| CMU Daily - on the inside 15 Jul 2002 |
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What did the following have in common before they were famous?
Belinda Carlisle, Shane Lynch (Boyzone), Keavy Lynch (B*Witched), Paul Young
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TODAY’S RECOMMENDED RELEASES
Singles: Hoobastank - Running Away, Mercury; Jinrai - Can I Be Your Man?, Acid Jazz; My Vitriol – Moodswings, Infectious Records; Paul Heaton - The Perfect Couple, Mercury; Primal Scream - Miss Lucifer, Sony; Drumattic Twins – Drumattical, Finger Lickin’.
Albums: Barth - Essence Of Giraffe, Boss Music; S-Tone Inc – Sobrenatural, Schema; V/A – Visions, Looking Good; Weird War - Weird War, Domino; Wilt - My Medicine, Mushroom.
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ESSENTIALLY A NO GO
As the music industry returns from their extended weekends at T in the Park, or a very crowded Brighton beach, we discover that the London edition of the Essential Festival at Hackney Marshes has been officially cancelled. Scheduled for the first weekend in August with Zero 7, DJ Shadow and Morcheeba amongst the line up, Essential Entertainments are blaming problems at their Bristol event earlier in the year and the state of the Marshes after the Mardi Gras festival last week. In an official statement they said: “Essential have made this very difficult decision after considering a number of issues in the build up to the event. The disastrous Rock Day at Bristol’s Essential Festival [where key performances were cancelled] has created significant financial difficulties for the event, which have not been able to be sufficiently resolved. In addition to this, the site suffered considerable damage after the adverse weather conditions that Mardi Gras had to face last weekend, with the result that Essential are not wholly confident that the location would be suitable for hosting the festival. This year has also seen a substantial slump in the market for outdoor events, with the notable exceptions of Glastonbury and Oasis, with many of the major events being subject to low attendance.”
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JACKSON, A PORN PRODUCER AND A CHARITY RECORD
It might be that Michael Jackson's running feud with Sony Music has as much to do with his attempts to release a charity record than the major’s performance in marketing ‘Invincible’. Last Autumn during post-Sep 11 hysteria, Jackson announced he was organising a charity single called ‘What More Can I Give’. The ‘We Are the World’-type song, featuring the vocal talents of Mariah Carey, Ricky Martin, Usher, Shakira and Nick Carter amongst others, was set to raise $50 million for victims of terrorist attacks. Eight months after Jackson announced the record was ready for release some of the reasons it never hit the record shops are coming to light.
The LA Times has reported that the project was abandoned after label bosses discovered that the song's executive producer, Marc Schaffel, had a background in porn, a fact which caused McDonald's to back out of an agreement to sell the single in its restaurants. Some sources close to the project have said it was the Jackson camp who got cold feet after discovering some of the films on Schaffel’s CV. They say having Jackson linked with porn would have been disastrous for his already troubled image. "One press organisation, an entertainment television show, found out about it, and they threatened to expose it," a source close to Jackson told reporters. "It got stopped because it was made clear that they would never get to work with Jackson again. But then it was like, ugh, we don't want to work with it anymore, because it would be an uphill battle and it was not part of the bargain." The Jackson camp tried to sack Schaffel from the project, but he argued that he owned the song and therefore couldn’t be fired. While Jackson claims ownership of the song the tapes of both the recording and the video are with Schaffel so the project could not develop further.
But Schaffel blames Sony for the delays. While he agrees his porn past caused some problems (even though, he is keen to add, his porn work is very much softcore) he insists he was never fired and that the delays were caused by Sony. He told MTV in the US: "Sony didn't want the single to take away from the release of ‘Invincible’. So they wanted to make sure it didn't come out at the same time. After that, they had other excuses. I don't think the porn was a legit excuse. But let's say that it is. No one picketed, and I still get hundreds of e-mails from fans wanting to know what the problem is. No one cares what I did before."
The extent of the major’s involvement is unclear – some insiders deny that Sony every agreed to release the single at all and rumours that Zomba label Jive had expressed an interest in putting it out suggests Jackson was offering the track around. But Schaffel maintains that despite the lack of a formal agreement, Sony was involved, since many of the artists participating were signed to Sony labels Columbia and Epic. "Do you think any of these major artists would have stopped what they were doing and recorded their parts without Sony authorisation?” he continued, “They can't do anything without an OK from Tommy Mottola."
McDonalds meanwhile deny every agreeing to sell the single at all – they discussed it with Jackon’s people but no agreement was reached for ‘timing, distribution and cost’ reasons. Sony has made no official comment.
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BRITS TOP DECLINING US LIVE MARKET
Two British music stars have made the most cash from US tours so far this year. Paul McCartney's US tour has been the most lucrative music tour of the year taking $52.8m (£33.9m) in ticket sales, according to a survey by US trade mag, Pollstar. Elton John's joint tour with Billy Joel came in second. McCartney enjoyed good reviews, sell out dates and an average ticket price of $129.59 (£83.27) in his first US tour for a decade. The double bill of Billy Joel and Elton John took $44.4m (£28.5m) from 23 shows in just eight cities with an average ticket price of $108.70 (£69.87). The duo might have come top had Joel’s health problems not postponed ten dates to the Autumn. The success for the British music veterans comes as newer Brit talent struggles to make it big in the Stages. And the survey did not deliver good news for the live music industry in general. It said that the top 50 acts sold a combined 10.6 million tickets in the first half of the year, a fall of three percent from the equivalent period last year, and down 18% from 2000. Some suggest the fall in attendance might be due to rising ticket prices – average entry fees have gone up 11.3%, considerably more than the current US inflation rate of 3.6%. "One has to wonder where the millions of ticket buyers we lost since 2000 have gone,” a Pollster spokesperson asked, "Can we get them back or have they been priced out of the market for good?"
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LL COOL J SWEARS IT’S TRUE
LL Cool J, currently touring the US, has admitted his record label, Def Jam, would have preferred him to wait for his album to be released before touring. "If I was them, I'd want the album out first, too," he admitted to reporters. "But, it's like, it can't always be about the economics." The album, ‘10’ is due out in September and will be LL's last for Def Jam. But this didn’t affect his decision to not go with his label’s wishes. "I wasn't listening to them that much anyway. No, it wasn't because this is the last album. I just want to go out and touch the people, man, have some fun." The new album, like 1990’s ‘Mama Said Knock You Out’, contains no swearing. "I didn't feel like 3 or 4 million or 300,000 or 400,000 people needed to hear that right now," he said. "I just think during this time, why not have some positive energy?"
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STEWART SUED OVER CANCELLED TOUR
Three concert promoters from the US and South America are suing Rod Stewart, his management and agents for failing to return a $780,000 deposit for a cancelled tour of Mexico and South America. The suit, filed last Wednesday, says that Stewart, who was to receive a $2.1 million fee in advance of the tour, was wrong to cancel the outing when the promoters failed to pay 50% of the fee by a pre-determined date. The suit seeks repayment of the deposit and about $3 million in damages. Stewart's attorney Barry Tyerman argues that when the promoters began selling tickets to the tour without permission and allegedly missed deposit deadlines, the artist had to cancel the tour to avoid being "further financially damaged" and avoid frustrating his fans. The time commitment and related expenses already incurred by Stewart by the time of the cancellation forfeits the promoters’ rights to any cash. Stewart is currently on the UK leg of his European tour.
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SHOOT THE MESSENGER
George Michael has told reporters he is surprised about the American public’s reaction to his video for ‘Shoot the Dog, and that he now can’t return there. The video has led some in the US to call him an Al Qaida sympathiser. He says he wanted to video to start a debate, and to encourage people to question their politicians about foreign policy. But he admits most people, especially in the US, are questioning him not government. He told reporters: "'Shoot the Dog' is simply my attempt to contribute to the public debate that I feel should be taking place regarding Iraq and Saddam Hussein". How the controversy will affect sales when the record is released in the UK, Europe and Australia in the first week of August remains to be seen.
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OZZFEST HOPES TO GET ROCK FANS CAMPAIGNING
The Ozzfest tour of the US has taken it on itself to educate its audience of rock fans with an onsite installation called ‘The Axis Of Justice’. Presented by Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and System of a Down the attraction aims to educate the public about key political matters including domestic violence, the environment, freedom of speech, war, racism and political prisoners. “Fans of hard rock music have often been wrongly pigeon-holed as apathetic,” Morello explains. “The Axis of Justice will provide an opportunity for fans of this year's Ozzfest to get involved.”
Serj Tankian of System of a Down added, “Concertgoers will be given the opportunity to educate themselves on many issues that are generally not exposed in the mass media. At the same time, they will be given the chance to meet with organisations that are trying to save the planet and the people that are living on it." Some of the organisations involved include Greenpeace, War Resisters League, Anti-Racist Action, Amnesty International, and the Armenian National Committee of America.
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WOGAN GOES TO CHANNEL 5
BBC Radio 2 presenter Terry Wogan is branching out from the Corporation with a new daytime TV show for Channel 5 alongside Children in Need co-presenter Gaby Rosling, who is also leaving her BBC exclusivity deal. Wogan will continue to present his breakfast show for Radio 2, which gets some 7.64 million listeners, and will then get a chauffeur driven motorbike ride across London every day to host the live Channel 5 show. In an interview last year Wogan said, "The BBC only uses you while you remain popular. To have loyalty to a big corporation is madness. You are only going to have your heart broken."