Bredonborough A bright very cold
09.26
Bredonborough.
A bright, very cold morning.
11.32 Headline news today: motorists trapped overnight on the A23. Oh no! Does this mean the Minx will be one of them? It was so…
Toyah Gets Caught In Snow /
Toyah's Traffic Trauma.
Fourteen hours from Chiswick to Chiswick via Pease Pottage.
15.36 Over the Market Square to check on the state of the World HQ garden in the current weather…
Yet buds are budding…
16.12 E-furying on the most recent major infringement, that by
The Orchard (that
Eric Alper /
the musicbiz lawyer)
How long will this take to settle, I wonder?
We are now into six years + of dispute with UMG. This might have been easily settled in 2006/7 had
Mr. Most Useless Of Smiths been able to acknowledge - Yes! We made a mistake. Instead of this, we received over 200 e-mails evading and prevaricating, with one all-time shining classic gem of authenticity and revelation in a telephone call: You don’t expect us to read all the contracts, do you? (of companies that Universal took over).
When I suggested to Mr. Useless that agreeing a settlement was above his pay-grade: Oh no! My superiors have confidence in me! Perhaps until Big Boss Immediate Supervisor, Mr. Clive Fisher, apologized for Mr. Smith during a telephone conversation with David Singleton and myself at DGM HQ in 2009.
In 2007 we would have been satisfied with apology and a nominal sum in settlement. Who can decline an honest apology, made sincerely? I’ve screwed up! Can we settle this honourably? The resounding and immediate response is: Yes!
The refusal to own up, accepting accountability and responsibility for our actions, to deny clear mistake-making over a long period of time: this gives deep offence and is very difficult to resolve. Forgiveness, yes. Always. Forgiveness enables the impossible to become possible, invisibly. Meanwhile, the unsubtle actualities rattle around, awaiting genuine engagement and the will to do so.
And on this topic, what then of Dr. SG Alder?
Some readers of this Diary may recall a few mentions of The Good Guy That You Can Trust. How to hold this Pillar Of Society and Worker Of Good Works to acknowledge and account for his primary lie (of February 22nd 1976)? With long perspective, this was the Foundation Lie that established our subsequent relationship. At the time the lie was told (in Sherborne House Gloucestershire), the prevailing ethos of the professional class was enshrined in the phrase:
My word is my bond (
urban dictionary). In the non-professional classes, the equivalents were the word of a gentleman and shaking-hands on a verbal agreement.
In 1976 Mr. Sam G. Alder was an ambitious Young Turk, and if he had to lie to achieve the direction he wanted (here, the re-licensing of EG’s record and publishing catalogue) then, in this case with me, he was willing to lie. He looked me in the eyes, and lied.
So, I take the date of February 22nd. 1976 as the pivotal moment when the Financial Services industry as a whole, represented by a chartered accountant, changed direction from serving the interests of its clients, to using clients for their own interest: Greed, characterized by the abuse of trust (The Independent).
Here we are, 37 years later, when few would have difficulty with the concept that a person, nominally respectable. in a position of responsibility and respected in the wider community, would act otherwise. Sam G Alder is not someone I associate with creative thinking, nor innovation. Yet here, I believe, Mr. Alder was in the vanguard of establishing a major shift in the re-direction of his industry; with eventual global repercussions.
The collapse of SG Alder Esq.’s affairs 1988-92, with subsequent failures to account to EG artists (1989-91) when he was swishing artist-income (received on their behalf by EG) into various of his accounts, was explained by Mr. Alder as: We were Big Boys, caught with our pants down! As an explanation, an accounting of decisions made and their effects on others, I find inadequate. Mr. Alder’s standard policy of gagging orders (why would this be standard behavior for anyone?) has limited wider commentary by those with close experience of Mr. Alder’s activities. How to address this? Perhaps, Eine Kleine Rough Music I…
II...
III...
IV...
A resolution to this is astonishingly simple. There are two good friends of mine whose actions, in the past, have severely impacted my professional, personal and musical well-being. Both of them approached me personally, to accept responsibility for their actions and to make amends - which was instantaneous, if not already in place, perhaps ahead of time.
Let’s hear it for Truth and Reconciliation.
22.18 An evening practicing.
