Posted on 06/01/2011 12:25:28 PM PDT by GSWarrior
Here in Dallas, we have Half-Price Books, it’s like a museum.
The olden days are far too romanticized (always in in everything IMHO). A band would struggle for months or years, spend a huge amount on a “demo” hoping to capture the attention of an A&R person, and if lucky enough to ‘sign a contract’ had to sign over pretty much all the rights to their work.
Give me a world where I can write a song on Friday night, lay down some of the tracks, send the Pro Tools file to a bud 3000 miles away for lead or back up vocals, mix the damn thing and be selling it on Garage band or CD’s at a gig or market by Sunday.
I don't miss LP’s *one.damn.bit* Be it Mongo Santamaria or Mozart, trying to compile a complete collection used to take years and thousand of dollars and cleaning a piece of vinyl and replacing needles and dealing with insufferable nipplheads in record stores who wouldn't know Shostakovich from Scarlatti.
Actually, I think it’s more a case of free market capitalism eating alive a corrupted political system where content was chosen by a small group of overlords.
Sure the indie stores suffer, but even during the 90’s boom of small press and independent labels, they were using the same 4 distributors. Much of it was marketing.
So now, anyone can publish, and produce, with cheap tools, and the market has been flooded. The market realities are that the only products making money are mass market paperbacks, Imax films or huge budget Blockbusters, and Arena tours. A tiny percentage of material will slip through and defy that rule, but the reality is, it’s not just your friend and his home recording system who can’t get a break now...it’s legends with cult followings like Prince. It’s Hollywood studios and the Cineplex chains.
It smells like bum and surfer. Oh wait: sorta the same thing.
This is like someone who tinkered with engines in his barn back in the 1890s whistfully complaining about the easy availability of automobiles in the 1920s. We have the internet now, and it can give us whatever weird, crazy crap we want without bothering to find a little boutique.
I understand nostalgia, and, indeed, have fond memories of little, local treasures selling food, clothing, music, books, etc. that I was forced to go out of my way to visit. But when you get down to it, commerce is commerce. If I can get what I want without unique atmosphere and comraderie, all the same. McDonald’s and Wal-mart can take over the world, for all I care. I wouldn’t waste time crying for lost stores. Save the whistfulness for lost family, friends, community, art, religion, or whatever.
By the way, I realize “community” and commerce go together, to a certain extent. So don’t remind me. It’s just not a very important part of community, in my opinion.
Amoeba Music--used to be a bowling alley on Haight Street. Now it is the granddaddy of independent record stores.
Eh. I’m sure as convenient as a good Barnes and Noble is, you can appreciate a good mom and pop shop that carries interesting titles without needing to special order them. It really is a cultural thing also.
Think of it as the difference between relying on NY Times or Drudge, and having a Free Republic, or whatever else is in your bookmarks list.
“without needing to special order them”
That’s just the thing: it’s so easy and natural to “special order” things now that it’s no longer “special.”
“Think of it as the difference between relying on NY Times or Drudge, and having a Free Republic, or whatever else is in your bookmarks list”
I can’t get my head around this analogy, for my entire point was that the internet has made specialty shops more and more irrelevant. So the choice isn’t between the Times and the internet; it’s between the olden days of big name, regional, and local publications, and perhaps amateur papers and “zines” and the brave new world of the interwebs.
It’s cool, but even Amoeba doesn’t order everything any more, and doesn’t get the so-called DJ copies, which in the past it sold at a cut rate.
My point is, without specialty shops, you have a harder time accessing specialty content....unless you actively seek it out.
On one hand, you can find a book or film virtually any topic you can think of. On the other hand, with rare exceptions, a lot of good stuff slips through the cracks, and marketing controls what gets exposure, and turns a profit.
Now, you could say, it's back to the old days as far as open market, because musicians can produce and market their own CDs. The problem with the Brave New World is that there are no referees, such as old time producers, and the market, or the Web, is filled with trash more than ever. (Just see epitonic.com)
While we're at it, do yourself a favor and lookup this dude, and the David Wax Museum.
Frank Zappa hit the nail on the head:
One thing that did happen during the 60s was that some music of an unusual or experimental nature did get recorded and did get released. Now look at who the executives were in those companies at those times not hip young guys. These were cigar chomping old guys who looked at the product that came in and said, I dunno. Who knows what it is? Record it. Stick it out. If it sells, all right!
We were better off with those guys than we are now with the supposedly hip young executives who are making the decisions about what people should see and hear in the marketplace. The young guys are more conservative and more dangerous to the artform than the old guys with the cigars ever were.
And you know how these young guys got in there? The old guy with the cigar, one day goes Yeah, I took a chance. It went out and we sold a few million units. All right. I dunno. I dunno what it is. But we need to do more of them. I need some advice. Lets get a hippy in here... So they hire a hippy. They bring in the guy with long hair. Now, theyre not going to trust him to do anything except carry coffee and bring the mail in. It starts from there. He carried the coffee four times so they figured they could trust him. Lets give him a real job. He becomes and A and R man (artists and repertoire) . From there, moving up and up and up... Next thing you know, hes got his feet on the desk and hes saying, Well, we cant take a chance on this because its simply not what the kids want and I know.
Good old days were always better. Remember Emperor Franz Josef?
The OTHER problem is that “indie” is also a way of saying “not overproduced”. But the INDUSTRY will still slip some faux “indie” acts into the public consciousness.
If I recall, there was a woman who had “viral” videos on Youtube playing her guitar in her kitchen. “Then” Disney(?) announced they were signing her. Except she’d already been signed and the videos were shot by her label.
The INDUSTRY can’t stand to lose control of their empire. So the pravda press is sure to give plenty of coverage to the latest “activity” from Lady Gaga, Britney Courtney Kee$ha, and hip hop gangbanger with a phony street cred bio. Anything to serve as a distraction.
Don’t even need CDs now, just go to selling digital downloads and song placements in tv/movie/advertising.
With a record or book, you have a tangible good. You have the right of resale. Not so with a digital download, you’ve bought it, that’s it. You MIGHT be able to get up to 3 REPLACEMENT download copied from itunes should your ipod/computer/cellphone/etc be stolen/break/get lost. Try claiming that loss of a music library with your homeowner’s insurance sometime...
The music industry doesn’t make money on the sale of used product and doesn’t particularly benefit from the prestige of rare records selling for $20-120-1200. They could always press more copies of the music (and in some situations, that would suffice to drive down the price of some rare R&B or rock single that was never released to an album). Some pioneering profiteers have taken to making their own bootleg pressings of obscure (but in demand) singles and compilation albums; some seek out proper rights payments, others just press the wax and try not to get caught.
Wax, shellac, and vinyl have gone through some format changes over time (cylinders of 2 playing lengths, pathe/edison/"standard" 78s (each played with a different stylus, Brunswick DID make a combination player). Even with the shift to wax there was a format war over 331/3 LP/EP vs 45single (or boxed album of singles). BUT in the end, dominant technology permitted you to play 78s from the 1910s-2011 LP/singles all on one contemporary turntable.
I question whether today's mp3s will still be supported by playing technology in 2110. And you certainly won't be able to reverse engineer a player from physical parts.
People will take the ease of a McDonald’s hamburger in the drive-through vs. preparing a balanced and enjoyable movie at home. They aren’t comparable experiences.
Instant gratification is the rage. Oh, and they want it for nothing. Not that the labels bothered PAYING their artists the money collected in their name...
The last time I know that the majors did that was in the 1990s and then they panicked and moved to the safety of boy and girl pop singers that they could market like the Monkees but without the depth or personality or staying power.
“dominant technology permitted you to play 78s from the 1910s-2011 LP/singles all on one contemporary turntable”
While it may be true that you have been able to play LPs on the same piece of equipment for that span of years, it is beyond reason to suggest any but the most assiduously preserved specific records remained playable for a similar span of time. For unlike digital ones, physical copies are prone to entropy.
It may be as you say, of course, that technology shifts will make irrelevant our digital copies. Be that as it may, almost certainly none of your LPs will survive to 2110.
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