How To Revive Rock Music

OK, so now that the IPod, downloads, the crappy economy et al have sunk the record business we used to know and love, I have an idea that just might draw a few of us back to the few remaining music stores that still exist....

In one word: collaboration.

Think of all the singers, writers, and bands we used to love. There's no "top 40" radio to speak of any more, so all we get are their classics endlessly played on oldies stations, 20, 30, 40 years after they first caught our attention. Somehow, the songs still sound great, even occasionally relevant despite they being a generation old. Yet, except for a rare few, we haven't heard from these people lately. Perhaps it's too costly to tour; perhaps they don't have a label -- who does these days? Maybe it's time for these talented people to revert back to (for lack of a better phrase) business model that once promised success for the best players:

Forming a new band.

Take Steven Stills, for example. 99 out of 100 people these days identify him with CSN (and sometimes Y) but look at the bands and the people he played with before that group.

From Wikipedia:

Stills dropped out of the University of Florida to pursue a music career in the early 1960s. He played in a series of unsuccessful bands including The Continentals, which featured future Eagles guitarist Don Felder. Stills could also be seen singing solo in Gerde's Folk City, a well-known coffee house in Greenwich Village. Stills eventually ended up in a nine-member vocal harmony group, the house act at the famous Cafe Au Go Go in NYC, called the Au Go Go Singers (Rick Geiger, Roy Michaels, Michael Scott, Jean Gurney, Kathy King, Nels Gustafson, Bob Harmelink, Richie Furay & Stills) where and when he met Richie Furay. This group also did some touring in the Catskills, and in the South, released one album in 1964, then broke up in 1965. Afterwards, Stills, along with four other former members of the Au Go Go Singers: Geiger, Michaels, Gurney & Scott, formed The Company, a folk/rock group. The Company embarked on a 6-week tour of Canada where Stills met a young guitarist named Neil Young. The Company broke up in New York within four months, opening up the way for Geiger to join a light opera company in Los Angeles; Michaels to link up with Jimi Hendrix, Gurney to go on to college while doing TV commercials, and Scott to tour with a retro-Highwaymen. Stills did session work and went to various auditions (including an unsuccessful one for The Monkees). In 1966 he convinced a reluctant former Au Go Go Singer, Richie Furay, then living in Massachusetts, to move with him to California.

Stills, Furay, and Young reunited in Los Angeles and formed the core of Buffalo Springfield. Legend has it that Stills and Furay recognized Young's converted hearse on the streets of LA and flagged him down, a meeting described in the recent solo track "Round the Bend". The band would release three albums (Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield Again, and Last Time Around) and one hit single (Stills' "For What It's Worth") before breaking up.

During the disintegration of Buffalo Springfield, Stills joined up with ex-Byrd David Crosby and ex-Hollie Graham Nash to form the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash. Cass Elliot invited Graham Nash over to meet Stills and David Crosby at the home of well known folk artist and painter Joni Mitchell, who painted several artworks of the three. Mitchell also contributed the artwork seen on the cover of the CSNY collection album "So Far", released in 1974.

Not to pick on Stills, but once CSNY hit it big, changing bands or changing up the lineup became a thing of the past. Yet his collaboration in other bands led him to the personal and musical connections that created CSNY.

So here's my point (and I do have one). What if all these great, well known individuals we heard on the radio dumped their egos at the door, quit trying to make a buck on the oldies county fair circuit, and sat down with other talented well known musicians and WROTE SOME NEW SONGS? Formed some NEW BANDS? Tried a new groove?

I, for one, want to hear Bob Seger team up with Linda Ronstadt and sing lyrics by Jackson Browne. Hell, at the very least, even an album of them doing covers of each others hits would be cool. (Think Seger singing "The Pretender." Sweet, huh?) Throw in a couple of killer guitarists from back in the day, and you've got a record people will pay for.

We, ahem, white people are all supposedly into country music these days, so why not unite some of the best country rock people from the 70's and turn them loose on some new tunes. Where are the boys from Marshall Tucker these days?

And, damnit, think about all the great soul acts out of Motown? Get those geezers out of the casino lounges and fire up a Hammond organ, for chrissakes. Think of the harmony! Stir that pot, mix in 40 years of real world experience, and gimme some new sounds that will rock this house. And put it out as an LP, too, just so I can smell some fresh vinyl again.