When you are smack dab in the middle of massive change, it’s nearly impossible to parse what is going on all around you.
Baby boomers have been there a few times. The chaos of the sixties, when the world suddenly went from belonging to your parents, to belonging to you and your like-minded friends – remember that?
Got an urgent email this morning, informing me that 427 million MySpace passwords had been stolen, and were being offered for sale on an online hacker forum by Russian CyberHacker‘Peace.’ I was shocked. People still use MySpace?
It’s only taken 8 months but I feel comfortable back in the captain’s chair at my record label after having not done it for the past 5 years. Re-issuing old albums will continue to be my bread and butter but I will always keep supporting and promoting independent music. It’s where I started and will always have a special place in my heart. The spirit of original and new music is what drives creativity forward. Nostalgia is full of sign posts but without new music to build and cultivate new paths the road ends and the sign post will read ‘dead end’.
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Quick! Without searching, answer a few questions. Who recorded We Are the World? Who benefited? Who wrote it? Was there a B-side? Were there other projects similar? Does anyone care? Did anyone care?
For those born after the fact, it may surprise you to know that plenty cared. Over 20 million people worldwide bought the record. I mean, Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, the writers of the song, were huge at the time. So were producers Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian, though Jones significantly more than Omartian.
Look, I tried to come up with a comprehensive topic for this week. I really did! But this past week has been such a jumble of music-related mumbo-jumbo that I thought I might take this time to put some things behind me. Seems like every time I turn around, someone is promoting this or bitching about that and I try to keep up, but it seems impossible. I have music to listen to, people, and don’t really have time for all the bullshit! And yet, here I am, aren’t I? Diving head first into questions which, like the oil in the Gulf, keep floating to the surface. So let’s start with….
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 