What about Eric Clapton? That would probably be DaBaby’s question if anyone asked. DaBaby—a rap artist whose music is happily unknown to me—was cancelled last week, literally, when concert impresarios C3 Presents struck his name from the famed Austin City Limits festival in October. Stop me if you’ve heard this before—for homophobic and highly ignorant comments. And justifiably so. But Eric Clapton who is white and is rock ‘n roll royalty has said a lot worse and will still be performing in Austin this September at the University of Texas’s Special Events Center. There’s been no call to cancel his visit, by promoters or by fans. In fact a good argument can be made that Clapton’s comments (“Stop Britain from being a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white . . . .”, hmmm), which led to the Rock Against Racism movement, actually, are worse, because they were directed against the very black people to whom Eric Clapton owes his music. There’s a silver lining to this episode, however, because DaBaby's time-out presents such a rich environment for puns—and also shines a long overdue light on the murky world of concert promotion in Austin, Texas, the World Capital of Live Music.
C3 Presents is da baby
of Charlie Jones, Charles Attal and Charlie Walker—the 3 original C’s—and was
born in this burgeoning River City fifteen years ago. An early backer of the company was said to be
cyclist Lance Armstrong. His longtime agent, Bill Stapleton, who is a former Longhorn swimmer and Olympian is somewhere in the early C3 mix too. Connection
to Lance Armstrong is not necessarily a good thing, considering the famed athlete’s recent troubles, but we won’t get into that here. Indeed C3 has some
very impressive credentials. Because the company also puts on the Lollapalooza
festival in Chicago, and came to the attention of the Obama clan, C3 was picked
later to put on events at the White House. My source who has worked as a
contractor for C3 said that regarding the company’s use by President Obama,
“They did everything for him from rallies to his acceptance speech in Grant
Park and Easter egg hunts at the White House.” C3 is described as highly
non-diverse (and declined to respond with its minority employment
breakdown.) What’s interesting is that the company that cancelled DaBaby—and
rightfully so—and also puts on a lot of shows in casinos—was bought out by Live
Nation which previously merged with Ticketmaster. (It was the Obama administration, btw, that allowed Live Nation to take over C3, despite antitrust fears.) Live Nation’s former chairman
is music mogul Irving Azoff, the former manager of the supergroup The Eagles. Azoff is also
former CEO of Ticketmaster, and is founder, together with Tim Leiweke, former
CEO of AEG—the largest sports promoter in the world—of “Oak View Group” which
together with Live Nation has a $338 million contract to build and manage the
new Moody Center in Austin to replace the old University of Texas Special Events
Center where Eric Clapton will play next month. If it sounds like a small world, it is,
and it gets smaller. The Moody Center will be home of Longhorn men and
women’s basketball and music events. Enter Matthew McConaughey. Per
Musicrow.com: “McConaughey, University of Texas at Austin professor,
Distinguished Alumnus (BS ’93) and Academy Award-winning actor, has signed on
as Minister of Culture of the Moody Center and will work on ideas including but
not limited to suite designs, bar placement, color schemes, and other concepts,
to create a symbiotic relationship between the arena, the city, and the
university.” You couldn’t make this up.
In addition C3
Presents has the contract for the Moody Amphitheater in the newly reopened
Waterloo Park, smack center of downtown Austin, a couple of blocks from Irving Azoff’s new
special events center on campus and a stone’s throw from the state Capitol and
Greg Abbott’s crib. If the governor opens his windows he can probably hear the music. Interesting that these deals, which have led to Mr. Azoff
becoming the single most important guy in music in Austin, in a very short
time, through public-private partnerships, were done without apparent bidding or
public scrutiny? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Mayor Steve Adler
who will soon preside over the reopening of Waterloo Park has declined requests
to explain what the public is getting out of all these music industry machinations. It’s like the privatization scandals of a prior Republican era,
except instead of prisons it’s music. This template (creation of a new music venue at a public park, and handing over management of the venue to a non-profit that does not have to explain its contracting process or answer open records requests) will soon be applied to Zilker Park. That is corruption City of Austin style. The UT deal was executed, btw, by former
university President Greg Fenves, in consultation with Mayor Adler, among others.
However everything
shakes out, this is likely to be a big payday and another increase in power for Irving Azoff who is a legend in the music business and who has also been accused of a
monopoly-like control in the industry in the past. Not that there’s anything
wrong with that, either. (Mr. Azoff would not comment.) The music industry may have
made the correct call with DaBaby but it’s weird that what is right or wrong or
not permissible, regarding race or culture, in live music in Waterloo Park is now in
the hands of a bunch of white guys, mostly living in L.A., who have made no
effort to diversify a very Caucasian group of music industry businesses. Back to
DaBaby, who is presently in time-out. It’s been noted elsewhere that his recent gay-bashing was not his first
offense and that the LGBTQ community is trying to make a stand against longtime
prejudice in the music industry. How gays do that is a gay rights call and
should be supported by the black community, because it ill-behooves blacks to complain about use of a social revolt playbook that we wrote. You feel me?
What one would like however is more consistency in how sanctions are applied.
Unfortunately, Eric Clapton may not be the best artist to start with. First, his comments were made almost half a century ago, during a time in which he has described himself as “semi-racist,” whatever that means. Even if you drop the semi—and add his recent anti-vaccination comments, he is simply, on one level, an unrepentant old white guy, age 76, who happens to be a CBE, courtesy of Her Majesty the Queen who is also dotty. Be that as it may. As for DaBaby, he needs a spanking now—that’s the best argument—while it may have an effect on future behavior. Which is unlikely to be the case with Clapton. Now we can address the real determinant of forgiveness and punishment in the culture wars, Eric Clapton’s artistry. “Layla,” “Cocaine,” “Lay Down Sally,” the Yardbirds, Cream, Derek and the Dominoes among his former associations. DaBaby may have a biography like that too one day but Eric Clapton already does. This is Slowhand himself, people. There are fans who would push their own grandmother out of the way to get the ticket. He’s not God but he plays electric guitar like Him or Her. Anybody who can see Clapton play now—live—should.
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