Where do we sign again? Here? Right…. Now, we’re done. We’re not done? Freaking hell! You’ve already got our signatures sixty-seven times. Just copy the fuckers.
Everything by the book, that’s how these legal types are. Anyway… greetings and welcome to Big Green-land. We’re finalizing the terms of our forthcoming CD release (actually, it’s our second-coming release… we’ve got two more to go before we get to our fourth) entitled International House, and it’s important to get all the details straight. Except when it comes to really shmeensy details of the sort lawyers love to dive into. (They’re like hippos who joined a flee circus and are trying to dive into the little swimming pool.) Appendix this and codicil that; refer to paragraph 97, section vii; subsection 7a; insofar as the party of the second part shall render unto the party of the first part said sums as designated in paragraph 43
…. Damn! I’ll tell you, it’s all we musicians can do to keep up with the obsessions of the corporate paymasters who rule our asses. (Power to the people! Strike! Strike! Strike!)
Whoops… slipped into a Marxian trance for a moment. (Workers control the means of production…. ahem!) Okay, now I don’t think I’m a particularly unreasonable person. Certainly Marvin (my personal robot assistant) doesn’t think so, either. And I know that brother Matt is far less unreasonable than I am. John? He’s a saint among men. And yet we all seem to recognize that our label, Loathsome Prick Records, is being more than a little true to their name when it comes to getting credit on the album. They’re insisting on prominent acknowledgment, even though this is essentially a self-paid manufacturing job. (We’re mortgaging the most valuable thing we have…. Trevor James Constable’s patented orgone generating machine. Don’t tell Trevor James!) Now how asinine is that? And I’m not talking about a subtle plug – they want an entire panel of the CD cover…and an audio plug at the opening of the album! Here’s the copy they’ve proposed:
Big Green’s “International House” is brought to you by Loathsome Prick Records, the awesomest label in the world. Without us, these losers would suck in obscurity. Take it away! Fucking thing sucks!
I don’t know about you, but that strikes me as mildly insulting. And they want it read by some guy they know who sounds like Bill O’Reilly freaking out on Inside Edition. (It may even be O’Reilly, I don’t know…. they’ve got some connections.) Now, this wouldn’t be a problem… if we had a competent lawyer. Now when I 
say “competent”, I mean someone who understands the law in the 21st Century. With our limited budget, we’ve been relying on legal counsel from the law firm Lincoln, Anti-Lincoln, Zamboola, and Tuber. (I’ll spare you their T.V. jingle.) As you may have surmised, the only two “lawyers” here are honest Abe and his doppelganger (who, actually, never passed the bar… in fact, he’s never passed a bar in my experience without stopping for at least a couple of drinks). And their expertise is mostly in the context of 19th Century railway law. As for the other partners, well…. the less said the better.
So that’s where we stand… legal blackmail from our rapacious corporate label. Just one more way THE MAN keeps us down. Workers of the world UNITE! (Damn – there I go again. Pipe down, comrade!)
