Living with squid.

[gatech!chinet.chi.il.us!katefans@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Chris Williams)]

Chris here,

    About having a good relationship with Sony/CBS: Who cares? Contact
with the "record business" has been compared to having a bath in a tub
full of live squid with good reason. Individual people in the "biz" may
well be good and kind, I'd imagine but it's a struggle to maintain any
semblance of decency working for a company willing to pay one billion
dollars to Michael Jackson. Let me clue you in, Kate Bush is one thing
to us, and entirely another to them. _The Sensual World_ is an important
part of our lives, but to them it's _PRODUCT_ that sells so many _UNITS_.
Just pick up any copy of _Billboard_ and try to read the entire wretched
thing from cover to cover. I doubt you can without wanting to throw it
across the room. In the "biz" Paula Abdul is a much more important _ARTIST_
than Kate because she _SHIPS_PLATINUM_ and has better _DEMOGRAPHIC_.
Music has _nothing_ to do with it.
 
   One of our dearest friends worked for a record store for years because
he loves music, and he tried to get a job with a record company. Finally
an offer came to work in the mailroom at WEA (Warner-Electra-Atlantic).
He worked hard and tried to get his bosses to notice what a bright lad he
was. In a short period of time he was offered his dream job!
"Alternative Music Rep. for the Midwest"!
Then of course the dream, as it always will in this type of story, turned
into a nightmare. He found out about having to push records that he thought
were awful, while having to ignore great ones. He found out about _UNITS_.
He found out about the squid. He quit. He has become a Massage Therapist. 

    What does Sony/CBS want to do with us? Try to look at this from their
perspective. Here you have a group of people who buy everything that this
artist releases. What sort of outreach program is needed for a group of
consumers like that?! They are going to buy the next one. OK. Fine. Now go
away, we've got to get ready for the big Michael Jackson push! Buy it!

  Record companies sell records.

  They do not book concerts; The tickets given away as _comps_ are
purchased from the promoter just as yours are. If I may remind everybody,
"a reserved seats for fans" system was tried for the Tour Of Life, and it
failed miserably. Promoters (Bill Graham, Danny Fey, etc.) have no interest
in setting any seats aside for any special group and prefer to work through
the channels that they know. The Dead decided to try reserving seats, and
the only solution that worked was for the Dead to _buy_ huge blocks of
seats, at every date on the tour, from the promoters.

  Record companies have no interest in an artist's fans. Fans do not sell
significant enough numbers of records to be of interest to a global record
company. Sony/CBS's interest in Kate is minimal. She is only on CBS in the
U.S., the area where her chart performance is worst (the only measure that
matters to these people). Kate's contract disinclines Sony/CBS from the
usual sort of huge promotional investment by the company. The normal
contract involves giving the artist a large sum of money - both to make an
album with and shove up his/her nose. This is a gamble; if the record sells
they make money. These sorts of contracts enable the record company to tell
the artist what sort of record they would like made with their money, and
if they get exactly what they want (and believe the public wants) they
promote the living hell out of it and it becomes a hit. Kate, on the other
hand, makes _exactly_ the recording she wants to make with her own money,
and the record companies, bless their smelly, flabby souls, have no say
what-so-ever about the sort of record she makes. EMI never heard a note
of "Hounds of Love" until after the final two track mix-down. This is
a wonderful situation for Kate's artistic vision, but a lousy one for
record companies executives, distrustful of anything that they haven't
had their hands in. This makes Kate's latest less important to them than
the latest from the newest, hand-honed, made-for-radio pop-tarts.
 
 They have no interest in fans, other than as a curiosity. We cannot
sell any product for them, and have already bought all the product they
have to offer. Personally, I think that they just want names for the CBS
record club. If it means becoming a tool of the record company, they can
keep their posters. We will obtain them from other sources at the store
level, where people still care about music. If you want to get in the tub
with them I'll give you a loofa and some soap and wish you luck.


                                    Chris Williams of
                                        Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                                            katefans@chinet.chi.il.us