Trumpcare Fails
This is what happens when entertainment abdicates its responsibility.
Reality triumphs.
The movie business is in decline, the China it depended upon has sputtered, if it weren’t for increased prices grosses would have tanked. And this is a result of the studios giving the public what it thinks it wants.
Nobody knows what the public wants. William Goldman was correct. Nobody knows anything in Hollywood. And now all the focus is on D.C.
This calcification, this predictability, this rule-abiding has infected music too. Credit Beyonce and Eric Church and most recently Drake for messing with the distribution paradigm, but they’re still selling albums even if they call them playlists and what they contain is moribund, we need more experimentation, speaking to the disenfranchised.
We’ve got a business selling hip-hop in a world where forty percent will never listen to the sound.
We’ve got a preponderance of beats and an absence of melody.
We’ve got songs written by committee because we’re afraid of individuality.
What we’re looking for is tracks that speak to those without a voice, those who are not rich or elected or in control of the press.
Instead, we’ve got an insularity that turns off fans and an overwhelming amount of fake music.
There are so many records by so many people demanding our attention that we can’t even find the good stuff. On a regular basis people e-mail me songs that have hundreds of millions of streams which I’ve never heard of. Try Duke Dumont’s “Ocean Drive,” links below, which made it to number one on the dance chart but only number forty on the Top Forty so most people have never heard of it, despite having 245,513,819 views on YouTube and 105,336,472 streams on Spotify. Who is gonna cut out the detritus and focus us on that which we need to hear? I mean I knew Dumont’s name, but with so much crap pushed down my throat I can’t see the forest for the trees, like an average American.
Or if Duke’s one listen smash is not your cup of tea, how about Mudcrutch’s “Hungry No More,” from their second album, “2.” If you lived through the seventies and eighties, when rock was king and you sat in front of the stereo stoned nodding your head, this’ll reach you, sit through the whole thing, as the aural adventure unfolds.
So, there is good new stuff out there, but it’s not getting to the public. The same way people don’t know the truth about the Affordable Care Act or globalization or so many of the issues dominating the economic landscape.
Then again, money is the root denominator, the only thing we think about more is love, although if you’ve got no mazuma good luck getting laid.
So, we’ve got a cornucopia of information and little coherence in music. No wonder it’s static, we need to entrance the public. But people are being force fed retreads and are saying no mas. When the truth is they want something brand new that’s different, they want someone to lead them to greatness the same way Elizabeth Warren cuts through the fog by speaking truth.
But maybe you don’t agree with that.
But your party just lost. Because when given the power you couldn’t get it done.
The artists have been given the power for fifteen years. They can record for nearly free, distribute for nearly free, publicize for nearly free, but all they can do is bitch that the game is rigged or put out derivative drivel.
It’s time to rise above. It’s time to lead.
Music has power. It can influence not only hearts, but minds. The Food Network turned the average American into a gourmand. Great new music can change people’s beliefs and make them take action.
Watching what was happening in D.C. was more riveting than anything coming out of the entertainment industrial complex, and we still have no idea where it’s going to end up, kinda like trying to predict “Sgt. Pepper” from “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” There’s gerrymandering, there are more Democratic Senate seats up for grabs the next election than Republican and…
Who’s gonna lead us out of the wilderness?
Artists. If they just grab the wheel and start to drive.
“Ocean Drive”
“Hungry No More”
P.S. “Hungry No More” has only 46,123 views on YouTube and 90,848 streams on Spotify. In other words, greatness is not enough. The cream can no longer rise to the top, like truth in our country at large. You need to push it, make people aware of it.
P.P.S. I like to get excited about things, I like to be passionate about things, I like to feel alive and following the shenanigans in D.C. I feel this way, but too often I feel dull when hyped and exposed to music, but there’s nothing as enticing as a track that titillates and stimulates, it’s just that we’re venerating wankers playing by the rules instead of celebrating those who think outside of the box and test limits.
