A Chicago attorney has has filed a series of complaints alleging abuses by the City’s public art program, “including holding meetings without a quorum. But the judge denied the city’s motion on three other counts, which accuse the program of inadequate record keeping and awarding at least $101,400 in taxpayer-funded commissions without proper authorization.”
Tag: 09.08.04
Court: Sampling is Stealing
“A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work — even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music.” Other courts had already ruled that recognizable “samples” of another artist’s work required payment, but the new ruling would make even the appropriation of a single note a matter requiring permission and payment. Some in the hip-hop industry are aghast…
Republican Convention Defeats Broadway
The Republican Convention was death on Broadway box office. “For the week ending Sun., Sept. 5, all but five of the 22 shows running on the Main Stem suffered significant shortfalls at the box office.”
Petition: Save Broadway Recordings
Seventeen thousand people have signed a protest over the decline of the Broadway original cast album. “Original cast recordings are on the verge of extinction. More and more record executives consider cast recordings a waste of time and money, and have made it clear that the days of recording Broadway shows are numbered.”
Americans Take Banff
Americans dominated at this year’s 8th Banff International String Quartet Competition. “In music, as in the visual arts, European pre-eminence can no longer be taken for granted, in part because of the superior educational opportunities afforded on this side of the Atlantic.”
Moving Art (Different Expectations?)
“Although there has been a dialogue between film and visual art since film was invented, you can’t simply compare a feature film with static art. But put the film in an art gallery and implicitly that is what you are doing. You are inviting comparison, not with the films that struggle to survive in the hard commercial world of the cinema, but with the art forms you expect to find in the gallery. And expectation is a key part of it.”
Teachout To First-Time Author: Get Real
Terry Teachout is a self-described “cynical old author with several books under his belt” and is amused by a first-time author’s expectations of how the publishing business works. Here’s “a more realistic perspective” on the way things work.
Future Shock – Sci-Fi Goes Soft
The world of science fiction is in crisis. Declining sales and a lack of creativity has fans of the form concerned. “It’s not just an issue of whether or not the golden age of sci-fi faded with the passing of proponents such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick, compounded by the fact that Ray Bradbury’s only recent contribution has been to complain that Michael Moore appropriated the title of his classic book Fahrenheit 411 for his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Movie Piracy’s Global Reach
Movie industry executives say that virtually any movie they produce is now pirated and distributed illegally within hours of its release. They paint “a sobering picture of how quickly piracy — aided by the latest technology — continues to escalate worldwide, whether it’s a vendor selling copies on a blanket from a street corner or a state-of-the-art online service.”
Hush Hush: Classical Musicians And Hearing Loss
“An often-cited study by Canadian audiologist Marshall Chasin measured hearing loss among rock musicians and found that about 30 percent were afflicted in some way. Among their classical music counterparts, the figure was 43 percent. Yet while noise-induced hearing impairment is a well-known issue in the rock world, long highlighted in educational campaigns featuring The Who’s Pete Townshend and rapper Missy Elliott, the discomfort from loudness suffered by classical musicians is generally kept hush-hush.”