Title TK Meets Danny Goldberg
Sep 20, 2011

On August 10, as part of the My Turn public program series, artist Cory Arcangel along with his Title TK band mates Alan Licht and Howie Chen, chatted with record exec and music industry mainstay Danny Goldberg about working with some of the best known bands in the business. Title TK is a self-proclaimed “banter-prone” band that produces more humorous musings than music, while Danny Goldberg is known for his work as record company president, public relations man, journalist, and band manager. Although Title TK rarely plays their instruments in public, and Goldberg proclaims that he has never been a musician, the speakers all share considerable knowledge of—and reverence for—Rock and Roll’s musical geniuses.

With wide-eyed enthusiasm, the artists of Title TK asked Goldberg how he recognizes musical genius and probed for inside stories about some of the generation’s greatest rockers. From his fifty-plus years in the industry, Goldberg offered anecdotes, affirming fables of sex, drugs, and legendary egos that accompanied clients like Kurt Cobain and Led Zeppelin.

Though Goldberg said he could not precisely define his intuitive sense for remarkable musicians, he attributed many of his career choices to good fortune. He shared some of the decisions he has regretted (passing on Dinosaur Jr, for example), and those that changed his life for the better (signing Sonic Youth and Nirvana).

The program proved to be more than an evening of fascinating gossip and fabled lore, however, as the conversation turned to the future of the music industry and Goldberg’s perspective on the cultural shifts in musical production and the record business. When asked if Hip Hop had officially replaced Rock and Roll, Goldberg seemed to both mourn the genre he reveres and celebrate the continued transformation of contemporary music. He acknowledged that “Hip Hop is a more cutting edge culture” than Rock and Roll for some of today’s youth. Despite his clear passion for the music, Goldberg asserted that Rock and Roll is an art form that requires “a mixture of art and commerce…there’s no such thing as being a rock star who’s not popular.” Beyond his first piece of advice to “avoid drug addicts,” Goldberg also suggested that any career in music requires business-savvy and an open mind. As someone who had started his career as an eighteen-year old college dropout working for Billboard Magazine, Goldberg posited that, most of all, the music scene belongs to the “young… those who are listening to it and writing about it.”

 By Emily Arensman, Coordinator of Public Programs