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Subject: RTP-area local music and culture

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  • From: James Hepler <jameshepler AT yahoo.com>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: best way to support artists?
  • Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 07:57:07 -0800 (PST)

En Garde futures will be available Smarch 16 at $1.50
per share.

--- grady <grady AT ibiblio.org> wrote:

> Duncan Murrell wrote:
> > 1. Affordable health plans for practicing artists
>
> Why stop there? Affordable health care for
> everybody. And by
> "affordable" I mean "universal". Or we can just keep
> having benefits
> anytime anybody we know gets sick, which works great
> if the doctor bill
> is under $800 or so. Everybody take yr vitamins!
>
> Do indie-rockers vote? Would it matter, since even
> 95% of Democratic
> politicians can't get over their fear of
> Clintonism/rejection by the
> insurance industry long enough to come out & say
> what most normal people
> realize: the government builds roads because they're
> vital to commerce,
> and difficult to make profitable, but for some
> reason it thinks it's
> preferable to stay out of healthcare, even though
> it's vital to commerce
> (not to mention life, liberty, pursuit of happiness,
> etc) and downright
> *immoral* to provide at a profit.
>
> > 2. Affordable rental housing, in general,
> especially near where they
> > work and/or practice their art.
>
> Welcome to Durham!
>
> > 3. SBA or private loans/bridge loans/lines of
> credit to finance
> > intense periods of art-making (touring, completing
> work for an
> > exhibition, working on a story/book that needs
> some dedicated
> > attention.) Yes, there are grants available, but
> they are few;
> > universal access to supplementary money (within
> reason) would help
> > the creative community, and the rest of the
> community would reap the
> > benefits ultimately. It would also put a few
> people into debt, I'm
> > sure, but no artist makes a breakthrough without
> taking a risk.
>
> I was thinking about this yesterday while in the
> throes of that, ahem,
> "discussion" with Glenn. Most artforms carry at
> least some level of
> public support & public assumption that such support
> is both necessary
> and appropriate. That's rarely the case with "rock
> music," even when the
> "rock music" is every bit as anti-popular as the
> "fine arts" ;-) .
>
> One of the things bugging me about that earlier
> conversation was the
> inherent assumption, on both our parts, that somehow
> the "free market"
> was an inherent & necessary factor. Glenn's saying
> "don't charge too
> much for CDs lest market forces drive your audience
> to extra-market
> alternatives" (the irony being that there's nothing
> particularly "free
> market" about ripping/downloading CDs for free).
> Whereas I'm saying
> "overhead has gone up dramatically, so it's to be
> expected that the
> prices of the product should go up as well," as if
> bands were
> corporations (well, apart from PiL), and as if any
> of the ones we love
> had much chance/hope of ever breaking even anyway.
>
> I mean, shit, we're both wrong. Into which column do
> you put "thousands
> of hours of free labor" at practice, and "the
> spaghetti dinner those
> kids made us in Akron" and everything else that adds
> up to the fact that
> it's hard to propose a market-based solution to an
> extra-market problem?
>
> Best way to support artists? Brainwashing: make 'em
> think they're
> stockbrokers. They'll be fine.
>
> xo
>
> Ross
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors
> alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
>


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