While in the nation's capitol for an annual meeting, Kix Brooks, Victoria Shaw, Randy Scruggs, Bob Dipiero and nearly 50 other members visited the Library of Congress for a tour and a presentation yesterday.
"Our strategic mission first and foremost -- it's been for 50 years -- is to promote the format, to promote country music," said Steve Moore, chairman of the CMA's board of directors. Visiting the Library of Congress "is a great opportunity to meet the staff and look into collaborations."
It was an amazing source of pride to be 'an insider' in the crowd at what has become so routine in Nashville, a candid, political, edgy, fun, ad libbed, unrehearsed guitar pull featuring those four as well as Lorrie Morgan and hard-lobbying man, the always political, brilliant and authentic John Rich, be so well-attended by Washington, D.C. glitterati and reviewed so favorably by the Washington Post.
Hopefully, the behind the scenes negotiations on royalties and performance rights between NAB and RIAA will be half as productive in the due course of time.
4 comments:
Media Institute VP Richard T. Kaplar and states that the royalty would impose an undue economic burden on broadcasters already reeling from the recession.
The Library of Congress and the Country Music Association hosted a day-long program for the CMA Board of Directors at the nation’s library, including a comprehensive tour of the historic Jefferson Building; an extensive orientation to the Library’s music, sound recording, and folk collections; a reception with members of the House of Representatives, Senate, and invited dignitaries; followed by a concert in the Coolidge Auditorium featuring some of Country Music’s finest hitmakers.
“The purpose of our events here at the Library of Congress are meant to bring attention to these fine collections and help this incredible institution build on the Library’s already unparallelled archive of sound recordings,” said Steve Moore, Chairman of the CMA Board of Directors. “The foundation has been laid for future programs and educational opportunies for Country Music lovers around the world”
Attending the reception in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress were nearly 400 Washington luminaries including U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch; House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer; members of the Tennessee delegation including U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Steve Cohen, Jim Cooper and Bart Gordon; and the Ambassador of New Zealand, Roy Ferguson, to name a few.
Mark Allen:
Sorry, Jaye, that would cost Congress a music performance royalty fee and they'd have to raise taxes to pay for it.
Jaye Albright:
I'm glad you said that, Mark. You know I agree with you, I hope, and the giant inflatable pig the RIAA put up at NAB yesterday is extremely country-productive.
My spin is that record companies continue to exploit talent financially and they are the one in the music-artist-writer-radio equation whose business model is simply not viable anymore, ... See Moreyet their demands are unreasonable. I am sympathetic to the writers and the performers current fate - since the vast majority of them make very little money for their efforts - but the villain is the terrible deals they make with record companies themselves.
The day will come when talent won't need "middlemen" to have access to fans, meanwhile radio remains essential to their career growth, more now than ever. It's my hope that all parties are sitting in a room somewhere getting "real" with one another instead of putting inflatables in front of the NAB offices.
“When I think of those “Country Roads” and “Wide Open Spaces” without broadband, I “Fall to Pieces” and say that’s “Crazy.” We need to address these “Unanswered Prayers.”
“As FCC Chairman, I have friends in high places and “Friends in Low Places,” and I’m pulled to and fro on policy issues, but “I Walk the Line.” That’s because telecomm politics is like a “Ring of Fire.” First I have Senator Rockefeller telling me about a “Coal Miner’s Daughter” who can’t get wireless service in some “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Next, “I’m on the Road Again” to where “The Grass is Blue” and “A Boy Named Sue” stops me and says we need super-duper fast broadband all the way from “Boulder to Birmingham” – and beyond, to “Galveston” and “El Paso.” He complains that his slow dial-up service can’t get to “Amarillo by Morning” and laments that America has gone round & round for years without a National Broadband Plan and plaintively asks, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”?
“I explain – to the “Boy Named Sue” – that this issue is “Always on my Mind” and the lack of a Plan should not make him “Hurt” or a “Man of Constant Sorrow” with his “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” Instead, I tell him to “Take it Easy ” — “Don’t Rock the Jukebox”…just try to “Keep on the Sunny Side” and dream “Sweet Dreams” — because a National Broadband Plan is coming. Next week.”
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