Prospect Magazine: “Groups used to tour, often at a loss, to stimulate sales of their latest album. Now it’s the other way around. Hence the widely reported decision earlier this year by the Crimea, a band previously signed to Warner Bros, to release their new album as a free download. The band explained this not as an anarcho-hippie gesture in support of the principle that music ought to be free, but as a sensible promotional tactic. Their hope is that by disseminating their music online, they will expand their fan base and increase their returns from touring. Having seen the small size of the cheques they got from Warner, they know where not to look for their future income.”
Category / Music
The Internet as Self-Correcting Cultural Safeguard?
The Mirror: “They have given their fans the chance to vote for where they would play next on their world tour. And now a massive internet campaign could mean the Spice Girls end up performing… in war-torn Iraq.”
Hello, Is It Mace You’re Looking For?
The End of Raucous Late Night Television
And here’s Part 2 of the John Lydon vs. Tom Snyder exchange.
RELATED: Wendy O. Williams smashing a television set and Snyder interview. More on Williams’s Milwaukee charges here. Also, Williams vs. Mrs. Fields.
TANGENTIALLY RELATED: Weird Al Yankovic’s first national television appearance — on The Tomorrow Show — performing “Another One Rides the Bus.”
It’s also worth noting that Tom Snyder’s The Tomorrow Show originally had the 12:30 AM time slot that NBC than gave to a rising standup comedian named David Letterman, who replaced Snyder’s thoughtful and often explosive interviews with “Stupid Pet Tricks” and interviews that involved Letterman more or less slipping into whatever celebrity junket was handed to him. Snyder would return to television thirteen years later — albeit in a more subdued form — to The Late, Late Show for a four year run. He eventually left, and he would once again see his show tailored for mass consumption — with the host replaced with Craig Kilborn and later Craig Ferguson. One might convincingly argue that Ferguson brings at least some smarts to the populist late night talk show. But when one considers the above explosive exchange with John Lydon and Wendy O. Williams’s smashing of television sets, it becomes clear that the days of late night television which attempted to grab viewers by the lapels or seriously challenge conventions are over.
Today, the only real intimate talk show interview — without a studio audience — is Charlie Rose. But compare Rose’s interviews, which involve Rose sucking up to his guests, with those of Dick Cavett’s, who regularly challenged his guests. Or Tom Snyder. Or even Mike Douglas. (Or even the early days of Bob Costas.) Television, which once specialized from time to time in provocative conversation, is now more content to waffle in conversational and intellectual mediocrity. And today’s 18-34 demographic, growing up without Snyder or Cavett, have no idea what they’re missing. (Terry Gross pretends to be a follower of this tradition, but as Curtis White has convincingly argued, she is not a true representative of public opinion.)
The interviews that I conduct for The Bat Segundo Show are an attempt to return to this abandoned long-form approach. I don’t claim to be as good as Cavett or Snyder. But I do hope that one day, radio and television will return to the conversation as a journalistic form, unsullied by avarice and the quids pro quo of publicists. Fortunately, the Internet presents an opportunity for today’s journalists to correct this considerable imbalance.
Wait Until This Judge Gets Around to Dylan and the Stones
The August issue of Harper’s contains, in its Readings section, a fantastic sentencing memorandum offered by Judge Gregory R. Todd, in the case of Montana vs. Andrew McCormack:
Mr. McCormack, to the question of “Give your recommendation as to what you think the Court should do in this case,” you said, “Like the Beatles say, ‘Let it be.'” If I were to overlook your actions and let it be, I would have to ignore that day in the life on April 21, 2006. Evidently, you said to yourself, “I feel fine,” while drinking beer. Later, whether you wanted money or were just trying to act naturally, you became the fool on the hill. As Mr. Moonlight at 1:30 A.M., you did not think for yourself, but just focused on I, me, mine. Because you didn’t ask for help, wait for something else, or listen to your conscience saying, “Honey, don’t,” the victim later that day was fixing a hole in the glass door you broke. After you stole the eighteen-pack of Old Milwaukee, you decided it was time to run for your life and carry that weight. But when the witness said, “Baby, it’s you,” the police responded, “I’ll get you,” and you had to admit, “You really got a hold on me.” You were not able to get back home because of the chains they put on you. Although you hoped the police would say, “I don’t want to spoil the party” and “We can work it out,” you were in misery when they said you were a bad boy. When the police took you to jail, they said, “Hello, goodbye,” and you became a nowhere man. Later, when you thought about what you did, you may have said, “I’ll cry instead.” Now you’re saying, “Let it be,” instead of, “I’m a loser.” As a result of your hard day’s night, you were looking at a ticket to ride that long and winding road. Hopefully, you can say when I’m sixty-four, “I should have known better.”
The blog Fifer Traeger has tracked down this alternative version of the sentencing.