Futile Delusions: The Art Of Industry Decadence

Knowledge may fuel the human spirit, but folly too frequently wins the human race. As Jacques Barzun notes in his provocative new book, "From Dawn To Decadence: 500 Years Of Western Cultural Life" (HarperCollins), "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent." As mentioned before in this space, my office at Billboard tends to be a magnet and forum for a range of figures who sound off on troubling issues confronting the music industry. This latest recap of visitors' concerns dovetails with insights gained from summer reading. In each instance, they involve cultural/business delusions that merit scrutiny.

• When it comes to sad absurdities, few equal a central irony behind the idea of artists joining with the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) to petition for government and court copyright protection from Napster's Internet music-directory service when the artists no longer own those copyrights! Understand, since November 1999, when Congress passed a so-called "work-for-hire" amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act that seized recording artists' ultimate ownership of licensed sound recordings, these artists unknowingly relinquished their copyrights to labels. Although the RIAA has insisted on its own Web site that the amendment was a mere technical clarification, further asserting that "the RIAA has never before sought this change," a letter dated Feb. 2, 1990, from its own senior VP/general counsel at the time to the register of copyrights confirms the goal became RIAA policy a decade ago.

Until and unless the recent amendment is repealed, artists' prior legal right to regain ownership of their recordings after a maximum 35-year licensing term is lost forever, and the record companies are now, in perpetuity, the "authors" of, for example, the albums on The Billboard 200 and the Top Pop Catalog Albums charts. Reporters covering either the Senate hearings on Napster or the subsequent court fight rarely found space to mention this bedrock fact. Meanwhile, the futility of artists' rallying beside the RIAA to ask Capitol Hill or federal district courts for copyright security resembles ex-homeowners pleading for the chance to watch locks get changed after their houses were repossessed.

Many attorneys and managers active in demanding repeal of the work-for-hire amendment do feel that Napster's file-swapping technology is stealing. "Yes, I believe it is," says copyright expert Jay Rosenthal, an attorney at the famed Washington, D.C., firm of Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe. "Napster provides a clear means to engage in copyright infringement through its uncontrolled ability to download, distribute, and store copyright music—it's an unlawful distributor." But Rosenthal, a guitarist/pianist and former Copyright Office staffer who represents acts as diverse as Mya and Sweet Honey In The Rock, sees a far greater problem in the undebated work-for-hire amendment's success at subverting the artist-friendly 1976 Copyright Act.

"This is a classic Washington legislative theft," Rosenthal says of the amendment. "It took the powers that be and other parties from 1909 to 1976 to negotiate a revised law everyone was happy with—but then it was literally changed overnight with no discussions with artists, no debates. It's another attempt to get artists in a submissive hold and turn them into 'employees.' And such a catalog of copyrights would hugely increase how any music company would be valued, especially if it wanted to be bought in the near term. Unless he faces serious fallout inside the Beltway, a federal politician who gets big political contributions from such a company could be seduced to look the other way."

• At the July 11 Napster hearings, artist Roger McGuinn testified that "in most cases a modest advance against royalties was all the money I received" from his Byrds releases or solo releases on major labels. An admitted technology buff, he praised MP3.com for the money he'd earned from new folk recordings sold through MP3.com's server in "an uncommonly fair" nonexclusive contract with a 50% royalty rate. Still, McGuinn said that "live performances . . . is how I make my living."

This writer can confirm McGuinn's love of technology, recalling taking him on a tour of the landmark Associated Press newsroom computer system in 1974 while a cub reporter at the New York bureau. McGuinn was then on the road promoting his "Peace On You" solo album, and he twice interrupted his visit for quick teleconferences with his management via the mobile briefcase phone system he carried at all times. Receptivity to techno-trends is a true McGuinn trait, but recent on-the-ground transitions like SFX/Clear Channel's merger of concert promotion and radio clout could one day constrict the movements of a savvy road warrior like McGuinn, who told senators that "radio created an audience for my live performances." When artists delude themselves by giving up real strengths and accepting a futile fallback position—such as touring revenue in place of royalties—they risk losing all viable forums for professional self-expression.

• It seems African-Americans in rap videos these days are seldom shown holding down any job whatsoever beyond pimping or thugging amid a landscape of flashy limos and flaming garbage cans. This absurdity has often been noted by Nzinga Garvey, granddaughter of Black Nationalist visionary Marcus Garvey and an executive at Warner Bros. Domestic Pay TV, who occasionally stops by Billboard to discuss the negative way black people are routinely depicted today in popular culture. "Losing The Race: Self-Sabotage In Black America" (The Free Press) by University of California associate professor John H. McWhorter seconds Garvey's concern over what he terms the current futile "victimology" of approving defeatism, criminality, and odious self-objectification while fostering cultural racism. As McWhorter writes, Tupac Shakur was a middle-class youth "who had the advantage of attending not one but two performing arts schools"; Shakur's violent street demise as a " 'gangsta' was a choice, not a destiny"—and a heartbreaking case of victimology.

• Rap isn't the only realm that's repeatedly been prey to decadent stereotyping. Just as the purported "hillbilly" or "poor white trash" backgrounds of early Grand Ole Opry artists were a myth, the notion that seminal black gospel was simply a resigned lament of one-time slaves is likewise a lie. As Andrew Ward shows in his new book, "Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story Of The Jubilee Singers Who Introduced The World To The Music Of Black America" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the black troupe that popularized "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was an educated, courageous group of young ex-slaves and freedmen who struggled to rescue Nashville's Fisk University from bankruptcy and to force issues of segregation onto the world's front pages.

Delusions die hard. A label of decadence fits any cyclical era wherein teachers traffic in ignorance, politicians call corruption pragmatism, prelates preach opportunism as a virtue, the creative community calls deterioration art, and citizens treat avoidance of the truth as a noble act of deference. We must make better, fairer, less absurd dreams come true. Let's begin again.