The State of New Music

Lately, I’ve noticed a spurt of thought-provoking articles on the current state of music and its corporate-sponsored nemesis, nostalgia, and I’m trying to wrap my arms around this multifaceted topic. Before I get started, I encourage you to read the following three articles I’ll refer to in this essay. They are:

1)  Is Old Music Killing New Music? By Ted Gioia of The Atlantic

2) Spotify backlash offers rare insight into reeling music industry — and struggles of working musicians
 by Travis M. Andrews of The Washington Post" 

3) Hindsight is 2022: The Psychology Behind Our Cultural Nostalgia by Kyle Chayka of Town & Country. 

This is complex stuff, and I’m not an expert in the business of music, but I’ve got a couple of key takeaways from the articles I’ve been reading:

1) Nostalgia is BIG BUSINESS, and it’s only going to get bigger as corporations seek to recoup their recent investments in the back catalogs of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, and the like. Expect more and more oldies gracing the airwaves, be it on radio, TV shows, film and commercials.  I imagine tribute bands will become an even bigger deal than they are currently, with exact recreations of specific tours from decades ago. According to The Atlantic essay referenced above, older songs now represent 70% of the U.S. market, and the market for new music is shrinking. This is a problem if you’re in the business of making music or are a lover of new music.

Nostalgia also comes in the form of books and documentaries about older artists. I should know, because I love this stuff! Books by Steven Hyden, David Hepworth and Rob Sheffield are among my favorites, and don’t get me started on movies like 20 Feet from Stardom, Summer of Soul, Searching for Sugar Man, etc. But where I differ from many of my peers is that I still seek out new music, which brings me to my next takeaway.

 2) The music market is fragmented like never before. I cry bullshit at the old geezers (or people my age who act like old geezers) who claim that there isn’t good music being produced today. I make the counter claim: there is as much good music out today than ever before, but it’s harder to FIND than ever before. Gone are the days when I could turn on the radio and hear a couple dozen new music selections of different genres that were making a significant cultural impact. Now I have to make an effort to find new music, and virtually none of it will have a significant following. Instead, it will have a small but dedicated group of fans that might be large enough to support a small tour in the country’s largest cities. If I live in a smaller city, I may never have an opportunity to see the band. It may also be true that the band I like can’t last beyond a couple of years due to the awful reality of today’s music industry, and the band I discover will likely be one that none of my friends are aware of, making the experience of listening to their music a very lonely endeavor. Sure, it’s cool that I found the artist Sammy Rae recently, but I can’t name any friends who have heard of her. I’m a fan on an island, at least in my demographic.

As Gioia states in The Atlantic article: “I know that plenty of exceptional young musicians are out there trying to make it. They exist. But the music industry has lost its ability to discover and nurture their talents.”

Instead, they devote resources to repackaging older music. And why shouldn’t they? They’re in the business of making money, and as long as we as consumers are willing to accept hearing “Piano Man” for the billionth time, these corporations will do more to sell old music and do less to sell new music. Until we as consumers demand better, we will get nothing better.

3) The ability for new artists to make money is largely limited to touring, and even this isn’t all that lucrative for most artists. Streaming services pay a pittance, and physical product sales – while climbing – are a shadow of what they were in the 90s. For bands to make money, they have to tour and sell merchandise, and it’s an awfully tough way to make a living. Studio bands like Steely Dan, The Alan Parsons Project or XTC would not be able to exist as new entities today – with no physical product to sell, the only way to survive would be to tour, and touring takes its toll, especially when you’re playing at small clubs that charge $30 for a ticket. 

I recently saw the aforementioned Sammy Rae in Milwaukee, and I tried to calculate how the heck she and her band were making a living. I concluded that they probably weren’t. Consider this:

The concert I saw was attended by about 200 people at around $35 a pop. That’s $7000. But the venue has to be paid, and Sammy had a four-piece band open for her, not to mention the 6-piece band supporting her, a roadie or two, plus a sound guy (maybe one person managed all of this?). Then there’s the van or bus to take them from show to show, food and gas, and I would hope an occasional stay at a hotel to freshen up. And I haven’t even mentioned the band manager, the promoter, the cost of making her recordings, the rehearsal space they probably had to pay for to get prepared for the tour, etc. I can guarantee you this: no one is getting rich off of this endeavor. So the question is, how long can Sammy Rae endure before
a) by some miracle she makes it big; or
b) she decides she actually wants to live comfortably and pursues a saner occupation?
I fear it will be the latter, and we as music lovers will be the worse for it.

4) Back to streaming services. According to the Washington Post article referenced above, for every dollar of revenue Spotify earns, a songwriter might earn as little as 12 cents of revenue (assuming there are no co-writers). “Not bad,” you might say, but it takes somewhere around 20,000 plays to generate a dollar, so if you’re lucky enough to be an artist who has a song that gets a million plays, congratulations, you may have earned approximately $6. I may have some of my math wrong here, but the truth holds: streaming isn’t really lucrative except for the upper echelon of artists. 

The Washington Post article states: “According to Spotify’s data, 13,400 artists generated more than $50,000 and 7,800 generated more than $100,000 in recording and publishing royalties in 2020. The musician would most likely receive a fraction of that amount.”

A fraction of $50K isn’t making a living. It’s barely surviving.

So where do we go from here? The pandemic made it all too clear just how important entertainment is. There are days when it’s the only thing taking me to the finish line. But aside from the biggest musical acts selling out shows at $150 a person, we don’t seem to put our money where our heart is. I used to spend all of my spare money on albums. Now I can pay $10 a month for immediate access to almost every song I’m inclined to hear. And when I see a new vinyl release for $30 I say to myself, “No thanks.” Never mind that when inflation is taken into account, this is actually cheaper than the $9 album I used to buy in the early 80s and that I have way more disposable income.

Bottom line: if you love an artist, buy their products. Buy a t-shirt, a CD, a record, and go and see them when they’re on tour, even if you have to stand among drunk 20-somethings in a crowded club. Better to spend $30 a piece on six new artists than $180 to see that aging rocker one more time at an arena show.

Be comfortable with urging streaming services to raise your fees for the purpose of paying artists better. I know that income levels vary, but for me personally, I would be happy to pay another $10 a month IF that money went to artists and not to the streaming service.

Seek out new music. Yes, nostalgia has its place, but as the Town & Country article suggests, it’s also keeping us from life-fulfilling experiences. And it’s making corporations rich instead of musicians.

I don’t know what else to say. But as Pete Townsend sang in 1978, “The music must change,” or maybe it should be rewritten as “The music business must change.” Either that, or we’ll all be singing the same damn songs for the rest of our lives. How many more times do you really need to hear “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” or “Can’t Buy Me Love”? Isn’t there something more out there?

Things to Watch, Read and Listen

Keeping track of TV shows, movies and books used to be a fairly easy task, but with today’s segmentation of markets and the sheer volume of media being produced (just looking at TV, there were approximately 495 scripted original series in 2018), relying on word-of-mouth has never been more important or more overwhelming.  Each time someone recommends a show or book or whatever to me, I text it to myself and compile a list that I keep near the TV, but I’ll never get to most the recommendations;  there’s simply too much out there to wrap one’s arms around.  I have a list of twenty shows to watch, fifty movies to view, fifteen books to read, twenty-five bands to listen to, and another half a dozen podcasts to explore.  This is in addition to the pile of unread books I already own and the podcasts I listen to regularly. 

In the spirit of offering more than you can handle, I thought I’d share just a few things I’ve come across lately that might be worth your time. 

WATCH

• The loss of romantic comedies from movie theaters has been lamented for some time, though apparently not enough for Hollywood studios to actually produce them.  But there is hope for the hopeless romantic.  Amazon has released Season 1 (8 episodes) of Modern Love, an anthology series based on a column in The New York Times, and has already renewed the series for another season.  I can’t vouch for all eight episodes, but the first two were excellent, with smart writing and directing, mostly by John Carney of Once and Sing Street.  The episodes clock in at under half an hour, which might almost be too snappy to tell compelling tales consistently, but so far so good.

• If you haven’t already checked out Ken Burns’s latest documentary Country Music on PBS, I urge you to do so.  Like all of his material, it requires a degree of dedication you might not be accustomed to – the series runs about sixteen hours – but it’s a rewarding ride.  I’m not much of a country fan, but I’ve learned a lot during the first four episodes, and with Spotify at my side, I’ve been able to explore many of the artists even further.  There’s something to be said for technology.

READ

• As if there weren’t enough music rabbit holes to fall into, Tom Breihan of Stereogum has embarked on the monumental task of listening to and writing about every #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 track hit from 1958 to the present.  Word-of-mouth failed me with this endeavor, because I just found out about it a month ago as a fluke, and Breihan is already into 1977, but that’s not a band place to start, as 1977-1982 is my sweet spot for music.  The first song I clicked on was Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light,” and I figured I’d read a few paragraphs about the track.  But no, Breihan writes extensively about each song, providing some history and context, offering links to other versions of the songs, and rating each song he covers, which makes this blog a little more thought-provoking than many.  When he mentioned how much he hates “Hotel California” the comments section went ballistic, but that to me is half the fun.  A great read.

LISTEN

Measured by time, I listen to podcasts more than any other medium – even music.  I have my usual suspects – WTF with Marc Maron, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Freakonomics, Radiolab – but here are two that I’ve added to my arsenal this year:

• Unspooled.  If you like movies, this is a fun podcast that covers one movie a week from the AFI list of Top 100 Films.  Hosted by actor Paul Scheer and critic Amy Nicholson, this weekly discussion has inspired me to fill in the gaps of some of my own viewing (my daughter Sarah has now watched 93 of the top 100 – I’m probably somewhere in the 60s). Paul and Amy are not the most eloquent speakers – I keep wanting them to live up to the standard that Siskel and Ebert set – but I like that they’re challenging the status quo and questioning whether the old boys club that supports mainly male-centric films from the 1970s needs to be upended (spoiler: it does).  They’ve also recommended some terrific books – most notably Making Movies by Sidney Lumet and Cameron Crowe’s Conversations with Wilder.  Both brilliant.

• My friend Michael Stoller has produced a podcast called My Blueprint, an exploration of various issues pertaining to growing as a human being.  These are snappy episodes of under ten minutes, and the few I’ve listened to so far are terrific.  Stoller doesn’t shy away from providing specific examples from his own life and touching on topics that affect all of us, and I walk away with just a little something to ponder as I go about my day.

So there you are!  Add them to the list so you can feel just as overwhelmed as I do!

New Album is Available for Streaming/Purchase

The Great Divide by Heinz and Wrobel is complete!  To stream or purchase this ten-song album, check out the following locations: 

• Amazon

• Spotify

• Apple Music

• This website

The album will be added to several other streaming sites shortly.

Heinz & Wrobel are:

Julian Wrobel – Bass
Sam Heinz – Drums
Paul Heinz-  Keys and Vocals

Tracking by Brad Showalter at Kiwi Studios, Batavia, Illinois
Overdubs engineered by Paul Heinz
Orchestration on “Cold” and “End Game” by Jim Gaynor
Mixed by Paul Heinz with the help of Julian, Sam and Anthony Calderisi
Mastering by Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room, Chicago, Illinois

All songs written by Paul Heinz, except “The Unexamined Road,” music by Sam Heinz and Paul Heinz, lyrics by Paul Heinz

Cover art by Sarah Heinz, based on a concept by Sam Heinz
Photograph by Sam Heinz

We’d like to thank Brad for his easy-going nature and diligence, Collin for his expertise Anthony for his objective listening skills, and Jim for giving two songs the lift they required.  We think “End Game” is the best song on the album thanks to you.

********************************************************************

After completing The Palisades in August of 2016 I wrote the following on my website: “I’m toying with the idea of doing my next project in about two days – all in the studio with a live band. A guy can dream, can’t he?”

Well, The Great Divide didn’t exactly take two days, but it was a hell of a lot faster this time around, for which I’m grateful.

In Spring of 2017, I began to ponder the next project, and Sam and I decided that we should record together in the studio and pound out the entire album in a day or two.  The issue was I didn’t really have any songs – only half-written melodies or a refrain or a verse that didn’t go anywhere.  It wasn’t until the summer when Sam was at camp for seven weeks that I began to diligently evaluate which half-written pieces of music were worth pursuing and which should be scrapped.  It took a while. 

That summer, I initially decided to create a thematic album called “Confessions and Confrontations,” with several instrumental interludes and a few musical themes that would repeat throughout the album, a pretty bold idea for someone who didn’t really even have any songs completed.  I worked hard on songs called “Eat Crow,” “Shouldn’t I Get Some Credit,” “Stretched Too Thin,” “I Once Fell in Love with a Girl,” “The Line,” and “Something Lost.”  Alas, none of these made the cut. 

Instead, a few other songs with working titles of “What Are You Going to Do” and “I Don’t Want to Talk About It Now” began to take shape, along with some very old ideas, such as one called “Same Old Shit,” which originated in the summer of 2013.  I also resurrected two song that I had, in fact, completed: one called “Cold,” which I’d written in 2001 and even recorded a demo of in maybe 2006; and “Put You Away,” composed sometime around 2009, but it never felt right with previous projects.  This time, it fit perfectly with the minimal instrumentation we were providing. 

One of the pieces I worked on in July of 2017 was a little chord intro that Sam had composed prior to leaving for Wisconsin.  This eventually evolved into a rather intricate little ditty called “The Unexamined Road,” a song that was known as “Untitled” up until November because I wasn’t happy with the lyrics.  Eventually this song sounded so darn good that it became the album’s opener.

I wrote most of the music for what became “Lies of the Damned” in April of 2006, but there it sat until 2017.  I needed an idea to help drive what I knew was an angry song.  Eventually, I came up with a sketch of a type of person I’ve met over the years: an odd combination of extreme self-centeredness, yet monstrously insecure.  I’ve known three or four people who fit this mold to a “t,” and once I knew the object of my angst, I was able to pound out the song very quickly!

“What is True” developed from a tune that came to me in a dream in December of 2016.  I was meeting my friend Scott Baldwin at an outdoor bar tended by none other than Rufus Wainwright, who was suffering badly of a cold.  He said that recently the “juices were flowing,” meaning he was composing a lot lately.  I asked him to fix me a sandwich, and he began singing his latest creation, “You say, I don’t want to talk about it now…”  I woke up and wrote it down and eventually developed it into a tale inspired by a friend of mine.  Similar to “I Can’t Take You Back” from Warts and All, it’s the heartbreaker on the album.

“Are You Gonna Fight For Her,” was nothing more than a verse and unfinished chorus in April of 2016, but in the summer I managed to write the bridge and instrumental sections that really made the song work.  I was the least confident that this song would work on the album, but once drums and bass were added, it all came together beautifully.

“Your Mother’s House” started once again with just a verse in May of 2014, and in April of 2015, as I was trying to write a chorus for the song “The Palisades,” I came up with a chord progression that eventually fit perfectly as the second half of the chorus for the former.  But I still had to write the first half of the chorus, which I finally completed at the end of August, along with the middle bridge.

I wrote the first several verses of “End Game” in September of 2016, just after completing The Palisades, but I didn’t finish this tune until over a year later, when I composed the build-up leading to the end of the song.  The “bombastic” section of the tune came in July, written originally as an instrumental theme to insert between songs, but then I recognized it would fit in the actual tune with a lyric.  How this all came together is a bit miraculous, and I’m grateful that it came off as well as it did.  By October I had to come up with a title, and “End Game” came to me in a flash. 

Little by little, songs were completed, while others were discarded.  Sometime in the summer, Sam asked if Julian would be up for recording with us, and he was excited to join the project.  On August 21 I drove Sam and Julian and a friend of theirs to Missouri to watch the total eclipse, and along the way I mentioned the name of the upcoming album and the concept.  They were both rather unenamored with the idea of “Confessions and Confrontations,” so I took this under advisement until I finished the song “Diverge,” a tune I’d written the first verse for back in 2012 but didn’t complete until October of 2017, the last tune written for the album.  I was so happy with this song that I was certain it would lead it off and that it should spawn the title for the album.  Eventually, “Diverge” gave way to “The Unexamined Road” as the opening track, a song which remained untitled and which I struggled mightily to come up with a different refrain, but none fit as well (An Energizing Trail?  A Uninspired Path?)  This is one of those instances where the lyrics don’t quite reach the same level as the music.

I liked the idea of The Great Divide as a concept and considered viewing the new album as a collection of songs about conflict.  I remember that the band Big Country had a song with this title off their Steeltown album, and after scouring through the lyrics of this song I came up with a list of possible titles for the album: “Sighs and Youth,” “Fire Away,” and “The Token Door.”  Eventually I thought, “Screw it.  Just call it The Great Divide.”  So there you are.

Once we knew the title of the album, Sam came to me with a concept for an album cover and I shared it with my daughter Sarah on January 8th at 3:38PM.  I wrote: “The drawing would be in the simplistic style of The Far Side comics and the Duke album by Genesis, and it would be a close-up of a inexpressive guy holding a baggy at eye level filled with water and containing a gold fish, and the gold fish staring back at him.  Hence, ‘the Great Divide.’  Get it?”  At 4:29PM she sent me the cover of the album.  Tell me she wasn’t looking for a reason to procrastinate finding an internship!  Sam and I looked at the cover after his drum lesson and immediately fell in love with it.

On October 26, I met with Sam and Julian and went through the whole album and how I wanted to approach things.  We discussed recording in February or March and decided not to record vocals at that time; it would be difficult enough to get the instrumental parts down.  We began rehearsing in November, and I was amazed at the parts that Sam and Julian created, producing a much better product than I ever could have managed on my own, and because we had so much time to rehearse, it ended up sounding better than if I had outsourced things to professionals.  Sam and Julian created “parts” for the songs; they didn’t just play along to a chord chart.

On February 17 we spent thirteen hours at Kiwi Studios in Batavia, Illinois, where I had recorded basic tracks for The Palisades, and finished piano, bass and drums for all ten songs.  Pretty impressive.  Brad Showalter engineered this time, and he was laid back, unhurried and flexible, making the whole experience very enjoyable.  Once again, Sam and Julian played like pros, punching in seamlessly, playing to click tracks for some songs and others on the fly.  The most difficult tune to record by far was “Lies of the Damned.”  By some minor miracle, “End Game,” which we recorded without a click track, we achieved on just the second take.  It is our favorite on the album.

I recorded vocals over the next few weeks into March, and then added a few backup vocals, percussion and synthetic strings, but what I really wanted was for composer Jim Gaynor to record orchestration for “Cold” and “End Game.”  In late March he was ready to add some tracks, and the results are superb. 

After several grueling rounds of mixing (an art form I still struggle with mightily on every album), I finished things up and set a date to master the product at The Boiler Room in Chicago, where Collin Jordan put the finishing touches on the album.  It helped that we had set an album-release concert for May 5th, which required me to wrap up the album quickly, whereas I’d normally spend another few months mixing everything to perfection (but never achieving it). 

We sent things off to Diskmakers and made physical CDs for the first time since my album in 2003, The Dragon Breathes on Bleecker Street.

All in all, a very satisfying and enjoyable project, made all the more meaningful by having my son and his friend, along with my artist daughter, involved.  And my vocalist daughter is able to join us on stage for the record release concert, so all three of my kids were involved in some meaningful way.  Now, if I could only get my wife involved somehow on the next project!

Join us on May 5th at 7PM, as Heinz & Wrobel host a record release party to celebrate the completion of our new album.  Email me for details. 

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

I’ve written before about the multitude of “must-see” TV shows recommended to me over the past decade and a half during which the Heinz household has been cable-free. It didn’t matter what show we tried to catch up on: Six Feet Under, Weeds, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Mozart in the Jungle, Newsroom…without fail, my wife and I watched no more than a season and a half and moved onto other endeavors, like attempting to stay awake long enough to say, “Well, at least I made it to 9:30 before hitting the sack.” And maybe our not watching TV is more telling about where we are in our lives than in the actual quality of entertainment, but as I wrote before, so much of television today is so mean-spirited – the meaner the show, the better the critiques, when all I really want is a few compelling characters and a couple of laughs – that I’ve been watching more of Bob’s Burgers than anything else these days (and if you haven’t seen this animated masterpiece, consider it – I laugh out loud as much at this show as I did with The Simpsons in its heyday).

Mozart in the Jungle showed promise. A show about musicians? Sign me up! But as so often happens with TV, the part of the show that I found interesting (music and musicians) took a backseat to other plot points (the conductor's unappealing and completely unbelievable ex-wife). Like a corporation that forgets its core competencies, this show forgot its essence in the span of one season.

NBC’s This Is Us started off with a terrific first episode, spanning decades and tying it all together perfectly with a fantastic plot twist that I never saw coming, but dang, they sure like to pour the saccharine on thick, don’t they? It’s a day-time soap showing in prime time. No thanks.

Alas, my wife and I may have finally found our show. Yes, we’re only three episodes into Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but it had me from the first scene, when there was finally – FINALLY – a character who I liked from the word go. Rachel Brosnahan’s portrayal of a recently abandoned Jewish housewife and mother of two who unexpectedly finds herself pursuing the life of a stand-up comedienne is so compelling, as a viewer you’re rooting for her immediately. Add actor Luke Kirby playing real-life comedian Lenny Bruce and excellent veteran actors like Kevin Pollak and Tony Shalhoub (whose series Monk also interested me, except my wife didn’t dig it), and you’ve got a show with some serious promise.

Like some of Aaron Sorkin’s material, the dialogue in Mrs. Maisel is sometimes too smart for its own good. In episode 2 the character of Susie Myerson speaks so quickly and eloquently (and incessantly) that it’s hard to keep up (and it’s also not very believable), but at least it isn’t dumb like – for example – The Big Bang Theory. The number of historical references in a short scene in episode 3 are difficult to keep track of if you’re not already up on your history, but I fortunately watched the film Trumbo last year and already knew of Joel and Ethel Rosenberg. And some of the colloquialisms are anachronistic. The third episode has Midge Maisel remarking, “It is what it is.” That’s not just out of place in a 1958 conversation, it’s lazy writing. But perhaps that’s the price you pay for creating a comedy set sixty years ago that’s expected to entertain 21st Century audiences. After all, comedy can be tough to appeal over time, though oddly, the real material from Bob Newhart and Lenny Bruce that's highlighted in the show is as funny and innovated today as when it first debuted.

After watching the first episode, I thought that Mrs. Maisel had no chance of attracting a mainstream audience, but earlier this week both Brosnahan and the series itself won Golden Globes, virtually guaranteeing another season. Unless the writers really go off the rails and have Kevin Pollak and Tony Shalhoub starting a meth lab in an RV, I’ll be watching.