News-Record.com

I'll have a short story in tomorrow's paper about some fans who came to the "American Idol" concert tour's sold-out Greensboro stop. Nice folks all. My colleague Lynn Hey also got what appear to be (I can't see them at full size on my monitor) some good photos.

We did not take any photos of the show itself. That's because the "Idol" tour organizers made such ridiculous demands of us in exchange for the right to shoot photos that we just laughed at them. Seriously: Everyone in the newsroom who I saw actually read their letter laughed out loud. I've worked here for 19 years, and I worked in various facets of the music bidness for years before that, and even I had never seen anything so ridiculous.

I don't have the letter in front of me so I'm going from memory here, but they demanded pretty much everything but our cameras. I think they wanted all the original work, plus contact sheets, plus one-time-only use on our part (not an unusual request in and of itself), plus a whole bunch of other stuff, for which they were either paying us $1 or $0, I forget which. I don't think there was anything in there about first-born children, but as I say, I'm going from memory.

I wonder sometimes whether the goal of the music business isn't to ensure that there are no mourners at its funeral. Behavior like this makes me think most of us will still be around to find out.