Years of imbalance between creative idealsand financial realities, personal problems amongst the label operators, an unwillingness to compromise our aesthetic standards, a tendency towards releasing challenging (i.e. unmarketable) artists, and the steady decline of the music industry in general, are amongst the chief reasons for our inability to continue.
As I reflect on this, I see how the American story is in many ways my story -- a country still trying to negotiate its own identity, caught between the paradise of its founding idealsand the realities of its history, trying to figure it out, trying to "become" even today -- the word hope as fresh on our tongues as it ever was.