By the late 1980s, MTV’s programmers weren’t content with scattershot ratings, so they experimented with original series and specialty programming blocks. Today, MTV’s harshest critics blast Jersey Shore and The Hills as having nothing to do with rock and roll, but each one of these groundbreaking series dealt with similar complaints:

#10: The State

In the early 1990s, MTV experimented mixed music videos with short comedy segments starring Ben Stiller and Alex Winter. With the premiere of The State, MTV flipped the formula to emphasize comedy, even though popular music pervaded the entire show. The NYU-based group managed to put Sid and Nancy on Pyramid, stage an Eastern Bloc variety show (that got its own spinoff), and chronicle a porcupine race.

#9: House of Style

Before fashion correspondents covered the runways on E!, MTV News spun its own style features into a newsmagazine that followed supermodels and designers around the world. Cindy Crawford hosted the original series for six years, presenting segments that analyzed how the fashion industry impacted social awareness as well as style consciousness. The series drew controversy for its examination of eating disorders in the modeling business.

#8: Total Request Live

When viewers complained that MTV had stopped playing music videos, programmers launched two series: Carson Daly’s countdown Total Request and the manic talk show MTV Live. Welding both shows together at MTV’s new Times Square studios in 1998 launched a decade of pop culture influence for TRL. The show’s popularity coincided with a boom in boy bands and teen queens, with TRL becoming world headquarters for fans of Christina, Britney, and Justin.

#7: Jackass

In 1999, struggling actor Johnny Knoxville recorded a series of bizarre stunts for a feature article in a skateboarding magazine. In the pre-YouTube era, Knoxville’s crazy videotapes circulated across the country until MTV offered the Jackass crew a permanent home—and access to professional first aid technicians. The show has spawned its own circle of celebrities, including Steve-O and Bam Margera, and a third Jackass feature film is in the works.

#6: MTV Unplugged

Originally showing up on the schedule in late 1989, MTV Unplugged offered a mellow escape into New York’s folk scene, with acoustic performances by some of the channel’s most popular stars. Paul McCartney’s release of his episode’s set as a live album turned Unplugged into an essential tour stop during the 1990s. Nirvana’s 1993 Unplugged episode became one of Kurt Cobain’s final television appearances.

#5: Remote Control

Ken Ober helmed MTV’s daily celebration of television’s loudest genre: the game show. Contestants didn’t always realize that a wrong answer could get them literally ejected from a recliner through a hole in “Kenny’s” basement wall. Players lucky enough to win the trivia competition found themselves strapped to a Craftmatic bed or to the “Wheel of Jeopardy” for the bonus round. Loony theme rounds featured up-and-coming comedians, including Denis Leary, Colin Quinn, and Adam Sandler.

#4: Liquid Television

MTV sucker-punched casual, late-night viewers by melting popular music videos into Liquid Television’s opening credits. A few seconds of “Love Shack” morphed into the first appearances of Aeon Flux, The Head, and Dog-Boy. Mike Judge not only debuted Beavis & Butthead on the series, he also screened the animated short that would evolve into Office Space.

#3: 120 Minutes

In 1986, just about the only place American audiences could catch a glimpse of R.E.M., The Smiths, or The Cure was on late Sunday night, when MTV programmed two hours of alternative music videos. By the time legendary host Dave Kendall arrived in 1989, alternative had practically taken over college radio. And with the world premiere of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” 120 Minutes helped modern rock conquer mainstream audiences.

#2: The Real World

MTV’s reality shows, especially standouts like The Osbournes and Jersey Shore, owe everything to The Real World. Starting with the New York season in 1992, the series broke documentary boundaries while introducing now-common devices like “The Confessional.” Third season cast member Pedro Zamora captured America’s attention by sharing both his same-sex marriage and his struggle with AIDS.

#1: Yo! MTV Raps

In August 1988, MTV brought the culture of freestyles and mixtapes to Middle America with the premiere of Yo! MTV Raps. Hosts Fab 5 Freddy, Doctor Dré, and Ed Lover captured classic interviews and performances while chronicling the sound and the style of hip hop. The groundbreaking show even engineered its own demise: the rap music it championed became so dominant in the mainstream, there was little reason to keep it as a standalone programming block.

Over the past few months, I’ve seen a huge surge of interest in my third book, Music Management for the Rest of Us. It could be that a bunch of folks are thinking about pursuing music industry careers, in the wake of crazy layoffs all over the United States. But it’s also likely that more independent musicians are thinking about building their success teams by training trusted friends and family members to help grow their audiences.

That’s why I’m so excited about this week’s special announcement.

Next month, I’m going to launch an eight-week “boot camp” for beginning music management professionals. I’ve been spending the last few months taking the ideas from my Music Management book and thinking about ways to develop some of the most crucial skills that someone would need to take on this important role for an artist.

Music Management Boot Camp participants will meet with me once per week, by phone, for eight weeks. During each of the first seven sessions, we’ll discuss how to develop a specific skill. I’ll even recommend some reading and assign some “homework” to drive each point home. The eighth week is about setting up an action plan to deliver meaningful results for your artist. We’ll follow up again ninety days later to check in on your progress.

If you’re self-managed, this course will help you learn how to look at your career through the eyes of a seasoned manager. And if you’re new to the business, you’ll learn how all seven of these skills trump experience and connections when it comes to getting things done for your clients. (Hint: they’re the same skills Brian Epstein used to help the Beatles — even though he was a retail manager only a few months before they met.)

There are only TWELVE seats available for this course, so I suggest you act fast. If I offer this again, it won’t be until the fall. Since I haven’t been able to open up any personal coaching appointments, this is one of the rare opportunities for us to get to work together on your music career in 2010.

Class starts on March 16, but these reservations WILL sell out sooner than that.

Visit our special Music Management Boot Camp website for all the details.

I hope we get to work together this Spring!

It seems like the music journalism community has decided that this is the week they can finally pile on Taylor Swift. In the past 36 hours, I’ve read headlines about her “career-ending” Grammy performance, bloggers and columnists have called for her to hand back the statues (not just the one that broke) or retire altogether from the music business.

Bitter, much?

Three things strike me as important about this debate:

1. It’s not like someone suddenly threw her on the stage and realized, “oh, no, she can’t sing!” Taylor’s team understands that the power of an organic live performance holds far more sway with her audience than anything inauthentic. When Lori and I watched the Grammycast, we noted that she probably should have sung an octave lower, but we gave her credit for taking a shot. Her fans “get” the courage it takes to turn Autotune off during a telecast that makes Jamie Foxx sound like a robot.

2. Grammys are awarded for production, not for live performance. It’s incredibly brave to get up and sing in front of The Industry without auto-tune, especially in an environment where “being pitchy” has become an American Idol catch phrase. It cracks me up that so many people are calling for her Grammys to be rescinded because Stevie Nicks sounded so much better than her on stage. Hell, Stevie Nicks could have made Beyonce sound bad.

3. Doesn’t it seem disingenuous that artists should penalize each other for taking risks? If Pink had fallen off that trapeze, I’m sure someone would have been talking about how her lack of acrobatic skill negates her musical talent. Lady Gaga sitting across from Elton John was a surprise, but not a huge risk: they have essentially the same career trajectory. Being accused of “not being country enough” then rolling out with a hootenanny arrangement of your biggest pop hit with one of rock’s sharpest singers — that’s a risk.

One of the central tenets of Grow Your Band’s Audience is that there’s an audience for anything. Being “good” or “bad” is just subjective. “Having fans that sustain you” vs. “not having fans” is really the differentiator in today’s market. Crafting entertainment that engages a specific audience is what will propel your career forward. Even if Taylor Swift doesn’t hold on to the overwhelming amount of popular attention she has now, the teens that have embraced her album now will be the adults that support her on tour in twenty years.

Two trends explain this. First, American pop culture has become very much about tearing down the things that you don’t personally like. It’s the “awesome/sucks” phenomenon. Second, I think there’s still a “zero sum game” fear that someone like Taylor Swift garners attention that could be lavished on someone else. Again, it doesn’t matter. If you define “success” as being able to quick your day job and play music full time, you have “made it.” At that point, playing the Grammycast is just gravy.

Everyone I know has a newfound respect for P!nk. Apparently, she’s been doing the wire act from last night’s Grammy Awards as an encore in her live set for some time now. That it was the standout moment in the telecast says a lot about what the music business has to do to attract and retain fans.

It’s not just about having a great song or a great look. It’s about transporting your audience to another place. In our hyper-connected society, what are you doing to get your audience away from Twitter, away from Facebook, and away from their friends long enough to actually pay attention to what you’re doing? So many bands I’ve seen in the last few years still struggle and strain to be heard over the din of a bar crowd that’s more interested in their own conversations than to hear the music they apparently paid to see.

That ties back to the undercurrent of chatter going on in many of the Academy’s chapters. I’m a member of the Philadelphia Chapter, and outside of New York and Los Angeles, the chapters work very hard to build community, launch careers, and advocate for arts education. Those are the reasons I remain a long term supporter (and member) of the Recording Academy. But casual observers often see the Academy linked directly to the efforts of the RIAA to cripple file sharing.

In so many ways, that’s sad, because the members of the Academy are personally interested in so much more. Many of us recognize that you’ve got to create content worth paying for and experiences worth paying for to justify an audience’s patronage. The vast majority of artists have already embraced the idea that collecting cash for album tracks is just the tiniest fraction of your potential revenue stream. A BitTorrent of Pink’s performance is nothing like seeing her live, and that’s the kind of focus artists require to make money in this environment.

That’s a shame, because Portnow has done so much to refocus the Academy around education and outreach. It’s sad when he uses the stage as a soapbox for the industry’s anti-piracy campaign. In the middle of a recession, here’s a guy, standing in front of an arena full of folks who can afford tuxedos and Cristal, complaining that the people in the room aren’t getting paid enough. Great way to build rapport.

Still, Portnow’s always going to be lightyears ahead of his predecessor, Michael Greene. The membership practically ran him out of town on a rail when we discovered that only about 10% of MusiCares donations were actually going to help sick artists. (Portnow has largely fixed this, though the outlay on MusiCares events would still make some of my friends in the non-profit community weep.) And that’s not even scratching the surface of Greene’s alleged ethics violations, accusations of sexual harassment, and my personal beef that he pretty much got the Grammys kicked out of New York permanently.

Overall, I’m happy about what Portnow’s done, and I was really impressed with last night’s telecast. It’s the first Grammy show in years that was technically tight and consistently engaging. If you’re still upset about who actually won the awards, then you can blame me and the other 10,000 voting members who are admittedly a little behind the curve when it comes to defining “what’s good.” Portnow’s LA crew did a great job rolling out the equivalent of Oscar “screeners” so voters could actually listen to all of the nominated tracks and albums this year.

Some of my highlight moments from last night:

• Had you told me in 1994 that we would be buying tickets for a Green Day Broadway musical in 2010, I would have advised you to step away from the bong. Yet, here we are.
• Cheers to Hillary Scott for a quick recovery after getting trapped by a scrim during Lady Antebellum’s performance.
• I grew concerned that facemasked will.i.am was going to go all supervillain and use Beyonce’s riot patrol to take the Staples Center hostage.
• I’m pretty sure most CBS affiliates went to bars-and-tone the moment Eminem got on the stage. How much longer before creative and financial pressures force the telecast onto cable, like the Miss America Pageant and Monday Night Football?

Some things show up in four year cycles, like the Winter Olympics, leap years, and complaints about Talent2K.

In the past few weeks, I’ve found myself again facing a stack of mail asking whether Talent2K is “legit,” whether they’re “reformed,” or whether they can deliver on the promise of a record deal.

Contributors to spinme.com have been writing about Talent2K since the very first iteration of this site, over a decade ago. Back in 2003, John Foxworthy wrote a guest editorial summarizing the findings of his investigation into the company. We followed up with some more details in a 2004 post, and our comments and bulletin boards have perennially surged with new readers looking for information about this A&R outfit.

Here’s how it works:

• Bands “sign” with Talent2K, an independent A&R company, who guarantees the offer of a record deal within a fixed period of time. During that time, T2K representatives “shop” a band’s demo to major labels. The contract promises a full refund if T2K fails to procure an offer.
• Usually days before the refund clause kicks in, T2K brings back an offer from one of a collection of affiliated labels. The deals we have heard about all require acts to front some of their own money for production or distribution expenses. These upfront costs often amount to thousands of dollars.
• Bands who turn down the deal end up losing the fee they paid Talent2K. After all, the contract only said they’d get you an “offer,” not an actual deal. And the contract didn’t stipulate which label you’d be hearing from. (They didn’t promise that you’d get signed to Warner or Sony, after all.)
• Bands actually forging ahead with the record deal often report back to us that they hit unsurmountable obstacles in the recording or production process. Bands have to pay their own expenses to travel to Los Angeles to record in an expensive studio–all stipulated by the record deal, and all requiring upfront expenses.
• The handful of recording artists that have made it to the point of completing an album under these deals now have to market and sell their CDs without help from the label, unless they’re willing to pay for an approved publicist. In some cases, I have heard of bands actually failing to receive the product they ordered. (As if nobody actually expected them to get that far.)

Is Talent2K a “scam” or a “ripoff?”

That depends on your definition. Legally, they provide the service that they offer. They shop records and they find record deals. But are they really doing anything you couldn’t do on your own, for far less money?

Their website no longer lists the “record deal” offer they’ve made in the past, so I have no idea if they still actually put that out there, or what they charge. Let’s look at what’s listed under their “limited offer” promotional package, for $995:

• 40 submissions to forty record labels
• 40 submissions to forty of the top management firms
• create a biography and press kit
• create a website for your project

Here’s what it really takes to accomplish the same net result:

• Order 80 nice Kraft folders from Staples, outer envelopes, eighty glossy headshots and eighty one-page fact sheets at Kinkos ($160)
• 100 CD’s in slimline cases from DiscMakers ($164)
• Convince a Facebook friend to write/design your one-sheet and CD sleeve (at least lunch at Taco Bell, no more than dinner at Morton’s.)
• Stamps ($173)
• Design and host a professional website. (Bandzoogle’s service does a great job for $15/month.)

Instead of spending $995 on your label outreach, you can do it yourself for a few hours of sweat equity and $512, and you will get EXACTLY the same result: no nibbles from any legitimate label that wants to offer you a deal.

That’s because NO A&R person is looking in their slush pile for acts anymore. They’re talking to club owners about who’s packing small venues. They’re watching chatter on bulletin boards and asking MP3 bloggers what they should be hearing. They’re looking at iTunes charts for bands with sales figures from out of nowhere. They’re looking for an audience that’s already been built.

They are NOT looking for acts in any pile of mail delivered by the United States Postal Service.

The website promised we’d be stars!

But, wait! Talent2K’s web site says that they have received millions of hits in the past year, and that they are one of the biggest music related websites on the net.

I call shenanigans.

spinme.com is definitely NOT one of the biggest music related websites on the net. Yet, even in a year where I have been wrapped up in book projects and posting only sporadic updates, we get many more unique visitors, according to respected third-party tracking service compete.com:

Not a fair comparison? At least they beat me during the month I screwed up the DNS records and knocked the site offline for, like, a week. But let’s stack both our sites up against a real tastemaker, like the folks at Pitchfork:

Won’t it cost less if seasoned professionals do all the work?

In 2003, it still cost thousands of dollars to record and master an album. Today, you can do it for far less, especially if you connect with fellow artists through communities like Just Plain Folks.

If you hand over thousands of dollars to anyone claiming even the most spurious connections to established artists in the hope that you will become an overnight sensation, you are simply telling the universe that you don’t like having money.

There is no company on earth that can take your band and a two thousand dollar investment and make you a star. Period.

Only you have the power to do that, and you don’t need to charge yourself that much.

If you feel really compelled to spend $512 on your career this month, I have compiled a shopping list:

• Get the Musicians Publicity Bootcamp collection that Bob and Ariel made, for $245.
• Buy Jay Frank’s awesome new book about how to write songs that radio programmers and A&R folks will love, for $25
• Hire Madalyn Sklar to conduct an interview of your band, which also includes a post on her blog (also read by more people than T2K), for $50.
• Get five independent, unbiased reviews of your press kit and demo from experienced journalists from ReviewYou for $150.
• And, of course, buy all four of my books for $67. (Why should my friends get all the love?)

Buying all this stuff won’t get you a record deal, either, but it will make a heck of an impact on growing an audience that can actually help you make your money back.

Lots of friends and colleagues from abroad have hyped up Spotify to me, and I don’t doubt that it’s an awesome service. As we hear more about Spotify, especially involving mobile apps and in-car services, I fear we might be getting ahead of ourselves. Specifically, I worry that users’ fervor for the system overlooks the core reason why similar concepts have failed in the U.S.: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The law was written during a time before iPod, in an era where it still seemed plausible that record companies could wield enough power to prevent users from finding content on demand without owning it first.

WFUV has a great, concise summary of the hoops broadcasters and webcasters must put themselves through in order to comply with the law:

• No on-demand content.
• Bizarre restrictions on the number of songs you can play from a given artist or album within any rolling three hour window.
• No published playlists of your shows if they’re archived, since users could conceivably find a song they want to hear within the archive of your show.
• Podcasts of music shows? Oh, hell no.

And this has nothing to do with royalties, either. It has to do with how the DMCA interprets copyright and ownership in the work. To get around it, you need to get a signed release from every known and prospective owner of the copyright in a recording. Usually, that’s the record label. But, with convoluted contacts from the past decade, it doesn’t surprise me to see managers, artists, songwriters, compilation producers, recording engineers, and other lienholders in the mix.

For a service like Spotify to work in the United States, they’ve got to get all of those parties to sign off on exemptions and exceptions to DMCA. Otherwise, you’ve got another version of Pandora. (And, while Pandora’s cool, nearly every limitation of the service can be traced directly to DMCA.)

I am trying out some new software, so if you’re subscribed to our weekly newsletter, you will get some mail from me with the return address:

newsletters [at] joetaylorjr.com

Thanks for helping me keep my inbox organized!

Musicians who check out spinme.com for music business news may want to skip past this post — it’s about one of my extracurricular projects.

As always, I am so flattered and excited when I get to write for my friends at Yahoo! about careers. My editors asked me to look into some jobs that offer more than just one or two weeks off per year. The resulting article, Five Rewarding Careers that Let You Have a Life, went live over the weekend and bubbled to their top page this morning.

It generated some interesting reader mail, including these comments:

You paint a lovely but unrealistic picture of this career. Our last day is June 2nd and I’ll return to this building August 7th. Actually I will use a personal day for June 2nd because I report to graduate school in Kansas on that day. For the second summer in a row, I will spend all of June and July attending classes. – Kiki in Colorado

Are you kidding me, were did you do your research. A K-12 teacher lets there class out early June, in most cases they are back in the classroom the next week to meet state requirements. Last summer because of the cost of daycare (NO INCOME DURING THE SUMMER BREAK) my children went to class with my wife, which let out right before she was the report back to the school she teaches at, for the beginning year seminars and to put your classroom back in order after summer cleaning. – Michael in Arizona

I am extremely insulted by your article. I do NOT get a VACATION! I am on unpaid leave for about 2 months. Also, during that time I HAVE to continue my education. Teaching licenses require 6 graduate credits every 5 years. So, even though I am not being paid I have to pay out money to continue my career. I would appreciate you doing better research before your write your articles. After reading this one, I assume you have misrepresented many things in your other articles. – Linda in Texas

I am NOT off for three months in the summer. If you look at when I do not have school, it comes in at less than three months. On top of that, there are meetings for 1 – 2 weeks after the year is over, and 1 – 2 weeks before the year begins. In reality, my summer is approximately 6 weeks long. – Wendy in Oregon

Certainly, I didn’t write the article to rile you up, or to paint an overly flattering picture of a challenging — but rewarding — career. To clarify the position I took in the article, I’d like to point out a few facts:

First, a number of you were riled up at the implication that teachers get “three months off.” Rest assured, that statement never appeared anywhere in my article. While teachers, in my book, deserve three months off, I don’t know of a school district that offers that much of a perk. Some of the other careers profiled in the piece do offer an unpaid seasonal break, especially for resort chefs. The closing paragraph of the piece also noted that all five careers involving unpaid leave required time management and money management skills.

Unfortunately, one of the folks who helped to promote this article used “Three Months Off” as a subhead on the Yahoo! home page, so I can understand where you might have felt that was implied. In my experience, teachers tend to get from 4-8 weeks in the summer as personal time. Sometimes, this time off is paid. Sometimes. it’s unpaid. Every school district seems to do this a little bit differently. And, as many folks pointed out in my inbox, some employers expect or require teachers to complete professional development projects during that time.

Second, whenever I write an article about education jobs, I hear from teachers who want to know where I get my data. I rely on surveys conducted by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as data from local school districts and government offices. I also interview teachers and school officials for background information, which I add to my collection of articles from colleagues at newspapers and blogs.

In many parts of the country, school districts and charter schools are competing for fresh talent with bigger pay packages, fast-tracked licensure, and — yes — guaranteed time off that does not include lesson planning and professional development. Some school districts are experimenting with year-round calendars, while others are dropping weather buffers in favor of longer summers.

For prospective teachers entering their careers in competitive school districts, there are some sweet deals to be had. At the same time, I know many beleaguered teaching professionals who earn under $22,000 a year and don’t remember what a day off looks like. Is that fair? Certainly not. But that’s the reality in a system that is generally underfunded and under attack from both political and economic forces.

Finally, some writers suggest I implied that teaching is a breeze. Yes, some teachers make it look effortless. However, teaching is hard work. None of my articles imply anything different. If you have read any of my articles and understood that to be the message, I sincerely apologize. More than most of us, teachers have a tendency to take their work home with them. Some teachers absorb the personal struggles of at-risk students. Others face challenges of meeting lofty goals with few resources. Do we ever ask bank tellers to pull a shift without pens or pencils? Why, then, do we constantly ask teachers to do the same?

I hope you can understand that my intent was not to insult anyone or to denigrate a profession. I’m merely reporting on a curious trend that has been tracked by multiple, credible sources. I do thank everyone who wrote in, especially since it gives us a sense of how many people are getting the chance to enjoy these pieces.

Comments on this post are open, and I’d love to continue the conversation…

UPDATE (Aug 27, 2008): A re-edit of this piece is now circulating, in which a paragraph has been massaged to include the phrase, “Even with three months off, many K-12 teachers earn over $41,000 per year.” A well-meaning editor wanted to emphasize the “three months” angle, although the statement actually refers to a minority of teachers working in school districts that do provide this perk.

For two years running, the American Idol Songwriter competition has brought a HUGE traffic spike to the site.

Here’s an easy way to help us pay the bills and earn $25 for about three minutes’ work.

Steve Case, who once helped launch AOL, is starting up a PayPal competitor. He’s offering $25 for each new member that signs up for the free service before April 15, 2008. Better still, if you follow our little green banner below, we get $10 to help cover the web hosting expenses that spike at about this time each year.

I’ve been looking for an alternative to PayPal for some of my personal friend-to-friend transactions for a time now, and I really like what they’re doing with this service.

Please help us out and click the link below to claim your bonus — totally free, no weird offers or ads to click through. Just two minutes to get your hands on $25 and keep us from hoisting a “site unavailable” error message.

Are we so transparent about marketing these days that it’s okay for NBC to just slap a box on their pages that blatantly says, “CROSS PROMOTE?”

Indulge me over the next few days, since I’m catching up from some time on the road and wanting to use this space to document a few of my experiences that have nothing at all to do with the music business.

Back in January, I enjoyed the chance to visit San Francisco for Macworld Expo. A wonderful, thrilling, fast-paced week. The last time I was in SF, Lori and I visited at the beginning of the end of the dot-com bubble so I could attend a “future of music” conference where everyone fretted about what might happen if MP3 downloads ever reached 64kbps quality. Oh, those were the days. During that visit, we enjoyed some of the best food of our lives, and I knew that I’d be in for just as much of a treat this time around.

Sure enough, I chalked up three of my most memorable dinners during this trip. So, whether you’re a musician on the road, looking for some yummy but inexpensive grub, or you’re a random visitor stumbling across this site for the first time, I present to you:

The House of Nanking

My new friend Antonio from Baltimore rousted up a Citysearch review for House of Nanking that looked promising after Mike and I suggested that we hike up to Chinatown from our hotel on Market. We wanted something inexpensive but fun, and maybe a little off the beaten path. The site suggested making reservations, but it was still early, so we headed uphill.

Set apart from the rest of the restaurants in the neighborhood, House of Nanking looks like a cross between a South Philly diner and a London Chinese takeaway. There’s zero design going on here — just utility. A mishmash of diner chairs and a cramped, goofy layout resulting from half of a wall knocked out between adjacent buildings. We got seats right by the miniscule kitchen. I once owned a microwave oven larger than this kitchen. I’m not even kidding.

A curt waiter grabbed our drink orders, and plopped down three cans of soda with two straws. Not quite the foodie heaven we pictured from the reviews. “Hey, I’ve eaten in way worse places,” I consoled. The stripped-down menu didn’t really hold allure for me, either. I hadn’t been eating red meat for a while, and there was a lot of beef on offer. I suggested to our waitress that I would simply have the chicken fried rice. (I really like chicken fried rice, and I always hated the fact that I couldn’t get any when I lived in Athens. So I seem to constantly try to make up for lost time by ordering it when I see it on the menu.)

The waitress actually crinkled up her nose at me and told me, “No. I really wouldn’t recommend the fried rice. I’ll tell you what — you came all this way for good food, so let us take care of you.” With that, she took our menus.

In hindsight, having read other reviews online, this appears to be a tactic that the staff use here quite often. It could be that the cooks are feisty and love to create tasting menus based on their moods. It could also be an easy way to shift merchandise based on what’s available that morning. Some of the online super-foodies take it as an insult — they don’t want to be told what to eat. We took it as an adventure, and I’m glad we did.

After ten minutes of nervous discussion, our waitress returned with three family-size trays of the most amazing Asian food I have ever experienced.

The sesame chicken made me want to find the nearest Panda Express and kick someone square in the nuts for the crimes they have committed against this cuisine. I never knew that dish could taste so good. Instead of the gloppy chicken nuggets we Americans are used to, we feasted on lean strips of breast meat in a light sauce. We could taste every flavor that went into the dish. I felt like Gordon Ramsay at the end of a Kitchen Nightmares where the chef has finally learned to cook.

Next, a really surprising dish, the Cracklin’ Beef. This was really a chopped salad of Romaine and diced tomatoes — almost like a salsa — with the tiniest strips of stir-fried steak. Think Philly cheese steak, but with a little more snap to the bite. I would probably never order this if I saw it on the menu, yet I consider it one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted.

Finally, the spicy fish. I asked the waitress if she could tell me what kind of fish it was, and she replied, “it’s good fish.” Touche. It was a light, white fish simmered in a spicy red sauce. To cut the kick, it came with a side of thinly sliced sweet potatoes, another unexpectedly amazing combination.

As we enjoyed our meal, other diners in the cramped space would lean in and ask us if everything was good — it was fun to be a part of this communal adventure.

With drinks and tip, the three of us got out of there for under $60. More than a typical diner, but far less than the Day Job’s per diem. On our way out, we noticed that a line had formed up the block and someone had to put out velvet ropes in front of this place that would give vintage CBGB a fair shot at winning a cleanliness contest.

It’s probably not for everyone — you might not want your menu dictated to you, you might not want cola in a can, and you might prefer a fawning waitstaff. And I certainly heard folks tell me that the place is not as good as it once was, which is kind of like saying you’d rather not see U2 play live today because they’re not as good as they were when War was released. Contrary to what I’ve read online, there were plenty of Asian folks chowing down in the dining room, so if that’s your barometer of a good Chinese restaurant, there you go. All I know is, I’m probably going to have to visit the place whenever I’m in town, which hopefully won’t take another eight years.

House of Nanking919 Kearny StSan Francisco, CA 94133-5106Phone: (415) 421-1429

Just back from vacation, I see a few notes in my box asking if I have any new books coming out.

Yes and no.

If you haven’t visited the site in a while, you might have missed a list of the topics I’m exploring this year. Somewhere in that list, there’s another book brewing, though I won’t know which one catches my fancy until I get the posts going.

Meanwhile, I’ve been spending a chunk of time doing non-music business stuff. Yes, the rumors are true. I have taken a full-time gig in a Big Company, where I get to do routinely Cool Things that are kinda tangential to music, but mostly about sales and marketing. It’s a fun and compelling challenge, and I get to work with the best team I have ever been a part of. I’m also spending a lot of my personal time working on freelance writing assignments that have nothing at all to do with music.

I’m not abandoning my readers, though. I simply want to spend some time right now to detach myself from the “biz” and reconnect with my love of music as a fan. The cruise we just took was a big part of that.

While we were at sea, Lori and I talked about where I thought I might go with this site and with my books in 2008, especially since my plate’s pretty full. And we reached a compelling conclusion:

I’m going to roll out the full text of all four of my books onto the site, for full and free access. No registration or login required.

I have wrestled with this on and off for about two years. In fact, Jason’s probably going to freak when he reads this, since he and I used to debate the pros and cons of this. (J, if I don’t get to call you soon, consider this a green light to post BBO, too.)

For a while, I felt like I couldn’t possibly devalue the thousands of copies of Grow Your Band’s Audience and its little siblings that sit on your shelves. And, at the same time, I hear from artists who really could benefit from the stuff that’s inside, who really can’t find the cash in their couch cushions to purchase a copy.

Part of me wonders what will happen by throwing it all out there, too. Kavit Haria took the zone booking strategy I introduced in More Gigs Now and has fleshed it out into its own science. I’m fascinated to see if he or other folks can build on to the rest of my initial research.

And I also want an opportunity to see what kinds of comments the material will generate once exposed to a wider audience. I once had a conversation with one of my long-time readers about making my books into a wiki and he wisely cautioned me against it. Posting the pages here will allow me to offer some authoritative advice alongside your own thoughts.

What put me past the tipping point was the insightful writing of Gerd Leonhard, who has been emphasizing that fans now pay for context and exclusivity instead of just the content. This site’s ad sales eclipsed my book sales about a year ago — it only makes sense now to put more content out to be supported by page views. Readers who want to enjoy the convenience of having everything in book form will still be able to do so. That’s where the value of purchasing the books really lies.

The process won’t be overnight. I expect to get about a chapter a day coded and posted, which means all four of my books will be online by Thanksgiving. In the meantime, I’ll post progress reports and links to new chapters on a steady basis.

And, once that’s done, I expect to compile all four books and all of my blog series into a new, single volume sometime in 2009. It’ll be a big’un.

That’s the plan, for now. And I want to thank you for the support you’ve given me over the years and for the inspiration you’ve offered me by showing me what you’ve been able to do with this material.

While it’s been pretty quiet here of late, I’ve been cooking up some new topic streams that I think you’ll find interesting in the new year. Some of the topics I’m kicking around include:

• more information about finding/training music managers
• what to look for and what to avoid in music business contracts
• how to find (or develop) a booking agent
• jobs in the music business
• music business books (best of the new crop)
• music business software (tools you can use to run your business)
• music business attorneys (how to find one, how to avoid bad ones)
• country music business (what’s different about Nashville)
• finding music publishing success
• how to use songwriting contests to jumpstart your creativity

As always, I’m trying to use the site as an opportunity to build on the books I’ve written over the last six years. So if there’s something you feel I should be covering here, try the search engine — you might find I’ve written about it earlier. And I want to thank you, the regular reader of this site, for indulging me during my time away. During my hiatus from the site, I’ve been able to recharge a little. That said, I’ll probably be splitting my time on the site between longer feature pieces or series and short little tweets and link lists. If you’ve got an idea for something you’d like to see here, please let me know in the comments, or via e-mail. 

As our newsletter subscribers have already heard, I’m spending a little time away from spinme.com to work on some new book projects and to write some pieces that have nothing to do with the music business. One of those pieces was featured on the front page at Yahoo! today, which is both flattering and awesome. So if you’re following me back here after a web search, welcome!