In the sauna last January an older man turned to me. You’re a music guy I’ve heard you talk before. That’s right, you too? I was a manager but now I’m retired. Did you manage anyone I know? Probably not but I wouldn’t tell you if I did. What does that mean? I like my secrets. Why is that? Experience sonny, experience. Do you have a manager? I take care of my own affairs and use a lawyer sometimes if I need to. Lawyer is good, taking care of your own affairs is sometimes good, sometimes not so good. How do you know? Me?! That’s all I know and I know it like my sore kishkas. Shouldn’t you keep your sore kishkas secret? You’re sharp sonny, I like that. You have any advice? Yes I do, music business is like war, remember people in charge might be very stupid and be very selective about whether you share your secrets because you might lose the war. That’s unusual advice. Experience sonny, experience. Based on …? Based on things you don’t know. You want a for instance? Yes please.

Okay, there was a woman in a rock band, a popular one from the 1970s, but she wanted to move on. Then she met a rock star, I’m not going to tell you his name, don’t ask, but he offered her a nice chunk of change to play in his band. So she quit her band and then his manager sent her a deal memo but it was for one fifth the money he had offered her. It was still good money but it was so much less than what he had offered when they spoke. What does she do? I’ll tell you, she writes the manager and says she was suppose to be paid five times that much. So the manager fires her and tells the rock star that she was a creep and the rock star assumes the manager knows what he’s talking about and leaves her out in the cold. That’s a shitty story. If you’re going to replace one thing with another you better make sure the other is for real. Experience sonny, experience.

Experience sonny, experience. You ever hear of a little thing called World War Two? Yes, what about it? You know 79 years ago this June, maybe June 28th, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The night before, a German soldier and a communist, Alfred Liskov, deserted, swam across a river and was captured by his idolized Soviet brethren, which was his intention, he wanted to warn them. Stalin didn’t believe he was telling the truth, thought it was a decoy perhaps to spark the Soviets to attack. Instead the next day, the Germans attacked and penetrated 300 kilometres capturing everything, chaos everywhere in the Soviet Union. Listow was later used by the Soviets for propaganda, then executed by Stalin. Stalin knew in advance and did nothing.

The people in charge might be very stupid. Look when Napster started, the heads of record companies sued them, sued the consumer and now they’re all in bed with Spotify. Liskov had great ideals, if only he could have inspected the Soviet Union first hand and seen whether the dream of an idealistic society was achievable or was just one more corrupt government, like all of them. That’s the thing right there sonny, the management, the agency, the record company even your bandmates, if you imagine what they’re about, instead of knowing them first hand – you could be ruined. Whatshisname Neil Young? What about him. He wrote A Man Needs a Maid. That’s not true, a man needs a secret and needs to keep that secret.