Dizzy O'Brian

The Independent Musician Serves No Master Some time ago, I ran an internet radio station and I interviewed various musical artists for the show. One, in particular, had a very interesting story of how she went from label to independent musician. She, at one time, had a contract with Capitol Records and she said that one upon a time, they had a division for just about every musical genre; Pop, Jazz, Motown, Rock and so on. Well, they changed management and all of these divisions were shut down. Why was this? Well this was the beginning of record companies deciding that it would be much easier to offer just one or two acts and build up the hype artificially, rather than try to give people too much of a freedom of choice over what they wanted to hear. Like the Pied Piper, they would call the tune and decide what people should listen to. Freedom of choice came down to deciding between the cute black kitten with the white stripes and the cute white kitten with the black stripes. But a socie...