People always say that the black community never takes care of its own. In the past couple of weeks Tyler Perry stepped up to the plate and now two churches in Atlanta are making a difference.
Eight years ago, a couple of Atlanta churches challenged a group of second graders. They told them if they graduated from high school, the churches promised pay for them to attend the colleges of their choice. “So often we tell young people to stay out of trouble, to stay in school and we don’t do enough to encourage them,” explained Rev. Raphael Warnock, Senior Pastor of Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Ebenezer Baptist and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church are partnering on the project.
“We adopted these kids when they were in the second grade and at the time they all lived in Bowen Homes housing project,” shared Warnock. “We said to them, that if they would stay in school and stay out of trouble, when they graduated, we would make sure that they made it through college.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in Ebenezer Baptist, so it’s appropriate that the churches partner with the non-profit “I Have a Dream” Foundation to work toward getting the kids through high school and college.
Rev. Warnock sees the 60 kids in they’re sponsoring as much like himself.
“I grew up in the housing projects of Savannah, Georgia and wanted to attend Morehouse College. I didn’t know how I was going to get the tuition money, but there were people who encouraged me,” he explained.
Organizers are using Warnock’s 40th birthday celebration for a “Dreamers and Dreamkeepers Fundraiser” for the cause.
“Our guest artist for the night is Stephanie Mills,” Warnock said. “And, Mr. Jonathan Slocumb, the comedian, will be the MC. There are a number of other celebrity friends of mine, Byron Cage and Dottie Peoples and some others that are just going to drop by for good measure. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
by Jill Stewart - La Weekly (July 31-Aug 6) Last week, the California governor, speaker of the State Assembly and the president pro tem of the State Senate announced a budget deal that slashes many state-government programs and departments to 2005 levels and forcibly “borrows” $2 billion from fiscally wrecked cities and counties.
The deal, designed to address a roughly $24 billion to $26-plus billion deficit, drew criticism for its severe cuts and praise for its belt-tightening, but along with it, lawsuit threats, cries of unconstitutionality, and big headlines when the Los Angeles Times suggested that 27,000 of California’s 168,000 prisoners might get released to save $1.2 billion.
The prisoner-release report set off a caterwaul by Republican legislators, who decried it as a double-cross by Democrats — except that the idea being discussed by Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was not a done deal. Some political analysts say a prisoner-release plan is iffy, especially after the tragic carjacking and murder of popular high school student Lily Burk in broad daylight in Los Angeles last Friday, allegedly committed by a violent ex-con released on parole in February. (See next page for story.) The union representing Los Angeles cops called suspect Charlie Samuel “precisely the type of ‘low-level’ parolee the state no longer wants to take responsibility for” and would release from prison to cut its deficit.
Some experts predict the budget will quickly become unbalanced again, thanks to a persistently bad economy. That didn’t stop self-congratulations and posturing by Schwarzenegger, Democratic majority leaders Karen Bass and Darrell Steinberg, and Republican minority leaders Dennis Hollingsworth and Sam Blakeslee, the so-called “big five” who worked out this latest budget.
Tim Hodson, executive director of the Sacramento State Center for California Studies, says that if the national economy “continues to sputter, and the California economy sputters, they may have to revisit this budget even before the end of the year — and with the same melodrama. And in the end, there will be cuts.”
Hodson hopes that the crisis yet to come will force the Legislature and business community to work together on a blend of permanent reforms that would increase some taxes while also producing spending discipline — a combination that has utterly eluded Schwarzenegger, Bass, Steinberg, Hollingsworth and Blakeslee.
Cities and counties attacked the $2 billion forcible “borrowing” of local property taxes, but an even more damaging plan to simply take $1 billion in local gas taxes was rejected at the last minute by the Legislature.
That left Schwarzenegger, veto pen in hand, looking all day on July 27 for eleventh-hour ways to close the deficit. On Tuesday, July 28, he signed a budget from which he personally cut $500 million out of programs that had escaped deeper cuts earlier. Among other areas, the new cuts reduced the funds to pay for investigators of child abuse and neglect, salaries for Medi-Cal eligibility workers, and key positions at the state’s AIDS prevention office.
Joel Bellman, spokesman for Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, said the almost desperate mishmash of budget cuts, borrowing and tricks suggests that the Sacramento press corps is failing to keep a close eye on the politicians who have left Sacramento gridlocked.
“If it hadn’t been such a depleted, exhausted and gutted press corps, they would not be able to get away with half this shit,” Bellman, a former newsman, said. “I don’t want to slight The Sacramento Bee and others, but there is far, far too little coverage of what is going on. To some extent the Sacramento media have Stockholm Syndrome. This budget isn’t just caused by the recession. We have had years and years of misalignment between spending and income.”
Bellman likened the $2 billion borrowing from local treasuries — coming after deep cuts already made by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and local governments — to watching “a ‘Saw’ movie, where if you try anything to escape the problem, you get into an even worse situation.”
The grinning photos of Schwarzenegger and Bass — two leaders who have helped drive Sacramento’s current public-approval ratings into the ground — set off thousands of e-mails and comments on Web sites statewide. Bill Fujioka, chief executive officer for Los Angeles County, speaking to L.A. Weekly, said of the budget plan, “Can you make sense of all the bullshit?”
Schwarzenegger posted a video of himself via Twitter in which he’s seen fiddling around with a big knife, clearly making light of roughly $15 billion in cuts to education, welfare, health care and other services that will fall heavily on those who can least afford them. Schwarzenegger bragged that he could autograph state vehicles set to be auctioned to raise funds, and critics immediately chortled that his autograph isn’t worth much these days.
Bass’ behavior came off as equally odd. Earlier this year, Bass, who has struggled as speaker, backed a plan to give big raises to scores of legislative staffers in Sacramento. Her plan drew tremendous public outrage and she dumped the idea, but the episode left her politically scarred.
Last week, Bass was touting how she and the Democrats deserved credit for preserving the “safety net” in the budget. In fact, the budget, with its mix of big cuts, no taxes and weird accounting tricks, was essentially the one sought by Schwarzenegger.
This “revised” budget is the final version of an ill-fated February budget hammered out by legislative leaders and signed by Schwarzenegger that boosted taxes by $12 billion for the next few years and forced government workers to take furloughs — yet allowed some big state programs to continue growing as revenues dropped. Against that ugly backdrop, the governor and Legislature in May asked voters to help close the deficit — and voters said no thanks.
The Sacramento Bee appeared to blame voters, reporting last week that “State voters deepened the deficit in May when they rejected $5.8 billion” in borrowing from the lottery, raids on preschool funds and other raids. But polls show that Californians not only oppose more borrowing and more taxes, but residents want Schwarzenegger, Bass, Steinberg and the others to knuckle down and do their jobs.
Instead, the Legislature repeatedly punted during 2008 on devising a long-term solution. Yet last week, its leaders claimed they’d had “no time” to craft a real solution. This week’s patchwork effort includes billions raised by borrowing, raiding local governments and performing bookkeeping tricks. One trick: charging a bunch of state employee salaries to the next fiscal year so that the spending doesn’t get counted this year.
The state’s general fund — the huge pot of cash used to run state parks, tax collections, public schools, prisons, and health and welfare programs — will stand at about $84 billion, 18 percent below where it was two years ago.
Some economists saw hope, in that the budget is apparently an admission by the California Legislature that state spending should be aligned with falling income. Perry Wong, senior managing economist at the Milken Institute, says, “Priority No. 1 is to accept that we need cuts, and priority number two, I think even with cutting, is that we still need to look at how to expand our tax base.”
Longtime statehouse-watchers like The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters pointed out that many other U.S. states are also in a fiscal free-fall. But in fact, no legislature and no governor in the nation has allowed a state budget to reel as far out of control as California’s.
Texas is probably the most stark example of a state doing almost the opposite. In a bipartisan series of agreements, Texas created a budget surplus of about $9 billion. In a recent comparison of Texas versus California by The Economist magazine, Texas’ public and private sectors are touted as having eclipsed California as economic heavyweights, with Texas increasing its funding for schools even while cutting taxes on 40,000 small businesses. Texas is attracting more Fortune 500 companies (Texas has 64, California has 51) and it unemployment is low (7.1 percent in Texas versus 11.5 percent in California).
California, meanwhile, is closing up a deficit that ranged from $24 billion to nearly $27 billion. As of press time, nobody knew for sure.
To the varied signs of the economic collapse we can now add a small but notable subspecies of urbanite: You'll recognize him (or her) by the ear buds burrowing into his head, the freebie SXSW tote bag slung over his shoulder, and the unintelligible mutterings about "melisma" and "twee-core" crossing his lips. If you see such a person out and about—likely wandering a neighborhood rich with coffee shops or, even better, two-for-one happy hours—remain calm but keep your distance. This is a music journalist, a type never famous for social skills, and he's in an especially bad mood these days.
Late last month, Vibe magazine announced that it was ceasing publication. The next day, word arrived that Spin was laying off a half-dozen staffers. In late March, Blender folded outright, and a few months before that, Rolling Stone trimmed its masthead. (Blender hired me out of college in 2002, and I worked there until its demise.) For this strange moment, at least, many onetime professional music nerds share a common experience with many onetime investment bankers: whiplash.
Some of the problems that have beset music magazines are familiar from discussions about the publishing industry's woes in general: Readership's down, advertising's down, the old guard has been slow in adapting to the Internet. But like newspapers and shelter titles, music magazines have proven especially vulnerable.
I'm going to leave aside the question of whether Blender and Vibe somehow deserved their undoing, via editorial missteps or poor business-side decisions, and whether Rolling Stone and Spin deserve their present difficulties. Criticisms attach to every title, and while such factors play a part in the music-mag death march, they're negligible when considered alongside three bigger problems that cut deep and wide across the medium:
1. There are fewer superstars, and the same musicians show up on every magazine cover.
Say Beyoncé—or Kanye, or Kelly Clarkson, or any of the few musical acts that still command massive appeal—announces a new album. Rolling Stone may try to book her for a cover, but even if it gets a guarantee she won't appear on the cover of another music magazine, readers will have plenty of time to tire of her face as it beams from the covers of "urban" magazines, women's magazines, teen magazines, fashion magazines, and tabloids (to say nothing of gossip blogs, Access Hollywood, etc.). No matter how striking your cover is, it will popfrom the racks that much less thanks to the inevitable media saturation of its star. My former editor at Blender, Craig Marks, identified this phenomenon as "cover fatigue": In trying to book covers with maximum reach, music magazines dunk month after month into the same shrinking pool of monolithic stars.
Different strategies for dealing with this have emerged, but nothing surefire. Not long ago, a Spin editor told me they'd realized that a cover featuring a multiplatinum rocker sold only slightly better than one featuring a critic's darling like Vampire Weekend. Spin decided they might as well choose more acts they loved as cover stars rather than focusing on bands that sold millions. This niche-targeting logic drives the indie-music Web site Pitchfork, whose core audience is perfectly happy to read a 650-word review of, say, the new Black Moth Super Rainbow album. But it's unclear whether the same thinking can sustain a magazine with a circulation of half a million copies a month—and it bears emphasizing that Pitchfork doesn't need to draw readers in with a single image.
2. Music mags have less to offer music lovers, and music lovers need them less than ever anyway.
Time was, record companies sent advance copies of albums to music journalists. They, in turn, offered a distinct service to fans with timely, expert evaluations of new music. In the early aughts, labels, frightened by online leaks, tightened their grip on advance music, and listening sessions became the norm for most popular acts. Often held without the complete CD, these sessions encourage partially informed, snap judgments. They're less than ideal in other ways, too: A colleague once reviewed a G-Unit album while 50 Cent sat directly across from him, nodding vigorously to the beat. Along the way, labels have tried other experiments. I've seen album advances come as preloaded iPods (the Pussycat Dolls), vinyl (the White Stripes), cassettes (Justin Timberlake), and a Discman glued shut (Tori Amos). As advances of high-profile records slowed to a trickle, Blender and other magazines working with long lead times were forced to run many big reviews several months late or skip them altogether.
Meanwhile, with the proliferation of online music, sanctioned and otherwise, music fans don't need critics to play middleman the way they once did: If a fan wants to decide whether he likes a new album, there are far easier ways than waiting for a critic to weigh in, from streaming tracks on MySpace and YouTube to downloading the whole thing on a torrent site or .rar blog. The value of the music reviewer has always been split between consumer service (should people plunk down cash for this CD?) and art criticism (what's the CD about?), but of late the balance has shifted from the former toward the latter—answering the question of whether to buy an album isn't much use when, for a lot of listeners, the music is effectively free. It's a valid point that the professional critic still wields an aura of authority rare in the cacophonous world of online music, but between taste-making blogs and ever-smarter music-recommendation algorithms like Apple Genius and Pandora, the critic's importance is being whittled down.
Reviews are one thing; what about features and interviews, where music journalists get access to stars that their online counterparts can only dream of? Unfortunately, the days when Cameron Crowe could spend months reporting a story from Led Zeppelin's tour bus are long gone. Tabloids have helped make stars wary, if not scornful, of journalists of all stripes, print doesn't fill artists' coffers (many high-powered publicists have repeated the mantra to me that press doesn't sell albums), and so artists big and medium give music magazines less of themselves than ever. Yes, a music-magazine cover can contribute to credibility and prestige, but the best access is often reserved for a title beyond the music ghetto, like Vanity Fair, GQ, or, should it come calling, The New Yorker. When I profiled Beyoncé for a 2006 Blender cover story, I was granted one hour to interview her and one hour to observe her at a video shoot. I stayed on the set for three hours, hoping to wring some lively detail from the mundane proceedings, until a bodyguard showed me the door. Beyoncé's mother, Tina, gave me a warm goodbye, then called a publicist to chew her out for letting me hang around so long and accused me of "going through Beyoncé's underwear." (I'd quizzed a seamstress about a pair of hot pants she was mending.) The writing that arises from situations like these invariably suffers, and readers notice.
3. Music magazines were an early version of social networking. But now there's this thing called "social networking" …
Many readers who are otherwise passionate about culture have little time for music writing, irritated that it speaks in abstract, jargon-stuffed language about ostensibly mainstream entertainment. Movie and TV reviewers can talk about plotlines and acting; video game reviewers can talk about graphics and game play. Music writers are charged with describing more ineffable things, and the frequent result is a pile-up of slang and shorthand references, purplish gushing, and tedious emphasis on lyrics. Even when the writing crackles, for every reader who is confronted with a culture-moving enigma like the Jonas Brothers and hungers for someone to come along with a magnifying glass and fine-toothed comb, there are those who insist that pop just isn't worth the effort—there's dancing about architecture, you see, and then there's hyperventilating about crap.
This has always been an issue for music magazines, but traditionally they've been able to make it an asset, too. One of the most important historical functions of music magazines has been precisely to speak in a semisecret language that separates in-the-know us from square them. Rolling Stone, Spin, and Vibe made their names on the backs of outsider music movements that were storming the mainstream: '60s rock counterculture, '90s alternative, and '90s hip-hop, respectively. (Blender aligned itself with a less oppositional, "poptimist" perspective.) Picture that mythical orange-haired girl walking around a nowheresville suburb in 1994 with a rolled-up Spin in her back pocket—it's not just a magazine but a badge, an amulet, a pipeline to a world far removed from her local food court. At least since the '60s, music has been more integral to youthful identity building than any other part of popular culture, and, at their most successful, music magazines have institutionalized, codified, and made themselves indispensable to that process. Teens trying to hash out (sub)cultural identities today have message boards, fan sites, and YouTube diaries to turn to, not to mention Facebook groups and musicians' MySpace pages. And that's perhaps the greatest crisis facing music magazines: They're being phased out, to a significant degree, by social-networking media, too.
So should we mourn dead music magazines or simply shrug as we pass the funeral? If they were to disappear entirely, people would still find out about new music, after all, and criticism would doubtless live on, online and in general-interest publications. It's the more costly reporting that would be harder to find, and this shouldn't be taken lightly. Although people are buying music at record lows, it's likely that we're listening to more of it than ever before. For every artist profile reduced to a charade (my hour with Beyoncé), there's a piece like David Peisner's fascinating 2006 Spin articlen the role of music as torture in the war on terror or 2008 Britney Spears stories by Michael Joseph Gross in Blender and Vanessa Grigoriadis in Rolling Stone, which offered engrossing, intelligent reporting into Spears' nadir without a smidge of "access" to the star herself. In the absence of the great feature writing that music magazines do underwrite (and unless Web writing, video interviews, artists' blogs, and other new forms fill the void), we'll be hearing only part of the song.
"Nicolay - Lose Your Way featuring Carlitta Durand" [first single from the forthcoming album "Shibuya" PS...I love Carlitta's voice and can't wait for her album on the Foreign Exchange Imprint] ==> LISTEN/DL <==
It seems like the homeless of NYC will no longer be able to put on for their city. The Bloomberg administration is giving any homeless family who wants, a free one-way ticket to anywhere they wish to go. The project was started to hopefully deplete the costly expense of homeless shelters in the city, which cost about $36,000 a year per family. Since 2007, more than 550 families have left the city and all it takes is for a relative to agree to take them in.
America is the only place we know where we can dump our problems on someone else and actually get praise and recognition for it!
Disney will be releasing the follow-up to it's 1982 classic "TRON" entitled "TRON LEGACY" around christmas 2010. They have premiered test footage from the movie at Comic Con which can now be viewed in HD online! The 1982 movie is known for it's groundbreaking special effects, and this new movie looks to be quite spectacular as well.
"Soundtrack To Life (STL) 09 - I Wanna Be Where You Are" [I really love this mix and hope you do too]
==> DOWNLOAD LINK <==
If you hadn't noticed, I was particularly fond of this STL mix because it ended up being my own Michael Jackson Tribute. Anyhow, I'll let the music speak for itself. Enjoy!!
TrackList:
1. Consequence ft. Kanye West and John Legend - Whatever U Want 2. Trey Songz feat Soulja Boy and Gucci Mane - LOL 3. Michael Jackson - Got The Hots 4. The Roots feat Erykah Badu - I Wanna Be Where You Are 5. Joy Jones - Constellations 6. Slakah the Beatchild - B-Boy Beef 7. Chrishan - Best Sex Vs Best Friend 8. Cheri Dennis - Flight 2304 9. Slakah the Beatchild - D.A.N.C.E. 10. Ryan Leslie - You're Not My Girl 11. Git Fresh - Open Up Your Ears 12. Lloyd - All My Love 13. Goapele - Milk & Honey 14. Chris Brown - Not My Fault 15. Omarion - Devastation 16. Teedra Moses -Everybody Rock 17. The Foreign Exchange - Purple Flip 18. The Jackson 5 - I Wanna Be Where You Are
How could you not like this girl after watching this video. Her personality IMO is refreshingly candid and a breath of fresh air.
From Honeysoul.com
Canadian R&B star Melanie Fiona has been making the rounds doing interviews and press as she prepares to release her album, The Bridge in the US this August (it’s already available in Canada). Here she is record digging with the Hip Hop Official crew and talking about some of her musical influences including, Sam Cooke, who she covered on her mixtape with Questlove.
Melanie is one of eight artists who will be featured on the BET series, Rising Icons, starting on Monday, July 27 at 10:30 pm EST
I wanted to do this promo just so that folks are familiar with the concept of STL. For a good 3 or 4 years now, I have put together these CDs of rare mixes and tracks that never see the light of day (ie...don't make it to radio) that I then add all sorts of sentimentality too that I dub Soundtracks To Life. When I listen to these, they usually take me back to a particular time in my life and serve sort of like musical journals. Don't read too much into that though, cause its purely about the music...so regardless of genre or theme, the songs make their way onto the set because they have created a lasting impression on my musical palette. Usually keen to pass these out amongst my friends, blogging gives me the opportunity to share the music with you cause lets face it....if you are a regular visitor to the site then you are a hardcore music lover too. The set will be dropping sometimes this week (and feature tracks showcased here on Sanspiracy) so please download, tell other music lovers to stop by, and enjoy.
"Mayer Hawthorne - I Wish It Would Rain" [from the forthcoming album "Strange Arrangement" in stores early August] ==> LISTEN/DL <==
Moody, then pull up a chair cause I have a jem for you. Having a bad week, never fear, cause good music is here. Corny, of course, but nothing soothes the soul like good old fashion soul music and its good to know that artists today are dipping into this heyday for inspiration. Enjoy!!!
I struggle to coin Drake as a talented MC. Yeah, his "So Far Gone" mixtape was leaps and bounds better than most label offerings. However, what struck me most about that project was his choice in music rather than his rhyming skills or his flow. His collaborations (if you can call them that) with Peter Bjorn and John, Lykke Li, and Santo Gold, Omarion, and Lil Wayne seems fresh and inspired on the project. However, since its is widely known now that Drake has signed with Young Money and therefore Universal Music Group and reppin a debut video directed by Kanye West, Drake has morphed into the premiere corporate poster child for the hip hop underground. Flossin fake, "Made it from the streets" candor by way of Toronto by way of Degrassi - but the truth of the matter is that his elevation to the "big time" hardly seems like a struggle at all. In fact, if you eliminate Drake entirely, it is one of the most effective label pushes for an artist I have seen in the better part of a decade. I didn't catch the Hot 97 freestyle session when it mades its debut in April, However, when you compare that video, with the spoof, what it essentially uncovers is the key problem with Drake "The Artist" - overhyped, unoriginality for those that like their hip hop nondescript (please watch the freestyle before the spoof for hilarity to ensue).
by Soulbounce The Foreign Exchange engine keeps moving forward with this year's release of Nicolay's City Lights 2: Shibuya. As a follow-up to the original City Lights, which focused on soulful Hip Hop instrumentals, Shibuya moves things forward in a new and surprising way. This collection is inspired by a trip to the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, which Nicolay visited in 2006, and promises to further release the Dutch producer from the confines of our expectations. With a release date of 9/15 on FE Music, Shibuya also features the vocals of Carlitta Durand, who we expect to hear more of this year. Full tracklisting below.
Lose Your Way feat. Carlitta Durand
Shibuya Station
Crossing
Rain In Ueno Park
Satellite
Saturday Night feat. Carlitta Durand
A Ride Under The Neon Moon
Omotesando
Meiji Shrine
Shadow Dancing
The Inner Garden
Bullet Train
Wake Up In Another Life feat. Carlitta Durand
Departure
Shibuya Epilogue feat. Carlitta Durand
Executive Producers: Phonte Coleman and Nicolay for Foreign Exchange Music, LLC
It is pretty common knowledge that it is high time that the recording industry re-evaluate its practices and business M.O.
This is a direct result of the digital era, however I have an archaic response to the resurgence of the new indie and internet movement.
Record labels need to make the record deal worth something again.
Right now, with all eyes on the artist, the artistry, the sales and the business, the labels are going to need to raise the bar instead of lowering it. In recent history, record deals have been given out like cheap candy on Halloween night. The dude co-signed by the DJ gets a deal. The bum best friend of the multi-platinum rapper gets a deal. The trash rapper that does a few thousand out-of-the-trunk can get a record deal. There’s a clearance sale on record deals, it seems and the industry “got it for cheap.”
These unqualified people are getting signed for all the wrong reasons and very little of it is based on talent or ability. Can we agree that that is most important aspect of an album? I mean, most of these folks don’t even have an interesting story to sell to the people or media. I’m sorry, but even getting shot isn’t enough anymore. The “deal” has been devalued so badly that your average artist boasts about being indie, not even fully grasping he gravity of that. (That’s another topic, but indie is short for independent.) The point is, nobody really cares about getting signed to a deal anymore…they have options.
Don’t confuse this as an anti-indie statement or even a pro-major labels commentary. I firmly believe that we only recently fundamentally got off track, but it seems like Pandora’s Box is completely broken open. Artists as recently as 50 Cent, Young Jeezy and wise older artists like Master P grasped the notion of crafting a full-circle look at their art way before they hopped in bed with the labels. Then, other artists already signed to majors took meticulous care of their likeness and their art, which often extended well beyond their music. That care doesn’t exist anymore, from the artist or the labels. Artist development, A&Ring and other once-essentials are now fundamentally dead.
That can change for the betterment of the business and the future stars of music, if the deal is harder to attain. Getting signed must be a rite of passage of sorts, where only the best of the best emerge victorious.
With the barriers to entry gone, and access readily available, I’m not suggesting that the music game shut down the doors to anybody. In fact, this idea would open up doors to the talents all over the nation and the world that have the goods, but don’t have the inroads. There are more ways for an artist to create energy around themselves and you don’t have to sit in front of the Def Jam building to get somebody’s attention. So, I’m talking about the artists in Detroit, Delaware, Baltimore and Chicago getting in. I’m talking about the MC’s in Rotterdam and South Africa. The labels have to understand, this is what is out there. The artists have to be ready to answer the door when opportunity knocks.
Essentially, what I am suggesting is that – for the fans’ sake – artists must assume control of their own destiny and when they have gone through that industry trial by fire, everybody is a winner.
If the deal is just given out, even the “nobody” doesn’t respect it. The goal: creating the next generation of superstars and salvaging a business that enables potential greats to fulfill their destiny.
Solutions:
Artists: Labels will be labels. Create value in what you do and what you are. Have a total package as an artist and, more importantly, as a commodity. Know the digital landscape in detail, but don’t completely abandon traditional forms of promotion and marketing that work. Have a team.
Labels: We’ve seen what happens when artists are JUST signed. Nobody wins, because many of these immensely talented individuals sit on a shelf, only to get released years after their buzz is the highest. Others do get release dates, but suffer from wackness or simply from neglect. From a business point of view, there will always be an urge to sign the next hot thing on the spot, but treat the artist like a flower and help them blossom. There aren’t many Michael’s, Mariah’s and Madonna’s out there, but there are many reoccurring lessons to be learned from these artists.
City police were stretched to the limit and taxpayer dollars were splurged by the millions, but the City Hall scenes swirling around the Michael Jackson memorial also created an unmistakable glow — one that spoke to ambition and opportunity — and at its center was City Councilwoman Jan Perry.
There was Perry basking in that attention, on CBS’ The Early Show one minute and MSNBC another, even earning a gushing Los Angeles Times profile that painted her as Citizen Perry up at 4:30 a.m., “zipping up and down city streets around Staples Center in her Honda Accord hybrid.” The Jackson tragedy was a public relations coup for Perry, who has represented the downtown area for eight years and is said to aspire to be mayor. With Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in South Africa attending an awards banquet, and Mayor Pro-Tem Eric Garcetti off to Japan, the pop icon’s funeral served as a perfect dry run to demonstrate Perry’s capabilities as mayor.
As she called for the Jackson family to defray the event’s estimated $3 million to $4 million cost, these scenes, both on TV and over the radio, perhaps unintentionally exposed who Perry perceives as her key constituents. It wasn’t taxpayers.
It was all but impossible to find mention, in Perry’s extensive media whirlwind, of the 800-pound gorilla in the room, as controversy over the costs mounted. That gorilla would be corporate king AEG (Anschutz Entertainment Group) a multitentacled billion-dollar enterprise. AEG owns Staples Center, which hosted the memorial, and the neighboring L.A. Live entertainment venue. It is also developing the über-luxury Ritz-Carlton Hotel under construction nearby, which will include opulent condos with five-star amenities.
AEG and its reclusive Colorado billionaire owner, Philip Anschutz, stand to profit from the more than 100 hours of footage taken of Jackson in meetings, auditions and rehearsals at Staples Center in preparation for his last, never-to-be, “This Is It” 50-venue concert tour.
Yet the much-disputed cost of providing thousands of police, street and sewer workers and others utterly free of charge, to keep order, control traffic, provide toilets and close Los Angeles freeways during the Jackson event, will be borne by Los Angeles residents.
On July 13 the mayor was back from South Africa, where he attended an awards banquet. His vacation, it now turns out, was paid by the banquet’s producer, the Academy of Achievement — which lists none other than Philip Anschutz as a big-money donating “patron.” Upon his return, Villaraigosa scolded those questioning the memorial’s cost, declaring that L.A. is a “world-class” city so he would not seek reimbursement from the Jacksons — or AEG — for funeral costs.
Both Perry and Villaraigosa have many strong ties to AEG. The firm has showered Villaraigosa’s political initiatives with $150,000, backing the mayor’s successful push to significantly boost the city phone tax on residents, and supporting Villaraigosa’s failed bid to take over L.A. schools.
Both Perry and Villaraigosa are highly visible boosters of Anschutz and AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke. Perry and Leiweke have breakfasted together, regularly chat and often publicly praise one another. On June 18, at a celebration of the Laker NBA Championship at the Coliseum, Perry went before a crowd of 80,000 — and thanked her friend Tim Leiweke. Earlier in June, she joined Villaraigosa in announcing that the NBA’s All-Star Game would come to Los Angeles in 2011 — and she again thanked Leiweke and AEG.
Perry’s support for Leiweke and Anschutz has created a persistent City Hall rumor: that Proposition R, approved by Los Angeles voters in 2006, which allowed the council members to remain in office for 12 instead of eight years, was initiated to keep Perry in power — so she can continue supporting AEG’s interests.
Perry did not respond to the Weekly’s queries. Such rumors are bound to arise, since taxpayers have been tapped to provide AEG with several big financial crutches, and Perry and Villaraigosa are the key cheerleaders. In 2007, wealthy AEG received a whopping $50 million in state bond monies from Proposition 1C, the Housing and Emergency Trust Fund Act of 2006. As the Weekly has reported, California voters approved this bond money to provide “affordable housing” for battered women and the poor.
But by mining the bond measure’s fine print, state officials, egged on by L.A. politicians, legally diverted $50 million — not for affordable housing but to pay for pretty sidewalks, upscale street-scaping and other improvements to Figueroa Street, which leads to AEG’s Staples Center and L.A. Live.
There’s more: The city has agreed to “rebate” to AEG up to $246 million in bed taxes paid by hotel visitors — a huge windfall that would normally flow into city coffers from the two high-end hotels AEG is developing next to its L.A. Live venue. But keep your calculators out: Anschutz has also received $4 million in “forgiven” building-permit fees for downtown developments — fees that little-guy businesses are seldom allowed to avoid. And last September, with only Councilman Bill Rosendahl dissenting, the City Council sold AEG the exclusive rights to erect controversial, huge, lucrative billboards on the taxpayer-owned Convention Center. In selling off this vast outdoor advertising space to AEG, the City Council failed to allow competitive bidding, prompting billboard opponent Dennis Hathaway to say, “AEG is the tail wagging the dog of the city.”
Then, on July 9, just days after the Jackson memorial, Villaraigosa’s political appointees on the city Planning Commission also backed the hotly criticized Convention Center scheme, under which its widely recognized green outer wall, at 50,000 square feet, would become one of the biggest billboard surfaces in California.
Newly elected City Attorney Carmen Trutanich had alerted the Planning Commission last week not to act until he determined whether the AEG scheme was ethically and legally permissible, but Villaraigosa’s appointees ignored him. The deal cut with AEG would force tens of thousands of motorists stuck on the 10 and 110 freeways to view huge ads. Trutanich wants the deal halted while Trutanich determines whether the sudden vote by Villaraigosa’s political appointees on the Planning Commission were ethically and legally permissible.
Now, Councilwoman Janice Hahn appears to be joining AEG’s unofficial political team, calling for a “study” to show how much in extra taxes the city reaped from visitors to the Jackson event — echoing talking points put out by Carol Schatz, who runs a downtown business lobbying group.
AEG’s potential Jackson profits are not lost on City Councilman Dennis Zine, who vociferously slammed what he says is $3.8 million in city worker overtime, lost hours and donating of normal work hours, all burned up by police and other city workers to honor Jackson.
AEG raised eyebrows when it lashed back at Zine, with Tim Leiweke declaring that Zine was out of line — an unusual muscle-flexing scene by Leiweke.
Impromptu and unscientific polls on Facebook and other social media sites show that Angelenos emphatically do not want to pick up this tab. As Zine’s office announced, “The event was held at their location, they are the promoters, and they are the ones who stand to profit.”
Yet a fascinating scene unfolded when Villaraigosa’s spokesman Matt Szabo Twittered the media, trying to spin the event as costing taxpayers only $1.4 million, not nearly $4 million. The Los Angeles Times accepted that low figure and published it without question.
Szabo calculated only the overtime, ignoring the reality that city workers burned through thousands of normal workday hours over several days. “How many calls got dropped?” Zine asked during a radio interview, of badly stretched emergency systems.
Whether the dropped tasks involved street-service workers, traffic coordinators, sewer workers or cops, the work they left on their desks might also cascade into a series of overtime issues as they try to catch up.
Councilman Rosendahl believes the Jackson memorial should not be marred by a debate over cost, saying, “AEG has done very well by our city over the years. The city has given them extensive support, and it would be a positive thing of AEG to work with us.”
Yet any typical L.A. resident who sought to hold an event that forced street closures and caused big strains on city services would be required to apply for a permit that could hold them liable for policing, street closure and clean-up costs.
According to Villaraigosa’s office, AEG did not even file this permit. The end result, sticking taxpayers with the tab, is “just plain wrong,” says neighborhood council activist Jack Humphreville.
