Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

There are a few groups that I grew up listening to but never had the chance to see live; with reunion tours and better medicine, I've been able to catch Yes, Genesis, Rush, and others live. But I have always longed to hear Renaissance, with Annie Haslam, in a small venue, with high-end sound.

Today Renaissance 2009 announced a tour starting in Pennsylvania (near Haslam's Bucks County home) in October. I already have tickets; eagerly awaiting news on the lineup. Will Jon Camp will rejoin with his Squire-esque Rickenbacker sound? Rave Tesar (recently toured with Haslam) or John Tout on keyboards? Doesn't matter to me; it's a 30-year old wish granted.

Back from a true week of vacation: thanks to the hotel's internet service provider's inability to maintain IP addresses consistently during a 24-hour period, I had almost no IMAP service and therefore no email. A week of bakery-fueled breakfasts, days of reading by the pool, and some random boogie boarding were a huge win.

First book I finished on the trip: Neal Peart's Traveling Music, a bit of a departure from Roadshow and Ghost Rider in that he didn't write it to chronicle a momentous occasion in his personal or professional life; he wrote it because he wanted to capture the backstory of his own musical influences. So the storylines wander, diverge, meander into seemingly unrelated areas to add color or depth. Of the three, I found it the most readable, probably because it's more about music than travel, and I thoroughly enjoyed Peart's implicit recommendations of bands and albums.

There were tons of little nuggets in the book to keep any Rush-head happy: seeing the lyrics for Workin' Them Angels (from "Snakes & Arrows") take shape as the epigraphs for each chapter; seeing how his travel adventures formed the backstory for the song; the exposition of Ellis, one of Peart's pre-Rush friends who is the "hero" in Nobody's Hero (a song which always reminds me of the great friend I have in Tom Chatt, who has been a hero of mine - for every reason Peart touches on - for 27 years. Thanks, Tom); the story behind Mission and the pressures placed on creative artists to continuously be, well, creative.

Best of all for me was the insight into how Buddy Rich's drumming influenced Peart. At first, I found this surprising; but listening carefully (especially to later Rush works) exposes what music critics in the 1970s referred to as "a jazzy drummer, like Bill Bruford." Peart quotes his teacher Freddie Gruber as saying "There are no straight lines in nature," imploring Peart to think away from the 1-(2)-3-(4) rock drum (straight) lines. One of Mr. Santoro's drummer friends put it another way: Find the beats in a circle, not a square. Beats on the downward stroke of the circle are straight-ahead -- it keeps you moving. On the upswing of the circle is laid-back -- you keep moving it. But never at the top or the bottom.

As soon as I put the book down I had Groovin' Hard by the Buddy Rich Big Band on the iPod. Non-traveling vacation music, straight ahead.

On our walk between the hotel and biergarten for dinner last night, a few of us stopped into a local music store on the Ku'dam in Berlin. This is one of my favorite ways to get a sense of local culture: stop into a local retail store. This music shop was 80% equivalent to what you'd find at a good used-CD store in the states but the classification system for the CD trays made up the other 20% that was unique.

In addition to the Rock A-Z dividers and a separate section for new releases, there was an almost equal-sized area for German artists, which was further broken down by genre. If I didn't have (literally) half of our European management team tapping its toes to a different (hungry) beat, I would have browsed the selection of German Hip-Hop. And I was thoroughly impressed by the dedicated and sizeable stack of Kraftwerk, although I was somewhat disappointed that Edgar Froese didn't have his own section (in all seriousness, I would have picked up a German pressing rather than download his material from iTunes just to see the liner notes).

Hanging out with Global Sales and Services Chief Geek Jim Baty has given me an appreciation for artists in general, and what Jim calls "the discomfort that comes with good art." Alas, the discomfort of long queues for weisswurst took precendence over further exploration of the deustche music scene, but not before I noticed that in the "world music" section, there was a divider labeled "Klezmer/Gypsy."

I'd never considered klezmer orchestras as a variation on gypsy music, or derived from Central European roots rather than the stuff of Hassidic tales of Tsarist Russia, but it stimulated an interesting conversation for the rest of our walk. Turns out that Inka, part of our GSE team in Prague refers to "gypsy music" as something that makes you feel energetic but you're not really sure you like it because it's crazy music. That's a more accurate description of klezmer than that of a friend who tabbed it "high speed oompah with jazz clarinet." Yes, the discomfort of good art. In the case of my affiliation with klezmer music, it started around 5th grade when I was suffering through clarinet lessons. Occasionally my father would dig up his old "Russian music fake books", primarily badly printed, hand-written transcriptions of klezmer songs that had survived on aural tradition for decades. We'd play a few songs together, a little clarinet duo having fun with the score to definitely capture "energy" and "crazy music" at the same time.

Bottom line: this is why meta data matters. Whatever the surface level taxonomy - CD shelves, file labels, bookstore directions to "file under programming languages" - it only represents one view of the actual bits or atoms. What we associate with the content in terms of related concepts, family memories, national references or other, alternate filing systems adds to the appeal and reach of the content. What's frightening is that I'm starting to think that klezmer isn't so much of an acquired taste as a genetic predisposition to take liberties with musical tradition: at least that's how I explained my son's arco rendition of the bass line to Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused" at the end of a school concert. Discomfort, good art, crazy music, but I'm not sure where you file it.

Bily Crystal wrote in 700 Sundays that he felt old when Mickey Mantle died, his first childhood hero's death forcing him to deal with mortality. I felt the same way when Willie Stargell died in 2001, on the very day that the more-than-lifesize statue of him was to be unveiled at the new Pittsburgh baseball park. Earlier this week Yes cancelled their "Close to the Edge and Back" tour due to the hospitalization of lead singer Jon Anderson. Yes was the first band for which I developed true fanaticism, with multiple playings of "Close to the Edge" and "Yessongs" fueling the completion of innumerable nights of algebra, trig and differential equation problem sets. Anderson is suffering acute respiration problems, and suddenly I feel very old as one of my favorite rock singers is suffering from problems treated with, not caused by, serious chemicals.

A Yes show was also among the first to which I took my son Benjamin, at the ripe age of four (he made it through the first set). During the last Yes tour, we journeyed to Philadelphia to see them, and when Jon Anderseon took a jaunt through the crowd Ben managed to touch his hand as he jogged by our seats. Wishes for a complete recovery to Jon Anderson so maybe we can catch (at least) one more tour with even more heartfelt high-fives from your fans of nearly four decades.

Chalk up another transitive closure to amazon.com's suggestion engine. While hunting for Yes "Live at Montreaux" on CD, I was presented with the concert mash-up of the last Genesis jaunt across Europe, appropriately titled "Live Over Europe 2007." I ended up throwing a nice Rick Wakeman compliation ("Sixty Minutes With...") and Asia's "Fantasia Live in Tokyo" into my cart. Tuesday provided the perfect chance to audition all of the recent arrivals, as I had a trip to and from Newark airport along with a reasonable ride to a youth hockey league meeting. I'm disappointed that the Asia concert assembly didn't include Steve Howe performing Clap, but on "Live at Montreaux" not only do we get Clap but the condensed game version of To Be Over with Howe on acoustic guitar, no lap steel, no other-Magnification required. It's a great rendition of one of my favorite Yes tunes (I can't further qualify it as favorite on the "Relayer" album because there are only three tracks on the whole thing).

Surprise, surprise, though, was the live Genesis CD. I was a bit disappointed in the Phil Collins vocals -- while they're crystal clear and the enunciation is better than most live recordings, he seems to have lost a bit of his range. The In the Cage medley, drawing on "Lamb Lies Down", the Slippermen section of Cinema Show and the tail out of Duke's Travels is spectacular -- I listened to it three times before even popping in disc two of the set. The segue to Afterglow is very smooth (thank goodness for gapless playback on the iPod, or I won't be able to listen to this one), but best of all, Firth of Fifth shows up, in pieces, with some Hackett-like guitar work by Mike Rutherford or Daryl Stuermer. Only thing missing (besides Supper's Ready): instrument credits per track, to go along with the location credits for each.

Disclaimer: I'm writing while listening to Yngwie Malmsteen's Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra in E Minor, which is the perfect complement to my Godsmack t-shirt and fuzzy duck slippers.

Context: While standing around with other middle school parents a few weeks ago, one (who happens to be a music teacher) posed a question to use that she had asked her class earlier in the week.

Question: What music of today will still be listened to in 300 years? Good question, because there aren't many others that let you put Beethoven, Jimi Hendrix and Charlie Parker in the same answer. Her class was quick to suggest various popular artists, only to have other students point out that last year's chart leaders were already forgotten. My related thought was that in 300 years, emo rock and Emo Phillips have about the same probability of popularity.

Answer: I didn't give this answer at the time because I was afraid of killing the conversation completely. Listeners in 2307 will enjoy whatever best survives the current copyright climate. It's the music that benefits from having communities that refresh themselves with new, young listeners, brought in by something they heard their parents enjoying or discussing; it's music that can be performed, mashed up, remixed, shared and laid down under some killer Lego anime. The Brothers Grimm are still popular, not as much in prose as in song and dance, thanks to Disney's appropriation of classic stories for their animated films. This isn't a bad thing; it's just an argument for the good that can come from having a relaxed view of copyright (or access to material for which the copyright has expired).

A Better Answer: Most jazz, particularly Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonius Monk. To this day jazz bands of teenagers struggle with transcriptions of their work, until they realize that those solos weren't written; they were experienced, and the musicians were having fun with the medium. I'm probably on the border of "today's music" with references to the golden be-bop kings, so I'll expand the list to include Yes, anything on Guitar Hero, the Grateful Dead, Phish, and the Who. In reverse order, the Who embodied "Rock is dead, long live rock" and a few centuries are unlikely to change that. Being first into the memorabilia shrine at the Hard Rock Cafe also helps. The Dead and Phish already thrive on a bootleg and sharing culture that is likely to cross generations (although I'm not sure how many young Dead heads I've met). Guitar Hero will expose the classic rockers to the Millenials and they'll boogie together. And finally, Yes will still be played in 300 years because those of us who are true Yes-heads have a religious attachment to their music, one that we try to pass on to our kids, one that's captured in at least a dozen books and biographies. There's a fine parallel between religion and music, whether it was Yes bass man Chris Squire learning his notes on a church organ, or Mozart's Requiem. And finally, as a bonus answer, in 250 years when Princeton University is celebrating its 500th anniversary the Princeton University Band will play the B-52's "Rock Lobster" and nobody will understand the lyrics then, either.

The duration and dialectic of the Writer's Guild strike demonstrates to me that most studios continue to "not get it" when it comes to digital media. They still insist on monetizing every right, and yet only want to share in that monetization if they can see an a priori path to generating profit from the format or device that generated the cash. If anyone on the left coast believes that phones, iPods, and similar portable devices will not be major video platforms for at least the next generation of users, then spend some more time any place frequented by teenagers. But the whole situation runs much, much deeper than simply guessing where and how people will watch their re-runs of "Scrubs".

It's about how we, as consumers of the content, also generate interest, foster new consumption and basically do the job of advertising and marketing arms of the studios. If every digital right is something to be controlled, with every potential fractional cent wrung from that control, we all lose. We lose because we miss out on things that might have mad us laugh, cry, or hurl (and if you laughed at that, you just proved my point, particularly if you had to explain the open guffaw to the next cube over. Party on, Wayne).

My opinions (and they are mine) are pretty straightforward here: if a studio can charge money for content, then that revenue should be shared proportionally independent of the vehicle, format, encoding, delivery, or payment mechanism. Compensate the creators, or they stop creating. That's one part of the writer's guild argument. My opinion is modulated by the words "can charge money,", not "must charge money," and that's the missing corollary argument around digital rights. How do you grow the overall demand for this content, enriching everyone along the way? That means giving away some rights, whether it's for YouTube video background music or setting context in a 1970s sitcom. There will continue to be licensing deals done - if you want your new car line to use a classic rock song, you bet the label will want a residual on each traffic slot filled. But I experienced, first-hand, the downside of this insistence on getting blood money from stone cold television reels.

Part of our family holiday tradition is to pick out movies or TV shows a least a decade removed from our kids' lives. They've discovered why Hoosiers might be the best sports movie of all time, and enjoyed a very young Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza. I was sorely tempted to buy the boxed set of WKRP In Cincinnati this year, until I found out that many of the musical gags had been edited out -- without redistribution rights for 10 seconds of various classic rock songs used in the television airings, those scenes were simply elided from the DVD set. So the audio punch lines can't even fall on deaf ears; the jokes stopped existing. You can only laugh at 70s fashion style so many times; WKRP as a series falls apart without the rock and roll angle. And it's likely to continue to sit, unloved as newsie Les Nessman, until those Foreigner tracks are reunited with the on-air cast.

I have always wanted to play the bass guitar. Gene Simmons from Kiss, Geddy Lee from Rush, John Camp of Renaissance, and of course Chris Squire of Yes (the latter two with their Rickenbacker axes; the former with his axe posing as bass) were my musical heroes. Twenty-seven years ago, I first attempted to learn to play, buying a very low-end Fender jazz bass look-alike with horrible action, uneven frets, and a warped neck (or at least those were my excuses for my lack of ability coupled with fret buzz). It was the week after midterms, the somewhat misplaced "fall break" during my freshman year at Princeton -- this exact upcoming week on the calendar. It wasn't the first time I'd come back to campus with more junk in tow than when I'd left.

My excuse for an amplifier was a "portable" cassette deck with the bass run into the line in, and an 1/8" plug to RCA plug cable going from line out into my stereo amplifier. Unintentional distortion, a little pre-amp control and a touch of Mr. Microphone all at the same time. A year later, partial differential equations and DeMorgan's theorem conspired to consume my practice hours, and I sold the bass to another unsuspecting (and unsuccessful) friend from the radio station. During my entire 4-string career, I learned the bass line to "I'm Free" by the Who and some of Lou Reed's "Rock and Roll."

Last year, when I was making up my list of projects in progress for Tim Marsland and Bob Brewin, incoming CTOs of software, I put "learn to play bass" in near the end, just to see if they'd read that far. Brewin asked me a few weeks ago if I ever learned to play, and I couldn't think of a good reason why I hadn't. I can find the time to practice; I have a place to practice and access to reasonable sound reinforcement. So after a few weeks of trolling around on eBay I managed to win one Steinberger-style, Hohner headless bass guitar, suitable for travel, practice in tight quarters, and aging heavy metal wannabes with fat fingers.

It arrived today, and I'm itching to get on the redeye so I can get down and get funky in NJ. Next stop: YYZ.

I'm the kind of person for whom upselling was invented. While trolling iTunes for some John Wetton-led U.K., I was tempted to look at The Syn. Being a Yes omnivore from my teenage days, I knew that bassist Chris Squire was a member of a group called "The Syn" in his pre-Yes days (being in sales, we have a lot of pre-yes days). Original keyboardist Peter Banks is gone, leaving only Squire and singer Steve Nardelli. But the result isn't bad. It's not quite the long, "audio painting" style of classic Yes, nor is it the pop meanderings of Asia or late lifecycle Yes. It's also lot more accessible than "Flag", the Squire-Bill Bruford collaboration. A good return on $10, commission of a nice Syn to my iTunes library and iPod.

Here's the recording industry's Syn of omission: I probably wouldn't have spent $18 on this CD. I certainly wouldn't have found it filed under "S" for "The Syn", or perhaps "Squire," avoiding Billy Squire without severe 80s withdrawal symptoms. But the suggestion offered by a perfect long tail of music -- iTunes driving demand from one small distribution curve (of British progressive rock fans) to an even smaller one (those who knew Chris Squire when...) -- incented me to spend money unintentionally.

That's not Simon Phipps addressing an open source conference -- rather it's John Wetton, bass player and front man for Asia, the "original" supergroup of the mid-80s formed from the remainders of Yes, King Crimson, UK, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and the Buggles (unless you count them as part of Yes). Wetton is using a bullhorn to simulate the simulated radio voice introduction of the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," which was tucked into the show on behalf of keyboardist Geoff Downes.

My son and I caught the show at the Fillmore Plaza in New York's Union Square, and by standing in line for about half an hour before the doors opened we claimed a spot directly in front of Steve Howe. The Buggles song always gives me a solid laugh, because there was palpable fear that MTV was going to destroy broadcast radio. A quarter century later, MTV has had a definite effect on how music is perceived, enjoyed and distributed, but it hasn't replaced radio. It's really just another channel for developing audiences, and in that regard, the parallel to open source communities and projects isn't so far off base (you knew I was going somewhere taking Simon's name in vain at the outset....)

More important to me is how a quarter century has passed and we still use music as the strong force in our nuclear families. My father introduced me to jazz as I was entering high school; Sonny Stitt and Charlie Parker were on the turntable as we adjusted our FM radio antenna to pick up the jazz show that preceded Spider on WBLS. Jazz was the supplement to a steady diet of hard rock (KISS, Led Zeppelin, and some guy named Frampton). As my son is about the same age (Internet-time adjusted) as I was when discovering jazz, I'm making sure he gets the 70s progressive rock vitamins to go along with Linkin Park, the Fratellis, Godsmack and Wolfmother staples. He enjoys listening to, and is amazed by, Steve Howe as much as his father. Video didn't kill that radio star because Howe and company weren't on the radio very much, modulo the regular Roundabout spin on most rock stations. Communities -- particularly very small ones involving family members and close friends -- shape our tastes as much as mass media.

I'm now the proud owner of a 14-CD set containing the complete Adventures of Chickenman. All 273 episodes, including the weekend specials that were sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, and the promotions, contests and "local avails" (where the local carrying station could insert some listener into the show, typically by splicing the intro and outro provided by Chickenman's producers around a contestant). Chickenman was a spoof on Batman, with completely repetitive, goofy audio gags replacing the unlikely physical jams into which Batman and Robin were typically placed (and even less believably extracted).

The boxed set makes me smile on a number of levels. What you get is essentially a CD version of the vinyl tracks that a radio station received in the 1970s, each day's episodes put onto a tape cartridge (cart) to be sequenced between commercials, station promotions and public service announcements. A great reminder of my days producing similarly sized taped gems at WPRB-FM.

Bigger smiles come from reliving summer days down the shore, where my sister and I would listen to WJRZ-FM, soaking up episodes of Chickenman between the Paul Harvey news and ads for the Ship Bottom Motor Lodge. It's not Law & Order but that's precisely the point -- Chickenman locked himself out of rooms, accidentally set his wings on fire, and frequently had to answer to the most unbending authority of all, his mother.

Chickenman was also well ahead of his time. Some of the later episodes than ran on the weekends weren't serialized as part of the "main" storyline, and instead featured Chickenman taking on polluters and other eco-unfriendly types. The Fantastic Fowl knew about eco-responsibility thirty years before it was fashionable. Chickenman's radio outro was clearly one of the first true network memes, as you can walk into clusters of 40-somethings and ask about "the most fantastic crime-fighter the world has ever known," only to find out that "he's everywhere! he's everywhere!". And now he's riding shotgun in my car's CD player, too.

I'm on a bit of a James Campion kick right now, having recently subscribed to his email list which supplants the need to read the Aquarian (and being in North Jersey, it's nearly impossible to find that long-standing tabloid anyway).

His obituary for punk club CBGB is required reading for anyone who listens, has listened, or might listen to the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, or the Clash. What other American club is cross-referenced by the Talking Heads?

What I find both sad and humorous about the decline and fall of CBGB is that punk rock was supposed to lead to the decline and fall of "real rock". I'm not quite sure how that was reflected in real life, since real NJ rocker Bruce Springsteen gave a hit song to punk NJ rocker Patti Smith ("Because the Night"), and the attitude ensconced in punk seems to have re-appeared in rap, hip-hop, grunge, industrial, and a metallicized renaissance. I'll admit I was as taken aback by System of a Down (on first listen) as my parents were by the Ramones. That, I believe, is the point: push the boundaries, challenge common perception, make music.

Art that is safe hangs on your wall. It's there for the duration. Art that challenges your perceptions requires a few passes, and probably some repeated listening. Perhaps network distribution of music will replace the need for small clubs like CBGB, because you'll be exposed to a wider variety of art with less travel, late night hours and parental scorn. But the dispersion of culture electronically will never replace the creation of culture through the physics of a tightly packed space so eloquently described by JC.

Just finished reading Rick Wakeman: The Caped Crusader, a semi-biography of the Yes keyboards player that covers his life from childhood through the "main sequence" of Yes albums ending with Going For The One. Found it on amazon.com through a used bookseller for about $30, which was significantly better than the occasional copy that shows up on eBay for closer to $100.

Of all of the anecdotes and quips in the book, though, the one that stuck with me was that Wakeman played the Mellotron on David Bowie's "Space Oddity," marking one of the first recorded uses of that keyboard (pun intended). He was paid nine pounds sterling for the gig -- session fees for session work, never mind the fact that Bowie was breaking a lot of rock and roll glass. I guess you never know when you're on the way up until you can look back from the next hill.

Went to see Godsmack at the Arts Center on Friday night with my son and one of his friends. In terms of pure energy, fun, quality of seats, and the theatrics, I'd put it in the top 10 rock shows I've seen. Ever. I was wearing my Sun Microsystems Americas Sales Meeting t-shirt that has a very Godsmack-inspired circular flaming sun logo, and got some double takes from other audience members. Then again, a bit of staggering and swaggering was average for the night, given the volume of {sound, people, beer} packed under the Arts Center cement tent.

The pyrotechnics were simply amazing -- flash pots, bang caps, rows of flame, and 8-10 foot tongues of fire coming up from the metal steps that rimmed the rear of the stage. Sound was as clean as it can be when ear plugs aren't even a question, but even with a 30 decibel drop in sound pressure the vocals were clean, Rombolo's guitar was sharp, and we got as much audible as physical presence from Robbie Merrill on bass.

So what was I doing taking a pair of 12 year olds to a metal concert?

First of all, the content and language (from the band, not the audience) are no worse than anything on prime time TV. Godsmack in 2006 is no worse from a comparative social perspective than KISS was in 1976. But the pyro has improved dramatically.

To a man, they're good musicians. Both of the almost-teens in tow play instruments with varying degrees of amplification. Nothing like seeing the real thing in concert to make you work harder. And we got the real thing -- Sully Erna on drums, harmonica, guitar and vocals; Tony Rombolo bending strings like David Beckham with soccer kicks. Listening to the Godsmack discography, I guessed he was long on effects pedals; turns out I guessed wrong on effects pedals. It was all finger strength -- really impressive to watch up close.

I love Robbie Merrill. The guy wore a beanie on stage under about 50,000 watts of lighting because it's part of his look. He's a hockey blogger as well, so we're kind of six-degrees-of-routing separated cousins. Above all else, he seemed to be having a lot of fun, and that's what music is supposed to be about.

I had a long drive from Westchester county back to New Jersey tonight, involving holiday shopping traffic around two major malls, a Hudson River crossing and a lot of toll booths. All made significantly easier with the re-issued Renaissance Live At Carnegie Hall.

I'm firmly convinced that Renaissance was primarily an East Coast, Philly to Boston, late baby boomer phenomenon. The best description I've heard of their music is "electric folk," but sparse adjectives don't do justice to Jon Camp's amazing bass lines, or Annie Haslam's vocals, or composition that draws on Russian literature and Persian folklore. Nearly 30 years after its release, I still get shivers when I hear Annie Haslam hit the final notes of "Sheherazade" or "Ashes are Burning." Annie Haslam has an unheard-of five octave range. All the more amazing to me since I have about two octaves and one of them is consistently out of whatever key we're in.

What happens when you take all-time favorite vocalist (Annie Haslam) and mix with all-time favorite guitar player (Steve Howe) on top-five all-time favorite Yes composition (Turn of the Century)? No, you don't get a recording session with MaryMary. But you can find out on Tales from Yesterday, a CD of Yes covers. It's magic.