The marijuana industry is growing by leaps and bounds across the country. And industry players are spending money on lobbying and have even been contributing to friendly candidates. Since 2010 the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has given contributions of between $500 and $1,000 to, among others:
Ted Nugent, who was once part of the music industry, opposes gun control. He has advocated private individuals being able to own heavy military equipment, from bazookas to tanks. When I became president of Reprise one of the first things I did was begin laying the groundwork for dropping his truly dreadful band, Damn Yankees. But not everyone in the music business is as big an asshole as Nugent.
I had dinner with my old friend Danny Fields today. You may know him as the guy who discovered Iggy and the MC5 or as manager of the Ramones or as the guy from the movie, Danny Says, that came out last year. I met Danny 50 years ago. I was still a teenager, in college, and he was ten years older and working in the music buisiness and seemed very much the ideal, cool adult hipster. I had booked an unknown band I had met at a tiny club in New York over the summer to play my school in September, The Doors.
Jeff Price and Sharky Laguana: Crusaders for fair streaming royalties-by Denise SullivanSo why, of all people was a tech basher like me at the annual Music Tech Summit in San Francisco Tuesday? Well, thanks to a friend they let me inside to observe the local industry in its natural, dealmaking environment.
Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan is a lot more thoughtful and insightful than many musicians. CNBC’s Squawk Alley had him on for a discussion of the music business a few days ago. "The music business," he explained, "is mostly run by feckless idiots, who do not subscribe to the normal tenets of capitalism, which, when they do, the business tends to work out well. Stars rise to the top; everybody benefits.
I'm not good with remembering dates things happened in my life-- beyond my birthday and the day I stopped wanting to use drugs forever. But I do remember that, although the music business was on an unhealthy trajectory when I retired a year or two after Bush stole the 2000 election, non-superstar artists could still scrape together a living and aspire to a career within the bounds of the music business. Since then, struggling artists have struggled a lot more-- and it's getting worse...
"What does it say about the richest country on earth that its citizens must depend upon raffles and spaghetti dinners to pay the medical bills-- a situation that exists in no other civilized country?
It's not a big deal-- at least not a public big deal-- that Arizona State University football player Edward "Chip" Sarafin came out, and very matter of factly, in a magazine article. He had already told his team mates, family and friends. After the magazine article was published, Ray Anderson, the school's athletic director, said, "The entire athletics department is extremely proud of Chip and is unequivocally supportive of him.
I've always been a law-and-order kind of guy. And yesterday I was horrified-- though not surprised-- when CIA Director John Brennan admitted the CIA had hacked Senate computers. Government officials do these kinds of things with alacrity because they know that even in the unlikely chance that they get caught, nothing happens to them anyway. Has Brennan been fired? Indicted? Jailed?
