Blog
The Music Industry
As cliché and tacky as it may seem, music is an art form. It is no less of an art form than Michelangelo’s flaccid cock, or Mona Lisa’s lazy eye. Music is the espousing of something with no rational existence, something that was produced simply because someone felt it should be. I say this with a tear in my idealistic eye, for there has been no other art form in history that has been systematically raped by commercialism like music… however, there is still hope… I think.
I have been 100% disconnected from mainstream music for several years now – it makes me angry when I see the 100K marketing scheme bleeding from the artists who have been promised a true escapist dream. It makes me angry when I hear the watered down, irrelevant dribble that is pouring from the festering cunt of major record labels worldwide. Opinions aside, I think that most people would agree that the mainstream music industry leaves a lot to be desired. The internet is around for good, yet they refuse to adapt, instead opting to try and sue and attack the internet into extinction… an attitude that is as unsurprising as it is retarded, considering the very nature of human beings to understand, exploit and erase.
I was reading someone’s blog the other day and they made an important point. In essence, they said that if the mainstream music industry could burn its history of rape and pillage, get rid of the tailored suits, get rid of the talentless pop-stars, and exist as another art industry, it could be one of the biggest success stories of the internet. Anyone who really cares about their art doesn’t care about making the front cover of Rolling Stone, hitting number one on the charts, going platinum—blah blah blah. I know that for myself and my band, we write music that we wish someone else was releasing, so we could listen to it. Most people who write music for honest reasons feel exactly the same.
To bring you all back to my wildly outrageous notion that music is an art form, I want to talk about a comparison I heard the other day between music and paintings. In the same way we can buy a postcard or a print of a painting we like for a few bucks, we have to make a real effort to go and see the artwork in real life. I believe true music fans understand that absolutely nothing compares to seeing, hearing, and experiencing something for real. It is something they will always pay for. It’s a sweeping statement to say that we should just give away our music and simply tour, but I believe that there needs to be a re-evaluation of the system in which the mainstream music industry operates. Any lame idiot (like myself) can look at record sales of particular bands and know that that is not an apt reflection of the bands pulling power at shows. It happens time and time again. It’s why more shows are added to tours; it’s why the same venue has the same show on several times. People ARE downloading music, people will ALWAYS be downloading music—but people know they just can’t download the experience of a live show.
The world needs its pop stars; hell, I use to be obsessed with the Backstreet Boys to the point where I could control my very dreams. In the dreams I would get their autographs somewhere on my body, then wake up and in a frantic hurry I would try to find them… fucked, hey? But my point is that no amount of Backstreet Boys CDs could give me what I wanted. They couldn’t let me meet the bOyZ: they couldn’t supply me with the experience I desired.
Let’s not forget this as the music industry approaches the fork in the road it’s been trying to avoid for the last 50 years. The choice must be made whether to adapt or be destroyed. We have to forget about CD sales, forget about the hopeless cunts at JB-HIFI who won’t get your CD on shelves in time, stop whinging that “the kids” ain’t being honest and buying your CD. Focus on touring, focus on your live show, focus on your music, focus on being relevant! The money for bands these days is made playing shows; everyone who is in a band knows that anyway.
We need to earn money. Without it, we can’t play shows, we can’t release albums, we can’t survive as a band. But money is a means to an end. Though we need it to play music, we should never play music for the money. As members of a relatively unspoiled scene, it’s still within our power to maintain the distinction between music and profit, art and finance. When the two are confused, it’s always the music that suffers. It’s the trap that our mainstream counterparts have fallen into. We can’t afford to make the same mistake.
p.s. here's my room mate sporting some gnarly snot.
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Introductory Stupidity
I added a girl called Terri Thompson from high school on facebook several years after having a sex dream about her, a dream in which she had no vagina, so i proceeded to have sex with her belly button, which was in fact her butt hole. I use to masturbate furiously to the factory sex scene in 8 mile and i now have a complex over Brittany Murphy... don't even try and tell me you didn't as well. Sometimes (all the time) me and my friends shower and wank together. I study commerce at university and constantly have to lie about various family members attempting suicide in order to get time off for tour. I do not desire a 30 year mortgage, a wife, 2 kids and a subscription to a corporate owned newspaper, i do not desire tribal or futuristic-female-ned-kelly-burning-herself-through-an-australian-flag-while-fighting-a-boxing-kangaroo tattoo's that litter our local beaches like dolphin choking litter. I do not understand why people look at the unit southern cross decal on the back of Holden SS ute's nation wide as something positive. Most of all i don't understand the world.
Of the .73 people out there who have anything in common with me, check back soon, cause i'll be writing about music, shows, the audio abomination that is Mary Jane Kelly, my failed sexual experiences and supplying more confessions that i should be extremely embarrassed about, but am not.
I have no suitable image for this entry, so here's a photo of my roommate with a bubble beard.
I love you all
Feel weird about it.
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