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Friday, Feb. 6 -
"Lollapalooza of a Business" - Perry Farrell
The
first thing I think about when someone suggests to me about playing
a festival, I think to myself, Where’s it going to be? Because
I think, like buying a house, it’s location, location, location.
I want you to tell me how that location is going to affect the feeling
of the evening. Are these beautiful trees going to be waving, maybe
blowing gently in the night, where we can kind of sneak off and have
sex or, um... pee?
The next thing I start to think about is, Gosh, I wonder who is going
to play with us! Is it going to be some crappy band that’s going
to reduce us or is it going to be somebody legendary that I can look
at from the side of the stage and just can’t believe that I’m
looking at them.
And then, quickly, all of a sudden I start thinking, How much?
But then I start to think to myself about what’s going to happen
that night. I start to imagine the crowd and I start to look out at
the crowd.
What’s cool about a crowd is that they instantly start to take
over, wherever you are. You can have planned this place for a year;
they start walking through the gates, it’s their place. (Mimics
an excited concert-goer) They’re walking around, digging it.
And I start to imagine the moment when everybody starts to respond.
They’re starting to talk back at you somehow. They’re
letting you know, and it all starts going around, it all starts to
become a nice circle. It’s very beautiful.
And what I’m after, all of the time, is the memory of a lifetime.
I would not settle for anything less. I want people to go home and,
if I would ever see them in an airport having a Bloody Mary, they
would say to me:
“You know, I saw you in ’85 or something.”
And I’m thinking, C’mon, tell me about it.
And they say, “You were ... your show was ... Man, dude, it
was ...”
Hmm, hmmm?
“... It was one of the greatest shows I ever saw.”
There you go! There you go. Thank you. That’s what I shoot for.
Nothing less. My show was the greatest you ever saw. Or one of the
greatest, anyways. There’s a lot of greats.
But it’s a memory of a lifetime. That much you better promise
me.
Great parties are sexy and everybody in the room feels like heroes.
Guys are cocky, girls are amused and people are lounging around as
if it’s their own estate. That’s the feeling. And it’s
a wonderful feeling, as a promoter, when you look out from behind
the curtain and you see that happening.
And for this kind of result, we depend upon the musician and we depend
on the music. And I say the musician first because I think, in this
day and age, we’re very used to getting music for nothing and
we get music at all angles. Music just comes to us. And we forget
a lot of time that there was somebody who fell in love really hard
and he decided to declare his love to somebody, and we took those
words and we took that music and we used those words and music to
serenade our own women.
And there was a guy who was really lonely and he wrote a song. And
all of the people who were out there who were really lonely felt it
made sense to them. He took the time, you know? They sit in rooms
and they write this music.
And they taught us things like how to go out and steal and pierce
your nose and get bad tattoos that you’re going to regret later.
And they taught you to question authority.
That’s something my friend Tim Leary taught me: “Question
authority! Even what I tell you, goddamn it!”
But we assume that music is just there. I do the same thing; I’m
very guilty of it. We can’t quantify its origins anymore. What
can music be if you get it for free? You’ve got to figure it’s
not worth much. It’s worth nothing.
But then I always figure, well, air is free but if you don’t
give a guy air for a minute, he’s fuckin’ dead! Heya!
Music!
Now I’m gonna tell ya what’s killin’ the music business.
It’s something that I became addicted to. You all know what
it is. Money? Cocaine? Oxycontin?
No, it’s the computer. It happens to be my “intimate friend.”
So, today, I’m going to admit something to everyone.
Hello, my name is Perry and I’m a downloader. (Cries) I started
downloading with my friends. I did it a couple of times. They mentioned
a band to me and asked me to try it. I said, “No, I’m
OK,” but they called me chicken and stuff.
After a while, I was getting into cheap stuff. Ninety-six bits from
cable. I waited for hours just to get what I needed.
I accepted the death of the traditional music industry the way Anna
Nicole Smith accepted the death of her 99-year-old husband. I embrace
the present and I look forward to the future! I dig the computer.
With the computer, I’ve expanded my musical knowledge. I do
research in different areas of music that I never would have paid
a nickel for and, in fact, if you want to know what I think, I think
that’s what you should pay for music – a nickel.
Here’s my system. Music that’s five years old should be
a nickel. Music’s that’s three to four years old, you
should pay a dime. If it’s two years old, it’s 50 cents
and for new singles, 75 cents.
Singles man, I think that’s where it’s at. And I bet you
if we had that system, you’d end up at the end of the month
with a bill of about forty bucks, which is pretty good when you think
about it. We’d all love to get forty bucks from every person
in this room for music, right? It’s a lot more than what we’re
getting now. Clever, huh?
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