Business Notes ACTIVISM

The steady hum of business-as-usual at Exxon's Manhattan headquarters was suddenly shattered last week by the howling of guitars and a raw-edged voice singing "You cut all the tall trees down, you poisoned the sky and the sea . . ." It was the music of Midnight Oil, the crusading Australian rock group, which staged a brief but high-decibel lunchtime concert below the company's windows. Between songs, lead singer Peter Garrett condemned Exxon's Alaskan oil spill. "You can't treat the world like a garbage dump," he said.

Ironically, one conspicuous polluter is the recording industry. In the U.S., compact discs are packaged in bulky 12-in. "longboxes," which consumers usually throw away. Angered by the waste, such musical activists as R.E.M. and Crosby, Stills & Nash have formed a coalition called Ban the Box to urge record companies to eliminate the excess cardboard.