List fails without Kurt Cobain. Now that was a "fark You!". Or did Courtney do that?

List fails by not having Neil Young recording a rockabilly album after the suits told him to make a "rock-n-roll" album.

Jumpin Jbot: List fails by not having Neil Young recording a rockabilly album after the suits told him to make a "rock-n-roll" album.

It's not an all-inclusive list. And all of the entries sound like they're better than your example.

/ old skool, biatches

FASTERISKCK YOUs?

I thought Sandinista! was The Clash's "Fark You" record.

I didn't know Wilco did that before Radiohead? Very cool.

Queen - "Death on Two Legs"

Didn't Prince change his name to that symbol to get out of a record deal?

No Metal Machine Music?

Gonzee: Didn't Prince change his name to that symbol to get out of a record deal?

I thought it was for taxes.

veedeevadeevoodee: / old skool, biatches

Context

Johnny Cash was having a great revival in the late 90s. Great recordings, critical acclaim, decent sales, and absolutely ZERO airplay. The "country" stations, as always, were bombarding us with bad pop music.

So Cash's producer, Rick Rubin, took out a full-page ad in Billboard:

Gonzee: Didn't Prince change his name to that symbol to get out of a record deal?

Not quite. He was pissed at Warner Bros. records for farking with his music, so he changed his name to make it harder for them to print cd labels and albums and to use in print media, because they had to design and commission a special font to print the symbol. Warner had to send a floppy disc to everyone they wanted to use the symbol. Later he put out as much crap as possible ("Chaos and Disorder") to get out of the contract before doing "Emancipation", when he changed his name back.

/prince fan
//from his first album "For You", where he looked like a girl

Jumpin Jbot: List fails by not having Neil Young recording a rockabilly album after the suits told him to make a "rock-n-roll" album.

Apocryphal. Young signed a deal with David Geffen, and made sure he could release whatever he wanted; Geffen assumed this meant more country and rock records, like the ones he'd been putting out for years, which kept him out of any neat genre. Instead, Young embarked on the weirdest period of his career, one in which the rockabilly record was really the most "normal" album he made, and a record with the Blue Notes was the best.

Geffen ended up suing Young for turning in "uncommercial" work. Neil pointed out that his contract let him release whatever he wanted.

It wasn't Geffen's first run-in with a truly weird talent (he thought he could work with anyone): he signed Bob Dylan to Asylum in the 1970s, resulting in truly beautiful and deeply weird "Planet Waves" album. No one was happy with the sales, so Dylan gave Geffen a live album to fulfill his contract and headed for the door.

In the meantime, Columbia (Dylan's old label) had put out an album of outtakes and covers Dylan never meant to release, including "Big Yellow Taxi". Dylan sued, and the record was pulled from the market.

When all the dust settled, Dylan re-signed with Columbia, leaving Geffen (and many others) wondering if it all hadn't been a clever tactic by Dylan to get a better deal with his label.

jaytkay: veedeevadeevoodee: / old skool, biatches

Context

Johnny Cash was having a great revival in the late 90s. Great recordings, critical acclaim, decent sales, and absolutely ZERO airplay. The "country" stations, as always, were bombarding us with bad pop music.

So Cash's producer, Rick Rubin, took out a full-page ad in Billboard:
[lh4.googleusercontent.com image 478x640]

Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson are in the same boat.

Neither one cares.

Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" had better be on that list..........

Another great story: Phil Spector was in business with a guy called Les. They had a company called Philles Records (their names together, not my hometown), and put out the records Spector produced.

Phil decided that he wanted to go solo, so he made Les' life a living hell until Les agree to sell out to Phil. Not content with his victory, Phil wrote and had the Ronnettes record a song. He registered the title and record number and had a thousand singles pressed, so that it was in every way an official Philles release. Instead of selling them, he destroyed most of them, leaving at least two copies, one for himself and one he sent to Les.

The song was called "Let's Dance the Screw (Parts 1 & 2)"

They screwed up for not mentioning The KLF. Big time.

Third_Uncle_Eno: Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" had better be on that list..........

It's never been clear if that really was a fark you or not on Reed's part; it didn't end his contract with RCA, and they put it out on their "Red Seal" (classical) label, indicating that it was taken seriously as "art".

Reed only claimed it was a giant fark you after it bombed completely. Even Lester Bangs wasn't sure what the real intent of it was.

Dwight_Yeast

Third_Uncle_Eno: Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" had better be on that list..........

It's never been clear if that really was a fark you or not on Reed's part; it didn't end his contract with RCA, and they put it out on their "Red Seal" (classical) label, indicating that it was taken seriously as "art".

Reed only claimed it was a giant fark you after it bombed completely. Even Lester Bangs wasn't sure what the real intent of it was.

Reed WANTED it to be put on RCA's classical label, but it ended up being on RCA's regular label.
( i saw an orig. 1975 copy for sale a few months ago at a record shop, and it was on the original RCA label - light beige background, black writing -. needless to say i didn't buy it because i didn't want to spend $20 for 4 sides of noise lol. well ok. 3 sides plus one side of infinity.)

Reed only claimed it was a giant fark you after it bombed completely.
this could be true, yes.

I remember reading a quote from Reed about it, from years later, (paraphrased, but very close)
"Yes, I was serious about it............ but I was also incredibly F***ing high."

Third_Uncle_Eno: I remember reading a quote from Reed about it, from years later, (paraphrased, but very close)
"Yes, I was serious about it............ but I was also incredibly F***ing high."

That sounds about right. If you haven't read Bangs' essay on the album, I highly recommend it; it's better than the album itself.

J. Frank Parnell: They screwed up for not mentioning The KLF. Big time.

What did the KLF do to the music industry? I mean, don't get me wrong, burning a million quid is impressive, but I'm not sure that affected their label at all. Especially since they WERE their own label. Unless that's what you meant, in which case

Trans.

/that is all.

Honourable Mention?

XTC went on strike after the release of Nonsuch (the one with The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, which many people know as a Crash Test Dummies song.) It took nearly 7 years of not giving the label anything to release before they could get out of their contract with Virgin Records. Apparently, the turning point for the band was Virgin's revocation of the PR push behind the would-be single, "Wrapped in Grey." The label ordered all copies returned and destroyed after they belatedly decided that the single wouldn't chart.

2112?

fusillade762: What did the KLF do to the music industry?

This will give you a better idea than the wiki page.

doglover: Who the hell is wilco?

ex. Uncle Tupelo

Oh, and one thing the wiki and that article curiously fail to mention is KLF stands for Kopyright Liberation Front. So from the start they were giving a big fark you to the record industry.

This list could easily be 30 items long. And yet there are people who still think record companies are the good guys.

No Cee-Lo?

Tom Petty threatening to name his album "the $8.98 Album" so his label couldn't raise it a buck. They caved.

akula: His "The Last DJ" album was pretty scathing to the music industry too. Not economically screwing record labels, though. Unsurprisingly, it still got just about no play on the radio.

And he has good reason to be ticked at the record label, he record Full Moon Fever, and the label didn't like it. Petty came back six months later, with the exact same album, nothing had been re-recorded, remixed, nothing. And the label loved it.

J. Frank Parnell: Oh, and one thing the wiki and that article curiously fail to mention is KLF stands for Kopyright Liberation Front. So from the start they were giving a big fark you to the record industry.

Except in a sort of Dada sense, making the music industry (radio, distro companies, etc) a boatload of cash and then burning the very small amount their music made for them was not a particularly clever or well though-out "fark You" to the industry.

It reminds me of Moriarty's clever but not particularly well-thought out plan to elude capture in the last episode of Sherlock.

akula: His "The Last DJ" album was pretty scathing to the music industry too. Not economically screwing record labels, though. Unsurprisingly, it still got just about no play on the radio.

He made it knowing it was going to get no airplay, as his previous album hadn't, either. The last album of his that did was Wallflowers.

Michael Jackson growing up as a beloved child star, releasing two gems with Quincy Jones, following up the best selling album ever with an album that had the most #1 singles, then crafting a harder sound for the 90s before completely losing touch with reality... all the while butchering his face, confounding the public, maintaining questionable relationships with children, progressively ruining his career before finally succumbing to drug addiction and dying while mounting his last chance comeback?
/Actually, this just sold more records.

The Writ by Black Sabbath.

Dwight_Yeast [TotalFark]



Third_Uncle_Eno: I remember reading a quote from Reed about it, from years later, (paraphrased, but very close)
"Yes, I was serious about it............ but I was also incredibly F***ing high."

That sounds about right. If you haven't read Bangs' essay on the album, I highly recommend it; it's better than the album itself.

hmmm. it rings a bell. I think i only read the title tho...... "the greatest album in the history of the human eardrum" or something.

WhyteRaven74: This list could easily be 30 items long. And yet there are people who still think record companies are the good guys.

This is what gets me. Obama included the topic quickly in his address the other week. It's gone entirely too far.

The people, by and large, are ignorant. The media(and now apparently even the president is to blame) They call it theft, and at first glance, it can appear be similar, ergo, that's what the public thinks, despite the analogy to real world trade goods being completely broken, it gets by under the radar.

This great nation, who, in it's infancy, loved the idea of sharing art, so much so that they printed artistic pieces on money, and established libraries in everything but 1 horse towns, now is bought out by the professional middlemen(read: organized crime members) that flesh out the industry as a whole. No free art, ever, unless it's so old and already so well known as to not be highly popular.(And some of that even is still under "protection".)

Disturbing really. Instead of handing out culture, they're charging for it. How long before it's no longer accessible to everyone? That is after all, the anti-thesis to what made this country great in the past.

This whole idea of making infinite amounts of money from a single and isolated work is absurd, especially when it's not even the artist making the infinite money, but the owner of the "rights".

IMO, call the internet a library. Ad support the overhead, and call it a day. Only charge for new works, and under a strict time limit. After that, it's communal property for viewing.
(re-sale is a whole other ball of wax, people without the right who did no work are pulling in actual money over that work, and things like the RIAA are pissed..."We were doing this first, go find another con!"..

/grumbles

Dwight_Yeast [TotalFark]



akula: His "The Last DJ" album was pretty scathing to the music industry too. Not economically screwing record labels, though. Unsurprisingly, it still got just about no play on the radio.

He made it knowing it was going to get no airplay, as his previous album hadn't, either. The last album of his that did was Wallflowers.

haha, sorry i'm 'calling' you on another thing,

but

his 'previous album' ( "Echo" from 1999) (between "wallflowers" and "last dj") had two hits, maybe three hits. not big hits, but hits nonetheless, all got airplay.
"Free Girl Now", "Swingin'", "Room at the Top"


/funny, i was just listening to "Wildflowers" while washing dishes this evening. great album. great roadtrip album.