09.43
Bredonborough.
A wet day, with dramatic skies…
It is a full time job: just sitting at the computer, dealing with stuff. How did I once spend weeks, months of each year on the road? Two possible answers:
1. You had total management control of your business.
2. You returned to your practical affairs in a mess.
Here’s a small example of current operations-of-stuff…
A week ago I received a request for a licence on an excerpt from an early-Crim classic, to be included in a DVD of another band of the period. The licence fee was small & would have cost DGM/RF money to process as a formal licence. I wrote to grant a non-exclusive licence pro bono, providing no paperwork & documentation was needed. The e-reply to this included thanks - with a standard contract to be downloaded, printed, signed & faxed back.
A note: any standard contract sucks. It favours the company in extremis & insults the intelligence of the artist receiving it. Where the deal is one that the artist wants to close, conventionally, this leads to a detailed exchange of views, negotiation, solicitors – time + money + grief. In mid-1991, during the early period of Endless Grief, when the future relationship between the parties was unclear, I was sent an EG Standard Contract. My reply: this is not acceptable. EG’s Standard was so far from anything I recognise/d as reasonable, equitable & fair that no future with the Main Men – who Are Back! was conceivable. My formal record dealings, at that point, moved directly to Virgin.
Richard Branson, reportedly, was once asked why Virgin ever sent out standard contracts (ie Virgin standard contracts sucked el maxima suck); and reportedly replied: because someone will sign it. When presented with Virgin’s standard contract in the early 1990s, I tore it into pieces & placed in on Ken Berry’s desk at Virgin in Los Angeles: Will you please consider this my formal response to your proposal? Ken, a bona fide Good Guy of the industry, didn’t miss a beat: I can see you had to do that. While KC were recording THRAK at Real World (Autumn 1994, my non-recording time was spent reading & dealing with the Virgin contract. When, several years later, I was asked to contribute an artist comment to celebrate a Virgin anniversary, my reply was this: all goodwill held towards Virgin disappeared with contract negotiations. My contribution wasn’t used.
My own standard response to standard contracts is this: if you want a standard contract, get a standard artist.
An additional clause in standard licensing agreements is the Indemnity Clause: if the licensee is sued in respect of a copyright track licensed, the grantor of the license is liable for all costs & expenses in respect of dispute and/or litigation. So, if some former Crim with ill-will or holding a grudge, plus a sufficient income stream to support a mischievous action, who derives amusement from leading The Awkward Squad, is fired up through a long night of ingesting enthusiasm, and then decides to cause trouble – it falls to me to head them off, wasting time & energy & paying bills to do so. Given that I do have the necessary rights to administer the catalogue (a long & hard-earned, expensive authority) this threat is not a danger, but a nuisance. So, in pro-bono licensing, I decline to give indemnity.
Back to the licence on the early-Crim classic: why should I put non-productive energy & time negotiating to give away a free licence & indemnity to a firm I don’t know on a project in which I have no interest & in which I would rather Crim was not included? (I note: this is only one example in a series of similar requests). Answers, please, to the Guestbook, for anyone who feels able to mount a persuasive argument.
Perhaps surprisingly, there are reasons why I would; but, in this specific instance, not.
18.15 An afternoon, mostly practising. This is good. This is part of the proper work of the aspirant musician.
"We begin where we are."
