More than I'll ever make

From the Financial Times Online (via Tom Lefsetz)

Warner Music executives net $21m
By Tim Burt in London
Published: February 20 2005

Warner Music, the former subsidiary of Time Warner, paid its top five executives more than $21m in salary and bonuses following last year's $2.6bn acquisition of the US music group by a private equity consortium.

The pay-outs include further guaranteed bonuses or change of control payments at the world's fourth-largest music groupboasting 38,000 artists including Green Day, Linkin Park and Madonna.

According to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, last year's total executive remuneration was more than three times higher than Warner Music's $7m operating income for the 10 months to September 30.

In that period, the company reversed previous operating losses of $197m as sales increased from $2.49bn to $2.55bn.

The management payments reflect Warner's success in cutting costs following last year's completion of the Time Warner disposal. The company expects to deliver $250m of annualised savings by May this year, achieved mainly through 1,600 job losses.

Of the top management, Edgar Bronfman Jr, the chairman who led last year's buy-out, received a $1m salary and $5.25m bonus. Paul Rene Albertini, head of Warner's international operations, was paid $1.25m in salary and a $3.15m bonus.

Lyor Cohen, head of the US recorded music business, received $1m and $5.24m respectively. Les Bider, the veteran chairman of the Warner Chappell music publishing business, received a $2.44m total payment.

The SEC document, filed as part of a $565m bond exchange offer by Warner Music, also reveals misgivings by outside auditors over internal accounting skills and royalty payment systems.

In its "S4" filing, Warner insists it has addressed problem areas such as appointing a permanent chief financial officer and establishing an audit committee.

But the company admits "additional measures will be necessary and these measures along with other measures we expect to take to improve our internal controls may not be sufficient to address the issues identified by our outside auditors".

Warner Music explained that these further measures would involve setting up financial controls and management systems that were previously handled by Time Warner, its former parent company, but were absent in the demerged company.

The weaknesses were identified as Warner Music is considering a potential initial public offering in the first half of this year, expected to place a $5bn enterprise value on the company.

The audit concerns do not relate to executive remuneration.

LEMUR heads west

This looks like fun:

The Beall Center for Art and Technology
presents

*JazzBot *

A performance of jazz piano and robotic musical instruments
Featuring Kei Akagi, piano

Wednesday March 9, 6:00 PM - FREE

Beall Center for Art and Technology
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
University of California, Irvine

Jazz pianist Kei Akagi of the UCI Music Department will give a brief performance in live interaction with a collection of robotic musical instruments. The robotic instruments, designed by LEMUR (the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots), are currently installed as an exhibition in the Beall Center for Art and Technology. Mr. Akagi will provide a demonstration of realtime musical interaction between man and machines, using music composed by, and musically intelligent robotic behavior programmed by, UCI professor Christopher Dobrian.

The 20-minute performance will be followed by a question-and-answer session with professors Akagi and Dobrian and LEMUR founder Eric Singer.

Seating is limited; for reservations phone (949) 824-4339.

Kei Akagi is professor of Jazz Composition and Performance in the UCI Music Department. Christopher Dobrian is professor of Composition and Technology, and director of the Gassmann Electronic Music Studio and the Realtime Audio Research Laboratory. The LEMUR exhibition is ongoing at the Beall Center through March 19, 2005.

Mr. Akagi will perform on a Yamaha Disklavier grand piano, with generous support from the Yamaha Corporation of America, the Gassmann Electronic Music Studio of UCI, and the Beall Center for Art and Technology.

My shortest post ever.

Play asteroids.

...and more words

The latest Star Chamber review is here. Not bad, though I have no idea who "Evan Fronos" or "Gorrell Smith" are.

Words...

My latest review: Guy Kulcevsek's Well Tampered Accordion.

Help this kid spit on himself (or avoid same)

I can't describe it any better than that.

The curmudgeon gets his comeuppance

Quick! If you hurry you can contribute to what promises to be a gargantuan bonfire of Pierre Boulez's works! And rest assured, it's all being done in accordance with the master's aesthetic precepts.

What am I talking about? It's the Pierre Boulez Project, of course.

Jazz: The Music of a Good Night's Rest?

Somehow I think that this article is actually talking about the most banal of smooth jazz. (From the headline: "Forget counting sheep, next time you are having trouble dropping off to sleep try putting on a jazz CD.")

A little overdue, methinks...

Sorry about the silence, things have been "hella-busy" (as they say in the backwoods of northern CA). (Not that that's where I am right now.) (Not that there would be anything wrong with that.) (I think I need one more parenthetical phrase here, but I'm all out at the moment.)

Anyway, here's some good news: the case of that idealistic biker guy was just dismissed! A little bit o' justice in a cruel cruel world.

The new IJG album is proceeding nicely... more news on this soon.

The devil's music

This is a funny read, though I completely disagree with the tired, tired implication:

MUSIC CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO MOUSE HEALTH

My mom gave us a "Baby Mozart" video for our daughter this Christmas, and there too, I resist the assumption that "classical" music (and Mozart somehow more than any other composer) promotes intelligence or makes a kid a genius or whatever. (What video did Mozart watch as a baby, I wonder?) For one thing, it's not "really" Mozart's music that is featured in the video, but a very watered-down version of same.

But how much more adventurous and interesting is the Boobah series. In one episode ("Record Player"), three sets of characters find three different records that play three different songs. Each song is played separately. Then, the characters find yet another record that plays all three pieces simultaneously, creating a glorious cacophony! Sort of "Baby Charles Ives."

It's art if you say it is, part 2

Marta de Menezes does interesting things at the intersection of biology and art. Check out the surgically altered live butterfly wings, fr'instance.

More words

My latest contribution to the All About Jazz smorgasbord: a review of Jean-Michel Pilc's disc, Follow Me.

The story of my life

If you've ever wondered what it takes to be a musician, Erik Satie lays it all out for you here.

Orwell, Kafka, and Bush

My neighbor's wife, who is in the military (as a reservist, I think), was recently sent to Guantanamo Bay. That's relative "good news" for her--at least "Gitmo" is not the horror of Iraq. Or maybe, as Richard Cohen suggested in the Washington Post yesterday, it's just Iraq without the carbombs.

Two great tastes...

CSPAN Karaoke! Why didn't anyone think of this combination before?

(Nota bene: when you get to the above page, you've got to click on "Idiomorphic software" to get to the feature.)

A little bit of code

From Ed Felten:

"TinyP2P is a functional peer-to-peer file sharing application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language. I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless."

Find it here.

Return of the Son of Space Invaders

Be on the lookout.

(If you find that site a little cryptic, here's a nice explanation.)

It's art if you say it is.

Or, how to make a living with roadkill.

Hey, Conservative Christians!

Interested in really living up to the tenets of your namesake?

1. Forget all that crap about whether or not political correctness has made us afraid to say the word "Christmas." (Though truthfully, the holiday committee has gotten Mr. Jesus's birthday all wrong. And by the way, is it just me, or does this sound like the most disgusting birthday cake ever?)

2. Stop buying all that creepy Veggie Tales propaganda for your kids. (Vegetables: good for eating, but do we really want to emulate them?)

3. Hell, skip a week or two of church this December.

Why? Because you can redirect all that energy into something useful: like doing for the U.S. Military what the U.S. Military should be doing for its own. That's right--send clothing to the wounded troops! Try to imagine what it must be like to spend Christmas sans clean underwear in a hospital ward in Germany, thousands of miles from your family and friends.

I got a rock

Give the RIAA and the MPAA coal for the holidays. They're dinosaurs, so what better gift than fossil fuel?