Fans still idolize the declining single

The single as a format is dead, and everyone knows it. Just look at the stats: Sales of singles are down 63% from last year at this time, according to Billboard magazine, after heading downward for a decade or more.

So who forgot to tell more than half a million people who’ve bought “American Idol” winner Kelly Clarkson’s hit “A Moment Like This” in the last four weeks?

Or all those consumers who have gobbled up more than 300,000 copies of B2K’s “Uh Huh” single this year?

“We feel confident there is still a singles market out there,” says Richard Sanders, executive vice president and general manager of RCA Records, which put out the Clarkson single and now plans to issue singles with the other “American Idol” finalists.

“We actually had to overcome the negativity at retail toward the single configuration,” Sanders says. “We asked them not to perceive it as a traditional single, but to view it as a $5 souvenir from ‘American Idol.’ ”

Some music merchants didn’t need any persuading.

“We have been actively petitioning the labels and distribution companies to reconsider their position on singles,” says Sam Milicia, vice president of the Handleman Co., which provides music to thousands of Wal-Mart, Kmart and other stores. “They really believe singles cannibalize album sales. We don’t believe that....

“If the [record companies] would support it, we certainly would support it, and our indications from the customers we service is that they would support it also,” Milicia says. “But you can’t have a singles business without all the hit singles,” most of which no longer are issued commercially.”

That’s because most record companies much prefer pushing albums that cost $15 to $18 at retail rather than singles that go for $3 to $5.

“We have been in a song-driven marketplace for a number of years, and yet the availability of singles continues to decline,” Pam Horovitz, president of the National Assn. of Record Merchants, told a conference recently. “When there is no way for the consumer to purchase just the one song they want, why are we all surprised that they take advantage of the widely available alternative -- which is a free copy from one of the various file-sharing services?

“If we want to get kids into the habit of paying for music,” Horovitz said, “we’ve got to provide them with a product that they want at an entry level price.”

-- Randy Lewis

A rock opera with grit(s)

Rock operas have been with us for decades, but ones examining the music and mind-set of the South are a rarity. Randy Newman’s “Good Ole Boys” from 1974 wasn’t exactly a rock opera, but it’s the closest anybody’s come.

Until Drive-By Truckers, that is.

The group’s “Southern Rock Opera” has been earning praise from the Village Voice, No Depression, Rolling Stone and other media. The two-CD set tells the story of a fictional band called Betamax Guillotine, modeled loosely on Lynyrd Skynyrd, that sees its career take off, then end in tragedy.

The group created “Southern Rock Opera” to explore what co-founder Patterson Hood describes as “the duality of the Southern thing.... The most consistent thing about the South is how contradictory it all is.”

Skynyrd, Neil Young, Bear Bryant, George Wallace and others are referenced in such songs as “Ronnie and Neil,” “Dead, Drunk and Naked” and “The Three Great Alabama Icons.” Drive-By Truckers comes to the House of Blues on Friday, and will play some of the “Southern Rock Opera” songs along with newer material and songs from its three earlier albums.

--Randy Lewis

Searching for Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen has been on a spiritual journey for some time, residing part time at a Buddhist retreat on Mt. Baldy. He also happens to be a destination on a young singer-songwriter’s own spiritual quest. New York musician Lizzie West, whose major-label debut will be an EP in November on Warner Bros. Records, made a cross-country journey shortly before signing to the label, and one of her goals was to find Cohen.

“I’d put out an album by myself, had a thousand copies and didn’t know what to do, so me and my dog got in the car and headed across the country playing wherever anyone would take us,” she says. “On that journey I also went looking for Leonard, thinking maybe he could tell me where to go and what to do.”

When she located him at his Los Angeles home, he was actually expecting her.

“He had gotten word [of our journey] and opened his doors to us and took us in, and it was amazing inspiration,” she says. “He took us to the Zen Center, and was the source of support I needed at that time to understand that what I was doing had a place in the culture.”

Now West is completing a film, “Holy Road Freedom Songs,” shot along that journey and supplemented with coverage of the making of a full Warner Bros. album, due in the spring, as well as performance footage. To thank Cohen, she’s recorded one of his songs -- a sly version of “I’m Your Man,” without switching the gender perspective, for the EP.

-- Steve Hochman

Small faces

Producer Mitchell Froom is working with rootsy Americana band eastmountainsouth for a debut album due on DreamWorks Records in February. Froom pal Tchad Blake will handle the mixing, and band members Peter Adams and Kat Maslich are getting help from musician and DreamWorks executive Robbie Robertson, who signed the band, and label chief Lenny Waronker in deciding which of more than two dozen songs they’ve written will make the cut for the record. They play at the Derby next Sunday.

Toad the Wet Sprocket is reuniting four years after the Santa Barbara alt-rock group disbanded. They’ll open for Counting Crows on Dec. 10 at the House of Blues in West Hollywood and plans several other California shows in December.