Absolutely! But I doubt most people really want to pay for that. Like a few artists who are re-recording their one hit wonder for streaming so they can get a bigger share of the revenue. But most of us,I think, want the real recording we remember.
Here's the thing, you probably already own the tracks that you like. Selling an additional copy to the people who already own it is not a particularly lucrative thing. On the other hand, if you can get a hot current artist to cover one of your "legacy" artists, then you will sell the legacy work to the young fans of current popular artist. For instance, Wiz Khalifa covering George Clinton/Parliament/Funkadelic, you have the possibility of producing a whole new generation listening to this classic Funk.
Spinning Gold is Spinning Lies: Spinning Gold, the new biopic about Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart, covers the seminal label’s impressive roster of ‘70s superstars, including KISS, Donna Summer, and George Clinton. But aside from a passing mention in the film’s final 10 minutes and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dance sequence, one of Casablanca’s biggest success stories is bafflingly overlooked. Now a founding member of that group has blasted the project, in a social media post titled “Spinning Gold Is SPINNING LIES About Village People's Involvement in the Movie.” Victor Willis — best known as Village People’s policeman, and the co-writer of the group’s biggest hits including “YMCA,” “Macho Man,” “In the Navy,” and “Go West” — took to Facebook Wednesday morning to vent about the costumed disco group’s surprising omission. Noting that he had been approached by many media outlets to do interviews about Spinning Gold, he said press releases and promotion for the film have misled the public “to believe that Village People would be featured in the movie when in fact, they are not.” Willis directed most of his ire towards the late Neil Bogart’s son, Timothy Scott Bogart, who wrote and directed the biopic — or, in Willis’s words, “eventually stitched together” the film, which had been in the works since 2011 and at one time was attached to big names like Justin Timberlake, Spike Lee, and Richard Dreyfuss. “Village People are not featured in that movie because Tim Bogart could not afford to pay the required licensing fees associated with use of Village People music and image,” Willis wrote. “So, he somewhat went around it by inserting an unauthorized scene with people dressed as Village People doing the ‘YMCA’ dance. And we are not cool with that at all. I did license use of a portion of ‘YMCA’ for the motion picture soundtrack only.” Willis went on to criticize what he called the “shameful and outright horrendous casting” of both Gladys Knight, who is played by Grammy-winning soul/jazz artist Ledisi, and Donna Summer, who is portrayed by Grammy-nominated Ariana Grande/Justin Bieber/Panic! at the Disco songwriter and R&B singer Tayla Parx. While Willis didn’t lambaste Neil Bogart’s other son involved in the film (hit pop songsmith Evan “Kidd” Bogart, who served as executive producer), or other notable cast members like Wiz Khalifa, Jason Derulo, Sebastian Maniscalco, Jay Pharoah, Chris Redd, Pink Sweats, and Michael Ian Black, he did argue that “this iteration of the movie (for which there have been numerous) should never have seen the light of day.”
"What cho talking 'bout,Willis?" That sounds a lot like "I wanted a million dollars to use my story" or possibly "I've been trying to sell my Village People movie for 25 years" and I'm really angry. The one straight guy in the band has really been pissing and moaning about everything pretty much since they were on top of the charts.
True. I think Victor Willis should be happy that royalties started rolling in again after a resurgence in interest in disco, and reissues of Village People music on cd. I remember reading a very sad interview with him in a local paper decades ago (probably late '80s or early '90s) when he was barely surviving -- if I recall correctly, he was running a perpetual garage sale somewhere in San Francisco.
The reviews of this are not very good! Review: ‘Spinning Gold’ a clumsy, sentimental spin on a remarkable life | Datebook ‘Spinning Gold’ Review: For the Records
I almost saw this last night. I just out and about and walking by the theater posters it said "Now Playing" I go to the ticket kiosk and don't see it. At that theater it starts today. They put the "Now Playing" tag on the poster a little early
Another review: Here's part of the first paragraph: The problem with “Spinning Gold” is not that it's a bad movie so much as a boring one about a true story. For anyone with even a vague knowledge of its subject—the meteoric rise and jaw-dropping fall of Casablanca Records and founder Neil Bogart during the 1970s—the idea that a tale dealing with such levels of creative, financial, and personal excess here could be dull seems almost impossible. Spinning Gold movie review & film summary (2023) | Roger Ebert
Saw it this afternoon, and while it's not great, it was enjoyable enough. It was kind of funny, they cast people playing these performers by their voice rather than their face or body - the woman playing Donna Summer was a heck of a lot shorter and more voluptuous than Donna actually was. I could see why Victor Willis of the Village People was unhappy, they were basically tossed aside with "Oh yeah, we also had the Village People on our label. But none of them actually sang on the records or even in concert except the guy playing the policeman. But that YMCA song was a huge hit."
"Gene Simmons" looks so feminine in the pics I saw I actually thought they cast a woman for a minute! Though I don't think the movie's Kiss sounds all that much like 'em either - at least not based on the short clip I saw.
All of the members of KISS were a lot more attractive than the actual people. Ace Frehley was pretty well written out of this particular script. They had to include Peter Criss because the song Beth figures into the story.
The film is pretty transparently in attempt to make a "jukebox musical" to eventually take it to Broadway. I kind of doubt that's going to happen.
The film plays with the timeline quite a bit, with KISS scraping along for a lot longer than I seem to remember. But the point is that they sold a lot of concert tickets, but not a whole lot of vinyl for a good part of their history. The film really concentrates on them and Donna Summer, with lesser amounts of time spent on George Clinton, The Isley Brothers, Gladys Knight and others.
Saw on another board that they made out like Bogart had the idea to change Midnight Train to Houston to Midnight Train to Georgia. It was already Georgia on Cissy Houston’s version before Gladys Knight re-did it.
The Larry Harris book about Casablanca is so entertaining and such a great story. It sounds like that didn't quite make it into this movie. I'll eventually see it but seems like a missed opportunity. My understanding of Kiss from that book was that they really weren't very successful until Alive and that pretty much turned around their career as well as Casablanca as a label.
Kiss was interesting in that their records sold consistently pretty well but they never had a blockbuster album. From 1974 to 1992, every studio album of theirs but 1 got certified gold. Granted, the 1st 3 clearly made that level of sales years later - not in 1974/75 - but they still got there. However, only 1 studio album was ever certified more than 1X platinum: 1975's "Destroyer", which went 2X platinum. Kinda stunning that a band as popular as Kiss never had any true mega-selling albums. Even the much-loved "Alive!" is only gold, though "Alive II" managed to go 2X. Not sure when the movie claims Kiss became successful, but "Alive!" in 1975 is the album that saved their bacon, as the 1st 3 solo albums weren't particularly successful. After "Alive!" did well, they were able to sell more albums.
It sounds like they were pretty accurate about the KISS sales figures. Bogart being annoyed about "Beth" being an attack on him cheating on his wife with their co-manager may or may not have been true. You'd have to be a pretty big fool to count on movies always being accurate history - it's all about telling an entertaining story. It really is a Bogart family production, one writing and directing, another doing the soundtrack, another being a producer. Anyway, it looks like it's bombing hugely, but it's not my money. It cost me $5.89 for an early afternoon screening to see it, and I got my money's worth.
Village People were not treated well in real life by their producer, and likely felt darn well tossed aside back in the day s well. We have to take his comments with a grain of salt…but the tough thing about all this is he also could be correct, it’s just that one would have to do their own research. Casablanca and it’s history is something that interests me a great deal, and I’ve studied it a lot in the past. What really sucked about being the guys in that group is they were just a front for the actual producer. They got paid almost nothing and when Neil found out, he had to confront the producer as it was ridiculously low…they were out there working their butts off for like $100 a week…I’m not kidding! There was nothing Neil could do legally, and all they got was a very small bump after Neil spoke. Things could have changed later on, but you guys have to remember, most Casablanca acts came and went with the speed of light. That was simply the gig if you did disco music. Village People had such a huge hit in YMCA that a lot of people don’t realize they didn’t exactly have a lot of hits as a whole, and their music wasn’t great. Another producers band, that did a bit better than many. But compare their careers to their contemporaries of the time, that didn’t do disco for the most part, and we’re talking about a very short career. So, if any major changes came their way, with the promises of more money, I doubt they benefitted much. Macho Man and In The Navy were, I believe, their only other major hits (and man those songs are bad imo…I never hear them on any SiriusXM 70’s stations, or anywhere else…only YMCA). So…if you were Victor, I doubt you would be very supportive of this. Again, he might be right about everything, but he has no reason to be very positive about all this. He got a raw deal imo. As usual, the powers to be in the music business can be incredibly greedy.
The book you refer to, and I’ve read many about the music business, has to be the best of the group I’ve ever read!! I grew up on RSO and Casablanca music, so I’m shamefully biased, but it’s a great read of you were into music from 1975-1982. I wish they had done a movie strictly based on Larry’s book. I’m still going to have to see this film, but it doesn’t sound remotely as good as Larry’s book. And Kiss was a huge reason Casablanca went under in the end, as helpful as their sales were earlier on. How ironic. And for you KISS fans (I’ve never “gotten” that band at all, as much as I’ve tried as they’ve had an incredible run) Casablanca worked their asses off to get those boys to final success. As they should have….that was their job as their label. But KISS was no easy sell! Again, fascinating read.
