"The Biz" & Lyor the Liar looking for wannabee moguls

Warner Music, AOL Team Up on Reality Series to feature Lyor Cohen

Warner Music and America Online will debut an online reality series in which contestants compete for a chance to become the president of a newly created record label. A link to submit yer own application before August 15th is below...

Maybe it should be you!

"The Biz" featuring controversial industry figure Lyor Cohen, will run as a webcast on AOL from mid-October through mid-November. Lyor Cohen, now CEO with Warner Music, was once head of Island Def Jam, where he was sued in federal court over ties to the drug money funded 'Murder Inc' label, and called by the trial judge a 'morally reprehensible' individual.


Cohen, the son of an Isreali army general, entered the rap game in the early 80's after an encounter with the seminal rappers Run-DMC at a club Cohen was running in California. He became Run DMC's road manager & soon headed for New York to work for Def Jam's founder Russell Simmons, when original partner Rick Rubin, headed out west to start his own label 'Def American'. Lyor Cohen's impact was seen in 1990 with the de-emphasis of the Def Jam name & the forming of RAL, which was an informal in house acronym for Russel And Lyor, but officially stood for 'Rush Associated Labels'.

Over the years Cohen's influence grew, to the point where the foul-tempered, tough negotiator personally took home $100 million from the deal when Def Jam sold to the Universal Music Group in 1999. He was then made president of a key part of the industries largest conglomerate, UMG subsidiary Island Def Jam, where he oversaw relationships with numerous artists & labels and whose units achieved phenomenal growth and earned almost $700 million a year.

Along with Rick Rubin's 'American Recordings', were partner labels like Irv 'Gotti' Gottleib's 'Murder Inc' label , where Cohen was listed on the executive board and reportedly was known by the endearing gangster nickname 'Lansky'. Irv Gotti dubbed Cohen his own "Meyer Lansky" in a 2002 statement publicly renewing Murder Inc. and Def Jam/Universal's business deal.

Lyor Cohen, has a reputation for playing hardball, conducting business in a very aggressive manner, including using techniques like intense pressure and stealing artists away from other deals etc . After breaking a deal with TVT records over some old pre-'Murder Inc' Ja Rule recordings, Lyor was sued by TVT. Despite his deep ties to the labels development, distribution and industry largesse, Cohen played off his dealings with the 'Murder Inc' label once the legal heat and spotlight was on. "Do you sit with Mr. Gotti on the executive board of Murder Inc.?" an attorney asked.

"I'm not sure," came Cohen's furtive testimony. After he lost the lawsuit to TVT records, it was ruled TVT was owed $132 million, half of which was designated as Cohen's personal responsibility to TVT after it was ruled that Cohen & UMG had committed fraud. Cohen's personal $56 million liability was unprecendented in the industry, but was later overturned this past June by an appeals court. TVT has vowed to appeal as well now. Another suit involving Cohen & Def Jam was filed in 2003 by Eric "Eric B." Barrier who claimed he was owed up to $70 million in royalties for the ironically titled "Paid In Full" album originally handled by Island subsidiary 4th & Broadway.

Cohen later left IDJ/UMG in January of 2004 for a position with the Edgar Bronfman, Jr. investor group financed Warner Music Group, now officially spun off from Time Warner. Joining Cohen at Warner is his former soldier at IDJ Kevin Liles (37), as well as a trio of older industry figures like Elektra founder Jac Holzman (73) known for work with folk groups & The Doors , Atlantic's legendary Ahmet Ertegun (82) and Sire's Seymour Stein (63) who in the 70's signed The Ramones & Talking Heads. Another industry success that has rejoined the Warner family is old Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin.

http://music.channel.aol.com/feature/the_biz

http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/news.cms?id=11365

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_32/b3946094.htm


Hey Damn ! You Made it !

Check Out Some Sounds !!!...
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John Waters biggest & best discovery... dead since 1988 but living in our hearts forever

Divine - I'm So Beautiful

A tribute to the first DJ to hit platinum & in turn set the standard

Jam Master Jay - The Eulogy - ( Run DMC tribute remix by Detroit Butcher )

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The aforementioned Hip Hop Pioneers laying it down old school style

Eric B & Rakim - Paid In Full

D.C's Go-Go Masters featuring Sugabear hang with the dynamic duo

Salt n Pepa - Shake Your Thang (Featuring E.U.)

A quirky electronica jam that is just annoying enuf to be fun on a darkwave dancefloor

LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk (Is Playing At My House) - remix

and from the ever entertaining blog & fine folks at WFMU is a tribute to & stack of quick MP3 one liners from the great Jewish comediane extraordinaire Pearl Williams , whose shlocky "adult" comedy albums are still plucked from dusty bins in ever rarer thriftstores of quality...

Pearl Williams - Kiss Your Ass Goodbye

Pearl Williams - "Girly Would stop Talking, Shut Your Hole And Let Mine Make A Little Money"

more at :

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/08/pearl_williams_.html

Two Fer Tuesdaze Gone

I just stormed out of a job today, laughing at some jerk who I was working a temp assignment for at the Linux World convention here in SF, and after an hour just decided it wasn't worth the piddly money.

Just cuz yer paying slave wages, doesn't mean I am yer f*ckin slave... you fat forty something bearded bitch boy!


some rebel rawk downloads for y'all ( note: I'm repeating some SaveFile links from recent posts because they'll be deleted within a few days if no one downloads 'em) -

Dsico (That No Talent Hack) - Jailbreak [AC / DC cover]

Bone Cootes - No More Flowers

The Avengers - Teenage Rebel

Bad Brains - Pay To Cum

MC5 - American Ruse

Flipper - Get Away


Some sweaty hairy fat dweeb from some magazine based in Jersey got off on the wrong foot with me, and pissed me off one to many times in the hour and a half I spent around him on the convention floor. I was doing a no brainer job, collecting leads via badge scanning, and distributing literature politely, and doing so fairly efficiently if I don't say so myself.

Me and the hot tradeshow talentrix brazilian babe & me had 140 some leads collected with one scanner in less than 90 minutes...

But this guy was a bitchy whiner worry wart, so I left him holding his own bag, literally, surrounded by anxious geeks grabbing for his lame canvas tote bags.

Oh well.. I'll burn another bridge when I come to it I suppose... but fuck if I'm gonna be around that prick three days making him feel superior...

I've always been a rebel, and I love being free & unashamed enough to just say "F You" and walk when I want... It may be dumb, but I gottta have my "FreeDumb" ...

better broke than bent over a barrel I say...

Another lady that won't take shit and gets a salute from me is Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in Sadr City Iraq fighting that senseless piece of sh*t war. She spent the weekend out in Crawford outside Bush's ranch trying to ask the Prez for what good reason did her son have to die.

Quicktime

Windows Media

If you'd like to contribute to keep Cindy Sheehan & other Gold Star Families For Peace making appearnaces and pressuring President Bush, send a couple bucks their way.

We can barely even focus on getting our own country on it's feet, yet we're spending an arm & a leg thousands of miles away so Bush & his buddies can clean up on no-bid contracts and backroom deals.

Great, just fricking great... I'm sure Cindy Sheehan is excited that her gas prices went down, oh , they didn't?

I remember growing up in upstate NY listening to one of those corporate rock stations that had the same format as a thousand other identical stations coast to coast.

Their slogan was "Long Live Rock" and I had me one of those 3/4 length baseball sleeve shirts that advertised that slogan in a silkscreen of bleeding red spray paint on the back and their call letters on the front.

I remember being on vacation on some other town and seeing an identical shirt, but with different call letters...

hey... was I duped into thinking we something special in our town & that the man couldn't bust our music?

you mean my fave 70s & 80s hard rock jams are a format! what ?

you mean someguy in Atlanta was programming the whole country?

man ! hey... I thought I was a rebel rocker... so much for the individual flava...

actual backstage promo-ganda from back in the day

It wasn't long until I rejected the recycled radio ready dinosaur rock churned out by Foreigner & Styx and friends started exploring new and more exciting musical landscapes.


Some of these "New Wave" tunes ame from across the pond courtesy of my new found friends at Miles Copeland's IRS Records, tunes from "The Damned", "Wazmo Nariz", "Squeeze" & "The Police" entered my world...

IRS even had some US bands like "The Fleshtones", "Cramps", and "The Dickies" and from Canada , Bob Rock's "Payola$".

link to :

an IRS records tribute page called IRS Corner

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There was also the " New Wave of British Heavy Metal" from Iron Maiden, Motorhead & Girlschool etc...

I read about more indie stuff including some bands made right here in the USA via mags like Ira Robbin's Trouser Press & NY Rocker. The NY Scene was rich with underground groups including my neighborhood pal's cousins bands like "8 Eyed Spy". and "Teenage Jesus & The Jerks". Her name was Lydia Lunch and she looked scary and never came home to visit on holidays.

Teenage Jesus & The Jerks - The Closet

I discovered the left of the dial... the local college stations pumping early cuts by local area bands like "Blotto", "10,000 maniacs" and "Chesterfield Kings". Their were also groups hitting the airwaves from afar like "Romeovoid" & "The Blasters" who filtered in via obscure FM signals coming via Buffalo and over Lake Ontario from Toronto...

bands that were likely never heard from again,

Then MTV came along, and in it's early years actually played some cool videos, not "reality shows" and indeed introduced millions of viewers to groups like The Ramones, Flock of Seagulls & Devo.

Originally MTV had to play obscure European band videos because the major US groups were so busy raking in tour dough & buying cocaine, that they didn't really have any promo clips... ( Eventually Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac & Tom Petty caught on and the channel turned into a video version of Top 40 radio and then whatever the hell it is to this day)

an early MTV faves:


Flock of Seagulls - I Ran


which begat Haircut 100 & Spandau Ballet, soon the amazing rise of mega budget Michael Jackson, and cheese layered all over everything from New Edition , New Kids On The Block, all the way to Lil Bow Wow, Hanson, R Kelly, Matchbox 20, Staind and the rest of today's brightest and most deplorable MTV/VH1 stars...


As you can see though, the good ol' days of MTV were pretty short lived... and to this day The Ramones are only ever seen on MTV when someone in the band dies...

which leads one to believe, of course , the more things change, the more they stay the same...

FCC Payola Probe to Open

The FCC finally getting off their collective ass will now investigate the radio "pay for play" scandal that NY Attorney General Elliott Spitzer initiated against music giant Sony BMG to pay $10 million to settle payola charges. Now the FCC has jumped onboard, saying the scandal "may represent the most widespread violation of FCC rules in the history of American broadcasting," claims once blissfully unaware commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.

Sonically Speaking : Mr. Slick's Next Last Electrical Light Train To Black Needle Ecological Hurricane Front

Hey I'm getting robbed at .25 cents a minute at a
Kinko's on Wilshire Blvd... so this weeek's post is quick and to the point

jam on it...


MC 5 - Skunk ( Sonically Speaking )

a rare track from a new boxset put out by the original radical rockers of the 1960's

don't forget to checkout my previous MC5 post from july

The Sonics - The Witch

the real godfathers of grunge emit some real 60's garage rock mayhem direct from the Pacific Northwest

Ken Nordine - Mr Slick

the father of Word Jazz laying it down like only he can

Mad Professor vs Jah Shaka - Ecological Dub

a deeply dubtastic track from the mighty Mad Professor

Princess Superstar vs The Who - Front Your Wet Cock

classic rock from pervy pete goes superstar stylee disco shlock for y'all

Scorpions - Rock You Like A Hurricane ( Live Unplugged 2001 )

when in doubt , there's always room for Klaus...

Electric Light Orchestra - Last Train to London

a classic pop track whose title became all the more newsworthy recently

Six Organs of Admittance - Black Needle Rhymes

some of that mellow but challenging alternative music you've been hearing about



Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Next

a Jacques Brel cover tune by one damn goofy Scottish band circa 1973. Frontman extraoridinaire Alex ("The Last of the Teenage Idols") Harvey died at age 47 in the early eighties of that notorious "old rocker" disease ( i.e combo of drugs, alcohol and rough living in general).

And although I'm new to the fan club, apparently he was quite a showman, an influence on the coming punk & new wave scenes, and this cover tune is considered amongst his finest hours.


This is probably his best - he sings the lyrics brilliantly, wailing them out in his distinctive voice. And the song has a great build-up to the crazy ending - it's an absolute classic. - Blamonet review

His performance of Jacques Brel's 'Next' is purest bravura, and it works precisely because Harvey reduced the distance between himself and the song to nothing. He became the song, was utterly present in the song and, by doing so, pulled the listener right in there himself. - New Musical Express 1982

Vambo Roolz !

Alex was atrue character, likely the first rocker to use spray paint on stage, a cue taken up later by others including The Clash & U2's Bono. He' s definitely unique & somebody I'm gonna dig up more recordings and info on in the future.



(Alex Harvey 1935-1982)