Monday, March 23, 2009
"Fuck, when the Couge's on, he's on"
That is my favorite quote from my entire time in Richmond. Whilst standing in a checkout line at Plan 9 as John Cougar Mellencamp was playing on throughout the store I heard one hipster behind the counter tell another hipster behind the counter "Fuck, when the Couge's on, he's on". And not only is that applicable to Mellencamp's music but a lot of times to his take on American life and culture, and now in his take on the music business as a whole. Below is an op-ed that The Couge has just posted laying out his thoughts on the music biz...
"Over the last few years, we have all witnessed the decline of the music business, highlighted by finger-pointing and blame directed against record companies, artists, internet file sharing and any other theories for which a case could be made. We've read and heard about the "good old days" and how things used to be. People remember when music existed as an art that motivated social movements. Artists and their music flourished in back alleys, taverns and barns until, in some cases, a popular groundswell propelled it far and wide. These days, that possibility no longer seems to exist. After 35 years as an artist in the recording business, I feel somehow compelled, not inspired, to stand up for our fellow artists and tell that side of the story as I perceive it. Had the industry not been decimated by a lack of vision caused by corporate bean counters obsessed with the bottom line, musicians would have been able to stick with creating music rather than trying to market it as well..."
The rest of the article after the jump
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5 comments:
"Artists and their music flourished in back alleys, taverns and barns until, in some cases, a popular groundswell propelled it far and wide. These days, that possibility no longer seems to exist."
Does he not own a computer or has he just never heard of YouTube / MySpace / Facebook / the hundreds of music blogs / streams / channels for people to distribute music more easily and democratically than ever before? Who gives a shit about radio airplay anymore?
Yeah but the radio used to be such a magical place and it allowed for good music to infiltrate popular culture. People used to be exposed to great music just by turning on their stereo's, now if you turn on the radio you get a bunch of watered down trash primarily.
As the Couge said, back in the day you could get a groundswell built up that would propel a good band to the masses. What bands has the internet sent to the masses? Souljaboy and Fall Out Boy.
- Adele, winner of the Best New Artist Grammy, came from MySpace.
This guy is going to be huge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOYAuk809fY
I guess having never lived in the mythical era of radio nirvana I can't fully appreciate whatever he's talking about. But it seems like for every Mariah Carey today there must have been a Lesley Gore back then.
This is kind of a never ending conversation, huh? One thing about the ol days of radio, when everyone was listening to it, is that it kept the masses under a flag of familiarity. There was, like, 3 genres of music and a limited amount of artists to choose from so everyone felt more connected.
Guess it's cool now that there's a lot of different options and sub-sub-sub-sub-genres of music to dig into, but none of it seems to matter as much.
Right ...like in GENEREAL ELECTRIC...that's the real COUGE ..that's your SUPPRESSANT!
And it's also your GLYCO with EL YORKO DORKO and that means COMEN with EDWARD MEESE.
And you get a COMIA and COPHYBA and you get it BRITISH AIRWAYS with a YAN!
And WATT is there with CAREY-TERRY and now, so are we with DON.
( CASA DONASA, anyone? Or MOTHER JONES?)
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