The studio behind “Hunger Games” — Lionsgate — has put a stop to an anti-hunger campaign, because it claims they are “piggy backing off of our motion picture.”
Remember: The movie stands to make $120 MILLION opening weekend.
We like this part the best. “We understand and support your cause and mission,” the lawyer writes, almost amicably. “We are on the same side. We are looking for an amicable resolution.” But then: “For a start we request that you immediately remove any mention of “Hunger is not a Game” from all of your websites and its affiliates and stop using the slogan in your interviews and publicity or press releases. Additionally, please contact the undersigned so we can work out a mutually acceptable plan to go forward where we do not infringe on each other’s rights.” In other words, we support you, but shut. it. down.
The domestic details spring to memory. Early on the evening of February 4, 1974, in her duplex apartment at 2603 Benvenue in Berkeley, Patricia Campbell Hearst, age nineteen, a student of art history at the University of California at Berkeley and a granddaughter of the late William Randolph Hearst, put on a blue terry-cloth bathrobe, heated a can of chicken-noodle soup and made tuna fish sandwiches for herself and her fiancé, Steven Weed; watched Mission Impossible and The Magician on television; cleaned up the dishes; sat down to study just as the doorbell rang; was abducted at gunpoint and held blindfolded, by three men and five women who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, for the next fifty-seven days.
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Joan Didion (Shoutout to Keith) This is probably the ballerest introduction to anything I’ve ever read. |
For I am a sinner in the hands of an angry god. Bloody Mary, full of Vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pray for me now at the hour of my death, which I hope is soon.
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| — | Sterling Mallory Archer |
Last night, I wrote the following letter to Drag City Records:
Hello Rian,
I am emailing you because you’re the licensing person according to the Drag City website and this seems like a licensing question. If it is not, please forward to the appropriate person.
Will the Drag City catalog be making its way to Spotify anytime soon? It would be great if it did. It’s always a bummer to type in “Joanna* Newsom” and only see that Roots song; to type in “Smog” and only see Golden Smog. If not, could you explain why not? I ask for an explanation not because I feel like I am owed one, but because I am genuinely curious — if Spotify is screwing independent record labels, I want to know about it.
Thanks, Brian
Today, I received the following response.
Brian -
Hey, hello. Thanks for getting in touch - and my apologies to you that Joanna Newsom isn’t available to you in the way you want to hear her. Your suspicions are correct - it has to do with money. I’m not sure if Spotify are “screwing” us or anyone else, but their scale for compensation is not tenable for Drag City. Take a look at this:
…for someone like Joanna, her records are being sold via LP, CD, iTunes and so forth, so by this reckoning, she wouldn’t need to stream 4 million songs in a month in order to make minimum wage - but perhaps you can see the point. Until there is a system for payment on streaming services that is more artist-friendly, we’re not able to be a part of any of them. It is simply unthinkable for us to sign of on the potential value of a song being worth $0.00045, even when it comes in the form of a stream, which is akin to a rental. Once we put such a value on the music at that rate, we are devaluing it. And the next step is that we’re saying that it’s okay for it to be free. And as you know, it just isn’t. This music cost time and money to make and the artist and people involved in bringing it forward deserve compensation.
If Joanna or anyone else on the label felt otherwise, we would try to make possible the goal of streaming their music for them. However, at the present time, everyone agrees that putting their music through such a service isn’t fair value for it. And so…this is where we are. Given the speed at which things have developed in recent times, I antipate that this situation and our position will change and evolve - and who knows, before too long we may be offering everything on Drag City in this way. Standards will definitely have to change before that happens.
Cheers and keep listening,
Rian Murphy Drag City Inc.
I don’t know if there is a more slept on musician than Allen Toussaint. Do yourself a favor and get familiar. Music from New Orleans > Music from anywhere else. That goes double for anything that’s not on No Limit Records, but No Limit Records counts too. I’m at work so I’m not going to link to any Youtube videos or upload any MP3s or anything, but hopefully you know how to use The Internet.
Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Gloomy good looks…Clean-cut jaw, muscular hand, deep sonorous voice…broad shoulder…I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor. Exceptional virility often reflects in the subject’s displayable features a sullen and congested something that pertains to what he has to conceal. And this was my case…But instead I am lanky, big-boned, wooly-chested Humbert Humbert, with thick black eyebrows…A cesspoolful of rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile…aging ape eyes…Humbert’s face might twitch with neuralgia.
