Music for Democracy - MFD Blog

Bright Eyes Records Anti-Arizona Song

mitch — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:17:44 +0000

Connor Oberst of Bright Eyes has recorded a new song called "Coyote Song" and has added his name to The Sound Strike, a group of musicians and artists boycotting Arizona due to the passing of the controversial SB 1070 bill, which gives the police broad power to detain people suspected to be in the country illegally.

David Byrne Sues to Protect Song Rights in Florida

mitch — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:10:22 +0000

From David Byrne's Blog:

I am bringing a lawsuit against the Governor of Florida.

A while back a friend told me that the Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, was using the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere” in a campaign ad. He’s running for Senate.

Los Lobos Cancel Arizona Performance

mitch — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:51:13 +0000

Los Lobos have canceled their scheduled performance at The Talking Stick Resort on June 10, 2010, due to the call to boycott Arizona in response to SB 1070.

Through their management, Los Lobos issued the following statement:

Civil Rights Concert at the White House

mitch — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:58:03 +0000

WASHINGTON - Crediting civil rights-era protest songs and their spiritual predecessors for his election, President Barack Obama on Tuesday sat in the East Room of his White House and listened to an all-star lineup of performers pay tribute to the music that he said fueled freedom marches and civil disobedience.

The nation's first black president transformed the grand ballroom into a concert hall packed with members of his Cabinet, Congress, civil rights leaders and students for a program that will air on public television later this week for Black History Month.

The Grateful Dead’s Bill Kreutzmann and Jerry Garcia’s on Ticket Scalping

mitch — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:04:41 +0000

Kreutzmann: I hate that scalping thing. It's one of my pet peeves. It's legal robbery. There should be a law against it. I'm not going to mention names, but the bigwigs in the business, the promoters—whatever you want to call them—one of them now owns a ticket company, and they were going to try to take a whole lot of tickets and scalp them, and we got them to stop that. It's asking our fans to pay too much money for something that really should almost be free. Garcia always said, “Music is so good for you, it should be free.” That's a famous Jerry quote. It's a sore subject with me.

NY State Assembly Proposes New Ticket Scalping Regulations

mitch — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:29:18 +0000

NY Assemblyman Richard Brodsky unveiled legislation today that would bring back some much needed regulation to the out-of-control ticket scalping market.

As per Brodsky’s press release, the new legislation would:

* Limit ticket resale to no more than 25 percent above the face price of a ticket
* Ban producers, promoters and their employees from engaging in scalping or otherwise benefiting from the secondary market.
* Ban the resale of tickets until one month after the initial sale.

An Interview with the Indigo Girls' Emily Saliers

mitch — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:04:10 +0000

The first time I heard an Indigo Girls song, or remember hearing one anyway, I was about 11 years old. I had just survived what felt like an overly traumatic dissolution of a crush on a boy named Joey, and for whatever reason, the song Ghost made everything feel a little bit better -- that, maybe, we all feel this way sometimes. When I learned that the lyrics were probably written for a woman, by another woman, I also remember it being the first time understanding that in love, life, or anything else for that matter, we were all the same. Felt the same.

NYT: Concert Ticket Secondary Scalper Market

mitch — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:25:51 +0000

Its been two years now since the New York State government relaxed their ticket scalping laws. With the change in law came a change in the ticket scalper. No longer is it that out-of-place looking fella out in the parking lot, in 2009 the ticket scalpers are the ticket companies themselves.

Today the New York Times reported:

read more

Trent Reznor Tells Fans “Don’t Buy From Scalpers.”

mitch — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:00:57 +0000

With tickets for the upcoming Nine Inch Nails tour with Jane’s Addiction set to go on sale to the public on March 20th, Trent Reznor took to the NIN forum to map out his thoughts on the secondary ticketing market, or “scalping” as it used to be called when the practice was illegal.

History of Music and Politics in the US

mitch — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:16:55 +0000

LOS ANGELES -- The GRAMMY Museum(SM) will open to the public on Saturday, Dec. 6 with the debut of Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom -- the first major museum exhibition to explore the 200-year history of music and politics in America, and music's role as a political force in society.