The Weak In Rock

I have a bit of an obsession with the plight of the successful musician stuck in a lousy record deal. It just amazes me that after decades, heck nearly a century of musicians getting reamed by record contracts, management contracts, publishing deals, promotional deals, etc. ad infinitum that no one ever seems to get wise.

On the one hand I get it. You want your record to be released and you want people to be able to buy it. Making music, like making any art, is largely an external expression of the artist’s ego. He/She wants to be loved and he/she wants to have their work appreciated. I get that. But it would seem that after all this time that some musician would occassionally consider whether signing on the dotted line was a good idea based upon the obligations contained in the contract.

Alas, nope. Doesn’t work that way. Steve Albini said is best:

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what’s printed on the contract. It’s too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody’s eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there’s only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says “Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke”. And he does of course.

Way back in the vast wastes of time (the late 1960s to be exact) it dawned on Van Morrison that he’d swum the above mentioned trench and needed to get out of his record deal and into a better one. He owed his label a certain number of songs and was smart enough to see that his contract allowed him to deliver pretty much any songs he wanted, so that’s what he did. Contractual obligations met he signed a lucrative deal with Warner Brothers and then handed them his masterpiece, Astral Weeks.

WFMU have dredged out the 30 songs that Morrison delivered to Bang Records to fulfill his contract and posted the mp3s for us to enjoy. It’s hilarious. I particularly like Want A Danish.

Enjoy.

(thanks to Boing Boing for the link)

This is Banned Books Week as promoted by the American Library Association.

Think about that for a minute. What on earth is the rationale behind banning a book? If that question doesn’t boggle your mind as much as it does mine have a look at the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books list maintained by the ALA.

Here are my favorites (and by favorites I mean that in a sense of shock and awe at the stupidity of the self-appointed monitors of public morality who live among us):

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - an utter and total classic work of American literature.

Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling - childrens’ books found objectionable because the heroes are wizards and witches.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger - oooh, a confused teenage boy swears a lot.

Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine - another set of childrens’ fiction that people challenge because it talks about the supernatural.

Final Exit by Derek Humphry - a book about euthenasia.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood - uh oh, it’s a work of science fiction that postulates a world of inequality driven by sexism.

What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras and What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras - heaven forbid that kids should actually understand their own physiology. What’s really fascinating is that the book for girls is far higher up on the list, as in far more frequently challenged, than the book for boys is. I suppose the logic is that boys need to understand their equipment but girls should remain ignorant.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - if you read this book and you’re offended then you’re a friggin’ bigot.

Cujo by Stephen King - ????? It’s about a rabid dog. This is somehow immoral?

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - If I were a fascist trying to retain power I’d probably want to prevent people from reading a book that documents war crimes and attrocities committed by the Americans and English in WWII.

Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford - ok, this is just confusing.

The most astonishing thing about this list though is the number of times that Judy Blume’s books show up on here. Parents objecting to Forever, which is about teenage sexuality and deals with it in a very frank way, I sort of understand. But the rest of her pre-teen books… well, that just makes me shake my head like the duck in the Aflac ads.

I highly recommend you head to your local library and check out a banned book this week. Read it and enjoy it and encourage others to do likewise.

It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye scurvy dogs.

Muwhahahahahahahahaha!

This courtesy of ESPN.com: Guerrero day-to-day with jammed left shoulder

Outfielder Vladimir Guerrero left in the sixth inning of Thursday’s night’s 8-6 loss to the Tigers because of a jammed left shoulder. Last year’s AL MVP hurt himself trying to make a diving catch of Vance Wilson’s double.

I know, I’m going to hell for this. I really wish no ill on big bad Vlad. He’s a great player. It’s just that he rather inconveniently plays for the wrong team.

Here’s an interesting article by Johann Hari about the prospect of drug legalization coming to the UK courtesy of a prominent Tory (for my fellow Yanks who aren’t hip to British political terminology, a Tory is a Conservative, with a definite capital C in the UK).

I guess this is a bit of an “only Nixon could go to China” sort of argument, and it’s one I tend to agree with. Traditional liberal reasoning behind drug legalization is shallow at best and tends to smack of hippie-dippie reasoning chock full of moral relativism. You know, the sort of stuff that gets gobbled up by urban intellectuals in NYC and Los Angeles but goes over like a KKK rally at the Apollo Theater in the rest of America.

I’m gradually realizing that the only hope of any progressive acheivements in American politics will have to come at the hands of some sensible, rational Republican. Now if we could only find a few of those.

Ever since the buttinski Christian Right hijacked the GOP it’s been dominated by slap-dicks like George W. Bush, Rick Santorum and Tom Delay. These are not conservatives, they’re fanatics.

What we need is another Teddy Roosevelt. Someone who understands what government is for and what it’s good at. There are plenty of solid conservative political reasons for legalizing drugs, allowing same-sex marriage and ridding the nation of abject poverty. But as long as the religious moralizers are in charge of the GOP none of this is possible.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link.

From this week’s Onion:Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses’ Teeth.

Calif. Gov. Signs Ban on School Junk Food

So John Roberts is very likely to be confirmed as the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the US of A. Unlike a lot of my liberal bretheren I’m really just totally incapable of caring about this one. For one, once appointed to the Court, Justices rarely do what was expected of them. Secondly, Roberts actually seems like a fairly reasonable fellow. Dubya certainly could have rammed worse down our throats.

Anyway, since this nominee fails to excite much interest on my part, if any, I thought I’d share these questions from 5ives that most certainly should have been asked of Roberts and should be asked of any Supreme Court Nominee, if only just for shits and giggles:

Five things I’d ask every Supreme Court nominee if I sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee

1. If you knew to an absolute moral certainty that you could capture and consume a live infant without being caught, how many do you suppose you could eat in a weekend?
2. Have you ever been spanked erotically by someone who was not your current legal spouse? Just yes or no, please.
3. Nominee, do you regard these slacks as accentuating my basket in an un-senatorial fashion?
4. Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about…your mother.
5. Kindly rise, and sing the 1979 hit, The Piña Colada Song, also known as Escape.

Muchos thanks to Boing Boing for the link.