Sunday, February 29, 2004
Compare and Contrast Dept.
While some of our music heroes, due to massive corporate undulations, media mergers, and strictly regulated play lists in the very corporate sector that once provided a helpful boost for their previous success by prescribed format play, have lately been obliged to waste their lives away with pince-nez on nose and handheld calculator in hand, reading through broad-reaching corporate fine-print contracts and toting the bottom line figure for those fiduciary agreements that will place their once great hits into the strictly regulated play lists piped in to the American shopping malls of the 21st century (the economy-minded box stores, the frugal food marts, and the dollar shoppes where welfare moms buy school clothes for their kids). We know they engage and agree to this interchange not from any real kind of fiscal self-interest on their part, but rather solely to reach the greatest number of people with their art, of course we accept that is their reasoning. Because they know full well that 90% of the people are at the bottom of the economic pyramid, and so are determined themselves not to add to that number themselves, this form of broadcast is merely looked upon as a convenient avenue to keep their sounds in front of the public in some way or act as a reminder of great hits of bygone eras and so freshen the public mind, and perhaps by providing a backdrop to the "glitzy" shopping mall mentality that will also make the shoppers there in some way receptive to the purchase of another eventual greatest hits compilation. This is not a way to make real money in the short term, but merely another way of spreading themselves far and wide, gathering a little here and a little there, and wise and shrewd it is to not profit from the fruits of solely one money tree, but to continue prospering and be supported if only so slightly at everyone else's expense.
There is music from other areas to listen to and learn about as well from people and places you might never have heard of.
Rock n Roll's Real Outlaws
(This article doesn't mention that Robert Plant made his way onto the performance roster at a Festival of the Desert in Timbuktu, all so that he might sing the music he's known for best, and carry his important message from the West, "I believe I need a suck". Well, that's rock n roll to lay it on the line like that, isn't it? As he is by all accounts the very definition of rock n roll, and the English are known to be gentlemen wherever it is in the world they might go or ever have gone, the tour promoters and music recorders there decided to let the philistines come. Although, I admit I've been wondering a bit lately how it is some pop musicians have at last found the time and interest to begin acting on their urges to participate in the world music phenomenon, but I'm not really surprised by any of this.)
¶ 2/29/2004 11:06:00 AM
While some of our music heroes, due to massive corporate undulations, media mergers, and strictly regulated play lists in the very corporate sector that once provided a helpful boost for their previous success by prescribed format play, have lately been obliged to waste their lives away with pince-nez on nose and handheld calculator in hand, reading through broad-reaching corporate fine-print contracts and toting the bottom line figure for those fiduciary agreements that will place their once great hits into the strictly regulated play lists piped in to the American shopping malls of the 21st century (the economy-minded box stores, the frugal food marts, and the dollar shoppes where welfare moms buy school clothes for their kids). We know they engage and agree to this interchange not from any real kind of fiscal self-interest on their part, but rather solely to reach the greatest number of people with their art, of course we accept that is their reasoning. Because they know full well that 90% of the people are at the bottom of the economic pyramid, and so are determined themselves not to add to that number themselves, this form of broadcast is merely looked upon as a convenient avenue to keep their sounds in front of the public in some way or act as a reminder of great hits of bygone eras and so freshen the public mind, and perhaps by providing a backdrop to the "glitzy" shopping mall mentality that will also make the shoppers there in some way receptive to the purchase of another eventual greatest hits compilation. This is not a way to make real money in the short term, but merely another way of spreading themselves far and wide, gathering a little here and a little there, and wise and shrewd it is to not profit from the fruits of solely one money tree, but to continue prospering and be supported if only so slightly at everyone else's expense.
There is music from other areas to listen to and learn about as well from people and places you might never have heard of.
Rock n Roll's Real Outlaws
(This article doesn't mention that Robert Plant made his way onto the performance roster at a Festival of the Desert in Timbuktu, all so that he might sing the music he's known for best, and carry his important message from the West, "I believe I need a suck". Well, that's rock n roll to lay it on the line like that, isn't it? As he is by all accounts the very definition of rock n roll, and the English are known to be gentlemen wherever it is in the world they might go or ever have gone, the tour promoters and music recorders there decided to let the philistines come. Although, I admit I've been wondering a bit lately how it is some pop musicians have at last found the time and interest to begin acting on their urges to participate in the world music phenomenon, but I'm not really surprised by any of this.)
¶ 2/29/2004 11:06:00 AM
