The hype is deafening.
Last night rewinding the tape (no, I don't have TiVo yet, don't tell me how great it is, my goal in life is to watch LESS TV and since I bought the best VCR, for all of $120 bucks, I can use a digital mouse, which doesn't move, but changes the channels on the digital box, allowing me to record whatever I want whenever I want) to see "Six Feet Under", which might have been the best, most human episode of television this year, I was exposed to a featurette on "Looney Tunes: Back In Action". Which comes out...who the fuck knows?
That's what the entertainment business does best. HYPE US!
It's kind of amazing. I read about the "Aristocrats" in the "New York Times". There was the leadup to Sundance, the pickup by Think, the rating issue. And you know what? Now that it's finally out I don't even have to see it. It's one joke anyway.
Same deal with "Wedding Crashers". HAD to see it. But when the first weekend's gross wasn't record-setting, when nobody I knew who saw it was peeing in their pants, suddenly, it became less of a priority. Hell, I might not even watch it on cable when it premieres a year from now. Hell, it'll be old news.
Still, even though the movie's been out for weeks, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are on the cover of "Rolling Stone". Like they stopped terrorism or something. It's only a fucking movie!
A fucking movie. Do we have to go to the movies anymore? Used to be the flicks dealt with big issues, everything from race to sexual politics. Then, in the nineties, you had to go so you could talk at parties, movies were the common denominator. Now you go out and everybody knows ABOUT the movies but they haven't seen them. Why? They always SUCK!
But their suckdom is jammed down our throat by a media so pervasive that you know what's going on in Hollywood even if you haven't been to the multiplex in years. It's an endless sell. Makes you think that normal elements of life...eating, conversation, sex...are just not as important as blowing up buildings and killing aliens on celluloid.
So I've ceased paying attention. I don't have to stay current. It's like the PEOPLE, not the media, all realize it's a joke. That it's not where it's at.
And it's just as bad in the music business. Labels selling product we don't want and suing us for stealing the single instead of paying for eleven other tracks we don't desire. Or selling us this one evanescent track in a copy-protected form that you know will become obsolete or lost in a matter of just a few years. Collecting? Being a believer? IRRELEVANT! All you have are your experiences, the live shows. Then again, who can you trust to say what's good? The media that trumpets the grosses or the baby boomers who need to look good by telling you that some act they saw in a hole in the wall is the next Dylan. And, there hasn't been a new Dylan EVER!
Which is why I could give a fuck about Sufjan Stevens. So, they play him on KCRW. So, his albums are thematic. So, the L.A. "Times" cares. I DON'T CARE!
But the one thing I do care about is e-mail. I read it all. And respond more than I have time to. And I got a missive from some woman at Sony BMG who asked me what I thought of Sufjan. I told her to e-mail me an MP3...
Can I tell you about discovery? Listening to the Warner Reprise double album samplers? Combing the rock press when you could read every publication in search of gems? Reading enough about certain records to take a chance? Stuff like Ry Cooder's "Into The Purple Valley"?
Fuck the Cuban Ry. The film music Ry. It's all about the first four albums. Well, each one other than the third, "Boomer's Story", which was a dud. But the reason I purchased the other three was because of "Into The Purple Valley'. It sounded NOTHING like anything else I owned. But, I got hooked on "Money Honey". And "F.D.R. In Trinidad". Listen to "Teardrops Will Fall", it's got more heart and emotion than ANY Mariah Carey track. "Into The Purple Valley" is one of my favorite albums of all time. It DEFIES categorization. There's not a single radio station, not even on the SATELLITE, that "Into The Purple Valley" fits in with neatly.
So, this woman sent me "Jacksonville". From Sufjan Stevens' new album "Illinois". And, listening in QuickTime, which I do to preview stuff, to see whether it's worthy of being in my iTunes library, I was stunned to find it was GOOD!
It wasn't mopey like Bright Eyes. It didn't have the mediocre vocals of the indie boys with their thin guitars. It sounded like nothing else on the landscape. Both melodic and experimental. Hooky, yet not repetitive. It was the kind of music I listened to in the seventies, that made me BELIEVE!
This woman told me she'd e-mail me more. But at this point I need the whole album. And, it's easiest just to rip the CD, since there are 22 tracks. But I don't know who to ask. "Illinois" is on an indie entitled Asthmatic Kitty. Of course, no major would take a chance on a record that wasn't obvious, that didn't contain a hit.
Which is why music fans have rejected the majors. The fact that this small record can surface outside the system indicates that the majors don't have the control over the mental marketplace they say they do. Or, as they're prone to saying, it's not about the money you spend, the best music always wins.
And we hear about the best music from our friends now. The top down music business won't die, but it's losing market share as we speak.
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