Daryl Hall is possibly the most interesting man in music. He and John Oates form the most successful musical duo of all time, and even though, their setlists during sold out shows around the world are full of instantly recognizable hits from the 1970s and ‘80s, they are not a nostalgia act. More than other performers in their age bracket, including The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, Daryl Hall and John Oates have constructed a coalition of baby boomers who remember where they were when “Rich Girl” or “Sara Smile” first hit the radio, and thirty and twenty-something fans who enjoy the smooth, soulful, and pop-infused style of “I Can’t Go For That” and “Out of Touch” as if those songs came out yesterday.

Hall owes much of his multigenerational admiration to his songwriting – clandestinely innovative and wildly varied – his voice – one of the best in the business – but also his early adaptation of the internet as an enhancement of art and entertainment, rather as a murderer of creativity, as many often call it. In 2007, Hall launched “Live From Daryl’s House” – an internet show depicting Hall and an invited guest jamming to a variety of songs within the confines of his home. The show still broadcasts from the internet, but also plays on the MTV Live network, and it is now filmed in Hall’s live music club, aptly named “Daryl’s House.”

Guests range from legends like Smokey Robinson, Cheap Trick, and The O’Jays (Cheap Trick was the guest for the debut episode of the current season) to rising stars such as Aloe Blaac, Amos Lee, and another guest of the current season, Wyclef Jean.

The show has a natural excitement. Hall’s band is in peak form – playing grooves so tight it is a wonder there is any oxygen in the room – and Daryl Hall’s voice soars whether he is singing blues based rock alongside Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top or he is shouting with soul to the music of Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings.

One of the elementary principles of evolutionary biology is environmental adaptation. Hall adapted early, and is now reaping the rewards. Proving himself the fittest of his generation in a war of attrition that often becomes survival of the fittest, Hall has created a program noteworthy for its postmodern synthesis of the past and future squarely in the present. It relies on present technology as a medium, giving projection into the future of music, but does so in service and celebration to the more organic, live, and human creativity of the music culture in which Hall first developed. Rather than an overly packaged, polished, and programmed product of committee creation, Live From Daryl’s House showcases talented people doing exactly what talented people do, without filter and without distortion.

I recently had a conversation with Hall, and learned that he is as passionate in his perspective as he is in his performance. Like a professor in the Department of Funk, Soul, and Pop Studies, he needs little provocation to provide “adult education” on everything from the state of music commerce to conflicts over cultural appropriation.

When you first started “Live From Daryl’s House,” what kind of ambition did you have for it, and did you envision that it would be such a success?

It has definitely evolved in a very natural way, and I look at the early shows and, even though we only had three cameras, and it was our friends holding the cameras, those shows were pretty damn good that way. So, really the challenge, over the years, is holding on to the looseness of it, and not getting into too formulaic of a situation, or not making it too solid. It needs to feel like it is still just an internet show – the way it was back in the day.

It does maintain that feeling. I just watched the Cheap Trick episode, and there is a passion that is palpable and infectious. Do you see “Live From Daryl’s House” as subversive, because so much of what now passes for television and music entertainment is “formulaic,” as you implied?

I look at everything I do as subversive, and this show in particular. My brain works that way. I’m an iconoclast. I don’t like the status quo. I used the word “solid” before, because I don’t like solidity. I don’t like formula. I don’t like any of those things that too often accompany music and entertainment in general. This show is the opposite. One of my ideas behind it was to turn everyone’s perception about music upside down: No audience, no pretensions, no script. Everyone just gets together, starts to have fun, and explores what they can do and create together.

Neil Young has an excellent lyric, “Ordinary people are bringing the good things back.” Do you believe a show like yours can help the cycle spin faster and accelerate a departure from all the artifice, and return to the organic quality of art and entertainment?

I would like to think so. If anything, it can provide an alternative to all of those things. I sense from the popularity of the show that there is a strong desire to get back to the real things, and the sooner everyone realizes that, the better off we will all be.

You’ve been inordinately successful throughout your career, but have challenges come with having a subversive attitude? It seems that our culture reacts poorly to anything that it cannot neatly categorize. Given that your music itself is a blend of soul, rock, and pop, has part of your career always been an uphill climb?

Yes, it always was. John (Oates) and I always had to do it ourselves. We never had the media wind at our sails. The critics were never behind us. So, we had to prove everything, and that is still happening. I had to prove that this show would work. When I first put the show on the internet, I did approach some networks, and I got the predictably stupid response. No one got it. No one understood why someone would want to watch what we’re doing with this show. It is frustrating, but in some ways, more fun this way.

There’s a big debate, and sometimes it is frustrating because it cuts out the nuances, but it is over the influence that the internet is having on music and the arts. As someone who has taken great advantage of the internet to enhance what you do, and enlarge your audience, where do you fall on this question?

If you work with what is real today instead of trying to fight it and resist it, it is a great time for making music. The real problem for young artists is that they don’t have any help or understanding from the record companies. Record company executives are the most backward bunch of idiots I’ve ever seen in my life. They are probably only surpassed by television executives. If I had a record company, I would know what to do, and how to promote new artists, and how to make money for myself, and for the artist. Now, all the artists are floundering, because all they can do is play live, and hope that they can gather a large enough tribe to support them. There is far too much ignorance right now and refusal to accept change.