There's a rumor going around that pirates are stealing our music. Aar matey. I wonder what the actual percentage of players is who've lost money to pirates. Or to put it somewhere near Realityland, the percentage of original bands or individuals with music they wrote who've lost actual money. Like, seen their music on a torrent site. Shooting the music industry point blank in the face with your flintlock pirate pistol is okay by me for the most part. I think they've treated a lot of musicians very badly. The trouble is you don't always know who you're shooting. The industry will quickly hold up a writer of songs to protect themselves from your blazing blunderbuss, but don't worry, your musket ball will hit the writer only 3% and the rest will land squarely in the face of the industry. That would be all great and stuff, except for the constant shrieking and moaning. The industry is in the process of doing their level best to get the Oscar for best dying scene. Sorta like a nine year old playing war with a stick rifle rolling around on the ground gasping and gurgling for ten minutes after being shot by the bad guys. They refuse to go quietly into that good night as another victim of the digital age. Like the printing industry. Now that was a dignified death. They quietly faded into history with barely a murmur. Printing used to be an actual career, much like playing music was. The similarities between printing and music creation are many. Printing was the mechanics of it, and the design and artwork was the artistic. Both industries have been decimated by digital with photoshop and computer printers on the one side, and protools and samples on the other. The difference is printers were mostly privately owned and small companies, whereas the music biz is corporate and large, so they have a bigger stage with which to gurgle and flail from. Here's an idea. What we need is for every copyright has to have a number designating how many times it's changed hands. So a copyright 1 would be the actual writer. That way, as we swing from torrent ropes across the digital railings with knives clenched in our teeth we know who we're ripping off. I bet the legitimate writers and players of music would suddenly find themselves much disenpiratated. That might be a good theory, but there's no way the industry would allow you to know who you're actually stealing from. I personally know a few players who own the rights to their own music, and have lost big money to piracy. Sucks for sure. However, they seem to be doing just fine. They make big dough playing out, and seem to manage the rent. I know a whole lot more players who were part of the creation of classic rock songs that make zero. I heard the woman who wrote Locomotion sold the rights for 50$. This is what started me down this path of righteous indignation. Then I looked it up and apparently it's not true. Way to go internet. Ruined yet another perfectly good rant. Ruiners. There's a thing called a false premise. That's where someone will build a case for their point of view or belief based on a half truth or outright lie. If you listen carefully you can usually spot the false premise somewhere near the beginning of the sales pitch. Here I looked it up: "A false premise is an incorrect proposition that forms the basis of an argument or syllogism. Since the premise (proposition, or assumption) is not correct, the conclusion drawn may be in error. However, the logical validity of an argument is a function of its internal consistency, not the truth value of its premises." Add to that what Upton Sinclair once said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Always remember kids: the only truth in life is what you see with your own eyes. The rest is people trying to convince you of something using logic based on half truths. When you come to a logical conclusion based on half truths and outright lies you've come to the wrong conclusion. People all over the world will base their entire lives on half truths and salary dependent belief. War, poverty, religious persecution, digital piracy, all is suspect. You'll never know for sure until you see it with your own eyes. Media is the playground of liars and thieves and indoctrinated true believers. Most everything your told through media purported to be cold hard truth doesn't hold up to the eyeball test. My part time gig when I'm not recording, ranting, or playing, is designated driver. Drive you home in your own car type dealio. So basically I drive around the lower mainland all night in Mercedes, Porsches and Cadillacs. So here's what I see with my own eyes as I drive: At night there is no colour, and no scenic mountain vistas. just street lights and reflective paint. Expensive cars driving past abject poverty. Hoards of people in real pain wandering around Hastings and Main. Security guards walking around Yaletown making sure the homeless don't bother the rich. Kids in front of every 24 hour store from North Van to Abbotsford begging for change. Billion dollar toll bridges. Boulevards full of shadowy roses. Kids on bikes looking for things to steal. Cops wasting time chasing people who've drank two beers and are driving. Murder and theft is fine, just don't drink and drive. As they say on Facebook and in more than a few songs, all that we are is how we treat each other. I'm here to testify, from top to bottom we are shit. So follow the example of the rich, the poor, the politician or cop, and steal anything not nailed down. Don't rip off your neighbor, rip off those who can afford it. Steal from those who will find it a minor irritation rather than a devastating loss. But screw all that. What to steal and what not to steal is a pointless exercise in justification. The things that you can't steal are the path to enlightenment. Anything not attached to acquiring money is where our salvation as a species lay, or more to the point, your own salvation as a person. Giving change to a drug addict? We must be doing them a favor not giving them money. That's enabling. However, but for the grace of God there goes any one of us. Or screw God, but for the grace of a drunken mistake there go any one of us. Thinking you're saving them by not giving money is judgement. You need to see with your own eyes the cause of a dopers pain before you deem it thusly from your lofty perch of wisdom. Giving them money for dope might be giving them a few moments peace in an otherwise horrible existence. Compassion and love is salvation. It's weird how any endeavor except acquisition appears to be the path to enlightenment, yet our focus is completely consumed with acquisition. Drug addicts, Chinese, politicians, homeless people, rich people, East Indians, old people, young people, disabled. Everybody you see as you walk down any street. The one thing we all have in common is we're all Canadians. People have fought and died for the privilege. When I was a kid I thought that meant we look out for each other. That's what I grew up believing because that's what I was told. As I look around with my own eyes I see that's not truth. So maybe stealing is bad? I have no idea. Okay, new rule: Anything you make over ten million a year goes to enlightenment. What a world that would be. You'd still be rich so quit whining. Sooo anyways. Don't write your songs and do the gig grind for money. Sure you have to do it for as much money as you can to stay afloat while you chase the dream, just remember music is not about money. It's about the size of the platform from which to gurgle from.
cosmictunes7