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June 15 / 16, 2002
Tanweer Akram
A Review
of Noam Chomsky's 9-11
Daniel Wolff
The Day
They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant
Ralph Nader
A Corporate
Crime State
Alexander Cockburn
Tourism
in Ancient Rome
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
June 17,
2002
The Decline
of Teen Jive?
Change Gonna Come
by Dave Marsh
Sam Cooke was right. No matter how long it may
take, change does come.
Last week, Clive Calder of Jive Records
and Zomba Music forced Jive's distributor, BMG Music, to buy
his company for $3 billion. Even though it has plenty of cash,
BMG didn't really want Jive, which specializes in teen appeal
acts (Britney Spears, 'N Sync,, etc.) Over the past year, the
company's business is off significantly--from almost 7% of the
market in 2000 to a little more than 3% now. As a stock analyst
told the N.Y. Times, "You could buy the EMI Group right
now for about that."
But it wasn't a need for cash that made
Calder want to deal. Market share for teen acts is plummeting
like dotcom share prices. That may mean that the market is shifting
away from teen jive, though it's hard to compare this cycle to
the past. Clear Channel, which has a Top 40 monopoly, has a huge
stake in teen appeal. But otherwise, the signs of a shift is
there.
Record buyers have complained, with justification,
about CD prices since the format's launch. Catalog prices, at
least, are falling now. The new industry standard-set by Sony
and Universal a few months ago, with BMG following suit recently--seems
to be $11.98, which as a practical matter means about $10 at
discount stores or on the Internet.
It's easy to see why this happened, too.
Billboard shows "deep catalog" sales, by far the most
consistently profitable kind, off almost 5% this year, while
more recent catalog is off 6%.
Labels shout and scream that this is
all the fault of the Internet. Well, no album this year got downloaded
like The Eminem Show which it sold 284,000 its first weekend
plus more than a million in its first full week, peak numbers
for the year. Although label execs refuse to recognize it, Internet
downloading most resembles not a B&E job but the way people
used radio before the government gave Clear Channel its monopoly.
If I told you that I found my favorite
harbinger of change in Ed Christman's report that label execs
are not being offered lavish new contracts, it'd make me look
mean. It would also be a lie.
My actual favorite was Rolling Stone
hiring an editor who believes "people don't have time to
sit down and read." This pleases me because because it will
kill off any remaining illusion that Rolling Stone has even a
vague musical expertise. Also, if the magazine's sales continue
to decline, they won't be able to blame those of us who used
to write "7000 word stories" as they have for the past
25 years.
New editor Eric Needham provides a treble
delight when he says, "All the great media adventures of
the 20th century have been visual. Television, movies, the Internet,
they're all visual mediums." First, Needham reveals that
he doesn't know the plural of medium. Then, he all but admits
that he has to be read aloud to (otherwise he would recognize
text as a visual medium). Finally, in the age of Napster, he's
decided that the Internet is a visual medium.
Pity Rolling Stone's poor music editors.
There's no change there, of course.
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
1. Try
Again, Mike Ireland and Holler (Ashmont) (After about
three listens you realize that Ireland, the best new honkytonker,
has kicked it into another gear by adding elements from his roots
rock days in the Starkweathers.)
2. Human
Being Lawnmower: The Baddest & Maddest of the MC5
(Total Energy)
3. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
4. The
Eminem Show, Eminem (Interscope)
5. Masquerade,
Wyclef Jean (Columbia)
6. "It's
Been A Change," Buddy Miller (from Rhino's otherwise
appalling Rockin' Patriots)
7. Halos
and Horns, Dolly Parton (Sugar Hill)
8.You're
Gonna Need That Pure Religion, Rev. Pearly Brown (Arhoolie)
9. By the Hand of the Father, Alejandro Escovedo (Texas Music
Group)
10. Tonight
at Johnny's Speakeasy, Jo Serrapere & the Willie
Dunns (Detroit Radio Co.)
11. Daddy's
Home: The Very Best of Shep and the Limelites (Collectables)
12. Gravity,
Alejandro Escovedo (Texas Music Group)
13. Return
of a Legend, Jody Williams (Evidence)
14. "I Won't Let Go," Dorothy
Love and "Walk On and Talk On," Brother Joe May (from
Creed
Gospel Classics, Vol. 5, AVI)
15. Veni,
Vidi, Vicious, The Hives (Sire/Burning Heart/Epitaph)
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Dave Marsh's
Previous DeskScan Top 10 Lists:
June 12, 2002
June 4, 2002
May 27, 2002
May 20, 2002
May 14, 2002
May 6, 2002
April 30, 2002
April 22, 2002
April 15, 2002
April 9, 2002
April 2, 2002
March 25, 2002
March 18,
2002
March 11,
2002
Today's
Features
David Vest
Shut Up
and Clap
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