If you have not seen this yet, please do so promptly.  Fascinating.

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’

Famous Toby Mamis

Shove this up your ass Bubble Boy.

What bugged me about Will Pugh’s e-mail is his denigration of a 200,000 member core audience.  He was worried without the bubble stunt his new CD might only sell 300,000 copies and his label would consider it a flop.  Shit, if Charlie Walk is your God, you know you’re in trouble.  Broadcasting, reaching the masses, those days are THROUGH!  Hey Will!  Norah Jones is the only one with a platinum record this year, good luck!

If Epic is too dumb to see that they’ve got to go niche, change their business model, does that mean Will Pugh, a seemingly honest, dedicated musician, should submerge his values and throw in with them?  Is that the only way?

Of course not.

Toby Mamis doesn’t send me links constantly.  And I know this guy.  That’s what friends do, hip you to good shit.  So I’ll check out what Toby has to say.  Whereas if I don’t know you, or you send me too much, or what you like sucks in my eyes, I ignore you.

I was positively stunned.

Oh, at first I thought it was a Jewish thing.  We Yids hang together.

But it’s not.

What did Robert Krulwich say on his TV show?  That rap is the music anybody can make?  I’m not going to debate that, for fear of e-mail abuse, but let’s just say I wouldn’t consider "Thou Shalt Always Kill" in the same league as the Beach Boys and the Beatles.  It’s less music, and more performance art.  Then again, there’s just as much creativity in this ditty as there was in "Revolution 9".

That’s what’s wrong with the major labels.  They only want what they can sell.  Something that’s creative, that’s outside, they just pass over.  But it’s this stuff that gets to our gut, it’s this stuff that makes us think, it’s this stuff we’re drawn to.

What possessed this guy to make this song/video?  And his delivery, it’s not rock star poised.  He doesn’t look like the guys on MTV.  He looks like you and me.  He MEANS IT!

But now, armed with a digital video camera and YouTube, he can REACH you and me.  He’s already got 339,126 views as I write this.  How many people does Will Pugh think WATCH MTV?  When music is playing in the afternoon?  A couple of hundred thousand AT BEST!  You can reach your core on YouTube, doing what YOU want, and maintain your credibility!

The only criterion for gaining viewers being that you’re good.

What is good?  Is it the ability to play well, is it the ability to write catchy songs?  All those count, but first and foremost, it’s the ability to STIMULATE people.  That’s why Jessica Simpson can’t sell a record.  The original hip-hop, before it delved into cars, money and ho’s, had a vibrancy, an honesty, absent from rock and roll that couldn’t be denied.  THAT’S why it was successful.  "Thou Shalt Always Kill" has got this same tuning fork characteristic.  You’ve thought about some of these subjects.  Others?  God, he’s right!

Why do you go to the bar?  Are you trying to get into a girl’s mind or pants, and which comes first?  And, if you’ve ever met any of these legendary musicians, you’re always stunned that they’re just people.  Oh, the art is great, but what makes the work truly transcendent is YOUR investment in it, what it means TO YOU!

That shit on MTV means nothing to you.

P2P, YouTube, they’re bringing back the essence of rock and roll, no matter what the music sounds like.  It’s about challenging convention, having no respect for authority.  I mean why give a shit what Charlie Walk or the gatekeepers at MTV and radio think ANYWAY?  That’s what fucks up the movie business.  So many collaborators, so many execs who think they’re the artists, telling the TRUE artists what to do.  In the seventies, we threw off the chains of this slavery in the music business.  How the artists became indentured servants again, confounds me.  But those days are through.

We saw the Beatles and we bought guitars.

Kids today are going to see this video, and will fire up GarageBand, and pick up digital video cameras, and create unfiltered stuff from deep inside that will resonate.  And listeners/viewers who are affected will spread the word.

You don’t need the old systems anymore.  If you’re playing along with the boys in suits, you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, you’re laughable.

It’s a new golden era.

Is the pot of riches clearly discernible off on the horizon?  NO!  But the Beatles didn’t know they were going to become rich and worldly famous when they started out either.