XX-XX-2005 – Macworld – The Great Rock-Market Crash of 2005

The timing was appropriate. On Valentine’s Day, Queen’s Web site (www.queenonline.com) announced that guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor were officially kicking off rehearsals with ex-Bad Company front man Paul Rodgers for a tour under the Queen name. Not showing up for the tour: classy bassist John Deacon and deceased vocalist Freddie Mercury.

If that’s not the end of love, I don’t know what is.

When I was growing up, I loved Queen. My older brother’s KISS records petrified me, so 1 chose to overplay his “Flash Gordon” 7-inch until it was useless. I still get chills when I hear Mercury — perhaps the most versatile rock singer ever-chew scenery with David Bowie in “Under Pressure.” I actually think Queen II rocks.

How could any kid who grew up reading comic books not love a lead singer who wore a cape and sang about fat-bottomed girls making the rocking world go ’round?

In contrast, my hatred for all things Paul Rodgers is as pure as the sentiment gets. “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and “Ready for Love” are turgid abominations that ironically make me feel like not making love. As if it weren’t bad enough that the guy has grunted out stupidity such as “Baby, when I think about you, I think about love,” he was also in Free, who gave us tripe like the atrocious “All Right Now.”

That he has sold more than 100 million albums proves only one thing: people can’t wait to throw their money into the nearest toilet.

Why must my Queen dollar go to him? Why should anyone buying A Night at the Opera or downloading “Stone Cold Crazy” have to subsidize, however tangentially, the suckitude of Paul Rodgers?

This got me thinking: maybe we, as music buyers, should start treating our purchases as investments. Don’t forget that a band is essentially a product of much larger corporations — its record label and the media conglomerate that owns that label.

When a company makes a cheap, shoddy product, we tend to punish it with a consumer backlash. Remember when Coca-Cola released New Coke? The chumps at Coca-Cola were scolded like puppies, and that crap was off the streets before your next tooth could rot out.

So if we’re giving all of our money to these companies that want to sue us for trying to sample their products before we buy, why shouldn’t we enjoy some sort of benefit when they make a horrible business decision?

We can call it Stupidity Reparations. Or maybe the Loyalty Tax.

Go ahead, “Queen.” Tour all you want. But now that your bassist and your lead singer are out of the equation, that 99-cent download price you charge loyal fans has just dropped to 50 cents. How you split that up between the band and Rodgers is your problem.

You want your price back up? Quit milking your fans and recall your shoddy product. Stop the tour, and your price point returns. It’s not a reunion if the singer is dead. And it’s not a tribute, because you’ve pissed on the last shred of your band’s dignity. You decide if an augmentation tour is worth it in the end. It probably will be, but at least you’ll feel the hurt in the royalty department.

This Loyalty Tax should apply to all musicians. For any publicly embarrassing, cred-destroying move they make, their profits would fluctuate like the stock market or the price of avocados. It’s only fair that fans who stuck with U2 through Pop should reap the benefits for their intestinal fortitude.

You get popped in an alley trying to score heroin off an undercover cop, your CD should hit the bargain bin until you shape up. It’s what market analysts like to call the “Scott Weiland-Velvet Revolver Effect.”

Madonna does a sanctimonious album about the shallowness of fame and consumerism, and follows that up with a Gap commercial? Well, the Material Girl’s hypocrisy meter has been in the red ever since she covered “American Pie” with a straight face.

Pete Townshend sells another Who classic to a drug company or hits the road as the Who, sans the Ox and Keith Moon? Free Quadrophenia downloads for everyone!

In a scenario like this, the Ashlee Simpson Saturday Night Live incident would have been an economic scandal of Enron proportions. That Sunday, the bodies of her employees would have littered the streets; corporate geezers, stylists, and PR hacks would have dived from the highest rooftops after that debacle.

And I’m OK with that. Sometimes the market has a runny way of correcting itself. We just have to remember that smart investing means putting your money in the right place.

As a music investor and former shareholder in Queen, I have to say to Brian May, Roger Taylor, and Paul Rodgers: you are definitely in one bad, bad company.

As for my money, these days I’m buying stock in Fugazi.

DYLAN GAUGHAN is a freelance writer living in Chicago, and if he’s not back again this time tomorrow, carry on, carry on, as if nothing really mattered.

Why should we have to subsidize the suckitude of Ashlee Simpson and Paul Rodgers?