Working on a blog piece for a LA cultural blog using music as a backdrop for a discussion on the effects of automation on various facets of human life.
I was going to do it with a sci fi movie but too much is at stake now. something real must be said. This will be edited and added to continually until the project is complete.
automation/technology
music & entertainment:
collapse of the old model vs. new model, new opportunity but oversaturated, attention spans from constantly being connected in, the actual music itself analog vs digital. have a sample from the 50's for an advert for vinyl or record player, something discussing analog sound in early seasons of Mad Men era advertising. Radio vs Satellite vs Napster vs iTunes vs Torrents vs Spotify/Rdio vs Pandora- all of that kills an concept of a DJ except sattelite radio stations like Sirius XMU where farily credible bloggers do radio shows presenting music they have discovered. People are filtered into pseudo stations where music is pumped into their brains, and this kills the adventure spirit of DISCOVERING something special. Mulling over Amazon Marketplace 10 years ago, I would spend days downloading music suggested by comments and the intelligence of that emergent property. This process was a bit cumbersome, but when i found that CD or album that blew my mind like the first TV on the Radio record or DJ Shadow's Endtroducing. I wasn't talking to anyone into these types of groups, but i researched it bc i loved it, i loved challenging music taking things to different levels. Instrumentals that aren't EDM DJ's but song writing like Burial or post rock era stuff like God Speed You Black Emperor or Explosions in the Sky. All these were areas I knew nothing about. I wasn't some scenester tapped into things. But there are interesting songs everywhere. Technology facilitated discovery like enzymes catalyzing reactions to create something incredible. This is so complex, bc the real dilemma is what are the limits for all of this? When we rech a limit, how do you augment a reality when people more and more are living inside their own reality free from challenging ideas to internal dogma.
Technology has made music easier to make but diminished the standards for quality. mp3's are a soul killer, compression is a soul killer for the spirits haunting the rooms of the teenage angst ridden. This is sad but vinyl sales are up? So maybe people are realizing.
As a musician, the manner in which I used to make music was daunting, if not NIL. I didnt have equipment or access to it. Now i make my own music constantly, so my happiness has increased. It is amazing what you can do when you want it. For my brother and I, we have been writing and working in a relationship for 15 years now. We went from no technology, a crappy Shure mic, just some basic wavefile programs, and we would then layer tracks OVER each other when recording, not separate. The ramification being that once you made a track, if you left it there, you could not change it again. This makes music sometimes sound like moving your head back and forth under water, just cluttered and cloudy. We had nothing, no money to do it. But we did it for 6 years. Now, we are making high quality sound, sending each other our project files with all of our files arranged over Dropbox. It's amazing what you can do and what we AREN'T doing. The potentiality to do more evades my consciousness at such a level, that its overwhelming.
Record companies don't matter but buy you an audience if you want your music heard. Our ideas now are to create it on our own and have a company distribute it. A proper record does cost $30-40,000 minimally to do it right. My brother and another member both are engineers, so mixing and mastering are handled. That would theoretically make it easier for an opportunity. That's the idea. Working with credible artists to get noticed, invest in the music, then create a platform to speak to an already engaged audience. Use You Tube and various other services, make compelling visuals, something for notoriety, Twitter, facebook, a web presence. Record companies give you access to these avenues that doing DIY can be tough when in a full responsible life with other careers and families. Yet, one can be DIY and suddenly take over the world, the potential is there, but you have to have something to say. In my mind, if I am rejected, I had nothing to say. I dream of a future where someone stumbles upon something of my work like a net-like Indiana Jones moving through webspace mining out interesting music and poems and stories and videos of a culture preserved in virtual amber. Words unintelligible 500 years from now, but the spirit moves thru time. That is all I can hope for as a contribution. We need to invade a planet with a 48 hour day, bc I need that much time to do all the things i want to do.
So the process for discovering music has changed, the pay structure and investment by companies in artosts has changed, the attention spans have all changed, the artist has surely changed, how we make music has changed.
jobs and new jobs after collapse:
opening of part 1- it will be about automation and corporate policies- opening will take every talking head- Rush, Rachel Maddow, Romney, Obama, Palin, Pelosi, etc and mix them into one cacophony at the beginning- it stops abruptly and it leads into one quote about the changing economic conditions and the American workers dismantling but also evolution.
less money, more efficiency, realizing we can still make money without people. Without collateral and credit, American multinational companies were able to make record profits. No need to hire, let's automate certain skills and keep the bottom line down.
The stock market is automated and can react at speeds that too many times inflate or erase profits for companies and those regular working folk investing but not knowing its all rigged and there's a way to make it your big pay day. That's someone's job, and I wish it was mine when i just think about how much easier shit would be if I was using my talents in a way that translates to a huge pay day. That's always the dream, but sometimes it being a dream means you don't believe it attainable. That's a Catholic guilt type of thing. I feel bad about everything, and don't feel confident enough to grab it all by the balls and tell it to shove off already. I got this. I wish but my hunger level for profits and all that just don't resonate at a feverish pitch. I'm easy going. I want comfort, and what I need is very basic. I watched my family invest and focus on profit generating progeny and extreme self reliance. I sort of floated through all that bc it was so obviously meaningless and irrelevant when compared to the power of the mind to dream and love and share the human experience. I was raised in Dallas, TX. Ronald Reagan stared at me every time I passed my grandfather's office decorated with WWII memorabilia and medals and George W. Bush signed photo's thanking him for his support. To claw out of the jaws of conservatism was more of recognition of who I was all the time but not confident enough to embrace until my mid-20's.
Companies are human. They will fuck you over to make a buck.- FUCK- take this line and slow it down and make it all deep and monstrous- use it on TNGHT track
And no matter how long you drink their corporate kool aid, once you become a nuisance or expendable, they must do what indifference does and get rid of you like a psychopath killing his first animal at the age of 10.
My dad had 25 years under his belt and was fucked by his company. I don't intend to do the same, but I have to feed my family, so means to an end. I just don't like the taste of Kool Aid, never did and never will.
The ability of firms and banks to destroy people's lives on such a global scale and have only a handful of arrests is mind boggling. It's been said so much better than I could but I'm channeling Matt Taibbi- ooh- use samples from his interviews for sampling on Dub it??
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