Category: Business

Offbeat doesn’t get it, or just saying “thank you” would be fine

offBeat Magazine has this interview with Harry Connick, Jr., Branford Marsalis, and Anne Marie Wilkins. The interview was conducted by Jam Ramsey, the publisher, and Alex Rawls, an editor.

Rawls: Does it strike you as odd having a Musicians’ Village where musicians are, at least at this stage, the minority?

Marsalis: There is a federal statute that says you can’t build homes with public people’s money, and say that they’re reserved for 100 percent of anybody. There was a time when you could do that, but we’ve gone past that time. We get 2,000 applications, and of those 2,000, 10 percent are musicians. So what do we do with the other 90 percent—“Sorry, not a musician. See ya”?

[It’s not obvious how the Fair Housing Act would prohibit an all-musician village. While that would certainly go against general notions of fairness, Section 804 (a) declares it unlawful to “refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” Throughout the act, those are the conditions under which discrimination is illegal; occupation is not mentioned.]

The last bit in italics is an editor’s note. That is exactly how it appears online and in the print version. I hope I am misreading this, but it appears to me that the editors of offBeat are quoting Federal statutes to make the point that it is not technically illegal to deny housing to someone because they are not a musician. Even though the editors admit, “that would certainly go against general notions of fairness,” it seems that they are badgering Connick and Marsalis about the lack of musicians who have qualified for housing in the Musicians Village, and in the process making the implication that non-musicians should be denied housing in favor of musicians.

I am not sure what offBeat’s motivation could be in doing this. It seems to be in vogue lately in New Orleans to find anyone who is trying to help, and give them crap about not helping “fast enough”/”the right way”/”the way we used to do it”, etc. This approach obviously makes everything run better (where’s that sarcasm emoticon again?). Why don’t we find everyone that wants to do some good in New Orleans and f*** with them until they get fed up and leave? Then we wouldn’t have any more carpetbaggers like Harry and Branford coming in here and trying to provide affordable homeownership for a city that has a dire housing need.

To even suggest that we should discourage non-musicians from receiving Habit for Humanity assistance is ludicrous. That is in no way different from saying that you can’t live here because you are black, white, straight, gay, or a writer for a mediocre music magazine. To make Harry and Branford defend this issue is appalling. It is a non-issue, and should have been from first glance. Those guys don’t have to do what they are doing. We should be thanking them, not giving them the 60 Minutes treatment.

Rawls: I understand what you’re saying about the housing rules, but this has been pitched as “the Musicians’ Village.”

Marsalis: It’s a musicians’ village in a peripheral sense. You can’t find me a single piece of documentation that says, “We’re building homes only for musicians.”

[True, but New Orleans musicians have a reason to think otherwise. That was certainly the tone of the initial message, so much so that none of the stories written about the Musicians’ Village printed in New Orleans mentioned that the village would not be reserved strictly for musicians. Only one Associated Press wire service story raised that issue; it quoted Jim Pate, executive director of New Orleans’ Habitat for Humanity, as saying, “Habitat cannot reserve houses for a specific group, and non-musicians would also live in the village.”]

I remember from the beginning hearing that the Musicians’ Village could not be reserved for musicians only, and it made perfect sense to me then. If the New Orleans press missed that part of the message it is because they are either incompetent, irresponsible or both.

After offBeat ran their first 60-Minutes-wanna-be piece on this, the Times-Picayune ran a big story on the injustice of musicians being denied homes in the Musicians’ Village. It was presented in a way that led one to believe that because our city flooded, we should take all of the irresponsible musicians with lousy credit that never could have bought a house before, and buy them all houses. They talked about how hard it is to get gigs post-K and how tough it is on the musicians. The photo used on the front page of the story showed a musician sitting in a FEMA trailer with a large TV that barely fit in the small trailer in the background. If you want to spend your Red Cross money on a big ass TV, that’s fine with me, just don’t make me listen to you bitch about your credit afterwards. Not long before that story ran, I received a last minute call from the premier local jazz club to bring in a band the next night, because the act they had booked cancelled the day before the gig. This is a good guaranteed money gig. The guy that cancelled was the guy in the paper in the FEMA trailer with the big ass TV. “Times are tough, but it’s easier to whine about it than to get my business together enough to do the gigs I have,” is the message that is being sent.

I’m not in any way saying that we should not be helping people. We should be helping people. As Harry said about the Habitat staff in the offBeat piece:

These guys are bending over backwards to help people, doing more even than I thought they would: There are legal services available; they’ve got credit counseling. It was actually a surprise to me how available all this stuff was to the applicants. It’s just a matter of calling, setting up an appointment, and doing a little bit of work.

offBeat stirring this pot in this manner is irresponsible. If they want to stir the pot, why not get on the city about the crime. A student of mine was robbed at gunpoint, and bound and gagged in his own home last weekend. Stir the pot about that. One annoying French Quarter resident/irritant is trying to get one of the few modern jazz venues in town shut down. Stir the pot about that.

offBeat won’t say this, but I will. Harry and Branford, Thank you very much for what you are doing. It is people like you that have the best chance of saving New Orleans from itself. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band | Dizzy’s Business on AAJ

Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band | Dizzy’s Business

Let’s admit it: If it weren’t for the ******-up economics of jazz today, this would be called the Slide Hampton Big Band, because it’s Hampton’s sensibilities that shape the sound of this orchestra, not Dizzy’s.

I’m glad someone finally said that in print. It’s not like Slide doesn’t have a name himself. Keeping Dizzy’s name on that band seems more and more necrophilic.

The cost of free music?

WIRED Blogs: Listening Post

He said that $50 per year from every person who listens to music would “meet or exceed the current over the counter sales of the music industry at a far lower cost,” but that because of deeply-entrenched flaws in the outmoded business models used by the labels that have evolved over the years, we’re unlikely ever to see such a system put in place — despite the fact that it would increase profits while allowing people far greater access to music.

The system will either change or die. Can we push change before the old guard kills it?

The Indie Jazz Conundrum

The recent J@LC presentation of John Zorn’s Masada and the Cecil Taylor Trio has stirred up some thinkers…not to mention John Schaefer.

Dig Darcy James Argue and Taylor Ho Bynum‘s thoughts on the subject.

All of this thought eventually led DJA to write this:

While I’m obviously all for the proliferation of independent, artist-owned, do-it-yourself labels and young musicians trying to pull off ambitious projects even in the absence of institutional support, the problem is (as I have said elsewhere) if everyone’s just doing their own thing, how does a collective scene emerge from that? How do we get people excited about the vanguard of independent, creative, contemporary jazz as a movement, instead of just gravitating towards the handful of stars who somehow emerge to wider acclaim?

DJA is concerned with scene development. I am more concerned with how we are to find our audiences. I think they are similar, if not the same issue. Scenes are a way to find music that we like. I like Ken Vandermark. Jeb Bishop was in his band, I’ll probably dig Jeb. I know Jeb plays with Keefe Jackson, maybe I should check out his stuff, etc. (Ok, that is a made up example, I actually have the pleasure of working with Jeb and Keefe, so maybe that was a blantant name/link drop.) Another example might be the scene that is happening around Barbes in Brooklyn right now. There are things I will check out because of their proximity to other things I like.

Again DJA asks:

“How do we get people excited about the vanguard of independent, creative, contemporary jazz as a movement, instead of just gravitating towards the handful of stars who somehow emerge to wider acclaim?”

While many of us as artists have found our way out of the old major label model of making and distributing music, most of us as listeners have not found our way to a new model of finding good music. In the old days we knew about what we read about in music magazines or newspapers, what we heard on the radio, and we saw in the record store. Record stores barely exist now, and won’t exsist as we know them in the new system. Radio and magazines are still stuck in the old mind set. They play/write about whatever they are told to by the labels. There is a perceived legitimacy that comes from being on a label, and media outlets still depend on this perception to make decisions of taste and quality for them. This is an issue for indie DIY artists, but only if that is still our method of reaching our audiences.

When I released “One”, I did limited runs of the CD. I think I made 200 in the first run. This was purely a financial decision. It meant I could pay the band more, because I had to come up with less for the manufacturing. This meant that the discs were burned instead of pressed. Other wise the rest of the package was the same. The method of putting the 1’s and 0’s onto the disc still carries a stigma. Cadence put their review of the disc in a special ghetto called “CD Ring” that is reserved for CD-R releases. This isn’t a knock on Cadence, just an indicator of their mindset on the indie issue, and they are one of the more progressive publications out there. No one else even reviewed it. Did they listen to it and decide not to write about it, or did they look at it and make that decision? I don’t know…

What if I decide to do a free download Creative Commons licensed album? Will I be able to get it written about in DownBeat or JazzTimes? Will it be viewed as less legitimate because I am not charging for it? Will people listen to it and write about it based solely on the musical content?

I think the music blogs that are hosting these conversations are part of the answer. Individual artists and listeners can help us find new music and new scenes. Those of us that teach need to make sure that we turn our students on to The Bad Plus and Steve Coleman, as well as Trane and Bird. We have to expose the now as much as the then. As performers we need to be willing to explore new venues and ways of presenting ourselves.

Most importantly, we need to support each other and create our scenes by talking about the music we like, and telling anyone who will listen about the killer new homemade indie disc we just picked up.

It would be great if J@LC had a New Improvisers Series every Thursday, and DownBeat had dedicated space for indie/DIY CD reviews, but we better not hold our breath. We probably just need to find the new way to make it work.

Boing Boing: MPAA rips off freeware author

I had been off of blogging the DRM/copyright stuff for a while, and here is the second one in a row. The story is ok, but Cory’s accompanying rant is very good.

Boing Boing: MPAA rips off freeware author

Even the MPAA and its member companies can’t avoid violating copyright. The MPAA’s own CEO personally ripped off Kirby Dick, pirating his film “This Film is Not Yet Rated” using the MPAA’s duplicating facilities. The studios regularly hose writers, painters, composers and performers, nicking their creative labor without compensation, and sneeringly invite them to sue if they don’t like it. Even the web-development departments get in on the act.

Is it any wonder that everyone with a computer is practically guaranteed to be a copyright criminal?

Blue Bayou: An industry that hates its customers

I’ve blogged similar stuff before, but this post (Blue Bayou: An industry that hates its customers) gets the point pretty well.

Imagine an industry that was so hostile to its customers that it regularly sued them; that resisted all new technologies for distributing its products, even as their best customers were embracing them; and that lobbies in Washington to try to take away its customers’ legal rights to use its products.

The future is coming, and artists have to decide if they want to join it or fight it.  Many of us have dreamed about getting major label deals, but at this point, does that put you on the right side of the future?