Captured by the Paparazzi while visiting an old friend on the Harvard campus during my trip to Cambridge last week.
In what at first appeared to be an annoucement straight out of left field, it turns out that Al Sharpton and artists rights have a lot more in common than first meets the eye, via Sharpton's National Action Network.
Check out this little ditty from Billboard (registration required so I have cut and pasted it from an email sent to me):
Sharpton To Call For Changes In Music Biz.
Sharpton To Call For Changes In Music Biz
Billboard Bulletin:
June 05, 2002,
Cochran, Sharpton To Call For Changes In Music Biz
Seeking to end what they call the "subservient way" major record labels treat recording artists, lawyer Johnnie Cochran and the Rev. Al Sharpton will today hold a news conference in L.A. in which they plan to propose "radical changes" for the music industry.
Operating as the legal arm of Sharpton's New York-based National Action Network civil-rights organization, Cochran is seeking meetings with the majors to "try and get a sense how [artist] relationships and contracts are evolved," according to a spokesperson. Changes they plan to propose include a system that would emulate the free-agency market that exists in professional sports; presumably this would give artists greater opportunities to shop their services to the highest bidder.
The RIAA did not return calls for comment. -- Erik Gruenwedel, L.A.
