| ORIGINALLY PRINTED
IN RHYTHMS MAGAZINE
The Music Lovers’ Liberation Front
To paraphrase Peter Finch’s little man against the world tirade
in the movie “Network”, “I’m mad as hell
& I’m not going to take it anymore! “Why?”
you may ask. Well, pick up a newspaper & name your poison, but
I’m also a member of a group of citizens who are the most
exploited, disappointed, ripped off, deceived, scorned & mistreated
in our community. I’m a lifelong music fan/consumer.
I love music; listening to it, thinking about it, making discoveries
old & new, reading about it, sharing it with friends & seeing
it performed live. In other words, I’m the sucker that’s
born every minute.
Take today for instance, I bought my 4th copy
of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited”, why didn’t
they remaster it properly in the first place? I made the mistake
of opening the so called jewel case that has not been improved since
CDs began, of course the hinges broke , made the mistake of taking
out the booklet which exploded like a life raft on an airplane,
I’ll never fit it back in there, & the print is so minute
that I think I’m going blind. I tried to copy the disc that
I own for my wife’s car, oops copy controlled! A speck of
dust on the disc made it repeat like an epileptic space invaders
game ( remember when we were told that you could virtually play
frisbee with them & that they would still play ? ) & that’s
not to mention my jacket that reeks like an ashtray after the poorly
ventilated gig last night, my ears are ringing due to the poor sound
mix & I won’t mention the bladder infection that I think
that I’ve contracted trying to avoid the toilets flooded with
beer, piss & vomit. It’s only rock n roll but I hate it!
I come from the generation that changed over their record collection
from vinyl to CD, let’s not even mention the 8 track &
cassettes, & have become what’s referred to in England
as the 50/50s, the 50 year olds who keep record shops alive, spending
50 pounds a visit rather than throwing the CD in amongst the pantyhose
& hose nozzles in the shopping trolley at K Mart or Target where
most records are sold.
And now to add insult to injury Neil Young who has long railed against
all things digital & CD, although it hasn’t stopped him
releasing all his stuff on Cd, is now extolling the virtues of stereo
DVD as the closest thing to analog quality! Neil I love ya but I’m
not changing again!
And speaking of change, fat cat record companies have been running
around like Chicken Little about the internet & it’s threat
to music as we know it, not debating the quality but it’s
commercial viability. But have they or you really listened to MP3
s, I Pods etc…they sound like an FM radio! You’re not
getting all the music! Much is made of the freedom of choice available,
but it’s all single tracks! The world is becoming like one
giant compliation tape!
I love the fact that so many albums that I’ve bought had 2
or 3 tracks that I was familiar with but also contained all sorts
of musical challenges unfamiliar to my ear that made me stretch
my auditory horizons, that developed a cumulative power as the album
progressed & left a sense of having been moved conciously through
an experience. The problem with only hearing tracks that you like
all the time is that you’ll end up only hearing the tracks
that you like all the time! The same way that if you only wine &
dine blandly, your palate will never really develop.
And speaking of wine, if you had a tap on your
wall which spewed forth generic wine would you drink that or still
want to go to the cellar, search out a vintage, read the label,
admire the bottle, uncork it gently & savour each sip? Of course
you would! Or I’m never coming to your house to sup or listen!
And the latest bit of good news is that our CDs are bronzing, losing
quality as they sit in the rack, especially if they’re stored
horizontally.
When John Lydon leered at the audience & sneered
“Ever feel like you’ve been ripped off “ he was
rubbing our noses in reality. The Music Lovers’ Liberation
Front starts here. Sign up now!
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