Goodbye Old Friend

This was a rather somber week in music entertainment with the loss of Clarence Clemons. During this week, and in fact during his musical career, I can’t remember hearing any negative words about the “Big Man” as Clemons was affectionately called. His most constant partner in his musical journey was Bruce Springsteen. In fact, as I read one story in the USA Today it stated that Clemons was Springsteen’s wing man since 1972. After reading that it made me think; this was almost a 40 year partnership. I’ve had two production partners in my musical life. The first lasted about two years and the second lasted more than five years. In the five years of the second partnership I can remember really developing a solid working relationship. Actually, we thought alike and even finished what the other one started many times. Can you imagine what happens after twenty, thirty or even forty years? Well, we were able to hear and if you saw Springsteen and the E Street Band perform you witnessed their relationship. One radio report said that over the years the women in Springsteen’s and Clemons’ lives were sometimes jealous of the relationship between the band-mates. Forty years? My wife and I just celebrated our twentieth anniversary and what a loss that would be if she was gone all of a sudden. So I can only imagine how Bruce Springsteen must feel right now. Will he ever perform again without Clemons? Only time will tell. But as we mourn the loss of Clemons, we should really be supportive of Bruce as well.

More Music Choices

A few days ago, while updating the music on my MP3 player I started to sort music by different genres. Then I thought that is an interesting word: genre, meaning category. Immediately I started to think back to my time promoting music. DJ’s, radio program directors, distributors and buyers alike, used categories extensively. All in an effort to decide what the public would hear and eventually choose to buy. I thought about a specific record that I had to promote and a subsequent meeting with a regional distributor. He, the distributor, was very cordial, which is a quality sometimes lacking in the music business. After talking a while, he wanted to hear the song. He listened about 15 to 20 seconds, turned it off, looked at me and said, “it’s R & B“. What I found interesting is that most of the local productions at the time, and even today, share elements of different musical styles. Local and national productions have sounds originating from dance, Latin, reggae, rock and more, making the lines blurred when it comes to clear-cut genres. The lines are so undefined today that we now have sub-genres, with music execs attempting to categorize even more. I am very happy to see so many artists’ using technology (the internet) to get their music heard around the world. Now they are skipping several middle persons and selling their own music. Good for them! Good for us too. Now, because of internet radio and MP3 technology, we really have many musical choices within several…….genres.