Along with the cheap fabrication of art, there was a smattering of drug use, one - night
stands, shady financial
deals and egos run amok by artists who would jump
on stage, flip
on a switch and «praise the Lord,» often giving canned speeches between songs that drove soccer moms to the merch
table to pick up an album so their kids could have «positive role models.»
The Big (i.e., irrelevant commercial) Publishers, the Random Houses and HarperCollinses and Simon & Schusters and Hachettes, wheeled and
dealt multimillion - dollar con - tracts among themselves, though increasingly the agents were holding
on to their authors» foreign rights, stalking the halls and booths like hyenas, or even, egregiously, like the upstart McTaggart, setting up their own
stands with spiffy little
tables and printed catalogs several inches thick handed out by demure young people, aping the publishers themselves (the nerve!).