Talking To Strangers
23/02/2015 § Leave a comment
As a kid, I had always wanted to sell enough stuff to absolute strangers in order to get those amazing prizes as advertised lavishly in comic books. You know, sell an inordinate amount of Peony seeds, or magazine subscriptions, or wrapping paper, and obtain a shiny new Schwinn Stingray Bike with a banana seat. Unfortunately for both the seed company and my parents, I couldn’t walk up to strangers and sell them junk they didn’t need, even when I was desperate to have that very thing that would make me cooler than my younger brother. I had the dream but not the wherewithal, so I needed my folks to spend real money in order to get the bike.
A Letter Each From Yoko, Hunter, & Sublette
20/09/2011 § Leave a comment
Yoko Ono, yes that Yoko Ono. I was her product manager at Rykodisc and worked intensely with her over the course of releasing the Onobox and her solo albums (and those duo Unfinished Music albums like TWO VIRGINS that she created with You-Know-Who). And yes, Robert Hunter, lyricist for the Dead. And yes, Sublette, Ned Sublette. Who? Look him up. When Rykodisc was being pulled to NYC by Chris Blackwell, I decided to get a raise and a better position instead of going back to the Big Apple with no raise, no cost-of-living increase, and no moving allowance, and in the lowly position of PM. Lowly, as they were trying to de-Rykodisc Ryko at the time with tighter marketing budgets and other de-naturing parts of their new Palm/Ryko bidness plan.
Kerouac-Kicks Joy Darkness – article for Borders’ Magazine
26/06/2011 § Leave a comment
Kerouac-Kicks Joy Darkness is a spoken-word tribute with music to the writings of Jack Kerouac through readings of his material (including a few previously unpublished pieces) by such Beat luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and William Burroughs; alternative music figures such as Michael Stipe, Eddie Vedder, and Patti Smith; and actors like Johnny Depp and Matt Dillon. Here David Greenberg, co-creator of Rykodisc’s Voices spoken-word recordings series, describes some of the special circumstances that went into the creation of this landmark recording.
This Is A Dangerous Album
20/06/2011 § Leave a comment
Alan Douglas licensed Rykodisc the rights to re-release Leary’s You Can Be Anyone This Time Around album in 1992. Originally, it was recorded at the heyday of Leary’s popularity in the late 1960s, but the full truth about the album sessions had to wait thirty years in the future, when we were allowed to put the full artist listing on the album. Jimi Hendrix played bass on one track! Okay, not earth shattering, but pretty wild to me, at least. Since Hendrix had long since passed and his record company—Warner Bros.—was not going to sue the ass off of Douglas for recording Hendrix outside of his contract and releasing an album with an illegal performance, we added this rock history factoid to our release. “Finally,” Jon Sebastian thanked me after sending him a slew of copies. “Everyone thinks I’m lying when I say I jammed with Jimi.” « Read the rest of this entry »
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