Britney’s Wedding

National Revue Online ^ | 9 January, 2004 | John Derbyshire

[ItsOurTimeNow]

LOL...thought I'd find you here...

[Range Rover]

Saw them many times many moons ago. One of the original members Brian Gregory - the real spooky looking one - unfortunately passed on last year.

I'm sure that there are a few Garage/Psychobilly fans lurking about the dark recesses of FR. (typing while listening to the 13th Floor Elevators and Sonics. My office mates are convinced I'm a bit odd)

[Thinkin' Gal]

Saw them many times many moons ago.

Me too, at the Roxy and Whiskey-a-Go-Go, among other places. Ack. At one point I was sure that I had every album and obscure import. Not that there were that many, but all I can say is... Yikes.

I didn't know Brian Gregory passed on but then again, he was the type which would make a person wonder, "Isn't he dead?" :-/

[r9etb]

I think back to the bands that I loved when I was younger. Yes, Steely Dan, Led Zepplin, etc., etc. I loved their music.

And in most cases it was music. And memorable, memorable solos ... there are still many solos that rattle around my head, even if I've not heard the song for years.

I don't claim to have listened to much in the way of pop music for 20 years or so -- but what I have heard is notably lacking in things that have made popular music interesting in the past.

[CTOCS]

Nice te, te, te, te, teeth!!!!!..

[r9etb]

Pop music is gaining more people like her because the record producers are becoming more controlling, they need maleable airheads that will stand in one place showing exactly as much cleavage as ordered and too dense to have an opinion on anything that might alienate the audience.

I'm convinced, BTW, that this is where the music download "industry" puts the major labels in the greatest danger. Big names can't really market interesting stuff, because their overhead is too high to gamble on small-market stuff. Plus which, they're so huge that they're too ponderous to shift direction easily. Slutney, for example, is a tool of AOL/Time/Warner -- she's a brand name to them.

Their entire setup is based on having a captive audience -- you have to listen to it on the radio; you have to buy it at a record store, and you have to pay $15 for the CD....

The internet turns this model on its head. There is almost no overhead, beyond maintenance of the server. There is nothing to limit listening to stations on the radio dial. The big record labels are going to kill themselves by peddling this pap.

Now, is there still a place for big labels? Maybe -- symphonic music, for example, takes a lot of overhead.... But even then, it's likely that each organization will be able to create its own "albums," and sell those via internet also.

New times a coming?

[discostu]

I'm still not convinced the internet will be a useful way to introduce artists to a new audience. But source music movie and TV soundtracks (like the Sopranos) should manage to fill that space nicely.

One of the things I find most interesting is how music and TV are following the same doomed path and to a degree the people in charge can see it's a path to doom but for whatever reason they just can't get off the path. Both industries have become so risk averse at the upper level that their cookie cuttering themselves to death. If you watch any shows that talk about 70s TV or music you'll hear a similar sentence over and over: "this show/album could never get made today". Nobody today would make All in the Family, Streets of San Fransisco, The Wall or Yessongs. And then they wonder why music sales and TV ratings are down.

Of course with all that being said the end isn't actually in sight. Yeah music sales are "down" but they're still being measured in the hundreds of millions (I think 2003 was like 680 million moved by RIAA labels alone). There aren't many industries that can complain about "only" selling 680 million units.

[Boxsford]

Thank goodness I don't know who Ron Jeremy is.(please leave me clueless.)
I don't know about her downward spiral. I fear she'll pick up where Madonna leaves off--when she ever does.

Music seems much more manipulative than ever. Of listeners.

[Triple Word Score]

I found the bands I've come to like by watching videos on Launch.com, which is free with my ISP. 90% of the time I hit "NEVER SHOW THIS TO ME AGAIN." There's a lot of sick stuff out there and it doesn't usually take ten seconds to identify and discard something.

But when I do find something I like, I go out and buy it. I bought several BNL CDs, one Coldplay, Josh Groban, and Toby Keith because I was able to sample their music for free on the internet. My husband has purchased Loreena McKinnett (sp?) and other Celtic sounding music on the strength of samples online. I never listen to anything but talk radio so I wouldn't have discovered new music in that traditional way. Commercial radio seems to alternate between commercials that scream and "music" that screams. My local oldies station has an extremely stale playlist (Love Potion No. 9, mostly, I think) and I think by and large my age group and older have been far too neglected by the music industry. Shame on ClearChannel--they ought to have figured out by now that there's an audience they aren't reaching! Many of us in this market won't go to concerts because they are uncomfortable. Too loud. Too crowded. We want our creature comforts. But we have money to spend, and they haven't gotten much of it through Brittney and Madonna and the other underdressed icons they try to shove down our throats.

[discostu]

Britney will be dead in an alley long before Madonna leaves off. Madonna actually took charge of her own career which kept her from being discarded by the industry the way they're trying to discard Britney.

I don't think music is more manipulative, I don't think you can get more manipulative than 60s protest music. The INDUSTRY on the other hand has gotten positively brutal in it's lust for every possible dollar.

[Boxsford]

Yeah, I guess that's what I mean. The industry and the choices they're making. As you know, this is not a topic I'm up on but even I can tell things have changed and commercializing a person like Britney not only makes her a ho but the industry that creates her a pimp after "dates" for his ho.

[discostu]

yeah, somewhere along the lines they got too addicted to the business part of the music business and stopped having fun. There was a time when the music biz was about short weedy guys doing coke with big stars and peeling off a couple of groupies. You'd think being more professional would have helped things, but instead their primary concern is the inches of flesh on poster/ poster sales ratio and maximizing verticle markets. Somebody needs to get the sex and drugs back into the rock and roll.

[bootyist-monk]

Look what they done did bump.

[r9etb]

As you know, this is not a topic I'm up on but even I can tell things have changed and commercializing a person like Britney not only makes her a ho but the industry that creates her a pimp after "dates" for his ho.

Which brings us back to this article. Derbyshire is correct: Britney Spears is best described as an instrument of Satan. And if this is correct, then we would have to classify the nice folks in The Industry as Satan's minions -- Screwtapes.

Now, whether or not this Satan is real or figurative (I lean strongly toward the former), it cannot be denied that the goal here is to gain control of the culture, and the people in it, so that ... whomever ... can rake in money and power. And to do that requires them to destroy anything that they cannot control, which (given human perversity) pretty much requires them to get rid of whatever is good.

[discostu]

I'm uncomfortable calling anyone an instrument of Satan. It's Britney's fault she's dumb as a box of rocks (no offense intended to the many fine rocks in the world), it's her mom's fault she has no sense of modesty, and it's some music executives fault she has more money than she knows what to do with. Satan might be giggling like a school girl at her antics but blame should stay with the people at fault: Britney and her circle.

[r9etb]

Satan might be giggling like a school girl at her antics but blame should stay with the people at fault: Britney and her circle.

Satan is more than happy to work with the willing.

And if it were just Britney (or Madonna, or Christina Aguilera, or any one of several hundred others....) I would be inclined to agree with you.

But when you look at the way things are done today -- seems like every pop star either starts out as a blonde bimbo or becomes one -- it's too systematic. That "cookie cutter" analogy is correct. I'm just more willing than you to attribute the underlying cause to more than mere stupidity and greed.

[discostu]

the blonde bimbo's success makes sense to me: teenagers lke cleavage and bleach is cheap. It's systematic because that's how the entertainment industry works, they always try to copy the latest success and one up what they think made it successful hoping for more success. That's why you get clones in every part of the entertainment industry. You start with Quintin Tarentino making a movie with lots of blood and swearing and non-linear editing and the next thing you know you've got a dozen movies out with more blood more swearing and less linear editing. Pearl Jam hit big with the flannel and fuzz box and BAMMO a dozen bands came out of Seattle wearing more flannel and using more fuzz box. Ever since "the poster" of Farrah Fawcett every aspect of the entertainment industry has been trying to give us more curvy bottle blondes wearing less clothing and standing in a more revealing way. And until a string of them show up that don't make money they'll keep pushing the envelop in that direction, the entertainment industry needs 4 to 10 failures in a row before they decide that direction is used up, and so far scantily clad blondes are a license to print money.

[Calvin Coolidge]

Even worse was her performance on the NFL Kickoff Concert. She didn't even lip-synch well, it seemed as if she didn't know the words and her mouth wasn't moving at the same time as the track.

She didn't even really dance, just strut around the stage. Her backup dancers would strike poses, and she would walk over and dry hump them.

Then, at the end, her dancers stripped off her pants to reveal a pair of short-shorts, and then carefully adjusted said shorts for her. It all seemed so clinical. Selling sexuality to children requires that it all seem symbolic, and that is why she does it so well. None of it seems to be actually SEXY, just stylized and robotic.

[grannie9]

I loooooove the New Riders.. I have two of their albums.. and never get sick of them.. ;)

[Fintan]