Random Notes on James Brown, Lenny Kravitz and Salt-n-Pepa

James Brown, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, should be able to work a little less hard now that he inked a $100 million deal to sell bonds backed by his future song and music publishing royalties.| The Godfather of Soul, who celebrates a birthday today (which could be either his seventy-first or sixty-sixth, depending who you ask), closed the deal last Friday, April 30, with the Pullman Group, the same organization that sold $55 million worth of bonds backed by the future music royalties of David Bowie in 1997. "An artist like Brown is ideal for this kind of deal, because his catalog is so diverse and spans more than forty years," Pullman Group principal David Pullman told reporters. Also sweetening the deal is the fact that Brown, whose hits such as "Brand New Bag", "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" topped the R&B charts, is also one of the few artists of such stature to retain most of the rights to his own songs. In addition, he's one of the most sampled artists in hip-hop. Brown will be taking his latest album, last November's I'm Back, on a world tour beginning Friday, May 7, in Sparks, Nev., and winding up on July 10 in Nice, France . . .

"They have a curfew, but I want to keep playing," Lenny Kravitz told his audience at Littleton, Colo.'s Fiddler's Green on Thursday, April 29. "I'll play until they cut me off." And that's exactly what they did, smack in the middle of a song. "This is part of the rules for running Fiddler's Green," Arapahoe Country Commissioner Polly Page told reporters of Kravitz' agreement to end the show by the town's 10:30 p.m. curfew. "They agreed to that in order to operate." Mark Norman, a vice president for Universal concerts, promoters of the event, said he didn't have a choice and had to turn off the power. "It's extremely unfortunate, but if I didn't do it, I'd be out of business," he claimed. A spokesperson at the venue concurred that the audience was not pleased by the gesture, but added, "They know the rules here. We only got a few calls for people wanting refunds." Now, if only someone could pull the plug on Kravitz' VH1-hogging video for "Fly Away" . . .

Naughty By Nature's Treach told New Jersey's Star Ledger that he and Pepa, one-third of the all-female hip-hop group Salt-n-Pepa have finally made it legal. Sort of. The two of them, who have an eight-month-old daughter named Egypt, were married in a tattoo parlor earlier this month. "We're going to make it official this summer," Treach revealed, "but we exchanged vows before God." No word if they got matching tattoos to go with their nuptials . . .

Harvey Ball, the Worchester, Mass., artist who created the ubiquitous yellow smiley face back in 1964, thinks that Marilyn Manson should cultivate a sense of humor. As we reported last week, Manson stomped off the stage in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when he noticed that someone had placed an oversized smiley face on one of his stage props. But Hall didn't take it personally, he saw it as an opportunity for self-promotion, and dashed off an autographed smiley face pin with the message "Lighten Up Marilyn" after hearing about the shock-rocker's temper tantrum . . .

JAAN UHELSZKI(May 3, 1999)