Letters to the Editor
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The Medium is The Message
I despise the ceaseless, obnoxious, blathering, intrusive, mindless television. People have a more profound emotional and psychological relationship with images on a screen than they do with the people to whom they're related sitting next to them on the sofa. I haven't watched the stupid thing for seven years and will not sit long in a room that has one on. The quicker we can blow it up the better.
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Under normal circumstances I would vehemently object to this argument
......until I recently heard the Flaming Lips sell out to Dell......nothing is sacred anymore
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Copy editing
This is a really hard sentence to read the first or second time around: "Afterward, many, including Drake's sister, said the singer, who died in 1974, an apparent suicide, benefited from the commercial because it exposed millions of people to his music."
Try this (for free this time):"There were many, including Drake's sister, who said that the singer, who died in 1974 of an apparent suicide, benefited ...."
Please try copy editing.
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Not actually Bill Drummond's idea.
The great English singer-songwriter Luke Haines (of The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder) proposed a "pop strike" in 2001, which was basically this very same idea, except it was rather more damning of modern music and was articulated with a great deal more wit. (Haines was honest enough to admit he was inspired by the Situationists; I don't know whether Bill Drummond owes Haines or Guy Debord.) The "manifesto" he wrote demanding the pop strike was priceless. I think it's a great idea, but it's really too bad that more people will pay more attention to tiresome old Bill Drummond than to the much more interesting Mr. Haines.
The Pop Strike Manifesto was published in The Guardian in mid-2001; I'm sure it can easily be located on the Web.
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Slow Torture
I'm a musician, and feel that the unceasing musical bombarment hurts all musicians-I think that people acquire a subconscious antipathy to music in general.
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VW Commercial
Thought people might be interested to know that the Nick Drake commercial (officially titled Milky Way was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris who you most likely know as the directors of Little Miss Sunshine.
They've made a number of commercials and music videos including "1979" and "Tonight, Tonight" (both for the Smashing Pumpkins). "1979" shares thematic elements with the VW commercial while "Tonight, Tonight" is pays homage/rips off (you decide) the Melies silent film A Voyage to the Moon.
Just last week I wrote about the impact this work had on my childhood: http://jackmetier.com/2007/11/13/on-my-wall/
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Moby
I don't necessarily agree with the inclusion of the example of Moby's "Play" in the list of albums ruined by ubiquitous commercialization. "Play" was liscensed so heavily to commercial concerns for the very reason that Berger wrote the article - as a protest and statement about the commodification of music today. The whole point of making all of the songs available for commercials/tv shows etc. was to make it impossible to listen to "Play" without forming those same associations.
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Yes..yes..Bring this to America. But nobody would comply.
Your article really hit the nail on the head. We are saturated with this crap and I am a musician. I remember an old Zap Comicbook cartoon, I think it was Mr. Natural who walked up to a guy holding a boombox to his head and said: "Must you always be feeding your ego?" We are bombasted with this garbage. Today, I went to a new shopping center in Tustin, Ca. and was flummoxed by loudspeakers up in the air in the parking lot every few feet blasting some tune that I didn't want to hear just then as I was getting out of my car, trying to find the Whole Foods Market in this maze.
There is a story that the USC bred composer Donal Michalsky once walked into a restaurant and demand that they shut down the Muzak. He said the reason was when he eats he likes to eat and when he listens to music he likes to listen to music. In other words to pay total attention to one excludes the other; a kind of Zen thing. To be totally immersed in the experience of eating or listening to music demands total concentration and being here now. Music robs us of that special 'being here nowness."
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Silver moon.
You weren't crotchety. There are places that I shun because of grating sounds. Last night, a place I'll hide sometimes in a mid-life-crisis, pick-up-huh-girls-truck, there was the most unusual, nonseasonal, insect chipping.
I could not imagine it as a black lonely cricket drumming her legs together? It made me wish I were a cricket for just one night.
One meal time I remember everybody was itching the crotch and snapping at each other. Fearful the mashed potatoes and succotash would start flying up to Capital Hill or Camp David mountain retreat, I turned off the radio music. The mood calmed.
If I'm ever in a tavern (rarely), I play one of the joke-box rambling man songs. I love the Rambling Man songs. The lyrics are interesting.
Silence is golden. Often, more can be said with silence than a bunch a jobber jabber. I long to shut my trap. To be in solitude is great.
I remember participating in a sad event. The griever told me all I needed to know without a word. And into the dark ambush they walked. Guns fired crackling sounds. A brief groan. Angels came down and took the slain spirits away without uttering a single word. It was long ago. God. Rambler. Doggone it! It was around Thanksgiving Day 1969. I dare not look into the 'after action' report. Wow. Happy sad anniversary? O, mashed up real bad. O, forgive me. I did not know what I was doing?
Drafted. Survive.
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Can I get some quiet here?
I work in a noisy hair salon and almost every day I have a conversation with someone about turning the stereo off or at least down. Between the street noise, chatting (yeah sure of course myself included), phones ringing AND the music I am rattled by days end. It seems only a few short years ago that I was cranking the stereo in my car on the way to and from work but now I either drive silently (well, perhaps that is relative as I am sure my cursing is noise) or listen to NPR. Funny, I went from crankin Tool to rapt with Terry Gross. Ah man, Ive also been buying sensible shoes...I'm doomed. Although even too much news seems to being making me jittery....is it me or does there seem to be an awful lot of bad stuff going on right now? Its truly exhausting. I suppose many people are afraid to hear let alone listen to the sounds within them and perhaps welcome the din for distraction. Id love a day off from it all. Too bad Americans have lost the fine art of cooperation or maybe we could have tried it.