Hello all,
I am in the middle of a very interesting book called "Rockonomics- The money behind the music" and i read that Alan Freed's own band, before becoming famous for the "rock and roll" term and the payola scandal, was actually called "Sultans of swing" mid 1940ies.
A very interesting book so far, gives new perspective to us, born after the first, second and third wave of rock (i was born during the Dada phase of rock - punk). It turns out that what i perceived as a matter of unbelievable originality and persistence combined with the necessary luck was nothing more than an carefully organized plan with lots of money backing it up (and the necessary luck to avoid the law, when you can't buy it) that helped Elvis (total sales of records over a BILLION!) and a few others (Sinatra etc) to shine above everybody else. Too bad...
I was thinking that Mark started making money from music rather late, so he had already built a strong character to see through things with modesty and surely was and still is aware of the situation. That is why he speaks of his accomplishments with modesty, referring to them as "happen to be there, lucky to be a hit, lots of other good music went unnoticed". Still wonder what kind of music we would be listening to, if history was left to be written with no interference and "help by ASCAP and BMI.
