If EMI couldn't promote the Sex Pistols back when record labels were record labels, music was music and no one knew what "downloading" was, except that it sounded vaguely dirty, is it any surprise the company didn't know what to do with the latest OK Go video?
Back in 1977, the Sex Pistols had the last laugh on EMI, and now OK Go is ready to do a little giggling itself. All the way to the bank, now that the group gets to keep all the profits.
Since the advent of streaming Internet video outlets such as YouTube, bands and record labels have repeatedly been at odds over how to address the issue that, when a user watches a video online, no money is generated for the label or the band. In an interview with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel, OK Go singer-songwriter-guitarist Damian Kulash says that he — and the rest of the band — view videos not as a potential source of income, but rather as another creative outlet.
"This is all sort of part of the creative project for us," he says. "I mean, the animating passion for us is to get up and chase down our craziest ideas, and sometimes those are filmic, and sometimes they're purely sounds."
The band's label, EMI, didn't see things the same way. In an effort to maintain some control over the dissemination of the music video, EMI denied listeners the ability to embed it on their own Web sites and blogs. After receiving a deluge of complaints, the band eventually persuaded EMI to enable embedding. Soon afterward, however, OK Go parted ways with EMI to start its own record label, Paracadute.
WHAT ESCAPES bloated corporate collections of shortsighted moneygrubbers like EMI is this: The OK Go video isn't a revenue stream, it's free advertising.
The cost for putting it on YouTube? Zero.
The cost of producing it for the band? I'll bet it wasn't much, considering they got State Farm to sponsor it.
The promotional dividends from having it embedded on websites and blogs (like this one) everywhere? Limitless.
YOU WANT to know what's priceless, though? From now on, OK Go doesn't have to get nickeled-and-dimed by a record label that didn't know what to do with the Sex Pistols back in the day, and hasn't learned a damned thing in the intervening 33 years.
P.S.: One more thing. . . . Because of the promotional value of the video and the All Things Considered piece, I'm going to iTunes and buying the album. And the only credit EMI can take for that is indirectly, via the law of unintended consequences.
Somebody, back in the 1950s, recorded WJR off of the Detroit radio on what was an antiquated piece of equipment even then . . . a home disc recorder. And today, that scratchy old recording has shown up on YouTube, allowing the analog past to meet the digital future.
And a Brummie beheld a new day dawning in America, had a pint -- or six -- and, yea, he spaketh unto his newspaper across the waters, the Birmingham Mail.
"F*** you. I quit," sayeth Adam Smith -- a.k.a., Steve Zacharanda . . . a.k.a., "Mate, could you spare a quid?" -- and, behold, a Dutch-American web journalist presenteth his message unto YouTube, and YouTube speaketh unto Smith's masters at the Birmingham Mail.
It is written: "You can't quit; you're fired."
OF COURSE, the rest of the British press is having a jolly good time with all of this. The Times of London, for one:
Sometimes, you wake up following a drunken night out and realise you have sent an inappropriate text to an ex-girlfriend or your boss.
And sometimes you realise you have drunkenly admitted to plagiarism to camera, and spectacularly resigned from your job, shouting "F**k you' to your boss.
This is what happened to Birmingham Mail reporter Adam Smith on Wednesday morning, as footage appeared on YouTube of him writing a report on the US election, slumped on a Miami pavement, and barely able to speak.
Mr Smith, who also calls himself Steve Zacharanda in the hit video which was viewed almost 20,000 times in 48 hours, had taken a week's holiday to go to Miami to volunteer for the Barack Obama election campaign.
After the victory, and very much the worse for wear and drink, Smith was caught flopped against a set of railings, a laptop on his lap, filing an article about Mr Obama's victory for the Mail.
The maker of the video, a Dutch amateur journalist from Couscous Global, had stumbled across Smith by the roadside, and asked him what he was doing.
"I jumped on a plane on Friday to volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign," Mr Smith explained in a strong, if rather slurred, Brummie accent. "As an ill-advised promise, I've decided to say to my paper back home that I'd write about the American election.
"I wanted to be here because I'm here for history. The trouble is, the readers of the Birmingham Mail are going to get my version of history. And I'm just a little bit pissed..."
With a laugh and a clap of the hands, he added: "And thank god for the BBC, because I'm cutting and pasting, oh, baby!"
Not wanting to seem too unprofessional, he added: "I'm a proper news journalist."
To pile further misery on his ignominy, Mr Smith ended the video by announcing: "My name is Adam Smith, also known as Steve Zacharanda, who has just resigned from the Birmingham Mail, the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Sunday Mercury, to set up my own magazine…F**k you, I'm doing what I want."
Mr Smith's employment status remains unclear today within a company which is undergoing significant restructuring.
Steve Dyson, editor of the Birmingham Mail, said: "This is an internal matter, so we cannot discuss it."
Asked about the company's attitude towards plagarism, he added: "Whilst we cannot discuss internal matters, plagarism will not be tolerated in any form by BTM Media Limited - although we do not believe that any has been taking place."
DEAR NEW YORK POST, I think you've just found Steve Dunleavy'sreplacement.
Meantime, Smith was "a bit scared to speak to work." No doubt.
"There's been words like outrageous, bringing the company into disrepute," he told the amateur videographer/reporter for Couscous Global. Actually, I found Smith to be a breath of fresh air.
Usually, you don't find reporters who are that honest and, frankly, hilarious. Give me a Brummie scribbler who's just a bit pissed (in the tipsy Brit sense of the word) any day, instead of 47 self-important, faux-objective "contributors" on American cable networks.
Disrepute? My ass.
Adam Smith took vacation time to come to America and volunteer for Barack Obama's campaign in Miami. His editors -- despite this -- prevailed upon him to write an election piece for the Birmingham News. Sans editor's note or "opinion" tag.
Who, then, ought to take ownership of the disrepute?
And, really, Smith didn't put together so bad a piece for being three sheets to the wind. Could have been much better, yes. But fairly remarkable for being that tanked.
The newspaper -- imagine! -- has taken down Smith's election piece, which (as far as I can tell) shows no sign of having been a "cut and paste" job at the BBC's expense. But you can find it here:
BIRMINGHAM Mail reporter Adam Smith is in America as Barack Obama is named as the next president. Here is his take on the atmosphere in the US:
A NEW chapter in world history has begun, and whatever happens, people in America will never forget this moment.
The people of the USA have elected the remarkable Barack Obama as their first African-American President.
Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a black Kenyan student and a white American woman, swept to power after millions of voters gave him a mandate for change.
Just 52 years after Rosa Parks started the Civil Rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat, millions of Americans from all different races flocked to polls to elect Mr Obama.
In what will be regarded as one of the greatest political speeches in history, Barack Obama today reawakened the ‘American dream’.
In front of a crowd of 125,000 in Chicago, the President elect said: “I believe in the America that says to every challenge ‘‘Yes We Can’.
“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.
“And I promise you we as a people will get there.”
OK, Obama's speech was quite good. But "one of the greatest political speeches in history" is pretty far over the top. Even for an Obama volunteer.
I attribute the hyperbole to breaking the four-pint barrier.
On the other hand, is Smith's piece much more gushing than that of "objective" American journalists who weren't -- at least officially -- volunteering for Obama-Biden '08? And the guy, as evidenced by the second video, has a love of America that even Sarah Palin couldn't call into question.
Just for that, as a colonist, you have to love the bloke.
SO, LET ME make this official. Adam Smith is my new journalistic hero. And I'd be proud to down a pint or three with him any day.
Barack Obama risks lightning and thunder during his speech at Widener University in Chester PA. It was a rainy and cold morning but 9000 people still stuck around to listen to what he had to say in his "closing speech".
Media please credit: Chris Barrett & Xtian Bretz
TV outlets: To License the footage please contact chris(at)powerhousepictures.com
Check out my book Direct Your Own Life ( http://www.directyourownlife.com ) and thanks for Xtian Bretz for noticing the strike ( http://www.xtian.tv )
TV OUTLETS: If you are so desperate for content that you will license totally unremarkable junk for real money during recessionary times, call me instead.
Really, all you have here is shaky footage of a presidential candidate without sense enough to come in out of a thunderstorm. Then again, if the fool had gotten lit up by a lightning bolt, it would have given a whole new meaning to "lightworker."
But he didn't. So . . . feh!
ANYWAY, if you need some real footage, the Mighty Favog and Revolution 21 stand ready to help!
For a low, low price, I am prepared to offer for immediate national release (network or cable) previously unseen video of Molly the Dog going "Woowoowooooooooooooooooo!" really cute with her beloved sock in her mouth.
I MEAN, "They invited the 'Chocolate Rain' guy to, like, go sing at some YouTube event in, like, China."
But no such "cewebrity" luuuuv for Mr. (Miss?) Leave Britney Alone! Such shabby treatment.
"I'm not mama- and papa-friendly, I understand. Mamas and papas don't like me, but guess what? Their kids do," he/she/it says. "I'm a voice of this generation . . .I'm a voice of this generation, and there's no stopping me."
Pick the version of events in the Saga of the Michigan Man you care to believe, but what it all came down to was LSU Coach Les Miles pulling the plug on an old, dear dream that was threatening to sink the football dream of a bunch of young men. His young men -- LSU Men.
And their dream did not die amid an ESPN hellstorm, nor did it die when a crippled up Louisiana State squad took on Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference title game.
NOW THE MICHIGAN MAN and his LSU Men -- after the most improbable chain of insane events during a wild and woolly season-finale weekend -- chase a renewed dream. A national championship. A dream so far out of reach that its sudden resurrection was marginally less stunning than ol' Lazarus stumbling out of his tomb a couple of millennia ago.
On one hand, the old Michigan Man can't go home again. Neither can many of us.
Things change, dreams die painful deaths and, sometimes, better ones show up after the funeral is concluded and the dearly departed's memory has been toasted.
Les Miles has a national championship to win against -- deliciously for an old Michigan Man -- the Ohio State University. And win it he just might.
