Whitney Houston will this evening be idolized, feted, memorialized, lionized. The publishers who hold copyright to the songs she recorded will be especially tearfully grateful to her, as their receipts will receive a healthy boost from the repeated plays, sales and downloads. Rather like the 'Elvis Effect' in which the labels and publishers celebrated a wonderful 1977 and 1978 in the wake of The King's premature exit from This Vale Of Tears. The past few years have been tough, and earnings are, after all, earnings.
Like Elvis and Michael Jackson, Miss Houston was a compelling performer, profoundly gifted. And like Elvis and Jacko, she supervised her million-dollar talent with a ten-dollar brain.
Like Elvis and Michael she should not be so much remembered as a tragic hero/heroine as much as An Object Lesson, to borrow a phrase from an earlier age.
What's not generally understood is the raw banality of the music business. Hunter Thompson expressed it best:
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”
As both participant and observer in DuhBiz, OS has almost lost count of the lives put through the sausage grinder: performers, composers, side musicians, engineers, on and on it goes. For Miss Houston, Elvis and Jacko, the truth of Thompson's analysis dawned much too late (or never at all). Or, they thought they were exempt, that the bad stuff would never catch up with them. That the money would always be there, that the money would solve all problems that might be encountered.
Million-dollar talents. Ten-dollar brains.
And it isn't like Miss Houston didn't have some wiser heads in her world attempting to help her out. All for nought, she knew better than they. Her death is a tragedy, but she is not a tragic figure. She is an Object Lesson.
And, tonight, the stars arrived on the red carpet, including the recipient of the next Whitney Houston Object Lesson Prize, Nicki Minaj. You must click the link to view the photo. Words fail, they simply fail... One would think that some sense of perspective may have descended upon Miss Minaj, given events of the past few days. But, then again, we're dealing with ten-dollar brains.
Back to the Dog Show. The contestants there are smarter.
