Remember 45 RPMs? I think they inspired the Frisbee. Some inventive entrepreneur gave his little sister’s favorite 45 a toss across the back yard and the dog caught it on the fly. It’s possible. Those things are antiques and share a museum case in my mind with those breakable 78 RPM records with the tiny hole, doctor the wire recorder, the cylinder and oh, yeah, nothing but live music “unplugged†by the absence of electricity. Since the 45, we’ve gone through 33RPM vinyl LPs, 8 track tapes, cassettes and now we are watching the last days of the CD pass before us with the speed of an MP3 downloading from the iCloud. The cloud is making USB disappear as well. Now, if you have a computer, you can be a rock star. The world of music is flooded with these homegrown efforts. A world rich in music is a good thing. One with quality music of course is prefered!
What is the good news? Music sales has grown in 2011 for the first time since 2004! And a big thank you to Adele because she is one of the biggest reasons that music sales were up for the first time in a long time! “‘Adele became the first artist to go double-platinum on iTunes — while her massive breakthrough, 21, helped goose digital and physical sales numbers by collectively topping more than 8 million in 2011 — digital sales were huge. Both unit sales (105 million) and revenue ($1 billion) were up more than 20 percent. Single downloads were up nearly 11 percent to 1.3 million.” That is impressive! I hope this kind of grow continues in 2012.
 I know I will surely concentrate on selling more downloads now and I’ll most likely limit my recording to two or three new songs a year. And you know what? I like it this way. The music biz has changed and I’m embracing it. I’ll make just enough CDs for promotion and for the dinosaurs who still walk among us. And for the rest of the world, there is my 2 for 1 deal! Buy one download and receive one free!
Writing with a collaborator is like weird science. It’s not like I haven’t done this before. I have successfully. It’s about chemistry but the right chemicals in the wrong place can run from ineffective to volatile. Two front men collaborating? Like who is gonna sing this baby, decease for one thing? I don’t know how Lennon and McCartney did it, malady really. No wonder John became a junkie. Two amazing talents who were both used to being front men. Yet the chemistry was special until they could’t stand it anymore. I really don’t blame them. I completely understand. You can’t blame it all on Yoko. I’ve learned that for me, at least, the best collaboration is one where each party brings something different yet needed to the table. Knives and forks. Appetizer and entree. Milk and honey. With Jax Resto and me it’s words and music. Melody and groove. Beauty and the beast. It’s working out great so far. We can’t wait to get a good recording and release this stuff. But there’s still a lot of work to do. You can argue that nothing is ever finished and you’d be right. But in this case, it’s only just started, past infant stage, all the way up into adolescence actually. But I’ll wait for at least young adulthood to show the world what we have here. My own recording skills are much too sub par to inflict this on anyone. Must have some pro help and we will get it. This collaboration discovery is the second most important thing I’ve learned since being in the biz. The first was that every writer or artist of any sort, needs a trusted editor. I need somebody I trust to tell me when I suck. Thankfully, I have my producer, Helen Avakian for that. It’d probably be a good idea to find others like Helen to help me with other genres but I haven’t started that search yet. And Helen and I were years in the making. I pass this advice on to every writer of any sort I know. Get a Helen. And get a Jax. Then you’ll get your groove on.
