{"id":2603,"date":"2017-02-10T23:48:15","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T23:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2603"},"modified":"2017-02-10T23:48:15","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T23:48:15","slug":"shining-some-light-on-the-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2603","title":{"rendered":"Shining some light on the darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom<\/a><\/p>\n

TOM WAITS<\/p>\n

There is enough darkness descending on us with the election of the monster to the presidency, so I want today to shed some lightness on us. Back in 2005, Nick Spitzer of American Routes did an interview with the legendary Tom Waits, singer and composer. Waits is my kind of guy and the interview Spitzer did with him was very instructional and mixed with some humor. The part that I particularly liked was when Spitzer mentioned that ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) tried a few years before to charge the Boy Scouts for singing campfire songs. Waits was quick to register, tongue in cheek, his surprise. \u201cOh, I like that. There\u2019s a lot of money there. Boys Scouts, they always carry a lot of cash with them out in the woods. I think they should pay. If I found out one of the boys was singing one of my songs, I would nail him.\u201d Spitzer added, in the spirit of the conversation, \u201cThat they are out there on the trail singing your songs.\u201d And Waits quickly added jokingly, \u201cIf we could just police that.\u201d I have found some other information on Waits, who has stood fast against his music being used in commercials, and has sued when it has been used without his permission. He even has joked about other artists who do and once said that \u201cif Michael Jackson wants to work for Pepsi, why doesn’t he just get himself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it?\u201d He also has said, \u201cApparently, the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad\u2014ideally, naked and purring on the hood of a new car..I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOM WAITS There is enough darkness descending on us with the election of the monster to the presidency, so I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2605,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions\/2605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}