October 12, 2011--Lady Gaga

I have a friend who years ago played keyboards for a garage band called After Glows.

We were having dinner the other night and he wondered out loud how singers these days become famous. He and I go back far enough to know that there is nothing equivalent to the Ed Sullivan Show, which was a launching pad for Elvis and the Beatles among many others.

And we're young enough to know that MTV no longer plays music videos. They have descended to showing "reality" shows such as Jersey Shore. And of course radio shows such as the Make Believe Ballroom, the Hit Parade, and Casey Kasem's American Top 40 have long since vanished as a place to hear new songs and savor hits.

"I suppose like everything else," my friend said with a rueful sigh, "these days you get your music out, get paid attention to--or not--and become famous--or not--via the Internet."

"There aren't even record stores anymore," I said. "Remember those where there were little booths in which you could play and listen to singles"

"I'm not old enough to remember those," he said with a wink. (He is.)

So yesterday morning I asked Doug about this. He's very musical, up on small bands and groups, and is too young ever to have watched Ed Sullivan, though he does remember Tower Records.

"Well, there are music 'stores,'" he said, making air quotes.

"Really," I said, not able to think where to find one now that Tower is out of business.

"You really are old," he said with a broad smile. "Ever hear of the iTunes Store?"

"Touché," I said. "Rona uses it all the time to download albums for her iPod."

"Exactly," he said. "And about your other question--how do bands and individuals get known and famous these days," I nodded, "It's also largely through the Internet. If it wasn't for YouTube and Facebook, very few musicians would get their work heard and seen--and I emphasize seen--by more than a handful of people. There are fewer in-person or TV venues for new music than when you were coming up. There were, what, three TV networks then and radio networks like NBC that had stations all over the country. So an Alan Freed or a Cousin Brucie or a Wolfman Jack had national audiences for their music shows and tens of millions would tune in every day."

"And a lot of how songs got played on their shows," Rona added, "was because of payola. The A&R reps would make the rounds and distribute the new singles with hundreds of dollars sipped in the record sleeves."

"That got outlawed," I said, though Doug and Rona who know more about how the real world worked were skeptical about that.

"But," I said, "if you're right and folks get known through the Internet isn't that a version of a truly unregulated free market where payola wouldn't work?"

"Yeah," Doug said, "but how a video posted on YouTube goes viral is not necessarily because it's guided by Adam Smith's Invisible Hand."

"There's a lot that can be manipulated on the Internet by savvy record company marketers," Rona agreed.

"But," Doug said, "YouTube and the other social media can be good and fair market places for new people trying to get paid attention to. If you hear a piece of music on a local college radio station--which, by the way, are the places in much of America, including up here in Maine, where a lot of people hear new things--you can let your hundreds of Facebook friends know about it--actually send them a link to the music itself so they can hear it on their computers, which by the way are the modern day equivalent of your record booth--who, if they like it in turn can send it to their hundreds of 'friends.' This is the way things have a chance to go exponentially viral, with millions potentially being exposed to something that started very small, very local. All, by the way, for free."

"It's the same way revolutions happen these days."

"Exactly. Like in Tunisia and Egypt."

"And maybe Wall Street," I couldn't resist adding.

So later that day, at Doug's suggestion I tuned into WCLZ based in nearby Yarmouth. As I expected, it sounded very basic, clearly not a big budget operation. And, no surprise, considering how out of things I am, I immediately encountered a group I had never heard of--the Decemberists, an indie folk-rock group from the Portland in Oregon whose lyrics, I later learned, include many rural references and images, including "Down By the Water" which I heard on WCLZ. And as I also learned, apropos of my talk with Doug, the album and which it is a track, "The King Is Dead," was launched on the Internet. The "Down By the Water" single was downloadable for free from the band's Website. Described as the "most pastoral, rustic record they've ever made," by Douglas Wolk of Rolling Stone, the album reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart in February.

From this kind of virtual reality, no need to remind myself, Lady Gaga was spawned.

Now, I thought, with all this new, hip knowledge about how things work and knowing about a very cool band, I could revisit my Facebook page and profile. When I joined Facebook, as with everyone, I was prompted to make a list of my favorite books, TV shows, movies, and music to share with my friends.

I was OK with books and movies--I could come up with lists to disguise my advanced age and uncoolness; but when it came to music, all I could think was to list Frank Sinatra; the Beatles; and, stretching for something perhaps a little hipper, the Chambers Brothers.

But before embarrassing myself, I checked to see what some of my coolest Facebook friends had listed--Warren, for one, had the Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, and Liz Phair. She, at least, sounded vaguely familiar.

But now I could link my new favorite, the Decemberists, and add a couple of more I also encountered for the first time yesterday--Sonic Youth and Scissor Sister, a girl group that emerged from the gay club scene in New York. The city to where we will be returning in a few weeks when our pipes up here begin to freeze.

In addition to the weather, I too will be feeling a lot cooler.