The DJ With the JD

Or why would the Killers, who hit it big last year, fire their manager, who has a contract with them through 2007? Escalante's seen this a hundred times. Lawyers, he says (not without a certain collegial contempt), clearly have persuaded the band to ditch that manager and pay him a settlement to go away, so as to acquire an even better manager who will bring them even more money, even though their first manager will be entitled to a piece of it. And if Escalante's wrong? Well, if you're a member of the Killers and you want to call in and talk, please, by all means, do.

For weeks he fixated on another egregious example of business before talent-- what can only be called The Brenna Problem, referencing the now-forgotten "American Idol" contestant who didn't make the finals.

"Earlier in the competition Brenna was on fire," he says. "But her last three weeks, she started getting average, average, average. You could see she was thinking about the money. Did you see her speech after [she was eliminated]? That was disgusting. . . . When it really counted, she said 'Ah, I'm already famous. You suckers sit around here and fight it out and see who's going to win that trophy, but I'm going to be in a recording studio.' "

Escalante says people "fill their brains with litigation in an artistic world." So many of his callers, he admits, need to quit figuring out a business plan. They need to stop worrying about LLCs (limited liability companies), earning royalty points, filling out sound recording permissions forms and suing over production credits.

"I tell people to take all that energy and put it into their creative energy, which sounds so lame," he says. "But in the music business, I'm telling you, that is real. Stop worrying about this stuff and get back into your basement and start writing some songs."

For it is business that sometimes kills poetry; contracts that can derail genius. When he was wearing a suit at CBS, Escalante says, he was still in a band, but "I couldn't write songs anymore. I'm not that broken up about it -- the guy who writes most of our songs is a guy who has no other job but being in the Vandals. He's protected by that. He doesn't have to think about the business stuff."

* * *

"Michael in L.A."

"Hi, Joe?," Michael says, and proceeds to talk about his short film. It's 10 minutes long, and it's all found black-and-white footage, which Michael believes is copyright free, except for some old animated bits of a cartoon mouse name Mickey --

"The answer is you're going down," Escalante snaps, at the merest mention of the Disney machine, the garlic that wards off every lawyer in town. "Cut it out of your film, today."

* * *

Everywhere, potential pitfalls. People call and want to know if the store signs and buildings that pass by in the backgrounds of their self-made films are copyrighted. (And the terrifying answer, in Hollywood, is a potential yes.) The innumerable ways people can sue one another in showbiz seems to delight Escalante. Yet, as casually as he tries to conduct himself, whether onstage or on the air, there is also something slightly battle-scarred about him too. He's a lawyer, and it's clear he's still sniffing at the world litigiously.

Two years ago, Escalante's record label was hired to produce a DVD of the Warped Tour. It involved 24 bands, and some four-dozen entertainment lawyers were involved to negotiate both the song publishing and performance rights. As the DVD was about to be pressed, Escalante says, an attorney for a singer in one of the bands (which he prudently won't name) came up with a whole other kind of copyright her client needed to sign off on. Another member of the band heard about that , and the entire project was again delayed. Escalante speaks of it now with sour resignation.

But his hope was restored a little by -- of all people -- Larry Flynt.

Escalante, a devout Catholic who says he is no fan of porn, knew going in that his show's name, "Barely Legal Radio," might run into some copyright issues with Flynt's Barely Legal brand of adult magazines and videos. But Flynt did not challenge the show's application for a trademark.

"I heard from some people inside that [Flynt] didn't think there was any confusion," Escalante says. "If this is true, he's the only guy I've ever heard of whose response is 'Why would I sue these people?' That sort of makes him a hero of the 'Barely Legal' show. You never hear something like that. In this town? Usually you'd at least get a letter.

"But I filed the paperwork and I got the trademark," he says. "It's a good name. It's also a disclaimer."