I was part of a mass facebook message from Richard Flynn who is the president of Tower Records. He was lamenting how music has become something to dismiss. It doesn't matter now - but at one time songwriters ruled the world. Music was prophetic. Sad that no one buys it anymore. Not just because I make no money - but because music has become something that literally has no value. Wallpaper. The Internet Ocean has gobbled up everything and there it sits, invisible, drowned, boutique, worthless. The only ones who make $ off of it are the ISP's and the computer manufacturers who need to give people a reason to buy their shit besides porn. Music was never something you could hold in your hand but the process of buying it and loving it was very human. I know I know the good and bad reasons, blah blah. Old marketing models versus new models blah blah blah. I just like record stores. There you are in public saying that you actually like this music. You walk to the snotty clerk and put your money where your mouth is. There you are when your friends come over and they see what you spent your goddam money on. It was important. Human. There was a deep story when you bought a record and its all gone. This is what Mr. Flynn said:
"For many of you that have worked with me know, my mission revolves around how to make music enjoyable again to a large audience. Thanks to various “improvements” in the industry music, especially with the younger generations, music is now background, white-noise. The majors only get behind the latest fad – content about an artist and the effort they put behind their art is lost."
Yep. That's about it.
4 comments:
Well, I have to agree with this even though I am part of those people who still purchase tons of new records every single week - and 98% of the time on vinyl. But I know we are a minority and even my young nephew who is 18, who has a turntable and supposedly loves music has a completely different approach to it. As you say 'Music was never something you could hold in your hand' even though somehow that's exactly what made us love it in the first place. The smell of the record stores, the vibe, touching and displaying those beautiful artworks, holding the piece of vinyl and dropping the needle with excitement. I somehow have not lost all these feelings and as I mentioned earlier I continue to buy new music on vinyl but I know we are only a handful 'older' guys attached to it and that will all get lost in a couple of decades. I also sadly start to see books going the same way.
Personally, I nearly went digital but after losing tons of music with hardrive crashes, lost iPods, etc... it freaked me out to realise how volatile and worthless the whole thing was and meant. Unless my house burns or any other disaster, I will continue to enjoy and rediscover my records. But what happens to all those new digital-only releases? They most likely disappear in the ether. Impalpable. On another hand, may be it is a good thing after all? Death to nostalgia! No more endless Phil Collins, Bryan Adams or Queens reissues! Only fresh and new music. Constantly.
I am torn in between those two thesis but may be it is only because I can still buy my weekly fix as a physical format. The day I lose this choice I may shy away from music entirely and disappear in its void.
Have you seen Allen Brown's recent well written and quite harrowing book on The Blue Nile, Nileism? I'd been spending a bit of my student loan on keyboards and stuff back when things started going awry for them, and things are said of Paul Jospeh Moore that fit my experience, that his tinkering with increasingly complicated, absorbing equipment compounded the fastidious nature of their methods, worked against his joy of music. I think there's another issue involved in what you're writing of. Is it possible that there's some struggling to own how you feel about technology's role in your working life - in owning its role and the embracing of it however ambivalent? Not to downplay any callousness or lack of sincere interest in some businessmen involved in the arts - I had a few poems in magazines between 2002 and 2007 but got played for a cunt by a lot of people, sending me into a bit of a retreat away from moving the burgeoning career on. Sod writing a short story without a word processor program, let alone a novel, and though I hate cables and fiddling with settings I record a bit of guitar now and then on my laptop. I guiltily admit that I've yet to pay for Bon Iver's For Emma record which I downloaded most of, though having now ceased pursuing what for me was the novelty of torrenting, I am catching up with some belated purchases of things I illegally enjoyed, but I feel just as intensely about the good stuff now as I did when I was buying vinyl - crappy thin 80s and 90s quality vinyl which I am about to take to charity shops as it'll never shift even on eBay - and despite my own ambivalence am not inclined to focus on what we may have lost because of technology. I am still nearly in tears with my phone's music player on as I walk to the shops every day, listening to the same twenty or so songs often, travelling right into them, all 192 compressed k. (What's made things better a bit for me maybe is discovering open source and free software and the Ubuntu operating system, and building my own computer, it's made technology seem less tainted to Mac-less me even if I can't cook up my own silicon.) In the same way that some of us have a vegetarian phase at 16 to externalise our shock at cruelty we've experienced ourselves, our feelings towards these technological changes to me seem like an externalised expression of something internal, a struggle we're complicit in with a potential happy or happier outcome, rather than being about something that's being forced on us from without.
As I won't touch Facebook or Twitter it's good to see your blog back on and I hope you'll give us a glimpse of the new songs here like you did with Like a River. Best wishes, Lee Wilson
Great. Hope you will like it!
§ Property in Spain
with respect,mark...you're perpetuating a chosen perception...you don't have to see it that way...music still means a lot to me and many others....true,there's more than ever to zone out,and i understand those moments where it all seems so cheap....but that goes beyond music...so i hope you don't mind me readdressing the balance a little bit...
warmest regards,and yourt music will never seem cheap to me...
mary cigarettes.
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