Saturday, March 12, 2005
Hats Off to the Ass Hats at AS(S)CAP
Two of the best examples of American institutions that were created with benevolent intentions and became a flesh eating virus on the human race: the insurance industry and ASCAP. They come to mind together because they are legalized crime at it's finest. I'm only going to deal with ASCAP (herein refereed to as ASS CAP) in this space. Discussing the hold that insurance has on us is like admitting you were willingly gang raped by non sentient beings. Just not going there. It's not musical. If it were, the soundtrack would be too much like the digestive gurgles of a Leviathan in a suit. A suit with a pocket protector.ASS CAP is undefeated in it's ability to extort money legally out of small venue owners under the guise of protecting songwriters. They do this at the same time as they screw most of the people who are actually writing songs. Think of my own situation as a microscopic example. Places I perform in which make very little money, places that are just hanging on, are being squeezed by ASCAP to pay them $500 a year for the right to have live music in their venue. BMI is demanding $350. SESAC out of Nashville hasn't caught up with them yet. If they pay, I, as a songwriter, should get some of that, right? Wrong. Because only the best selling songwriters get any of the billions of dollars they collect. If you're not getting top forty play, you're getting zilch. And the places you play are being run out of business. I don't want the money anyway. And I especially don't want my local coffee houses going broke to pay top forty artists for songs I didn't perform. But that's what happens.
Where to begin to explain this without giving my readers the same feeling you get when you read the fine print of an insurance policy? You can read about it here.
I'd prefer to offer people in my situation a solution. Most small towns or suburban areas have many people who write and perform their own songs. They play in coffee houses and small bars and restaurants. They usually do a lot of cover tunes because that is what people want to hear. Something familiar. It's the cover tunes that get ASS CAP and BMI breathing fire on them. I'm going to do everything in my power to encourage venue owners and singer/songwriters in my area to do the following.
Venue owners should declare that only original material will be performed in their establishments. No cover tunes with one exception. That being the tunes by other local singer/songwriters who agree to join this effort. That would mean that we would all have to provide each other with our lyrics and chords and CD's and possibly even run workshops to teach our songs to everybody else. That means I'll be performing the songs of musician friends of mine every set as well as my own. I'll just do the ones I like best. I can even stylize them to suit me. People will do the same for me and I might even learn that I like somebody else's arrangement better. How can this be a bad thing? It also encourages people to write more songs. How can that be a bad thing? The alternative is to stop working altogether or just play in your living room.
So if we are able to pull this off, I'd have to tip my hat at the ass hats at Ass CAP.
More to come.
posted by Bud @ 6:38 AM
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