On Basketball And Boobs And The Biggest Dick In The World
Nancy Rommelmann should check with me before she posts blog items, because I find her writing and thinking irresistible. This is a problem if I'm on deadline, as I am today, because I drop what I'm doing and go read her. Loved this piece she blogged on Sunday. An excerpt from the dick portion, but go read the whole thing:
In 1988, I still believed my ticket to stardom would arrive in a big car soon after I arrived in Los Angeles. It did not. Nor was it in the Porsche 911 I found myself stepping into one evening, a car that belonged to a man I was told had the biggest dick in the world. Though he told me this himself, I'd first heard it from my sister-in-law. Sandra was a northern Italian girl with Gina Lollobrigida curls and a gap between her front teeth. She and my brother married for love, but she also needed a green card and, well, she often strayed. She was more attentive to my wanting to be an actress, and told me she'd met a man--let's call him Hal--who was casting a film. He'd liked her look and asked her to audition, which she had, though not because she an actress and or had any ambitions to act. Then why did she audition? Because she was a pretty twenty-five-year-old to whom someone said, "I want you in my movie." While this might cause someone to scratch her head in Schenectady, in Hollywood, it's axiomatic that you go.
Not to be cynical about Rommelmann's blog post or personal experiences or those of her friends or anything like that, but...
Digress with me!
As a child I loved pop music, Beatles and bubblegum. For the latter especially –and perhaps because of the unusual talents of the former– I was always ready to credit the singers themselves as special people.
But everything you'd ever read about them made them seem pathetic: They were always being ripped off by these clever record company executives, dastardly sharks who made them sign horrible contracts.
But after a couple of decades of listening to that stuff it became obvious that it usually wasn't the singer who made the magic happen... It was the producer or some other genius, usually someone who knew how to, y'know, read music. Consider this classic... A bass line like that was going to make any cute kid singer into someone famous. (And will someone here please teach me how to play that monster octave-y riff at 53 seconds? Thanks.)
American Idol is all about sexable young people who pretend to emote under spotlights. The "magic" of most pop artists is their youth, period. It's not that they deserve to be exploited, but most of them don't exactly deserve not to be exploited, either. Very few are notably skilled composers, or players, or even managers. They count on a huge –if dispersed– array of supporting talent to make them successful.
This is part of the pissing match I had with Mike Hunter here. For a person to aspire to pop stardom isn't all that noble, and calling them "artists" is just one of the ways the lawyers trick them into signing the contracts.
Same with starlets. People who find themselves in the cold and clammy clutches of some despicable producer were usually hoping to be richly rewarded for doing nothing in particular.
It's hard to sympathize with naifs.
Crid [CridComment @ gmail] at November 23, 2009 4:09 AM
As for starlets "usually hoping to be richly rewarded for doing nothing in particular": that's exactly what I'd been hoping for!
Nancy Rommelmann at November 23, 2009 9:10 AM
Didn't mean to be critical, OK? I'm still expecting a call from Mick for help mixing the next chart-topping Stones album (with a possible rhythm guitar appearance deep in the mix of a lesser ballad on Side Two). Just sayin'....
The reason showbiz is so sleazy is that it deserves to be!
Crid [CridComment @ gmail] at November 23, 2009 12:18 PM
God do I love Crid!
Kristen at November 23, 2009 3:39 PM
Yes, the music industry is a special breed of people. My brother was in a band that was signed to a major label in the '80s. I met their manager several times. I remember her being surprised that I read Billboard and that I knew a good bit about the industry. I think I made her nervous.
My brother and his band mates weren't naifs. They were already veterans of the industry when they signed; they had done the club circuit around the Southeast for years, and all of them had plenty of experience around Nashville. And they got screwed anyway. Their manager wound up taking them for just about every dime they made. The financial devastation broke the band up. My brother came back east and went into the IT industry, at which he's done pretty well. The other band members also got jobs and put their talents to good use. They're all sharp guys.
A few years ago, on a lark, they decided to do a reunion show. That went well and led to other offers. They started up a Web site, recorded a couple of new songs, and put them up on the Web. Now they all take a few days off from their jobs every few months and do a long weekend playing reunion shows. They say they're making more money off of it now then they did when they were signed.
Cousin Dave at November 24, 2009 5:39 AM
Bruno Mars Unreleased Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQWi06j37-E
charles Florrie at February 26, 2011 2:58 PM
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