Thursday, May 19, 2011

I Heart Radio this summer...its time to resurface your kitchen filled with memories.

Just when you think all the great songs have been written and the biggest and best stage performances are tucked away in weather torn cardboard boxes outside the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland; the cell phone app I Heart Radio slips a sip of common sense back into place by introducing you to a few bars of harmony the car radio forgot to play.

John Mayer’s Gravity…

I guessed, assumed, thought without truly thinking that People, US Weekly, Rollingstone, Entertainment Tonight and Ryan Seacrest on American Top 40 had dumped all there was about John Mayer on us until the still hot ashes from a burning soul picked up enough oxygen to ignite a small fire in my imagination.

Music is our meat and like great hunters no warrior walks into the birth of a new morning without requiring a fresh breath of rhythms, beats and tones perfectly ripe for your ears to pick.

I Heart Radio carries an echo the future will no longer be concerned with; an age when dropping diamond tipped needle on a sliver of vinyl tore up your father’s desire to seek a corner of the world blessed with peace and quiet but the music pressed into that oil slick was never loud enough to reach the deepest darkest whispers that kept you awake at night...so you kept it cranked.

Dreams from Fleetwood Mac isn’t the best cut on Rumors; show me the middle aged man that didn’t voluntarily get wrapped tightly in The Chain or Gold Dust Woman while staring at true to life photographs of the most beautiful woman in America Stevie Nicks.

Thirty two years of day to day play it until it burns out broadcasting and I still fall to my badly scared knees melted by the unexpected presence of quality songwriting produced by open minded mentors of music that foresaw the destination of lyrics touching the edge of fifty plus years and beyond.

The Ipod connects our ultimate earth moving, mood swinging favorites like the bright green and orange plastic spools did in our bedrooms, except now we don’t have to pick our lazy butts up off the bed to walk over to the stereo to slide another ten 45’s onto the maker of beats.

The problem with the digital age has nothing to do with how easily accessible the tunes are but how much we’ve forgotten about the rhyming and timing once carefully positioned between Baby I love Your Way and Show Me The Way from Frampton.

My midlife crisis project is having the blessed opportunity to record my poetry in music form with real musicians on a mission, directors with a vision to seek higher ground and producers with enough space in their head to legally call them insane until you take four minutes and listen to their art.

Alan constantly tells me, “We’re going back to the old days…each piece is part of a story. I want to make listeners hate themselves for not listening to the entire reason why these seventeen songs flew out of you. We don’t need the Ipod generation to find your songs. The growing need in this country is a music outlet that gives back to the person that wants to escape for an hour without having to live in a past they can’t change.”

Gravity from John Mayer paints the path of solitude for the soul that’s crammed fourteen hours of work into an eight hour day but you’re only getting paid for six of it.

Why is The Eagles Greatest Hits the biggest selling collection of tunes on earth? Because every song is worth holding.

It doesn’t matter how many video’s Beyonce debuts on American Idol; today’s music is based on looping drums and guitars and it’s up to the vocalist to fill in the blanks. Gene Simmons of KISS isn’t shy to admit that few of us truly have a love for music…we’re searching for an instant escape. He calls it legalized prostitution.

What if you spent the summer of 2011 with I Heart Radio, would the balance between your left foot and right be more equal?

Constantly we complain about change without physically doing anything but adding more work to our plate. Bob Dylan isn’t the greatest poet of all time; stop Googling radio's top twenty. Today’s un-radio airplays bubbling loosely on Itunes next to the one you really want to buy sits in a pool of sweat wanting to swim through your farthest thoughts in the way deep cuts on side B mesmerized even the best jocks in high school.

Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins is a genius in the way he’s taken an approach to our aspirations to feed vibrations into our veins; he doesn’t need a record company; he only needs Social Networking to spin its magic through text messaging and Face Booking…the word is heard of a new song which you can download free…then he makes his money playing it live.

A starving artist isn’t someone that can’t sell their pieces; look deeper into the eyes of truth; starving begins when the drive to breathe is taken over by an ego addicted to making a living. The origin of the artist’s vision didn’t cost them a dingy old beat up 1922 penny…just time, which will be lost at their passing…then the family is stuck wondering what they hell their going to do with all the pieces they elected to keep hidden from the world to display.

I Heart Radio is music’s gallery…its free for the taking.

arroecollins@clearchannel.com

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