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August 8, 2002
Gary Leupp
Karzai's
Bodyguard
August 7, 2002
Anis Shivani
The First
21st Century
Police State
Jeffrey St. Clair
Fallon's
Fallen
Is the US Navy Killing
Children in Nevada?
Robert Fisk
For the
Forgotten Afghans,
the UN Offers a Fresh Hell
Dr. Susan Block
Rigas in
Cuffs
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies of the US Part 5: the Call of Democracy?
August 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Signs
of the Elites
Bruce Gagnon
We Must
Come Alive
David Krieger
From
Hiroshima to Hope
Jerre Skog
Global
Reach of Corporate Crime or What the Hell are
They Teaching at Harvard?
Robert Fisk
Return to
Afghanistan:
Collateral Damage
Alexander Cockburn
The
Fox in the Pension Fund
August 5, 2002
Rahul Mahajan
Iraq
and the New Great Game
Jordy Cummings
The
Last Frontier of
Israel and Palestine
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Saddam's Diary
Mike Leon
US Mute
to Israeli Brutality
Norman Madarasz
Brazil:
the Most Important Election of 2002?
August 4, 2002
Susan Davis
Fat Americans
August 3, 2002
David Krieger
Nuclear
Apartheid
Gilad Atzmon
The End
of Innocence
Gavin Keeney
Everybody's
a Critic
Alexander Cockburn
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save Dick Cheney?
August 2, 2002
Ralph Nader
The Labor
Party
Chris Floyd
Moral Maze:
Bankruptcy Made Easy
Jeremy Scahill
Saddam,
Chemical Weapons and Donald Rumsfeld
Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Deeds in the Black Hills:
Daschle Dooms the
Sacred Land of the Sioux
August 1, 2002
Steven Higgs
Activists
Under Siege
Anthony Gancarski
Draft
Picks:
Staffing the Latest War
Zeynep Toufe
Invisible
Children: AIDS,
Africa and Selective Vision
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
July 31, 2002
Amelia Peltz
Inside
Ramallah:
How Can the World Witness Such Suffering and Do Nothing?
M. Shahid Alam
The Academic
Boycott of Israel
Bernard Weiner
20 Things
We've Learned Since 9/11
Philip Cryan
Discourse
and War in Colombia
Neve Gordon
A Feast
of Bombs:
Sharon's Endgame for Palestine
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Days That
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Cockburn
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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
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Reviews of Gore:
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August
8, 2002
Now Ain't the
Time for Your Tears
by Dave Marsh
"No artist
ever lost money auditing a record company." It's been said, and it's been true, since before
I was old enough to vote. I've never even heard anyone suggest
it could be refuted. Nevertheless, why it works that way remained
obscure until a brave man named Fred Wilhelms delivered his testimony
July 23 at the California state senate hearing on music industry
accounting.
Wilhelms became former national
director of the AFTRA Health and Retirement Funds because he
refused to roll over and play dead about the record industry's
deformed income reporting that deprived artists of benefits.
Before that, Wilhelms worked as an auditor New Jersey construction
trade unions. He says that compared to the record industry, those
guys constitute a monument to scruples.
The press coverage of the hearing paid
little attention to what Wilhelms said, instead centering on
the usual charges, countercharges and record company bleating.
The RIAA's grandstand play this time was walking out without
concluding its testimony, which served to piss off the senators
and take the headlines away from the revelations of corruption.
My printout of Wilhelm's remarks runs
10 single-spaced pages (drop me a note and I'll send it as a
Word file). "Routine and systematic disregard of the requirements
of the agreement and Federal law" probably summarizes it
best. Most devasting to me: His description of an artist dying
because "the industry does its absolute best to avoid its
obligations."
More devilish details abound. For instance:
Did you know that record companies can be audited only on documents
they provide? Manufacturing and even shipping records are off
limits. That auditors are hired by the artist but the labels
have the right to veto the artist's choice? (One reason Wilhelms
is brave.) That the contract allows no auditor to have more than
one active record biz case? That opening balances on statements
often bear no relationship to the closing balance on the previous
statement? That although the artist can only audit for the preceding
two years, record companies make "adjustments" four
or five years after the fact? That record companies often charge
pension and welfare payments against the artist's royalties?
(That one's a violation of Federal law, never mind contracts.)
That these debits from the royalty account often do not correspond
to the amounts paid to the pension and welfare fund? (The amounts
paid are, of course, invariably lower, sometimes zero.)
"So, at the end of an audit, which
may be a couple years after the first demand for one was made,
the artist finds himself at the poker table with the company
again," Wilhelms said. "there is a very good chance
the artist has not been paid anything in the interim. IN the
middle of the table is what the auditor has found for the artist.
Does the company fold and simply push the chips to the artist?
Not unless the artist has a current hit."
Instead, he explains, the record company
banks on the artist's need for cash. So it stalls and stalls
some more and doesn't mind a lawsuit, which will let it stall
still further (_its_ lawyers are employees or on retainer). In
the end, since they have all the leverage and collect all the
dough, rarely do the labels pay out much more than about 30 or
40 percent of what the audit proves they owe.
These practices provoked tears in me
but that's not the right response. The right response is to fight.
Artists fight today more often and more powerfully than ever
before through the litigation against the AFTRA funds and the
record labels and via the Recording Artists Coalition. Can they
win? To do that, they'll have to overturn an entrenched system
whose prowess and conniving makes Enron look like amateur hour.
Read Wilhelms testimony and see for yourself. _Especially_ if
you or anyone you know wants to sign a record deal.
Hard to remember when I received the
amount of angry mail I got about my Alan Lomax column (trashing
the Ramones didn't come close). None of it denies that Lomax
and his father falsified history, took credit and income that
didn't belong to them, and in doing so cheated the actual creators
of the music they championed twice over.
I actually received a vague threat from
Alan's nephew John ("this is the beginning," accompanied
by an Interet screed). More bizarre, according to a whitewash
followup by Jon Pareles in the NY Times-I guess inspired by my
criticisms, since there were no other prominent ones--"Lomax's
rationale was that without his own clout, publishers wouldn't
bother to track down the likes of a Delta bluesman to get them
their royalties. 'If he did not secure these songs in the names
of himself and these artists, they would not be paid,' said his
daughter, Anna L. Chairetakis, who now runs the Alan Lomax Archive."
Which is kinda strange. I know several
blues researchers who at one time or another have campaigned
to get artists paid, sometimes successfully. None of them puts
their name on the songs as a precondition. I thank Chairetakis
and Pareles for proving my point.
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office; expanded
again. Too much good music out there, a rare thing in recent
midsummers.)
1. The
Rising Bruce Springsteen (Sony)-Abounding evidence that
it does not go smoothly at all.
2. Jerusalem,
Steve Earle (E Squared)-The real Neil Young.
3. The Complete John Lee Hooker, Vol.
4: Detroit 1950-51 (Body & Soul, Fr.)
4. Love
That Louie: The Louie Louie Files(Ace UK) Arguably the
greatest rock'n'roll anthology of all time. Or, I guess, the
worst.
5. Africa
Raps (Trikont)
6. All
Over Creation, Jason Ringenberg (Yep Rock)-One of the
founders of alt-country struggles with Southerness and freedom,
sees the Civil War through the eyes of Irish immigrants and acknowledges
responsibility for finishing the work of the civil rights movement.
7. Time
Bomb High School, Reigning Sound (In the Red)-If anything
could kill doowop, it'd be that opening version of "Stormy
Weather."
8. Try
Again, Mike Ireland and Holler (Ashmont) 9. Nellyville,
Nelly (Universal)
10. Adult
World, Wayne Kramer (MuscleTone)
11. Down
in the Alley, Alvin Youngblood-Hart (Memphis International)-Really
the blues.
12. Fashionably
Late, Linda Thompson (Rounder)-You won't miss Richard.
13. Faces
& Names, Dave Pirner (Ultimatum Music)
14. Electric
Warrior, T. Rex (A&M Jpn)-To hell with David Bowie,
Marc Bolan rocked 10 times better and 100 times sexier.
15. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
16. Viva
El Mariachi: Nati Cano's Mariachi Los Camperos (Smithsonian
Folkways)
17. Que
Pasa?: The Best of the Fania All-Stars (Columbia/Legacy)
18. Millionaire,
Kevin Welch (Dead Reckoning)
19. Keep
on Burning, Bob Frank (Bowstring)
20. Superbad!
The Soul of the City (Time-Life)-A seamless argument
for celebrating the '70s while ignoring the Bradys, Kiss and
the Osmonds.
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
Marsh is the author of The
Heart of Rock and Soul: the 1001 Greatest Singles.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Today's Features
Gary Leupp
Karzai's
Bodyguard
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