Tag: music

Deal with it, commies

Lefties are deeply upset to discover that their labor is of so little value that they can be literally replaced for nothing:

#LAWeekly fired their staff in favor of unpaid “contributors.” If you are an aspiring writer, and you submit to them, you are insuring it becomes impossible to make a living in this field.
– Jennifer Wright‏

As with music, just because you love something so much that you’d do it for free, doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to be paid for your hard work that makes other people money.
– Zack Stentz

See, the problem is supply and demand. The labor theory of value is false. There is no intrinsic value in one’s labor that merits automatic compensation. In cases such as this, the value of the channel greatly exceeds the value of the indistinguishable content flowing through it.

We have firsthand experience of this. We have a perfectly functioning store that sells – or as is increasingly the case, sold – ebooks that are superior to the ebooks that Amazon sells. Unlike Amazon, we don’t DRM the epubs sold there, whereas Amazon converts exactly the same epub into a proprietary format that can only be read on a Kindle device or application. The price is exactly the same.

And yet, we sell literally 100 times more books through Amazon because that is how people almost uniformly prefer to buy them. In fact, we have learned that we even do better giving Amazon exclusive distribution rights and permitting them to give books away to its KU subscribers and then compensate us for those who actually read them at about one-half the page rate that would be equivalent to a book sale than we do selling our books on our own store. More than three times better.

Of course, this preference for the dominant channel will sooner or later lead to the usual monopoly-related problems, which is why we will continue to maintain our digital storefront. But as long as the channel is more valuable than the content, content providers will be at risk by those willing to provide cheaper, or even free, substitutes. And the more that content is readily available, the less one is going to be compensated for it.

Steve Keen may have disproved the inescapability of the Law of Supply & Demand, but that doesn’t mean it is never relevant, only that it may not always be applicable to a given situation. But in this particular case, there is clearly more demand for free labor than there is for expensive labor. The writers and musicians affected would be wise to contemplate why their work is so easily replaced by free substitutes; the irony is that the free music available today is often superior in quality to that for which one must pay up front.

Case in point: Erock’s instrumental version of Let It Go is a joyful thing of beauty that surpasses Leo Moracchioli’s very good metal cover, and both of them are far more interesting than the Disney-published version available in the stores. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a better combination of technical pyrotechnics with staying completely within the melodic framework of a song. Note to aspiring young guitarists: if you want to make an unforgettable impression on the girls in your town, learn to play this.

Grammys So Black

Strangely, no one is complaining about the fact that Native American recording artists were AGAIN shut out at the Grammy Awards this year.

The Grammys in New York took a weird turn this morning as the nominations were a shocker: Ed Sheeran’s best selling “Divide” did not get an Album of the Year nod, neither did albums by Lady Gaga or Kesha. Instead, the Grammys went mostly for R&B and rap: Jay Z, Bruno Mars, Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino, who is really the actor Donald Glover. CBS must be plotzing. (I’m thrilled because I love the Childish Gambino album.)

Indeed, all the acts they want on the show– the white pop acts– have been relegated to the Pop Vocal category. That’s Gaga, Sheeran, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Kesha.

How the Grammys became the R&B/Hip Hop Awards will be the subject of much discussion at Black Rock today. Their traditional country nominee is absent, which for CBS is a disaster.  The only pop singer who scored an Album of the Year nod was Lorde, the 20 year New Zealand singer whose “Melodrama” album not much of a hit compared to her previous outing.

Kendrick Lamar, Glover, Bruno Mars and Jay Z also took up most of the Record and Song of the Year categories even though almost none of that music is not what is typically thought of for those categories. I’ll bet a lot of pop, rock and R&B stars are in shock right now. Ed Sheeran and his team must be having Xanax omelettes.

Again, for older skewing CBS and producer Ken Erlich, this will be a challenge. This is not the show they want. Having no country nominees in the main categories is heart-attack inducing.

I don’t see what the problem is. If the television advertisers are to be believed, white people like nothing better than advertisements featuring black people. Especially if those black people are implied to be having sex with white people.

One love! So brave. Thank you for this.

Let it go to Hell

As I’ve told my children, Let It Go is an expression of pure Crowleyian evil; it doesn’t even rise to the less evil version of W. Somerset Maugham, as there is no due regard for civic mores. Dalrock and his readers have noticed too:

Anonymous Reader notes that Let it go is well loved by modern Christians:

I have not yet encountered a single churchgoing person in my social circle who has a problem with “Frozen” the movie or with “Let it go” the song. Not one. That includes a couple of families that are part of leadership. Pointing out the “no rules” part is like describing the color “purple” to someone who is blind. They literally can’t see anything wrong – perhaps because “It’s DISNEY” or something. I’ve gotten blank stares from people over 40 but also parents under 30. It’s bizarre.

I don’t think the messenger makes the message palatable.  It is the message itself that is loved.  Women and girls learning how to throw off all rules and inhibition is core to our new morality.  The song isn’t loved as a guilty pleasure;  it is loved as a bold moral declaration.  Stop trying to be a good girl and learn to worship yourself is a moral exhortation.  As Vox pointed out in The devil that is Disney:

Disney is run by literal satanists preaching Alastair Crowley’s “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” to children. They are one of the primary engine’s of the West’s degeneracy and decline. It is not an accident that everything they touch, in every industry, turns into morally radioactive slime.

Children, including Christian children, understand this best of all.  They know what their parents worship, what their parents see as righteous (even if their parents fall short of living the ideal).  They know that Frozen and Let It Go is a morality tale that teaches them about our most sacred beliefs.

Perhaps the concept is a little easier to grasp when it isn’t a pretty cartoon character warbling, but Leo Moracchioli doing what is a more aesthetically honest version of the song. The only thing that would really improve upon the song is a video full of tattooed strippers on poles doing drugs that ends with snow falling upon a grave with a woman’s name and dates indicating that she died in her 20s.

Leo is now my favorite band. His covers are awesome. I love his version of Africa. And the six – SIX! – guitar solos in his Californication are simply epic. All six are great and fit perfectly within the song somehow, but Scallon’s solo on the eight-string is my favorite just for how he delivers it, expressionless, on an escalator. It reminded me a little of 808 State playing First Avenue with their backs to the crowd for the entire show. That transcended the very concept of cool.

One thing I will say for YouTube: it has totally transformed the way young guitarists learn to play their instruments. It is ASTONISHING how good they are.

UPDATE: Wow. That is all. Just wow.

The rise of the American nationalists

The fact that the Republican establishment cannot understand the emotional appeal of this new Kid Rock song, or the pride possessed by those they dismiss as “white trash”, is why the God-Emperor will likely be more powerful after 2018 than he is now. Both Kid Rock and Trump represent is a civic nationalist, traditional American heritage spirit that is nevertheless identity-aware, if not pure identity politics, and stands directly in the way of the social justice, diversity, inclusivity, and equality Left.
It’s Alt Lite, not Alt Right. It’s populist, neither intellectual nor ideological. And while it’s ultimately insufficient, it nevertheless represents a tremendous step forward for Americans, because, unlike the Diversity Left, which hates America, and the Establishment Right, which cares about nothing except GDP and the well-being of the donor class, the Trump nationalists love America.
I think Kid Rock will win a Senate seat if he actually runs, because on the basis of this video alone, you can see that his rhetoric is powerful and his political instincts are formidable. Girls, guns, motor vehicles and beer is about as American as it gets, while the uncharacteristic absence of rebel flags and the inclusion of black rednecks is almost certainly significant given the demographics of Michigan. It’s not a bad song either.

Best. Timeline. Ever.

I suddenly have an image of the God-Emperor and his new Voice raising kitsune while rocking out to Akatsuki in the Oval Office. Glorious doesn’t even begin to describe it.

From Dusk Till Dawn

First time for that song live. Quasi-live, anyhow. I was wondering how they were ever going to perform it when it didn’t appear in either Tokyo Dome set, but a backing digital track was really the only way that made sense given all the heavy processing involved. This is what the song actually sounds like. Anyhow, if you’re in Mountain View, you may be able to catch them tonight at the Shoreline Ampitheatre. In my experience, it’s a concert well worth seeing, even in these smaller venues.

Then again, one of my favorite moments from the Tokyo Dome shows is the first time the girls come down to the stage from the giant tower on the opening Red Night, see that there are 55,000 rabid fans surrounding them, and Yui and Su exchange a great “can you believe this?” look.

The wind blows in my empty wallet

Even if you never go to Japan, you have to love the fact that it exists. Where else would you find a kawaii metal song about low wage rates.

OH SWEET FOX GOD! It only gets better.

Isn’t this a renge spoon for ramen?
YOU CAN SCOOP UP THINGS WITH IT!
What else besides ramen can you scoop?
YOU CAN SCOOP UP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Because the world is a bowl of chaos, right?