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February 24, 2006

Have You Every Felt Like You’ve Been Cheated?

Sooner of later the ever numbing and endless award show season will finish. Regardless of the award’s importance, let alone credence it should win an award at all, the urgency, for instance, of a Grammy winner is lost on the audience within the week. Quickly – What artist won record of the year?

In a few weeks the 2006 induction ceremony to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will be held in New York. A “strange brew” of artists this time as Miles Davis, Black Sabbath, Blondie, Lynard Skynard and the founders of A&M records, Herb Albert and Jerry Moss, will be feted before they are put on display under glass in Cleveland, Ohio for time and memorial. I’m glad Miles is getting some credit as his work covered more than six decades of experimentation in the fusion of jazz with rock, soul, funk and hip hop. Miles Davis wasn’t called the “Picasso of Jazz” for nothing. He was the catalyst for many styles to come. He would fade from the scene every few years to come back to re-invent the musical landscape for everyone to follow.

Another band who influenced the musical landscape to come was the Sex Pistols. They too will be inducted in to the Hall of Fame this March. It is fitting that they are being added in 2006 as it marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Punk in Britain, along with the 50th Birthday for Johnny Rotten. The Pistols were the original snarling face of the British Punk Movement. Though the Damned released the first punk album, the Jam took over the record charts with every single, the Clash were certainly a better, stronger and more adventurous band and the Ramones delivered the speed and persona to the movement, the Sex Pistols were the quintessential debauchery band Rock and Roll has come to Love and Hate. Regardless of looking ten years earlier to see the Rolling Stones and their social presents, the Pistols controlled the media to their best advantage. As a traveling circus, the Pistols were well represented. Sid Viscous was the clown, Steve Jones and Paul Jones was the workers-the laborors in the mess (along with Glen Matlock) and Johnny Rotten, the “star” puppet whose strings were being controlled by the Svengali Malcolm McLaren. Their music is still powerful "God Save the Queen", "Pretty Vacant", "Anarchy in the UK" brought political fury to the top. In 1977, during the Queen’s Jubilee, "God Save the Queen" featured the line God save the Queen/ she ain’t no human being which became Britain’s number one single even though it had been banned. A band like this needed to “die before I get old” (nice Who lyric there). Regardless of the "Filthy Lucre" tours the Pistols have done over the years to cash in on some money from the X and Y generations, the official last show was in January 1978, in San Francisco. The band had disintegrated, Cook and Jones pounded out the chords and beats, Sid wandered the stage in a stupor and Rotten stared out at the audience and utter these famous last words – “Have You Every Felt Like You’ve Been Cheated?”

Lasted news is that the Sex Pistols will not be attending the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame party in New York. Their web site said they were not coming - But not with out a few choice 8#@&^ words.

Posted by nick on 9:47 AM | Comments (47)

February 20, 2006

Music Paranoia — are you being bugged?

After swimming through the Holiday season relatively unscathed the numbing focus of another year came in to view, but not before the floating iceberg of paranoia came creeping stealthy from last year. Ever wonder if there was a connection between the SonyBMG CD scandal, the Patriot Act secrecy, Celine Dion and terrorism...Oh, there is.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) became a major story in the middle of November as it became evident that certain SonyBMG releases had been specifically encoded to stop the user from making "authorized duplication" of the CD. From the Foo Fighters to Dave Matthews Band to Celine Dion and Neil Diamond, the playing and downloading of the special encoded program on to your computer brought major alarm to the masses once the it had been raised. The installation of the special media player brought a secret "rootkey" file that left your computer open to viruses, hackers and out-sourced telemarketers in Bangalore. Once the program was on the computer you needed to get permission from SonyBMG to delete it by sending them your personal info for which they would decide to send you the patch to delete.

Every time you played an encoded SonyBMG disc you had to access the Sony media player program, which would send a CD identifier back to Sony telling them of your listing habits and probably, after sneaking around for a look-see on your computer report back to Sony (and other political forces) your favorite URL sites, files and naughty photos. Who's bugging my privacy...Is the Patriot Act using SonyBMG disc to infiltrate the sorry lot of Celine Dion fans or trying to find out who is emailing friends out side of the States or vice versa? I didn't see any country artists on the list — some heavy persuasion from the Texas power lot to stop the good-ol' boys there.

They hit Pete Seeger again. He was chased as a communist back in the fifties and a civil rights groupie in the sixties — if you bought that disc be ready for the Brown Shirts of Texas (via Greenwich, CT) to come visit.

In closing, Osama bin Laden is not tech savvy. He has no podcast, nothing available via iTunes or Google video, no ring-tones or e-mail to a blackberry. Probably still makes his videos on tape.

I wonder if he buys anything from Amazon.

Posted by nick on 9:47 AM | Comments (0)