Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MARIE ANTOINETTES OF MU-SICK:

If you want to jump up and down and stomp your feet and bare your pearly-white caps in anger and tell the world GEORGE W. BUSH IS A NAZI, fine with me.  Remember this: every time you do so you flip the bird to those who may not agree with you.  You think it won't hurt your careers?  Whoopi would still be endorsing SlimFast if she'd just told a few mild jokes and ogled John Edwards's hair.  And it may not just be yourselves you're hurting.  The concert biz has seen better days; so everytime you call Michael Moore THE SAVIOR OF HUMANKIND you may well be providing fewer jobs for the roadies and ticket takers.  Ah, but what are they?  The scum of the earth!  Well, what about the people who work for the companies responsible for your moribund recording careers?  I don't mean the pimps in gold chains; they'll always have jobs.  I mean the people in the replicating plants who stamp the CDs and insert the liner books and tray cards; the people in the distribution side who move your product in and out of the warehouses; the managers and clerks in the ever dwindling realm of the record stores; the conscientious newbies looking to produce great albums for the reissue labels.  BMG and Sony Music say they'll fire 2,000 when they consummate their merger.  Want to add to that head count?    Keep talking!

I really don't think you give two hoots about the lowlifes who support your mammoth egos; they're someone to scream at when they give you twenty bottles of Perrier backstage instead of the contractually-agreed-upon 32.   But lowlifes have lives too -- not so gilded as yours, but they have families to support, and mortgages to pay off, and tuitions to finance, and you raging Marie Antoinettes don't help their cause one iota when you tell a vast chunk of your audience, STOP ATTENDING MY CONCERTS AND STOP BUYING MY RECORDS. They will do so -- and who knows, one day it may finally catch up to YOU.