Memoirs of a Music Junkie By L.E. Kalikow
It had been seven years since I last attended SXSW. As one of the original attendees from 1988 to 2010, I’d seen the changes as the internet gradually wiped out the music business, and the festival diversified into film, interactive, gaming, etc. But I really wasn’t prepared for what had happened to Austin itself.
How Music Got Here
When the new millennium began with record companies suing their own customers for peer-to-peer music downloading, the graffiti was on the wall. Like the industrial revolution before, the digital age wiped out the multi-billion dollar record business we once thought recession proof and timeless.
But the music didn’t die, it simply morphed into another dimension as the infrastructure built to filter, foster, package, market and sell it disappeared. Now music exists in an unfiltered internet ocean requiring navigational tools like Spotify and Pandora. And the vestiges of past record companies, co-opted into entertainment conglomerates, now create brands instead of artists, with commercials, soundtracks, and albums produced, not for the music, but to sell the brand.
As a white teenage civil rights marcher in the 60’s, I remember when ‘Colored’ became ‘Black,’ and suddenly I was an outsider. It was proposed that if we Caucasians could call ourselves ‘White’ and take pride in our various European heritages, former Negro slaves could call themselves ‘Black’ and take pride in their African heritage. However, with that Black and White distinction, an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality was also implanted.
Black Nationalism
I tried to watch the VMA Award show Sunday night, assaulted by two hip-hop DJs yelling Twitter nonsense over the smoking spectacle spotlighting a series of twat twitching, cunt grabbing, sex squatting, herky-jerky robotic arm flailing, ass bumping productions, clarifying this generation’s female transformation from sex object to predator, all synced to repetitive, electronic noise and dumbed down rap slogans, and all I could think was WTF! I’m definitely now in the ‘older generation.’
Sex in Music is Nothing New
There’s something wrong in The Arts, rewarding the hucksters over the creators. Speculators sell and re-sell paintings for millions, without a penny in royalty or commission going to the artist or his family while a struggling musician with a hit record can starve as everyone in the sales and marketing food chain takes a bite.
My First Major Record Contract
To cope with internet overload, we allow algorithms to sift through and feed us bits and pieces to match our tastes or cosmetically enhanced anchormen (and anchorwomen) to spoon up headlines to the tune of tone-deaf sponsors. How does this affect the arts… and more specifically music?
Analog vs Digital Music
America’s sexual attitudes are f*cked up!
Apparently the word ‘intercourse’ is okay but ‘fuck’ is dirty? You can stab a woman in her chest on TV as long as you don’t show her nipple?!?
Who makes these rules?
Above on the left is the cover art I submitted to publish my audiobook “Sex, No Drugs & Rock’N’Roll: Memoirs of A Music Junkie” to Amazon’s subsidiary Audible. It was rejected on the grounds it “contained nudity.” This, despite the fact that the cover had already been accepted in the paperback, album and eBook formats.
It’s hard to watch the “Glory Days” of the music I grew up with die. It’s not just the recent passing of such musical marvels as Natalie Cole, Glenn Frey, Maurice White, and David Bowie. It goes much deeper than that.
In 1971 when I brought my first major recording contract home to my attorney father, in my book “Sex, No Drugs & Rock’N’Roll: Memoirs Of A Music Junkie,” I recounted, “As my father read the recording contract, he just kept shaking his head. To him it bordered on legalized slavery. We needed a consulting opinion.” So, we visited a major entertainment lawyer at the time who, “made the distinction between legal and practical in the high-stakes music business, with one-sided contracts that reflected the risk. On the other hand, once successful, everything was renegotiable.”
Ever since the Scorsese/Jagger project was announced over a year ago, I’ve been waiting with Christmas anticipation for its opening. Having recently watched and re-watched the terrific CNN documentaries on both the 60’s and the 70’s, I now had a special interest in “Vinyl.” The Valentine’s Day pilot launch coincided directly with release of my own book living through the music business during those years in “Sex, No Drugs & Rock’N’Roll: Memoirs Of A Music Junkie.”