Musical Money

I love John Mayer. He is the one gossip column, hopelessly self centered performing artist I just can't help swooning over.

I was never one of those connoisseurs of obscure and eclectic music. I found music I liked and I listened to it, pretentiousness aside. When smaller acts I had taken a fancy to found a way to make it big, I harbored them no ill will. That was the dream right? To become rock stars. How can you deny someone their dream? I didn't accuse anyone of selling out and trading down. I was a very forgiving, steadfast fan. But I have a feeling times, times are a-changin'.

Ever since watching the in class video on the music industry, I get this gut wrenching feeling every time I turn on the radio. Listening to a successful and independent artist like Annie Difranco, a woman who could have completely become the next hit female artist, talk about her absolute refusal to play into the machine made me want to simultaneously cheer and cry.

I can't help it. I think the music biz is a farce and I think everyone participates in it has to shoulder some of the blame. That includes me, for purchasing CD's and downloading music. That includes radio stations and televisions stations for monopolizing our music exposure. Of course that means the record companies and the massive media oligopolies and monopolies. But it also means all the mainstream artists, who perpetuate the notion that it is ok to subject musicians to the power of the almighty dollar. Ugh.

And I am not completely naive. I know art has been manipulated, forever, probably since the beginning of time, by money. Money made Michelangelo and Leonard Da Vinci famous. Some of the earliest philosophers and writers had time to spare and inherited cash to burn. But I love to believe that we have come so far, that we could accomplish something so much more, so much bigger and better. Instead we just buy into the same dog eat dog, money makes the world go round kind of status quo. Our methods are smoother and are products are shinier, but in the end we are just as bad as the unappreciative public that made Van Gogh take his own life.

We kill creativity. It's disgusting.