Bless the Children is honored for community service SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE The Bless the Children Program and 4-H Club knows all about true success. Feb. 19 marked the first year of The Bless the Children Program and 4-H Cluh being a legal, chartered organization. The group has achieved a lot. The group received a cer tificate of appreciation for community service at Forsyth County 4-H Achievement Night. Thirty-five youths, seven staff members and six volunteers, all representing The Bless the Children Pro gram and 4-H Club, were pre sented the award after pulling up in their first van. sponsored by Beauty World. The theme of Achievement Night was "The Power of Youth" (4-H emphasizes head, heart, hands and health). Awards and certificates were presented to more than 1 (K) youths and their 4-H groups. Johnell and Debra Hunter and their youth group were pre sented with a 4-H Club achievement certificate. The Hunters wish to thank all of the children, parents, staff vol unteers and sponsors for for supporting the Bless the Chil dren Program and 4-H Club. This has been a blessed year for the club, which has obtained a new office, com puter, national base station, three new sites for neighbor hood tieautification. a new 4 H youth committee and sever al new sponsors. Club activities include: field trips, missions, outreach programs, arts and crafts, awards, garden projects, com munity clean-up, neighbor hood beautification, and cele brations and giveaways. The club wishes to thank Don Mebane and Jackie Hilton. 4-H agents; Mrs. Stan back and Beth Thompson of the junior master gardener program; others with the N.C. Cooperative Extension Ser vice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and John Kim of Beauty World. ,? Also, 4-H celebrated 100 plus years of service as the world's Jargest youth organi zation. The Bless the Children Program and 4-H Club meets on the third Thursday of each month from 6-8:30 at New ness of Life Family Worship Center, 4125 Indiana Ave. Fot more information, call the church at 744-5080 or the Hunters at 725-7073. Members of the Bless the Children Program and 4-H Club Johnell and Debra Hunter Retailers . from page C7 compact disc. Eighteen were on sale just as vinyl records. Seventeen songs, including Creed's "My Sacrifice," No Doubt's "Hey Baby," Enrique Iglesias' "Hero" and Alanis Morissette's "Hands Clean," were only available if you bought a full album. Record retailers complain this alien ates fans, particularly young ones, by forcing them to spend more than they want or - worse yet - retrieve songs online. "I think they're losing a whole generation of record buyers," said Carl Rosen baum, chief executive of Top Hits, a Buffalo Grove, HI., company that supplies music to 15,000 stores nationwide. "You either have to steal it off the Internet or you just don't buy it at all," he said. "The other option is to buy a full CD for $18. If you're just introducing yourself to an act. you don't want to do that. It's hard to figure out what their thinking is." Music executives, in turn, blame retailers for discounting singles so heavily it's impossi ble to make money. "We can't work it out," said Val Azzoli, co-chairman of the Atlantic Group of record labels. "We're not an industry that works together." If the single dies altogeth er. the beginning of the end can be traced a decade back to the start of Soundscan, which provided the first precise measurements of music sales. Executives who long sus pected that singles cut into sales of the more profitable full-length CDs now had evi dence to back that up, said Jor dan Katz, senior vice president of sales at Arista Records. There's some debate about the extent to which that's true, though. Bob Higgins, chief execu tive of the Albany, N.Y.-based Trans World Entertainment, which owns 950 music stores, said he believes singles hurt album sales in only about 15 percent of the cases. Nickelback's "Silver Side Up" album is currently in the top 10. seemingly unhurt by the CD single for the song "How You Remind Me." And Santana sold boatloads of its most recent album despite a succession of singles, he said. In the late 1990s, there was a brief period when record companies put singles by singers such as Mariah Carey on sale for a money-losing 49 cents, artificially boosting sales to secure flashy chart debuts. To avoid manipulations of its charts. Billboard changed the way it computed the Top 40 to reflect radio airplay as well as sales. Therefore, it was possible to have a hit "single" without a song ever being released as a single. CD singles, which usually have two or three songs, gen erally retail for between $3 and $4. Many retailers rou tinely discount them, by 50 percent or more. Azzoli said. And there are still music com panies that encourage this by secretly giving singles away to retailers to inflate sales, he said. "If I could get $5 a single and sell a million of them, hey, there's a business there," Azzoli said. The demise of the single means more of music's romance is disappearing, just like when colorful album cov ers were replaced by tiny CD booklets. In a song being released this spring, Elvis Costello waxes nostalgic about collecting stacks of 45s (a phrase already consigned to history, because it refers to the number of revolutions a 7-inch disc made each minute on a turntable). "Nine-year-old puts his money down," he sings. "Every scratch, every click, every heartbeat. Every breath that I held for you." Music companies recog nize the -danger, but "their short-term motivation is to get as much profit as possible," said Ed Christman, retail edi tor at Billboard. "The fact that young kids aren't buying records is a long-term worry." It's not easy to find the section where singles are sold at the Virgin megastore in New York's Times Square. Walk past the display of top albums, go down the esca lator and wander to the dance section in a back corner. It's close to where Jeannie Imperati of North Haven, Conn., was grumbling one recent day when she took her 15-year-old son shopping. "I'll spend $100 on CDs just so he can get one song out of each of them," she said. Her friend John Cas said he found the lack of choices in the singles section frustrating. "Most of the CDs have only one good song out of a dozen," he said. "At 18 or 20 bucks a pop. you want to be able to enjoy the whole CD." The space that music stores used to devote to singles is dwindling, or disappearing altogether. One worry for Rosenbaum's Top Hits is that the chains he supplies with music, such as Eckerd Drugs, may simply use the space for non-music products. Now he's distributing golf balls as well as music. At Arista, Katz is sensitive to concerns on both sides and is among executives experi menting with ways to make more singles available, though maybe not in the way many consumers would want. In some cases, singles are' made available before an album's release but pulled from stores when the album comes out. Arista also makes singles for songs after they have cooled off as hits. Pink's "Get the Party Started," cur rently in Billboard's Top 10, isn't a CD single now but may be in a couple of months. Labels also are experi menting more with so-called maxi-singles. They may con tain five or six songs - often different remixes of the same song - and are sold for between $7 and $8. The costs of manufacturing them are ? similar to regular singles, so profits are higher. Some artists also release DVD singles with videos included with the music. "We have to get kids in the habit of buying music," Katz said. "I'm trying to figure out innovative ways to have sin gles and albums co-exist." Author . from page C7 country. "My mother was a social worker and inspired us to do for other people." Taylor said. "The issue of domestic abuse is in the book, so I felt I had to do my part." Taylor said that her book gives a voice to the 50 million American women who are abused by their spouses. "A Silver Tongue" is pub- , lished by Oshun Dynasty Pub lications. | EVERYONE'S CONCERNS (A Z E III 0 z 0 0 (A ill 1 E III > III Jl## N?r Friday Nights at 9:30 March, 2002 Black Issues Forum Friday. March. 1 (g> 9:30 PM Join Jay HoUoway for uplifting profiles and issue-oriented discussion. See unctv.org/bif Friday. March. 8 (g> 9:36 PM '* * Join Jay HoUoway for uplifting profiles and issue-oriented discussion. See unctv.org/bif Friday. March. IS @ 9:30 PM Join Jay HoUoway for uplifting profiles and issue-oriented discussion. See unctv.org/bif. Friday. March. 22 @ 9:30 PM Join Jay HoUoway for uplifting profiles and issue-oriented discussion. See unctv.org/bif. Friday. March. 22 QP 9:30 PM Join Jay HoUoway for uplifting profiles and issue-oriented discussum. See unctv.org/bif A 30-minute review of critical issues that affect the black community and influence the quality of living for all North Carolinians. Host, Jay Hoiloway I T"??? The National Black Theatre Festival In Association With The Lyceum Series Of Winston-Salem State University Present The Show That Electrified Winston-Salem With Pure Joy During The National Black Theatre Festival! Is Back! The Jackie Wilson Story (My Heart Is Crying, Crying ...) Black Theatre Ensemble (Chicago) Written, Produced and Directed By Jackie Taylor Photo by Bruce Chapman Starring Chester Gregory II April 5 & 6 At 8:00 p.m. Kenneth R. Williams Auditorium Winston-Salem State University Tickets $35 General Admission Limited Seating Call (336) 723-2266 Now Or Purchase Tickets At The NC Black Repertory Company 610 Coliseum Drive, Winston-Salem, N.C. The North Carolina Black Repertory Company is a Funded Member of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Arts Council and receives Funding from the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts

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