Edit: I was just feeling glum because someone I respect wrote something I wish were true, which I do not believe is true. I don’t feel like I was able to fully express my thoughts on this.

Full disclosure: Bing is an advertiser on this site, yet BlueBlood.net does not on the first dozen pages of search results for a search on Blue Blood. SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is internet professional lingo for the process by which someone expert in this area would attempt to fix Bing’s search results so they would no longer be defective in this regard.

I’ve been really bummed out all day because of something Derek Powazek wrote. (Also, I made the mistake of watching this week’s brilliant but melancholy Mad Men on TiVo to snap myself out of it. Doh.) Halcyon first turned me on to Derek Powazek’s writing. Derek Powazek tends to write useful articles about how to make good web sites. He has an engaging style and manages to speak clear tech talk. I think we shook hands once at an event, but we do not know each other; I’m just a fan.

Entertainment industry professionals always used to joke with me and Forrest Black about Blue Blood in print being the “trade mag of cool”, maybe because we always found the next big thing and provided contact info. I suppose I’d be wildly wealthy today if I’d just marketed myself as a consultant and charged quite a bit more for that data than the price of a magazine. My focus, however, was just on making a good magazine. One of the coolest things about making a magazine, versus making a website, is that I could just mail anyone I thought was cool a free one. I never felt like I needed fancy press releases. I could just show what I created to people I respected and hope they liked it. I didn’t know it until years too late for this to be useful to me, but Blue Blood was far and away the highest circulation magazine in its niche. So I guess that all worked just fine, in some respects. But, for a web site, this becomes a lot more challenging because previously normal human journalists may freak out that they are being spammed when sent a press release, as opposed to physical freebies.

Here is where Derek Powazek’s “Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists” article really depressed me. His advice is to never SEO (see the witty title there). His article states that SEO does not work and also, because it works temporarily, it clogs up search engine results. (I think he should pick which is the problem.) He directs his readers to avoid making sites for Google and just make good web sites for one’s readers and tell people you know personally about them.

So here is why the “Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists” article really upset me. The whole time I was growing up, it was drummed into me that I absolutely had to get good grades and go to good schools, so I could get a good job and a good life. Okay, both my parents went to Harvard and I went to Wesleyan, but Wes is still one of the top universities in the country on all ranking lists. And that paired with a hot suit will get me a job as a nonsexual escort. Escorting is actually the only job I’ve ever done which required me to have an advanced education. As writing about that job for Hustler’s Chic got me my first non-music glossy magazine clip, I supposed I’ve arguably gotten two jobs for all those years of school. Kind of a sucky ROI.

But I digress. The point is that I was told to just work hard and do what I was supposed to do and I would be rewarded. And I fucking well wasn’t. So it upsets me being told once again that I need to just work hard and do what I’m supposed to do and I will be rewarded. I mean, I still do that because it’s just how I am wired at this point. Like the characters on Mad Men, there is a thin patina of mild disappointment on a lot of my experiences, but I no longer get wildly, dramatically, heart-breakingly disappointed, because I stopped believing my reward was just around the corner and would be given just for making something good which people liked.

In point of fact, for example, I work very hard on making BlueBlood.com a good site. But I spend my time creating and publishing content the readers will enjoy, not optimizing for Google or Yahoo or Bing. BlueBlood.com never makes the front page of Google for a freaking search for Blue Blood. This makes doing radio and TV shows much less beneficial than it should be. That site has actually only received 844 visits from Google total this month. And 143 of those were people searching for specifically blueblood.com. I don’t get why someone would type that into a search engine, but the point is that just working hard and doing good work are absolutely not enough. I would love it if someone from Google could explain why the heck that site is never indexed properly. Thank goodness I have extensive traffic resources outside of what search engines provide. And I work hard on those too. It makes me viscerally angry to see Twitter lighting up with venture capital rich tech gurus saying everyone else should just work hard, tell their friends they’re working on cool stuff, and sit around waiting for something good to happen. The Underpants Gnomes on South Park have a waaaaay better business plan.

I like to do the right thing and I enjoy working hard. But I am well aware that I pay a heavy price for the luxury of doing what I feel is the right thing on the road less traveled. And I am sick to death of being advised to keep doing the same thing while expecting different results.

If I were in Portland for NYE, I can guarantee that I would be at Darklady’s Empire of Pleasure New Year’s Eve. If you’ve ever read the words in an adult publication, you are most likely familiar with Darklady’s work. She is a successful prolific journalist and sexpert and knows so much about so many of my favorite things. She describes her areas of expertise as “adult entertainment industry, free speech, internet technology, and alternative sexuality” and I’d have to agree that is deliciously accurate.

What you may not know is that Darklady Productions, Inc. also produces a series of good events for the perverse. We’ve got a little taster gallery of event photos from her Burlesque-a-thon themed 2008 Portland Masturbate-a-thon and her 2007 NYE Masquerade. I’m always down for wearing giant hoop skirts which knock everything over, although, because I don’t have a real hat head, sometimes crowns can be difficult to fit. Tiaras work fine though. Yes, I’m planning an outfit in my head for an Empire of Pleasure themed event I probably won’t be in town to attend; I work too much, but it sounds really fun. Darklady described the theme, saying:

“The snows are melting and Darklady’s Empire of Pleasure has physical, emotional and spiritual warmth to spare. Pay homage to empires past, present and future while lovingly indulging your senses in celebration of life and the coming New Year. Darklady’s Empire of Pleasure pays homage to days past, present and future that shape us. Whether your favorite “imperial” spreads like butter or starred Shaka Zulu, the Son of Heaven, the Chrysanthemum Throne, Imperium Romanum, Stormtroopers or genuinely Byzantine thinking, Darklady invites you to lovingly indulge in a celebration of the senses and New Year.”

They will also have giveaways from Big Teaze Toys, Topco Toys, Taboo Video, Stockroom and Astroglide too if you count the fact that Astroglide is sort of sponsoring the play room. They take their play seriously in the Pacific NW. Plus all you can eat Mediterranean buffet. Mmmmm.

You can get more info at Darklady’s site and RSVP to Darklady@darklady.com.

The sexy lead-off picture for our Darklady photo gallery is of her and Dale the Nail from this year’s Portland Masturbate-a-thon, photographed by Bryan Grimes. Darklady and I were chatting about her party and just random stuff going on and this photo made her think of a great story she shared:

“It’s so weird about Dale and I. We were punk teens back in the 70s/80s and hung out downtown — then dropped out of contact until after 2000 when we discovered I was writing throwing parties and writing about sex for a living and he was hanging from hooks and creating weird “guerrilla art.”

Nice to know we didn’t all grow up to become accountants and housewives.“

Amen to that, sister.

Vladimir Putin has released a judo video. You may recall that Vladimir Putin tied Anderson Cooper for Blue Blood fancy in the 2006 top hottest men countdown. Funkatron recalled and made sure he immediately alerted me when The Daily Mail announced what is obviously one of the most important DVD releases of the year.

Although the DVD includes hometown judo champion and black belt Vladimir Putin philosophizing about martial arts and demonstrating judo moves, he says that he feels the most important contributions are from his partner on the video, World and Olympic judo champion Yasuhiro Yamashita. Vladimir Putin feels that sports and health are vital to the growth and health of a nation and is happy to use his celebrity to help bring Yasuhiro Yamashita healthy wisdom to the people.

So far, I haven’t figured out who the publicist for the video is because I suspect it is someone who might generally promote things not exactly on my journalistic beat. I can’t find the video on Netflix or Amazon yet. And I guess there is a good chance it is in Russian, which I can’t even remember swear words in at the moment. But I approve most anything Vladimir Putin wants to support with his coiled ready stance and his pale blue crystal ice stare. (I mean, except for throwing journalists who supported him out of Russia and like any plans he might have for world domination which include conquering America. But except for those things, he is totally hot and his philosophies are worth exploring.)

Many years ago, I lived near a Tower Records with an amazing selection. This was after I stopped getting my music for free from air promotions for being a radio DJ and before I started getting my music for free from publicists for being a journalist. It was also after I was broke and living in a punk rock group house and before I stopped giving a fuck about most of it.

I knew these two guys who went by the telling monikers of Psycho and Xylo. Psycho had a job as a clerk at Tower. One of his responsibilities was to check people’s bags while they were browsing. Now Psycho’s dad was some ridiculously high-ranking mucky-muck in the military, so Psycho could come off as sort of responsible. Xylo was less convincing, but he knew me. I had striped hair and liked to wear my underwear in public, but I came across as much more innocent and respectable. Probably because I was. But I was broke, coveted music, and was sweet on Xylo, so it didn’t take much to get me in on their heist.

The basic plan was actually kind of brilliant in its elegant simplicity. Psycho stockpiled a ton of CDs behind the counter where he worked. Xylo supplied me with a duffle bag, which I checked upon entering the store. I looked like someone who would shop at Tower, but I didn’t look like someone who would be part of a heist, because I normally wouldn’t have been. The idea was that I would check “my” bag, browse around the store while Psycho filled the duffle bag with CDs, and then pick up “my” duffle bag and leave. Now the plan got a little bit more complicated when everyone in my group house heard about it and also wanted in. But the basics were the same and I was still the wholesome-looking mule for the big haul. Only the security guard started following me around and chatting me up because he thought I was hot. Which made things a little easier for my degenerate housemates and assorted unsavory pals, but I was stuck feigning interest in some band called Forced Entry which the security guard was telling me about.

So, when I say that file-sharing is killing stores like Tower, I mean it, but I’m not saying that I don’t understand what it is like to be young and budget-challenged and want music so passionately, it seems more necessary than food.

Great American Group is the company which won the bidding for most of Tower’s assets, now that the company is in bankruptcy. Great American has helped a large number of retailers liquidate their assets. When I say a large number, I mean to the tune of more than thirty billion dollars worth, GAG has fluidized merchandise from not only Tower Records, but Aron’s Records, Musicland, and Wherehouse Music, among many other bankrupt giants. If Tower were the only music chain going under, one could think it was just mismanagement on the part of Tower higher-ups, but Tower is not alone in the pain there.

Some people claim that Tower’s troubles are due to them being late to embrace new technology. These are the same morons who will tell you a Mac is better than a PC without having one single solitary shred of rationale for that opinion, much less proof. Tower in fact built one of the first online music retailers, in partnership with AOL in 1995. Their own online store hit the web shortly thereafter. They did podcasting partnered with Outhink and super indie artist distro partnered with CD Baby.

In many respects, MTS, Inc., Tower’s corporate parent, is an American counterculture success story. Chairman Russell Solomon dropped out of high school to do what financial reporters euphemistically refer to as “fulfill hippie dreams” i.e. presumably to get laid, smoke pot, and most importantly rock and roll. The Tower corporate website itself refers to the company as the result of “a vicious hangover and a greasy breakfast.” Solomon built Tower up to be one of the top music chains in the States with more than two hundred stores, including approximately ninety company-owned stores and franchises in approximately seventeen countries.

Back when we were doing Blue Blood in print, Tower Records used to have nearly 100% sell-through for us, the foreign franchises usually being the stumbling block to perfection. Tower made a ton of money from the zine revolution because they were very forward-thinking on it. Tower locations tended to be huge shopping center anchors or stand-alone locations, so they were never answerable to any repressive mall landlords. They had this buyer Doug Something whose voicemail pushed garlic and red wine, but who was so bitchy he actually made me cry once . . . while doubling his order for Blue Blood. No mean feat. I outsourced our distro after that.

At any rate, let me give you all a quick explanation of what it means that Blue Blood had nearly 100% sell-through via Tower Records. Sell-through percentage is the amount of copies of a magazine which are actually reported as sold versus the number which are reported as destroyed or returned to the publisher or distributor. 30% is considered very successful. One issue of Blue Blood, it was Japan which kept us from flawless sell-through. The prior issue Tower had had no problems with and they upped their Japanese distro for us, but it just so happened that we’d had an issue where everyone naked was completely shaved and the following issue contained pubic hair, which Japan was having none of. Japanese law was apparently written by people too prudish to even mention genitalia, so the lawmakers just sort of wrote around it. Hence, it is not difficult to distribute explicit media in Japan, but it can’t show any muff.

At any rate, Doug Whatever wasn’t always easy to deal with, but what he did was really special, so special that the Wall Street Journal profiled the man (which he was sure to mention during pretty much every single conversation he ever had.) He bought publications of a sort which once could never have received wide distribution. Desktop publishing technology made zines possible, but companies like Tower Records brought them to the people. The zines on Tower’s shelves featured the whole gamut of of opinions the mainstream press did not carry – punk rock, queer-friendly, pervy, fucking nutjob, they were all there. I remember Forrest Black and yours truly buying more than a hundred dollars worth of copies of Skin Two for the first time at that Tower Records. I was gainfully employed by this time and Tower would carry back issues of international publications. It was a wonderful notion that there was a party like that somewhere beyond Virginia, where everyone could dress up in wild costumes and be themselves. I’m more cynical and maybe more in-the-know now than I was then, but that stuff was all so exciting then and Tower brought windows to another world to my neighborhood.

As a publisher, I know that Tower was one of the few distribution points which was truly a friend to independent publishers. Their buyer might have felt he deserved a blowjob and a cookie for giving indie folks the hook-up, but maybe he really did deserve a blowjob and a cookie for the good he did. Or some garlic and red wine. Whatever. All the crusty zinesters reading this know what I’m talking about. Tower would pay as agreed. Tower never lied about their sell-through percentages. Tower never ordered copies and then turned them down after they were printed. The most input Tower ever had on editorial content was to suggest more music coverage. Instead of claiming to destroy supposedly unsold copies, Tower would mail whole copies back to publishers if asked. Blue Blood could always do brisk business in back issues sales, so that would have made a huge difference if everyone had been as kind as Tower in that way.

According to Home Media Retailing, Trans World Entertainment was narrowly beaten out by the GAG liquidation company which picked up most of Tower’s assets. Trans World and Walgreens are now the two big bidders hoping to pick up leases on many Tower locations. Trans World appears to be a holding company for more than eight hundred media stores, mostly of the mall variety and including Sam Goody, Planet Music, Coconuts, Spec’s, Wherehouse, Suncoast, and their flagship FYE or For Your Entertainment. They appear decently poised to remain commercially viable in the new millenium, partly because they are on top of newer tech products like ringtones and partly because they are picking up all the chains with products at all similar to theirs. (Want to sell your site? Send me a Personal Message on the Blue Blood boards or contact us via our MySpace Profile.)

Companies like Trans World and Virgin (who bought out Tower’s UK interests some time ago) operate too many mall stores to ever be bastions of free speech, independent music, or indie anything else. A significant number of non-mall Virgin Megastores have closed their doors. Wal-Mart and Best Buy, who are by most accounts the two largest American music retailers today, are definitely not going to be launchpads for new music or new ideas. And the little independent music stores got fucked first by the current market climate. Most of them went under a few years ago, around the same time the Kemp Mill chain was going under. People always say they care about gourmet cheddar, but most will buy Cheez Whiz if it is competitively priced. It was not greed which set Tower prices higher than Wal-Mart’s. It was the simple economics of cost of goods sold and the economies of scale. Eight hundred pound gorillas like Wal-Mart can tell their suppliers what to charge. Additionally, chains like Best Buy or CostCo, which make most of their revenue from the sales of electronics or bulk items, will often sell things like music or books as what is known as loss leaders. A loss leader is an item sold at or below the store’s cost in order to attract customers. Of course, internet file-sharing also offers the music product for free. This means that stores like Tower and small indies get squeezed from both sides.

My college friend George heard about the exploit with Xylo and Psycho and the duffle bag and asked me how I reconciled participating, when I didn’t come up with the kinds of excuses some of my unsavory friends did. I told him that I thought it was important to keep my morals straight, to remember that stealing was stealing, so that, when I could afford it, I would not steal out of habit because I would still be able to tell right from wrong. If you are fourteen and limited by parental tastes and you snarf music online, I understand. If you are nineteen and in college and you snarf music online or patronize lame stores for the discounts, I understand. If you are twenty-two and in transition and you snarf music online or patronize lame stores for the discounts, I understand. If you are over twenty-five and gainfully employed and you do those things, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. If you are over twenty-five and not gainfully employed enough to afford one CD and engage in the self-discipline not to require two when you can only afford one, then also fuck you. Grow up and take some responsibility.

I have never stolen a song online because online file-sharing came along after I really was not in a place in my life where that was necessary. I accept that kids will sometimes steal music, but call the thing by its proper name. If you are stealing, fucking know you are stealing. And know that, if you make a habit of it, you have an impact. Don’t tell me you are just one little person and you couldn’t make a difference. I am so sick of hearing how every vote makes a difference from the same people who tell me their thefts impact no one. Almost all of the cool music stores are dead now. Some of the responsibility goes to the giants like Wal-Mart who can manipulate the marketplace, but you get some responsibility too, if you shop there. I have never set foot in a Wal-Mart. Most people can’t have everything they want, but that doesn’t make it okay to steal as a way of life.

Back to the Tower Records caper of yesteryear. When last we left our heroes, I was being pursued romantically (and ironically) by the security guard. The long-haired metal guy security guard chatted me up for quite some time and eventually got me to both give him my phone number and buy the Forced Entry CD. My companion in crime Xylo thought Forced Entry had to be a stupid metal band and was totally furious that I gave the security guard my number. Whether this was out of jealousy or fear of being caught, I do not know. I thought I did a good job protecting everyone. Xylo and Psycho were both later busted by Tower, trying to repeat the heist without my participation. I vaguely think Xylo was working there then and it was Psycho who got busted going through the security gate with still-magnetized product, but whatever. I suppose the specifics don’t matter that much. I could never decide whether the security guard wanted me to buy the Forced Entry CD because he was in the band, because a friend of his was in the band, because he really loved the CD, because he suspected what we were up to and thought it was funny, because he thought his musical taste would impress me, or because he was some kind of sex creep who liked the idea of, you know, Forced Entry.

I kept that Forced Entry CD for many years and only recently sold it to the Amoeba Records in Hollywood, California, where I now make my home. Some pundits are going on about how Amoeba is going to replace Tower Records culturally. Amoeba manages to have big stores which still feel like music stores and they do try to get involved in their local communities, including giving gigs to local bands, and all that is cool. However, they only have three outlets and they are all in California. Hipster pundits in New York are saying the same things about Other Music. Here is the thing though: Between the two of them, those stores have four outlets all together and they have two of the least-visited websites on the internet. The world just got a lot more limited for people outside of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major metropolitan areas.

I mourn Tower’s passing. Tower founder Russ Solomon had some pleasantly upbeat things to say to the Sacramento Bee a while back, when it first became apparent that Tower might be going into a second bankruptcy. He said, “The truth is, I’ve had a great ride. We played too hard, we drank too hard, but we had a lot of fun. It’s been tough for everyone, these last few years, but what’s happened has happened.” On the even brighter side, I believe Tower Japan is a separately incorporated company with multiple robust websites, holdings in modern tech products, and fifty stores of its own, including the largest music store in the world with eight stories of CDs and related goodies. So maybe we can all move to Japan. Except that, due to Japanese laws, they will censor everything with any pubic hair in it. Then again, shaved pussy and offbeat music go together nicely.