Good for Artemis
Artemis Records waives Internet royalty fees. "Artemis Records [the label for Steve Earle, among others] has agreed to issue licenses to internet radio for one year for the master use of songs by all Artemis recording artists. This announcement was made today by Danny Goldberg, Chairman and CEO, Artemis Records and Daniel Glass, President, Artemis Records. During this period, beginning August 1, 2002, Artemis will waive the royalty payments that would otherwise be due them. " [MetaFilter]
Hooray for these guys! I was going to do it anyway, just to be contrary, and I usually buy about every second Earle album, but this company just sold me the new Steve Earle album. I also like the way the company is standing behind Steve Earle in this deal, they include an eminently reasonable, perfectly justifiable comment from Steve:
In the press material prepared to go out with the advance mailing of the album this week, Steve Earle told journalist Marc Jacobson, referring to "John Walker's Blues:" "I don't condone what he did. Still, he's a 20 year-old kid. My son Justin is almost exactly Walker's age. Would I be upset if he suddenly turned up fighting for the Islamic Jihad? Sure, absolutely. Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too. But there are circumstances. Walker was from a very bohemian household, from Marin County. His father had just come out of the closet. It's hard to say how that played out in Walker's mind. He went to Yemen because that's where they teach the purest kind of Arabic. He didn't just sit on the couch and watch the box, get depressed and complain. He was a smart kid, he graduated from high school early, the culture here didn't impress him, so he went out looking for something to believe in."
It would be a pretty shallow culture if songwriters only wrote about nice people. From the classic songs "The Ballad of Jesse James" to Lloyd Price's "Stagger Lee," Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" to Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska," and to Steve's own "Jonathan's Song," songwriters have explored the humanity of murderers and other evil-doers as part of the way they view the world.
It would be a pretty shallow culture, indeed. Seems as if some would rather keep it that way. I really like the comment about "the enemy of real thought." We have plenty of those kinds of enemies today, not just in the Taliban, but also on the radio stations and in the halls of government. They scare me as much as the bombs and airplanes, because they create the monsters that drive the airplanes and drop the bombs.
6:31:17 PM Permalink
|
|
