The Vast Vortex - Expanded

Yesterday, I wrote about the Vast Vortex of Suckitude that has engulfed Hollywood. It was an oversight on my part not to have included the music industry. That oversight is now being corrected.

Last night, Mister Priapus and I, along with some other friends, went to a midnight viewing of Joss Whedon's Serenity. The movie theater we went to has speakers scattered around the parking lot so that moviegoers can listen to music as they waited outside. In this case, these speakers were emanating some angsty, whiny, Prozac-popping punk, whose balls had apparently either not yet dropped or had been removed in some horrific fashion, singing a song I'd never heard before...or so I thought. After a few seconds, some of the lyrics began to sound familiar. You could have heard the collective screaming of "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" as we recognized the song.

This whiny, angsty punk was singing an emo version of the Beastie Boys' "You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party!"

The pain of that moment was indescribable.

For several years, I've felt that the modern-day music industry is nothing more than cookie-cutter crap. It all sounds the same to me. This belief is cross-genre.

Elton John had this to say about modern musicians:

Nowadays, record companies want the quick buck from the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Travis Miscia, S Club Seven, Steps. They've always been around, I'm not knocking the music perhaps, but it's like packets of cereal. There are too many of them, too many of them are just mediocre. And I think it damages real people's chance, real talent, of getting airplay. It's just fodder.

Hank Williams III agrees. From his song "Dick in Dixie":

Well we're losing all the outlaws
that had to stand their ground
and they're being replaced by these kids
from a manufactured town
And they don't have no idea
about sorrow and woe
'Cause they're all just too damn busy
kissin' ass on Music Row

Simply put, the music industry is contributing to the Vast Vortex of Suckitude by refusing to put out quality music.

This, of course, leads right into the music industry's jihad against people who download music off the internet. The RIAA states that "internet music piracy" is cutting into their profits. However, if you look at the numbers, and compare the amount of music the RIAA is losing, and the amount of money being made by up-and-coming idependent music labels, such as Rick Rubin's American Records, you'd see that the amounts are nearly identical.

The reason for this is simple: RIAA is putting out CDs with one or two good songs buried amidst loads of crap, while the indedpendent labels are putting out CDs with a better quality of product. In addition, many of the independent labels support the downloading of music because it gets their product out to the ears of the masses; it allows them to compete with the RIAA's near-monopoly of the music industry.

It is my hope that the independent labels can break the back of the RIAA, and return some semblence of quality to the music industry, lest we be subject to more travesties like the "You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party" remake mentioned above.