After trying to dodge the thing Frogger-style, I finally read the (third? 700th?) George Steel profile in the Times. All I will say is that in the piece, he’s compared to The President of the United States of America, “another newcomer to a tough job in a time of crisis.” I wonder when publicists will start comparing artists to Obama in their press releases. I’m sure it’s already happened.
I was forwarded an e mail about a new classical music gossip site called The Cereal List. Despite the fact that my readers did not seem to get behind Pitch Snitch, ahem, I remain convinced that more gossipy blogs – notably OperaChic and Parterre Box – are some of the best things in the industry. Unfortunately, the introduction e mail to The Cereal List included a fake teaser about Cecilia Bartoli hooking up with Joshua Bell, calling it “an Ashton and Demi thing” (Mmm…Google it: Bartoli is about one year older than Bell). Additionally, this intro e mail was sent from the super secret aspiring gossip columnist’s Personal E mail Address, which is really amazing. These big little initial missteps don’t inspire much confidence, and I’m not entirely sure how (if?) they’re going to fact-check, but take a gander and decide for yourselves.
Not unsurprisingly, One Hundred people forwarded me the news of the Streisand Village Vanguard concert a couple weeks back. First, it’s genius because I actually thought you had to pre-order the CD to enter to win tickets, but there’s small print that says you don’t. Point is, had my sister not corrected me, ~17 copies of Love is the Answer would have arrived (for different names) at my doorstep. That is some good, trixy marketing. However, my intern Nate took a close look at the rules (and nooo, I did not make him do that as part of his job) and found this oddity: Any potential winner who resides in Canada will first be required to
correctly answer a skill-testing (arithmetical) question as a condition
of winning.
What now? I mean, how’s that?
Something like this, maybe:
A cruise ship sinks in the Atlantic and half of the survivors make it to a desert island. There are enough copies of The Way We Were to last 14 people 2 weeks. 4 days later, the ship sent to rescue the survivors also sinks, drowning 6.5 crew members and 33 Color Me Barbra records, leaving an
additional 7 people stranded on the island to now share the 1 copy of Streisand Superman. The Art obviously has to be re-rationed, but everyone is now on half of the original ration, so how many days in total from the day of the original sinking would it take for a shipment of Yentl DVDs to reach the island?
This is due to some silly archaic law that we have in Canada which prohibits betting and lotteries (aside from casinos, government-controlled lotteries, and a few other exceptions) but does not disallow prizes awarded for “contests of skill”. So all competitions and lotteries with prizes have to include some sort of ‘skill test’ to make them legal. We Canucks are all very accustomed to them! The typical question is something like this:
(4 + 16) / 5 = __ ?
Similarly in the US–the reason they can’t make you buy the record to win the tix is that that would be a betting operation. No, it doesn’t make sense when there are (as in Canada) so many exceptions, including Off-Track Betting, state lotteries, casinos, and (here in California) card rooms where you can play draw poker and low-ball–games of skill, you understand, like chess or Go–but not stud poker or blackjack which are mere games of chance. Go figure.
Come on, didn’t you at least get a chuckle out of those Naxos covers — and that Gheorghiu clip?
Amanda! Why so discreet?? I’m disappointed. These people are making it their jobs to embarrass other people, and you won’t post his name? Boo. Well, the e mail was forwarded to me too and I have no problem telling LAP readers that it’s Brian Sacawa, “concert saxophonist”. Concert saxophonist who apparently has a lot free time on his hands (bitter, much?). Sacawa is the “writer” who calls himself “Miss Information” on The Cereal List. His wife if your co-Arts Journal blogger Molly Sheridan, who also writes for The Washington Post, Time Out New York, and New Music Box. So!! No big surprise that they have “gossip” from the critics association, right? By trying to ruin other’s careers, they may, oops, very well ruin their own.
I think The Cereal List is pretty darned amusing.
This blog is funny. That blog is not funny. It’s quite simple: I know them, and Molly and Brian are clearly just bored at home with their cat in Baltimore. Also, I heard Darcy James Argue was involved. Get off Photoshop and write some music! I’d love to know how much traffic they get after this first week buzz dies down. More importantly, AMANDA, do you know if the Ahn Trio was OK with that racist post? I’d be interested to know how you would respond if one of your clients was attacked like that.
Yikes! With friends like this…But to answer your question, and it is a serious one, misinformation has been put out into the world about my clients on much higher trafficked sites/in wider read publications than The Cereal List and it’s very upsetting and frustrating. When an actual factual error is made, you have to decide how much negative effect it will have. For example, a classical music magazine recently said Hilary was 30 and not 29; OK, it’s embarrassing that they don’t have fact-checkers/don’t know how to use Google, but I’m not going to make a fuss when we’re talking about a year. An important year, but a year. It’s also a matter of knowing what your clients do and don’t care about, so sometimes little things are worth making fusses about for their personal reasons. I’ve also found that the more prestigious magazines I’ve worked with – The New Yorker, Marie Claire, Gotham, New York Magazine – do extensive fact-checking. The New Yorker fact-checks ever concert listing! It seems the higher-read the publication, the less chances of inaccuracies, which is reassuring, though it doesn’t excuse the rest.
Re: The Ahn Trio, I don’t know their management or PR team, so I can’t comment on the specifics. The entry reads, “I recently caught up with the Ahn sisters and took a photograph of them.” If that did not happen, I would e mail the site and complain. They’re also quoted in the post, which leads me to believe the Trio agreed to the faux interview. If not, I’m sure(/I hope?) The Cereal List consulted lawyers before it launched! Thanks for commenting. -AA