I’m blaming everything this week on the solar flares. “I said what? Sorry, must have been the solar flares talking.” “The rent is late? Why those damn solar flares. They just get into everything.”
While we Peppers mused about the state of the music industry late Tuesday night, the Hollywood Reporter was publishing a cogent and insightful Commentary by Todd Rundgren which covered similar ground. (The link is active as I write this, but it may turn into subscriber content at some point.) It’s interesting how alike our remarks are, although Rundgren comes to his article as a free-thinker and aggressive computer progressive marginalized by a record industry that can’t get comfy with profits until album sales break 500,000 copies or so. I come to mine as an indie label guy, hiding in the shrubbery outside the country club and wondering what the hell they put in the drinks in there.
Compare ours with this excerpt of Todd’s:
Music is a sacrament. This has been true for thousands of years of human history, save the last 100 or so. I’m sure it was not Edison’s purpose to debase such an important aspect of our collective liturgy, but what would one expect when something that was once ephemeral and could only be experienced at the behest of other humans is reduced to a commodity on a shelf.
Damn solar flares, they get into everything. If you’re likely to think in these directions, I highly recommend Rundgren’s rant. And let’s fiddle together when he says, “It’s time to let the monolith of commoditized music collapse like the Berlin Wall.”
