Mowl
Member
Watching Anthony Kiedis morph into Iggy Pop is trending for sure.
The entire international business model these days is reflected in the likes of say Ed Sheeran having a global audience. Billions of people. He is, in effect, a street busker lifted of the high streets and dumped onto the top of the music shite mountain, along with Taylor Swift (I couldn't name even one of her songs for you - Ed Sheeran's too) and watching the bubblegum pop acts strutting on catwalks (there's a huge irony there I doubt any of them actually get) bridging the gap between kid's music and 'adult' music with the distinct differences we once took for granted now faded away and a new voice of 'music for everyone' has taken over both television and radio.
People don't want pop songs, they want the story behind it, the filth, the sleaze, the barely contained pornography of 'Wrecking Ball' type material delivered by girls mimicking Madonna of forty years ago, masturbating on-stage, using mics as dildos, men as women, women as men - that fat fucker (what's his name? He's all over the media at the moment - edit: Sam Smith, I had to look it up) dressed in lingerie and heels, a fat arse and pig-ugly face - and this is supposed to be 'sexy'? This is what's getting the kids going? Jesus fuck, it turns my stomach just looking at the bloke. He looks like the stereotype just out of the closet and proud of it gay clown-show tinged with a sort of Val Martin element of narcissism. I couldn't name one of Smith's songs to save my life. I saw a few photos, that was more than enough thanks.
There's fuck all going on the commercial vein right now bar the LGBTQXYZ crowd stealing the stage to show off their mangled new body parts. It has fuck al to do with music either - it's all about controversy. Of course, older people who remember the punk era said the same back then, but they were wrong: this wasn't a fad - this was a tsunami of change, of destroying the dinosaurs once and for all, and the same is likely true of today. Who knows how it's going to be in ten or twenty years time, but it won't be anything like we expect it. Looking back today to the 80s, the 90s, the noughties? I can't recall any mass movement outside of the clubbing scene throughout those three decades. One has to move with the times (hence PAMF having a variety of alternate line-ups for a variety of different requirements) and find your place in the scene going forward. You can't rest on your laurels these days. You have to keep at it all the time to be relevant. We decided it made more sense to fill every gap we possibly could to get paid and keep the actual music we were making going, and having an audience to sell it to. But in reality, for us there was more money in performances than selling material. Spot the crack in the scene and fill it - like the drummers we did everywhere from the POD to the OMMC to Whelan's, Vicar Street, the National stadium, etc. Get paid for those but play other 'real' shows based on ticket sales and see the difference in income over say six months to a year. Fuck that. It's just not worth breaking your heart over.
But in general what we have to look forward to is an even more diluted form of 'music' designed to shock and capture the imagination in ways we haven't seen before. Ask yourself: how long will it take for hard-core porn to sidle into bed with pure pop? For the everyday market? Madonna did it as far back as the 80s and 90s, and the French classic 'je t'aime moi non plus' came out in the sixties! For fuck's sake - think about that? 1967? A sweat and tobacco-stinking French Marlboro man and his fragile little lady getting it on for the mic?
The problem is that we live in an age where all the great ideas have already been dreamed up, later rehashed, tossed overboard, years pass, they become hip and fashionable again. Imagine a world where pure and unstructured jazz was the single most popular music going? Impossible. Could never happen. Because people don't want to have t think about what they're hearing, to try to assimilate it, appreciate it, even understand it. No, they want thirty second soundbites with all the flashing lights and stretch limousines carrying some anorexic American teenie idol dressed in teddy-bear ears and crotch-less panties. Whores, basically. Loose women in the old sense. But still - at least the girls are having a good time breaking the rules for a change. It used to be Keith Moon throwing tellies out of hotel windows and trashing the place. Now it's girls with shaved pussies sitting spread-eagled on grand pianos with fifteen inch heels on. The blokes? In kinky underwear? Jesus - it really does make me want to puke, actual puke, and lots of it. It's utterly fucking revolting looking at them.
So what's coming next?
It'll be no small thing, that's for sure. I'd imagine there are A&R heads (remember them?) looking out right now for the next big thing. Chequebooks and ink pens at the ready. Checking everywhere from 'Jugs' magazine to Porn Hub trailers and credits. The model is broken, even the way it's broadcast is dead. What's the point of watching Mylie Cyrus on telly? You need to be there, to smell the morning dew on her pubis, to smell her sweat and maybe grab a pair of knickers when she takes them off and flings them into the front rows. Telly, as a music medium - is dead. Videos don't cut it these days. There is no MTV, that too was diluted and left to die three decades ago. There is no music 'business' as such these days. Signing up a band, giving them studio time to get their shit together. Teach them how to dance. How to dress. How to speak (think any interview with Boyzone/B'witched?) Release an album, throw in four or six videos, hype the fuck out of it, and see what happens.
Nothing will - that game's over.
It's been done to death.
It's not about the music at all - it's about capitalizing on the latest trend. Being the first in there to gouge out the cash and run with it. There are few role models for boys - but masses of them for girls. Do Irish kids really want to be like Sam fucking Smith? Look like that? Dress like that? Undress like that?? Fuck no. But the girlies? they've had a bar set for them that's so high they likely view as we did in our time: how does this business work and how do I make it to the top? Or even the middle? How do I get an audience? How do I sell records?
It's got fuck all to do with music or musicians - it's production, auto tune, songs that write themselves as soon as you power up and play the demo on the latest keyboard from Casio, crappy samey dross ear-candy bollocks nothing-shit. Utterly forgettable. Worthless crap.
Anyone going into the business these days is exposed to the same rip-off culture the music business was built on.
Except today's music is entirely disposable.
There's a reason why THIS changed everything:
