I was "tipped off" to this story by a weird little non-descript piece of mail that I had in a pile of junk mail I was just about to throw away. Luckily I opened it. I'd forgotten about registering in the lawsuit online a few years ago.
So how to spend this $13.86 windfall? On music of course. But somehow it just didn't seem right to give back the dough to the people who'd ripped me off in the first place. (Yes, as a critic and DJ I do get tons of free CDs, but as a music nut, I also undoubtedly buy more CDs than your average 50-year-old citizen.)
In the Capitol pressroom yesterday I cynically suggested I'd spend the money on blank CDs just to piss off the RIAA. But I decided instead to spend it on some unknown, independent musician who I'd never heard of before.
Surfing around the CD Baby site -- that's a righteous web-based company that sells my CD -- I came across a dude called Ukulele Man who is
described as a "cross between Cab Calloway, Ukulele Ike, Abbie Hoffman, and a mild-mannered Captain Beefheart; if the Pogues were a Cajun band that hung out with Robert Fripp>"
His album Crazy Old World has a song about PeeWee Herman (I heard a sample of this one -- sounds bitchen) and tunes called "I Wish I Were a Pirate" and "Thank God for Toilets."
How could I go wrong?
With postage it came to $15.22.
I'll let you know how the album is. Meanwhile, if you're one of the 3.5 million who are getting an extra $13.86, please consider spending it on an independent artist.
