Rant and Rave Blog

A fair and balanced compendium of spontaneous exclamations and excited utterances, with 22 entries on the front page.

And, now, Home of the YATSASS™ Reports

Yet Another True Story About Stupid Studies:

• Oliver Twist Was Well Fed

• Breathing Bus Exhaust is Stressful

• Depressed People May Take Drugs To Feel Better

• Smart healthy people choose foods more wisely than stupid drunks

• Stressed Out Moms Think Their Babies Are Annoying

• People Are Groggy When They Wake Up

• Exercise is Good For You

• Airport Screeners Probably Can't Stop Spread of SARS & Flu

• Study on Studies Yields Disappointment!

• Kids Imitate Their Parents!

• Lengthy Study with No Findings! A perfect YATSASS!

• Making Fun Of Fat Kids Depresses Them

• Drinking Highly Sugared Beverages Can Make You Fat!

• Americans Prefer Safe & Effective Drugs to Unproven and Dangerous Ones

• Study Shows Poor & Homeless Drink More Malt Liquor

• Study on People in Studies Yields Predictable Answers, But Also Raises New Questions

• Women Don't Like Getting Up to Feed the Newborn While Their Husbands Sleep Like Babies

• Sperm Levels Drop With Frequent Ejaculation

• People Who Don't Screw Around Get Less Clap

• Swimming Can Cause Fluid Build-Up in Lungs

• People Who Eat A Proper Diet are Healthier and Thinner

• People who don't wet their pants feel better than people who do

• Maybe Left Handed Winter Babies have More Brain Cancer, Maybe Not...

• People who had nose jobs and people who didn't both like the same kind of noses

• People pass more gas when they are active

• Kids who spend too much time reading will get headaches

• People who get drunk think others are more attractive than they do when they're sober

In the old days, My thoughts were more coherent, and I could string together whole sequences of actual paragraphs! Those essays can be found here for those so interested.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Posted 1:06 PM

Oh, poor, poor Trent...

Reznor: Manager Duped Me Into Bad Contract
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer Mon May 16, 7:58 PM ET NEW YORK

Alternative-rocker Trent Reznor testified Monday against his longtime manager, saying he was stunned to learn in 2003 that despite millions of dollars in earnings by his band, Nine Inch Nails, he was left with as little as $400,000 in cash.

'I felt I had an accountant I could trust,' he said in his federal civil lawsuit against John Malm. Reznor contends that his former friend duped him into signing a contract that allowed Malm to collect 20 percent of the singer's gross earnings rather than net earnings.

Oh, please, give me a break. You can't get duped into signing a contract. Either you sign it or you don't. If you don't go out and get advice independent from the guy who hands you the contract then you are an idiot, and don't deserve to even have the estate of 3 million and cash of $400,000 that you are whining about.

Further, how long did you work with this guy, under this agreement? Like 25 years? And the way I get it, John Malm wasn't just an accountant, he was your manager, dude!

John was the business guy, and I was the guy working for nothing in the studio," Reznor told jurors. He said the pair created their own production company and managed sales of merchandise

Uh, huh. Working for nothing in the studio. Never got a cent, right. Greedy bastard "accountant" took it all! Listen Trent, 20% of gross for what your friend did for you is pretty much par for the course. There's not alot of managers who'll do half as much for you for less than 20%. This, from a 1996 interview

Q: What's the lowest point of music has led you to?

A: When I dropped out of college, which would have been the year of '84, I spent a year doing nothing. I lived with my dad out in the woods. And I was playing with cover bands. Three hundred bucks a week. It was the most whorish part of my career so far. I played keyboards and sang. My destiny was lounge bands.

Q: So how did you break away?

A:I moved to Cleveland, because the band I was playing in was there a lot. There was a music store that had all the high-tech synthesizers and sequencers that were coming out. I was there all the time. They offered me a job. Ten to six, every day. Hearing 20 people bang on drum machines.

One of the guys that also worked in this store was in a synth-poppy, all original band called Exotic Birds. I got a job with them as a keyboard player. The band eventually became me playing all the keyboards, the main guy writing the songs, singing and playing guitar, and Chris Vrenna, my current drummer, playing drums. That's also when I met my manager, John Malm.

Q: Had you written a single song, at that point?

A: No, I hadn't written anything...

OK, a dumbass, college dropout working in a music store, who hasn't written a freakin' song in his life...

and this...

Despite your loner reputation, you seem to develop strong personal loyalties, including a group of people, from your manager to Gary Talpas who doesn your artwork, who go back to the early Cleveland days.

It's been nice to see the people who started off on a lower level kind of rise. We use the same manager, the same booking agent we had from the first tour, the same road manager (up to this tour). The same soundman, since the beginning. Even if it's sometimes gotten us fucked over, because everyone else in the business is bullshit, I'd rather be around straight-up, no-bullshit guys like [manager] John [Malm]. Personally, though, I'm still a mess.

But here's the parts I love best. Reznor is actually trying to convince a jury that most managers work for 20% of the net. A jury may believe that, they believed OJ and Blake. But it ain't true. A manager always commissions the gross. A manager can only control the gross. It is the artist who determines the net; as in "I want a private jet," I wan't my own limo," "I want to stay only at Ritz-Carlton," "I want the stage to move and turn and the lights to go blah blah blah... and I come in standing on two white stallions ..."

Yeah, sure - I'll take a piece of that net... But here's the best part, again, Trent said this:

It was not pleasant discovering you have a 10th as much as you've been told you have," Reznor said, later explaining that he started to fully comprehend his financial situation several years ago, after tackling his addiction to drugs and alcohol.

Kind of reminds me of Nigel Tufnel: "Well I'm sure I'd be more upset if I weren't so heavily sedated." Yeah, I'll bet it was a real downer, dude.

Let's recap: a drug addicted, alcoholic, bi-polar college drop out comes out of a self induced coma after 25 years of behavior that would make Caligula blush and somehow all his money is gone (except he does have 3.5 million dollars...)

Hey Trent! Happy Effin' Birthday man - I just heard you turned 40 today! Kind of like Bob DeNiro said to Charles Grodin in Midnight Run "I got two words for you:"

GROW THE EFF UP!

- 30 -

© 2002-2008 Rob Falk, All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Denied.
Your mileage won't vary; it will be less.

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