NOT ASKING FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING

From the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” manager Jon Landau explaining the release to the label exec

“I’m not asking for your understanding, and I’m not here to explain Bruce’s thinking or justify his artistic choices. I am here to make sure the album is released precisely the way he wants, that’s it.

Whether or not you believe in this particular album, in this office, my office, we believe in Bruce Springsteen.”

This movie rattled me in a few ways, but this is the part I carry in my mission going back to 2001, that being, “I just wanna help my friends in band’s sell albums.”

This mission has changed over the years, notably to, “I just wanna help bands sell albums” when I helped launch Noise Creep at AOL Music in 2008. In 2021, when I launched Heavy Metal Email, a newsletter to help heavy bands return to email lists and websites as a way to regain a direct connection with fans, to 2023 when I renamed it as Social Media Escape Club, my mission is broader, “I just wanna help creative people make their work.”

It’s not quite so noble, more selfish than anything. I just wanted to see my friends in bands, or people I looked up to, I just wanted them to keep putting out their music, and keep this great big circus going – the artists who painted album covers, photographers who took band photos, the journalists who wrote about rock and roll.

I just wanna help creative people do their thing, and to do that thing they need to be able to let their fans know when they’ve got a new art exhibit, a new album to promote, a new book to order, and that’s becoming harder on social media in 2026.

So yes, I think simple email lists and websites make that work, just like post cards and tube amps and print flyers still work in the year 2026. Because it’s people, not platforms. It’s DIY venues filled with weirdos and punks and freaks that will outlast the “too big to fail” monoliths.

I’m not asking for your understanding, or to justify these artistic choices. Whether or not you believe any of this, I believe in the art.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE ONLINE

This from “The only taboo left is copyright infringement,” from Garbage Day:

The culture that feels the most dangerous, and, thus, exciting to young people, will be what you can’t see online. And the most dangerous thing for platforms is not racist garbage. It’s unmonetizeable content. The “metric” that will matter most going forward will not be the numbers at the bottom of a post or video, but the human beings in a room that left their house to experience something.

I’m sure people nearing 50 in prior generations kept fighting for drive in movie theaters, and muscle cars, late night diners – but that’s gone, only to be unearthed like dinosaur bones. I can’t remember the last time I even saw a photo of a drive in movie theater, a muscle car, or the late night diner scene, you know?

That’s just from the 1950s to 2025, that’s 75 years. Give it another 25 years and the fond memories of MTV, corded phones, and VCRs will be long forgotten.

It was in 1971 Gil Scott-Heron told us “The revolution will not be televised.”

The revolution will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run, brothers
The revolution will be live

Perhaps the revolution will not be online, it will be live.

I BUILT MY CAREER BY BLOGGING

I believe this with all my heart:

Go beyond the idea that you “need eyeballs” for your efforts to be worthwhile, and believe that writing about what you do in a lower stakes manner might be the best thing for your work.

I’ve been blogging since 2001, writing and publishing and hitting post or send for 26 years. Heck, even before that in the late 90s when building websites for bands and sending email newsletters for tiny music venues.

MUSICIANS SAYING NO TO STREAMING

Love this from Rolling Stone: “Johnny Blue Skies, the guy formerly known as Sturgill Simpson, will release a new album only in physical format.”

No streaming, just vinyl, CD, and cassette.

As Steve Vai once said, “I get paid the most.” As more artists call the shots, and resist the allure of giving everything away for free, then we’ll see some actual change in the creative world.

Spotify won’t one day wake up and start paying more. Nor will the general public just stop streaming everything for $10 a month.

Until there’s less music available to stream.

Love music? Support it, or watch it go away.

BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA DAY

Got 40+ registered for tomorrow’s BREAK UP 💔 WITH SOCIAL MEDIA Day Zoom call tomorrow at 12pm EST (Feb 14, of course, still time to register).

Three hours a day is… a lot. I’ll be deleting the YouTube app (too easy to get caught up in scrolling Shorts while making lunch, or reheating my coffee), and the Substack app. Now that I can schedule Live streams via the desktop, I can finally ditch the app, as that too is just way too easy to scroll scroll scroll a few times a day, which adds up.

I love doing live stream stuff, and I feel like I need to figure out how to do that via YouTube or something at some point.

NERDY METAL TRIVIA SHOUT OUT FROM NPR

NPR ASK ME ANOTHER SKULL TOASTER

It was 13 years ago today that NPR’s Ask Me Another Twitter account gave my Skull Toaster project a little shout.

I posted well over 2,000 nerdy metal trivia questions on Twitter, and also over 1,000 email newsletters with the answers (and backstory). From 2011-2018 I did this as a living resume; showing potential companies that I could build audience, build community, and handle daily content for both social media and email newsletters, which is now the basis of my work over a decade later.

This stuff takes time. Don’t let the online guru’s fool you – it’s not as easy as just “pick your niche” and then “post content.” Anyone can buy a domain name and post for a month, but it takes belief and vision to do it for the long haul, even with no guarantee of making $10,000/MRR or an email list with 5,000 subscribers.