“Record labels have long been accused of stealing musicians’ copyrights as soon as the ink is dry on the contract. Now, one small independent label in Great Britain is doing the opposite: It’s giving the rights to the artists — and anyone else who wants to use the music, too. Loca Records wants to foster experimentation and freedom in music by building a stable of free music which can be shared, remixed and manipulated by anyone… The music is available for free in MP3 format, but the company sells its CDs and vinyl in retail stores throughout Europe.”
Tag: 11.20.03
Hazzard Wins, King Fumes at Nat’l Book Awards
Shirley Hazzard took the top fiction prize at the National Book Awards last night, winning for The Great Fire, her first novel in nearly a quarter-century. Cuban memoirist Carlos Eire took the non-fiction prize, and C.K. Williams won the poetry award. In the strangest moment of the evening, bestselling horror writer Stephen King accepted a medal of honor, and then lashed out at the literary world during his acceptance speech, explicitly criticising those authors “who make a point of pride in saying they have never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.”
Could Pew Control The Barnes Collection’s Move?
“If the Barnes Foundation wins court permission to move its famed art collection to Center City, the Pew Charitable Trusts, not the Barnes itself, could take charge of administering the $150 million needed to build a new Barnes museum and endow it.”
Stephen King To Book Awards Group: Read More!
Terry Teachout attends the National Book Awards banquet as a judge. Stephen King’s speech was “interesting. He was clearly moved by the honor—he choked up. He was funny and unpretentious when paying tribute to his wife and talking about the “vulnerability” to self-doubt of poor, struggling authors (such as himself when young). I suspect he was the first National Book Award laureate ever to say “Oh, shit!” in his acceptance speech (he was describing the way an honest author might portray a terrified character in extreme circumstances). And he was simultaneously a bit defensive and more than a little bit aggressive when he informed the crowd that they’d be making a mistake if they treated their decision to give him the prize as an act of ‘tokenism’.”
Broadway’s Bumpy Fall
“All across Broadway, producers, landlords and investors are suffering through one of the bumpiest fall seasons in recent memory, a snake-bit period that has seen one show close in previews (“Bobbi Boland”), another close in rehearsal (“Harmony”) and a Stephen Sondheim show (“Bounce”) close out of town.”
Muschamp: Simplicity Is What’s Required For WTC Memorial
“For better or worse, we are living in baroque if not byzantine times. Some of our most impressive contemporary architecture reflects this. All eight designs chosen as finalists for a memorial of the World Trade Center disaster bear strong traces of it, to a greater or lesser degree. Each of them suffers as a result.