Via History.com

The music industry is notorious for its creative accounting practices and for onerous contracts that can keep even some top-selling artists perpetually in debt to their record labels. In a typical recording contract, a record label advances an artist a certain sum of money against future earnings from royalties. But because the cost of things like studio time, marketing support and tour expenses must be “recouped” by the label before an artist earns any royalties, many artists who sign recording contracts never sell enough records to “earn out” their advance.

Continue reading “THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Tom Petty defies his record label and files for bankruptcy – 1979”

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

How to account for Americans being the most anxious, fearful, and stressed-out people among the supposedly advanced nations? Do we not live in the world’s greatest democratic utopia where dreams come true?

What if the dreaming part is actually driving us insane? What if we have engineered a society in which fantasy has so grotesquely over-run reality that coping with daily life is nearly impossible. What if an existence mediated by pixel screens large and small presents a virtual world more compelling than the real world and turns out to be a kind of contagious avoidance behavior — until reality is so fugitive that we can barely discern its colors and outlines beyond the screens?

Continue reading “Tom Petty was Right”

Very sad day. One of my favorite rock and roll legends.