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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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February 28, 2003
YOU are the last DJ
God love Tom Petty. He's created one of the greatest recorded legacies of anyone in the rock music tradition. Even though it hasn't sold much, the title song in particular of his newest album, "The Last DJ" will be considered a classic.
I respectfully suggest that Tom has the wrong idea here, though. This is not a musical argument. It's an outstanding, catchy song. It has a strong emotional content. Structurally and emotionally, the song rings true.
However, Mr. Petty perhaps doesn't quite get the modern world. The point of the song is that it is a elegy for the last independent voice, which is finally being squished by the establishment.
there goes the last dj
who plays what he wants to play
and says what he wants to say
hey, hey, hey
there goes your freedom of choice
there goes the last human voice
there goes the last dj
This does not jibe with my experience, nor that of most Americans, at least. We have more freedom of choice in most things than ever, particularly media.
I for one have never had near the access to more different music than in the last couple of years. The advent of Napster and Kazaa and CD burners give us more choices than ever before, especially in relatively isolated rural areas.
Satellite tv offers us HUNDREDS of choices of programming, not the three networks of my childhood. There's usually something worth watching on cable, if only by accident. Also, satellite and cable tv offer vastly underappreciated music programming, dozens and dozens of channels of all kinds of music -with no damned DJ yammering on or even commercials. Hell, I can listen to commercial free Hawaiian music 24/7 off the satellite.
I know I didn't have anything like this kind of choice when I was in high school 20 odd years ago. The 16 year old AL would have KILLED to have access to music the way I do now. I remember what a big deal it was that the local Danner's department store in Rushville actually stocked an 8-track copy of Sgt. Pepper's. Wow- an album not by Kenny Rogers or the Bee Gees! If you'd told me that I'd be able to sit in my room and conjure up pictures and album titles and reviews, and then just order nearly any commercially available album [or movie] in the world on a credit card for delivery to my door- well, I'd have probably just creamed my jeans.
Now, apparently Clear Channel does own every commercial radio station in the country. I'll grant Mr. Petty that. Presumably Montgomery Burns owns Clear Channel and carefully programs their stations to make you extra stupid or something.
Which may be the case, but so what? I for one don't give a rat's ass about commercial radio. I haven't spent this much money on CDs for all these years to listen to whatever random crap some marketing guy in Jersey picked out to pimp to the teenagers this week. Commercial radio becomes less and less critical to the dissemination of music by the day.
Tom Petty famously went to bat for consumers aka his fans when his new, now classic Hard Promises album was slated to be one of the first albums to carry the newly jacked up $9.98 list. He went as far as having an album cover photo shot with a box of LPs marked for $8.98, making it basically politically impossible for the record company to carry out their evil scheme. This nearly quarter century old controversy probably was still resounding in his mind when he wrote:
all the boys upstairs want to see
how much you'll pay for
what you used to get for free
This part of the song particularly does not ring true today, though. The boys upstairs may WANT to figure out better ways to rape the consumer, but they're fighting a losing battle. What with Napster and CD burners, they're struggling with figuring out how to keep us paying the price for what they've been use to screwing us for. Now that we're getting used to burning CDs ourselves, the purely abusive nature of seriously demanding that people pay $15+ for a 10 cent disc ain't looking so good. We may pay some premium to buy factory CDs in order to get nice printed jackets, a full professional quality product, to save fooling around with downloading and slinging files, and just to blend in with society and see that everyone gets paid.
Let's not get stupid though, Mr. Record Dude. Your prices get TOO stupid, we CAN just buy one copy and pass it around amongst friends, or download the damned overpriced things FOR FREE from the net. You can't stop us. You're fighting a losing battle. At this point, people do in fact have the power.
In Tom Petty's prime days, we couldn't make our own records. If we wanted music, we had to buy their plastic. We don't now. The record companies can work with the consumers, or they can get swept away. The bastards can't BUY enough congressmen and judges to stop us. Ha!
Indeed, there are more people out speaking their minds for public consumption than ever before. How many MILLIONS of people have websites now?
well, he got him a station
down in mexico
sometimes it'll kinda come in
Well, if the guy would just invest a modest few bucks on some decent server connections, he could make that sucker available in full digital worldwide 24/7. Indeed, before long it'll be so cheap and easy that everyone can have their own custom internet radio station running off a hard drive of mp3s on their desktop pc and beaming down to your car via satellite link -and coming across to anyone else who wants to join the flow. Brothers and sisters, YOU are the last dj.
Viva the last DJ!
posted by Al at 2/28/2003 10:21:00 PM
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