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THE REAL STORY OF KING JAMES I

WAS KING JAMES REALLY THE UNGODLY MAN THAT HIS MODERN CRITICS PROCLAIM HIM TO BE?

By Dr. Phil Stringer

Landmark Baptist College Press
810 East Hinson Avenue, Haines City, FL 33844

INTRODUCTION

"I never with God's grace shall do anything in private which I may not without shame proclaim upon the tops of houses." King James I, 1603

"And there must go much more to the making of a guilty man, than rumor." Ben Johnson, 1605

"USING THE PERSON OF KING JAMES TO ATTACK THE KING JAMES BIBLE."

"King James was a fag. How can you advocate a Bible that was translated by a faggot?" (From an Internet chat room)

"King James was a homosexual. . . Was a bitter persecutor of our forefathers . . . King James chose the King James translators, instructed the King James translators, approved and disapproved portions of the translation." Baptist evangelist J.H. Melton

Many critics of the King James Bible are deeply condescending towards the defenders of the King James Bible. This is seen in the statement by James White in his book, The King James Only Controversy:

"The KJV Only controversy feeds upon the ignorance among Christians regarding the origin, transmission, and translation of the Bible. Those who have taken the time to study this area are not likely candidates for induction into the KJV Only camp" (White, Introduction, p.v)

But, the truth is that the defenders of the King James are often far more educated on this subject then their critics. Many books have been published on the issue over the last few years. Many King James Bible defenders are easily able to shatter the often shallow attacks on the King James Bible. It is not unusual for those who have just found their pet arguments shattered to retreat to an argument like this. "Well, after all King James was a homosexual you know!"

But was he? Is this just a very historically shallow, unsound repetition of gossip and rumor or is it a historical fact? It must be admitted that many historians report that King James was a homosexual. But what is the evidence for such a charge? If King James was not a homosexual, his memory has been done a great injustice.

The real King James was a very different man than the one described by the critics of the King James Bible.

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF KING JAMES

James was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 19.1566. He was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots. His father, Lord Darnley was killed in an explosion when James was only eight months old.When James was one year old, his mother abdicated the throne of Scotland and James officially became king. She never saw her son again.

James was supervised during his childhood by several Scottish lords. He had several tutors, all evangelical Protestants. He became fluent in Greek, French, and Latin and received classical instruction in all three of these languages as well as English. He was kept fairly isolated until age 14. He developed a great fondness for books. Even as a teenager he was recognized as a serious scholar.

James was slender and of average height. He enjoyed horseback riding and hunting. His thin legs and narrow jaw prompted some to mock his appearance.

James opposed the attempts of the Presbyterian preachers of Scotland to control the royal government. However, he remained in sympathy with their doctrine and publicly supported many of their efforts.

In 1589 James was married to Anne, the daughter of Frederick II king of Denmark. They had eight children together. When Queen Elizabeth (his mother's cousin) died, James was next in line for the throne of England. In 1603 he was crowned King of England. He was officially King James VI of Scotland and King James I of England. He quickly ended the English war with Spain and England was to live in peace during his reign.

James survived four assassination attempts, the most famous of which was the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. A Roman Catholic agent, Guy Fawkes, had planted several barrels of gunpowder in the basement of Parliament. He planned to blow up the Parliament building while James was addressing the Parliament. His plot was disclosed and defeated. The English still celebrate the survival of James and the Parliament with a national holiday - Guy Fawkes Day.

Even though James had many opponents among the nobility and the clergy, he remained popular among the English people. England experienced both peace and prosperity during his rule

James was a strong advocate of the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Many Protestants felt that he took this concept much farther in his teaching and in his pronouncements than the Scripture warranted. However he ruled in a generally kind and benevolent manner rather than as a royal despot His many enemies were never able to generate any grassroots support among the people of England for their criticism of James.

The English program to colonize the Atlantic seaboard, begun under Queen Elizabeth, was strengthened under the influence of King James. Jamestown, the first enduring English settlement in the new world, was named after King James. King James's most conspicuous claims to fame were the formation of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland under one throne) and the sponsorship of the King James translation of the Bible.

Even King James's most loyal supporters acknowledged that he was sometimes unwise in his selection of advisors and cabinet ministers. Historian George McCauely wrote:".... . he could never tell a good man from a rogue or a wise man from a fool." As a result, he was surrounded by plots and intrigues, especially the last few years of his life.

In 1625 King James passed away peacefully at his country estate in Hertfordshire.

THE ORIGINS OF THE ATTACK ON KING JAMES

There is no record of anyone accusing King James of homosexual behavior during his lifetime. If you read most modern historians, you would believe that King James's homosexuality was open and widely recognized but this is far from the truth. There are absolutely no contemporary accounts alleging homosexuality on King James's part though there are contemporary accounts praising him for his moral virtue.

Sir Anthony Welden was an officer in the royal household of King James. He was knighted by King James in 1617. He was eventually dismissed from the royal court by King James. He vowed to get revenge!

He supported the anti-monarchy forces during the English Civil War. Twenty-five years after the death of King James, (one year after the execution of Charles I, King James's son) Welden made the first accusations of homosexuality against King James. His statements were widely rejected at the time because there were still too many living people who had known King James personally and who dismissed the allegations as ridiculous.

Disgruntled courtiers and political opponents picked up the allegations against King James and began to use innuendo to hurt his reputation. While not accusing him directly of homosexuality, they tried to create questions about his loyalties to his close friends and associates. These seventeenth century critics seem to fall into two groups. Some had their political and personal ambitions thwarted by King James. Others opposed his policy of uniting Scotland and England into one kingdom. All of these allegations come from people with a strong bias against James and they all were made a long time after his death.

Some historians began to repeat these attacks against King James without investigation. Soon vague allegations, rumor, innuendo and speculations were reported as historical fact. While some historians have sifted through the rumors to get the facts, many just repeated the statements of previous historians without any examination.

In the eighteenth century the primary reporters of King James's homosexuality, were those who opposed the union of Great Britain and also Roman Catholics who resented the support that James gave Protestants. In the twentieth century two different groups have clung to the allegations about King James and propagated them in defiance of the facts.

Homosexual activists have been determined to claim King James as one of their own. These are the same activists who claim that Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, the Biblical King David and Jonathan and even Jesus Christ were really homosexuals. Historical facts means nothing to these people. They care only about their political and social agenda. It is a travesty when evangelicals quote their books as credible sources. The second group which refuses to be persuaded by the facts about King James are those who wish to use King James's supposed homosexuality to discredit the King James Bible.

In 1985, Moody Monthly magazine alerted the evangelical world to the allegations that King James was a homosexual. These charges came in an article entitled The Real King James by Karen Ann Wojahn. No evidence was provided. The article was accompanied by The Bible That Bears His Name by Leslie Keylock, This article was an attack on the King James Bible. Numerous attempts have been made to get Moody Monthly to either document or withdraw the charges made in these articles but fourteen years later neither has been done.

Despite the lack of evidence (and in spite of the evidence to the contrary) some evangelicals are quick to use the baseless accusations against King James to bolster their attacks on the King James Bible. But facts are contrary things! King James never claimed to be a homosexual. He was never accused of being one during his life time. No one ever claimed to see James in a homosexual situation. The accusations against him, past and present, stem from bias and not from fact.

The character and record of King James clearly refutes the charges of homosexuality against King James.

CONTEMPORARY REFERENCES TO THE MORAL CHARACTER OF KING JAMES

In 1602, Sir Henry Wotton wrote of King James, "... Among his good qualities none shines more brightly than the chasteness of his life, which he has preserved without stain down to the present time contrary to the example of almost all his ancestors. ."

Sir Edward Coke, the famous English jurist was a contemporary of King James. He was often a political opponent of King James. Historian Jasper Ridley called Sir Edward the leader of the "lawyers opposition" to the king. He had been appointed by James as the chief justice of the Court of the King's Bench. A number of his judicial rulings went against the king. He considered himself the defender of the English common law against the doctrine of the divine right of kings. James eventually had him dismissed from the English high court.

In his legal commentary, Coke maintained the common law position about homosexuality, "Buggery is a detestable and abominable sin, ... Against the ordinances of the Creator and the order of nature." Coke was no friend of homosexuality and no political ally of the king. Yet in reference to the personal character of King James he wrote "and I knowing the sincerity of his (James's) justice, (for which he is the most renowned king in the Christian world)..."

Sir Arthur Wilson was a historian during the time of James. He opposed James and the concept of the monarchy. He wrote harshly about James in some areas. However, in his Dictionary of National Biography he has these references to King James. He states that James's life was "decidedly pure" and "his own life was pure." He also stated that James did not "come into conflict with the Presbyterian clergy" in the area of "morality." The Presbyterian preachers had opposed his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, on the grounds of her adulteries. They found no reason to oppose King James on moral grounds.

Bishop Godfrey Goodman lived during the time of King James. He publically preached against moral sins. He opposed King James and was denied opportunities for advancement by King James. James suspected him of sympathy towards Roman Catholicism. However, when Anthony Welden began to question James' morality, Bishop Goodman retuted him. According to English historian Charles Williams, Goodman wrote, "the king himself was a very chaste man."

It is a rare political leader whose morality and virtue is praised even by his contemporary opponents.

Dr. Miles Smith was chosen by the King James translators to write the preface to the King James Bible. "The Translators to the Readers." In this preface he says very complimentary things about King James. Some have suggested that this was simply the custom of the times and other have questioned the sincerity of the translators because of these comments. In reality these were devout Bible believing men who were not afraid to disagree with the king. Many of them spoke publicly against King James's position on the divine right of kings. Had there been any reason to believe that he was a homosexual they would have openly condemned him for it. Yet their estimate of his spiritual character and moral leadership is reflected in statements such as these. From the preface to the King James Bible:

"Great and manifold were the blessings, most dread sovereign which Almighty God, the Father of all mercies, bestowed upon us the people of England, when he first sent your Majesty's Royal Person to rule and reign over us." The preface also praises King James for "maintaining the truth of Christ, and propagating it far and near is that which hath so bound and firmly knit the hearts of all your majesty's loyal and religious people unto you, that your very name is precious among them. Their eye doth behold you with comfort, and they bless you in their hearts, as that sanctified Person, who, under God is the immediate author of their true happiness."

The Puritans were not frightened, helpless preachers who were scared into praising a wicked monarch When James's son, Charles I, became king, the Puritans thundered against his perceived immoralities like John the Baptist against Herod. Yet they had nothing but praise for King James's moral and spiritual character.

Not all historians have blindly repeated the slander against King James. Issac Disracli (1863) wrote:

"Perhaps no sovereign has suffered more by that art, which is described by an old Irish proverb of killing a man by lies, the surmises and the insinuations of one party, dissatisfied with the established government... the misconceptions of more modern writers... And the anonymous libels ... viliy the Stuarts. These cannot be treasured as authorities of history." Much can be substantiated in favor of the domestic affections and habits of this pacific monarch: and those who are more intimately acquainted with the secret history of the times will perceive how erroneously the personal character of this sovereign is exhibited in our popular historians, and often even among the few who, with better information, have re-echoed their preconceived opinions.

In 1891, F.A. Inderwick wrote (Side Lights on the Stuarts) about King James:

"I think only justice to say, that much of scurrilous abuse to which he has been subjected appears to be without warrant, and that he was personally a man of good moral character, a quality which he was probably much indebted to the strict and careful training he received from his Presbyterian tutors.

Historian Robert Chambers (1830) published two volumes on the life of King James. Chambers calls him "greatly loved and greeted", and "very much beloved by his people." He also calls him a "monarch whose character was good." He also says that his "conduct was every thing that could be expected of a good Christian."

Historian Samuel Rawson Gardiner wrote of King James, "His own life was virtuous and upright."

KING JAMES OWN STATEMENTS ON HOMOSEXUALITY

King James book Basilicon Doron (the Kingly Gift) was written in 1599. It contained instructions to his son about how to properly carry out the responsibilities of the king. Included among his instructions is this statement: "there are some horrible crimes that ye are bound in conscience never to forgive: such as witchcraft, willful murder,incest and sodomv..."

In July of 1610 James was asked to pardon a number of criminals. He did pardon several on the list but refused to pardon those convicted of sodomy. He advised his son to stay away from "effeminate ones." James repeatedly referred to homosexuality as the "horrible crime!" These are indeed strange statements from someone given to homosexuality. James routinely listed homosexuality with witchcraft and murder just as the Bible does).

The King James Version translation of the Bible, which was sponsored by King James, does not in any way weaken the Biblical statements about homosexuality. Modem English translations like the RSV and the NIV weaken or delete Biblical statements condemning homosexuality. The King James Bible is clear in reflecting the Bibles' strong statements condemning homosexuality.

KING JAMES MARRIAGE AND MORAL TEACHING ABOUT MARRIAGE

King James was married to Anne of Denmark in 1589. They remained married until her death in 1619. King James's modern critics say that this means nothing since homosexual rulers have often maintained wives for public appearance's sake.

However, King James spent much time with his wife (more than most monarchs), was openly affectionate to her in public and wrote her many love poems and sonnets. He greatly mourned her passing. More significantly James and Anne had eight children together.

The unmarried Puritan preacher John Rainolds questioned the use of the phrase "with my body I thee worship" in the standard English wedding ceremony. King James openly teased him about this. He said, "Many a man speaks of Robin Hood who never shot his bow; if you had a good wife yourself, you would think that all the honor and worship you could do her would be well bestowed." He then spoke of his queen as "our dearest bedfellow."

In 1603 James wrote the following to Anne:

"...I thank God I carry that love and respect unto you which, by the law of God and nature, I ought to do to my wife and mother of my children. . . For the respect of your honorable earth and descent I married you; but the love and respect I now bear you for that ye are my married wife and so partaker of my honour, as of all my other fortunes... Where ye were a king's or cook's daughter ye must be all alike to me being one my wife."

D.H. Wilson wrote the following about King James's love poems to his wife:

"He remained infatuated with his bride, whose praises he sang in sonnets and in other verse. Her beauty, he wrote, has caused his love,

'Long smoldering as fire hidden among coals, to burst into sudden blaze.'

She inspires his verse, and her approbation spurs him to preserve, though government brings stormy cares. But she is a sweet physician who can soothe and cure his ills."

In fact, James did something almost unique for a royal monarch. He taught that the king should be a moral person, faithful to his wife and should set a moral example for his people. It was common for kings to have a number of mistresses. In France the king's mistress was considered an official member of the royal court. In fact the lack of mistresses in King James's Court is often used as proof that he was a homosexual. However a lack of mistresses is also a sign of a godly man leading a clean moral life.

James further writes:

"Marriage is one of the greatest actions that a man does all his time." "When you are married, keep inviolably your promise made to God in your marriage, which all stands in doing of one thing. And abstaining from another, to treat her in all things as your wife and the half of yourself, and to make your body (which then is no more yours but property hers) common with none other. I trust I need not to insist there to dissuade you from filthy vice of adultery remember only what solemn promise you made to God at your marriage." And for your behavior to your wife, the Scripture can best give you counsel therein. Treat her as your own flesh, command her as her lord, cherish her as your helper, rule her as your pupil, please her in all things reasonable, but teach her not to be curious in things that belong not to her. You are the head, she is your body, it is your office to command and hers to obey, but yet with such a sweet harmony as she should be as ready to obey as you to command, as willing to follow as you to go before, your love being wholly knit unto her, and all her affections lovingly bent to follow your will."

James repeatedly taught the importance of morality and marriage. James wrote in Basilicon Doron:

"But the principal blessing that you can get of good company will stand, in your marrying of a godly and virtuous wife. . . being flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. . . Marriage is the greatest earthlv felicity. .. without the blessing of God you cannot look for a happy marriage."

James instructed his son:

"Keep your body clean and unpolluted while you give it to your wife whom to only it belongs for how can you justly crave to be joined with a Virgin if your body be polluted? Why should the one half be clean, and other defiled? And suppose I know, fornication is thought but a venial sin by the most part of the world, yet remember well what I said to you in my first book regarding conscience, and count every sin and breach of God's law, not according as the vain world esteems of it, but as God judge and maker of the law accounts of the same: hear God commanding by the mouth of Paul to abstain from fornication, declaring that the fornicator shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven, and by the mouth of John reckoning out fornication among other grievous sins that declares the commiters among dogs and swine." James notes the end thereof is a "man given over to his own filthy affections."

Because of King James's strong moral teaching and personal example, Disraeli wrote: "James had formed the most elevated conception of the virtues and duties of a monarch." Few English monarchs used the moral authority of the throne to teach morality and demonstrate it by example. Those who did, like King James and Queen Victoria, generated great resentment from those who were convicted by their moral teachings. In both cases, after their death, their enemies attacked them with vicious moral slanders. The real King James was an outstanding moral example and a clear moral teacher. In neither case was there any evidence to back up their accusations.

King James pointed out how many civil wars were started by the illegitimate sons of kings. He pointed out how many innocent lives could have been saved if kings had been moral people.

MISUNDERSTOOD CUSTOMS OF THE TIME

King James's critics ask: isn't it true that King James publicly kissed men on the cheek and called men affectionate names like darling and sweetheart? Didn't men routinely sleep at night in his bed? Didn't King James often lean on male members of the royal household? These allegations are true. Similar evidence is also used by modern homosexual activists to assert that William Shakespeare (a contemporary of King James) was a homosexual. But this is all a misreading of the customs of the time.

Assassination of royalty was a common event and it was a customary thing for kings to have bodyguards sleep in their bed. No one accuses the promiscuous, womanizer, Henry VIII of being anything but a heterosexual. Yet he routinely slept with bodyguards in the royal bed. King James survived two kidnappings and four violent attempts on his life. Such experiences did nothing to cause King James to break with the normal procedure of always keeping his bodyguards close at hand. In sharing his bed with royal bodyguards, King James was only following the normal practice of the royalty of his time.

Terms of affection like "sweetheart" and "darling" were normal terms used between men in the seventeenth century in England. In Psalm 22:20, God the Father calls Christ the Son "My Darling." He does so again in Psalm 35:17. In the 1990's African - American women routinely called each other "girlfriend." This is not a homosexual term but a normal expression of the time. Anyone who presents the use of terms like "sweetheart" and "darling" as proof of homosexuality in seventeenth century England is a very shallow historian (or has a very vulgar mind). King James (or for that matter William Shakespeare) does not deserve such treatment.

Men kissing men as a form of greeting was a common innocent custom in seventeenth century England (just as it is in twentieth century France).

Erasmus wrote of the English:

"Wherever you come, you are received with a kiss by all; when you take your leave, you are dismissed with kisses: you return, kisses are repeated, They come to visit you, kisses again: they leave you, you kiss them all round. Should they meet you anywhere kisses in abundance: in fine, wherever you move, there is nothing but kisses."

Before evil minded men are quick to present this as proof of homosexuality, perhaps they should remember that this was also a common custom in Bible times: "Greet ye one another with a holy kiss." I Corinthians 16:20 (see also Luke 7:45, Romans 16:16, II Corinthians 13:12, I Thessalonians 5:26.1 Peter 5:14, Acts 20:37).

Because of the weakness of his legs James often leaned on members of the royal staff as he was dealing with official business. Such a position is not unusual for a king (II Kings 7:2,17). John leaned on Jesus (John 13:23, 21:20). Homosexual activists try to claim this as proof of homosexuality on the part of Jesus but Bible believers are quick to see through such foolishness, (Titus 1:15).

Anyone interested in the truth would be willing to understand King James's behavior in the light of the customs of the day.

WAS KING JAMES A SAVED MAN?

James was around the preaching of the gospel and the teaching of evangelical theology from his early childhood. His coronation sermon was delivered by Reformation leader John Knox. Puritan theologian George Buchanan was one of James's early tutors and later dedicated a doctrines textbook to him.

Historian Robert Chambers described James's Biblical knowledge this way, "He was deeply read in Scripture; he could quote its texts with great facility; knew it even with philological exactness." James wrote to a friend and said, "Praying God that as you are regenerated and born in him anew, so you may rise to him and be sanctified in him forever." In his writings James often refers to salvation as a free gift, salvation by faith and regeneration. He refers to one day receiving "white garments washed in the blood of the lamb."

In only one area does James ever seem to differ doctrinally with his Scottish Presbyterian tutors - the doctrine of civil government.

James was trained by evangelical Christians, claimed to be an evangelical Christian, wrote about evangelical doctrine and was accepted as a saved man by the born again Christians of his time. Nothing documented in his life gives anyone reason to question his salvation. In fact the real King James showed an interest in morality and holiness that is almost unique among the royalty of the period. James wrote "Holiness being the first and most requisite quality of a Christian (as proceeding from true fear and knowledge of God)."

There is no legitimate reason to question James's salvation. The real King James was a professing Christian with a good testimony.

KING JAMES'S ROLE IN SPONSORING THE KING JAMES TRANSLATION

From January 14-18, 1604 A.D., the leaders of the Church of England met at Hampton Court in London. This meeting was called by King James. The Church of England was divided into three main factions. The Anglo-Catholic faction wanted to keep all the trappings and much of the doctrine of Roman Catholicism without acknowledging the authority of the Pope. The Protestant faction wanted the church of England to be the state Protestant Church like the Lutheran in Germany and the Reformed Church in Switzerland.

The Puritans were the most thoroughly evangelical and Biblically oriented of the three groups. They wanted a complete break with Catholicism and a greater degree of independence for local churches.

The three factions were at considerable odds with each other. King James attempted to moderate between the different factions. John Rainolds, representing the Puritans, made a formal request that King James sponsor a new English translation. The Bishop of London opposed this suggestion but John Rainolds eventually persuaded King James to give his blessing! Because of this Rainolds is remembered as the Father of the King James Bible.

King James became the first earthly monarch to successfully sponsor and encourage the distribution of the entire Word of God in the daily language of his people. (King Alfred had made an attempt to get part of the Scripture into the language of the people of England centuries earlier).

William Tyndale, the Father of the English Bible, had been used of God to bring an early translation of the Bible in English to the English people. For this crime he was declared to be a heretic and was burned at the stake. His last words were "Lord, open the King of England's eyes." Now a born again English king was sponsoring an English Bible, produced openly on English soil for English churches and English Christians.

King James appointed 54 learned men to make "one more exact translation of the Bible." Later others would be invited to join them. King James encouraged financial gifts to this project and set the example by agreeing to underwrite the salary of several of the translators himself.

Even though the official name for this translation would be the Authorized Version, it was soon known as the King James Bible. It was uniquely made possible and promoted by the King of England - King James. Laymen now had no fear of owning their own Bible - it was sponsored by the King for them.

THE LITERARY ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND SCHOLARSHIP OF KING JAMES

King James was fluent in Greek, Latin and French. He wrote a number of books and pamphlets on a wide variety of subjects. In his book Great Britain's Solomon Maurice Lee, Jr. wrote: "It would be difficult to imagine a more absorbing companion than this intelligent, learned, witty Scot, an author who wrote on subjects as diverse as theology, tobacco, witchcraft and the theory and practice of kingship and who was a poet to boot. And a king - a king almost from birth in his native Scotland, for forty of his forty-nine years and of England and Ireland for twenty-two. And be it said at once a successful king."

King James did his own private translation of Psalms. He also wrote a commentary on the book of Revelation and a series of devotionals on the Lord's Prayer.

Tobacco use began in England during the time of King James. Tobacco was being introduced from England's new American colonies. King James wrote a small book about tobacco and condemned both the smoking and chewing of tobacco as a disgusting habit. He wrote that ". . . a smoker and a non- smoker cannot be equally free in the same room."

James wrote a book entitled Demonology. This book enraged the witches of England because it attributed their supernatural powers to demon possession. They swore their eternal hatred of James.

James wrote often about moral matters including homosexuality. There is absolutely nothing in his writings to give evidence to the moral charges against King James and there is much to refute them.

King James wrote more books than any royal monarch of any nation. As a result he is the most often quoted royal monarch of all time.

The real King James was a respected scholar and an influential author.

KING JAMES POLITICAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS

King James was the first British monarch to bear the title "sacred majesty."

King James united Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland under one royal throne. This created the United Kingdom. How different the world might have been if the United Kingdom had not had the strength to resist first the German fascists and then the Russian communists in the twentieth century.

The leadership of King James was essential in planting an enduring English presence in the Western Hemisphere. These humble beginnings would lead to the foundation of the United States of America. Again, how different the world would have been in the twentieth century had the United States not been Great Britain's indispensable partner in resisting both fascism and communism in the twentieth century.

Certainly all the credit cannot be given to King James for the strength and development of the United Kingdom and the United States but he played an important and positive role in the history of each.

One of James's contemporaries described his rule this way: "... for he lived in peace, died in peace and left all his kingdoms in a peaceable condition."

James is also credited with ending torture as a part of the English legal system. He also replaced burning at the stake as a means of execution.

When James became King it was a common thing for Baptists (among others) to be executed by the state for being religious nonconformists. This continued through the early years of the reign of King James but he put an end to this policy in 1612. He wrote,

"I will never allow in my conscience that the blood of any man shall be shed for diversity of opinions in religion."

The peace and prosperity enjoyed by England during James's rule would be a credit to any civil ruler. Upon his death in 1625 James was compared (in his funeral sermon) to King Solomon.

"King Solomon is said to be Brigentus Corm Matre Sua, the only son of his mother, Proverbs 4:3. So was King James. Solomon had a complexion white and ruddy, Song of Solomon 5:10. So was King James. Solomon was an infant king, Pver Parvulus, a little child, I Chronicles 22:5 - So was King James, a King at the age of 13 months. Solomon began his reign in the life of his predecessor, I Kings 1:32, so by the force and compulsion of the state (Scotland) did our late sovereign King James. Solomon was twice crowned and anointed a King. I Chronicles 29:22 - so was King James. Solomon's minority was rough, through the quarrels of the former sovereign; so was that of King James. Solomon learned above all the princes of the East, I Kings 4:20. So was King James. Above all the princes of the universal world. Solomon was a writer in prose and verse, I Kings 4:32 - so in a very pure and exquisite manner was our sweet sovereign King James. Solomon was the greatest patron we ever read to church and churchman and yet no greater (let the house of Aaron now confess then King James). Solomon was honored with ambassadors from all Kings of the earth, I Kings 4- And so you know was King James... Solomon died in peace, when he had lived about 60 years and so you know did King James."

Sir Fernando Gorges one of the founders of Jamestown, also compared James to Solomon.

<strong>"This great monarch gloriously ascending his throne (1603) being born to greatness above his ancestors to whom all submitted as to another Solomon for wisdom and justice."

KING JAMES - UNJUSTLY ACCUSED

Almost half of the information in this monograph comes from one source - the book King James the VI of Scotland and The I of England Unjustly Accused. This book was written by Stephen Coston Sr. and published in 1996. It is 392 pages in length. This book does a masterful job of refuting the moral accusations against King James. Coston's work is unanswerable.

This book may be obtained by writing:

Stephen Alexander Coston, Sr.
7245 34th Avenue North
St. Petersburg, FL 33710

CONCLUSION

King James spoke eloquently of the role of the King as a moral example:

"But it is not enough to be a good king, by the thralldom of good laws will execute to govern his people, if he joins not therewith his virtuous life in his own person and in the person of his court and company by his good example alluring his subjects to the love of virtue and hatred of vice ..."

King James believed his servant John Gibb had lost some important papers. In his anger he kicked him. Later he found out that Gibb had not lost them. In a display of humility, almost unheard of for a royal monarch, he knelt before Gibb and begged his forgiveness.

As historian Steven Coston Sr. says "James was, no matter what tales some may tell, a virtuous man of good intentions, who did the best he could as God gave him strength."

How many folks know that King James (who commissioned the King James Bible and to whom it was dedicated) loved men and had sex with them? At the age of thirteen James fell madly in love with his male cousin Esme Stuart whom he made Duke of Lennox. James deferred to Esme to the consternation of his ministers. In 1582 James was kidnapped and forced to issue a proclamation against his lover and send him back to France.

Later, James fell in love with a poor young Scotsman named Robert Carr. "The king leans on his [Carr's] arm, pinches his cheeks, smooths his ruffled garment, and when he looks upon Carr, directs his speech to others." (Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, in a letter, 1611)

Carr eventually ended the relationship after which the king expressed his dissatisfaction in a letter to Carr, "I leave out of this reckoning your long creeping back and withdrawing yourself from lying in my chamber, notwithstanding my many hundred times earnest soliciting you to the contrary...Remember that (since I am king) all your being, except your breathing and soul, is from me." (See The Letters of King James I & VI, ed., G. P. V. Akrigg, Univ. of Calif. Press, 1984. Also see Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland, David M. Bergeron, Univ. of Missouri Press, 1991)
- Skip Church

King James' favorite male lovers were the Earl of Somerset and the Duke of Buckingham.
- Ben Edward Akerly, The X-rated Bible

James's sexual orientation was so widely known that Sir Walter Raleigh joked about it in public saying "King Elizabeth" had been succeeded by "Queen James."
- Catherine D. Bowen, The Lion and the Throne

King James 1 was a known homosexual who murdered his young lovers and victimized countless heretics and women. His cruelty was justified by his "divine right" of kings.
- Otto J. Scott, James the First

Although the title page of The King James Bible boasted that it was "newly translated out of the original tongues," the work was actually a revision of The Bishop's Bible of 1568, which was a revision of The Great Bible of 1539, which was itself based on three previous English translations from the early 1500s. So, the men who produced the King James Bible not only inherited some of the errors made by previous English translators, but invented some of their own.

Desiderius Erasmus was a "Christian humanist" who collected Greek (and Latin) New Testament manuscripts and compared and edited them, verse by verse, selecting what he considered to be the best variant passages, until he had compiled what came to be known as the "textus receptus." Early English translations of the Bible, like those mentioned above, were based on his "textus receptus." Erasmus was also a monk whom some historians believe engaged in homosexual activities.

But without both King James and Erasmus, the most widely touted Bible in Christian history would never have been produced, the KJV (or shall we say, Gay-JV?) Bible.
- Skip Church

A physical weakling, as an adolescent James had shown himself to be a coward, who liked only to hunt, to read (which he did, prodigiously) and to talk. To protect himself he wore thick quilted doublets, so padded that they provided a kind of armor against any assassin who might attack him with a knife. When he revealed a sexual preference for men, falling in love with his cousin Esmé Stewart and elevating him to a position of authority on the royal council, some of his nobles kidnapped James and held him captive, banishing Stewart and controlling James's every move. After nearly a year James escaped, but continued to resent his jailers; after he began to rule on his own behalf, at seventeen, he made it a priority to bring the turbulent Scots nobles under control.

As he aged James indulged his preference for handsome men, living apart from his wife. His doting fondness was part paternal, part erotic; he called his favorite George Villiers "sweet child and wife" and referred to himself as "your dear dad and husband." But to his courtiers, the sight of the aging, paunchy, balding monarch, who according to one court observer had a tendency to drool, leaning on his paramours was utterly repellant.

The first of the king's minions was Robert Carr, Groom of the Bedchamber, who the king elevated to earl of Somerset and appointed Lord Chamberlain. After six years of favors and royal gifts Carr was brought low, accused of murder and sent away from court. The second and greatest royal favorite, the extraordinarily handsome George Villiers, rose from cupbearer to Gentleman of the Bedchamber and ultimately to Earl of Buckingham.

"I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else," James announced to his councilors, "and more than you who are here assembled." He compared his love for the earl to Jesus's affection for the "beloved disciple" John. "Jesus Christ did the same," the king said, "and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his John, and I have my George."

With such pronouncements King James seemed to reach a new level of outrage, especially when he compounded his offense, in the view of many, by heaping Buckingham with costly jewels, lands, and lucrative offices.

-Royal Panoply, Brief Lives Of The English Monarchs
Carrolly Erickson, History Book Club

RELATED ARTICLES
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Homosexuality, The Bible vs. Nature
Examples of species who break the rules, from homosexual to even trans-sexual behaviors.

Protestantism In England And Scotland Under James I. And Charles I. (1603-1649)
Revised translation of the Bible issued during King James reign, and ready for publication in 1611. Furtherance of toleration toward Protestantism, and grievances of the Puritans.

Was the Wickedness of Sodom Homosexuality?
Excerpts from the Concordance, and a critical analysis of scripture, clarifying the definition of the Hebrew term 'know' as was recorded about Sodom in Genesis.

Florence Nightingale, The Red Cross and Christianity
Excerpt: Was Florence Nightingale, lesbian? "I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women...no woman has excited passions among women more than I have." -- Florence Nightengale
Common error the work of Florence Nightingale, founder of the Nursing Profession, and the origins of the International Red Cross, were founded upon Christianity.

Thank a Homosexual for Your Bible (Actually more likely bisexual which is common in men and women.

Any serious biography of King James I of England will talk about his homosexuality. He was completely open about it. Sources include the reports of foreign ambassadors, such as the Spanish ambassador writing home to say "the king goes to Newcastle today, much as another monarch went to Capri." Of course, you have to know about Tiberias at Capri to understand
that. 

The printing of the King James Bible was sponsored by King James I of England. Until the printing of this version the scriptures were ". . . practically unknown either to clergy or to people." (1) In 1522 William Tindale, an Oxford scholar, considered translating the Bible into English. He met resistance and was exiled to Germany.

In 1525 the New Testament, partially translated by Tindale, was printed in Cologne. During the same year 6,000 copies of the Testament were smuggled into England. By the authority of the church they were publicly burned. The Bible was the first book ever to be banned in England. (2) Driven from town to town William Tindale was eventually strangled in 1536 and his body burned.

Queen Mary, the mother of James I and a devout Catholic, had commanded "that no manners of persons presume to bring into this real any messages., books, paper, etc. in the name of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Miles Coverdale, Erasmus, Tyndale etc. or any like books containing false doctrines against the Catholic faith".

The Puritans complained to King James that the Bible available to them, the Douay version, was corrupt and begged for a new translation. King James complied and in 1611 the first printing was completed.

King James I, at the age of 8, was able to translate aloud chapters of the Bible from Latin to French and then to English. James believed strongly that the Bible should be available to ordinary people, not just the clergy.

At the age of thirteen James fell madly in love with his cousin Esmé Stuart whom he made Duke of Lennox. James deferred to Esmé to the consternation of his ministers. In 1582 James was kidnapped and forced to issue a proclamation against his lover and send him back to France.

Despite his homosexual activities James later fell in love with and married Anne of Denmark with whom he had seven children. 
NOTES:
1. William Tindale's Impact on the Translation of the King James Bible, by Pathricia Samuels.
2. The Bible Banned, THE FILE ROOM, Muntadas and Randolph Street Gallery.
3. King James I of Scotland and England, by Brian Barrow.
====================================
King James was affectionately called "Queen James" by his friends. Being gay himself, he would know if the Hebrew and Greek condemned homosexuality. 

If indeed homosexuality was to be condemned Thomas Moore used the word "invert" in 1533. "Invert" was one of the words used to denote homosexuality. 

So by the time of the writing of the King James version there were several words in use which would have condemned homosexuality. They WERE NOT used! Ask yourself: If there were plain and simple words to mean homosexuality why weren't they used? Simply because homosexuality was not the issue in these passages that the religious right use. Almost every biblical scholar today will agree on that point.

It wasn't until 1946 with the coming out of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) did we find the word homosexual in an English translation. 

If Plato, Erasmus, Michaelangelo, James I of England and others were gay throughout history, surely people knew about homosexuality long before the religious right decided that it was a sin.

It is appalling to me that so many people follow fads and false teachers without even looking into the background of the things they are willing to condemn.

When Mel White, who was a ghost writer for Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson and others, told them he is gay, and he tried for 25 years to "overcome" his homosexuality, you would think that they would be willing to listen to an "expert". But no, they act like they don't know him. 

Source: http://www.daily.iastate.edu/volumes/Fall95/Sept-26-95/in_my_view.html
===============================================
Queen James and His Courtiers
A very long discussion of his homosexual lovers is at Queer History and Literature http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/jamesi.htm
===============================================
Also in research of Francis Bacon from South Bank University London (http://www.sbu.ac.uk/stafflag/francisbacon1561.html) These comments are made:

In 1573 Francis Bacon and his elder brother Anthony (1558-1601), who was also gay, entered Trinity College, Cambridge. They then went to Gray's Inn, London, in 1576. In 1582 Francis was called to the bar and began a very successful law practice. He became a Member of Parliament in 1584, and he was appointed Queen Elizabeth I's Counsellor in 1591. James I (1566-1625) acceded to the thrown in 1603 and in the same year Francis Bacon was knighted. He became Solicitor General in 1607, Attorney General in 1613, and Lord High Chancellor in 1618. He was conferred the title of Baron Verulam in 1618, and of Viscount St. Albans in 1621. 

Bacon's personal friendship with King James I may have been a factor in his swift rise to power. James's homosexual loves are well-established, and he was known as "Queen James". However, Bacon had to be more discreet. His brother-in-law, Mervyn Touchet, was executed in 1631 for his homosexuality, as were two of Touchet's servants. 
===============================================
Some Christians however attack these facts and suggest that since King James was such a good Christian, he could not possibly be a homosexual. There are strong passions on both sides of the question regarding the sexual orientation of King James. For an outspoken view that he was not homosexual see:
King James The VI of Scotland & The I of England Unjustly Accused? BY: STEPHEN A. COSTON, SR. 

But in my reading his arguments he is mostly tearing apart arguments he claims are used to say that King James was homosexual, which I've never seen used, and mostly ignores the points made in research I've found which indicates he was homosexual.

He uses the same false approach, it seems to be, regarding Hebrew and Greek words using later middle age understandings of words, not what the words actually meant in biblical times.
===============================================
Other interesting research I mostly agree with

1. The Hebrew Old Testament clearly indicates that King David had a sexual relationship with Jonathan, the son of King Saul. 

2. The Hebrew Old Testament clearly documents a sexual relationship between the prophet Daniel and a man named Ashpenaz, and indicates that God put Daniel into that relationship.

3. Much to the embarrassment of the Vatican, the Catholic theologian Boswell has uncovered proof that, up until the fourteenth century, the church was routinely performing wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples.

4. The social tides in Europe began to turn against homosexuality around the thirteenth century. Up until that time, there was no organized opposition to homosexuality, either from society or from the church. 

5. The religious tide did not turn against homosexuals until after the social tides. The change in society's attitude toward homosexuals was the only reason the church stopped marrying them and began to persecute them. 

6. Boswell found that same-sex marriage continued in certain parts of eastern Europe until the nineteenth century, and that in a few villages, they still continue. 

7. King James, who ordered the English translation of the Bible which bears his name, was a homosexual, a fact of which the translators were well aware. This fact displeased them, but since he was the king, they could not express their displeasure openly. Although on the surface, they were careful to be certain that their translation flattered and pleased the king, they also used it to attack him in a way he could not fight.

8. There is absolutely no condemnation of homosexuality in the Hebrew Old Testament.

10. There is absolutely no condemnation of homosexuality in the Greek New Testament.

11. All English translations (one of the earliest being 1611 AD, more than 200 years after the social tide turned against homosexuals, and more than 100 years after the church stopped performing most homosexual weddings) have been deliberately mistranslated to make it appear that God condemned homosexuality.

12. The Hebrew and Greek scriptures never connected Soddom and Gomorrah with homosexuality. The idea that those cities were destroyed for homosexuality is a man-made notion and is unsupported by scriptures.

13. The Greek New Testament, while not condemning homosexuality, does forbid people to attempt to alter their sexual orientation.

14. Both the Greek and Roman Empires considered exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality to be abnormal. They believed that all people should be bisexual. 

Source: National Gay Pentecostal Alliance Lighthouse Apostolic Church P.O. Box 1391 Schenectady, NY 12301-1391

I don't fully understand the logic of the last point that all people should be bisexual. But the other points I strongly agree with based on my biblical research as do many other theologians, many of whom are heterosexual.

PROPHETS OF RAGE: PUBLIC ENEMY #1

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR GRIFF BY: KALONJI JAMA CHANGA

In 1987 when Public Enemy stepped on the scene with their debut album,"Yo! Bumrush The Show", they shocked the world. No one knew they would be recognized as one of the most controversial groups in the history of rap. Now 12 albums later, millions of records sold and performances in over 40 countries, the group is still doing their thing with their latest release, Rebirth of a Nation, featuring West Coast rebel rap artist, Paris.

The group started out with the front man Chuck D, the side-show Flava Flav, Terminator X (DJ) and the Minister of Information and leader of the S1W's (Security of the First World), Professor Griff. Years before Flava Flav's infamous VH1 television stunts, another member of Public Enemy was at the center of controversy. In 1989, based on an interview with The Washington Post, Professor Griff, who was misquoted, was accused of anti-semitism and faced a barrage of attacks from the Jewish Community. During this time period, Professor Griff made headlines around the country and had several attempts on his life including a sniper attack and poisoning.

I first met Professor Griff in Atlanta after a lecture I gave. He then invited me to open up for his now classic discourse, "Strange Love, has Public Enemy lost its Flava". Since that particular engagement, we have shared the stage on several different panel discussions and lectures. A strong community activist, he has supported different programs that we have launched in Atlanta, including the Feed The People program and a joint benefit effort for Bernard Burden, a victim of a lynching that took place a year and a half ago in the State of Georgia.

On Friday June 2, 2006, I caught up with Professor Griff at Lush Life Cafe in the West End of Atlanta and what followed was this interview. Brace Yo' self!

Kalonji: In your words, what is revolution?

Professor Griff: When the term revolution is mentioned, nowadays a lot of people look at it as a passe term. They only think of the "negro" revolution that we had here in America. Although, some Brothers, Sisters and a lot of organizations during the 60's, did bring about change, it wasn't a complete, total, constructive, conscious change. So when defining revolution, revolution is complete, total, constructive, conscious change. When we look back on different revolutions around the globe, for instance the Cuban Revolution what kind of change did that bring about? It brought about a complete, total, constructive, conscious change for the people in Cuba - with Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and Che Guevara. When you talk about Revolution, you're not talking about necessarily overthrowing the physical government in the land in which we live in, but overthrowing the government of your mind- so it has to be a complete, constructive, conscious change. In a nutshell, that's what revolution means to me. Every step you take towards that particular goal is revolution, long as it's about change. The clinical definition for insanity or insane is when you constantly do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. That's not gonna happen, that's counter revolutionary...I think a lot of the things that we're doing, such as what Tavis Smiley is doing with The Covenant is counter revolutionary. Actually trying to take steps backwards in order to go forward.

Kalonji: Do you feel we have effective Black Leadership in America today, and if so who would you consider leadership?

Professor Griff: When you say effective leadership, I think Al Sharpton put it best. He said, "We have those who call themselves Black Leadership, or we could reverse that and say those who call themselves leading Blacks". We have a lot of negroes that like to lead Blacks. They don't necessarily know where they're going but they wanna lead. So, if youre talking about using this system to lead Black People, then I think that's sad because this system is not designed to lead Black People anywhere. This system was constructed to keep Black People in a box and a certain place and those handpicked Black leaders are put in place to do just that. So when we talk about effective Black Leadership, what kind of change do they effect? Do they put policies in place that reach as high as the government and as low as the projects, that can effect Pookie, Man-man, Tay-Tay and Peanut? I don't think this is true. Other than the leadership of The Most Honorable Louis Farrakhan, I can't see anyone else being too effective. Theres a Brother Ray Hagin (pastor), in St. Louis. Theres a couple of other Brothers that have different organizations on a small scale they're reaching Grassroots people. But, you have 40 to 70 million Black People in America that need to be effected. So we need something broad across the board. A lot of us still believe in the esoteric, where we are waiting for someone to come save us, this whole Messiah concept, and that's played out. It's not gonna happen.

Kalonji: Earlier you mentioned the whole 60's Movement, Do you feel there is a Movement right now and if there is what is that Movement missing in 2006?

Professor Griff: Yes, I think there are different Movements that are going on. Things are moving and things are changing, but I don't think there is a common thread - I don't think we are moving as a whole. I think Chuck D said it better, he said, "We move as a team, we never move alone /the posse is ready and we operating in our zone". So were moving, you're moving. There are different organizations across the globe that are moving. Different Revolutionary Organizations are moving a lot of people. Is there a common thread there? Do we have the basics of economics - which is Land? No. We don't feed ourselves, someone else feeds us. We don't clothe ourselves. We don't educate ourselves. We get these things from someone else. Therefore that leadership we talked about is ineffective. That Movement and that change that we need, that so called moving the masses of our people, will not be successful if the basics are not taken care of. The basic things that our people should do for themselves.

Kalonji: What's your take on Voting? About two years ago cats like Puff and Russell were pushing this whole Vote or Die thing. What do you think about that, are we gonna Vote and still Die or what's the deal?

Professor Griff: I think Malcolm said it best when he gave us the analogy of "The Ballot or The Bullet". I think we should look at the whole Vote or Die as being some kind of scheme using negroes like Puffy to come lock down that whole demographic from 18 to 35. Even if you did vote, who would you vote for? Do those particular candidates come to the hood to speak to us? Number 2, if you are going to register people to vote, why not have a voter education to educate the people on the policies and the agendas of the candidates. Then we need to look at the long term effects of what voting does, where do those registration cards go? I know for a fact that the Selective Draft Services of the United States Government uses those cards to chose who is selected for the draft from the voter registration cards. That's very important. That's something we need to know and we don't know that. What has voting ever done for us? Vote or Die? No. That's a charade, that's a trick. You got imps like Chuck D to fall into things like that, because he the main one on t.v., talkin' bout, we need to vote. MTV Rock The Vote, with that kind of madness! That vote is a scam Bro, and you and I know it and they should know it also.

Kalonji: You know I agree with that...You mentioned some Hip Hop artists, you're coming from Public Enemy, one of the most popular groups in the History of Hip Hop. Do you think Hip Hop artists should be held accountable for their music and do they have a responsibility to help build the Black community?

Professor Griff: In dealing with Hip Hop and lyrical content, there definitely comes a social responsibility along with that. This question and this answer may not fit every artist in every genre in music. But, it does with Black People simply because there are no other people on the face of the Earth in the particular situation we're in. I cant even include the Brothers and Sisters on the Continent. They are not in the situation we're in. They did not lose they're Name, Culture, God. They probably lost a few other things, but we were the ones that were knocked over the head and dragged to America and lost everything. So we do have a social responsibility along with the lyrical content. I can't go out here and make a shoot'em up bang-bang kind of video. Shoot'em up bang-bang kind of songs, the rims are spinnin', I'm bling-blingin' and these kind of songs and not be held accountable for the effect that it has on the hood. A lot of times we come up outta these situations and we talk about those same situations "about keepin' it real" at the age of 17 - 18 years old. How come 10-15 years will go by and we 30 still talkin' about the same situation. Especially those that are in Hip Hop that are millionaires. You wearing a $100,000 in each ear, you got a $200,000 grill, a million dollar pinky ring and about $400,000 on ya wrist and you still talkin' bout what Pookie, Man-man and Tay-Tay are doing in the projects? Naw, something is wrong with that man. You should be the one comin' out of the projects and now that you are quote- unquote successful, you should be going back laying out some kind of economic game plan because someone did it for you.

Kalonji: Bubba Sparxxx has a video for a song called "Ms. New Booty", with a lot of Sistahs "shakin' what they mama gave 'em"...Do you feel it's artistry or exploitation? Do you feel the people should support someone like Bubba Sparxxx or do you feel that he is capitalizing off of the Sistahs?

Professor Griff: Most definitely he's capitalizing off of the ignorance of the people. But, ignorant is not a bad word, ignorant just means you choose to ignore, so it's not like these people don't know. We can go back in history and look at that same kind of scene being played out. The white rap artist talking about the Ma, The Mother and even with Black rap artists who constantly attack the womb. The micro-womb not the macro-womb. The smaller womb because they don't respect the macro-womb of the Universe. We attack the Womb as if we didn't come from the Womb like we came from somewhere else, so we attack the Ma, which is the Great Mother. Not only that, in us attacking the Womb, we allow our open enemy to attack the Womb. Because his woman is not full figured and shaped like a real woman should, we allow these people to come over the fence and snatch our women. A lot of these women gladly go, as you seen in the video. That scene was played out with Janet Jackson allowing Justin Timberlake to rip her clothing off, exposing her breast. For some strange reason (some) Black Women feel that they have to please the slave masters children. Then us as Black Men sit on the sideline and allow it to go down. We don't chastise the woman, nor deal with the white man. Then again we on the world stage, like punks once again. Unable to protect our women, unable to protect our children and until we stand up and do so....Probably at the detriment of being cursed out by the woman, but so-damn what! We have to take our rightful place. We can't do that with his woman. Imagine you going across the fence and snatching up a Jewish woman, calling her all kinds of bitches and hoes on t.v., you know Jewish people ain't having that. Imagine you snatching up a Jewish woman and calling her a kike, they will string yo' Black ass up downtown somewhere and tar and feather you. Right or wrong? So why should we allow it? In a minute some of us are going to get together and visit people like Bubba Sparxxx and we are going to talk to him. Talk to him (laughs)....

Kalonji: I hope you call me when it's time to talk (laughs). During the early 90's the Jewish community was upset about something you supposedly said. I heard that there was supposedly a hit out on you and there was actually a sniper from one particular Jewish organization on the roof at The Def Jam Building. Can you touch on that?

Professor Griff: I think just like any other Revolutionary trying to bring about a change with the people, especially a mental revolution, your own people are gonna want to fight you. Then you are going to get those who want to keep this thing on a hush, keep this thing as business as usual. Yeah, we gotta fight them also. There was an article in the paper (I still have the article) about how there was a Jewish gentlemen from the ADL across from RUSH Management company, on Elizabeth Street, Downtown Manhattan, shooting at the building. Thinking I was in there. They arrested him, and he did time. But you don't hear this stuff in the news, because our lives are not worth that much to people. This is not news worthy. So what another rapper dies. So they don't get it out to the masses of our people to the point where it hits us in the heart and we respond. We have been desensitized. That's just another nigga dead for them and for us it's business as usual, and we just push right along.

Kalonji: I heard you speak about our open enemy who would you say is our "open enemy"?

Professor Griff: When I say open enemy, Ava Muhammad taught us that everything in nature has an open enemy, a natural enemy. If we just stop and watch the Discovery Channel tonight, you can tell who is the enemy of the rat? It's the cat. Who is the open enemy of the cat? It's the dog. The open enemy of the chicken is the chicken hawk. So, if we look at white people's history and Black people's history and put them side by side, who is the open enemy of the Black Man and Woman? Who is the open enemy of God, it's the devil. That's easy to tell! But, you will get some negro, babblin' on t.v., like Michael Eric Dyson or "Corny" West or one of them, who will try to intellectualize this. Rather than come out and say, because they're scared, theyre punks. They fear the open enemy. But you can't tell that to Amilcar Cabral, you can't tell that to different revolutionaries, because we know the enemy. You can't say that to Steve Biko, Che Guevara, we know and understand who the enemy is. You can't tell that to Kalonji Jama Changa. You can't tell that to Fred Hampton Jr., you know what I'm saying? I had the pleasure of doing a lecture in New Jersey and guess who walked in the door? Dr. Leonard Jefferies. I was like Wow! One of the Elders sitting in my lecture! I felt honored. You can't tell that to a Brother like that, who knows who the open enemy is, who goes back to Egypt every year and tells us who the open enemy is. It wasn't no secret then, and it ain't no secret now.

Kalonji: In your lectures you often talk about the "scared to death negro". What is a scared to death negro?

Professor Griff: Let's define negro as a human being who has been written off as being dead. Negro coming from the Latin word meaning, black, dead, lifeless. A black shoe, a black board, a black tire, dead, lifeless. Let's see who some of the scared to death negroes are. Let's look at all the Black Mayors without even naming names. Let's roll off the idea of you being a Black Mayor in a "Black city". As many Mayors as we ran through in the past 10 years you would think we own or runnin' something, you would think we coming up. Not the case. We not runnin' anything in America, but our mouths. So, when I say scared to death negroes, not those brave men and women that are in Congress, that's working in cities I go to, that help Black people raise their conscious level to help Black people do something for the masses of our people. Not them. The ones that wanna take the lead and have no platform, that wanna take the lead and lead us right back to the slave masters plantation. We got some scared to death negroes that are rappers, that are really sitting comfortable. I heard recently that cats like Nelly are vegetarians, so why not make a song and help the masses of the people get up off this swine, this pork, this pig? No you would rather keep making these kind of songs to keep the people in the same wretched condition there in? That's sad, somebody need to come see you. Harriet Tubman dealt with that scared to death negro, like we dealing with that scared to death negro today. There's a railroad of bones that you can trace back and follow right back to the Continent of Africa. There's dead dry bones here in America, all throughout the 9,000 miles it took us to get here and there are dead dry bones there of our Ancestors. So for you not to remember this and not stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, you a scared to death negro! But, I say scared of what? You gonna die of something someday. I always tell people, I'm not gonna die on my knees, I am gonna die on my feet like a real man, standing up fighting this enemy.

Kalonji: The 1 Million Dollar Question....If I don't ask you this question we didn't do an interview...

Professor Griff: Let me answer it without you even asking. You about to ask me something about Flava?

Kalonji: You are absolutely correct.

Professor Griff: First of all we need to start the answer off like this, every Black Man in America needs to eat, whether you are in the rap game or not. We not gonna knock the next man's hustle on how you gotta eat. But dude, you're Public Enemy! We were the same one's talking about Bring The Noise, Don't Believe The Hype, Fight The Power. We were the same ones to talk about a Mind Revolution. Riot Starter, Public Enemy #1, Can't Trust It, Prophets of Rage! How could you now turn around and sweetheart the devil on t.v.? Lickin' and kissing on this white woman. There is a new generation that's coming up that never heard anything about Public Enemy. They heard glimpses about what Public Enemy was about, but in full they don't know what Public Enemy was about. These young people are coming up and seeing what Public Enemy is about thru the eyes of a cat like Flava Flav. Through madness of what he is doing on t.v. We love the Brotha, very brilliant Brotha, very talented Brotha. But will he use his awareness to raise the masses of our people. Flava gotta eat, but it's just that we need to put some conscious thinking into what we do before we allow our open enemy to put this before the world. To continue to destroy us as a people. You know how many people watched one episode, of those 10 episodes that Flava did with Bridgette Nielsen on Strange Love? How many people it reached that's looking at Public Enemy like them cats sold out? Millions! That's a reality. If Flava Flav don't know it by now, and I'm sure this message will get to him, I did a 2 hour lecture, "Strange Love, has Public Enemy lost it's Flava". Trying to lay it out and lay my position out, that we are not tolerating that. We need to stop sweethearting the slave masters children. Now, I'm gonna put something out there that may be detrimental to a lot of people. Back in the days, I think all of us have had encounters with white women and white men. But, see we dealt with them in a different kind of way. I know when I was growing up, we did. If we ever dealt with a cracker, we were using her or getting something else. We don't deal with them like that now. We having children with them, we even marrying these devils, man. Which is Ridiculous! No, we should never, love the devil. Under no circumstance, he is not to be trusted especially with weakening your Melanin. You giving that Chemical Blackness, that life force away. This is what they live for. They trying to sneak into Heaven and we ain't allowing it.

Kalonji Jama Changa can be reached at :

therawintellect@yahoo.com or www.myspace.com/kalonji_ftp

..

ATTN: A MUST READ FOR ALL UNSIGNED ARTIST

"Courtney Love" does the math

The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs."

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By Courtney Love

June 14, 2000 | Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.

I'm talking about major label recording contracts.

I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:

This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.

The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

Of course, they had fun. Hearing yourself on the radio, selling records, getting new fans and being on TV is great, but now the band doesn't have enough money to pay the rent and nobody has any credit.

Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work ... they can pay the mortgage forever but they'll never own the house. Like I said: Sharecropping. Our media says, "Boo hoo, poor pop stars, they had a nice ride. Fuck them for speaking up"; but I say this dialogue is imperative. And cynical media people, who are more fascinated with celebrity than most celebrities, need to reacquaint themselves with their value systems.

When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.

The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid.

Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)

Last November, a Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier, with the support of the RIAA, added a "technical amendment" to a bill that defined recorded music as "works for hire" under the 1978 Copyright Act.

He did this after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. The bill was on its way to the White House for the president's signature.

That subtle change in copyright law will add billions of dollars to record company bank accounts over the next few years -- billions of dollars that rightfully should have been paid to artists. A "work for hire" is now owned in perpetuity by the record company.

Under the 1978 Copyright Act, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. If you wrote and recorded "Everybody Hurts," you at least got it back to as a family legacy after 35 years. But now, because of this corrupt little pisher, "Everybody Hurts" never gets returned to your family, and can now be sold to the highest bidder.

Over the years record companies have tried to put "work for hire" provisions in their contracts, and Mr. Glazier claims that the "work for hire" only "codified" a standard industry practice. But copyright laws didn't identify sound recordings as being eligible to be called "works for hire," so those contracts didn't mean anything. Until now.

Writing and recording "Hey Jude" is now the same thing as writing an English textbook, writing standardized tests, translating a novel from one language to another or making a map. These are the types of things addressed in the "work for hire" act. And writing a standardized test is a work for hire. Not making a record.

So an assistant substantially altered a major law when he only had the authority to make spelling corrections. That's not what I learned about how government works in my high school civics class.

Three months later, the RIAA hired Mr. Glazier to become its top lobbyist at a salary that was obviously much greater than the one he had as the spelling corrector guy.

The RIAA tries to argue that this change was necessary because of a provision in the bill that musicians supported. That provision prevents anyone from registering a famous person's name as a Web address without that person's permission. That's great. I own my name, and should be able to do what I want with my name.

But the bill also created an exception that allows a company to take a person's name for a Web address if they create a work for hire. Which means a record company would be allowed to own your Web site when you record your "work for hire" album. Like I said: Sharecropping.

Although I've never met any one at a record company who "believed in the Internet," they've all been trying to cover their asses by securing everyone's digital rights. Not that they know what to do with them. Go to a major label-owned band site. Give me a dollar for every time you see an annoying "under construction" sign. I used to pester Geffen (when it was a label) to do a better job. I was totally ignored for two years, until I got my band name back. The Goo Goo Dolls are struggling to gain control of their domain name from Warner Bros., who claim they own the name because they set up a shitty promotional Web site for the band.

Orrin Hatch, songwriter and Republican senator from Utah, seems to be the only person in Washington with a progressive view of copyright law. One lobbyist says that there's no one in the House with a similar view and that "this would have never happened if Sonny Bono was still alive."

By the way, which bill do you think the recording industry used for this amendment?

The Record Company Redefinition Act? No. The Music Copyright Act? No. The Work for Hire Authorship Act? No.

How about the Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999?

Stealing our copyright reversions in the dead of night while no one was looking, and with no hearings held, is piracy.

It's piracy when the RIAA lobbies to change the bankruptcy law to make it more difficult for musicians to declare bankruptcy. Some musicians have declared bankruptcy to free themselves from truly evil contracts. TLC declared bankruptcy after they received less than 2 percent of the $175 million earned by their CD sales. That was about 40 times less than the profit that was divided among their management, production and record companies.

Toni Braxton also declared bankruptcy in 1998. She sold $188 million worth of CDs, but she was broke because of a terrible recording contract that paid her less than 35 cents per album. Bankruptcy can be an artist's only defense against a truly horrible deal and the RIAA wants to take it away.

Artists want to believe that we can make lots of money if we're successful. But there are hundreds of stories about artists in their 60s and 70s who are broke because they never made a dime from their hit records. And real success is still a long shot for a new artist today. Of the 32,000 new releases each year, only 250 sell more than 10,000 copies. And less than 30 go platinum.

The four major record corporations fund the RIAA. These companies are rich and obviously well-represented. Recording artists and musicians don't really have the money to compete. The 273,000 working musicians in America make about $30,000 a year. Only 15 percent of American Federation of Musicians members work steadily in music.

But the music industry is a $40 billion-a-year business. One-third of that revenue comes from the United States. The annual sales of cassettes, CDs and video are larger than the gross national product of 80 countries. Americans have more CD players, radios and VCRs than we have bathtubs.

Story after story gets told about artists -- some of them in their 60s and 70s, some of them authors of huge successful songs that we all enjoy, use and sing -- living in total poverty, never having been paid anything. Not even having access to a union or to basic health care. Artists who have generated billions of dollars for an industry die broke and un-cared for.

And they're not actors or participators. They're the rightful owners, originators and performers of original compositions.

This is piracy.

Technology is not piracy

This opinion is one I really haven't formed yet, so as I speak about Napster now, please understand that I'm not totally informed. I will be the first in line to file a class action suit to protect my copyrights if Napster or even the far more advanced Gnutella doesn't work with us to protect us. I'm on [Metallica drummer] Lars Ulrich's side, in other words, and I feel really badly for him that he doesn't know how to condense his case down to a sound-bite that sounds more reasonable than the one I saw today.

I also think Metallica is being given too much grief. It's anti-artist, for one thing. An artist speaks up and the artist gets squashed: Sharecropping. Don't get above your station, kid. It's not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster or Gnutella or Freenet or iMesh or beaming their CDs into a My.MP3.com or MyPlay.com music locker. It's piracy when those guys that run those companies make side deals with the cartel lawyers and label heads so that they can be "the labels' friend," and not the artists'.

Recording artists have essentially been giving their music away for free under the old system, so new technology that exposes our music to a larger audience can only be a good thing. Why aren't these companies working with us to create some peace?

There were a billion music downloads last year, but music sales are up. Where's the evidence that downloads hurt business? Downloads are creating more demand.

Why aren't record companies embracing this great opportunity? Why aren't they trying to talk to the kids passing compilations around to learn what they like? Why is the RIAA suing the companies that are stimulating this new demand? What's the point of going after people swapping cruddy-sounding MP3s? Cash! Cash they have no intention of passing onto us, the writers of their profits.

At this point the "record collector" geniuses who use Napster don't have the coolest most arcane selection anyway, unless you're into techno. Hardly any pre-1982 REM fans, no '60s punk, even the Alan Parsons Project was underrepresented when I tried to find some Napster buddies. For the most part, it was college boy rawk without a lot of imagination. Maybe that's the demographic that cares -- and in that case, My Bloody Valentine and Bert Jansch aren't going to get screwed just yet. There's still time to negotiate.

Destroying traditional access

Somewhere along the way, record companies figured out that it's a lot more profitable to control the distribution system than it is to nurture artists. And since the companies didn't have any real competition, artists had no other place to go. Record companies controlled the promotion and marketing; only they had the ability to get lots of radio play, and get records into all the big chain store. That power put them above both the artists and the audience. They own the plantation.

Being the gatekeeper was the most profitable place to be, but now we're in a world half without gates. The Internet allows artists to communicate directly with their audiences; we don't have to depend solely on an inefficient system where the record company promotes our records to radio, press or retail and then sits back and hopes fans find out about our music.

Record companies don't understand the intimacy between artists and their fans. They put records on the radio and buy some advertising and hope for the best. Digital distribution gives everyone worldwide, instant access to music.

And filters are replacing gatekeepers. In a world where we can get anything we want, whenever we want it, how does a company create value? By filtering. In a world without friction, the only friction people value is editing. A filter is valuable when it understands the needs of both artists and the public. New companies should be conduits between musicians and their fans.

Right now the only way you can get music is by shelling out $17. In a world where music costs a nickel, an artist can "sell" 100 million copies instead of just a million.

The present system keeps artists from finding an audience because it has too many artificial scarcities: limited radio promotion, limited bin space in stores and a limited number of spots on the record company roster.

The digital world has no scarcities. There are countless ways to reach an audience. Radio is no longer the only place to hear a new song. And tiny mall record stores aren't the only place to buy a new CD.

I'm leaving

Now artists have options. We don't have to work with major labels anymore, because the digital economy is creating new ways to distribute and market music. And the free ones amongst us aren't going to. That means the slave class, which I represent, has to find ways to get out of our deals. This didn't really matter before, and that's why we all stayed.

I want my seven-year contract law California labor code case to mean something to other artists. (Universal Records sues me because I leave because my employment is up, but they say a recording contract is not a personal contract; because the recording industry -- who, we have established, are excellent lobbyists, getting, as they did, a clerk to disallow Don Henley or Tom Petty the right to give their copyrights to their families -- in California, in 1987, lobbied to pass an amendment that nullified recording contracts as personal contracts, sort of. Maybe. Kind of. A little bit. And again, in the dead of night, succeeded.)

That's why I'm willing to do it with a sword in my teeth. I expect I'll be ignored or ostracized following this lawsuit. I expect that the treatment you're seeing Lars Ulrich get now will quadruple for me. Cool. At least I'll serve a purpose. I'm an artist and a good artist, I think, but I'm not that artist that has to play all the time, and thus has to get fucked. Maybe my laziness and self-destructive streak will finally pay off and serve a community desperately in need of it. They can't torture me like they could Lucinda Williams.

You funny dot-communists. Get your shit together, you annoying sucka VCs

I want to work with people who believe in music and art and passion. And I'm just the tip of the iceberg. I'm leaving the major label system and there are hundreds of artists who are going to follow me. There's an unbelievable opportunity for new companies that dare to get it right.

How can anyone defend the current system when it fails to deliver music to so many potential fans? That only expects of itself a "5 percent success rate" a year? The status quo gives us a boring culture. In a society of over 300 million people, only 30 new artists a year sell a million records. By any measure, that's a huge failure.

Maybe each fan will spend less money, but maybe each artist will have a better chance of making a living. Maybe our culture will get more interesting than the one currently owned by Time Warner. I'm not crazy. Ask yourself, are any of you somehow connected to Time Warner media? I think there are a lot of yeses to that and I'd have to say that in that case president McKinley truly failed to bust any trusts. Maybe we can remedy that now.

Artists will make that compromise if it means we can connect with hundreds of millions of fans instead of the hundreds of thousands that we have now. Especially if we lose all the crap that goes with success under the current system. I'm willing, right now, to leave half of these trappings -- fuck it, all these trappings -- at the door to have a pure artist experience. They cosset us with trappings to shut us up. That way when we say "sharecropper!" you can point to my free suit and say "Shut up pop star."

Here, take my Prada pants. Fuck it. Let us do our real jobs. And those of us addicted to celebrity because we have nothing else to give will fade away. And those of us addicted to celebrity because it was there will find a better, purer way to live.

Since I've basically been giving my music away for free under the old system, I'm not afraid of wireless, MP3 files or any of the other threats to my copyrights. Anything that makes my music more available to more people is great. MP3 files sound cruddy, but a well-made album sounds great. And I don't care what anyone says about digital recordings. At this point they are good for dance music, but try listening to a warm guitar tone on them. They suck for what I do.

Record companies are terrified of anything that challenges their control of distribution. This is the business that insisted that CDs be sold in incredibly wasteful 6-by-12 inch long boxes just because no one thought you could change the bins in a record store.

Let's not call the major labels "labels." Let's call them by their real names: They are the distributors. They're the only distributors and they exist because of scarcity. Artists pay 95 percent of whatever we make to gatekeepers because we used to need gatekeepers to get our music heard. Because they have a system, and when they decide to spend enough money -- all of it recoupable, all of it owed by me -- they can occasionally shove things through this system, depending on a lot of arbitrary factors.

The corporate filtering system, which is the system that brought you (in my humble opinion) a piece of crap like "Mambo No. 5" and didn't let you hear the brilliant Cat Power record or the amazing new Sleater Kinney record, obviously doesn't have good taste anyway. But we've never paid major label/distributors for their good taste. They've never been like Yahoo and provided a filter service.

There were a lot of factors that made a distributor decide to push a recording through the system:

How powerful is management?
Who owes whom a favor?
What independent promoter's cousin is the drummer?
What part of the fiscal year is the company putting out the record?
Is the royalty rate for the artist so obscenely bad that it's almost 100 percent profit instead of just 95 percent so that if the record sells, it's literally a steal?
How much bin space is left over this year?
Was the record already a hit in Europe so that there's corporate pressure to make it work?
Will the band screw up its live career to play free shows for radio stations?
Does the artist's song sound enough like someone else that radio stations will play it because it fits the sound of the month?
Did the artist get the song on a film soundtrack so that the movie studio will pay for the video?

These factors affect the decisions that go into the system. Not public taste. All these things are becoming eradicated now. They are gone or on their way out. We don't need the gatekeepers any more. We just don't need them.

And if they aren't going to do for me what I can do for myself with my 19-year-old Webmistress on my own Web site, then they need to get the hell out of my way. [I will] allow millions of people to get my music for nothing if they want and hopefully they'll be kind enough to leave a tip if they like it.

I still need the old stuff. I still need a producer in the creation of a recording, I still need to get on the radio (which costs a lot of money), I still need bin space for hardware CDs, I still need to provide an opportunity for people without computers to buy the hardware that I make. I still need a lot of this stuff, but I can get these things from a joint venture with a company that serves as a conduit and knows its place. Serving the artist and serving the public: That's its place.

Equity for artists

A new company that gives artists true equity in their work can take over the world, kick ass and make a lot of money. We're inspired by how people get paid in the new economy. Many visual artists and software and hardware designers have real ownership of their work.

I have a 14-year-old niece. She used to want to be a rock star. Before that she wanted to be an actress. As of six months ago, what do you think she wants to be when she grows up? What's the glamorous, emancipating career of choice? Of course, she wants to be a Web designer. It's such a glamorous business!

When you people do business with artists, you have to take a different view of things. We want to be treated with the respect that now goes to Web designers. We're not Dockers-wearing Intel workers from Portland who know how to "manage our stress." We don't understand or want to understand corporate culture.

I feel this obscene gold rush greedgreedgreed vibe that bothers me a lot when I talk to dot-com people about all this. You guys can't hustle artists that well. At least slick A&R guys know the buzzwords. Don't try to compete with them. I just laugh at you when you do! Maybe you could a year ago when anything dot-com sounded smarter than the rest of us, but the scam has been uncovered.

The celebrity-for-sale business is about to crash, I hope, and the idea of a sucker VC gifting some company with four floors just because they can "do" "chats" with "Christina" once or twice is ridiculous. I did a chat today, twice. Big damn deal. 200 bucks for the software and some elbow grease and a good back-end coder. Wow. That's not worth 150 million bucks.

... I mean, yeah, sure it is if you'd like to give it to me.

Tipping/music as service

I know my place. I'm a waiter. I'm in the service industry.

I live on tips. Occasionally, I'm going to get stiffed, but that's OK. If I work hard and I'm doing good work, I believe that the people who enjoy it are going to want to come directly to me and get my music because it sounds better, since it's mastered and packaged by me personally. I'm providing an honest, real experience. Period.

When people buy the bootleg T-shirt in the concert parking lot and not the more expensive T-shirt inside the venue, it isn't to save money. The T-shirt in the parking lot is cheap and badly made, but it's easier to buy. The bootleggers have a better distribution system. There's no waiting in line and it only takes two minutes to buy one.

I know that if I can provide my own T-shirt that I designed, that I made, and provide it as quickly or quicker than the bootleggers, people who've enjoyed the experience I've provided will be happy to shell out a little more money to cover my costs. Especially if they understand this context, and aren't being shoveled a load of shit about "uppity" artists.

It's exactly the same with recorded music. The real thing to fear from Napster is its simple and excellent distribution system. No one really prefers a cruddy-sounding Napster MP3 file to the real thing. But it's really easy to get an MP3 file; and in the middle of Kansas you may never see my record because major distribution is really bad if your record's not in the charts this week, and even then it takes a couple of weeks to restock the one copy they usually keep on hand.

I also know how many times I have heard a song on the radio that I loved only to buy the record and have the album be a piece of crap. If you're afraid of your own filler then I bet you're afraid of Napster. I'm afraid of Napster because I think the major label cartel will get to them before I do.

I've made three records. I like them all. I haven't made filler and they're all committed pieces of work. I'm not scared of you previewing my record. If you like it enough to have it be a part of your life, I know you'll come to me to get it, as long as I show you how to get to me, and as long as you know that it's out.

Most people don't go into restaurants and stiff waiters, but record labels represent the restaurant that forces the waiters to live on, and sometimes pool, their tips. And they even fight for a bit of their tips.

Music is a service to its consumers, not a product. I live on tips. Giving music away for free is what artists have been doing naturally all their lives.

New models

Record companies stand between artists and their fans. We signed terrible deals with them because they controlled our access to the public.

But in a world of total connectivity, record companies lose that control. With unlimited bin space and intelligent search engines, fans will have no trouble finding the music they know they want. They have to know they want it, and that needs to be a marketing business that takes a fee.

If a record company has a reason to exist, it has to bring an artist's music to more fans and it has to deliver more and better music to the audience. You bring me a bigger audience or a better relationship with my audience or get the fuck out of my way. Next time I release a record, I'll be able to go directly to my fans and let them hear it before anyone else.

We'll still have to use radio and traditional CD distribution. Record stores aren't going away any time soon and radio is still the most important part of record promotion.

Major labels are freaking out because they have no control in this new world. Artists can sell CDs directly to fans. We can make direct deals with thousands of other Web sites and promote our music to millions of people that old record companies never touch.

We're about to have lots of new ways to sell our music: downloads, hardware bundles, memory sticks, live Webcasts, and lots of other things that aren't even invented yet.

Content providers

But there's something you guys have to figure out.

Here's my open letter to Steve Case:

Avatars don't talk back!!! But what are you going to do with real live artists?

Artists aren't like you. We go through a creative process that's demented and crazy. There's a lot of soul-searching and turning ourselves inside-out and all kinds of gross stuff that ends up on "Behind the Music."

A lot of people who haven't been around artists very much get really weird when they sit down to lunch with us. So I want to give you some advice: Learn to speak our language. Talk about songs and melody and hooks and art and beauty and soul. Not sleazy record-guy crap, where you're in a cashmere sweater murmuring that the perfect deal really is perfect, Courtney. Yuck. Honestly hire honestly committed people. We're in a "new economy," right? You can afford to do that.

But don't talk to me about "content."

I get really freaked out when I meet someone and they start telling me that I should record 34 songs in the next six months so that we have enough content for my site. Defining artistic expression as content is anathema to me.

What the hell is content? Nobody buys content. Real people pay money for music because it means something to them. A great song is not just something to take up space on a Web site next to stock market quotes and baseball scores.

DEN tried to build a site with artist-free content and I'm not sorry to see it fail. The DEN shows look like art if you're not paying attention, but they forgot to hire anyone to be creative. So they ended up with a lot of content nobody wants to see because they thought they could avoid dealing with defiant and moody personalities. Because they were arrogant. And because they were conformists. Artists have to deal with business people and business people have to deal with artists. We hate each other. Let's create companies of mediators.

Every single artist who makes records believes and hopes that they give you something that will transform your life. If you're really just interested in data mining or selling banner ads, stick with those "artists" willing to call themselves content providers.

I don't know if an artist can last by meeting the current public taste, the taste from the last quarterly report. I don't think you can last by following demographics and carefully meeting expectations. I don't know many lasting works of art that are condescending or deliberately stupid or were created as content.

Don't tell me I'm a brand. I'm famous and people recognize me, but I can't look in the mirror and see my brand identity.

Keep talking about brands and you know what you'll get? Bad clothes. Bad hair. Bad books. Bad movies. And bad records. And bankrupt businesses. Rides that were fun for a year with no employee loyalty but everyone got rich fucking you. Who wants that? The answer is purity. We can afford it. Let's go find it again while we can.

I also feel filthy trying to call my music a product. It's not a thing that I test market like toothpaste or a new car. Music is personal and mysterious.

Being a "content provider" is prostitution work that devalues our art and doesn't satisfy our spirits. Artistic expression has to be provocative. The problem with artists and the Internet: Once their art is reduced to content, they may never have the opportunity to retrieve their souls.

When you form your business for creative people, with creative people, come at us with some thought. Everybody's process is different. And remember that it's art. We're not craftspeople.

Sponsorships

I don't know what a good sponsorship would be for me or for other artists I respect. People bring up sponsorships a lot as a way for artists to get our music paid for upfront and for us to earn a fee. I've dealt with large corporations for long enough to know that any alliance where I'm an owned service is going to be doomed.

When I agreed to allow a large cola company to promote a live show, I couldn't have been more miserable. They screwed up every single thing imaginable. The venue was empty but sold out. There were thousands of people outside who wanted to be there, trying to get tickets. And there were the empty seats the company had purchased for a lump sum and failed to market because they were clueless about music.

It was really dumb. You had to buy the cola. You had to dial a number. You had to press a bunch of buttons. You had to do all this crap that nobody wanted to do. Why not just bring a can to the door?

On top of all this, I felt embarrassed to be an advertising agent for a product that I'd never let my daughter use. Plus they were a condescending bunch of little guys. They treated me like I was an ungrateful little bitch who should be groveling for the experience to play for their damn soda.

I ended up playing without my shirt on and ordering a six-pack of the rival cola onstage. Also lots of unwholesome cursing and nudity occurred. This way I knew that no matter how tempting the cash was, they'd never do business with me again.

If you want some little obedient slave content provider, then fine. But I think most musicians don't want to be responsible for your clean-cut, wholesome, all-American, sugar corrosive cancer-causing, all white people, no women allowed sodapop images.

Nor, on the converse, do we want to be responsible for your vice-inducing, liver-rotting, child-labor-law-violating, all white people, no-women-allowed booze images.

So as a defiant moody artist worth my salt, I've got to think of something else. Tampax, maybe.

Money

As a user, I love Napster. It carries some risk. I hear idealistic business people talk about how people that are musicians would be musicians no matter what and that we're already doing it for free, so what about copyright?

Please. It's incredibly easy not to be a musician. It's always a struggle and a dangerous career choice. We are motivated by passion and by money.

That's not a dirty little secret. It's a fact. Take away the incentive for major or minor financial reward and you dilute the pool of musicians. I am not saying that only pure artists will survive. Like a few of the more utopian people who discuss this, I don't want just pure artists to survive.

Where would we all be without the trash? We need the trash to cover up our national depression. The utopians also say that because in their minds "pure" artists are all Ani DiFranco and don't demand a lot of money. Why are the utopians all entertainment lawyers and major label workers anyway? I demand a lot of money if I do a big huge worthwhile job and millions of people like it, don't kid yourself. In economic terms, you've got an industry that's loathsome and outmoded, but when it works it creates some incentive and some efficiency even though absolutely no one gets paid.

We suffer as a society and a culture when we don't pay the true value of goods and services delivered. We create a lack of production. Less good music is recorded if we remove the incentive to create it.

Music is intellectual property with full cash and opportunity costs required to create, polish and record a finished product. If I invest money and time into my business, I should be reasonably protected from the theft of my goods and services. When the judgment came against MP3.com, the RIAA sought damages of $150,000 for each major-label-"owned" musical track in MP3's database. Multiply by 80,000 CDs, and MP3.com could owe the gatekeepers $120 billion.

But what about the Plimsouls? Why can't MP3.com pay each artist a fixed amount based on the number of their downloads? Why on earth should MP3.com pay $120 billion to four distribution companies, who in most cases won't have to pay a nickel to the artists whose copyrights they've stolen through their system of organized theft?

It's a ridiculous judgment. I believe if evidence had been entered that ultimately it's just shuffling big cash around two or three corporations, I can only pray that the judge in the MP3.com case would have seen the RIAA's case for the joke that it was.

I'd rather work out a deal with MP3.com myself, and force them to be artist-friendly, instead of being laughed at and having my money hidden by a major label as they sell my records out the back door, behind everyone's back.

How dare they behave in such a horrified manner in regards to copyright law when their entire industry is based on piracy? When Mister Label Head Guy, whom my lawyer yelled at me not to name, got caught last year selling millions of "cleans" out the back door. "Cleans" being the records that aren't for marketing but are to be sold. Who the fuck is this guy? He wants to save a little cash so he fucks the artist and goes home? Do they fire him? Does Chuck Phillips of the LA Times say anything? No way! This guy's a source! He throws

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