I don’t enter music contests. Whenever I hear about them, they crack me up. I can’t believe how exploitative they can be. They play on the archetypal insecurities of unknown artists, counting on the fact that a profitable number of them would be willing to buy a chance at legitimacy, as if legitimacy actually exists. In my view, either you make your expression, or you don’t. The legitimacy of it has nothing to do with what happens after, though the truth of that contention is something of which even I must remind myself from time to time.

Most contests for musicians or songs promise the chance for some notoriety, some brush with stardom, in return for your best effort and your entry fee. I gather that there are still an overwhelming number of “unsigned” recording artists that believe being noticed by some faceless yet “important” individual (any one will do) is one of many paths to success. I haven’t thought that way since I was a kid. It’s a fool’s errand. In this age of independent avenues, the idea is about as viable as a new development that improves the steam engine.

It never sits right with me when people running one of these contests think nothing of placing the distinction of expertise in the hands of some B-level celebrity and deeming them qualified to judge. The contests themselves amount to little more than commercials for everyone other than the people paying entry fees. One example of this practice is the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. It never impresses me when someone describes himself as a “Two-Time John Lennon Songwriting Contest Winner!” Among the judges this year?

The Bacon Brothers.

Huh? What exactly would it mean if the Bacon Brothers thought you were a winning songwriter? I have no idea. The $30 entry fee might get you the answer.

Trust me, no one’s looking for “new talent.” Save your money. It’s not a ticket to anything. You don’t have to be a genius to do a little arithmetic and know that the entry fees add up to a great big profit for the contest. They will never be out-valued by the prize packages.

The Ultimate Payola

I saw this video this week.

This interview could be applied very much to the way it seems like music is treated in the consciousness of the “new” media. I’ve written before about morons who believe music should be free and how these people maintain that there’s plenty of money in licensing for TV and so on. One thing I didn’t think of while writing that piece was that big corporations, the ones who would supposedly have deep enough pockets to license music and keep all of these recording artists and songwriters afloat, are the undisputed pros when it comes to staying rich and not spending their own money. They will fleece you faster than any kid with a high speed internet connection. Of course they will! Stay with me, because thanks to Sirius/XM and Mel Karmazin, I can see where these free music arguments lead: to the Ultimate Payola. I’ve included a link in case you don’t know what payola is.

Yesterday I got my regular spam as a Sirius/XM subscriber (a status I really must reconsider the merits of, truth be told) and it led me to see something so horrible, so criminal and so disgusting that I couldn’t not share it here. Upon reading it, I felt the same revulsion I felt when my Catholic high school religion teacher without prior warning showed a video of an abortion in progress. Yeah, that bad. It’s the Ultimate Payola. This is how bad Harlan Ellison’s contention has gotten with respect to music. I don’t want to believe this is legal, but I’ll never enter, so at least it can’t happen to me.

It seems that this guy Jay Thomas, has a show on Sirius/XM. I had to look up who he was. I think I’ve seen him before, but he doesn’t come to mind when I think “star.” There’s no way this guy could be relevant on any level. Anyway, he’s got this contest going in which he’s searching for the next “Homegrown Song.” “Oh Christ,” I thought, “I’ve gotta see this. How lame.”

But it isn’t lame. It’s sinister.

With a contest pitch, I always look for the entry fee. I was looking for a good laugh on this one, since the prize is only $500. There wasn’t an entry fee, but there was an affidavit you had to sign. An affidavit? Not an entry form. An affidavit. 

You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. They’re hoping you don’t. What could it possibly say that would sway you from the possibility of having your song heard by “thousands and thousands of people?”

I’ll tell you.

As usual, you can’t use their logo, name etc. to promote yourself at all if you win. You can only mention it incidentally. If they play your tune, you’ll never be compensated. No royalties. However, they can do whatever they want with your song, name, image etc. including whatever alterations and even over-dubs they want. There are tons of other clauses for corporate protection there too…

…but I never expected this:

Assignment:
I understand and agree that all rights, title and interest, including the copyright in and to the Entry Recording and all elements thereof and intellectual property rights therein will automatically be assigned to Sponsor upon submission of the Entry Recording, that Sponsor shall own the copyrights and other intellectual property rights relating to my Entry Recording, including the rights to make derivative works, and the Programming (defined below), in any and all present and future media. I understand that my signature on this Affidavit shall effect the assignment.

You know what this is? It’s a transfer of your copyright upon submission. You don’t even have to win! If you submit your song, it belongs to the sponsor! There are already 5 submissions on the site. I wonder if those people know that they no longer own the rights to their songs.

This is how the media industries play. This should not have surprised me. If the free music fallacy is allowed to proliferate, this is what will happen next. Hell, it’s already happening on some small scale. Then what? I can’t decide whether this is worse than some miscreant college kid ripping off thousands of songs by download. Thankfully, I don’t have to decide. They each are their own flavor of evil.

Therefore, the next time you hear someone saying music should be free and that the exposure is all you should care about, tell that person the following in the clearest possible language:

1. Fuck off.
2. I’ll see you in Hell, you scumbag.
3. Allow me to show you a video of an abortion in progress so that you might better understand how I feel about your ill-formed opinion.

Over the top? Maybe, but I had no choice. Harlan Ellison set the bar pretty high.

I went to a concert last week at the Philadelphia Spectrum. (I think it’s the Wachovia Spectrum, but I always hear the announcer from the first Rocky movie bellowing with that heavy delay in my head, “Welcome to the Philadelphia Spectrum! –pectrum… –pectrum… –pectrum…”) They’re gonna rip the place down and they’re staging some final concerts as a send off. To sweeten the pot, they were charging what it would have cost you to go to a show there when the place first opened in 1967. So last Friday, it was Philly all the way. You could see the Hooters, Todd Rundgren and Hall and Oates on the same bill for $4, $5 or $6. Awesome. Of course, the tickets were unavailable at first because of the scalping industry, but a friend of mine got them for us for free through a record company connection he has. I’m not much of a Hooters fan, but to see two of my all-time favorites, Todd and Hall and Oates, in a packed arena (well mostly) in Philadelphia was just too unique to pass up.

I loved the show. Todd playing Arena songs in an actual arena was something I was thrilled about for him. The Hall and Oates band was really tight. I never saw John play lead guitar before. I could hear every nuance that I saw. I even got some O’Jays tunes, which made the show complete for me. However, this is not a review of the concert. This is more a review of the elusive and powerful feelings I experienced.

I have long been drawn to Philadelphia, though I have yet to explore the city completely. It takes a little over an hour to get there from where I live, so there’s really no excuse for that, but just the same, it was so exciting to get over the Walt Whitman bridge and see the Spectrum in the distance. I spend most of my time in New York, but Philadelphia, the place that birthed my favorite soul music felt just as mythical. Could I feel the soul in the air? I wanted to try. I think there’s something about smaller cities that New York can never offer. They are more authentic. Their “personality” can be more direct. Like many things in New York City, being the biggest and the best at all times can get fascist and boring. Having too much to love and too much to digest at even several sittings can serve to make the place less welcoming sometimes.

I liked vibe of the people in Philadelphia. They seemed to be from Philadelphia. I know that sounds odd, but when you’re in New York, every one seems to be from somewhere else. If you go to a show at Madison Square Garden, for every New Yorker, there are probably 20 people from New Jersey, Connecticut and the outer boroughs. There’s a dilution of the city’s true character. It’s unavoidable. Last week, I felt proud to be in Philadelphia. I liked being among the people there. I can’t explain it.

I also enjoyed the Geno’s cheese steak sometime after midnight. I enjoyed it so much in fact that I considered coming back for breakfast.

The Spectrum is a truly old-school arena. I felt more at home there than I ever did at the Brendan Byrne (Continental/Izod, who the hell knows now?) arena in New Jersey. I even love the graphic design of its logos and the structure of its embellishments. They are just the warmest thing to me. I love that stuff. The Spectrum has a reputation for historic concert events and had its heyday in the 70s, which is my favorite period in music history. By being there at the end, I was somehow a part of it, which is just priceless to me.

The Spectrum is perfectly viable in my mind, even if the concourse could get a little jammed between sets. The real motivator to get rid of old venues like the Spectrum is probably that there are too few opportunities to accommodate corporate subscribers. (with perks like private boxes and stuff) It is an arena, so the place is a barn, but it had such a coziness about it. Coupled with feeling like I was part of something important and the general good vibe I got from the diverse audience, I never felt better at an arena concert.

I made the observation that back in the 80s, I couldn’t go to a concert that wasn’t in an arena. I longed for theatre concerts that were more intimate. Now, those smaller venues are the norm. This concert could very well prove to be the last arena show I ever see. I’m so glad it was at the Spectrum.

My friend contrasted the new Prudential arena in Newark with the Spectrum. The Spectrum is wider and more comfortable. The Prudential has more tiers and their angle is steeper. The big screen in Newark takes up the length of the building. The Spectrum looked comparatively like a very large television set. Awesome. I think the significance of the differences is self-evident.

My friend went out to the concession and he mentioned how some girl out there had asked the guy behind the counter when they were going to demolish it. The guy said in 6-18 months. She asked why. He said, “I don’t know, this place is fine.”

Too right.

I had a peculiar thought last week. It occurred to me that I have been an adult for longer than I was ever a child. By child, I mean in the purely chronological and legal sense. I find more often now that I can use expressions like “20 years ago…” and be referring honestly to some bit of personal experience. I’ve begun to take more notice when my friends and acquaintances talk about “getting old.” This condition is still not something that I consciously claim. Perhaps it’s because my health is not failing and I still have all of this hair, but it might also be that I’ve yet to give up on my life and its untapped potentials. When I hear someone my age talking about “getting old,” I immediately leap, perhaps erroneously, to thinking how that person must be seeking affirmation, even forgiveness, for accepting his lot.

Far from accepting my lot, I’m loathe to think of any condition as my lot. Nor have I ever been one to state that I’m “getting old” while I shake my head ruefully about something that I perceive to be outside of my control. I don’t believe I’ve ever claimed that I was “getting too old” for anything. I’m not in denial, for surely enough, I’ve aged, but the expression has not leaked into my personal lexicon. It’s as alien to me as it would be to preface a sentence with “Back when I would take on rabid black bears three at a time…”

My attitude on having lived almost two score years is never more than whatever wisdom I’ve managed to accrue. I’m much more likely to say something like, “I’ve come too far” to be averted by some odd situation or “after everything I’ve learned” I can’t possibly be discouraged by this or that. I can ease most losses of my innocence by reminding myself that I still have no idea what a beer costs. When I consider symptoms of age that may affect me on a primal level, the most prominent is probably a waning sense of invincibility. Perhaps that’s part of the wisdom too.

I was considering writing about these contemplations last week. Then, by what could only be described as a cosmic tidal wave of the universal mind, I received a message through Facebook. It was a “friend request” from a woman I didn’t know. I went to the page and tried to find out what I could by looking at the tiny profile picture. Had I met this person on a gig or something? We shared a single friend, someone I went to grade school with. When I glanced down at her other friends, I saw her sister’s name. That name was very distinctive. I hadn’t heard it since her sister was born, when I was around 9 or 10. The requestor was using her married name. When I discovered who it was, I felt for a moment the same way you feel atop the largest hill in a roller coaster, when the car is creeping over the crest and you feel your weight shift.

This was a girl I knew back in the 70s. (I can actually say that. It refers to real experience.) She was literally the girl next door. (OK, she lived behind my house, but you get the idea.) She is the first friend I can remember whom I believe in some small way influenced the adult I became. I could speculate for volumes, but suffice it to say that she was the first girl of which I was constantly aware. We had not communicated for almost 30 years (another real number), because her family moved to California in the early 80s. Being from Jersey, I never had occasion to drop in.

In my mind for the last few decades, this woman has been nine years old. So as we wrote back and forth tossing about amusing memories, it was difficult not to visualize her as the little girl I remembered. That cloudy timeline suddenly had an endpoint, but the start of it was still quite vivid. I tried to think of defining events in my life that my old friend pre-dated. Nearly all of them. How incredible! All through the vagaries of my childhood experiences, into high school and beyond, hearing now from this person I knew for a comparatively short period of time brought me a rare joy. This overwhelming exercise in reflection might cause someone else to feel “old,” but I found instead that I experienced a kind of compression of time. More recent events seemed far more dusty and distant.

I hesitate to conclude that I had been considering my life in two phases, before and after my friend moved, but what was it that made my nine year old mind capable of preserving experiences with a sparkling newness when my twenty nine year old mind seemed more content to overstuff a very large closet? In the mounting wisdom of my age, I think I’ve arrived at the lesson, though it wouldn’t be accurate to call it a revelation: Nothing is mundane at nine, so maybe we get off cheap then, but with age, we have to make a greater effort to preserve what we want to remember and we must actively choose what we allow to shape us. The next time I sit back and contemplate my lifetime as a gestalt, maybe I won’t be so surprised.

I was so glad to hear that my old friend was doing well, and as I wrote to her mother days later, I knew her family was out there somewhere. I was happy to have been remembered fondly and as a “passionate” person at the age of nine. Though I may never fill in all the blanks on that timeline I mentioned earlier, I’m fairly confident that I won’t “get old.” I’ll change. And I won’t.