Thursday, June 16, 2005
Busting Mondo Kim's
Mondo Kim's popular music store in New York was busted last week for "bootlegging." Employees - these are "retail clerks" - were arrested & thrown in the slamma - treated like they were working for a mafia assembly line out of an old warehouse in Queens. The RIAA Enforcers were prepared to build up the bust the way Jersey State Police calculate marijuana raids - retail by the bone. But it turned out only 51 "mix tapes" were seized out of an inventory of 120,000 titles. Wow. Although the music "industry" claimed to be protecting musicians & consumers, you'd be hard-pressed to find any artist represented on a Nu Yawk mix-tape who says it's hurting business. In fact, it's a good, even necessary promotion to be featured on those things - which become obsolete after a week or two anyway in the flighty music club world.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
