Went to see the matrix reloaded tonight. Awesome movie. Someone emailed me that Neo and Trinity were classic modern role models. This movie was a thrill. What a fucking relief to just sit there and take it all in. Of course there wasn’t much of a story this time out and a bit too much action. It would have improved the experience if we would have gotten a little SOMETHING. But o.k., maybe next time. At least we got IT.
It turns out that Robbie Robertson wrote a lot of those classic Band songs like drove ole Dixie down. You hear songs like that you just assume that they existed forever. Classics. Legends. You don’t think, you know, that someone sat down and wrote that themselves. Wow. Impressive.
Exploring Kazaa. Say good bye to the music business as we now know it? The prophecies of the early nineties about the coming end of intellectual property protection and coinciding profits, or even revenues are now fully being realized right before our generation’s eyes. As I write this there are 3,816,443 users logged on to the network sharing 845,262,005 files of music, movies, pictures, or videos, or even word documents, whole books, magazine articles. Whatever song or artist I want to listen to while I worked all day I would just search for and download onto my laptop. I didn’t even open the closet to my CD collection. There was no need. Every song I could think of was available OUT THERE. This is as utterly beautiful and mystical and magical as it is catastrophic and horrifying and disturbing.
My prediction? Now that I’m sitting here doing it myself. (o.k. I admit I’m kind of cheating at being a cheater, because almost every song I downloaded I already owned that CD—just didn’t feel like looking for it.) But still I did steal from Christina Aguilera cause I dig that song Beautiful she does so I admit it, I just totally stole this song. And I will listen to it maybe ten times twenty times. And she won’t make a dime, and neither will the songwriter or the producer or publisher or the record company or anyone else who worked at putting it all together and spent their time and money and soul energy making it happen. Why? Because I stole it. That’s what’s fucked about this whole thing. In a nutshell. I don’t care what other people tell you. They probably aren’t artists. They’re probably more like techno-geek types who masturbated for years programming and fantasizing about the day this would all come to pass. They didn’t see a naked Elizabeth Hurley in their wet dreams. They saw world-wide pier to pier file sharing. And they don’t care that they are creating something that rips even themselves off, because they all live with their parents and never had and never will have any money. And hey who’s to blame them. It is a modern miracle. But who wants to live in your parent’s Basement all your life because you can’t get paid for your creativity anymore?
The government is going to have to step in and do something about it. Create a system that makes everyone pay a fee if they want their computer to be able to do it. Make it illegal to sell a computer that does not have a lock on it that can only be unlocked when you are caught up on your monthly fees. Just like electricity or cable TV or phone. I mean, we can’t just sit here and steal other peoples work all day. We’re doing it now yea because it doesn’t feel illegal. And the record industry itself comes off so stinky and greedy that it almost feels good ripping them off. $18.95 for one CD???!!!! Man that is fucked. I’ll admit it. Any artist will. But its not us. It’s the fucking labels and the stores. They’re bringing the whole machine down and they either don’t know it or they don’t care. O.k. enough. Hey, long live file sharing. But lets still make a living from writing and recording songs. I’m already broke enough. I don’t need to suffer any more for my art.
Current spins: Phoenix, Mojave 3, and Tahiti 80.