Deconstructing Pop Culture

I recently re-read the article “Are you a racist?” by Derald Wing Sue (2003). I think Sue’s argument is mistaken on several points, which I now propose to address. Who is a racist? Distilled to its essentials, Sue’s basic argument is that every white male is a racist because they are beneficiaries of a pervasive, [...]

I recently visited the California African American Museum in Los Angeles with several of my friends. It is situated in Exposition Park, across the street from U.S.C. Before everybody got there I walked around the Rose Garden, redolent of Los Angeles in the 1930s. Bold statements about art, poetry, literature and philosophy adorned some of [...]

I recently spent some time volunteering at A Place Called Home, located on South Central Ave. at 28th Street in Los Angeles. It is an after-school program for neighborhood kids. Its main concept is to get them off the streets after school and into a safe environment. The first thing we do is feed them. [...]

I recently spent time volunteering at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles.  Here are some of my observations, together with comments on the logic of being a volunteer at a non-profit organization. The place. Founded in the late 19th-century, Lincoln is one of the oldest high schools in Los Angeles. It presently enrolls approximately 3,000 [...]

Stephen J. Cannell died on September 30, 2010. Laudatory obituaries now have appeared in both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. What this style of Hollywood eulogy invariably misses is that the person they are lauding frequently was a jerk. Such was my experience with Cannell. Back in 2000 I financed an [...]

I took my daughter Lauren to see John Cale perform this evening at UCLA’s Royce Hall. In addition to a stripped-down trio of drums-bass-guitar he was accompanied by a selection of musician’s from UCLA’s student orchestra. The concert’s conceit was a live orchestral performance of Cale’s early-1972 album “Paris 1919.” I have to hand it [...]

Dick Griffey passed on September 24, 2010. I had close interactions with him in the mid-1980s in connection with his label Solar Records. I also became friendly with Virgil Roberts, his head of business affairs. Roberts went on to become a successful Los Angeles attorney. Solar stood for “Sound of Los Angeles.” Some of Griffey’s [...]

For some time Billboard Magazine published a “Top 200” chart, which purported to identify the 200 best-selling records in the country. It used a variety of methodologies over time to comprise this data. Initially it relied on “store reports” from a limited (“small-n”) sample of retail record stores, together with feedback from local radio stations, [...]

In the late 1990s – early 2000s, most independent films were produced using a “structured financing”-type structure.  Various collateral items were comprised including foreign pre-sales; syndicated tax benefits; and domestic theatrical, television and video rights.  These were used as collateral for a bank loan to finance production.  Portfolios of these loans were amassed and syndicated [...]

Here are two documents pertaining to SBK Music Publishing and SBK Records, cited in my post “Capitol-EMI in the Late 1980s – Early 1990s.” EMI Prospectus to Acquire SBK 1989 SBK Records Joint Venture Agreement