as you may know, i run the worlds best howard stern facebook group.
one of the things that im constantly debtating about is deleting posts that whine that howard isnt the same howard as he was when he was throwing baloney on the asses of strippers or yelling at the FCC or having women sit on a giant vibrating… well… device.
the same could be said about this blog or me or you or anything. shit changes. get over it.
i am so blessed that i was invited to be part of the college of creative studies when i was a lad because creativity has been top of my mind for a long time. and especially the dynamic of how creativity changes as we age.
in music it seems like most artists have a spurt of creativity when they’re young and it dissipates as they get older. listen to Bruce Springsteen’s first three records compared to his last three and a lot of the experimentation is long gone and Bruce is far from the only example of this happening. indeed there seems to be only a few exceptions to this rule
tom waits, bob dylan, and neil young.
in rap it seems like only kanye continues to push his own boundaries in dramatic ways but i could be wrong i dont know a lot of hip hop. but lets bring it back to the busblog.
i know i dont experiment here as i used to. i dont for a million reasons including the fact that i just dont care any more. in the day when blogging was poppin and i would get millions of readers and 40-50 comments on every post i felt like the only way i could compete with alllll the other blogs in the world was to do Anything i could to stay relevant and interesting and vibrant.
now i am one of the last blogs that does this almost every day.
so who cares if i do something interesting or “new”, who’s gonna read it?
and in a way i dont want that many people reading it (murphys law, catch 22) because i dont want to be misunderstood and have that affect my livelihood. its all very complicated.
now back to howard. im sure at 65 years old theres part of him that wouldnt mind throwing a slice of luncheon meat at someone from time to time, but i think he’s gotten that out of his system. and if he does it now people will complain and say he has run out of ideas. you can never win.
but you can.
you win by doing. you win by going to work every day (or in his case 3x a week) and putting out a show and relating to people and connecting to people and doing the damn thing. dancing with the one you brung ya.
last night i was reading about HBO and how now that they are owned by AT&T have all this extra money and they wanna compete with Netflix. and i thought maybe i should try to work with someone to bring Howard a Charlie Rose type interview show thats just a big round table and Howard and a guest. Letterman did a short version of this for Netflix, but America knows Dave as a great interviewer, not everyone knows that Howard is even better.
and i thought, someone has probably tried to get howard to do it but for whatever reason thats not his thing. what is his thing? painting? he loves to paint. so maybe get howard to interview great artists for a month. then the next month SNL alumns. then musicians. it could be a whole thing that compliments his work on radio.
so the question is, do i know a producer who could help me with this?
the answer is. yes i probably do.