domination
a memo from your c.e.o
dear dogandponyshow shareholder,

please find enclosed minutes of record company meeting 28.04.00. acting in your interests i insisted on a full conference-room round-table of directors, senior management and accountants and immediately expelled from this room anyone with any interest whatsoever in any 'artistic' aspect of my music.

MINUTES OF MEETING 28th April 2000

DP CEO
: Is that tea-boy A&R gimp out of here?

Chairman of the Board: Calm down, he's going. He's going..

DP CEO: Just they make me kinda .. queasy. I appreciate this is not orthodox, gentlemen. Most people would rather avoid a look at the abattoir when they buy a pack of sausages.

Chairman of the Board: Now..your CD..very exciting..we're excited

DP CEO: Personally, my wiener tastes a lot sweeter when I pop a bolt into the old boar myself, har har..

Chairman of the Board: Quite. I believe you have been approached by several other companies.
DP CEO: Ex-companies. Our business is struggling to adapt in a brave new world, gentlemen.  The nature of our business is changing. The nature of change is changing. Everything is now uprooted and up for grabs.

Head of Royalties:
You can rest assured your material will come out in all the latest formats.

DP CEO (leaning forward): All around industry heavyweights panic, consolidate, get tripped up and kicked in the pants by marauding gangs of dot com boot boys. Copyright law is a mere series of loopholes held together by tiny lumps of grey area. Leaner, smarter players are leaping though these loopholes, with two fingers up to companies like yours.  In short, we are being sucked and bashed around in whirlpool of pig-ugly flux.

Head of Copyright
: We like what you're doing musically. It's edgy .. refreshing ..

DP CEO
(banging table): Boring ! Bor - ing !

Chairman Of The Board
: You'll find we're a label the public trust. Many of these johnny-come-quicklies will soon fall to the wayside..

DP CEO
: Jeez louise, gentlemen.. under the wayside, there's a fast-track. The old fast-track  - congested by dinosaurs. In the future, for example, parents may be able to choose how many ears their children have. Your entire catalogue may become inaudible as we evolve from meat structures into a more gas-like state. How many people do you have working on these problems?

Head of Product: Well .. none.

DP CEO: Cowboys! Philistines!..Consider the fate of the full string orchestra, it downsized into a big band and a jazz ensemble. From there it downsized again into the rock group, the synth duo, the DJ. It won't stop there, gentlemen.
Popular music is now refracting inside the collective brain of an Ubernet of Supermakers, Masterconsumers. E-roadies. There lies an instant between composition and consumption. Soon these will merge into instinct..  reflex. One organism.. pulsing... moving...

Chairman of the Board: Please sit down.

DP CEO: ..dancing to it's own unfettered bio-rhythms.

Senior Accountan
t (struggling): Take your hands off my shoulders!

DP CE
O: Like any organism, it's sole purpose - constant sexual re-creation. A dog and pony show, gentlemen, a dog and pony show.

Head of Product
: Oh God no..jesus..no..

{
The following item has been struck from the agenda}

Chairman of the Board
(angrily):  You obviously have no interest in contracts or in negotiation. State your business.
DP CEO (lying on table, lighting a cigar): As an intellectual copyright whizzkid I saw the need for a dynamic new currency. It is already established and called the 'Pony'. It is pan-territory and digital. I have them all and everyone else has none whatsoever.

Senior Accountant:
The World Bank will never recognise such a..

DP CEO (rising): My purchase of which went through this morning. As did -

Chairman of the Board
: Quite insane!

DP CEO
(kicking papers off the table): - my purchase of this company. Don't bother clearing your desks, gentlemen.

Chairman of the Board: What gives you the authority to come galloping in he -

DP CEO (to intercom) :  Wayne, we seem to have a little unpleasantness in the boardroom.

Wayne
: Right away, Mr Ponyshow, sir

The Board: Wha - ?

Wayne, the tea-boy A&R, re-enters dressed as a Nazi stormtrooper. Behind him are Zimbabwean mercenaries waving Kalashnikov rifles.


DP CEO: This is an old-fashioned take-over, gentlemen.  Wayne - break 'em down, strip and examine their assets. Then, I think, an aggressive foreign merger through the backdoor.

Wayne: With pleasure, DP !!
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