This morning Stoned Out Loud's publisher emailed John Perry Barlow, author of "Napster.com and the Death of the Music Business", asking permission to reprint it as it appeared on Technocrat.net (Technocrat has temporarily left the room). He also asked for contributed columns. A few minutes ago, this came in.

Stoned out Loud is proud to present You with this article. Thank You John.
-g.moss

Slouching Towards Hollywood
Creative Livelihood in an Economy of Verbs

"By" John Perry Barlow

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has
come.- Victor Hugo

The great cultural war has broken out at last.

Long-awaited by some and a nasty surprise to others, the conflict between the Industrial Period and the Virtual Age is now engaged in
earnest, thanks to the modestly conceived but paradigm-shattering thing called Napster.

What Napster's first realization of global peer-to-peer networking made inevitable is not so different from what happened when the
American colonists realized that the conditions of their New World were sufficiently different from those of ancient England that they
would be obliged to cast off the Crown before they could develop an economy natural to their environment. For the settlers of cyberspace, the "shot heard 'round the world" was fired on July 26 by Judge Marilyn Patel when she enjoined Napster and thereby sought to silence the cacophonous free market of expression already teeming with over 20 million directly-wired music lovers.

Despite the stay immediately granted the Napsterians, her decree transformed an evolving economy into a cause, and turned millions of politically apathetic youngsters into electronic Hezbollah. Neither the best efforts of Judge Patel - nor those of the Porsche-driving
executives of the Recording Industry Association of America, the Congress they own, or the sleek legal defenders of existing copyright
law - will alter this simple fact: No law can be successfully imposed on a huge population that does not morally support it, and possesses many easy means for its invisible evasion.

To put it mildly, the entertainment industry geriatrics didn't see it coming. They figured the Internet presented about as serious an
obstacle to their infotainment empire as ham radio had to NBC. Even after that assumption was shattered, they remained serene as sunning crocodiles. After all, they still "owned" all that stuff they call "content." That it might soon become possible for anyone with a PC to effortlessly and perfectly reproduce their "property" and distribute it to all humanity troubled them little.

But then along came Napster. Or, more to the point, along came the real Internet, an instantaneous network that endows any acne-faced kid with a distributive range equal to Time-Warner's. Moreover, those were kids who don't give a flying byte about the existing legal battlements, and a lot of them possess decryption skills easily sufficient to crack whatever lame code the entertainment industry
might wrap around "their" goods.

Practically every traditional pundit who's commented on the Napster case has at some point furrowed his telegenic brow and asked, "Is the genie out of the bottle?" A better question would be, "Is there a bottle?" No. There isn't.

Which is not to say the industry won't keep trying to create one. In addition to ludicrous (and probably unconstitutional) edicts like the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the industry is placing a lot of faith in new cryptographic solutions. But before they waste a lot
more time on their last algorithmic vessels, they might consider the ones they've designed so far. These include such systems as DivX,
SDMI, and CSS - the DVD encryption standard, which has sparked its own legal hostilities on the Eastern Front, the New York court of
Judge Lewis Kaplan.

Here's the present score: DivX was still-born, SDMI will never be born owing to the wrangling of its corporate parents, and DeCSS (the
DVD decryptor) is spreading at a rate that will not slow even in the unlikely event that the Motion Picture Association of America
prevails with its current lawsuits aimed at declaring it a prohibited form of speech. Outside Kaplan's Federal Court in New York City,
where the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been defending three electronic distributors of DeCSS, nose-ringed kids sell T-shirts with
its code silk-screened on them.

The last time technical copy protection was widely attempted - remember when most software was copy-protected? - it failed in the
marketplace, and failed miserably. Earlier bans on reproductive technologies have also failed. Even though they are exceptionally
slow learners, entertainment executives will eventually realize what they should have learned long ago: The free proliferation of
expression does not decrease its commercial value. It increases it. It would serve them far better to encourage it.

The war is on, all right, but to my mind, it's over. The future will win. There will be no property in cyberspace. Behold DotCommunism.
(And dig it, ye talented, since it will enrich you.) It's a pity that the entertainment industry is too wedged in the past to recognize
this, as they will thereby require us to fight this war anyway. So we will all enrich lawyers with a fortune that could be spent fostering
and distributing creativity. And we will be forced to watch a few pointless public executions - Shawn Fanning's cross awaits - when we
could be employing such condemned genius in the service of a greater good.

As the inevitable unfolds, the real challenge arises: It's one thing to win a revolution and quite another to govern its consequences.
How, in the absence of laws that turn thoughts into things, will we be assured payment for the work we do with our minds? Must the
talented all start looking for day jobs?

Nope. Why should we? Most day jobs, at least in developed economies, already consist of mind work. The vast majority of us live by our wits now, producing "verbs" - that is, ideas - rather than such "nouns" as automobiles or toasters. Doctors, architects, executives,
consultants, receptionists, televangelists, and, even, unfortunately, lawyers all manage to survive economically without "owning" their
cognition.

I take further comfort in the fact that the human species managed to produce pretty decent creative work during the 5,000 years that
preceded 1709, when John Locke pushed the Statute of Anne, the world's first copyright law, through the House of Lords.

Sophocles, Dante, Da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Newton, Cervantes, Bach - all found reasons to get out of bed in the morning without expecting to own the works they would create during the day ahead.

Even during the zenith of copyright, we got some pretty useful stuff out of Benoit Mandelbrot, Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andresson, and Linus Torvalds, none of whom did their world-morphing work with royalties in mind. And then there are all those great musicians of the last 50 years who went on making music even after they discovered that the record companies got to keep all the money.

Nor can I resist trotting out, one last time, the horse I rode back in 1994, when I explored these issues in a Wired article called "The
Economy of Ideas," The Grateful Dead. The Dead, for whom I once wrote songs, learned by accident that if we let fans tape our concerts and freely reproduce those tapes - "stealing" our intellectual "property" just like those heinous Napsterites - the tapes would become a marketing virus that would spawn enough Deadheads to fill any stadium in America. Even though Deadheads had free recordings that were better than our commercial albums, fans still went out and bought records in such quantity that most of them eventually went platinum.

My opponents always dismiss this example as a special case. But it's not. Here are a couple of others closer to Hollywood. Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA and leader of the fight against DeCSS, kept VCRs out America for 5 years, convinced they would kill the film industry. Eventually the wall came down. What followed reversed his expectations (not that he seems to have learned from the experience).

Despite the ubiquity of VCRs, more people go to the movies than ever and videocassette rentals and sales account for nearly 70 percent of his industry's income.

The RIAA is unalterably convinced that toe easy availability of freely downloadable commercial songs will bring on the apocalypse,
and yet, during the two years since MP3 music began flooding the Net, CD sales have risen by 20 percent.

Finally, after giving up on copy protection, the software industry expected that widespread piracy would surely occur. And it did. I
often ask audiences how many of them can honestly say they have no unauthorized software on their hard drives. Most people don't raise their hands. And yet, the software industry is booming. Why? Because the more a program is pirated, the more likely it is to become a standard. Once it becomes a standard, it is a great deal more convenient to enter into a long-term service relationship with the vendor.

All these examples point to the same conclusion: non-commercial distribution of information increases the sale of commercial
information. Abundance breeds abundance.

This is precisely contrary to what happens in a physical economy. When you're selling nouns, there is an undeniable relationship
between scarcity and value. Adam Smith figured that out a long time ago. But in an economy of verbs, the inverse applies. There is a
relationship between familiarity and value. For ideas, fame is fortune. And nothing makes you famous faster than an audience willing
to distribute your work for free.

All the same, there remains a general and passionate belief that, in the absence of copyright, artists and other creative people will no
longer be compensated. I'm forever accused of being an anti-materialistic hippie who thinks we should all be create for the
Greater Good of Mankind and lead lives of ascetic service. If only I were so noble. While I do believe that most genuine artists are
primarily motivated by the joys of creation, I also believe we will be more productive if we don't have to work a second job to support
our art habit. Think of how many more poems Wallace Stevens could have written if he hadn't been forced to run an insurance company to support his "hobby."

Following the death of copyright, I believe our interests will be assured instead by the following practical values: relationship,
convenience, interactivity, service, and ethics.

Before I go further in explaining what I mean, let me state a creed: Art is a service, not a product. Created beauty is a relationship,
and a relationship with the Holy at that. To reduce such work to "content" is like praying in swear words. End of sermon. Back to
business.

The economic model that supported most of the ancient masters I named above (and thousands more like them) was patronage, whether endowed by a wealthy individual, a religious institution, a university, a corporation, or, by the instrument of governmental support, society as a whole.

Patronage is both a relationship and a service. It is a relationship that supported genius during the Renaissance and supports it today.

Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Botticelli all shared the support of both the Medicis and, through Pope Leo X, the Catholic Church. Bach had a series of patrons, most notably the Duke of Weimar. Dante served as a politician and diplomat for the Church and a variety of Tuscan aristocrats. I could go on, but I can already hear you saying, "Surely this fool doesn't expect the return of patronage."

But patronage never went away. It just changed its appearance. Marc Andresson was a beneficiary of the "patronage" of the National Center for Supercomputer Applications when he created Mosaic; CERN was a patron to Tim Berners-Lee while he created the World Wide Web. DARPA was Vint Cerf's benefactor; IBM was Mandelbrot's.

"Aha!" you say, "but IBM is a corporation. They profited from the intellectual property Mandelbrot created." Maybe, but so did the rest
of us. While IBM would patent air and water if it could, I don't believe it ever attempted to file a patent on fractal geometry.

Relationship, along with service, is at the heart of what supports all sorts of other modern, though more anonymous, "knowledge
workers." Doctors are economically protected by a relationship with their patients, architects with their clients, executives with their
corporations. Even copyright lawyers wouldn't find it advantageous to copyright their briefs, since they rip one another off so flagrantly.
Copy and paste is second only to paranoia in being is the best thing that ever happened to the legal profession.

In general, if you substitute "relationship" for "property," you begin to understand why a digitized information economy can work fine
in the absence of enforceable property law. Cyberspace is unreal estate. Relationships are its geology.

Convenience is another important factor in the future compensation of creation. The reason that video didn't kill the movie star is that
it's simply more convenient to rent a video than to copy one. Software is easy to copy, of course, but software piracy hasn't
impoverished Bill Gates, because in the long run it's more convenient to enter into a relationship with Microsoft if you want to use their
products. It's certainly more convenient to get technical support if you have a real serial number when you finally get the support person
on the phone. And that serial number is not a thing. It's a contract. It is the symbol of a relationship.

Think of how the emerging digital conveniences will empower musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and writers when you can click
on an icon, upload a cyber-dime into their accounts, and download their latest songs, images, films, or chapters, all without the
barbaric inconvenience currently imposed by the entertainment industry.

Interactivity is also central to the future of creation. Performance is a form of interaction. The reason Deadheads went to concerts
instead of just listening to free tapes was that they wanted to interact with the band in Meatspace. The more people knew what our
concerts sounded like, the more people wanted to experience them.

I enjoy a similar benefit in my current incarnation. I'm reasonably well-paid to write, despite the fact that I put most of my work on
the Net before it can be printed, but I'm paid a lot more to speak, and more still to consult, since my real value lies in something that
can't be stolen from me - my point of view. A unique and passionate viewpoint is more valuable in a conversation than the one-way
broadcast of words. And the more my words self-replicate on the Net, the more I can charge for symmetrical interaction.

Finally, there is the role of ethics. (I can hear you snickering already.) But hey, people actually do feel inclined to reward
creative value if it's not too inconvenient. As Courtney Love said recently in a brilliant blast at the music industry: "I'm a waitress.
I work for tips." She's right. People want to pay her because they like her work. Indeed, actual waitpeople get by even though the
people they serve are under no legal obligation to tip them. They tip them because it's the right thing to do.

I believe that, in the practical absence of law, ethics are going to make a major comeback in cyberspace. In an environment of dense
connection where much of what we do and say is recorded, preserved, and easily discovered, ethical behavior becomes less a matter of self-imposed virtue and more a matter of horizontal social enforcement. (Think of how much better you tip when everyone at the
table can watch you total the credit card slip.)

Besides, the more connected we become, the more obvious it is that we're all in this thing together. If I don't pay for the light of
your creation, it goes out and the place gets dimmer. If no one pays, we're all in the dark. In cyberspace, it becomes increasingly obvious that what goes around comes around. What has been an ideal become a sensible business practice.

Think of cyberspace as an ecosystem, because it is one. It is a great rain forest of those life forms called ideas, which, like organisms - those patterns of self-reproducing, evolving, adaptive information that express themselves in skeins of carbon - require one another to exist. Imagine the challenge of trying to write a song if you'd never heard one.

As in biology, what has lived before becomes the compost from which new shoots spring forth. Moreover, when you buy - or, for that
matter, "steal" - an idea that first took form in my head, it remains where it grew and you in no way lessen its value by sharing it. On
the contrary, mine becomes more valuable, since in the informational space between your interpretation of it and mine, new species can grow. The more such spaces exist, the more fertile is the greater ecology of mind.

I can also imagine the great electronic nervous system producing entirely new models of creative worth where value resides not in the
artifact, which is static and dead, but in the real art - the living process that bore it. I would have given a lot to be present as, say,
the Beatles grew their songs. I'd have paid even more to have actually participated in some small way. Part of the reason Deadheads
were so obsessed with live concerts was that they did participate in some weird, mysterious way. They were allowed the intimacy of seeing the larval beginnings of a song flop out onstage, wet and ugly, and they would help nurture its growth.

Instead of bottles of dead "content," I imagine electronically defined zones of creative interactions, where minds residing in
bodies scattered all over the planet are admitted, either by subscription or a ticket at a time, into the real-time presence of
the verb I call art.

For example, I imagine actual storytelling making a comeback. Storytelling, unlike the one-way, asymmetrical thing that goes by
that name in Hollywood, is highly participatory. Instead further hypnotizing the passive TV viewer, awash in electrons and Budweiser.,
I imagine new audiences happily paying for engagement with the bard.

This scenario doesn't require much imagination, since it's what happens in the presence good public speaker now. The best of them
don't talk at the audience, but rather converse with them, creating a sanctuary of permission where something real and personal can happen.

People will also pay to get first crack at the fresh stuff, just as Stephen King is proving by serializing novels on the Web. Dickens
demonstrated the efficiency of this system long ago. Unruly dockside mobs greeted the ship bearing the last chapter of Great Expectations. They paid considerable premiums for copies of the magazine in which it was being serialized. Though Dickens was irritated that the Americans ignored his British copyright, he adapted and devised a way to get paid anyway. The artists and writers of the future will adapt to practical possibility. Many already have done so. They are, after all, creative people.

Best of all, think of how much more money there will be for the truly creative when the truly cynical have been dealt out of the game. Once we have all given up regarding our ideas as a form of property, the entertainment industry will no longer have anything to steal from us. Meet the new boss: no boss.

But enough about the money. I could go on at far greater length about economic models, both demonstrated and speculative, but the fact remains, we don't know jack about what's eventually going to work in the new ecosystem we're growing. If one compares the evolution of Industry to the information economy now slouching through cyberspace to be born, we are metaphorically closer to the era of Eli Whitney than Henry Ford's. This would be a lousy time to lock in our future by imposing on it a set of legal, commercial, and aesthetic principles that were merely the best our ancestors could do with the tools they had.

The fact that those principles might artificially extend the longevity of some institutions and people who have shamelessly fed
on the creative for over a century does not trouble me. They wouldn't deserve to survive even if they still had practical value.

We've won the revolution. It's all over but the litigation. While that drags on, let us think about our real mission: ancestry. We have
a profound responsibility to employ the tools freshly available to us to be better ancestors. With technology, we are building the
foundations of a social architecture that may endure a very long time. What we do now will likely determine the productivity and
freedom of artists 20 generations yet un-born. What we do now will determine whether the great works of the last century rot embedded in the corpses of the their former distributors, forever lost to our descendents.

Let us digitize every work of mind we love and endow it with permanent virtual life, whatever the tightening noose of law may
dictate.

Let us not sacrifice a free future to preserve a little longer the slavery of the past.

--
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School

posted by gathering moss at 2:07 PM

Yesterday and last night was a turbulent day with Delene and Mike. He called last night late and whined at her over non performance about deliverables, while she grew increasingly impatient with his excuses about why she could not be paid, nor be allowed to have the tools or information to accomplish what he seems to be demanding.

I'm under the impression that Mike Decaro truly believes and is pretending to himself that he can get away with not paying her up to date on her quarter of a million dollar (plus) contract. He really needs to get a clue about nonperformance himself, in my own judicious opinion. (heheh. my email is g.moss@lawyer.com).

Finally Delene did lose all patience and became totally unwilling to waste time any further on this idiot. She told him "When You decide to get serious, call me." With that she slammed down the phone and we both got back to work on our respective projects. Mick did try to call back twice after that. She answered the first time, and hung up on him (he was ranting, arrogant and abusive - "How Dare You Hang up on me!" - rather than the whine-ass. aside-he often oscillates back and forth between these poses. But Delene stood her ground. Sorry "Mick". No Mon, No Fun.

He had tried every gambit and excuse, and she called him on each and every one. It was beautiful to see.

Later, this afternoon, he called back in a more reasonable tone. He still whined about lots of water under the bridge, but did manage to be lucid enough to reach some sort of rapproachment with Delene. Result? I got kicked off the computer while she finished up the site.

Holy Shit. I was impressed. She went out to moreover and made a custom newsfeed to search for Rolling Stones Tour related stories, and installed a news page. She had a couple of questions about javascipt and pop-up windows, but overall she figured it out herself and got it finished. Then tripod's ftp server went down shortly after midnight, and she couldn't complete the file transfers.

D'oh!

I'm proud of her. Check it out here. I like the newspage with the pop-up windows. But that's just javascipt, a relatively simple call. The real value-add she gave Decaro and the Stones there is the customised news feed that goes out and searches for Stones-related stuff. It's handy.

Now if she can only start to get paid up to date. Ah, well either she will or she won't...there's always the road of litigation, liens, auctions, etc. in a Country of Laws. Let us hope it doesn't come to that.

In the meantime I was busy with getting newsfeeds for Stoned Out Loud (we all were). Dave got some too, and attended to getting set up on our new servers at Cornerhost.com and backing them up. There's going to be a few changes around here. We're growing fast, so don't be surprised by the new look in the next few hours and days. We all hope You like it.

-g.moss
g.moss@lawyer.com


posted by gathering moss at 6:20 AM

As of sometime this evening EST, Stoned Out Loud has gone live on a commercially hosted server! We are hosting with Michal Wallace's most excellent Cornerhost.com, and can now be accessed (for the moment) free of ad banners. So now, in addition to stoned-out.blogspot.com and stoned-out-loud.tripod.com, You can reach us at

http://www.stoned-out-loud.com ,

or if You're really drunk or have lazy thumbs (or no thumbs) or just spacebar-challenged, use

http://www.stonedoutloud.com . (eventually...I just checked and that dns entry hasn't yet made it's way around to my ISP from the originating registrar :-\ )

We're all real happy about getting our own real live shiny new domains, and are now going for a beer.

Cheers,
g.moss

posted by gathering moss at 2:24 AM

For those who didn't visit the site linked from the words "Unless You are a contractor for the Rolling Stones," at the bottom of False Hopes and Bad PIN Numbers, here is what You would have found there (from google groups, a usenet posting to alt.rock-n-roll.stones he made on December 14, 1999, responding to someone's report of a stone's memorabilia trader who allegedly ripped people off. I have redacted the trader's name, as I don't want to get sued, but You can view it in the discussion Yourself if You go to google. Usenet postings are Public utterances.):

---begin google archive usenet posting ----
From: mickdec1@aol.com (MickDec1)
Subject: Re: BAD TRADER: (((REDACTED)))
Date: 1999/12/14
Message-ID: <19991214151127.20741.00000888@ng-da1.aol.com>#1/1
References: <82268v$6n9$7@illusion.connect.net>
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.rock-n-roll.stones
X-Admin: news@aol.com

I have worked for the band for over 20+ years and have one of the largest and
widest variety of collections in the world and never did anyone wrong your
reputation is something actually the only thing you can take to your grave and
be proud of hang the sonofabitch taking hard working peoples money that they
think are going to get a certain item cause they enjoy the stones and there
music and it makes them happy and some little shithead comes along and rips
people off! I swear I see when he is home Keith 1-2 times a week sometimes and
he does not care about bootlegs but I swear give me this guys address and he
will meet Keith in the worst way and his dreams will be crushed when his mentor
calls him a fucking slug and say's YOU ARE A A HOLE that will stay with him
forever and then see if it was worth whatever amount of $$ he stole from people
right!! Mike DeCaro
----end google archive usenet posting -----

The "Unless..." link takes you to http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=19991214151127.20741.00000888%40ng-da1.aol.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain.

Google's html version of this posting is at http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=19991214151127.20741.00000888%40ng-da1.aol.com&oe=UTF-8 if You prefer.

Another late night call

Mike called again last night/this morning around 12:07am.

First he bitched at her at the unfairness of it all. Then moved on to explain how this tour's ticket sales work...how (somebody named) Koll put up a site that sold for a $90 fee, tickets to the tour shows...and how they were nosebleed seats (he actually sang the alphabet song to her over the phone and stopped at "Q". ! ) that everybody is complaining about in Sticky Fingers Journal, and how the Stones are "slowly" trying to undo it. How somebody named Michael Koll was selling tickets on the web for what sounded like a $90 surcharge (to hear him tell it). But that the stuff he, Mike Decaro, was peddling was the real deal. That he wasn't the type to deceive People and rip them off or jerk them around, and that the Stones were "slowly fixing it" (the nosebleed seat sales from this guy).

I just gotta say: What the hell does "slowly fixing it" mean? If I get lousy service in a grocery store or department store, does that mean I'm being "slowly" satisfied? Or do I get "slowly" pissed and then "slowly" complain?

eeeyeah.

The Stones are slowly fixing things alright. When a contractor "slowly" gets paid - like this? - they "slowly" starve, and very quickly go broke, supporting Keith Richard's pet, Mike Decaro. This kind of slow pay is actually a eupemism for no pay.

"I don't care either way."

Then "Mick" moved on to discuss Delene's failure to work for free. (Remember, the original deal he struck with her, on behalf of The Rolling Stones organisation, was for her time, and not any particular deliverables other than her time.)

Decaro allowed as to how Delene had kept bringing up the issue of money, and speculated on whether or not she ever would be like it was his decision to make. He stated flatly: "I'm not going to care either way. It's like Your a secretary who takes the job and then wants to get paid for only typing 10 words a minute."

He went on to say he couldn't understand why she keeps asking to be paid when (he contends) she hasn't done anything. Delene said nothing for a while while he ranted on, restating his point repeatedly as is his custom, bludgeoning her with vituperation. At one point she got really pissed and in reponse to Decaro's "Why should You want to get paid? ", she blurted "Because I'm running out of money!"

Mike Decaro has not a single idea of what things cost for People who live honestly and work, rather than trading in favors, in my opinion. Delene has probably spent 3 or 4 thousand dollars on gas and cigarettes and mileage and car insurance and wear and tear on her car since March, catering to the madly careening personality and appetites for mental abuse practiced by Mike "mick" Decaro. Not to mention meals she has bought him. Not to mention wear and tear on her nerves.

Not to mention a lot of things.

They finally finished their conversation around 1:57 am. Mike spent the last half hour giving Delene unsolicited advice on how to kick me out of her house. Her comment to me afterward? "Who said I wanted to?"

The bulk of the rest of the conversation was Mike remonstrating with her on how the newsletter isn't getting done, but when she asked for a copy, he didn't have any, couldn't access a copy, and refused to provide her with the material necessary to do it.

His pattern is to make excuses such that the bottom line is: HE is left in sole control of the information and will not share it...then he bitches at her interminably about her "not doing her job." This is his method of control. It's a control-freak thing, combined with other con techniques.

-g.moss

posted by gathering moss at 9:25 AM

A little over a week ago "Mick" had Delene come down to give her some cash to keep going on the site. But as usual, it was the runaround again. I think he missed hooking her up with a radio station guy because either the guy couldn't come down or something, I can't recall exactly. But I do remember she mentioned that he had promised her $5000 cash when she got there.

They must have had some words, because I know when she got back she said she had told him not to call her at all unless he had some money for her. It takes a lot for her to lose her patience. I know. I live with her.

Anyway, he called her a week ago monday (the last monday in July) at 7 o'clock in the morning and woke her up. Big News! Callou Callai! He could finally give her some money! If she came right down he would give her $5000 that morning. (It seems they gave him a credit card to pay her so they could keep her deal "off the books.")

She got herself up, washed up, got dressed, fed the chickens, took Lucy out, lumbered out to the car and took off to drive the 100 miles or so to Stamford, for what must be the 50th time. (Lucy is a sweet brown bitch Delene rescued from a fire and gave mouth-to-snout resuscitation to bring her back. That was about 3 years ago, I think. She was just a puppy then.)

She got there around 11, she later told me. Yeah, lousy time. I95 in the summer along the Connecticut coast sucks. It's hot, the road carries about 4 to 6 times the amount of traffic it was built for, and there's perpetual summer construction going on between Guilford and Greenwich. That's most of the coast of the state. And it was rush hour. Yechhh.

The Stones (he told Delene it was Jane Rose) had given "Mick" a credit card, so he could pay Delene something, at last. Unfortunately "Mick" had started spending the moment it was handed to him apparently. He took Trish, a girl knows, out bar hopping or out for drinks or something, Delene later told me...it wasn't quite clear...but then with the shuckin' and jivin' Mike Decaro practices, it never is.

Delene arrived and asked if Mick had any money for her...He said he had put a call in to Mike Kramer at WAAF. Mick has given a guarantee to the station that they could interview Keith Richards for about 15 or 20 minutes before the sound check for first show on the Tour (Boston, Fleet Center), in exchange for $10,000, which the band would let him put in his pocket. Earlier "Mick" had promised Delene half of that, $5,000.00 (since he has been singularly unable to fork over a dime, one might observe). Now, this monday morning that he had called her out of her bed in NE Connecticut to come to Stamford to pick up the $5k, suddenly he said he had called the Radio guy and could get $5000.00 from him "today" and give her half.

Suddenly Delene's half of 10 grand had become half of 5 grand.

"Mick" Decaro said they could go to an ATM machine to get cash, but it wouldn't work.

The PIN number was "bad".

It was bad because it had been suspended.

It had been suspended because "Mick" had spent so much on it so fast that the bank had changed the PIN because they thought it had been stolen! They did it as a precaution, looking at the frenzied account activity of Mike Decaro wooing his friend Trish.

As they say in the ad: "Priceless".

Was Delene pissed? I guess. (Maybe she'll make some comments on this news and discussion site in a leetle while. You never know.)

Even so, she drove him to the bank to cash his check (he offered her no money from it), then to buy cigarettes. And, of course, to McDonald's so Mike Decaro could have his chicken sandwich.)

She returned with her usual external equanimity, but I could tell she was increasingly disenchanted with this bullshit. According to Mike "Mick" Decaro, Jane Rose gave him the credit card to pay her (among other things) because she didn't want to formally put her on the payroll because she hadn't met Delene in Person (look at the bottom of this linked page, where it says "Created by..". Meet the Person, Delene) , and this would keep her "off the books".

I wonder if Jane Rose's fingers have been injured so she is unable to dial a telephone, or if she is as cyber-challenged as Decaro that she can't use email to send Delene a copy of the alleged written "contract" to be "on the books"?

What is a contract?

Originally I thought, and reported earlier in this story that Delene started up with this Mike Decaro in April.

I got it wrong. Here's what I have since found:

Upon closer questioning of Delene I have determined that she indeed had accepted a 2 year contract offer made by Decaro back at the beginning of March, to devote her time and effort to this tour (and she has, and has incurred nontrivial expenses in so doing) in exchange for the consideration of $2500.00 per week for a duration of two (2) years.

This makes her contract worth $260,000.00 plus expenses, plus mileage, plus interest at the standard 1.5 percent for balances due over 30 days. Pretty standard Contractor stuff. Because...

From the first of March until now she has worked with Mike Decaro on his projects. She has spent days at a time at his workplace out of his home in Stamford working on this tour and Decaro's projects, and Mike Decaro has come here to Delene's workplace out of her home to work on the Rolling Stones 2002-2003 Tour project, and he has remained here for 2, 3, and 4 days at a time in so doing.

Contract?

A deal is a deal.

Unless You are a contractor for the Rolling Stones, I guess.

btw, stoned-out-loud.tripod.com is now registered with over 25 search engines.


posted by gathering moss at 2:09 PM

Late Wednesday night Delene got another call from "Mick".

He was unusually lucid and calm. He began casually, as though there had never been any tension between them, as old friends would talk. First, he told her about his trip to the City.

I found out about this quite by accident...Delene was working on the computer and listening to the Stones Flashpoint - a live 89-90 Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle World Tour cd now out of print, that she was lucky enough to find at Tumbleweed in Niantic. She had asked me to watch TV in the other room if I had to. So there I was sitting on the bed with the commercials on mute when the phone rang. Almost at the end of the commercial stopset I decided to have a cigarette, on the bedside table next to the other phone. I grabbed a smoke, lit it, and tossed the lighter back on the table. It hit the speaker button, and it happened to begin emitting Mike's voice in an uncustomarily calm tone. Intrigued, I listened...(I know...but just couldn't help being curious.)

Mike was telling Delene about how he and this guy from the radio station had gone down to "the most exclusive Strip Club" in New York. The guy he was with looked "92 percent like Mick Jagger", he said.

Wow. 92 percent.

Sorta made me wonder what the other 8% looked like.

"Mick" went on to describe the dive in the most lurid detail he could muster. He noted that when they arrived he was worried he didn't have enough money to pay to get in, but his companion said "Hey, Mike, don't sweat it. I got You covered." After a few remarks about how exclusive this club was, and how his 92% friend had paid his way - insisting on VIP section and treatment all the way through the night (I guess that's what WAAF sent him there for...and I know "Mick" knew it, was milking it...I gagged, and, TV still muted, reached over and gently hit the mute button on the phone so the speaker wouldn't carry the sound of me coughing).


posted by gathering moss at 9:28 AM

Btw, before I forget, the day after Trooper Trott's visit Delene went down to Mick's to work on the contest questions...WAAF is running a contest to award some lucky fan a concert nite with the stones themselves. She slept on the Decaro's couch overnite, spell-checked his questions (idiot-stick Mick claims his MS-Word installation won't let it send him if the spelling isn't right...maybe (probably) he's got the settings fu-barred, but, duh...he don't know how to use the built-in spell-checker? No...just that his consciousness generally is so soaked with alcohol and methadone that he doesn't have the focus do so, that's my speculation), and played taxi to him half the day.

She took him to the bank to cash a sizeable check. He did not offer to pay her anything. He did not offer to pay for her gas to go down there, or back. He did not offer to pay for any mileage. He did not pay her one red cent.

Oh, he did buy her a pack of cigarettes.

Yes, he did buy her a sandwich at McDonalds.

Big spender.

How many packs of cigarettes has Delene purchased with her money from her disability check for Mike Decaro? Many.

How many meals at McDonalds had Delene bought for Mick since April? Quite a few.

So, in addition to the accumulated back pay at $2500 per week, plus 1 and 1/2 percent interest on balances due past 30 days going back to April 1 2002, the Rolling Stones owe my Friend and housemate Delene for some packs of cigarettes that went into Mike Decaro's lungs.

And quite a few chicken sandwiches eaten by Mike Decaro, as well.

So far, I must say, I am singularly unimpressed with the Rolling Stones fiduciary responsibility.

So far, I must say, I am singularly unimpressed with the company Keith Richards keeps.

Hey, Keith. If You are going to have a pet, why not keep him on a leash? He's been pissing all over my Friend Delene.

As for financial responsibility, Mick Jagger is reputed to be a good businessman. Is this how You made Your money, Sir Jagger? By screwing Your contractors?

Time will tell. Gonna be a helluva tour, I'm sure.

posted by gathering moss at 8:53 AM

Mick just called again tonite at 4am. Delene was in bed asleep like most normal People. I was up working on the web like the geek I am. I told him this was much too late to call, and just hung up and turned-off the ringer.

I guess I don't need to tell You, You've probably guessed by now: Mick Decaro has been told at least 842 times in the last 4 months not to call after normal business hours, by Delene. If he were actually living up to his part of the work arrangement (umm, by actually Paying her as agreed , contracting for her time on behalf of the Rolling Stones) with my Friend Delene it might be a different story. He doesn't know how lucky he is to have her even still speaking to him, in my opinion.

If I were a Lawyer I would supoena Decaro's LUDs and ...ah, well not yet, not yet. All in due time.

I've been up all night working and have to crash now. I'll pick up the narrative with A False Report - Continued later.

posted by gathering moss at 8:24 AM

Three nites before I called the Police, Delene and I were watching a movie on DVD. I think it was The Fifth Element, one of my favourites. Anyway, Mick called about 3 minutes into it (we didn't sit down to start watching it until after 10:30pm as I recall). Delene told him, basically, that she was busy, but would call him in the morning. Mick wouldn't let it go at that. Of course not, being Mick .

Now, Delene has an almost infinite patience when babysitting him on the phone...she just doesn't want to face the fact that some folks are that rude, inconsiderate, or liars when it comes to making promises to pay for Your time. But she's getting there (everybody learns at their own rate).

She repeated herself to him, at 10 minute intervals, for probably an hour. The message changed from being busy to being tired and going to bed (the fact we were trying to watch a movie was really none of his goddamn business, seeing as how neither Mick, nor the Rolling Stones have lived-up to their obligations they took on when they agreed at the beginning of April to pay her $2500.00 a week for her time working with - babysitting, actually - Mike "Mick" Decaro).

Anyway, Mick kept ringing the phone after Delene concluded the conversation. Finally we unplugged all the phones in the house.

Then we watched the movie. Afterward, Delene went to bed, while I stayed-up working on the internet (I do site design work among other things).

About 1:30 or 1:45, Delene was awakened by the sound of a car in the driveway. She called my attention to it (I was still up working and hadn't heard it), so I flipped on the outside lights and ventured out to see who it was. It was a Connecticut State Police car.

posted by gathering moss at 8:05 AM

Anyway Delene came in as the Trooper was trying to get Mike's attention without much success. He was able to get him to pause (by banging the receiver on the table again) long enough to tell him that she had just come in, but that he would not put her on the phone because here hands were full (they were) and that she would call him when she got situated.

Decaro continued to ramble on. The State Trooper was very patient, but he did tell Mike that his patience was wearing thin, and that he had been nice so far, but soon would run out. Relentlessly, Mike (who likes to call himself "Mick" --I guess because it likens him to another Mick (Sir Mick) ) blathered on. Trott had taken him off the speakerphone and was attempting to reason with him. Occasionally, he would pull the phone away from his ear, roll his eyes, and have short conversations with Delene and I.

Finally, out of patience, he said so.

Repeatedly.

Finally, he got Mick to agree not to call again (a 10th time) that nite, and to hang up.

Then Delene and I explained the situation to him, and why I felt obligated to call him to our home for his assistance in dealing with this arrogant heedless putz.

posted by gathering moss at 7:22 AM

The Connecticut State Trooper stood in my living room, staring into the speakerphone in growing disbelief. As he listened to Mike Decaro's idiotic self-important mixture of threats and assertions and maunderings, he looked at me. "This guy must be on drugs." I explained Mike's medication ingestion to the best of my knowledge, a certain maintenance program.

When he had heard enough, the Trooper picked up the handset and tried to get in a word. He repeated his identification several times. It was clearly spoken, calm, and professional.

Mike Decaro rambled on.

Finally, the policeman looked at me, at the phone, and banged the handset on the worktable several times. Putting it back to his ear, he said, "Hello. This is Trooper Trott of the CT State Police." He still had to repeat himself several times before Mike realised that he was no longer ranting at me.

Trott remonstrated with Decaro that we had had quite enough phone calls for the night here.

It didn't work. Off went Mike Decaro at a mile a minute again.

posted by gathering moss at 5:49 PM

So, why were the Police at my house?

As I said, I asked them to come because of his harassing me on the phone, invading the peace and quiet of my home, disturbing me while I was working on something.

You see, it's because Mike Decaro has not cultivated his listening skills. He is much too busy enjoying the sound of his own voice, usually going on and on about how important and powerful he is because he works for the Rolling Stones, and how his buddy is Keith Richards (I wonder how much we are judged by the company we keep versus the content of our character), and how this tour is so big, why it's bigger than big. ("Come in here dear boy have a cigar your gonna go far..."- Pink Floyd) .

Mike will run on and on never stopping to listen or take turns or have an actual conversation, rather he will try to bulldoze over any participation by the target of his blather. He would appear to write the same way.

Nope. Mike just doesn't listen. When he called yesterday the first time Delene had gone on an animal rescue/relocation mission for Pet Pals. I told him what she told me: She would not be back home until sometime tomorrow afternoon (that's right now as I write this). Did he listen?

The second time he called, I repeated to him that Delene was not here, and please don't bother me as I was working. He continued talking, as he is wont to do. Again, obviously not listening. I hung up.

The third time he called, I told him he was harassing me, that Delene wasn't here, and that he would have a visit from the Police if he rang the phone again, and that this time it would not be a false report. (refer to the entry in this journal headed "A False Report")

The fourth time he called, it was his elderly mother calling, with him standing next to her putting her up to it. (She is a sweet lady whom I once showed how to play back songs on her electric organ). Mrs. Decaro asked me if Delene had returned from the doctor? I had no idea what she was talking about, and said "I don't know anything about that, but she won't be back until tomorrow afternoon." She thanked me and hung up.

The fifth call was from a fellow who said he was Dave White, and that he worked with WAAF, a station that is promoting a contest to win a night with the Stones. The fellow was nice, and we spoke for a few minutes about web logs, and I told him about blogger.com. Evidently Delene was working with him on the contest in conjunction with Mike, and he was looking for her. I told him that she would be back tomorrow afternoon, that she was on an animal errand with Pet Pals. After I hung up, I wondered if Mike had had him call, but dismissed it.

I knocked off work to go to a bluegrass concert nearby to raise money for a local museum. As I was leaving, the phone was ringing...

When I returned from the concert the phone was ringing...

I answered and it was Mike Decaro. The sixth call (fifth if You discount the radio guy).

When I recognised his voice, I hung up.

The seventh call was from the WAAF radio guy. Now, he had seemed a reasonable sort earlier when I spoke with him, and I had told him Delene would be back tomorrow afternoon. But he must have forgotten...He was asking for Delene. At that point I began to wonder if he was being put up to calling. It was then that he mentioned that they were working on a contest. I said that I hoped he wasn't doing it on spec, and he laughed, thanked me and the conversation ended.

The eightth call was Mike Decaro. He didn't say hello, he just went off rambling a mile-a-minute, giving his simulation of a radio announcer calling a lucky caller who had won a contest....

This was Mike Decaro's way of telling me he had put-up the radio guy to call and disturb me just out of spite I guess. Mike can be that way, I've noticed.

I hung up and decided to call the State Police. Enough was enough. They sent a very nice Trooper named Trott to speak with me.

I hated to waste their time with it. There are too few State Troopers covering too many towns spanning too large an area in northeastern CT. But since the other night (see next entry) I figured they may have an interest in this.

Trooper Trott was professional. I explained what was happening. As I explained, the phone rang. Guess who?

That's right. Lucky Caller Number Nine. Mike Decaro.

I put it on speaker so the Trooper could see/hear what I was dealing with.

Mike began slowly, which was unusual for him. He calmly said that he had a right to talk to Delene, and that I could not block his calls, and that (picking up speed now) when (Delene's former housemate) left he was assured the phone would be available and...

I interrupted his snowballing rapid-fire assertions to repeat that Delene was not here; that she was running an errand with the animal People; and that she told me she would probably not be back before tomorrow afternoon. I repeated that I had told him all this when he had called the first time.

Trooper Trott listened.

I walked into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, shaking my head, no longer listening to Decaro's senseless blather. Ever hear a junkie or speed freak ramble? Or somebody with cocaine psychosis? Or a bipolar Person on a manic high? You get the idea.

Since I had stopped verbally responding, the Trooper began supplying the "uh-huh"s. At one point I started to interrupt and said, "Mike, I'm hanging up now..." and began to reach for the phone, but Trooper Trott stopped me and softly admonished me, "No, let him go on a bit, give him his say...". I shrugged and said okay.

posted by gathering moss at 4:21 PM

Yes, again. You see, it's my housemate, Delene.

She met this MikeDecaro fellow a few months ago. He says he works for the Rolling Stones. He offerred her a good amount of money for her time. He wants her to help him sell things. What things?

Himself, mostly. Rolling Stones memorabilia actually.

Pie in the Sky

Delene has Multiple Sclerosis (but she doesn't let it stop her from trying). She is a divorced mother of two, trying to get by on a fixed income, disability. Delene has worked for Mike Decaro and the Rolling Stones since April. She has delivered her time. Has she been paid? Not a dime.

In that time, Delene has served as chauffeur, taxi, and emotional punching bag to Mike Decaro. He has given her nothing for gas or mileage travelling back and forth from her home in NE Connecticut to Stamford many times. She paid these expenses herself.

Mike always seems to be broke.. He has her buy him cigarettes, because he has no money.

He has her buy him chicken sandwiches at McDonalds, because he has no money.

No Worries

Mike Decaro has no money worries. He peddles influence and access to the band to radio stations and others foolish enough to buy it. In addition to working for the Rolling Stones and running miscellaneous errands for Keith Richards, Mike Decaro has placed a virtual saddle on my Friend Delene. Mike Decaro has apparently found a Beast of Burden.

Princely Sums and Prevarication

Maybe the Rolling Stones can not afford to pay Delene the princely (or should I say Knightly?) sum that Mike Decaro contracted to pay for her time.

Or maybe it is just that Mike Decaro is not authorised to hire anybody.

Or maybe it is just the policy of the Rolling Stone's organisation to try to get People to work for free, and offer their time for free. After all, maybe they are no different than any big record company that puts Artists on the road to promote their work and keep the bulk of the money for themselves. As Courtney Love observed a speech reported in the Salon article Courtney Does the Math, "The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid."

Liars and Thieves

I do know that I like some of the Stones' music. It is this business practice of defrauding their contractor's by theft of time and services that I have trouble with...especially when the victim is a Friend.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A Veteran, Herdsman, and Pet Pal

Delene is a Veteran of the United States Army. She worked for many years for DHI (Dairy Herd Improvement). It was on a trip for DHI during the Steel Wheels tour that Delene happened to meet Keith Richards.

Among other things, Mike Decaro says he runs errands for Keith Richards.

Later, Delene became the Dog Warden for four northeastern Connecticut towns. She loves animals. She works with Pet Pals, an animal rescue and adoption organisation (see the pet search banner at the bottom of this page). She has done this for years.

I like Delene. She is kind to animals, and People. She helped me when I needed it, because she could. And I would help her in any way that I could.

I plan to.

posted by gathering moss at 2:55 PM

The Police were at my house tonite.

I asked them to come. Mike Decaro was harassing me on the phone.

Again.


posted by gathering moss at 4:02 AM