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Date Posted: 15:47:15 06/21/03 Sat
Author: Ramystein
Author Host/IP: cache-rl05.proxy.aol.com / 152.163.252.229
Subject: Ben Weasel Rants

OK, well I thought I'd share this with all of you:

Friday, June 20, 2003

Everything’s Coming Up Britney!
I’m no longer a music fanatic and I haven’t been for many years. That’s important for you to know up front, because it isn’t just my status as a working musician that has influenced my views on the theft of music via the Internet. As an ex-fanatic, I am very familiar with the music fanatic – or the “fan” as he is better known – and one of the things I know about the fanatic is that he is often irrational. And a lack of rational thinking plays a big part in the problem of Internet music theft.

Music fans – and I use the term not to describe all fans, but rather the genuine loonies that make up an extremely vocal minority - can’t imagine life without music. Music speaks the words that they can’t seem to form. It expresses difficult emotions with ease and it does so with an eloquence that they don’t possess. It reminds them of that summer, that girl, that kiss. And it isn’t just music that the fans love; they particularly love recorded music. When you have a recording of a band, it doesn’t matter that they’ve changed directions or styles; you own them as if they had been frozen in time.

When you move a music fan, you take on a significance in his life that few lovers can match. That can be very flattering, but lovers have a way of turning ugly. Just like in relationships, we’re often very cruel to those who are closest to us, treating our lovers in ways we wouldn’t even consider when dealing with our enemies. Selling out, behaving inconsistently, and “acting like a rock star,” are actions tantamount to flagrant infidelity, and hell hath no fury like an outraged music fan.

And yet, even though we recognize that they are irrational words spoken in anger, when the music fan accuses us of egomania, it stings, because we know it’s true (as it is of all people, but it hits us harder because we’re standing on stages and posing for photographs, looking all precious). When the fan chides us for selling out, we wince a little, because we know it’s true (and we’ve all sold out, but it cuts closer to the bone for musicians because we’ve built our reputations with the bricks of rebellion – true, we used bullshit for mortar, but we didn’t think anybody had noticed…). But nobody ever calls us on being pushovers, which is perhaps our only truly indictable moral offense, because when we succumb to the whims of the music fan, we hurt ourselves, the fans, and our music, and we make it that much harder for the next generation of musicians to do their work with dignity, pride and self-respect. We have to do our business and take care of ourselves despite the fan's always-pending charges against us for our moral offenses, not only because we have a reality to deal with that includes stacks of bills and overdue rent, but also because if we leave rock and roll only to those who are paid ungodly sums and to those who can afford to not care about getting paid, there’s going to be a serious and potentially permanent drop in the quality of music being made. Considering how little music of quality is currently being produced, we can’t afford to let things get any worse.

I don’t despise the music fan, but I’m wary of him. The fan tends to think with his heart and so it follows that he tends to behave irrationally. The fan can get possessive and controlling. Music fans are often one part religious zealot and two parts jealous stalker. The music fan can’t fathom the idea that musicians make music for any reason other than that their tortured souls demand it of them (which, to complicate matters, actually usually IS at least one of the reasons and often the compelling one). In the world of the fan, real musicians seldom think about money – they’re too busy channeling their angst into another song for you – and when they do, it’s only in terms of breaking even. A musician who takes seriously the financial realities of his craft is a sell-out. One who attempts to profit from his talent is the devil.

“Musician” is the only job title in the world other than “monk,” “nun,” or “priest,” where those who benefit the most from your work expect you to do that work for cost, or free. At least monks and priests get health benefits. But to the music fan, musicians should be martyrs for their art. Believe me, it’s scary to realize that your financial future rests in the hands of a demented child who really, really loves you - as long as you behave according to a stringent set of creative and financial rules, that is. Music fans – again, the true fanatics, the bellowing minority - seem to have two personalities: plodding, overly affectionate lummox, and hyper, shrill arbiter of musical correctness. The music fan is constantly checking up on us to make sure that we know we’re adored as well as to ensure that we’re suffering properly and sufficiently. The reason we keep the fans at arm’s length is because if we don’t, we’re liable to end up playing Curley’s wife to their Lenny.

So, speaking from a safe distance, I have some things I need to tell you, music fan:

Even done as a hobby, playing music is extremely expensive. For those of us with the temerity to actually try to live off of our earnings, the odds are stacked comically against us. Please try to remember that, because “I love music” is a sentence that no working musician should ever have to speak. It should be a foregone conclusion that nobody except the clinically insane would even attempt to earn a living through playing music if he wasn’t driven by the love of playing (or, perhaps more accurately, the insatiable need to create music, regardless of {minor} success, {abject} failure, friends and family members laughing at him or telling him what an idiot he is, loss of large amounts of money, fan abuse, critical abuse, crooked promoters and record label owners, etc.).

The vast majority of working musicians are barely getting by. Again, the VAST MAJORITY. BARELY getting by. This is not subjective opinion – this is fact. We can’t afford to have you stealing our music. Even if we could afford it, you’d still be wrong. Of COURSE you have the right to think that musicians shouldn’t make money. You also have the right to think that plumbers shouldn’t make money. You don’t, however, have the right to hire a plumber to fix your toilet and then pay him in Communist rhetoric. That’s how people end up with pipe wrenches sticking out of their butts. People only steal from musicians because doing so is easy and anonymous. If they had to go through us to rip us off, few of them would dare. They couldn’t look us in the eye.

Legally and ethically speaking, of course, you have no right to steal from anyone. Justifying your theft with “Oh, they’re all rich” or “Well, the major labels are crooks anyway” might make you feel better about yourself, but you’re still a thief. Yet in a way, I don’t blame you, at least not for wanting a little revenge. You’ve been ripped off. The majors gouged you – they were busted for it, for crying out loud – and it’s not the first time they screwed you. They’ve been doing it since rock and roll began. They are the reason that quality and success are unrelated concepts in rock and roll. They are in the business of bullying, lying, cheating and stealing. But as wrong as they are – and let’s not forget that they’ve screwed musicians right along with fans – as wrong as they are in practically everything they do, they are right about stealing music. I don’t like to agree with the RIAA – they certainly don’t represent any musician I know – but they are right. Stealing IS wrong, and Internet theft of music IS killing the industry. Maybe the industry deserves to die – I don’t know. But is it worth putting so many people out of business (not to mention losing their creative voices) to get back at what amounts to a handful of very wealthy, very powerful people who, regardless of what you do, will remain very wealthy and very powerful? I don’t think so – working towards an alternative would seem to make more sense.

But honestly, I think the behavior of the major labels is largely irrelevant to most thieves. I think a lot of the press about Internet theft being fueled primarily by outrage is just the product of guilty minds that have come up with a sort of moral Get Out Of Jail Free card for behavior every bit as crooked and sneaky as that of those they criticize. Just like the major labels, they take what they want and they really don’t seem to care who gets screwed over in the process. The righteous indignation voiced by the Kazaa youth makes no distinction between the real crooks – the major labels – and their artists, not to mention all the independent labels and their artists. All of us are fair game – we all apparently deserve to be ripped off. And this is all due to the actions of the big, mean, corporations? Well, then why don’t I see these upright citizens, these modern-day Sons Of Liberty, throwing some civil disobedience at the cable companies or sticking it to the phone companies? If they’re truly burning with Howard Beale-ian rage, why not announce that they’re mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it any more from ComEd? It’s as simple as this: people found a way to steal music. This is what I hear from friends who are seen as fools by their co-workers and acquaintances for buying music instead of stealing it: Why pay for what you can get for free? It’s there, so TAKE IT. Nobody buys music anymore! Are you STUPID? It’s really that simple. If people could steal phone service or cable service or sneakers or video games as easily as they now steal music, they would. And they wouldn’t call it stealing. If they stole it via the Internet, they’d just call it downloading.

Stealing music online is definitely a kind of revolution. But like all revolutions, it’s real big on hysterical screaming about the bad guys, and not interested at all in talking about the very real people who are getting crushed under the wheels of their movement. And like all revolutions, the majority of the participants are opportunists looking out for number one while waving around protest signs and chanting mindless slogans in support of “the people.” So I don’t know if it’s worth it to support the killing of an industry simply to sate the appetites of an already morbidly obese consumer of the sort that compulsively crams his greasy fingers into the change slots of pay phones looking for that elusive quarter. I do know that a hell of a lot of good people – talented people who’ve earned (via their popularity) the right to make a living from playing music – are being forced out of the music business.

I believe that there are some misguided fans who really think they’re doing us and the world of music a favor by refusing to pay us anymore. I think there is a very naïve, almost sweet (if it weren’t so wrong) desire on the part of some fans to destroy the industry so it can begin again, this time, honestly and sincerely. The problem with such an idea is that it is completely unworkable and unrealistic; it assumes that if you just take money out of the equation, everything will be groovy. It’s kind of a Marxist-by-way-of-modern-day-anarchism non-solution that would only even begin to enter the realm of viability if we all woke up one day and decided to be really nice to each other. I mean, on one level, it’s a really beautiful wish, but for obvious reasons, I’d rather not be the guinea pig in that doomed experiment. The bills aren’t going to pay themselves, and I think that although they probably wouldn’t dare to admit it out loud, what the musical idealists really want is for us musicians to live lives that more or less don’t require paying bills. I really think that many of the fans just want us to be troubadours, making our way from town to town to entertain them just because we so love playing music and making people happy. Even those fans who are a bit more realistic don’t want our groceries being paid for with money earned by playing music. Warehouse loading dock money or bartender money or pizza delivery money is one thing, but money made from music should be spent on making more music, not on such prosaic necessities as food and rent.

The saddest thing about this – from the perspective of someone who loves off-beat, weird, unique and just plain fun music – is that Internet theft is most definitely not going to kill the music industry, it’s just going to cause the industry to channel a greater percentage of available resources towards a fewer number of people. The first ones squeezed out will be the edgy, interesting, ballsy, truly creative musicians – the ones who barely squeezed through the door in the first place. Will they continue to make music just because they love it? Yeah, of course they will, technically, but not in any viable way. Their records will be harder and harder to find, and you won’t likely ever see them play live because they won’t be able to afford to take time off from work to play your little town in Texas or Maryland.

You’ll be left, for all practical purposes, with two groups of musicians. The first will consist of musicians who aren’t any good and never were and were formerly engaged primarily in attempts to convince suckers in Estonia to download the dopey love songs and experimental art-rock they recorded on their four-tracks; these self-indulgent, pretentious rank amateurs will be your new alternative and they will rule the college radio charts. In the second group will be the musicians you’ll be hearing on commercial radio and seeing on TV. They will be the Survivors Of The Fattest. They will be young, because people over the age of twenty-eight don’t have the energy or motivation to stay on the road nine months a year and spend the other three months living in a loft with their band members. They’ll be upper middle class and wealthy, because middle class and poor people can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars on gear (and upkeep), a vehicle (and upkeep), rehearsal space rent, postage, Internet access and web site charges, phone bills, etc. without getting any return while they wait for their agents and lawyers to land them a record deal. They will look edgy and radical but they will sound like whatever came before them, because with less room available, it just won’t make sense to do anything other than the tried and true; anything that might potentially reduce their odds of making the cut will be verboten. More than ever before, what gets a band noticed will not be the quality of their music, but the effectiveness of their management and publicity teams. They will give you exactly what you claim you don’t want: middle-of-the-road, dull, plastic songs that aren’t so hot for dancing, but are awfully good for buying things to.

So for those who insist on stealing music via the Internet, you might want to stock up now because things are going to change. As my friend Jack says, I hope you like Good Charlotte and Britney Spears, because pretty soon that’s all you’re going to be getting.

This revolution of theft is having an effect on the industry, no question. But it’s not taking out the big guns. They aren’t going anywhere. You’re killing the little guy. You’re ruining the very people that make music interesting, exciting, and vital. I hope you can manage to enjoy what will be left over, and when that day comes – and it’s coming fast – at least don’t insult our intelligence by blaming Metallica or the RIAA or Warner Bros. At least try to be honest enough to admit that it was your own willingness to rip off your heroes – whether out of greed, or misplaced moral outrage, or both - that drove us out of the business. Don’t blame the big, bad corporations for killing rock and roll. Blame yourselves.


what do you think?

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