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"...in 1979, with Off The Wall, he invented modern pop as we know it. He'd been around for years, making the occasional solo record, but for literally millions of us, it was a de facto debut album from a kid -- a kid! Like us! -- we were hearing for the first time. It was an unabashed disco record, with an anthem called "Burn This Disco Out" at a time when "disco" was the most polarizing word in pop music. But it was a disco record that imagined the entirety of pop in disco terms, and it sounded universal on a level nobody had imagined possible before -- even Donna Summer's Bad Girls, which had dominated 1979 radio, sounded a bit narrow in comparison. Off The Wall had more hits than the radio had time to play: When "Rock With You" crashed the radio, it was time for "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" to go home, but the radio just kept right on playing it -- because none of us had gotten enough. His voice had that sad, lonely, vulnerable twitch, just as his songs felt haunted by something otherworldly and beautiful. He was as personal and eccentric as any crackpot singer-songwriter could be -- yet he was also the most famous guy in the world.--Rob Sheffield on Michael Jackson in Rolling Stone

Early in "Appetite for Self-Destruction," Knopper quotes former Warner Records and EMI CEO Joe Smith as observing, "This business ain't full of Martin Luther Kings." It says something about the emotional power of music that anyone would expect sainthood in its executives, but in the real world the absence of "Martin Luther Kings" is notable in virtually all businesses. Internet romanticists liked to ridicule the often implausible claims of record execs that they were looking out for the artists, since these were, at times, the same companies that had been successfully sued by artists for inaccurate accounting. However, the venture capitalists were not funding business plans to advance a utopian vision. The tech companies were every bit as self-interested and just as much driven by short-term profits as the most venal record company execs. At least the record companies sometimes paid artists something.

There is no denying that the major record companies made mistakes, which leaders of other media were able to learn from and avoid (although not with demonstrably better results). There is, however, no evidence that there was any strategy, regardless of who ran the record companies or what decisions they made, that could have stopped fans, especially young fans, from legally or illegally copying or downloading music instead of buying it....--Danny Goldberg on Steve Knopper's APPETITE FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION

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"The Beatles hit white America like the biggest thing to happen maybe ever, and they hardly hit black America at all..." Elijah Wald in TIME, talking about How The Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll (Oxford).

Erik Himmelsbach, LA Times
Michealangelo Matos, AV Club

"I feel a nostalgia for an age yet to come." Matt Kane

see also: Warhol as Batman, with Nico

INSURANCE SECTOR PROFITS FROM TOBACCO INVESTMENTS

UPDATE: new links

Related articles by Zemanta

• Life, health insurers invest big in tobacco (beinghealthyhomeandaway.blogspot.com)
• Health, life insurers hold billions in tobacco stocks: NEJM article (scienceblog.com)
• Health Insurers Own Tobacco Stocks Worth Nearly $4.5 Billion [Conflict Of Interest] (consumerist.com)
• Health insurers invest billions in tobacco stocks (boingboing.net)

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that life and health insurance companies in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain invest heavily in tobacco companies. Tobacco use is a major cause of fatal lung diseases and cancer, and is known to elevate the risk for heart attack and stroke. The study found that the American insurance company Prudential Financial, Inc. has $264.3 million invested in U.S. cigarette makers, including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. The Canadian company Sun Life Financial, Inc., which sells life, health and disability insurance, owns over $1 billion worth of stock in tobacco interests, including $890 million in Philip Morris. Prudential Plc, which sells health and disability coverage, has $1.38 billion invested in two tobacco companies, including British American Tobacco. Wesley Boyd, the study's lead author and a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, says that while it may seem self-defeating for companies to sell insurance while also owning tobacco stocks, insurers have found ways to profit from both. "Insurers exclude smokers from coverage or, more commonly, charge them higher premiums. Insurers profit -- and smokers lose -- twice over." Study co-author David Himmelstien explains, "It's the combined taxidermist-and-veterinarian approach: either way, you get your dog back." Boyd adds that the main objective for insurance companies is not to safeguard customers' well-being, but to generate profits. The authors also point to this study as a reason why health insurance coverage should not be left in the hands of private insurers. --from PR Watch.org
New England Journal of Medecine
TIME magazine
Google news thread

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that life and health insurance companies in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain invest heavily in tobacco companies. Tobacco use is a major cause of fatal lung diseases and cancer, and is known to elevate the risk for heart attack and stroke. The study found that the American insurance company Prudential Financial, Inc. has $264.3 million invested in U.S. cigarette makers, including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. The Canadian company Sun Life Financial, Inc., which sells life, health and disability insurance, owns over $1 billion worth of stock in tobacco interests, including $890 million in Philip Morris. Prudential Plc, which sells health and disability coverage, has $1.38 billion invested in two tobacco companies, including British American Tobacco. Wesley Boyd, the study's lead author and a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, says that while it may seem self-defeating for companies to sell insurance while also owning tobacco stocks, insurers have found ways to profit from both. "Insurers exclude smokers from coverage or, more commonly, charge them higher premiums. Insurers profit -- and smokers lose -- twice over." Study co-author David Himmelstien explains, "It's the combined taxidermist-and-veterinarian approach: either way, you get your dog back." Boyd adds that the main objective for insurance companies is not to safeguard customers' well-being, but to generate profits. The authors also point to this study as a reason why health insurance coverage should not be left in the hands of private insurers. --from PR Watch.org
New England Journal of Medecine
TIME magazine
Google news thread

I get a special chill whenever I find myself agreeing with EVERYTHING Ralph Nader says. And Matt Taibbi is not GOD-ON-A-STICK, but he can be pretty persuasive.

If postmodernism is useful, then it's not as a theory in itself, but as an approach to other theories, perhaps typified by a degree of quasi-existential self-realization, a certain incredulity to meta-narratives (be they social, religious, cultural, philosophical, or economical), and a desire and ability to draw holistic links between seemingly disparate elements. Anything goes, as long as one is sensible. Of course postmodernism is rarely seen in this manner these days, and is more often a misunderstood, abused, and unfairly maligned mismatch of separatist ironies, highbrow conceits, and obfuscatory linguistic tricks designed to scare away the unwary outsider...--Nick Southhall, introducing Top Ten Post-Rock Albums, on Stylus (alas no more).

OR: RENTAL OF THE MONTH
3:10 To Yuma gets at all those Batman themes in that rarest of imperfectible genres, "the Western." Exploiting the hoariest of cliches, Russell Crowe plays the baddass like a carney barker, but Bale bores a hole in him with his eyes, and by the end it's less a surprise twist shootout than exquisitely delayed tension. Man those guys worked that script ...to the bone (Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt, and Derek Haas): "Sometimes a man has to be big enough to see how small he is..."

OR: POSES DOUBLING AS COMMENTARY...
(why does Bowie dominate this meme?)

Just before we left, Lester took us down into the basement of his house, to look through his stack of discarded promo albums, and told me to take anything I wanted. I selected three different Move LP's, among other castoffs, but when I showed him the recent Dana Gillespie album, he waved his hand and made a face -- I left that one there. Then Lester gave me a copy of Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power album as a parting gift -- he said he'd had Columbia send him 25 of them when it came out, as he wanted to spread around his belief in the set. We said good-bye to Lester, standing there by his dusty red and black '67 Camaro with open paperback books littering the dashboard, and headed home to Cincinnati...--Richard Reigel in Rock's Back Pages

Somewhere between Duchamp's Mona Lisa and Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece," the worth and import of a modern artist began forming behind the question "Is this artist pulling our leg?" Jeff Koons, now ensconsed, starts a lot of the answer like his forebears, with a big Yes, and then...

Ingrid Sischy's essay

Alexandra A. Seno in Newsweek