03 July 2007

a different drum

This article, via Bookforum, formerly Political Daily Review, tells how close we came to legitimate fee for service downloads from Napster. But the record companies thought it was a bridge too far, too outside the box, beyond any cliche.

And the
inevitable navel-gazing for the next big thing.

And the
inexorable decline of music (how I remember the old man damning Cream's sublime* Disraeli Gears as I played it over and over, the perfect background to not studying for the HSC). It wasn't Django and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, it wasn't Bix Beiderbecke, it wasn't the Dorseys, it wasn't Satchmo, it wasn't...everybody who counted.

Well, sublime except for "Take it back" which one of the blues 'purists' at school lambasted as "not the blues." Just 'cos a song is a 12 bar don't make it the blues...

Now it's me in his shoes and the inexorable decline continues with Kanye West and 50 Cent and Christina Aguilera, not to mention the Spice Girls and Boys and...and...and...

...and I still don't have an iPod or similar because I don't know what I'd do with one. Still buying CDs, more country (for the "power chords and anthemic choruses"...well, sort of), been looking for Blitzen Trapper but despite being reviewed in the Australian weekend Review liftout it's still not in the shops as far as I can see. Hence the recent Wilburys purchase...heritage rock for the over 50s. Bring it on.

4 comments:

JahTeh said...

You mentioned spice girls, wash your blog out.

Currently I'm listening and singing to Roy Orbison and I sound better than that quartet of pommy hasbeens.

phil said...

No doubt. And I of course have Orbison as one fifth of the Wilburys on in the car - what a voice!

Ann ODyne said...

Just cut out all the modern stuff
and go back to the basic template: Country Blues.
Ma rainey or Bessie Smith or Big Mama Thornton (forget which) was bisexual and her band was The Blues Assassinators, and it was about 1904 or something.
These modern skinny little undressed chicks aint doing nothing aint been done better before.

... and your dad?
he's right about Cream.
I was in a warehouse club in the Sixties when a ligger called to the band on stage to "do some Cream" and the singer spat into the mike - "we don't do Cream cos we dont do CRAP".
... now Blind Faith ...

JahTeh said...

The Blues Assassinators, that name leaves icky SpiceGirls for dead.

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