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Shots In The Dark
Saturday, August 06, 2024
  Rolling Stones and Whores
The Rolling Stones catalogue has just been released on iTunes, and a quick perusal of it makes a few things obvious.

1) They used to be really good.
2) They suck now. Can anyone name a song off, say, the past six records they've made?
3) It's very likely that they've put out more greatest hits albums than they've put out albums of new material.
4) They are corporate whores.


Actually, I don't mention number four because of iTunes, but because of the excruciatingly bad Ameriquest ads all over television at the moment. They feature a guy in a suit who's supposed to be in the front rows of a Stones concert—and boy, there's a telling image—although I think the crowd is actually superimposed on footage of the Stones playing. He's talking about how Ameriquest, which is a mortgage company, is sponsoring the new Rolling Stones tour.

This is such a bummer for so many reasons....

I guess there's a certain appropriateness to the fact that a rock and roll tour by a group of sexagenarians is being sponsored by a mortgage company. But for the consumer, what exactly does sponsorship mean? Other than a barrage of poorly-produced ads?

The Rolling Stones were, if memory serves, the first band ever to have a tour sponsored. Back in 1981, Jovan Musk (also high on the list of deeply uncool sponsors) paid the band $500,000 to underwrite the tour. Since then, Budweiser and Sprint have paid significantly more.

The band originally explained this sell-out as a way of keeping ticket prices down, but that's a rationale they don't even try to throw against the wall anymore, because they know it won't stick. Every time they hit the road, the Stones charge the highest ticket prices in the world of music—face value for Stones tickets is often in the hundreds of dollars.

If these guys have managed their money well, they must all be worth in the nine figures. And yet, they constantly debase their reputation (sponsorship, playing corporate gigs and birthday parties, licensing their songs) in their lust for lucre. How much money do you need to be happy? How much is enough?

The idea that rock 'n roll is a pure art form, free of commercial corruption, has of course never been true. But there are degrees. The Rolling Stones make me respect even more artists like Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Tom Petty, who a) don't accept sponsorship and would never let their music appear in ads, and b) manage to keep their ticket prices down nonetheless.

I have this naive idea that greed is wrong (which is one reason I can't watch "The Apprentice"). It often makes me feel alienated from mainstream American culture. But it also makes me really appreciate people in high places who feel the same way.

Next on the musical whore list: Sheryl Crow.
 
Comments:
i don't know, i think the biggest whore of them all is ticketmaster; that you can't buy any tickets without them and their greedy pricing is, for lack of a better word, criminal
 
That doesn't make Ticketmaster a whore. It goes to show the caliber of moron through the years that has ascended to power in the music industry ; allowing Ticketmaster's gauging to be standard operating procedure is ridiculous, but typical. This is an industry that did not even track it's own record sales, leaving a rather huge space to be filled by a little company called SoundScan. This is an industry that died a long-long time ago... Remember MTV?
They GAVE away content. Sony and the compact disc? The video game industry makes more money and since it's inception has been just as suseptible to piracy: They built this reality into their business model!
RIchard, you can't get all pissed off with the Stones and Sheryl Crow (you can not like her for other reasons!) because they are going where the money is.
The Stones re-release these best of's to make up for all the money they lose on the original recordings which they never got paid for... most of which they don't own their copyrights of to this day!
Musicians aren't the most astute of business minds. . . if they were they wouldn't sign away all their rights for seven years or seven records for an ADVANCE!
Remember, the contracts initiated by the first labels like Sun and Reprise-- they were laundering money for the mob.
Ticketmaster and Clear Channel are two of the most EVIL corporations this side of Enron.... but they only exist because entertainment is so backasswards!
 
anonymous, your points are well taken and i'm not going to go into most of them because this isn't a field i know much about. however, in regard to ticketmaster, i can say that just because their operating procedure is "typical" and "standard operating procedure" doesn't take away from the fact that they are whores.
 
I would say Ticketmaster is the pimp, not the whore. ;-)

I'm sure that the music industry screws artists royally, and I'm sure that was truer than ever back when the Stones began. Still...I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. They've never been a progressive force in the music business, as far as I can tell; never did what Pearl Jam tried to do, for example, and boycott Ticketmaster. Or did what the Dead did, which is have a mail order for tickets to keep them out of the hands of scalpers....
 
Richard:
Your pal Kristen here... No blogger account.
I was earlier anonymous comment. You finally pulled me out of my commenting shell...

You need to stick to politics, dear heart!
For starters, Pearl Jam's crusade was funded by corporate dollars. Otherwise, a nice example of a band trying to be progressive. Once they all got married and had mortgages (and uh-- alimony) to worry about... it's amazing how fast they were take the check from Epic and go away quitely when they were in perfect position to turn the industry upside down. Don't get me started about how quick to sell out most of your (likely) music heroes have been. I could ruin your afternoon.

No one was more progressive, earlier on than Mick Jagger. Well, perhaps maybe Zappa when he gave his wife, Gail, his publishing rights. Mick has always been a shrewd businessman. He learned early on during his days on London/Decca how important copyright was and has been the most successful artist in the business at retaining those rights and profitting from them in subsequent relationships with labels... again and again and again.

Debating the progressive personalities in music really should be limited to their roles as musicians.
Not many musicians straddle that whole right brain/left brain thing all that well.... while Stone Gossard had the right idea in taking on Ticketmaster, he wasn't successful, ticketmaster became more powerful, and Pearl Jam more difficult to see live.
Mick is a machine. Half of the most prolific song writer partnerships in rock 'n roll. Look, i DESPISE those commercials. I haven't heard a new Stones song, let alone an entire record/cd in 20+ years. . .
But it's merely a sign of the times. Calling it all out... C'mon... it's as pointless right now as bitching about Clear Channel, the lack of music on music television, or the lack of positive role models in sports.

When the myth of what it is to be a rock star dies or is changed, then maybe these guys will wake up and stop signing away their lives to the powers that be. As it stands, that myth unfortunately is still a driving force in music making today. So sad.
 
Hey Kristen,

I know that I'm raging against the onslaught here, but still...there remains value in pointing this out, and in complimenting those who don't go the way of the Stones. I hope.
 
i love love love that you put yourself in with
"other" "people in high places who feel alienated from mainstream American culture"
dude. you're a blogger.
 
Maybe *everyone* feels alienated from mainstream American culture?

Or maybe I just feel alienated from what the producers of mass culture tells us is mainstream....
 
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