I don't normally write about my job, because for the most part it's an inappropriate topic to write about. I work for a local MLA, and my job mostly involves explaining government policy and decisions, and helping people connect with the provincial government services they need. I get yelled at a lot by people who are pissed off and ignorant, but for the most part it's an interesting and fulfilling job.
Today, there was a protest at my office. The details aren't really important - it was regarding the potential sale of some land to housing developers. Small group of protestors decided for some reason utterly unfathomable to me that the appropriate thing to do to protest the sale of private land was to throw chickens at us. Live chickens. In my office. Yes, it's as stupid, cruel, and ineffective as it sounds. So I spent about half an hour with live chickens in my office while I waited for animal control. The chickens were actually rather pleasant, to be honest, and to be fair to the protest at large, several of the protestors including the organizer of the protest came to our door and said that they did not know about this in advance and didn't condone it. The police and animal control were great about the whole thing.
This inspired me to think about the ineffectiveness of protests and protestors. Consider that many of the same people who today were protesting the possibile construction of new housing were a few months ago publically protesting the lack of affordable housing. Prior to that, they were protesting the lack of funding for arts, and before that, protesting taxes. I know these are many of these same people because we keep track of who writes our office, and there are dozens of people who have written complaining about all of these issues.
Pick your bloody battles. Seriously.
If you want housing, you need to understand that either you're going to have to tear down a block of houses and replace them with highrises, or you're going to have to start chopping down forests. Houses have to go somewhere. You can't be simultaneously in favour of affordable and expanded housing and opposed to increased land-use. Likewise, if you are concerned about funding for the arts, health care, education, or whatever else, you need to understand that the primary source of government revenue is taxation. I've written a lot lately about the importance of understanding issues before sounding off about them and this is no different. However much some people would like to pretend otherwise, governments can't simply borrow indefinitely. If you want that arts funding or that funding for scholarships or whatever else it is that's important to you, you need to understand two things:
1. Government has to raise the revenue to pay for it. That means taxes.
and
2. People have dramatically different priorities. You may believe that $15 million of government funding should go to arts grants. Someone else may believe equally passionately and with equal justification that that $15 million ought to go to funding scholarships for graduate students in the sciences.
So if you want to argue that government ought to fund these things, don't turn around and start complaining about the horrors of taxation.
And if you want to get up on your moral high horse about anything, don't throw chickens at me, and don't throw marbles under horses' hooves. Cruelty to animals is pathetic, and not only should you be arrested, and not only do you lose your moral highground, you've dived into a moral cesspool with only the dregs of society to keep you company.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at is that most protestors are ignorant hypocrites who would rather scream and yell and make asses of themselves than understand the nuances of issues and work constructively to improve the quality of life in this country.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Five Underrated Albums
I want to write about five truly great albums that are overlooked or underrated. To qualify, an album has to be one that no one's heard of, or one that everyone's heard of but no one realizes is great.
They are, in no particular order:
Phil Collins - Face Value
Hot Chip - The Warning
Barenaked Ladies - Maybe You Should Drive
Mono - One Step More And You Die
The Brothers Creeggan - The Brothers Creeggan II
Of course, there are many more great underrated albums out there, but one has to limit oneself. These are the ones that immediately came to mind.
Hot Chip The Warning
Every time I ask someone about Hot Chip, it seems that they've heard of the band but never listened to their music. It's a real shame. The Warning is a truly sublime album, full of gorgeous melodies, interesting beats and loops, brilliant production techniques, and clever lyrics. Songwriters Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard seem to have inherited Thom Yorke's ability to take a simple phrase that could sound trite and and to bend it around a melody so that it sounds like a brilliant insight into human nature. A lyric like "We tried, but we don't belong" could come of silly, but on standout track "(And I Was) A Boy from School" it's elevated to a kind of high-school outcast anthem. The rest of the album is only one step down - from the nearly-as-sublime "Colours" to the get-up-and-dance rave of "Over and Over" and the mid-tempo chill-out title track "The Warning".
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtxAou8c28k
Barenaked Ladies Maybe You Should Drive
If you're my age or older, you'll remember Barenaked Ladies' ridiculously meteoric rise in the early 90s on the strength of pseudo-novelty songs like "If I Had A Million Dollars" and "Be My Yoko Ono". If you're much younger than me, you're probably more familiar with them from their US breakthrough album Stunt and its massive hit single "One Week".
Unfortunately, because the band's radio singles consist almost-exclusively of novelty songs (particularly following the success of "One Week" and the subsequent 'Ed Raps' like "Pinch Me" and *shudder* "Another Post Card"), people tend to overlook the band's much better deep cuts. Maybe You Should Drive is both nearly-devoid of novelty songs (minute-long track "Little Tiny Song" notwithstanding) and filled to the brim with the best deep cuts of the band's career. Of course, it's also one of their least successful albums - Canada was suffering from BNL-backlash and the US had yet to discover the Ladies, so Maybe You Should Drive is largely a lost treasure.
But what a treasure it is. The one successful single from the album, "Jane", opens the disc with hammered dulcimer and a soaring chorus that's among the strongest in a career built on catchy choruses. English songwriter Stephen Duffy cowrite several of the album's tracks with lead singer Steven Page, and there's a sense of british pop classicism on "Jane', as well as "Everything Old is New Again" and "Alternative Girlfriend". I don't think a finer Canadian pop song was written in the 90s than "Life in a Nutshell" (which includes the hilariously lewd come-on "when she was three, her barbies always did it on the first date; now she's with me and there's never any need for them to demonstrate), and the low-key moments on the album from Page ("You Will Be Waiting") and Ed Robertson ("Am I the Only One?") are stunningly beautiful. Producer Ben Mink plays to the bands strengths, layering backing vocal harmonies and very sparing string arrangements across the tracks while reigning in the more theatrical and silly impulses of the band. The result is an album of focused, unassuming, and truly fantastic pop/alternative/rock music that is the band's finest work and one of the most overlooked and underappreciated albums of the 90s.
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x60wFJUdb8&feature=related (song starts at 1:36 - also, I've always thought Steve Page looked a little like Seth Rogen, but with a beard the resemblance is uncanny).
Mono One Step More And You Die
There are half a dozen great post-rock bands: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Tortoise, Do Make Say Think, and Mono (Sigur Rós and Slint as well if you want to call them "post-rock"). All of those bands, save Mono, have received a fair bit of indie and even mainstream success in North America and Europe, headlining festivals, scoring films, and generally being awesome. Mono, however, haven't had the same success. The Japanese post-rockers have toured extensively, worked with Steve Albini, and released several great records (One Step More And You Die being the finest), but haven't had any sort of significant breakthrough. If you're a fan of largely-instrumental rock music, though, you owe it to yourself to have a listen. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, and Do Make Say Think may get loud, dark, and angry on occassion, but their natural tendencies are towards pretty melodies and reverb-drenched guitar ambience. One Step More And You Die, on the other hand, is like a whole album of "Like Herod"s - huge dynamic swings (with little dynamic compression - you have to have a good stereo to really appreciate this album), terrifying noise, crushing guitars, thundering drums. Mono can get pretty, and often do, tossing off moments of quiet beauty in the breaks between the squal, but their modus operandi is clear: this band is here to rock your fucking face off.
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY_4EkwzJcw - This is actually from Gone, but I couldn't find a good recording on YouTube of anything off of One Step More and You Die
The Brothers Creeggan Brothers Creeggan II
Really great indie-jazz from the bassist and former keyboard player of Barenaked Ladies. And you've never heard it. Go listen!
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzn_1Sj9Udg
(by the way - Andy and Jim [the creeggans] have that really freaky sibling-vocal thing going on where it's almost impossible to tell their voices apart. When they sing harmony it sounds like one guy multitracking).
Phil Collins Face Value
Alright. I know you've heard at least one song off of this album. And I know you have a whole lot of ideas about who Phil Collins is and what he sounds like. You're wrong. Phil Collins isn't the Tarzan soundtrack. He's not "Sussudio" or "Another Day in Paradise" or "In Too Deep". That Phil Collins sucks, more or less. That Phil Collins is at least somewhat-deserving of all the BS you've heard about him. He writes schmaltzy love songs.
Face Value Phil Collins is not that Phil Collins. Face Value Phil Collins is angry, bleak, and sparse. Face Value Phil Collins is also fucking fantastic.
Go back and listen to "In The Air Tonight". I know you've heard it before, but have you ever really listened to it? Think of how often you hear a song on the radio that's that sparse - it's just Phil's voice, a touch of guitar ambience, and a drum machine until the massive "real drums" enter 2/3 of the way through the song. And then listen to just how massive those drums are. Try and divorce yourself from the fact that we've had that drum sound in pop music for nearly 30 years now - go back and listen to a few albums from the 60s and 70s and listen to how the drums sound, then come back to "In The Air Tonight". The "80s drum sound" was created by Collins, Peter Gabriel, and engineer Hugh Padgham on Gabriel's song "Intruder", but it was perfected here by Collins and Padgham. There's a reason everyone now thinks of it as the "80s drum sound" - because every producer in the world heard things song, sat bolt-upright and said "Holy shit, I have to make the drums on my next recording sound like that". No one ever did it quite as well though.
Beyond "In The Air Tonight", Face Value maintains its brilliance. Collins reworks a song from Genesis' album Duke, released a year earlier, for "Behind the Lines", a fun bit of jazz fusion, records one of his finest, barest ballads (what sounds like a home demo of Collins at his piano) for "The Roof is Leaking", and covers the Beatles ably on "Tomorrow Never Knows".
Don't hold Phil Collins' later work against this album. It's great.
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=manxPVTLth8&feature=related
I've linked to the live version for two reasons - the two second shot of his bass player (watch for it!) and because goddamnit, I wish I could sing that well now, let alone when I'm pushing 60.
They are, in no particular order:
Phil Collins - Face Value
Hot Chip - The Warning
Barenaked Ladies - Maybe You Should Drive
Mono - One Step More And You Die
The Brothers Creeggan - The Brothers Creeggan II
Of course, there are many more great underrated albums out there, but one has to limit oneself. These are the ones that immediately came to mind.
Hot Chip The Warning
Every time I ask someone about Hot Chip, it seems that they've heard of the band but never listened to their music. It's a real shame. The Warning is a truly sublime album, full of gorgeous melodies, interesting beats and loops, brilliant production techniques, and clever lyrics. Songwriters Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard seem to have inherited Thom Yorke's ability to take a simple phrase that could sound trite and and to bend it around a melody so that it sounds like a brilliant insight into human nature. A lyric like "We tried, but we don't belong" could come of silly, but on standout track "(And I Was) A Boy from School" it's elevated to a kind of high-school outcast anthem. The rest of the album is only one step down - from the nearly-as-sublime "Colours" to the get-up-and-dance rave of "Over and Over" and the mid-tempo chill-out title track "The Warning".
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtxAou8c28k
Barenaked Ladies Maybe You Should Drive
If you're my age or older, you'll remember Barenaked Ladies' ridiculously meteoric rise in the early 90s on the strength of pseudo-novelty songs like "If I Had A Million Dollars" and "Be My Yoko Ono". If you're much younger than me, you're probably more familiar with them from their US breakthrough album Stunt and its massive hit single "One Week".
Unfortunately, because the band's radio singles consist almost-exclusively of novelty songs (particularly following the success of "One Week" and the subsequent 'Ed Raps' like "Pinch Me" and *shudder* "Another Post Card"), people tend to overlook the band's much better deep cuts. Maybe You Should Drive is both nearly-devoid of novelty songs (minute-long track "Little Tiny Song" notwithstanding) and filled to the brim with the best deep cuts of the band's career. Of course, it's also one of their least successful albums - Canada was suffering from BNL-backlash and the US had yet to discover the Ladies, so Maybe You Should Drive is largely a lost treasure.
But what a treasure it is. The one successful single from the album, "Jane", opens the disc with hammered dulcimer and a soaring chorus that's among the strongest in a career built on catchy choruses. English songwriter Stephen Duffy cowrite several of the album's tracks with lead singer Steven Page, and there's a sense of british pop classicism on "Jane', as well as "Everything Old is New Again" and "Alternative Girlfriend". I don't think a finer Canadian pop song was written in the 90s than "Life in a Nutshell" (which includes the hilariously lewd come-on "when she was three, her barbies always did it on the first date; now she's with me and there's never any need for them to demonstrate), and the low-key moments on the album from Page ("You Will Be Waiting") and Ed Robertson ("Am I the Only One?") are stunningly beautiful. Producer Ben Mink plays to the bands strengths, layering backing vocal harmonies and very sparing string arrangements across the tracks while reigning in the more theatrical and silly impulses of the band. The result is an album of focused, unassuming, and truly fantastic pop/alternative/rock music that is the band's finest work and one of the most overlooked and underappreciated albums of the 90s.
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x60wFJUdb8&feature=related (song starts at 1:36 - also, I've always thought Steve Page looked a little like Seth Rogen, but with a beard the resemblance is uncanny).
Mono One Step More And You Die
There are half a dozen great post-rock bands: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Tortoise, Do Make Say Think, and Mono (Sigur Rós and Slint as well if you want to call them "post-rock"). All of those bands, save Mono, have received a fair bit of indie and even mainstream success in North America and Europe, headlining festivals, scoring films, and generally being awesome. Mono, however, haven't had the same success. The Japanese post-rockers have toured extensively, worked with Steve Albini, and released several great records (One Step More And You Die being the finest), but haven't had any sort of significant breakthrough. If you're a fan of largely-instrumental rock music, though, you owe it to yourself to have a listen. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, and Do Make Say Think may get loud, dark, and angry on occassion, but their natural tendencies are towards pretty melodies and reverb-drenched guitar ambience. One Step More And You Die, on the other hand, is like a whole album of "Like Herod"s - huge dynamic swings (with little dynamic compression - you have to have a good stereo to really appreciate this album), terrifying noise, crushing guitars, thundering drums. Mono can get pretty, and often do, tossing off moments of quiet beauty in the breaks between the squal, but their modus operandi is clear: this band is here to rock your fucking face off.
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY_4EkwzJcw - This is actually from Gone, but I couldn't find a good recording on YouTube of anything off of One Step More and You Die
The Brothers Creeggan Brothers Creeggan II
Really great indie-jazz from the bassist and former keyboard player of Barenaked Ladies. And you've never heard it. Go listen!
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzn_1Sj9Udg
(by the way - Andy and Jim [the creeggans] have that really freaky sibling-vocal thing going on where it's almost impossible to tell their voices apart. When they sing harmony it sounds like one guy multitracking).
Phil Collins Face Value
Alright. I know you've heard at least one song off of this album. And I know you have a whole lot of ideas about who Phil Collins is and what he sounds like. You're wrong. Phil Collins isn't the Tarzan soundtrack. He's not "Sussudio" or "Another Day in Paradise" or "In Too Deep". That Phil Collins sucks, more or less. That Phil Collins is at least somewhat-deserving of all the BS you've heard about him. He writes schmaltzy love songs.
Face Value Phil Collins is not that Phil Collins. Face Value Phil Collins is angry, bleak, and sparse. Face Value Phil Collins is also fucking fantastic.
Go back and listen to "In The Air Tonight". I know you've heard it before, but have you ever really listened to it? Think of how often you hear a song on the radio that's that sparse - it's just Phil's voice, a touch of guitar ambience, and a drum machine until the massive "real drums" enter 2/3 of the way through the song. And then listen to just how massive those drums are. Try and divorce yourself from the fact that we've had that drum sound in pop music for nearly 30 years now - go back and listen to a few albums from the 60s and 70s and listen to how the drums sound, then come back to "In The Air Tonight". The "80s drum sound" was created by Collins, Peter Gabriel, and engineer Hugh Padgham on Gabriel's song "Intruder", but it was perfected here by Collins and Padgham. There's a reason everyone now thinks of it as the "80s drum sound" - because every producer in the world heard things song, sat bolt-upright and said "Holy shit, I have to make the drums on my next recording sound like that". No one ever did it quite as well though.
Beyond "In The Air Tonight", Face Value maintains its brilliance. Collins reworks a song from Genesis' album Duke, released a year earlier, for "Behind the Lines", a fun bit of jazz fusion, records one of his finest, barest ballads (what sounds like a home demo of Collins at his piano) for "The Roof is Leaking", and covers the Beatles ably on "Tomorrow Never Knows".
Don't hold Phil Collins' later work against this album. It's great.
For your consideration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=manxPVTLth8&feature=related
I've linked to the live version for two reasons - the two second shot of his bass player (watch for it!) and because goddamnit, I wish I could sing that well now, let alone when I'm pushing 60.
Listen to good music. There's too much of it out there.
Originally written December 2008
Alternate title: "Why I feel personally offended by bad music"
I'm overwhelmed by good music. I buy a couple new albums every week, music new and old. I have over 700 albums, and I'd say the majority of them are pretty good.
I've barely begun to scratch the surface.
If I had the time and the funds, I could probably buy 10 albums a week of new and old material and with careful selection I could go most of my life without listening to any really bad music. If people just stopped producing new music today, I could still probably spend the rest of my life discovering music and never come close to getting through even a fraction of the truly great music out there.
There's great music of every type. Great baroque, classical, romantic, contemporary music. Great blues, jazz, R&B. Great rock & roll, pop, disco, funk, metal, folk, country, hip hop, noise, prog, post-rock, indie, shoegaze... Whatever genre, whatever style, whatever aesthetic tickles your fancy, there are near-endless depths of great music to plumb.
So I get offended when people listen to bad music.
I know you're thinking two things.
1. I listen to some terrible music. Guilty as charged.
2. Who's to say what's great music?
Everyone enjoys some garbage entertainment now-and-again. Sometimes, you just want to turn your brain off and enjoy schlock. Yes, I love Phil Collins' album "Both Sides", and Yes's 90125. They're bad. They're cheap entertainment. I love Friday the 13th Part VI and Hellraiser VI too. But the key word is "sometimes". I try and spend the bulk of my time listening to good music, watching good films, and reading good books.
I guess I have a hard time understanding why people don't spend more time listening to good music. If you like dance-pop music, don't listen to trash, listen to Cut/Copy or Sally Shapiro or M83. Smart lyrics, clever melodies, better production, more energy and more care went into that music than into Owl City or the like.
But why should you listen to good music?
It makes you a better person. Really. Good art of any kind demands you engage with not just the art itself, but with the rest of your life and with your relationships with other people on a deeper level. If you're just listening to schlock and your only justification for listening to it is "it's fun" or "it has a good beat", you're not only not engaging with music, you're not engaging in any sort of meaningful discourse ABOUT music. Which brings us to how does one define good music.
I have lots of ways that I determine what I want to listen to. That encompases a lot of good music, and a bit of bad music, but it certainly doesn't encompass all music. I don't really like hip-hop, or metal. I'm fairly indifferent to R&B, though I like a bit of it, and I like a bit of jazz but it's not really my passion. I'm not so arrogant to think that just because I don't like this music, though, that it isn't good music. Any art is good art, or at least valuable art, if you're able to have a meaningful discussion about it. Which I guess I should qualify: The only meaningful discussion you could ever have about "My Humps" (objectively the worst song ever written) is about how awful it is - that doesn't make it art (though I guess one could argue that "My Humps" crosses such a perverse line of awfulness that it actually becomes inverse-art, or something, but lets not go there). I mean meaningful discourse about artistic merit, about why it's worth listening to, about how it affects people on a level beyond "there's a beat. I guess I'll dance to it".
You should listen to good music because there's no excuse not to. Visit www.pitchforkmedia.com or www.cokemachineglow.com and read some reviews. Go visit Ditch Records or The Turntable here in Victoria, or your local record store whereever you are, and talk to the staff about music. Go to amazon.com or iTunes and listen to samples. It requires almost no effort to discover truly great music. If you just want pop music, don't be lazy and just take whatever is shovelled to you on the radio. Take 10 seconds to find music that's melodic and danceable but isn't mind-numbingly terrible in every other regard.
If you really don't care, why are you even listening?
Prior to records being available (and really, prior to car stereos, walkmans, and music ubiquity) people who didn't care about music didn't listen. Now people hang their music around their necks as a way to define themselves, like their awful jewlery and their gaudy clothes. Don't do this. If you really don't care about music and you just have it on because everyone else does, find something else to do with your time. Find something you're passionate about and invest your time and your money there.
Now go listen to Magma, or Deerhunter, or TV on the Radio, or Sonic Youth, or King Crimson, or The Beatles, or Fleet Foxes, or Neil Young, or Bob Dylan, or Nirvana, or The Smiths, or Talking Heads, or JS Bach, or Oscar Peterson, or John Cage, or Steve Reich, or Sufjan Stevens, or Final Fantasy, or The Arcade Fire, or David Bowie, or Tragically Hip, or Barenaked Ladies, or Arctic Monkeys, or Franz Ferdinand, or Mogwai, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or Mono, or Radiohead, or Coldplay, or Jethro Tull, or Peter Gabriel, or Morrissey, or Saint Vincent, or I'm From Barcelona, or Polyphonc Spree, or My Brightest Diamond, or Bjork, or Sigur Ros, or Mum, or The Who, or Led Zeppelin, or Black Sabbath, or Slint, or Smashing Pumpkins, or The Field, or M83, or Hercules & Love Affair, or Antony & The Johnsons, or Red Hot Chilli Peppers, or Genesis, or Gentle Giant, or Do Make Say Think, or Broken Social Scene, or Feist, or John Coltrane, or Yo Yo Ma, or...
You get the picture.
There's a lot of beautiful, wonderful, exciting, challenging, terrifying, engaging music out there. Please don't deprive yourself of it.
Alternate title: "Why I feel personally offended by bad music"
I'm overwhelmed by good music. I buy a couple new albums every week, music new and old. I have over 700 albums, and I'd say the majority of them are pretty good.
I've barely begun to scratch the surface.
If I had the time and the funds, I could probably buy 10 albums a week of new and old material and with careful selection I could go most of my life without listening to any really bad music. If people just stopped producing new music today, I could still probably spend the rest of my life discovering music and never come close to getting through even a fraction of the truly great music out there.
There's great music of every type. Great baroque, classical, romantic, contemporary music. Great blues, jazz, R&B. Great rock & roll, pop, disco, funk, metal, folk, country, hip hop, noise, prog, post-rock, indie, shoegaze... Whatever genre, whatever style, whatever aesthetic tickles your fancy, there are near-endless depths of great music to plumb.
So I get offended when people listen to bad music.
I know you're thinking two things.
1. I listen to some terrible music. Guilty as charged.
2. Who's to say what's great music?
Everyone enjoys some garbage entertainment now-and-again. Sometimes, you just want to turn your brain off and enjoy schlock. Yes, I love Phil Collins' album "Both Sides", and Yes's 90125. They're bad. They're cheap entertainment. I love Friday the 13th Part VI and Hellraiser VI too. But the key word is "sometimes". I try and spend the bulk of my time listening to good music, watching good films, and reading good books.
I guess I have a hard time understanding why people don't spend more time listening to good music. If you like dance-pop music, don't listen to trash, listen to Cut/Copy or Sally Shapiro or M83. Smart lyrics, clever melodies, better production, more energy and more care went into that music than into Owl City or the like.
But why should you listen to good music?
It makes you a better person. Really. Good art of any kind demands you engage with not just the art itself, but with the rest of your life and with your relationships with other people on a deeper level. If you're just listening to schlock and your only justification for listening to it is "it's fun" or "it has a good beat", you're not only not engaging with music, you're not engaging in any sort of meaningful discourse ABOUT music. Which brings us to how does one define good music.
I have lots of ways that I determine what I want to listen to. That encompases a lot of good music, and a bit of bad music, but it certainly doesn't encompass all music. I don't really like hip-hop, or metal. I'm fairly indifferent to R&B, though I like a bit of it, and I like a bit of jazz but it's not really my passion. I'm not so arrogant to think that just because I don't like this music, though, that it isn't good music. Any art is good art, or at least valuable art, if you're able to have a meaningful discussion about it. Which I guess I should qualify: The only meaningful discussion you could ever have about "My Humps" (objectively the worst song ever written) is about how awful it is - that doesn't make it art (though I guess one could argue that "My Humps" crosses such a perverse line of awfulness that it actually becomes inverse-art, or something, but lets not go there). I mean meaningful discourse about artistic merit, about why it's worth listening to, about how it affects people on a level beyond "there's a beat. I guess I'll dance to it".
You should listen to good music because there's no excuse not to. Visit www.pitchforkmedia.com or www.cokemachineglow.com and read some reviews. Go visit Ditch Records or The Turntable here in Victoria, or your local record store whereever you are, and talk to the staff about music. Go to amazon.com or iTunes and listen to samples. It requires almost no effort to discover truly great music. If you just want pop music, don't be lazy and just take whatever is shovelled to you on the radio. Take 10 seconds to find music that's melodic and danceable but isn't mind-numbingly terrible in every other regard.
If you really don't care, why are you even listening?
Prior to records being available (and really, prior to car stereos, walkmans, and music ubiquity) people who didn't care about music didn't listen. Now people hang their music around their necks as a way to define themselves, like their awful jewlery and their gaudy clothes. Don't do this. If you really don't care about music and you just have it on because everyone else does, find something else to do with your time. Find something you're passionate about and invest your time and your money there.
Now go listen to Magma, or Deerhunter, or TV on the Radio, or Sonic Youth, or King Crimson, or The Beatles, or Fleet Foxes, or Neil Young, or Bob Dylan, or Nirvana, or The Smiths, or Talking Heads, or JS Bach, or Oscar Peterson, or John Cage, or Steve Reich, or Sufjan Stevens, or Final Fantasy, or The Arcade Fire, or David Bowie, or Tragically Hip, or Barenaked Ladies, or Arctic Monkeys, or Franz Ferdinand, or Mogwai, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or Mono, or Radiohead, or Coldplay, or Jethro Tull, or Peter Gabriel, or Morrissey, or Saint Vincent, or I'm From Barcelona, or Polyphonc Spree, or My Brightest Diamond, or Bjork, or Sigur Ros, or Mum, or The Who, or Led Zeppelin, or Black Sabbath, or Slint, or Smashing Pumpkins, or The Field, or M83, or Hercules & Love Affair, or Antony & The Johnsons, or Red Hot Chilli Peppers, or Genesis, or Gentle Giant, or Do Make Say Think, or Broken Social Scene, or Feist, or John Coltrane, or Yo Yo Ma, or...
You get the picture.
There's a lot of beautiful, wonderful, exciting, challenging, terrifying, engaging music out there. Please don't deprive yourself of it.
Conservativism in North America is Dead
Originally written in November 2008
"Conservativism is Dead". It's a statement you've probably heard before from talking heads on American television. But they're not talking about true conservativism. They're talking about Reagan conservativism, which is small-L liberalism with religious social conservativism bolted on. That conservativism ("modern conservativism") is alive and well, though in recent years in the US it's been supplanted by neo-conservativism, which is a different beast entirely. Our current Conservative minority government here in Canada is a modern conservative government.
It's traditional conservativism that's dead.
George Grant wrote "Lament for a Nation" nearly half a century ago, arguing that traditional conservativism died along with the Diefenbaker government. Grant was somewhat premature. We did get one more traditional conservative Prime Minister (Joe Clark) and one bizarre hybrid of traditional and modern conservatives Prime Minister (Brian Mulroney) before traditional conservativism in Canada truly died. The US's final traditional conservative president was Richard Nixon.
I suppose one has to define traditional conservativism before one can lament its passing, and it's a bit of a tricky proposition. Modern political parties and political ideologies (sometimes separate, sometimes the same) have reoriented themselves along a number of different vectors (apologies for the pretentious academia-speak) over the past 75 years. Political parties generally define themselves along two lines - economic and social. Small-L liberal (as in liberal ideology and not Liberal Party policy) economics generally refers to laisez-faire economics - the belief that the government should participate in the economic system of the nation as little as possible. Conservative (again, small-c) economic policy generally demands that the government have a guiding role in the economy, regulating business to protect the interests of workers, the environment, and the general health of the nation, but still running essentially a free-market system. Socialist economic policy generally dictates that the state have a controlling stake in the economy.
Social policy is even more muddled than economic policy these days. Liberal social policy generally dictates that people can do whatever they like, as long as it doesn’t significantly impinge upon the freedoms of others. The government should take little role in society, neither promoting cultural growth nor restricting social freedoms like choice of sexual partner or decision to use drugs. Traditional conservativism generally is interested in promoting family (that phrase is so loaded now and so distorted by the American "conservatives" that I’ll have to come back to it) and culture, and providing a moderate amount of control over social freedoms - restricting access to drugs and activities that are generally harmful and enforcing through law many cultural norms. Modern social conservatism is a beast - interfering in people's social freedoms (fags are evil! No gay marriage!) while denying government support of culture and community.
Briefly regarding "support for the family" - this concept in the Henri Bourassa Quebec-Nationalist-Conservative tradition meant support for communities-as-families, providing a strong social network for individuals in communities so that they felt pride in their homes and in their nations, and could feel supported by those institutions. It didn't have anything to do with "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve! A marriage is between One Man and One Woman" bigotry.
Anyway, back on track.
If you break down our modern Canadian parties, they look something like this:
Conservatives: Liberal economic policy. Social policy in the party is divided between social conservatives and libertarians. Social conservatives seem to be the dominant force in the party today.
Liberals: Conservative economic policy, liberal social policy.
NDP: Socialist economic policy, traditional conservative social policy.
There's more nuance, of course. Environment has traditionally been a conservative issue (Teddy Roosevelt established the national parks system in the US, Nixon established the E.P.A.), for example. But generally, traditional conservative principles have splintered across parties, and few are left within the party carrying the "Conservative" banner.
I want to be able to vote for a party that believes in the free market, but not to such a blinding extent that they refuse to see the problems with a laisez-faire system and work to ensure business is properly regulated. I want to vote for a party that promotes community, not just through social programs but through support of the arts, support for local organizations and promotion of ethical conduct. I want to be able to vote for a party in the tradition of Joe Clark, John Deifenbaker, and John A. MacDonald. It makes me sad that I can't, federally. The Liberal party is sort-of similar in generalities to traditional Conservativism, but they lack the "conservative mindset"; the idea that one ought to take a conservative (small-c) approach to problems facing the nation - to exercise care, caution, and prudence, rather than rushing headlong into the future in the name of progress.
Provincially, the current Liberals are about as close to a traditional conservative party we have in Canada. They fall closer to liberal economic policy, but since the budget was balanced and they were reelected in 2005, the party has drifted much more towards conservative social policy (by which I mean NOT social conservativism, just to enforce the point, but to a strong support of community programs, arts funding etc..) while advocating a generally conservative view of the future of BC - spend wisely, project cautiously, build the province and make it better through planning and careful thought rather than throwing a bunch of money at the problem or just dismantling government.
Both the US and Canada could do with a true Conservative federal party. Especially the US, whose post-communist veneration of the individual above all else is bordering on ridiculous. I guess that's what we've lost in the Conservative movement over the last 50 years- a sense of obligation towards local communities has been replaced by the elevation of the individual to the highest level of importance.
"Conservativism is Dead". It's a statement you've probably heard before from talking heads on American television. But they're not talking about true conservativism. They're talking about Reagan conservativism, which is small-L liberalism with religious social conservativism bolted on. That conservativism ("modern conservativism") is alive and well, though in recent years in the US it's been supplanted by neo-conservativism, which is a different beast entirely. Our current Conservative minority government here in Canada is a modern conservative government.
It's traditional conservativism that's dead.
George Grant wrote "Lament for a Nation" nearly half a century ago, arguing that traditional conservativism died along with the Diefenbaker government. Grant was somewhat premature. We did get one more traditional conservative Prime Minister (Joe Clark) and one bizarre hybrid of traditional and modern conservatives Prime Minister (Brian Mulroney) before traditional conservativism in Canada truly died. The US's final traditional conservative president was Richard Nixon.
I suppose one has to define traditional conservativism before one can lament its passing, and it's a bit of a tricky proposition. Modern political parties and political ideologies (sometimes separate, sometimes the same) have reoriented themselves along a number of different vectors (apologies for the pretentious academia-speak) over the past 75 years. Political parties generally define themselves along two lines - economic and social. Small-L liberal (as in liberal ideology and not Liberal Party policy) economics generally refers to laisez-faire economics - the belief that the government should participate in the economic system of the nation as little as possible. Conservative (again, small-c) economic policy generally demands that the government have a guiding role in the economy, regulating business to protect the interests of workers, the environment, and the general health of the nation, but still running essentially a free-market system. Socialist economic policy generally dictates that the state have a controlling stake in the economy.
Social policy is even more muddled than economic policy these days. Liberal social policy generally dictates that people can do whatever they like, as long as it doesn’t significantly impinge upon the freedoms of others. The government should take little role in society, neither promoting cultural growth nor restricting social freedoms like choice of sexual partner or decision to use drugs. Traditional conservativism generally is interested in promoting family (that phrase is so loaded now and so distorted by the American "conservatives" that I’ll have to come back to it) and culture, and providing a moderate amount of control over social freedoms - restricting access to drugs and activities that are generally harmful and enforcing through law many cultural norms. Modern social conservatism is a beast - interfering in people's social freedoms (fags are evil! No gay marriage!) while denying government support of culture and community.
Briefly regarding "support for the family" - this concept in the Henri Bourassa Quebec-Nationalist-Conservative tradition meant support for communities-as-families, providing a strong social network for individuals in communities so that they felt pride in their homes and in their nations, and could feel supported by those institutions. It didn't have anything to do with "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve! A marriage is between One Man and One Woman" bigotry.
Anyway, back on track.
If you break down our modern Canadian parties, they look something like this:
Conservatives: Liberal economic policy. Social policy in the party is divided between social conservatives and libertarians. Social conservatives seem to be the dominant force in the party today.
Liberals: Conservative economic policy, liberal social policy.
NDP: Socialist economic policy, traditional conservative social policy.
There's more nuance, of course. Environment has traditionally been a conservative issue (Teddy Roosevelt established the national parks system in the US, Nixon established the E.P.A.), for example. But generally, traditional conservative principles have splintered across parties, and few are left within the party carrying the "Conservative" banner.
I want to be able to vote for a party that believes in the free market, but not to such a blinding extent that they refuse to see the problems with a laisez-faire system and work to ensure business is properly regulated. I want to vote for a party that promotes community, not just through social programs but through support of the arts, support for local organizations and promotion of ethical conduct. I want to be able to vote for a party in the tradition of Joe Clark, John Deifenbaker, and John A. MacDonald. It makes me sad that I can't, federally. The Liberal party is sort-of similar in generalities to traditional Conservativism, but they lack the "conservative mindset"; the idea that one ought to take a conservative (small-c) approach to problems facing the nation - to exercise care, caution, and prudence, rather than rushing headlong into the future in the name of progress.
Provincially, the current Liberals are about as close to a traditional conservative party we have in Canada. They fall closer to liberal economic policy, but since the budget was balanced and they were reelected in 2005, the party has drifted much more towards conservative social policy (by which I mean NOT social conservativism, just to enforce the point, but to a strong support of community programs, arts funding etc..) while advocating a generally conservative view of the future of BC - spend wisely, project cautiously, build the province and make it better through planning and careful thought rather than throwing a bunch of money at the problem or just dismantling government.
Both the US and Canada could do with a true Conservative federal party. Especially the US, whose post-communist veneration of the individual above all else is bordering on ridiculous. I guess that's what we've lost in the Conservative movement over the last 50 years- a sense of obligation towards local communities has been replaced by the elevation of the individual to the highest level of importance.
On Abortion
This was originally written in response to the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential election.
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I have a bone to pick with Katie Couric, and a lot of Pro-Choice people.
I should preface this by saying I am strongly pro-choice. But pro-choice advocates frequently bring up rape and incest when they're talking to pro-lifers. Doing this shows a profound misunderstanding of the views of pro-life people, and frankly, I'd like to shake any pro-lifers who said they were in favour of abortion in the case of rape or incest.
If you believe that a fetus is a human life and is entitled to the same rights and protections as any other human life, then that's it. There's no qualifying that. A human life doesn't become less valuable because the sex that conceived it was non-consensual. That is irrelevant. The pro-life response ought to be, "I'm sorry if you were raped, but that doesn't give you the right to murder."
I don’t understand why people bring up rape as some kind of trump-card in the abortion debate. Either you believe a fetus is human life with human rights, or you don't. If you don't, then abortions are okay, regardless of circumstance. If you do, then the only circumstance where not carrying a baby to term would be okay is if doing so endanger the life of the mother.
-------------
I have a bone to pick with Katie Couric, and a lot of Pro-Choice people.
I should preface this by saying I am strongly pro-choice. But pro-choice advocates frequently bring up rape and incest when they're talking to pro-lifers. Doing this shows a profound misunderstanding of the views of pro-life people, and frankly, I'd like to shake any pro-lifers who said they were in favour of abortion in the case of rape or incest.
If you believe that a fetus is a human life and is entitled to the same rights and protections as any other human life, then that's it. There's no qualifying that. A human life doesn't become less valuable because the sex that conceived it was non-consensual. That is irrelevant. The pro-life response ought to be, "I'm sorry if you were raped, but that doesn't give you the right to murder."
I don’t understand why people bring up rape as some kind of trump-card in the abortion debate. Either you believe a fetus is human life with human rights, or you don't. If you don't, then abortions are okay, regardless of circumstance. If you do, then the only circumstance where not carrying a baby to term would be okay is if doing so endanger the life of the mother.
Do you steal music?
(This was originally written in September 2008)
A couple of weeks ago I got in arguments with several different people about music piracy. Then I found the "Make music downloading legal in Canada again!" Facebook group. All the usual arguments (music industry evil, musicians rich, no actual lost income, I go to concerts, I need to sample it before I buy) came up. They hold no more weight now than they did seven or eight years ago when this issue returned to prominence (it was a bit of a heated debate in the 70s after the rise of the cassette). I've been trying to think of why I take so much personal offence and feel so incredibly angry and indignant when the topic comes up.
It's not really the "I'm a musician, I sympathize" thing, though that contributes. Really, I'm in a band that's played ~40 shows and sold ~100-~150 CDs. I don't really have the same perspective as a mainstream artist.
I think it's the feeling that the only reason the vast majority of people behave ethically is that they're scared of getting caught. I find that thought depressing. However, I’m going to go through the motions and talk about most of the common pro-piracy arguments anyway.
The silliest argument, and the one I’ll address first, is that ‘musicians are rich and don’t need the money’. There are a few major fallacies implicit in this argument. The most egregiously wrong idea is that you have the right to steal from people with more money than you. That's a slippery slope I'm sure we don't want to go down (you're reading this on a computer? In Canada? At least half the population of the world have the right to steal from you). There are two others: Musicians are rich, and musicians are the only ones who benefit from album sales.
Most musicians aren't rich. I have a hard time believing Owen Pallett is driving around in a Rolls-Royce with four boys hanging off his arms, eating caviar at high-class restaurants. If you have a mainstream hit on top-40 radio and a video playing round-the-clock on MTV, you're probably doing pretty alright for yourself. Most musicians don't fall into this category.
There is a whole industry that benefits from album sales. There are artists who design the CD liner notes, the people who run the companies that press discs, the people who run the distribution warehouse that make sure those discs get to the stores, the guy who runs the little record shop downtown and the kid who works for the guy who runs the record shop downtown. All of their livelihoods depend on CD sales too, and when you download an album, you're stealing from your buddy who works at the record store and your buddy who's trying to make a living as a visual artist as much as you're stealing from the "fat-cat executive" and the rich musician.
Another argument I've heard more recently is that someone downloads an album to "sample" it, and if he likes it enough, he’ll go out and buy the album. Again, this argument has a few inherent flaws. Go in to a restaurant. Sit down. Order a meal. Eat the meal. If it wasn't one of the best meals you've ever had, get up and leave. Don't pay. If the waiter tries to stop you, tell him you just wanted to see what the food was like, and it was pretty good but you don't think you want to spend $15 on it. I don’t think you will get far.
This argument is also moot because almost every band out there now puts a pretty significant portion of their new albums on their Myspace or iTunes pages so people can 100% legally and with the artist's explicit consent sample their new albums. Mogwai's entire new album, The Hawk Is Howling, was online at the time I originally wrote this at www.myspace.com/mogwai. Most record labels have come to agreements with YouTube and decades of music videos for hit singles and obscure tracks are now online to stream for free, legally.
But really, where is your sense of adventure? CDs don’t cost hundreds of dollars. Domestic CDs are ten to twenty dollars, usually. It's the cost of lunch, or a couple of magazines, three cups of coffee, two beer at the bar, seeing a movie at the theatre, 1/6th of the cost of a tank of gas in an average car, or 1/20th of what your grocery bill probably was this month. Take a risk. If you hate the CD, trade it in or give it away. Maybe you'll discover something you wouldn't have otherwise given a chance.
Studies tend to pop up now and again promoting the idea that this sort of "sampling" actually boosts album sales. We'd really have to have two identical worlds running parallel, one with P2P sharing and one without, to say either way, but I call shenanigans. I'm sure it's helped a few obscure bands, but I'd be willing to bet www.pitchforkmedia.com has done more for indie music in the past decade than any P2P service, and overall, CD sales have fallen dramatically and online sales haven't even come close to picking up the slack. When your industry grows every single year for 50 years and then practically collapses when people start stealing your product online, it strikes me as disingenuous to argue that piracy was not a significant contributor to that collapse.
The other major argument that pops up a lot is two-fold: "Record companies are evil and artists make most of their money on live shows anyway, so I'll steal the albums and attend the live shows".
I addressed this to some extent early when discussing the idea that musicians are particularly wealthy; however, there is more going on here. While it’s true that most artists don’t make a significant amount of money on album sales, consider why this is the case. It isn’t because greedy record companies are nefariously working the squeeze every penny from their artists (usually). Record companies shoulder almost the entire burden of risk when signing a new artist. A record company may sink hundreds of thousands of dollars in to an artist so that the artist has the freedom to record his album, to afford new gear, to be able to rent a bus or an airplane and tour, to advertise the album, to make sure the album is distributed to record stores, and to fund a music video. The record company takes that risk, and they recoup their losses on CD sales while the band makes money on a tour. This isn't to argue that record companies are saints or that artists haven’t signed exploitative contracts - this happens, but record companies are businesses first and foremost. Usually, it’s a mutual relationship - the artist gets something (funding to record, promotion, etc) and the record company gets something (a product to sell).
If you truly believe record companies are evil, don’t by the products they sell. This doesn't mean you're somehow entitled to music. You have no right to someone else’s music. You have no right to my art, or to anyone else's. If you're going to make the decision to protest what you perceive as a predatory and outdated business model, do so, but have the intellectual honesty and integrity to make the sacrifice that entails.
Which brings me to the crux of this post:
Music is a luxury.
Music was someone's hard work.
You don't need music. It's not food. It's not shelter. It's not even clothing or transportation. If music disappeared from your life, your life (unless you work in the music industry) likely wouldn't be dramatically different. I'd be a lot less happy if music was gone from my life, but I'm more involved with it than the majority. Most people would just get on with their lives. No matter how elaborate your carefully-constructed justification for stealing it may be, it's invalid. Period. You can't justify stealing a luxury, for any reason.
And it's someone's hard work.
When you download music without paying for it, you're saying to a person who poured his or her love and care and hundreds of hours of time into creating something that you claim to love that his labour is worthless. You’re saying you are so greedy and selfish that you can't spend $10 on his work that may bring you dozens of hours of happiness when you're perfectly happy to spend the same $10 on a couple of Starbucks coffees.
It strikes me as fantastically ironic when people justify their actions by accusing record companies of greed. You're taking something that doesn't belong to you against the wishes of the people who made it to feed your own hedonism. That's the definition of greed and hypocrisy.
If you're going to steal music, at least admit it. Don't wrap yourself up in some self-righteous cloak of justifications. Maybe sooner or later you'll grow up and realize you're not entitled to everything you want on a silver platter. Maybe if you want something you ought to work for it.
A couple of weeks ago I got in arguments with several different people about music piracy. Then I found the "Make music downloading legal in Canada again!" Facebook group. All the usual arguments (music industry evil, musicians rich, no actual lost income, I go to concerts, I need to sample it before I buy) came up. They hold no more weight now than they did seven or eight years ago when this issue returned to prominence (it was a bit of a heated debate in the 70s after the rise of the cassette). I've been trying to think of why I take so much personal offence and feel so incredibly angry and indignant when the topic comes up.
It's not really the "I'm a musician, I sympathize" thing, though that contributes. Really, I'm in a band that's played ~40 shows and sold ~100-~150 CDs. I don't really have the same perspective as a mainstream artist.
I think it's the feeling that the only reason the vast majority of people behave ethically is that they're scared of getting caught. I find that thought depressing. However, I’m going to go through the motions and talk about most of the common pro-piracy arguments anyway.
The silliest argument, and the one I’ll address first, is that ‘musicians are rich and don’t need the money’. There are a few major fallacies implicit in this argument. The most egregiously wrong idea is that you have the right to steal from people with more money than you. That's a slippery slope I'm sure we don't want to go down (you're reading this on a computer? In Canada? At least half the population of the world have the right to steal from you). There are two others: Musicians are rich, and musicians are the only ones who benefit from album sales.
Most musicians aren't rich. I have a hard time believing Owen Pallett is driving around in a Rolls-Royce with four boys hanging off his arms, eating caviar at high-class restaurants. If you have a mainstream hit on top-40 radio and a video playing round-the-clock on MTV, you're probably doing pretty alright for yourself. Most musicians don't fall into this category.
There is a whole industry that benefits from album sales. There are artists who design the CD liner notes, the people who run the companies that press discs, the people who run the distribution warehouse that make sure those discs get to the stores, the guy who runs the little record shop downtown and the kid who works for the guy who runs the record shop downtown. All of their livelihoods depend on CD sales too, and when you download an album, you're stealing from your buddy who works at the record store and your buddy who's trying to make a living as a visual artist as much as you're stealing from the "fat-cat executive" and the rich musician.
Another argument I've heard more recently is that someone downloads an album to "sample" it, and if he likes it enough, he’ll go out and buy the album. Again, this argument has a few inherent flaws. Go in to a restaurant. Sit down. Order a meal. Eat the meal. If it wasn't one of the best meals you've ever had, get up and leave. Don't pay. If the waiter tries to stop you, tell him you just wanted to see what the food was like, and it was pretty good but you don't think you want to spend $15 on it. I don’t think you will get far.
This argument is also moot because almost every band out there now puts a pretty significant portion of their new albums on their Myspace or iTunes pages so people can 100% legally and with the artist's explicit consent sample their new albums. Mogwai's entire new album, The Hawk Is Howling, was online at the time I originally wrote this at www.myspace.com/mogwai. Most record labels have come to agreements with YouTube and decades of music videos for hit singles and obscure tracks are now online to stream for free, legally.
But really, where is your sense of adventure? CDs don’t cost hundreds of dollars. Domestic CDs are ten to twenty dollars, usually. It's the cost of lunch, or a couple of magazines, three cups of coffee, two beer at the bar, seeing a movie at the theatre, 1/6th of the cost of a tank of gas in an average car, or 1/20th of what your grocery bill probably was this month. Take a risk. If you hate the CD, trade it in or give it away. Maybe you'll discover something you wouldn't have otherwise given a chance.
Studies tend to pop up now and again promoting the idea that this sort of "sampling" actually boosts album sales. We'd really have to have two identical worlds running parallel, one with P2P sharing and one without, to say either way, but I call shenanigans. I'm sure it's helped a few obscure bands, but I'd be willing to bet www.pitchforkmedia.com has done more for indie music in the past decade than any P2P service, and overall, CD sales have fallen dramatically and online sales haven't even come close to picking up the slack. When your industry grows every single year for 50 years and then practically collapses when people start stealing your product online, it strikes me as disingenuous to argue that piracy was not a significant contributor to that collapse.
The other major argument that pops up a lot is two-fold: "Record companies are evil and artists make most of their money on live shows anyway, so I'll steal the albums and attend the live shows".
I addressed this to some extent early when discussing the idea that musicians are particularly wealthy; however, there is more going on here. While it’s true that most artists don’t make a significant amount of money on album sales, consider why this is the case. It isn’t because greedy record companies are nefariously working the squeeze every penny from their artists (usually). Record companies shoulder almost the entire burden of risk when signing a new artist. A record company may sink hundreds of thousands of dollars in to an artist so that the artist has the freedom to record his album, to afford new gear, to be able to rent a bus or an airplane and tour, to advertise the album, to make sure the album is distributed to record stores, and to fund a music video. The record company takes that risk, and they recoup their losses on CD sales while the band makes money on a tour. This isn't to argue that record companies are saints or that artists haven’t signed exploitative contracts - this happens, but record companies are businesses first and foremost. Usually, it’s a mutual relationship - the artist gets something (funding to record, promotion, etc) and the record company gets something (a product to sell).
If you truly believe record companies are evil, don’t by the products they sell. This doesn't mean you're somehow entitled to music. You have no right to someone else’s music. You have no right to my art, or to anyone else's. If you're going to make the decision to protest what you perceive as a predatory and outdated business model, do so, but have the intellectual honesty and integrity to make the sacrifice that entails.
Which brings me to the crux of this post:
Music is a luxury.
Music was someone's hard work.
You don't need music. It's not food. It's not shelter. It's not even clothing or transportation. If music disappeared from your life, your life (unless you work in the music industry) likely wouldn't be dramatically different. I'd be a lot less happy if music was gone from my life, but I'm more involved with it than the majority. Most people would just get on with their lives. No matter how elaborate your carefully-constructed justification for stealing it may be, it's invalid. Period. You can't justify stealing a luxury, for any reason.
And it's someone's hard work.
When you download music without paying for it, you're saying to a person who poured his or her love and care and hundreds of hours of time into creating something that you claim to love that his labour is worthless. You’re saying you are so greedy and selfish that you can't spend $10 on his work that may bring you dozens of hours of happiness when you're perfectly happy to spend the same $10 on a couple of Starbucks coffees.
It strikes me as fantastically ironic when people justify their actions by accusing record companies of greed. You're taking something that doesn't belong to you against the wishes of the people who made it to feed your own hedonism. That's the definition of greed and hypocrisy.
If you're going to steal music, at least admit it. Don't wrap yourself up in some self-righteous cloak of justifications. Maybe sooner or later you'll grow up and realize you're not entitled to everything you want on a silver platter. Maybe if you want something you ought to work for it.
First!
After about two years of writing and throwing things up on facebook or just e-mail around, I've finally succumbed to the pressure and started a blog.
I'll be writing about politics and the media, music, science, health, and whatever else tickles my fancy.
The title of this blog is borrowed from Ben Goldacre's badscience.net. Ben's one of the finest bloggers on the net, and I encourage everyone to read his book, Bad Science.
Updates coming soon.
I'll be writing about politics and the media, music, science, health, and whatever else tickles my fancy.
The title of this blog is borrowed from Ben Goldacre's badscience.net. Ben's one of the finest bloggers on the net, and I encourage everyone to read his book, Bad Science.
Updates coming soon.
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