I feel a bit like a Dixie Chick.\u00c2\u00a0 I stood up for what I believed and I’ve watched my subscriber list decline.<\/p>\n
I now understand why everybody’s reluctant go on the record.\u00c2\u00a0 The vehemence of dissension is overwhelming.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you get some reasoned debate, but mostly you receive expletives.\u00c2\u00a0 Reasonable debate is out of the question.<\/p>\n
And I wonder how these people were brought up, how far we’ve come.\u00c2\u00a0 I was raised with the concept of reasonable debate.\u00c2\u00a0 But now, strangely, you’re either with us or against us.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re either a believer, in the government, in Christianity, or you’re a divisive rodent whose views must be eradicated.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like all the hysteria of talk radio has invaded the street.\u00c2\u00a0 People are taking on the histrionic personas of their favorite cartoon characters.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, they’re cartoons.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how you get ratings.\u00c2\u00a0 By creating a train-wreck.<\/p>\n
And it’s no different in the music world.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not good enough to make quality music.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to have some spice, a story.\u00c2\u00a0 Something that will make people stand up and pay attention.<\/p>\n
And getting people to pay attention is almost impossible.\u00c2\u00a0 So, therefore, whatever story you’ve got you must amp up, spread far and wide at 11.\u00c2\u00a0 The end result is blowback.\u00c2\u00a0 Even your greatest adherents reject you.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it only takes a short while, two years at most, for everybody to realize what is being purveyed is phony.<\/p>\n
The major labels are complaining that this paradigm is not working as well as it used to.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be that they could reach every listener in America, and lemmings would buy their pieces of crap.\u00c2\u00a0 But now, it’s getting almost impossible to reach people.<\/p>\n
Everybody’s off in his own world.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like me.\u00c2\u00a0 God, I had no idea there was that much right wing hatred out there, even from those struggling, those from the traditional Democratic base, who benefit almost not at all from tax cuts, who won’t ever have an estate large enough to be taxed.<\/p>\n
To reach me is not easy.<\/p>\n
I don’t watch TV.\u00c2\u00a0 Almost at all.\u00c2\u00a0 Believe me, you don’t need TiVo if you’re watching an hour and a half a week.\u00c2\u00a0 ("Entourage" and Bill Maher.)\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to watch any more.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want it to anesthetize the way I feel.<\/p>\n
But when I venture outside I find it’s LIKE New Orleans.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no center.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s every man for himself.\u00c2\u00a0 In the entertainment world.<\/p>\n
Oh, there’s a ton of product.\u00c2\u00a0 But you know most of it’s crap.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s no way to find out what’s good.\u00c2\u00a0 The purveyors say it’s all quality goods, and the reviewers are really just looking to get a gig with the purveyor, or at least continue to get a constant stream of perks.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s America.\u00c2\u00a0 Say anything negative, criticize the system, and everybody gets up in arms.\u00c2\u00a0 I’M JUST TRYING TO MAKE A LIVING HERE!\u00c2\u00a0 WHY ARE YOU FUCKING WITH MY RIGHT TO MAKE A LIVING?<\/p>\n
Used to be musicians used to question this ethos.\u00c2\u00a0 But now they’ve bought into it too.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t care about art, they care about MONEY!<\/p>\n
I don’t care about money.\u00c2\u00a0 Not much.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I want a modicum, in order to eat, to have a roof over my head, but I don’t need a giant SUV, I don’t need to vacation in St. Bart’s, I don’t need a vacation house larger than most domiciles in New Orleans.\u00c2\u00a0 I just need the human connection, I need to hear people’s stories.<\/p>\n
That’s what I want.\u00c2\u00a0 What’s inside you.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfiltered.<\/p>\n
And that’s what I want in my art.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to feel the connection.<\/p>\n
My best respite from this bullshit world is my car.\u00c2\u00a0 Saturday afternoon, taking a break from the e-mail that had me in an emotional spin, I was driving listening to Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 And I heard a record.<\/p>\n
You know immediately.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s kind of like love.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s at first sight.<\/p>\n
Always with me anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you don’t really know them.\u00c2\u00a0 But you FEEL something.\u00c2\u00a0 And it grows from there.\u00c2\u00a0 You create a deep bond, as you get to know the person, the record more.<\/p>\n
That’s the greatest challenge facing the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 Exposure.<\/p>\n
Oh, the labels won’t admit it.\u00c2\u00a0 They just want the old game, the old rules enforced.\u00c2\u00a0 Labels believe in MTV and terrestrial radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Where it’s almost impossible to hear anything new, anything different, the kind of music that entrances me.\u00c2\u00a0 Like I’m going to get to fuck the buxom chick in the video?\u00c2\u00a0 She’s got NOTHING TO DO with the music, and this type of person, this model type, she’s from a completely different world from me, an uneducated one, where how you look trumps who you are, what you know, how you think,<\/p>\n
Thinking people created P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 The labels believe it’s about rip-off.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s looking at it the wrong way.\u00c2\u00a0 The desire was to hear more music.\u00c2\u00a0 Something that’s ANATHEMA to them.<\/p>\n
The labels should be CHASING new technology.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s their savior.\u00c2\u00a0 But they prefer to sue.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 To futilely try to maintain their old monopoly.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve crippled satellite radio.\u00c2\u00a0 There are so many rules re what you can play it’s CLEAR they don’t believe in it.\u00c2\u00a0 You need a WAIVER to play a whole day of someone’s music, to play a number of tracks in close proximity.\u00c2\u00a0 God, I’d tell somebody to play AS MUCH OF MY MUSIC AS THEY WANTED!<\/p>\n
They stifled Internet radio.<\/p>\n
They come up with useless distribution schemes that no right person would be enamored of.<\/p>\n
But still the music remains.\u00c2\u00a0 Their protest that P2P is killing music is completely hollow.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe only the real musicians will remain.<\/p>\n
But you don’t need to employ P2P to hear my favorite new song.\u00c2\u00a0 No, the ARTIST HIMSELF is giving it away!<\/p>\n
I’d like to tell you I can break a record.<\/p>\n
But I can’t.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t reach enough people.<\/p>\n
And that’s not my goal.\u00c2\u00a0 My goal is to turn YOU on to new stuff that maybe YOU missed, that you’ve never heard.<\/p>\n