Hoo-Hoo Stern is being sued by his former employer, CBS Radio. The giant conglomerate is saying Stern improperly used studio time to promote his move to Little Doggie Satellite Radio and therefore breached his contract. Hoo-Hoo had a little press conference on Tuesday trying to deflate the whole matter, but when you have $500 million, certainly paying CBS wouldn’t be too difficult, no?
Oh, Hoo-Hoo. Spend that money wisely.
With Sony/BMG and Warner Bros. recently getting hit with payola lawsuits, more music being purchased digitally, and more new artists becoming hip to the fact that they can survive on their own without “borrowing” money from a major label, the music industry is becoming more indie than ever. Distribution companies such as Redeye are allowing independent artists and indie labels the option of using channels that were previously reserved for the majors. And artists are able to sell their own CD’s online and digitally, as well as through traditional touring….and realizing that they can make and KEEP all or most of the proceeds. No more concern about getting dropped or about the spending the next five years paying a major label all the recoupable expense associated with breaking a new band.
And when the war against payola reaches the radio programmers, it could be the end of FM radio as we know it. Which begs the question: will anyone care? I know I won’t. And once again the best artists are the ones who will get noticed.
Three days after I moved to Boston in the fall of 1991, Lynne Shaughnessy, the girl that would one day become my sister-in-law, took me to Avalon, a rock club on Lansdowne Street behind Fenway Park’s Green Monster, to see a local band called Tribe. I’d never put much stock into local bands, though that had more to do with where I grew up (central Ohio) than anything else. But these guys, they were unlike any “local” band I had ever seen. A quintet with the standard Bon Jovi/Duran Duran setup of gtr/bass/keys/vox/drums, their songs were hard edged and insanely catchy, boasting lyrics that were far deeper and darker than their hook filled melodies would suggest. They weren’t flashy musicians, but they were solid, with guitarist Eric Brosius’s laid back guitar playing complementing the boisterous rhythm section of Greg LoPiccolo and drummer David Penzo perfectly.
And then there was Janet.
Lead singer Janet LaValley was simply mesmerizing to watch onstage. She didn’t just move around, she prowled the stage like a big cat. Dressed mainly in black, to match her jet black hair, she had a voice like Siouxsie Sioux’s but with better pitch, exotic but also extremely powerful. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about her was that she wasn’t even the prettiest girl in the band (that honor belonged to keyboardist Terri Barous). Still, just try and take your eyes off of her when she had a mic in her hands. She was a truly blessed front woman.
Read more about my quest to find Tribe here.
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