You Can Shoot a Cannonball Through Here

These tough economic times remind me of the music industry's technologically fueled meltdown of the late-90's. With the music industry undergoing moments of great upheaval, venerable labels and label-heads were seeing their days drawing to an ignominious close. This was of course driven by the rampant free file-sharing services like Napster with which the music industry had no idea how to deal, a statement that incredibly is still true to some extent today (itunes notwithstanding). For the purposes of this post, it's worth noting that EMI Records, a well-known imprint of the record label EMI, had ceased operations in the late 90's. A massive restructuring was taking place within EMI effecting all of its labels and imprint labels including Blue Note Recods the legendary jazz label.

At Arkadia Jazz we, of course, felt this industry shift as well but being a Jazz label (Jazz as a genre only represented 2.5% of the industry's sales) we didn't feel it quite that much. Jerrold, Arkadia's promotions man was a fairly well connected cat in the Jazz world. A former Duke Ellington band manager/gofer/administrator and adopted Grandson of legendary jazz bassist Milt Hinton, Jerrold was a man with notable chops in the jazz world. This stature and name helped carry him into the world of artist management, a nice side gig to augment the meager salary he drew from Arkadia. I, however, did not have any "cred" in the jazz world or in the New York City music scene for that matter. With interest in having side gigs of my own, I found myself riding Jerrold's coattails deeper into Jazz in order to perhaps get some artist management business of my own started. With Jerrold welcoming me along (probably thinking that he was already expanding his "staff") we left the Arkadia offices on 23rd street for the lush Blue Note offices around the corner on Park Avenue South. Blue Note, celebrating it's 60th year of business at the time, was still a strong brand in jazz and in music but with the EMI restructing taking place they were a calm oasis amongst the turbulence of change. Blue Note/EMI's building entrance was not much to look at but once on their floor, the large sunny office with bright windows nearly took our breath away. The Arkadia offices only had windows in the front of the office with the back covered by industrial-strength metal window shutters that offered no glimpse of the building's courtyard or outside.

Mark Shim, a young tenor saxophonist, was Jerrold's property at the moment and our meeting was with Mr. Shim himself and a Blue Note/EMI label rep. After passing through reception we traversed the wide open expansive spaces of Blue Note/EMI to a small conference room in the back corner. This long walk took us through all of the former EMI Records areas that were now vacant save stray bits of office supplies and empty jewel cases. We navigated row upon row of vacant cubicles and empty desk chairs to find Mr. Shim and the young, attractive African-American woman who served as his label rep. The meeting went fine, but the atmosphere in that office made us feel like we were having a meeting in a desolate abandoned office furnitrue warehouse. Evidence of the EMI layoff casualties was like crossing a battlefield recently vacated by soldiers both living and dead. Upon leaving the meeting and heading for the elevators, Jerrold and I felt compelled to keep our voices down (no small feat for the loquacious Jerrold) in this large quite space which now reminded us of a library. At reception I looked back through the transparent doors into the office and could detect wispy shadows in the far ends of the office beyond the empty spaces.