INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT MORGAN
FRIDAY JULY 9TH - ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
FOR AMERICAN RUSE RECORDS
ARR-
At this stage of your career… you said you’ve been doing this since… 1961 you started playing guitar… What do you think about the music business? I mean, “the state of rock & roll”, or whatever you want to call it… A little sad right now I’d say. What are your thoughts?
SM-
I keep hearing the quotes about record sales being down $20 billion a year or something ridiculous… For it to be down $20 billion a year, means that it had to be up really high, like $60 billion, or I don’t know what it was, but... they’re selling a lot of records. They’re making a lot of money. But, I think the problem is, they’re not really trying to make good records, they’re trying to make records that’ll sell. I think that’s the whole problem.
ARR-
Have you got the solution? Where’s the magic bullet?
SM-
After a while, I think people are just going to get tired of paying money for crap. They’re going to want, come on you know! Don’t just give me some cooked up in the studio, expensive, crappy can of Campbell’s soup or something! Come up with something new, something good. Something with some imagination, something with some soul, some heart in it, something you believe in. Whatever.
ARR-
When do you think this whole trend…
SM-
It’s not just the record labels, it’s the whole thing. It’s the radio, and MTV, and corporate media, and corporate agencies. It’s just a big mafia of music business.
ARR-
I don’t understand, I guess, why things are the way they are.
SM-
Well, because for one thing, the people that run the business aren’t necessarily the people that love the music. At all levels. Let’s say you’re a journalist. You might not be able to make money as a journalist writing about what you like, you might have to write about whatever they tell you to write about. If you’re a DJ, you’re not picking those records, you’re not playing the records that you play in your car, or at home, you’re playing what you’re told to play. And I guess if you’re in A&R at a record label, you’re putting out the records that the suits approve of. So the people that really love the music aren’t making the decisions, and that’s a bad development in the music business.
ARR-
That leads me to another question… what do you think about the internet, and I guess not necessarily specifically MP3’s but the ability for any band anywhere to start advertising their music and getting exposure. What do you think about that?
SM-
It’s great.
ARR-
Do you have any problems with file sharing, of MP3’s?
SM-
No.
ARR-
You don’t have a problem when you go to Napster and look up your songs?
SM-
No. As a matter of fact we put our stuff on Napster.
ARR-
I’m the kind of guy that when I buy a record, I want the whole package.
SM-
Exactly. This is the Alanis Morissette theory. And it all holds up, and everybody knows it’s true in the music business, that she makes a record for her corporate record label, she’s going to get a get a dollar for every copy. OK? Fine, that’s all fine, that’s cool. But if she does a concert somewhere, she’s going to make a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and sell maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars of her merch. And it’s all her money. So, to her, and I think the Grateful Dead will look at it the same way, and a lot of other bands, it’s really to their advantage to have people know their music, even if they get it for free, because they’re going to come see the band, they’re going to be fans.
ARR-
What do you think of people taping shows?
SM-
Fine, I just want a tape.
ARR-
Obviously not for resale.
SM-
No, no. We’re talking about sharing, file swapping, that sort of thing. It’s just like if you made me a cassette, what’s illegal about that? If you made a cassette of your favorite music, or I did the same for you, I don’t get it… why should that be illegal? It’s just stupid. It doesn’t make any sense!
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The complete interview can be found here, and if you want to download an MP3 file of the interview (hahahah!!!) you can click here to download it.
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