Too Many Indiscretions for an Affidavit, Part 2: Brown Fudges More of His Music Career

In most of the same places that Dan takes credit for the work of the real Olympic song writers, he claims to have had 4 CDs of his music published. But it's tough to determine who the publisher is.

The following circuitous route leads to a vanity, pay-for-play music publisher.

(After we finish this tour, we'll look at his claim of a world tour with "the renowned ACGC.")

To start the trip, visite: http://988.com/authors/brown_dan.php

Which has the following listing:

CMC: Dan Brown
Dan Brown. Dan Brown is one of the most impressive writers I've heard in the last five hears . John Braheny, Author, The Craft and Business of Songwriting .
http://www.aimcmc.com/browndan.html

Extractions: A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Amherst College, Dan Brown is a member of MENSA, an internationally published novelist, and the composer/producer of four CD's of original music. His single "Peace in our Time" was recently performed at the Atlanta Olympics. Dan's live performance experience includes a world tour with the renown ACGC and appearances in such venues as Notre Dame Cathedral (Paris), St. Marco's Cathedral (Venice), St. Stephen's (Vienna), the Acropolis (Athens), and the American Embassies in Delhi, Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Seoul. He's also performed as a solo piano/vocalist at The Rojo y Negro in Spain and in Hollywood at the National Academy of Songwriters Acoustic Underground. DGB Music, ASCAP Close on the heels of his LA production deal with British Record Producer of the Year and one of the most respected producers of pop music today, Barry Fasman, Dan Brown has come out with an album industry heavy-hitters are definitely talking about. Gregorian chant, mandolins, synthesizers, and lofty lyrics..."

It's apparent that Braheny gives Dan a good blurb here, so why can't we listen to them? And where does this text come from? It sounds like something from a news release.

Well, we can wonder or we can click on. Unfortunately, http://www.aimcmc.com/browndan.html returns the infamous "404 Not Found" error message.

The results are better when we go to the home URL , http://www.aimcmc.com/ which gives us the home page of the Creative Musicians Coalition (CMC). It looks like a well-done indie music site.

So if we click on over to the Artists Index link at: http://www.musicdiscoveries.com/music/artists/artistindex.html and click on "B" we don't find Dan Brown.

BUT, this page tells us to "Visit our store for more "B" Artists" and when we surf over to that page (which CMC describes as a " sister organization"), http://www.musicdiscoveries.com/music/artists/artistindex.html, we DO find Dan Brown's name, but that link:

http://creativecenters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=M&Category_Code=BROWND

alas, gets us a blank page. DANG!

Okay, Dan: your footprints are all over here. But where are your CDs?

Well, if you surf back over to the CMC site and make a logical but UNfounded (and as yet UNverified) assumption that Dan's four CDs were published by CMC and sold at its sister site, the next question would be, how do you get these guys to sell the music? Clicking around the links, we find a "Join With Us" page at http://www.aimcmc.com/artist.html that offers a sign-up page that promises to get back to you.

I filled out that page and ... sacre bleu! They got back to me with the following forms: http://www.davincicodex.com/CMC-Music.exe (This is a self-extracting file with a built-in viewer. Just double click on it from Windows Explorer ... I use this format because it is a LOT smaller than .jpgs and downloads a lot faster.

As you can see, CMC is strictly pay for play. You pay; CMC sells, then sends you a piece of your action.

Back on Lee Goldberg's blog, a few more interesting things came out of this trip. Take that aimcmc.com/browndan.html page that gave us the 404 error ... Well, thanks to the Internet Archive (also known as the Wayback Machine) the page still lives at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030216121324/aimcmc.com/browndan.html

An emailer wrote: "Dan Brown's CD that was listed by CMC was called "Angels & Demons" and the company that released it was DGB Music. (Presumably, that's Dan G. Brown Music.).... This appears to be the music equivalent of a vanity press. I wonder why CDC removed the listing for Brown. I would assume that he made them do it -- if it were up to them, presumably they'd be trying to cash in on his name, now that he's semi-famous.

"Interesting side note," the lurker continued, "the cover art "ambigram" for the album was created by John Langdon, whom you can read about here:

http://www.johnlangdon.net/New_Pages/Angels_Demons.htm

"Sounds like Dan gave John a tip o' the hat with the
name of his protagonist."

I went to the page and am still going over things ...interesting that one of his top blurbs is from Blythe Newlon -- his wife.

You can also download some of the clips. Have a listen. Express your finely tuned music critic's opinion.