Once you start thinking about it....

Unraveling the Mainstream, and peeking behind the Posthumous Veil

May 7, 2021

Hello Everybody!

Welcome back to your regularly irregular Money 4 Nothing newsletter—it’s been a busy minute!

We started off April with a conversation with Dr. Alex Sayf Cummings, a scholar whose work on the history of piracy, copyright, and bootlegging is—quite frankly—inspiring.

With Alex, we dug into how the legal regimes that govern music are created by a constant push and pull between companies and their lawyers, courts making copyright law, and…an entire motley universe of folks REALLY pushing the legal envelope. We often complain that the laws governing music are a mess—Alex helps us understand that they’ve pretty much always been that way. We also got to hear about some deeply entertaining characters, from a bootlegging car-salesmen who commercialized the eight track in between blowing up vehicles on TV to “Modular Records,” an FBI sting operation in which the bureau SET UP A FAKE RECORD STORE to crack a network of mob-affiliated bootleggers.

Listen to the episode here (Itunes), here (Podbean), or here (Spotify)

After that came an episode focusing on posthumous releases—a follow-up to our exploration of greatest hits albums from a few months back. While these albums can seem like (and, quite often are) little more than ghoulish cash-grabs, they also have a lot to tell us, both about how the music industry views artists, and how fans understand their relationship to the musicians they’re listening to.

To dig into the former, we unpacked the afterlives of Hendrix and Tupac. Era-defining Black stars whose lives were cut short at the peak of their fame, both were the subject of a flood of sketchy records that helped to cloud their artistic narrative. After over two decades, however, the Hendrix estate won back control of his masters, allowing them to scrub past releases, and start over, releasing a string of historically cohesive (and critically acclaimed) records. Tupac has suffered a similar fate, with his music owned by multiple record companies, and little thought given to the overall state of his artistic legacy. More recently, his family has similarly regained control—we can only hope that they are able to reconfigure his enormously influential musical output.

Listen to the episode here (Itunes), here (Podbean), or here (Spotify)

Most recently, we got a chance to talk to Dr. Eric Weisbard, the author of the “Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music,” who shattered our preconceived notions about how radio formats, musical mainstreams, or the “top 40” work—and what they mean. Instead of examining a sub-scene (like our recent episode about Christian Rock), Eric focuses on the center of the pop charts, exploring how what can seem like a single, homogeneous story is actually a result of a myriad of intersecting musical worlds. To unpack that, we talk about classic rock in Cleveland, Herb Albert and the “adult” pop of the ‘60s, and the Isley Brothers. We LOVE the Isley Brothers. That 73-80 album run, right?

Listen to the episode here (Itunes), here (Podbean), or here (Spotify)

Other Stuff:

https://www.artforum.com/news/japan-reworks-tax-structure-in-push-to-become-arts-hub-85679

Cool to see countries like Japan treating art like it’s a major global resource. Wish the approach wasn’t “we’ll give the ultra-rich access to our free-ports.”

https://ra.co/news/75297

A more positive story out of Berlin, which has allowed clubs to be designated as “cultural sites.” According to the article, this would change their tax status and “protect them from displacement.” We’re all for that, although (as we’ve questioned previously), live venues are also employers, and clubs ≠ the musicians playing in them.

Actually Music:

Trying out something new here, and dropping some stuff that we’ve been digging lately.

Sam: I’ve been pretty consistently delighted by the Bad Boy Chiller Crew, a bassline/garage group from Northern England who bring a massive smile to my face. I also grew up on those early Streets albums (not sure how but…) so I LOVE this kind of beat.”