Body Count

This week, I had a call from Steve Knopper, a writer doing a story for Billboard, about how musicians may look at their responsibility to call attention to the political anomalies around Trump and Trumpism. I'll share that with you when it's published next week.

I was listed as the Executive Producer of the record from which the video above was made. I'm very proud to have played a small part in getting these ideas out in 1992. I would have wished the police would have learned something from the song and the ensuing controversy-- and, truth be told, many have. But not enough to stop the attitude that keeps the police murder of young black men at epidemic levels in America. I believe in peace and love and non-violence...

The L.A. Basin is filled with empty McMansions. I hear there are also lots of big empty homes in Seattle, Vancouver, San Diego and the space-strapped San Francisco Bay Area as well. They're like fields left fallow, although they're not getting more fertile over time. These homes are investments from wealthy foreigners, predominantly from China and Russia, although from anywhere in the world where the wealthy know their riches could be seized in a political upheaval at any time.

When I ran Sire Records and then Reprise bands often asked me if I would be the executive producer of their album. I never felt comfortable doing it-- showing that kind of perceived favoritism when I was responsible for all the bands and all their albums-- so I would routinely say "no, thanks." Except once. That once was a band I had signed to Sire, Body Count. My boss, Seymour Stein, had already signed the ground-breaking rapper Ice-T to the label but when Ice put together a punk/metal band, he brought it to me. I loved the live shows I had seen around L.A.