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Let It Bleed Among other sour notes hit by the Recording Industry Association of America this past year was an all-out legal assault on college kids and grandmothers for downloading songs from the internet. Listen closely to the soundtrack. The song you hear is Who’s Sorry Now as millions of listeners continue to drop conventional sources of recorded music the way the recording industry drops sub-platinum artists. The folks who paid Martha and the Vandellas $100 a week while they had a string of number one hits wants a little sympathy for the devil. Big name rap artists whose entire genre is based on stealing other people’s music are suddenly livid that it’s being stolen back. The record industry is more of a mess than Courtney Love’s home life. Remember payola, back in the 50s and 60s? Today, payola is as natural as Granola. Now they call it cooperative advertising. Every decade has had its own scandals, screw-ups, and outrageous greed. Among other hits brought to you by the record industry in the 1980s was the death of cover art. Seeing the cover of Sgt. Pepper shrunk down to the size of a baseball card with the Baltimore Orioles team picture on it was a thrill I’ll never forget. The PMRC missed the point. The only thing really obscene on the those early CDs was the price. But just when they thought they’d spend the rest of eternity charging 16.99 for CDs that cost about a quarter to manufacture in the People’s Republic of China, the recording industry was caught taking a Napster. The industry’s laments already sound like a broken record. Being lectured to on legality and fair use by the record industry is like being taught elocution by Ozzy Osbourne. We haven’t seen such a groundswell of public support for a corporate behemoth since General Electric sued David Letterman for intellectual property rights to the top ten list. So if this is the coda for the record business, it will not have come a measure too soon. Karma isn’t always instant. Back in the 20s and 30s, the labor pains of the recording industry included putting thousands of theater musicians out of work. The recording industry goes through artists faster than Paris Hilton goes through video tape, and major record labels merge more often than failing telecommunications outfits. They got a little too comfortable swallowing each other and putting a pleasant spin on it. Now it’s time to be swallowed by fifteen-year-olds with tongue rings and an iPod. It sure is a long and winding road. Industry reps who wouldn’t walk two blocks to see your friend’s band’s showcase are now performing undercover surveillance at flea markets. Given the way much of the last decade’s music makes you want to throw up, A&R must stand for acid reflux. This business was never a love shack. Musicians hated record company executives for stealing their money, and record company executives hated musicians for stealing their chicks. Turns out the only way to find out if you really love music itself is to see how much of it you make when you’re not being paid to do it. Thanks to sites like Napster and Kazaa and the geeks who perfected the technology behind them, artistic geniuses like Marilyn Manson, Justin Timberlake, and Britney Spears will finally get that chance. Those of us with a little THC still embedded in our thyroid remember how the Dead handled a similar situation before they really were dead. They knew they were too stoned and complacent to stem the endless tide of bootlegging, so they invited it. They made plenty of money anyway, much of which they used to roll more joints. But at 16.99 or more a pop, you’re already one tenth of the way to getting a cheap guitar, learning a few chords, and putting out CD demos as good as anything by Kid Rock. The truth is, no one to date can figure out why the recording industry needs to exist. Without it, great, mediocre, and unlistenable music will continue to be written, performed, recorded, and distributed worldwide. The only difference is it will cost a lot less. When you drop 18.99 on an *NSYNCH CD, no doubt 5.99 of it is funding the plying of venal major market radio stations and keeping the cocaine industry afloat. To reprise, the recording industry has been around for only a sixteenth note in the score of music history. We will look back and see the 20th Century as a bridge between the era of saloon piano players and the world of high-speed digital downloads. Right now, the industry must face the music: Owning a magnetic pulse, binary formation, or electrical waveform is a fleeting sensation. Just be happy a bunch of nebbishes like yourselves had a nice run there for a while and got to lord it over a few people with a bit of talent. Thanks, guys. It’s been reel. See you in the discount bin. Click here to rant back. |