
(Gladys Vega/WireImage/Getty Images)
(Gladys Vega/WireImage/Getty Images)
It's been three months since the music industry paused for a day of reflection in the wake of the police killing of GEORGE FLOYD, and the two women who set BLACKOUT TUESDAY in motion have made it clear they're going to hold the industry to account for promises made in the wake of that self-inflicted timeout. On Wednesday, the three-month anniversary, JAMILA THOMAS of ATLANTIC RECORDS and BRIANNA AGYEMANG of the artist-services company PLATOON laid out a set of demands for any "company that conducts business in the world of Black music," on behalf of their platform, THE SHOW MUST BE PAUSED. It's a smart list. It's long and it asks for serious work and demonstrable progress, but every item seems reasonable and achievable. Nothing pie-in-the-sky, nothing radical. No one's being asked to give artists their masters back. No one's being asked to resign. They're being asked to provide health insurance benefits to artists and road crews. They're being asked to address internal pay disparities and convert long-term temp jobs to staff jobs. They're being asked to diversify their C-suites and provide concrete timelines for doing so. They're being asked to add anti-racism and anti-sexism clauses to touring contracts. They're being asked to actively recruit Black employees and to make internships available to people who aren't in college. They're being asked to contribute to social justice causes and give employees to time off for "community-facing programming." It's a long list of change-begins-at-home asks. To put it in terms of politics, this isn't a campaign for the White House. It's a campaign for city halls and state houses. And like an employer laying out a plan of action for an employee, Thomas and Agyemang are also asking for paperwork: regular reports to The Show Must Be Paused on how this is all going. There are asks for both annual and quarterly reports. There are asks for active participation in The Show Must Be Paused. There are lots of opportunities for a record company or a promoter or a management company or an agency to say "sorry, but no" or "this is a little too much" or to gently push back. (Can you afford all that new health insurance? Can your employees and artists afford not having that health insurance?) But I can't imagine a significant music company responding with a blanket no, or not even responding. I'm pretty sure everyone understands that's not an option anymore. Right? Right??... A dozen Black indie promoters whose clients have included JAY-Z, MARY J. BLIGE, SNOOP DOGG and STEVIE WONDERh ave joined forces as the BLACK PROMOTERS COLLECTIVE... The New York Times' JOE COSCARELLI goes one-on-one with 6IX9INE, who does not give a f*** and who may not even know how to give a f***, which I offer neither as compliment nor criticism, just observation. Q: "Why not try to be more thoughtful in your music"? A: "My fans don’t want that. You don’t go to MCDONALD’S and get filet mignon"... The stone wall that surrounds GRACELAND was tagged Monday night/Tuesday morning with a combination of BLACK LIVES MATTER and QANON graffiti that pissed off most of Memphis while allowing news orgs to tilt their coverage of the vandalism in whichever direction best suited their needs... DAVE, LITTLE SIMZ and JAMIE CULLUM won IVOR NOVELLO AWARDS, and JOAN ARMATRADING was recognized for lifetime achievement... Your audio on ZOOM, you can make it better... RIP IAN MITCHELL and BOBBY ENGEL... RIP also the amazin' TOM SEAVER, who, for the purposes of this newsletter, was the younger brother of KATIE SEAVER, who in the mid-1950s dated a STANFORD classmate named DAVE GUARD. Her parents introduced Guard to this song, which he would record a few years later with his band, the KINGSTON TRIO, for a blockbuster debut album that would end up spending nearly four years on the BILLBOARD album chart. The DARK SIDE OF THE MOON of its era. Eleven years after that album came out, young Tom Seaver would lead the most amazin' baseball team that ever played the game to the most amazin' World Series championship that ever was. In his honor, this is a song, too, written by RUTH ROBERTS—who also, by the way, wrote this—and BILL KATZ.