Joni Mitchell death hoax - Did I do that?

When I wrote this piece, it was late at night.  Initially, there was very little information about Joni’s condition.  Just that she had been rushed to the hospital unconscious.

I was literally in bed when I read that, I jumped up, and fired up the blog!

In order to be first to the story, my initial piece was titled ‘Joni Mitchell passes away’.  I wrote it as a draft in the Blogger application.  Google, as you may know, owns Blogger.  This becomes pertinent in a moment.

As I was writing, I was desperate for information.  I news googled ‘joni mitchell’ in every combination of ‘health, sick, dies’ etc etc.  I came across a headline that said “Joni Mitchell passes away”.  FUCK, I thought.  That sucks.  Oh well, at least I will have a timely Joni Mitchell piece for when the world wakes up to the bad news.  I clicked on the link for details.  It was my own damn article.  Apparently, it slipped out of draft status and into ‘publish’ status.  I felt dumb, and bad.  I immediately went back and deleted the article all together.  Google had indexed my headline from my silly little blog and had it as a national headline in about 20 minutes.

If you were up at 3 am that evening, and this includes you, Joni… I would just like to say I am sorry that I accidentally killed Joni Mitchell on the internet.  Proof you can’t believe everything you read.

Clear Channel changes their name

I was ranting up a piece on Clear Channel and I saw they changed their name.  In short, let's just call that an admission of guilt.  Companies love to do this when they have a shit shit name in the marketplace.



Phillip Morris got a bad name for killing people with ciggies.  Then, they got a worse name when they were caught lying to Congress about the addictive properties about ciggies.  Then, their name got worse when a 60 minutes story blew up into an Al Pacino movie about them covering up their cover up.  So what do you do?  Change your name to something pretty.  They are now Altria.  It sounds like a air freshener.  Problem solved about the killing people willingly and covering it up.  That was a bunch of meanies at Phillip Morris.

Blackwater... that was those mercenary guys who just killed people, right?  I mean a LOT of people, right?  Weren't they just, literally, Dick Cheney's asssain squad in the middle east?  They sure were.  Problem is with the internet and technology, everyone knows they are not a 'security firm'.  They are murderous thug monster hit men for the US Govt.  Man, what jerks, right?  Good thing they are gone.  Now they are Academi.  Gee, that sounds nice.  Sounds like learning and stuff.  I guess we had them all wrong.

Comcast was one of the few companies to be the most hated company in America two years running.  Comcast was/is more hated than the IRS, and I am serious on that.  They were known for poor service, monopolistic pricing, and a general apathy towards customers.  Here, just watch this.



Man, what a bunch of assholes, right?  Nope.  They are Xfinity now.  Yay, I think they make space legos or something.

Remember Qwest?  They were the really mean phone company that bought out the apathetic and useless US West.  Qwest stormed into Denver and put their bright blue logo on our tallest buildings.  They left that logo light on all night.  We all fucking hated it.  You could literally see it from Red Rocks.  Anyhow, they are all in jail now.  and Qwest is gone.  They are now Century Link.  That just sounds like two benevolent bankers hugging, a la 'it's a Wonderful Life'

Remember Clear Channel, those dicks that bought up every single radio station in the US?  Remember how they took a ton of shit when people found out they eliminated all local DJs, and basically ran the country from a building in Denver?  Remember how they spent a good 12 years trying to make Peter Gabriel relevant again... by playing that Afro Celt System song 27 times a day for all those years?  Who the hell is 'Afro Celt Sound System', anyway?  Remember how they took a ton of shit for censoring about 130 songs after 9/11 because they thought you couldn't handle it?  Remember how they got nailed in a big payola/concert scandal with Live Nation?   The two together were telling bands 'play our shitty event, for no money, or you don't get played on our stations... which is all of them'.  Oops, not one lawsuit.... but 22 of them.

Do you remember when it got weird when you realized up and down the dial, even no matter what genre you cross... you were listening to a Clear Channel station?  Remember when the story leaked that Clear Channel was a super religious fundy organization... owned by Mitt Romney?  Don't worry, those aholes are gone.  It is now 'I heart media'.

Sadly, those are all just off the top of my head.  Here are some companies that oughta consider it - British Petroleum, Dish, and Guns and Roses.

String Cheese Incident - appendix piece

Start here, first.  It will make more sense.

String Cheese Incident, of Boulder Colorado, fought a big and nasty and noble fight against Ticketmaster and their fees... here is how.  SCI didn't want fans to have to pay $23 fees on a $60 concert ticket.  As we learned from Pearl Jam's ugly and totally unsuccessful war against TM, you can't negotiate with them.  Here is what SCI proposed to do.  It used to be forever that there was only one way around Tm and their fees; you could go straight to the box office in person and avoid all fees.  You only paid the face value of a ticket.

SCI said (I am paraphrasing here) since you won't negotiate with us, we are going to bankroll fans to go to the box office and buy up half the seats at face value.  We will then buy those tickets back from them and sell them ourselves with only a $3 fee.  This is beyond brilliant, it is also noble and crazy.  If they felt they had the demand, they would buy 100% of the tickets for a show sending people to buy them in person and avoid all fees... then redistribute them ourselves.  It is beating TM at their own game.  How did TM respond?  You can no longer avoid service fees by going to the box office.  In fact, in researching ticket prices for an Iron Maiden show, I learned I had to pay MORE at the box office than if I bought them online.  Wrap your head around that one.

Ok, now I have to bring this piece up.  Consider this an annex to the appendix.  This is tangent adjacent.  I went to buy tickets for an Iron Maiden show.  The $18 lawn seat cost me $32.  I drove my ass to the box office (in the anecdote above) and found out there was no way for me to buy an $18 ticket.  A month after I bought those tickets (but still a month before the actual concert) TM/Live Nation announced 'service fee free summer'.  They so proudly let everyone know that for ALL shows at Fiddlers Green there would be NO fees.  You fuckers!  You did this after I (and most others) had bought tickets.  I wanted my $14 per ticket back.  I logged on to see if I could get a refund (I knew the answer would be no, but I was steaming bad) and the 'face value' for the tickets doubled.  The day before they so generously announced no service fees, they bumped lawn seats up to $36 a piece. 

It was now MORE expensive to buy the seats without the service fees.  That is beyond evil.

Welcome - This site is to serve solely as an appendix/companion site to my music writing site.  Please start here.