ILMC Mob Coming Clean?

Maybe ILMC will have its share of memorable moments like the one in the original "Godfather," when Michael Corleone tells the story about the gangster who held his gun to the bandleader’s head and told him either his signature or his brains would be going on the contract.

There have been some fundamental changes in the live music industry since that film came out in 1972, not least of all because somewhere along the line, the artists somehow managed to grab the gun.

Picking "The Godfather" films as the theme for an ILMC is such an obvious choice that it’s amazing it hasn’t been done before, particularly given the number of real and apocryphal rock ‘n’ roll stories that liken promoters, agents and record company execs to a bunch of hoodlums.

The arrival of the U.S. corporate dons and the globalization of the concert business coincided with – or more likely caused – a period where the live music industry smartened itself up and became more professional.

In turn, there are no more (new) stories about promoters from the Mafia heartlands of Italy and Sicily – for an apposite ILMC example – shooting the tires off the touring trucks to stop an act from leaving a festival site before it had played.

The promoters from the region still enjoy a fierce rivalry without toting guns, and seem to have settled for just suing each other for libel.

The conference’s underlying theme is "transparency," a word mentioned twice in the latest edition of IQ, the bimonthly ILMC journal that is mailed free to a database of potential delegates.

It’s also taken up by IQ associate editor and ILMC agenda consultant Allan McGowan in his regular editorial "McGowan’s Musings" in the Danish-based VIP News. So maybe the conference really is about to ask the business to clear its conscience and open its soul and its books for closer scrutiny.

It will be interesting to see how McGowan or any of the panel moderators get on when they ask such questions as how many ticket companies are prepared to own up to undisclosed kickbacks to promoters and how many promoters are happy to accept them. Any guesses on how many hands go up for that one?

ILMC looks to have pledged itself to an idealistic and wholly admirable crusade, although there may be a sad old bunch of hardcore cynics who think it also happens to be more than a little optimistic.

It’s hardly likely that everyone will suddenly want to wash their dirty linen in public, or need to skip Ed Bicknell’s annual Sunday-morning chat show because they had a sudden urge to go to confession.

For years, ILMC delegates have stood up and congratulated and even praised the industry and themselves for the way the live business has "come of age" and matured toward greater honesty. However, trade journalists can still spend most of the rest of the year coming across incidents that suggest that isn’t the whole and transparent truth.

Somewhere among the discussions on honesty and transparency, perhaps those delegates who are fully paid-up members of the mutual back-slapping society may concede that there are still a few promoters who fail to return ticket money when shows get canceled.

Other promoters still go down under a barrage of questions from a state attorney wanting to know what the hell happened to the investors’ or the creditors’ money – and in some cases, the fans’ money.

There are still incidents – noticeably in emerging European markets – where deals tank under a tide of accusations and counterclaims, creating a long winding paper trail that may eventually lead to the truth of what actually happened and where the money really went – and which party really owes the other the however many thousands of euros or dollars they happen to be arguing about.

Perhaps it was bound to happen when the well-established and far more affluent live music biz powers decided to develop (and exploit) the old Communist territories, some of which struggle to find "transparent" methods of raising the fees that some international acts are demanding.

The great film director Stanley Kubrick once said, "The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."

Companies still fall one day and start up again the next, leaving former partners and suppliers dealing with the domino effect of bankruptcy and often seeing their own businesses clatter to the deck.

It’s no doubt true that, by and large, the business has become a much cleaner place in the last decade or so. It’s also true that it’s still a long way from being spotless.

Dirty deals are still going down, created by the duplicity of the con artist and often aided by the blind stupidity of some of the victims.

In previous years, when ILMC has crowed about how the business is developing, these incidents are the ones that tended to get brushed aside or under the carpet.

Does "transparency" mean that this year’s conference (London Royal Gardens Hotel, March 9-11) will result in the business suddenly forming a crystal-clear view of what’s really going on? Or does "transparency" mean that the business will prefer to just continue to stare straight through it?