You'll Never Find

As long as you live
Someone who loves you tender like I do
You'll never find, no matter where you search
Someone who cares about you the way I do

Whoa, I'm not braggin' on myself, baby
But I'm the one who loves you
And there's no one else, no-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh one else

You'll never find, it'll take the end of all time
Someone to understand you like I do
You'll never find the rhythm, the rhyme
All the magic we shared, just us two

Whoa, I'm not tryin' to make you stay, baby
But I know some how, some day, some way
You are (you're gonna miss my lovin')
You're gonna miss my lovin' (you're gonna miss my lovin')
You're gonna miss my lovin' (you're gonna miss my lovin')
You're gonna miss, you're gonna miss my lo-o-ove

Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh (you're gonna miss my lovin')
Late in the midnight hour, baby (you're gonna miss my lovin')
When it's cold outside (you're gonna miss my lovin')
You're gonna miss, you're gonna miss my lo-o-ove

You'll never find another love like mine
Someone who needs you like I do
You'll never see what you've found in me
You'll keep searching and searching your whole life through
Whoa, I don't wish you no bad luck, baby
But there's no ifs and buts or maybes

You're gonna, You're gonna miss (miss my lovin')
You're gonna miss my lovin' (you're gonna miss my lovin')
I know you're gonna my lovin' (you're gonna miss my lovin')
You're gonna miss, you're gonna miss my lo-o-ove

Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh (you're gonna miss my lovin')
Late in the midnight hour, baby (you're gonna miss my lovin')
When it gets real cold outside (you're gonna miss my lovin')
I know, I know that you are gonna miss my lo-o-ove

Let me tell you that you're gonna miss my lovin'
Yes you will, baby (you're gonna miss my lovin')
When I'm long gon
I know, I know, I know that you are gonna miss

We will miss your voice, Lou, but your legacy will continue on.
An Evening of Stars, started by Lou Rawls, has raised over $250M for the United Negro College Fund and will be broadcast on KRON this Friday evening.

I love the lyrics in this song. It conveys the way I feel about someone in my own life. It reminds me of a film I reviewed on this blog, After Sunset, where two people meet up ten years later and realize that a special connection they had was a lot more rare and valuable then they originally thought. But, what if one of them did realize at the time how special it was and had to watch the other one dither around for ten years waiting for them to figure it out?

Well, you'd say something like Lou does here. Hey, get a clue. You think you're gonna find this again, cause you lucked out and don't appreciate that you really won the lottery. It's like winning the Oscar at a young age or something, you haven't really worked long, it just sort of comes your way. It's only later, when it goes away, you realize what you had. Like that Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi, "Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got till it's gone".

Well, now Lou is gone, and we will definitely miss him. And, if you didn't appreciate him while he was here... there's always an upcoming biopic.

Producers Reward Production

It sounds axiomatic, but, in reality, the very exclusive 2.000 member Producers Guild of America usually awards big budget, high grossing movies. However, after being battered by the internet and seeing Netflix grow more than any studio, the PGA today nominated a roster of films that clearly show an awareness of where and how to profit in the film industry.

Nominated for best picture, by the newly expanded Guild (grown by 20% last year) are Focus Features' "Brokeback Mountain," United Artists and Sony Pictures Classics' "Capote," Lionsgate's "Crash," Warner Independent Pictures' "Good Night, and Good Luck" and 20th Century Fox's "Walk the Line." The latter was made for $29M and three of the others were under $8M in production costs. Aside from the low budgets, we are seeing thought-provoking art films and again, biopics. And, mark my words, message is in. These films were mostly labors of love, they have behind them the heart wrenching stories of how they came to fruition.

This story will not get much attention, but, I think it's one of the biggest stories of the year. This marks a clear shift in philosophy from a very powerful group of people. 2005 will be seen as a pivotal year in the film industry. Just as Evans turned Paramount around in the late 60's by making relevant, rebellious films, the producers of today are sending a clear message that the business model is changing and they are looking to this (indie) section as the best road to profitability.

The music and and film industries are predicated on the massive hits needed to sustain fixed costs. In the past, the blockbusters were seen as the only real profit centers and increasingly became the focus of LA. Now that they've seen a year where only indie studios or indie arms of major studios are profiting at all, they understand that you can't subsidize the tech houses forever, the magic of Toy Story and Monsters is over.

Hey Steve, and Peter, you can't make it look any more real! It's so real I almost forget the gum on the floor, OK? There is a limit to what the American public will pay to watch the special effects and photo-real animation. It was truly incredible that the PGA formerly nominated The Incredibles over films like Lost in Translation, which is by a Coppolla for god's sake.

So, in a year where King Kong crashed, the PGA saw the light. They now understand that big budget films are risky business and are largely responsible for year-end losses and massive cost cutting at every studio this year. When you can bet on a smaller film and double your return, thoughtful, plot-driven films which still bank on major brands like Ray Charles and Johnny Cash start to look a lot different to producers.

Hollywood is driven from the top down. If your film doesn't get financed, it doesn't get made. The only way to change things is to vote with your dollars, and we have. We've turned away from Kong and to lots of very nice stuff from Netflix. If you want us in the theaters now, you'll have to offer more than $5. popcorn. We now want IMAX, one of the very few bright spots in the theater business.

There will always be people wanting to come out for an experience, but not the experience of cranking your neck back, looking over someone's head in some uncomfortable chair, watching commercials, getting hearing damage so you can be the first one on your block to see some very entertaining and maybe very beautiful and meaningful but nonetheless, average, film.

Average is looking better to the PGA every day as average films are getting better and better every day.

The Way The Music Died

You have to be awake at 4am to find this stuff on TV, but the website gives all sorts of great particulars. The title is a twist on the phrase coined by Don McLean in American Pie which traced our demise from the date February 2, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Big Bopper & Richie Valens crashed in a snowy field. For me, the day the music died was December 8, 1980, when John Lennon was shot.

Although we had lost, perhaps, our innocence, we certainly had incredible music after 1959. However, I defy anyone to successfully argue that the 25 years since 1980 have produced better music than the 25 years before it. The world of music is a world filled with death and tragedy along with the magnificent highs it produces. It will die many deaths and be reborn as often.

The program I highlight here is a great synopsis of how the industry operates, and it will probably go a lot faster than reading this blog. Though, if you really want to know, and don't mind all the extra opinion and analysis, I suggest IntoFreeMusic. The reason I write about this stuff so much is because when people understand the process by which music, and other entertainment, is filtered before it gets to them and the economics of the industry, they will use their dollars and computers wisely to improve our selection of meaningful art.

Anyway, the day it died is far less interesting to me than the way it died, or the way it is changing. As a matter of fact, I don't quite understand why PBS takes such a dour tone. The music isn't dying. The music is being resurrected. It's the music INDUSTRY that's dying, so that the music itself can live. Nothing is more worthy of death than the music industry which has been killing music, not to mention human brain activity, since it became a billion dollar sector and attracted the sharks.

First it became a commodity, and then, via MTV, it became a visual commodity. The music itself took a back seat to those marketing and visual factors to the point where we get to stars as profitable as Britney Spears who succeed almost totally on the basis of visuals, promotion & production. Yes, we reached some low points, boxed boy bands etc. You know, people have a right to be entertained without having their minds or hearts stimulated. And I don't have a problem with anyone offering up that opium.

My issues with the music industry, film, TV, radio, print and many other industries, including, increasingly, the tech sector is the lack of a free market. Yes, crappy art bothers me, so I try not to patronize it. As long as alternatives exist and the economics of the sector have sufficient checks and balances, I'm ok. If Britney is popular because there are more people who enjoy watching her tits bounce than there are people who enjoy listening to Fiona Apple, no problem. When Clear Channel, who owns every major market in the country takes the Dixie Chicks off their stations because Natalie Mains criticizes Bush, I got a big fucking problem. Especially when the powerful broadcasting lobby has Congress exponentially expand the number of stations a company can own.

I prefer not to focus on death but rebirth and the important date for me was July 29, 2000, when Napster defeated RIAA's first try at an injunction. Hank Barry, the triumphant Robin Hood telling the public, hey, we got your music back... come and get it. Well, we came, we got it. The internet has changed everything, and though we need to be vigilant, I think it will be an uphill battle for entertainment entities to control content and price the way they did before. Music is becoming less something you buy, and more something you do.

Musique est mort? Viva la musique!

Media in 2005

Thank you Richard Menta, I'm surprised I never came across your site before, but I'll add it to my list. Last year I spent a lot of time on those end of the year wrap-ups, but yours was so good, I'll save myself the trouble this year and just provide the link to yours, and to the link to the survey showing only 2% of online music buyers care about the legality of internet music. And, thanks for mentioning Jon Newton, the guy is an unsung hero. They did have Patti Santangelo on both Today & CBS This Morning last Friday... finally.

I Know What You Want

With all the rain, it's New Years... I may as well dig into something deep. As you may have noticed, this blog breaks roughly into four areas: film, music, commentary - mostly on media and then there's the more personal stuff, my art, my ideas, philosophy etc. I put all the film stuff on IntoFilm, the music stuff on IntoTune and the opinion driven stuff onto IntoFreeMusic.

OK, well there's another blog I've never mentioned. Don't even bother looking for it because there's almost nothing on it and by the time I finish this post even that will be absorbed. It's based on the title of a book I intend to write so that I can actually profit from some of my writing. Since much of what I write about is the frustration of living in a society where people are directed out of their creativity by a desire to have a decent standard of living, it would be nice to actually profit off my own creative efforts at some point.

The other blog, called Transformationz, discussed a term I'd seen on Roger McNamee's blog. Roger is a very interesting man, made so much money he was able to put together a top-notch band by putting them all on an annual salary, he plays guitar and tours with them for his vacations. He put Elevation Partners together with Bono. High energy, extroverted, very much about contacts and networking, so it was somewhat surprising he would get me thinking about self-awareness. I'm far more introverted than Roger, want a slower pace but I have always been very self aware, or, at least I've tried to be.

You know, making money requires a person to service others in some way. Artists can make money by connecting to themselves, their god and portraying it out into art. But most people learn that if they want a job and a paycheck, they need to focus on other people and what needs to be accomplished by the group. So, there are always these competing needs, and this was the subject of my movie. How does one balance the intrinsic need to understand their life and their thoughts and feelings while still accomplishing useful work and making money?

It's very easy to understand the value of money and things and it's also very easy to forget the value of our spiritual needs.

The other day I asked my teenage son some typical mom question like why did he do or say some particular thing and he gave me the standard answer, that he didn't know. So, I said something like, well, you should know why you do things, you should understand yourself, have some insight, something.

Then a few days later he comes up and asks why he should need this type of understanding. So, I said something like, "Oh nothing big, just happiness. peace of mind, fulfillment... that type of thing." Then we probably had one of our mother-son talks where my daughter tries desperately to join in, but, it's just still over her head. Having a son and a daughter, I do think women come by self awareness more naturally in way. The female hormones are more emotion driven and male ones more motion driven. Plus, women are always dealing with their bodies in a way men don't.

So, I thought our little exchange was just the sweetest, most archetypal thing. God only knows how many of the hundreds of men I've spoken to in the past few years did not have this type of conversation with their own moms. Maybe their moms were too busy washing their dishes and shorts. My kids clean up after themselves and I try to guide them in their lives cause I've come by my self awareness the hard way, the only way, and I'm willing to open up and expose myself and my mistakes and my thoughts and feelings, even the unsavory and unpopular ones.

My kids are already getting quite deep and incredible and grow in their relationship to each other. They've had a lot to deal with in their young lives and I try to demonstrate and impart skills. I have definitely found myself much more attentive to this quality in others. Basically, I'm sick of dealing with immature, dense, clueless people. My son has more maturity and self awareness at 14 than his father has at 55. I know plenty of young people who demonstrate more sensitivity and awareness than older ones.