In the midst of rock writer Dorian Lynskey's mostly-wet-kiss profile of U2 and SONGS OF INNOCENCE, there's this passage of Bono the Plutocrat formerly known as Paul Hewson waxing eloquent:
Of course, the biggest blow to Bono’s activist reputation has been U2’s collective decision in 2006 to transfer U2 Ltd, which handles their publishing royalties (not the bulk of their income but a significant chunk), from Ireland to the Netherlands to reduce their tax bill. Their Glastonbury set attracted a small lobby of banner-waving protesters. Edge is painstakingly even-handed about it. “Was it totally fair? Probably not. The perception is a gross distortion. We do pay a lot of tax. But if I was them I probably would have done the same, so it goes with the territory.”
Like the protesters, I think the arrangement sits badly with Bono’s development [charitable] work and we go back and forth for a while. It isn’t a clandestine offshore tax haven, Bono insists. “All of our stuff is out in the open. How did people find out about it? Because it’s published. The sneakiness is when you don’t even know what’s going on.” Eventually, we agree to disagree, and the conversation moves on to Ireland’s corporation-friendly tax laws, currently the subject of an EU investigation.
“Look, Ireland is not going to back down on this,” he says. “We are a tiny little country, we don’t have scale, and our version of scale is to be innovative and to be clever, and tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity we’ve known. That’s how we got these [tech] companies here. Little countries, we don’t have natural resources, we have to be able to attract people. We’ve been through the 50s and the 60s, and mass haemorrhaging of our population all over the world. There are more hospitals and firemen and teachers because of [Ireland’s tax] policy.”
The complete Lynskey profile of U2 can be found here:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/12/u2-job-art-divisive-interview
Showing posts with label Bono. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bono. Show all posts
Monday, October 13, 2014
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Rock critic Dave Marsh on new book about U2's Bono.
Reprinted from an e-mail sent by Dave Marsh's ROCKNRAP CONFIDENTIAL:
RRC Extra No. 35 May 2013
Bono: Mascot of Neoliberalism
by Dave Marsh
reprinted with permission from CounterPunch [counterpunch.org]
In 1984 I wrote a hostile (to both music and words) review of U2’s Unforgettable Fire. Some weeks later, I found myself dragooned (by a force too absurd to mention) into a late afternoon conversation with Bono. It wasn’t an interview. He wanted to talk one-on-one about why I’d written such a negative estimation of the record.
I arrived bemused, only to become more so when I was sent to the hotel’s penthouse. I knew this hotel, the Who made it their New York headquarters (Keith Moon got the suites about to be remodeled to save on demolition costs). I’d interviewed some other famous rockers in their rooms there, too. But I had never been to the penthouse. Yet here sat a young Irish star, who’d never had a top ten album or a top 20 single in the States.
We had a conversation, not that either of us listened too much. I asked Bono if he knew why I’d brought him a copy of my book about Elvis. He didn’t. “Because, if you read it, you’ll know pretty much exactly what I think about Elvis,” I said. “But I’ve listened to that song, ‘Elvis Presley and America,’ a dozen times and I still can’t figure out what you’re trying to say.” He didn’t have anything much to add. Or subtract.
This is the part that’s hardest to believe: For roughly the next ten years, every time I ran into Bono, he tried to re-engage me about that review. Once, backstage at Madison Square Garden, he walked the circumference of a small knot of people that included Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel, in order to pursue Moby Reviewer. It was dumbfounding.
But after reading Harry Browne’s The Front Man: Bono (In the Name of Power), I think I understand. I had said no. The review called him out as at worst a fraud or at least an incompetent. Face to face, it may never have happened again in the last three decades.
The Front Man is about a boy who never grew up or faced facts. Through very careful accretion of detail it left me feeling that Bono resembled no entertainment or arts figure nearly as much as that other sad, sheltered boy, George W. Bush. In fact, what surprised me most about my reaction to the book was how my response changed as I read. At first, the prose seemed too reserved, too cautious, incapable of capturing the outrageousness of Bono, one part talent to nine parts hubris. But as the pages turned, what engrossed me was another portrait: Bono as that little boy in man’s boots, surrounded by forces he fathoms no more than a five-year-old fathoms the perils of the sea. In the end, Harry Browne’s Bono is not so much a huckster as a sucker; not a con man so much as a victim of the world’s greatest con artists; not an egomaniac but someone so insecure he has found ways to be shielded from almost all harsh realities (well, at least his own). If this were a movie, you might be able to measure the price paid just by the way he looks at himself in the mirror.
Most less than adulatory writing about Bono, including my own, is a blend of anger, contempt, condescension and frustration. The Front Man recognizes all these instincts, but keeps them under tight command. For instance, Browne allows himself to be angrier (in tone) at Bono’s wife, Ali, whose business machinations are real but comparatively trivial, than at Bono, himself. There’s kind of a shadow behind such moments, as if we’re meant to glean that the book’s protagonist can’t be judged like other men, not because he is extraordinarily gifted or brave or empathetic, but because he’s so lost, frightened and pathetic. Bono may be the personification of all that’s evil about contemporary celebrity culture and all that’s worse than bankrupt about liberal capitalism (and liberal capitalists) but there’s also a real person in there, and he’s spent most of a lifetime making himself what history must surely judge—perhaps not with as much restraint as the author—as a fool.
Does this make Harry Browne’s Bono less easy to despise? Probably but it also makes him easier to understand. Here, Bono becomes less the many-sided symbolic figure and more a fallible (sometimes likable, sometimes detestable) human. Think of the former Paul Hewson as the first self-created one dimensional man (all front, no back). Browne’s dug past the PR and the rhetoric and found…a Mad Men cliché for our times.
But that’s not why you need to read The Front Man. You do need to. Not because you want to better understand Bono, let alone empathize with his plight, but because what topples is not only Bono’s stature but the excuses his chosen trade, liberal philanthropic paternalism, makes for itself. Langston Hughes wrote that the animal that should be chosen to represent liberals is not a donkey or an elephant but an ostrich. This book could be subtitled Bono (With His Head in the Sand).
The Unforgettable Fire was just sort of a second-rate record by a pretty good but not great rock band, one of maybe a hundred records I reviewed that year. I wasn’t a U2 fan. I was disappointed because I thought the previous album was better. But U2, not its front man was my concern as a critic.
So I didn’t start writing about Bono—not U2, Bono– and talking about him on the radio because he seems charismatic. (Too desperate for attention and adulation for that.) Bono proves a useful tool for understanding the forces around him because his behavior exemplifies the way that liberals, especially neoliberals from Clinton and Blair to Obama, not only played into the hands of reactionaries but vanished every time they got a chance to act like liberals are supposed to act.
Liberals have usually not lived up to their rep. They derive the bulk of their glory by taking credit for the achievements of radicals. The current crop, whose respect for civil liberties is nil and whose attitude toward the suffering is STFU, sets new lows. It is now easier to name a liberal Supreme Court Justice who thinks Roe V. Wade a mistake than to find one who will make any meaningful effort to stop illegal detention, de facto segregation in everything (schools, housing, jobs, the Obama cabinet), or prevent the incarceration, even murder, of political opponents without trial. Liberals claim the entirety of the moral high ground as their turf, but at best, they’re absentee landlords.
Harry Browne reserves his sense of outrage in The Front Man for a rendition of the liberal and neoliberal subversion of human rights. He pays especial attention as that subversion is accomplished under cover of noble goals as articulated by Bono and his guru, the austerity (for others) loving pinhead Jeffrey Sachs, one of the early proponents of TINA (there is no alternative). The TINA doctrine almost literally forms the wool over Bono’s eyes. It boils down to the rich should rule the world, and the richest become the most powerful. The portrait here of how Bono, a man of only marginally inconceivable wealth, has been passed around, mostly without compensation to the suffering or often even himself, resembles a nonfiction Sister Carrie. If I knew how to get my remaining liberal friends to accept evidence-based political journalism, I’d say this book has redemptive power. Alas, there is that ostrich and an abundance of sand, already forming a dune around the person of the former Goldwater volunteer.
The Front Man is, in addition to being an important book about Bono and celebrity, one of the few books about contemporary music that understands issues of colonialism and white privilege, especially in regard to Africa. But Browne doesn’t spend enough time on religion, and in defining the Christian humanism that informed all of Bono’s early work and still empowers his evangelical rhetoric about TINA. This is why Bono is not a unique figure. Actually, he’s a type and the type is not all that new. Consider a paragraph that C.L.R. James wrote in 1950:
“The Christian Humanists have a systematic political economy. They propose decentralized self-governing corporations of private property with every worker in his place. They have a philosophy of history. They believe in the eternal ambiguities of the human situation and the impossibility of ever attaining human freedom on earth. They have a theory of politics. The natural and ideological elite must rule, the masses must not have absolute sovereignty. Since evil and imperfection are eternal, they say, the alternatives are either limited sovereignty or unmitigated authoritarianism.” (from State Capitalism and World Revolution)
Even Browne has given us no better way to account for why Bono misunderstands the meaning of his own successes (there have been some, and not only onstage) and why he cannot recognize his most significant failures, either as a rock star or as a political figure.
Browne also doesn’t talk enough about music, which is especially disappointing because he’s insightful where he does. He was probably prevented by neoliberal copyright laws from quoting many of Bono’s lyrics (a mixed curse in this case) but there are elements of the group’s music, the way it is powered and the way it is manipulated, the sources it draws upon and who it is (and is not) aimed at that merit inclusion in this discussion. So far, no copyright act prevents one from describing and drawing conclusions from guitar licks and drum beats and vocal phrasing. So far.
But that’s not much to complain about. For the activist beginning to confront the obstacles neoliberalism places under all of our footsteps, as well as the rock fan trying to imagine a world without charity records and broadcast benefit concerts, and especially for those who still revere Bono and his many works, The Front Man serves as both an effective cautionary tale and an excellent how-to-book on avoiding the traps of neo-liberalism. On top of that, it offers the tale of a mannish boy who’s genuinely incapable of grasping why some folks just plain don’t like his act.
Maybe Bono himself will read it. It might be painful but even that couldn’t hurt.
RRC Extra No. 35 May 2013
Bono: Mascot of Neoliberalism
by Dave Marsh
reprinted with permission from CounterPunch [counterpunch.org]
In 1984 I wrote a hostile (to both music and words) review of U2’s Unforgettable Fire. Some weeks later, I found myself dragooned (by a force too absurd to mention) into a late afternoon conversation with Bono. It wasn’t an interview. He wanted to talk one-on-one about why I’d written such a negative estimation of the record.
I arrived bemused, only to become more so when I was sent to the hotel’s penthouse. I knew this hotel, the Who made it their New York headquarters (Keith Moon got the suites about to be remodeled to save on demolition costs). I’d interviewed some other famous rockers in their rooms there, too. But I had never been to the penthouse. Yet here sat a young Irish star, who’d never had a top ten album or a top 20 single in the States.
We had a conversation, not that either of us listened too much. I asked Bono if he knew why I’d brought him a copy of my book about Elvis. He didn’t. “Because, if you read it, you’ll know pretty much exactly what I think about Elvis,” I said. “But I’ve listened to that song, ‘Elvis Presley and America,’ a dozen times and I still can’t figure out what you’re trying to say.” He didn’t have anything much to add. Or subtract.
This is the part that’s hardest to believe: For roughly the next ten years, every time I ran into Bono, he tried to re-engage me about that review. Once, backstage at Madison Square Garden, he walked the circumference of a small knot of people that included Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel, in order to pursue Moby Reviewer. It was dumbfounding.
But after reading Harry Browne’s The Front Man: Bono (In the Name of Power), I think I understand. I had said no. The review called him out as at worst a fraud or at least an incompetent. Face to face, it may never have happened again in the last three decades.
The Front Man is about a boy who never grew up or faced facts. Through very careful accretion of detail it left me feeling that Bono resembled no entertainment or arts figure nearly as much as that other sad, sheltered boy, George W. Bush. In fact, what surprised me most about my reaction to the book was how my response changed as I read. At first, the prose seemed too reserved, too cautious, incapable of capturing the outrageousness of Bono, one part talent to nine parts hubris. But as the pages turned, what engrossed me was another portrait: Bono as that little boy in man’s boots, surrounded by forces he fathoms no more than a five-year-old fathoms the perils of the sea. In the end, Harry Browne’s Bono is not so much a huckster as a sucker; not a con man so much as a victim of the world’s greatest con artists; not an egomaniac but someone so insecure he has found ways to be shielded from almost all harsh realities (well, at least his own). If this were a movie, you might be able to measure the price paid just by the way he looks at himself in the mirror.
Most less than adulatory writing about Bono, including my own, is a blend of anger, contempt, condescension and frustration. The Front Man recognizes all these instincts, but keeps them under tight command. For instance, Browne allows himself to be angrier (in tone) at Bono’s wife, Ali, whose business machinations are real but comparatively trivial, than at Bono, himself. There’s kind of a shadow behind such moments, as if we’re meant to glean that the book’s protagonist can’t be judged like other men, not because he is extraordinarily gifted or brave or empathetic, but because he’s so lost, frightened and pathetic. Bono may be the personification of all that’s evil about contemporary celebrity culture and all that’s worse than bankrupt about liberal capitalism (and liberal capitalists) but there’s also a real person in there, and he’s spent most of a lifetime making himself what history must surely judge—perhaps not with as much restraint as the author—as a fool.
Does this make Harry Browne’s Bono less easy to despise? Probably but it also makes him easier to understand. Here, Bono becomes less the many-sided symbolic figure and more a fallible (sometimes likable, sometimes detestable) human. Think of the former Paul Hewson as the first self-created one dimensional man (all front, no back). Browne’s dug past the PR and the rhetoric and found…a Mad Men cliché for our times.
But that’s not why you need to read The Front Man. You do need to. Not because you want to better understand Bono, let alone empathize with his plight, but because what topples is not only Bono’s stature but the excuses his chosen trade, liberal philanthropic paternalism, makes for itself. Langston Hughes wrote that the animal that should be chosen to represent liberals is not a donkey or an elephant but an ostrich. This book could be subtitled Bono (With His Head in the Sand).
The Unforgettable Fire was just sort of a second-rate record by a pretty good but not great rock band, one of maybe a hundred records I reviewed that year. I wasn’t a U2 fan. I was disappointed because I thought the previous album was better. But U2, not its front man was my concern as a critic.
So I didn’t start writing about Bono—not U2, Bono– and talking about him on the radio because he seems charismatic. (Too desperate for attention and adulation for that.) Bono proves a useful tool for understanding the forces around him because his behavior exemplifies the way that liberals, especially neoliberals from Clinton and Blair to Obama, not only played into the hands of reactionaries but vanished every time they got a chance to act like liberals are supposed to act.
Liberals have usually not lived up to their rep. They derive the bulk of their glory by taking credit for the achievements of radicals. The current crop, whose respect for civil liberties is nil and whose attitude toward the suffering is STFU, sets new lows. It is now easier to name a liberal Supreme Court Justice who thinks Roe V. Wade a mistake than to find one who will make any meaningful effort to stop illegal detention, de facto segregation in everything (schools, housing, jobs, the Obama cabinet), or prevent the incarceration, even murder, of political opponents without trial. Liberals claim the entirety of the moral high ground as their turf, but at best, they’re absentee landlords.
Harry Browne reserves his sense of outrage in The Front Man for a rendition of the liberal and neoliberal subversion of human rights. He pays especial attention as that subversion is accomplished under cover of noble goals as articulated by Bono and his guru, the austerity (for others) loving pinhead Jeffrey Sachs, one of the early proponents of TINA (there is no alternative). The TINA doctrine almost literally forms the wool over Bono’s eyes. It boils down to the rich should rule the world, and the richest become the most powerful. The portrait here of how Bono, a man of only marginally inconceivable wealth, has been passed around, mostly without compensation to the suffering or often even himself, resembles a nonfiction Sister Carrie. If I knew how to get my remaining liberal friends to accept evidence-based political journalism, I’d say this book has redemptive power. Alas, there is that ostrich and an abundance of sand, already forming a dune around the person of the former Goldwater volunteer.
The Front Man is, in addition to being an important book about Bono and celebrity, one of the few books about contemporary music that understands issues of colonialism and white privilege, especially in regard to Africa. But Browne doesn’t spend enough time on religion, and in defining the Christian humanism that informed all of Bono’s early work and still empowers his evangelical rhetoric about TINA. This is why Bono is not a unique figure. Actually, he’s a type and the type is not all that new. Consider a paragraph that C.L.R. James wrote in 1950:
“The Christian Humanists have a systematic political economy. They propose decentralized self-governing corporations of private property with every worker in his place. They have a philosophy of history. They believe in the eternal ambiguities of the human situation and the impossibility of ever attaining human freedom on earth. They have a theory of politics. The natural and ideological elite must rule, the masses must not have absolute sovereignty. Since evil and imperfection are eternal, they say, the alternatives are either limited sovereignty or unmitigated authoritarianism.” (from State Capitalism and World Revolution)
Even Browne has given us no better way to account for why Bono misunderstands the meaning of his own successes (there have been some, and not only onstage) and why he cannot recognize his most significant failures, either as a rock star or as a political figure.
Browne also doesn’t talk enough about music, which is especially disappointing because he’s insightful where he does. He was probably prevented by neoliberal copyright laws from quoting many of Bono’s lyrics (a mixed curse in this case) but there are elements of the group’s music, the way it is powered and the way it is manipulated, the sources it draws upon and who it is (and is not) aimed at that merit inclusion in this discussion. So far, no copyright act prevents one from describing and drawing conclusions from guitar licks and drum beats and vocal phrasing. So far.
But that’s not much to complain about. For the activist beginning to confront the obstacles neoliberalism places under all of our footsteps, as well as the rock fan trying to imagine a world without charity records and broadcast benefit concerts, and especially for those who still revere Bono and his many works, The Front Man serves as both an effective cautionary tale and an excellent how-to-book on avoiding the traps of neo-liberalism. On top of that, it offers the tale of a mannish boy who’s genuinely incapable of grasping why some folks just plain don’t like his act.
Maybe Bono himself will read it. It might be painful but even that couldn’t hurt.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Laura Nyro's son and this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerfriedman/2012/03/22/rock-hall-of-fame-wont-invite-laura-nyros-son-to-induction-ceremony/
In one of life's little ironies, this appeared on the website of FORBES magazine, which Bono has a part-ownership in (also keep in mind the handle-with-kid-gloves approach of ROLLING STONE to recent U2-related projects like the disappointing recent album NO LINE ON THE HORIZON and the SPIDER-MAN musical).
Roger Friedman, when formerly employed by Fox, was critical of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Curious to see how strong the editorial firewall at Forbes.com will be.
UPDATE 5/7/12: I'm in the process of watching the 2 1/2 hour HBO version of the 2012 ceremony and was happy to see that Nyro's son accepted her award after the heartfelt induction speech from Bette Midler.
In one of life's little ironies, this appeared on the website of FORBES magazine, which Bono has a part-ownership in (also keep in mind the handle-with-kid-gloves approach of ROLLING STONE to recent U2-related projects like the disappointing recent album NO LINE ON THE HORIZON and the SPIDER-MAN musical).
Roger Friedman, when formerly employed by Fox, was critical of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Curious to see how strong the editorial firewall at Forbes.com will be.
UPDATE 5/7/12: I'm in the process of watching the 2 1/2 hour HBO version of the 2012 ceremony and was happy to see that Nyro's son accepted her award after the heartfelt induction speech from Bette Midler.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Forbes--of which Bono is an owner--now prints articles "written" by computer.
Another sad example of the "let's do it cheaper" recession-era ways of doing business. Thanks to Red Hen Press for linking to this article on their Facebook page.
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/forbes-among-30-clients-using-computer-generated-stories-instead-of-writers_b47243
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/forbes-among-30-clients-using-computer-generated-stories-instead-of-writers_b47243
Sunday, June 26, 2011
U2 T-shirt reads: "Stand up to rock stars." Just don't stand up to U2 at Glastonbury....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/26/glastonbury-2011-politcs-protests
Key passage from article:
There were rumours of siege towers and stage invasions. But in the end, Art Uncut's much-hyped U2 protest proved somewhat less seismic: an 8m-high balloon – inscribed with the slogan "U Pay Your Tax 2" (geddit?) – that was ripped down by security almost as soon as it was inflated on Friday. Standing a few metres away, I was surprised and disheartened. It's not that the ensuing scuffles were serious (although one protester ended up with a broken finger), but they left a sour taste. Stamping on good-natured direct action so aggressively seemed at odds with the supposedly progressive values of the festival.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. This year's event was built up as the year Glasto got its political mojo back, with the U2 protest slated as emblematic of this change. Festival-founder Michael Eavis had sounded excited, calling politics the thing that "gives Glastonbury soul and gives it back its purpose". On the day of the protest itself, he called the festival "socialism with a small s", saying that Glastonbury-goers "walk the talk, rather than just talk the talk". It's not that Art Uncut's argument – that U2 shouldn't be offshoring their tax burden when a) their Irish compatriots are up the economic spout, and b) their lead singer Bono is petitioning western politicians to increase overseas aid – would have persuaded everyone, but it was expected it would get a hearing.
[UPDATE: Thanks to Dave Marsh's ROCK AND RAP CONFIDENTIAL for posting this article:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/glastonbury-guards-deflate-u2-protest-1.1108489
From the article:
Against the background of escalating opposition to the government’s spending cuts, the Art Uncut activists are posing an uncomfortable question: why are ordinary people being asked to endure painful cuts in public services, while rock stars, sportsmen and businessmen manage to avoid paying billions of pounds in taxes, albeit legally?
Key passage from article:
There were rumours of siege towers and stage invasions. But in the end, Art Uncut's much-hyped U2 protest proved somewhat less seismic: an 8m-high balloon – inscribed with the slogan "U Pay Your Tax 2" (geddit?) – that was ripped down by security almost as soon as it was inflated on Friday. Standing a few metres away, I was surprised and disheartened. It's not that the ensuing scuffles were serious (although one protester ended up with a broken finger), but they left a sour taste. Stamping on good-natured direct action so aggressively seemed at odds with the supposedly progressive values of the festival.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. This year's event was built up as the year Glasto got its political mojo back, with the U2 protest slated as emblematic of this change. Festival-founder Michael Eavis had sounded excited, calling politics the thing that "gives Glastonbury soul and gives it back its purpose". On the day of the protest itself, he called the festival "socialism with a small s", saying that Glastonbury-goers "walk the talk, rather than just talk the talk". It's not that Art Uncut's argument – that U2 shouldn't be offshoring their tax burden when a) their Irish compatriots are up the economic spout, and b) their lead singer Bono is petitioning western politicians to increase overseas aid – would have persuaded everyone, but it was expected it would get a hearing.
[UPDATE: Thanks to Dave Marsh's ROCK AND RAP CONFIDENTIAL for posting this article:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/glastonbury-guards-deflate-u2-protest-1.1108489
From the article:
Against the background of escalating opposition to the government’s spending cuts, the Art Uncut activists are posing an uncomfortable question: why are ordinary people being asked to endure painful cuts in public services, while rock stars, sportsmen and businessmen manage to avoid paying billions of pounds in taxes, albeit legally?
For the protesters, U2 are just one high-profile symbol. They are one of the world’s biggest rock bands, fronted by Bono, a man almost as famous for trying to persuade world leaders to make poverty history as for his music.
But by arranging their business so it does not incur tax bills in their home country of Ireland, the members of U2 stand accused, along with other celebrities and multinational corporations, of depriving governments of money to pay for schools, hospitals and other crucial public services.
The total sums of money involved are enormous. The official estimate of how much tax is missing from UK coffers was £42 billion in 2008-09. But many experts suggest the real amount could be £120bn.
To put that into context: the UK’s total public spending last year was £669bn, and the government wants to cut some £81bn over the next four years. Scotland’s budget is £35bn.
U2 moved part of their business empire to a finance house in Holland (where there is no direct tax on royalties) in 2006 after the Irish government capped a tax exemption on royalties earned from the sale and performance of their work for artists.
The band is among the world’s highest-earning musicians, reportedly earning the equivalent of about £80 million last year.
Charlie Dewar from Art Uncut said U2’s tax move “is depriving the Irish people at a time when they desperately need income to offset the Irish government’s savage austerity programme”.
He added: “There is also a whiff of hypocrisy here with Bono being so well-known for his anti-poverty campaigning, since each year developing countries lose more in tax avoidance … than they receive in aid.”]
Thursday, March 10, 2011
It's In The Way That You Use It--The Derrick Brown situation and local poetry..
A few days ago, I wrote a blog entry about Derrick Brown mentioning a FORBES magazine article about him in his official bio (which was used in a Beyond Baroque flyer listing); the post was a bit dubious about the value of a FORBES mention due to its ownership by a more-big-capitalist-than-most-people-are-aware Bono.
I sent the blog entry to his Write Bloody e-mail and got a short, profane text-message sort of response; this was highly likely since I wasn't thrilled with what I perceived to be an overly for-cool-kids-only ambience last summer at the portion of a Lightbulb Mouth reading I attended in Long Beach (and I wrote about it).
In a perfect world, perhaps Derrick could have written whole sentences and paragraphs about why he disliked my post (defending the FORBES piece, among other things). He didn't. Instead, he opted for the Frank Sinatra/Russell Crowe way of striking down an annoying pest with a very heavy hand.
Here's an irony about the whole thing: I think Write Bloody has great graphic design and well-presented product (at least Derrick got books into the Borders chain before their current financial difficulties) and am pleased that Derrick champions people like Mindy Nettifee and Buddy Wakefield. I became interested in the Write Bloody imprint a few years ago when Derrick was in Tennessee and word went out amongst the poetry community that he was ill and needed money from book sales; I bought several books--anthologies and individual authors' volumes--at that time.
But, as I've learned from the poetry community, if you say both nice and less-than-laudatory things about certain poets, they tend to only listen to the latter and then yell their heads off.
In a way, I'm still amazed by the way some of our ostensibly-progressive poetry community leaders (which sometimes resort to a rigid form of groupthink) tend to react/overreact to contrary opinions (be it about a magazine article or even certain cliques which tend to feature the same poets over and over--something I was kicked in the shins for mentioning way back in 2003).
To close, certain poets (especially the entrepreneurs) need to be less translucent-skinned and start banishing the phrase YOU CAN'T SAY THAT! from their public and private vocabularies.
It will make for a healthier, more welcoming environment for all.
I sent the blog entry to his Write Bloody e-mail and got a short, profane text-message sort of response; this was highly likely since I wasn't thrilled with what I perceived to be an overly for-cool-kids-only ambience last summer at the portion of a Lightbulb Mouth reading I attended in Long Beach (and I wrote about it).
In a perfect world, perhaps Derrick could have written whole sentences and paragraphs about why he disliked my post (defending the FORBES piece, among other things). He didn't. Instead, he opted for the Frank Sinatra/Russell Crowe way of striking down an annoying pest with a very heavy hand.
Here's an irony about the whole thing: I think Write Bloody has great graphic design and well-presented product (at least Derrick got books into the Borders chain before their current financial difficulties) and am pleased that Derrick champions people like Mindy Nettifee and Buddy Wakefield. I became interested in the Write Bloody imprint a few years ago when Derrick was in Tennessee and word went out amongst the poetry community that he was ill and needed money from book sales; I bought several books--anthologies and individual authors' volumes--at that time.
But, as I've learned from the poetry community, if you say both nice and less-than-laudatory things about certain poets, they tend to only listen to the latter and then yell their heads off.
In a way, I'm still amazed by the way some of our ostensibly-progressive poetry community leaders (which sometimes resort to a rigid form of groupthink) tend to react/overreact to contrary opinions (be it about a magazine article or even certain cliques which tend to feature the same poets over and over--something I was kicked in the shins for mentioning way back in 2003).
To close, certain poets (especially the entrepreneurs) need to be less translucent-skinned and start banishing the phrase YOU CAN'T SAY THAT! from their public and private vocabularies.
It will make for a healthier, more welcoming environment for all.
Friday, March 4, 2011
What do poet/publisher Derrick Brown and U2's Bono have in common?
Just noticed this on a Beyond Baroque e-flyer, taken from a future reading that Derrick Brown of the LBC is taking part in (highlighting by me):
DERRICK BROWN, former paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne, gondolier, magician, and fired weatherman dedicated to bringing American poetry into rock and roll status. He is president of Write Bloody Publishing, the first indie press to be reviewed with favor by Forbes Magazine.
I'm not sure the above is that much of an honor.
It's not household knowledge, but do some digging (Rock critic Dave Marsh's ROCK N RAP CONFIDENTIAL newsletter/website at http://rockrap.com/ is an excellent place to start) and you'll find out how semi-idealist plutocrat Bono of U2 came to be an integral part of Forbes Magazine.
In any event, the old phrase about "rendering unto Caesar" comes to mind--to say the least.
UPDATE: I sent the above post to Derrick Brown and this is a portion of his response:
"you bitter friendless witless talentless turd"
Safe to say that Bono, even faced with criticism, would have handled this somewhat better.
UPDATE #2: Here's a link to the Forbes article, which mainly looks favorably on Brown's money-generation as a road-warrior performance poet: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0622/lifestyle-poetry-slams-derrick-brown-poetic-license.html
DERRICK BROWN, former paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne, gondolier, magician, and fired weatherman dedicated to bringing American poetry into rock and roll status. He is president of Write Bloody Publishing, the first indie press to be reviewed with favor by Forbes Magazine.
I'm not sure the above is that much of an honor.
It's not household knowledge, but do some digging (Rock critic Dave Marsh's ROCK N RAP CONFIDENTIAL newsletter/website at http://rockrap.com/ is an excellent place to start) and you'll find out how semi-idealist plutocrat Bono of U2 came to be an integral part of Forbes Magazine.
In any event, the old phrase about "rendering unto Caesar" comes to mind--to say the least.
UPDATE: I sent the above post to Derrick Brown and this is a portion of his response:
"you bitter friendless witless talentless turd"
Safe to say that Bono, even faced with criticism, would have handled this somewhat better.
UPDATE #2: Here's a link to the Forbes article, which mainly looks favorably on Brown's money-generation as a road-warrior performance poet: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0622/lifestyle-poetry-slams-derrick-brown-poetic-license.html
Monday, July 12, 2010
Re the music industry's cruel summer of underattended and cancelled concerts.
I posted this to someone else's blog in his comments section. Reposting it here in its entirety:
As a concertgoer, I'd say that Irving Azoff and his Ticketmaster/Live Nation empire--with little room for other promoters excepting AEG--has been a big factor in this year's touring kerfluffles.
Ticket prices [at least the before-fees face value] are going to have to shrink to a range of $25-$75 to re-interest those who have been priced out of attendance over the last decade (and, yes, it has been a decade since SFX and then Clear Channel helped ignite today's forest fire of empty seats and gig cancellations).
TicketNation (a nice soubriquet) and many A-and-B-list artists also need to join together, face reality and voluntarily take cuts on the too-huge artist advances which have been paid in recent years.
Having written the above, the cynic in me believes that if the latest leg of the U2 360 tour had gone on as scheduled this summer, the number of articles in the US/European media about poor sales wouldn't have attracted as much attention.
So, if ticket prices do come down, we have Bono (and his untimely back injury) to thank.
As a concertgoer, I'd say that Irving Azoff and his Ticketmaster/Live Nation empire--with little room for other promoters excepting AEG--has been a big factor in this year's touring kerfluffles.
Ticket prices [at least the before-fees face value] are going to have to shrink to a range of $25-$75 to re-interest those who have been priced out of attendance over the last decade (and, yes, it has been a decade since SFX and then Clear Channel helped ignite today's forest fire of empty seats and gig cancellations).
TicketNation (a nice soubriquet) and many A-and-B-list artists also need to join together, face reality and voluntarily take cuts on the too-huge artist advances which have been paid in recent years.
Having written the above, the cynic in me believes that if the latest leg of the U2 360 tour had gone on as scheduled this summer, the number of articles in the US/European media about poor sales wouldn't have attracted as much attention.
So, if ticket prices do come down, we have Bono (and his untimely back injury) to thank.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
U2's Dave "The Edge" Evans planning to do for Malibu what he's doing for Dublin's Clarence Hotel.
http://www.laweekly.com/2009-03-19/music/the-edge-of-destruction/
http://www.theclarence.ie/clarence-project
http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2008/4/16/16133/6708/hotels/The_Edge_Sticks_Up_for_The_U2_Hotel_s_Planned_Renovations_
http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2007/10/3/132633/370/hotels/Bono_s_Hotel_Plans_Strike_Pride_In_the_Name_of_Angry_Dubliners
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/17/travel/main4270220.shtml
http://u2b-irishblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/u2-beautiful-day_27.html
http://www.theclarence.ie/clarence-project
http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2008/4/16/16133/6708/hotels/The_Edge_Sticks_Up_for_The_U2_Hotel_s_Planned_Renovations_
http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2007/10/3/132633/370/hotels/Bono_s_Hotel_Plans_Strike_Pride_In_the_Name_of_Angry_Dubliners
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/17/travel/main4270220.shtml
http://u2b-irishblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/u2-beautiful-day_27.html
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