Returning with collaborative new single – Following Rainbows with Velatronix which you can hear below – and a tour that kicks off this month, Larry Love from Alabama 3 argues in a guest column there’s no longer a music industry to speak of. Having provided the theme song for The Sopranos, he suggests the record business has been whacked.
There is no John, Paul, George or Ringo anymore… The Beatles are dead. Long live Elvis, who died knowing that to shuffle off this mortal coil while shitting yourself on the gold plated toilet of the jungle room, was the most situationist art prank of the 21st century. Elvis works in a chip shop… so never forget this:
The one and only empirical fact, the one fact necessary in terms of one’s ability to survive and thrive in the music industry is this – There is no music industry.
The commodification of music reached its apogee exactly 100 years after the invention of the phonographic stylus and the Behemoth that was the 78rpm playing, 12-inch shellac mass-produced for the glory and consumption of those privileged enough to purchase such products. As Metallica et al raged against the dying of the machine, endorsing FBI entrapment scams for transgressive teenagers, who dared to file share, courtesy of Napster, those with the “nous” knew that as the Sandman entered Guantanamo Bay and as the increasingly hoarse Metallica endorsed not only the persecution of intelligent hip young kids but turned a blind eye to the use of their music for the purposes of torture, the game was up.
Music has returned to its primeval essence and those ready to roll down the lost highway are the ones who are looking for car crash collaborative collisions… there is no greater joy or honour to be a musician in this post industrial age, than to putting a 15 year-old gang member, excluded from school but with vision in his eyes, together, with a 63 year old Delta Blues guitar player and watch them grime it up.
We are all crime scene cleaners now, and as the X Factor sends more and more casualties to a musical A&E I’d like to think that we will be there to stitch up the wounds, pick and mix up the pieces. God Bless the X Factor, God Bless Simon Cowell and the silicone talent shows that saturate our children’s nightmare’s, selling them dreams hollow and empty, for without such gratuitous commodification of desperate artistry, there would be no opposition.
For yea though we dance through the seventh veil of evil, we shall not fear The Maggot Brain.
And to be funky is this… Have Garage Band, have Reason, have Logic, have Pro Tools and you will travel. Whilst technology has broken hearts and bruised the wallets of the old guard, whose existence was predicated upon an inherently defective strategy of revenue raising, those on the front line know this: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” (Hunter S Thompson)
Be your own pimp, be your own whore, be street corner and be high grade. Always be ready to steal a car and collaborate, collectivize and coordinate… take your seatbelt off and get ready for collision. We are the garage mechanics. We know how to put the machine back together.
