RTP-area local music and culture

[James Hepler <jameshepler AT yahoo.com>]

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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