Posted on 11/21/2003 7:12:04 PM PST by kirkrg
THE ODOR OF MUSICAL MENDACITY “The powerful...odor of mendacity” was what Big Daddy detected swirling around him in Tennessee Williams’ play, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The smell would knock him off his feet were he standing downwind the nattily attired legal reps who’ve pressed music industry suits against the likes of Napster.
Corporate execs and their culturally-challenged “artists” are more than a little peeved that their patrons have chosen to ignore (or to interpret liberally) laws designed to protect intellectual property. Too many adolescents weaned on the moral diet provided by punksters, hip-hoppers, metal freaks, rappers, and grungees have foregone paying fifteen bucks for the privilege of hearing violent, anti-social, and narcissistic lyrics spewed forth in rough conjunction with amplified doses of rhythmic dissonance. Instead, these semi-larcenous teens have “burned” music files on blank discs without attending to copyright niceties. What a shock!
Who would have thought that kids urged from birth to ignore cultural boundaries might actually skirt laws dealing with royalty rights? Who would have imagined that tongue-pierced teens subjected to endless propaganda about money-grubbing corporations would fail to provide a special exemption for an industry that, as the late Allan Bloom put it, “has all the moral dignity of drug trafficking”?
Here’s a truly mild example of the fare recently dished out by Eminem: “And it seems like the media immediately points a finger at me / So I point one back at ‘em / But not the index or the pinky or the ring or the thumb / It’s the one you put up when you don’t give a f---.”
Given such lyrics, I suppose it’s understandable if aficionados of aural mutilation are confused about the precise meaning of the phrase “digital rights.” It’s not a concept that’s clearly defined in the minds of most peach-fuzzers who gobble up CDs devoted to slapping around “bitches” and “hos.”
What’s most delicious about this MP3-Napster suit is how it exposes the music industry’s blatant hypocrisy. “Hypocrisy” is the trait most despised by angry “artists” who claim to be uncompromising critics of the system. What this legal dust-up reveals is what really motivates all the violent, cop-whacking jive that permeates pop-music: Money!
Like slavers of old, these guys would rape their grandmothers if they could make a buck doing it. They despise “the system”--but are awfully ticked when it isn’t there to conduct the proceeds of their electronic gigs to their bulging bank accounts. It’s the most hypocritical scam on earth--an industry dedicated to the production of mindless mall rats who hate rules, globalization, and capitalism but meekly put down $15 for the privilege of hearing a base mixture of repetitive instrumentation and crude expletives.
Well, at last the scumlords are hoisted on their own petard! As Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey would say, “That’s justice!”
[Richard Kirk is a freelance writer who lives in Oceanside, California. E-mail him at kirkrg@nctimes.net]
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