate Doritos, but almost wanted one after all that salivating and rhapsodizing over the frigging thing. No need to pay them, reality show participants are not unionized, nor are their writers/producers, whatever you want to call this new brand of entertainer personality and their, essentially, editors.

As with the airlines, who had to look for ways to profit in a heavily unionized industry, the entertainment execs need to find ways to grow in a changing industry. It is an environment where consumers are running from traditional advertising, which talks at them in non-targeted ways. Is there anyone over five who enjoys commercials? Do you enjoy them on your DVDs? Now they’re even in theatres, do you feel like a sucker paying ten bucks to be some captive audience for a commercial? You should.

As with their delivery systems, the traditional, huge companies that provide 95% of our entertainment have trouble changing long established, and highly profitable ways of doing things. Nevertheless, distribution and technology is changing, and consumers are constantly looking for ways to avoid inappropriate advertising, such as switching from commercial TV to VOD etc. This is where the product placement comes in… can’t fast forward through that. It’s now part of the storyline. At least it’s less obtrusive and distracting.

The real advance will come as advertisers learn to sell only to those who truly will want their product. Instead of mass hamburgers, smaller companies who successfully find customers will be rewarded and consumers may see a day where they won’t find ads or tie-ins offensive because the products and services advertised to them will be stuff they would truly be interested in using. That’s probably a long time away. Meanwhile, brace yourself while the unions and execs quibble about how to split the shrinking TV advertising dollar which is, and will continue to be siphoned off by internet companies… anyone heard of Google?