What if record companies hadn’t been asses?

At Truthdig.com, Danny Goldberg has reviewed Steve Knopper’s book, Appetite for Self-Destruction. According to Goldbert, Knopper asks asks some good questions. Was it really necessary that the record companies had to suffer their massive economic collapses? Here are many of the excuses you hear:

If only they hadn’t charged so much for CDs even after the per-unit manufacturing cost went down; if only they hadn’t abandoned the commercial single when it ceased to be sufficiently profitable; if only they hadn’t cooperated with Best Buy and Wal-Mart at the expense of indie stores; if only they hadn’t sued customers for illegal downloading, etc. etc. Referring to the fact that some of Sony/BMG’s ill-fated watermarked CDs damaged some computers, Knopper writes: “This lack of empathy reinforced Napster-era beliefs that the music industry was more interested in suing and punishing its customers than catering to them.”

Goldberg disagrees with all of this. He points to the newspaper industry, which made none of these mistakes, but is also suffering massive economic losses.

This litany of real and imagined insults to the consumer [caused by record companies] ignores the central reality of what caused the decline of record sales: the ability of fans to get albums free.

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Cultural death in threes –

I am experiencing a rather weird feeling - three cultural icons whose flames burned brightest during my own youth have all been extinguished in the same week. First Ed McMahon, who, for years has been but a caricature of himself, died, essentially of old age, at 86. Not a big surprise, except I wonder how someone who was so vibrant when I was a teen managed to get that old?! A friend pointed out that deaths like his make her feel old, and I get that. But so do the deaths of Farrah and Jacko today - at least for me. Because I can still remember believing that only old people lose contemporaries in any large number - and perhaps because we lost a mom at my oldest daughter's school to ovarian cancer this month - I'm feeling a bit too close to death's doorway. I was never a big fan of Farrah, but I know several men who, as boys, would glaze over just staring at her poster on their bedroom walls. She and her fellow Angels were early purveyors of girl-power - except it was the toxic kind, a power that came primarily from great bodies, beautiful faces and big hair. Oh, and yeah, they could kick butt against the bad guys, of course. Theirs was a cultural impact similar to Barbie's - a completely unrealistic picture of femininity to strive for, girls! But still, they were women in formerly man-held roles, and they were part of my girlhood, for better or worse. Farrah, of course, was always the top angel. Not a role model, although back then some tried to paint her as such; just an icon, replete with faults that became more apparent as she got older and the media more intrusive. Like her or not, I am saddened by the long suffering she had to endure up to her end. As for Michael Jackson, I simply don't know how to feel.

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Socialist Saturday in the park

Yesterday I was riding in a cab driving by Hakim, a young man who came to the U.S. eleven years ago from Kenya. During the cab ride to downtown KC, we discussed the many businessmen who treat professional sports like a religion. Many of them spend several thousands of dollars per year for the privilege of showing up several times per week to watch millionaire-athletes play games while eating $6 hotdogs and drinking $8 cups of beer. The conversation then turned to some of the many things one can do without spending much money, as well as many alternative ways to spend the $4,000 you might spend to watch a package of baseball games over the course of a season. Hakim works to support his family here in the United States, but he sends an extra $200 per month to Kenya each month, which fully supports his widowed sister and her three children. Hakim is also going to school to learn computer programming. He was a thoughtful and enterprising fellow and I really enjoyed our conversation. I continued thinking about money and healthy ways of spending discretionary time this morning at the Tower Grove Farmer's Market, in Tower Grove Park, near my home in St. Louis, Missouri. But then it struck me that there was a lot of ugly low-priced socialism going on all around me. You see, the government runs the park, inviting families to come swim in a big fountain and shop for food directly from farmer-vendors, no corporate middle-men and no heavy-handed corporate sponsors taking control of the natural ebbs and flows of those who attend (though a few good-hearted local businesses pitch in to make the event possible). I took the following photo of the many socialists splashing in the fountain (I tweaked it with Photoshop, trying to make it artsy and also because I wanted to obscure the identities of the folks in the photo. BTW, feel free to click to enlarge the image). fountain-rendered-as-sponge-drawing As I drove to the park on a government-paid road, I had passed a government-paid (socialist) police officer. It occurred to me that this sort of socialism is not unusual. There is both a socialized fire department and a a socialized library near the park, as well as many socialized (public) schools. Then, to exacerbate the situation, Steve Albers showed up, unpaid, to provide live music (disclosure: Steve is my brother-in-law). Steve, who is an excellent blues musician but a confused capitalist, decided to put out a bucket for cash donations--all of it to go to the organizer of the market so that it could hire out other local professional music acts on future weekends. Image by Erich Vieth Bottom line: a government operated park, no heavy-handed corporate sponsors, free music, free fountain, donations for future non-profit endeavors. People self-organizing without the assistance of any corporate mascot, without anyone telling them how to have fun. Lively and thoughtful conversation everywhere. Children spontaneously dancing, with dedicated parents nearby. Tall trees, fresh air and the recurring thought that this is what life is really about. Ubiquitous healthy food. The honest and spontaneous power of the grass roots--people choosing to be the people they are. I'm hearing Chicago's "Saturday in the Park" as I write this. I've seen the dour faces of the people who attend high-priced "fun" at corporate entertainment, while slurping their $8 beer. They are people who are barraged with advertisements all over the stadium, and they are constantly being told when to applaud by a corporate-sponsored scoreboard and PA. Image by Erich Vieth They are carefully searched on the way into the stadium to make damned sure that they don't bring in their own alcoholic drinks (oh, year, 12% of this expensive and unnecessary new stadium was constructed using taxpayer money). I can guarantee that the fun per dollar spent was much higher today. That's my thought for this morning: that we don't need to be told how to have fun by big corporations. We are better off spending next to nothing creating our own low-priced entertainment.

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…and now for something completely different

It's time for some Gratuitous Self-Promotion! Yes, in lieu of having anything interesting to say about anything interesting, I shall talk about myself. Apart from being an interweb crank and having been described, just the once, as an "in-your-face modern atheist" (whatever that's meant to mean - I'll take it as a compliment though, because people say that kind of thing about Richard Dawkins and I think he's a top bloke), I'm also a musician. Specifically a singer and lyricist. Since the age of 15 I've been in numerous bands, starting off playing metal & hard rock covers in a high school band named Mothdust in 1992 and joining my first original act, Roger The Band, in 1996. In 2000 Mothdust reformed and we started writing our own stuff. Having those two bands on the go was awesome if a little challenging, especially considering I was doing some acting with a small Adelaide theatre company at the time. In 2001 both bands released six-track EPs within a month of each other and it was a tiny thrill seeing both records in the local Adelaide charts! Both bands managed to attract a small but loyal following and many, many great times were had. Eventually though, Roger The Band gradually started falling apart, as bands sometimes simply do after six years. I decided to move to Melbourne with the members of Mothdust in 2003, to see if we could make a go of it in Australia's rock city. This also was not to be though, with one member going back to Adelaide after nine months and another getting married and buggering off to Manchester with his new bride six months later. After the final member and his wife returned to Adelaide to spawn, my lady Jo and I were left alone. I thought I'd be happy just strumming my guitar and writing electronic music on my computer for my own amusement, but I really missed collaborating with other musicians and playing really loud music, so I started looking online for Melbourne musos who were at a similarly loose end. Long story short: after many woeful demos I found a highly motivated and creative guitarist (Jiz) and drummer (Mike) who had been writing and performing together for a couple of years. We hit it off instantly, shared many of the same musical inspirations and attitudes and starting writing straight away. Eventually we found a bass player (Lachie) to round out the quartet (no mean feat - good bassists who aren't in bands are hard to find in Melbourne) and Jiz named the band From The Ashes. This was 2005. Last month From The Ashes released our debut independent album entitled Incendiary. We're launching the record officially on July 31 at Melbourne's famous Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda. DI's own Mike Pulcinella is featuring one of our tracks, Said & Done, on his latest documentary, Raising The Bar 3 (which I'm looking forward to seeing and no, not just because our song's on it - Mike makes a mean doco). What do we sound like? I never know how to answer that question. We're a rock band with diverse influences - everything from Elvis Costello, Paul Simon & The Police to The Mars Volta, Faith No More & Smashing Pumpkins. That doesn't mean we sound anything like any of those artists, it just means we like musicians who put a lot of thought into their music, especially into constructing interesting melody & mood, and who aren't afraid to be a little bit self-indulgent. Sometimes. That being said, we also just love bands that rock the f* out like Queens Of The Stone Age and Foo Fighters. Now, I'll do what I always do when asked what we sound like: invite the questioner to have a listen to the gear, decide for themselves what we we sound like and maybe leave some feedback. Here are some links containing preview tracks and other assorted rubbish:

myspace

Last.fm

iTunes

Thanks for your attention & I hope you like the material. Cheers Hank L to R: Mike, Lachie, Jiz, Hank Mike, Lachie, Jiz & Hank Corporate Logo 1.0

Continue Reading…and now for something completely different