The Day the Music Died

Those that know me, know that I've been pretty down on the music industry for the past couple of years. I think that, for me, a large part of it is that I am of the opinion that most of the best music ever to be released came out between 1991 & 1999. It was almost a decade of post-grunge, post-gangsta rap, post-R&B and a time for true experimentation. Bands like Small 23, Archers of Loaf, the Rugburns, Tribe, and of course Gorilla Biscuits put out Start Today which is still the best NYHC album ever to come out. Janes Addiction just put out their first self titled record. Black Sheep released Wolf in Sheeps Clothing and, with 3rd Bass, Das Efx & Pete Rock, you could be hip-hop, cool without killing whitey, slapping bitches and drinking Crystal. It was a good time to be an audiophile. Of course, I'll readily admit that a.) 1991 - 1999 was high school, college and my move to California, so it was a pretty formidable stage of my life; b.) I suspect that most people think that the music from this period in their own life is the best music ever created and c.) that I'm old and of the opinion that most music released today sucks, even though I'm totally out of touch with everything. Candidly, I haven't really thought about the music industry for a while since I've spent most of my time listening to Coverville, KSCU & NPR, however, I've neglected mass music on such a scale that a rant has been boiling up inside for a long time. Ian Rogers had a great link today to Consumerist and a long letter about musical piracy. Second, Michael Arrington had a good post today about music sales being down. Both of these posts are excellent and both led to this rant. Major record labels are as dead as American auto manufacturers. Like their Detroit counterparts, Warner Music, Sony, BMG, and the others are simply putting out a crappy product, making it difficult to get and making it too overtly expensive. At this point, rather than continuing to piss off the consumer with high prices & DRM, they should simply just hit the lights, lock the doors and hand the keys over the landlords. After all, how do you compete with GarageBand, ProTools, MySpace, YouTube & a Mac? They can't, so it is a land grab for the back catalog that they do have. This is why people are paying $18.99 for Aretha Franklin re-issues in Starbucks. This is why DRM only works on certain players but not on others. It is simply greed and ignorance by an industry too lazy to change. Isn't it interesting how music really seems to have become significantly more processed and cookie cutter after Napster was shut down? I understand all of the perils and concerns about Napster shanking the labels, but Napster also made it very easy for independent bands to get global distribution. It was a great time to be an indie band. Since most bands actually make their money on touring and not on CD sales, this was a boon for them. Get their product in the consumers hands, but still make dough on the tour and merch? A total winner. Today, music has become like software development in that record companies are just reusing components. Ticket prices have become insane and the desire to see a washed up Phil Collins just isn't there (just to be clear, there was never a desire to see a young, bald Phil Collins either). The record companies say that CD sales are declining and I say good. Good for them. You reap what you sow. The major labels have shafted consumers with over inflated CD (record, cassette) prices for far too long. Rather than jump on board and try to come up with ways to adopt the technology that will get them to succeed in a new century, they've opted to sue their users. Nothing makes me want to support an industry that is into suing me, my friends or my family. Thanks guys, thanks for suing grandma for downloading a Benny Goodman track that you discontinued 15 years ago. Sweet move. In a way, it is exciting. I believe that we are on a precipice of really, really amazing music being released by individuals. Arctic Monkeys were a start. MC Lars is starting to gain popularity and is the most original artist I've heard in years. Atom started out really well and now he has Armalite. There are tons of others. Scroll through MySpace Music to see what I mean. At the same time, it is a bit sad. Over the next 5 years, the consumer will get hosed. Perhaps it is punishment for listening to crappy music. Like if you really want Toby Keith's I love this Bar, you should be stuck having to listen to it on your Zune.
Tagged Books & Blogs Movies Music Rants & Raves Television

Donald and Rosie Need to go to Iraq


By making such a huge deal about this fabricated Rosie O'Donnell / Donald Trump spat, mass media pulled the equivalent of the Bill and Ted 'Hey look, it's the Goodyear Blimp' stunt.

This past week, our president signed up to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq. In his infinite wisdom, he also signed up to spend another $100 billion dollars on this war. Why are people so pissed off about oil companies making such a huge profit, but not defense companies?

Lockheed Martin, a major profiteer in this war has posted a 47% quarterly year over year earnings growth. Raytheon has posted 40% quarterly year over year earnings growth. Compare that to Exxon who has posted a paltry 5% and you have to start to wonder where all these $100 billion investments are going?

As we quickly close in on the half a trillion dollar investment mark on this war (and I use investment very lightly), isn't it time for Congress and the American people to revolt a little bit. To show a bit more of an 'I'm pissed off to be paying for this' attitude instead of the complacency that we've seemed to slip into? To put it into perspective, $500 billion, looks like this:

$500,000,000,000

Where I come from, that is a lot of zeros. It is $1,666 for every man, woman, & child in these United States. A better way to figure it is to say that it is about $5,000 per household. If you wonder why you don't have money for retirement, health care or education, this is a good place to look. Sure, you might not be paying for it today, and if you look at the overall $8.6 trillion public debt that we have it is pretty tiny, but if you look at the long term, we will be paying for this in spades.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that it is Karl Rove at work. Start an unwinnable war, jack oil prices up to new record levels and run up a huge, unprecedented level of debt, then let the Democrats try to figure out how to fix it. Then, after four years point out how they didn't make anything better, create a plan to fix it and ensure that Republicans will be in the White House until the Rapture occurs.

Which leads me back to Donald and Rosie. IMO, the reason that America is so fascinated with Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell is because they seem to be the only two people in the country that can publicly tell someone else their true opinion. Donald Trump is the only person alive that can go on national television and call someone 'Fat and Disgusting'. Rosie is the only person alive is the only person that can go on national television and make fun of someones baldness and bad toupee. We've become a nation so afraid to speak our mind that we've forgotten how to do it when it is appropriate. The Democrats need to run a candidate that will do the same thing if they really want to win an election.

During the Kerry / Bush campaign you heard debates like this:

Bush: I think that education is a great thing and the No Child Left Behind act will propel this country into the future. It will be a great system and well worth going further into debt for.

Kerry: While I don't necessarily agree with you, I think that education is important too.

Why is the Democratic party so spineless and afraid to offend anyone? It's time to knuckle up people. How great would it have been to have Kerry say something along the lines of "With all due respect, Mr. President, that is the stupidest thing that I've ever heard in my life. And I did say 'with all due respect'".

Lloyd Bentsen pulled it off almost 10 years ago and, while he lost (he was with Dukakis, don't you people ever learn?) more people remember his quote one night than anything Quayle said the next 4 years. Potatoe / potato withstanding. Sen. Boxer is kind of doing that, but it is really behind the closed doors of the Senate floor, and who (beside me) reads the transcripts from these things? Sen. Boxer stepped up and dropped the hammer on Condoleeza Rice. Why can't someone, with a bit more prominence than Barbara Boxer do this on television (who reads papers, anyway?).

It's 2007 Dems. It's time to take the gloves off. You've got 20 short months to get the American public to wake up. Pick an issue, there is certainly no shortage of them, come up with a plan and stick to it.

My point is, pick something. Anything and stick with it. The 2008 election should be the largest landslide in history. You are going up against a bunch of total muppets. It should have been this way in 2004 and 2000, but how do you win against Rove with these dopey 'Aw Shucks' candidates that you've been serving up? You can't. You need to run someone who will speak their mind. For better or worse, you need a candidate that tells it like it is. Who will it be?

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New Car, Cavier

Michael Arrington is clearly an influencer. I don't think that there is any agrument about that. In fact, I was influenced by his write up on Cars Direct, so much so that after reading it, Holly & decided on both Cars Direct and the Honda Pilot for our new car. Now that our kids are getting bigger, there is some more pressure to drive more kids than our Jeep could handle to school, events, play-dates, etc. We needed some more seats. Plus, with a bunch of family coming for the holidays, the timing seemed right. Unfortuantely, our experience with CarsDirect wasn't nearly as good as Arrington's. We've spent the past couple of months having the 'Need to Upgrade our Car' discussion and narrowing down our choices to the Volvo XL90, the Toyota Highlander & the Honda Pilot. The Pilot was actually ousted fairly early on due to Holly not liking the way that it drove. As most people that know me know, I'm a cheap bastard, especially when it comes to cars. We had our Jeep for 6 years and I plan on having the Prius until it totally falls apart. The idea of buying the Volva pained me to no end. The Highlander was a nice car and, based on the experience with the Pri-ii, I really wanted to go in that direction. Enter a 3rd party broker who suggested driving the EX-L again. Holly agreed to do so and really loved it. The sales rep at the dealer was like none other that we had dealt with in the past. He was personable and had a great attitude. There was no slimely snake oil felling with him. We also gave us a pretty aggressive price and a very aggressive finance rate. We requested a quote from Cars Direct for the Volvo, the Highlander & the Pilot. The Pilot actually came in about $2,000 lower than the Highlander and almost $8,000 less than the Volvo. The decision was made, we submitted to buy from CarsDirect and never heard back from them. We got a bunch of generic emails, but no one contacted us either by phone or email. Dead air. We got a call a couple of days later from the rep at the Honda dealer explaining that the finace rate would be going away and were we still interested. The rate, 4.9% was much lower than what Cars Direct advertises on their site. It is also 2.5 points lower than the national average. If he could meet the CarsDirect price and give us the same rate, we would come over and do the deal. He said yes (should have asked for more) and that he would get the car ready. We showed up at the dealership at 4:30 and explained that we had a sitter and needed to be finished by 6. Can you do it? He was fairly confident that he could and started the credit process. Somehow, even though we are building a house, we were approved for credit, we signed the paperwork and drove our new car off the lot at 6:10. A new record for Honda. All car sales should go so smoothly.
Tagged Internet Mobile & Technology Rants & Raves

What up, yo?

I've been meaning to do a number of posts lately, but between a new job and building a house, I haven't quite been able to find the time to jot down my thoughts enough to come up with a full post. So here is a bunch of short ones for your reading enjoyment. - November is clearly 'Drive Like a Total Ass Clown' month. Between the rain and the Halloween sugar-high detox, people can't put the key in the ignition with out doing something so stupid that I question how we've advanced so far as a society. Somewhere Darwin is spinning. - My house site is getting over 200 hits a day. This is very cool. To put that in perspective, that is about 199 more a day than this site gets. If only I had the foresight to pick a free blogging service that allows me to put AdSense on it's pages, I'd be a Rockefeller. Oh, well. Doing it for the love anyway. Hopefully someone will introduce me to a service that let's me publish my blog to a coffee table book or something (business idea, perhaps). - The Democrats kicked ass in this past election. Seriously though, a collection of 4th graders should have been able to beat the republicans in this last election. It is interesting to watch how power shifts from one side to the next in this country. In the 90's, under Clinton, it was very left wing, the balance of power shifted and now it has shifted back. It is an interesting pendulum to watch. - My MG broke down again over the weekend. Sucks. I'm going to need to have a full brake job done. At least I wasn't hurt. - I was going to do a big rant on the death of customer service, but for the most part, I've had two really good experiences. One with Comcast (I know) and the other with Verizon (I know, I know). The Verizon one even netted me $300. Steve in their customer loyalty department is great and deserves a raise. If you have a problem with Verizon, ask for customer loyalty and they will dial you in.
Tagged My Side Projects Politics & News Pop Culture Rants & Raves
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