Open Letter to the Music Industry
Posted on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 9:11 am
Dear Music Industry,
I recently purchased a CD: Blue October – Foiled. The album is, unfortunately, not very good. I only purchased it because I thoroughly enjoyed the band’s current single, “Hate Me,” which I assumed to be representative of the rest of the album’s contents. Unfortunately, it’s not. There are about two songs on the album, besides the single, which I don’t utterly detest outright. The rest of it sounds very much like Phil Collins. And if I’d wanted to hear Phil Collins, I would have bought a Phil Collins record. Sorry, Blue October, that’s just the way I feel. Don’t take it personally. I’m glad the album was on sale and I only paid $9 for it. $3 per song that doesn’t make me want to vomit seems reasonable. In retrospect, I should have probably purchased only the single from iTunes, and it only would have cost me $0.99. Hindsight’s 20/20.
Primarily, however, I take issue not with the CD, but with the packaging.
Music Industry, perhaps you should consider adding the “FBI Anti-Piracy Warning” to just a few more places around future CD packages. The five (if I recall correctly) places it appeared on the aforementioned CD are perhaps not enough to deter the casual sharing that you seem to be so concerned with. After all, there could still be a few retarded midgets – ahem; mentally challenged little people – who are unable to read and comprehend the warnings. And if they don’t understand the severity of those warnings, how ever will they know not to make “unauthorized copies” of the CD? And let’s not even get started on the actual pirates who are making a healthy living selling poor-quality burned copies of the latest CD to come out of American Idol’s pair-of-tits-with-a-voice factory for $2 each on street corners in Malaysia. They don’t matter at all. The ones who really matter are the grandmothers, the 12 year old girls, the young single mothers on welfare, and the family that doesn’t even own a computer.
In fact, you could probably dispense with any and all album art and make the entire CD insert into one gigantic FBI warning. Simply put the name of the band and the album in 6pt font in an inconspicuous spot – the bottom right corner, for instance – so as not to distract people from the true intent of the CD insert: warning them that sharing some of their favorite music with their friends is considered an act of terrorism and is punishable by death. The benefit of doing this includes not only getting your anti-piracy message out to even those a couple meat patties short of a full double cheeseburger, but also it could increase total album sales. By having the name of the artist and album so small, and by having the cover of every CD nearly identical, it’s quite possible that people will purchase the wrong CD and have to make another trip to the store to purchase the correct one. Now you’ve sold two albums instead of just one. It’s a win-win situation!
Also, in order to avoid being labelled as discriminatory, you should probably take blind people into account. They’re blind, so they can’t see your monstrous FBI warning, no matter how big and annoying you make it. To solve this, consider adding a verbal warning as the first track on every CD you sell. I’m sure Lars Ulrich would be more than willing to record this verbal warning for you. Actually, if you play your cards right, you could even have each band that releases a CD record their own warning. They could even set it to music. This way, you might be able to trick people into believing that the FBI warning is actually part of the entertainment experience. If the band really only cares about their music, they probably will not agree to do this. But any band that’s in it for the money will be excited for the opportunity to serve their robot overlords. Of course, this also presents a way for you to thin out your herds, so to speak, as any band that refuses to record their FBI warning obviously only cares about the music itself, and as such is incompatible with your views and goals, Music Industry. This should give you just cause for tearing up their zillion dollar contract and telling them to go flip burgers.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, Music Industry. I’m only trying to offer helpful suggestions. Seriously.
Sincerely,
Everybody who’s not completely batshit insane.
5 Comments
Co&Ca pics
Posted on Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 6:51 pm
See the previous post for more about the concert. But here’s the pics. The first 5 are Coheed & Cambria, the last 2 are Avenged Sevenfold. Sorry for the lack of detail, but that’s the problem with a VGA camera phone. If you look close in the middle of the first few, you can see Claudio’s massive hair.
1 Comment
Mmmm, Co&Ca goodness.
Posted on at 12:08 pm
Yay and pancakes. Totally went to the Coheed & Cambria show last night, and it rocked my nards off. Literally. I have no nards anymore, because they were so thoroughly rocked off. You have no idea.
I’m sure Ralphie will get on here and say something like “Coheed and Cambria sucks” because they’re not Tool or NIN or one of the, oh, three other bands that fit into his incredibly narrow definition of good music. And to that I say: lick my chode. By the way, Ralphie, if you don’t already, you really should check out the Your Band Sucks column on SA. I think you and Dr. Thorpe would get along swimmingly.
Anyway, enough with placating the naysayers.
The concert was awesome. Some local band I’d never heard of, Glass Intrepid, opened (instead of Head Automatica, which was scheduled to open but apparently never showed up). They were pretty good, and they kept talking about Chuck Norris, which is always good for a grin. Because, as we all know, the chief export of Chuck Norris is PAIN!
Then Co&Ca came out and did their set. Their stage setup was pretty sweet. The guillotine came out and opened its wings up at the end, which was cool. And they played my three favorite songs – Everything Evil, The Crowing and Welcome Home – which was just gravy. Of course, Claudio’s hair was entertaining to watch. The only downside to the concert was the asian kid sitting next to us who quite literally smelled like ass. Oh, and the hefty girl who insisted on providing us with her very own interpretive dance routine for every single song.
Avenged Sevenfold was next. I don’t like them as much. Their show was alright, but the stage setup really reminded me of videos I’ve seen of KISS concerts back in the 70s. Kinda freaky.
Anyway, I took a bunch of pics on my RAZR (forgot to bring the real camera, and I think they prolly would have confiscated it anyway if I had brought it). They’re a little sharper than the ones of the Evans Blue concert, but we’re pretty far away so it’s still hard to make out much detail. I’ll get those up eventually, as soon as I can get Mobile Phone Tools working properly so I can pull them off my phone. But in lieu of actual pictures, I have taken the liberty of drawing Claudio in Photoshop (in classic Mr. Poopie! style). So I’ll post that for now. Pictures will prolly be posted later.
3 Comments
Congress shall make no law…
Posted on Friday, April 14, 2006 at 10:13 am
It seems as if the 4 big TV networks may just have a sack after all. Because they’re actually challenging the FCC in reference to a few semi-recent rulings made by the omnipresent media watchdog that lately exists only to piss on the First Amendment.
In reading the article, it seems that the networks are not directly challenging the authority of the FCC in general (which they should be doing), but rather challenging a few select rulings due to their inconsistency with precedent. So, while they’re not doing all they could be doing in my opinion, the important thing is the solidarity of the group. Fox, ABC, and CBS all have a beef with the FCC, so they’re pissed with good reason. NBC, though, isn’t even challenging any specific rulings, it’s just in for the hell of it – which gives me a newfound respect for NBC. They don’t really even have a reason to be there, they’re just in it for moral support for the other three networks. I’ll totally… um… briefly consider watching Law & Order instead of CSI:NY now.
The quote at the bottom of the article, though, makes me wonder if they won’t eventually take this whole thing a little further…
The networks and affiliates Friday said they objected to the “growing government control over what viewers should and shouldn’t see on television.”
The group said parents already have the ability to block certain programs by using the V-chip and various other parental controls.
AMEN BROTHA!!! PREACH ON!!!!!
The FCC, to me, is a worthless pseudo-solution to lazy parenting. If you’re really that concerned about your kids hearing someone say “shit” on TV, then fucking turn it off! The inherent flaw, it seems, is that it amounts to enforcement after the fact. By the time it can punish a network for some assumed grievance, the damage (if any) has already been done. Your kids are already scarred, they’re never going to get horrid visions of Janet Jackson’s breastal region out of their fragile little minds. So what’s the point? Even that one was an accident, so it can be assumed that any concerned parent didn’t see it coming in time to shut the tube off. But one of the instances mentioned in the article regarded an episode of NYPD Blue. Let’s think about this for a second. You’re a parent, a nice responsible adult. You’ve seen NYPD Blue a few times, you know what it’s about. Don’t you think that, perhaps, you should tell your kids to go in the other room and watch The Wiggles or something? The fact that you allowed your child to see the episode in the first place, such that you could pursue an imagined valid grievance against the network, speaks more to me about your parenting skills (read: complete lack thereof) than anything else.
Seriously.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the government stopped allowing a few prudes in suits to dictate morality to the nation? Maybe with the combined might of the entirety of worthwhile primetime TV, someone will realize that the system is broken. Here’s hoping.
3 Comments
Cop Drama: City Name – PART DEUX!!!!
Posted on Wednesday, April 5, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Very shortly after I moved over to WordPress and the whole 7et Reset thing (in fact, it was my fourth post), you may remember a post entitled “Cop Drama: City Name” wherein I discussed the slew of cop dramas currently gracing the airwaves. There’ve been a few more new spins to the genre lately, so I decided to go back and issue an update. This post is one half update to shows featured in the previous post, one half addition of new shows, and one half general purpose asskickery. Yes, I know that’s three halves. But I don’t care. I was never good at math anyway.
CSI: [Las Vegas is implied, but not explicitly in the title]
Gimmick: Hard-boiled cops solving crimes with forensic science.
Review: Grissom can totally have my babies. This show is the whole reason I started liking cop dramas in the first place. You’ve got a lot of CGI scenes of zooming ultra-close-up into random objects and random wounds in random bodies. Also, it’s got a lot of poorly-conceived use of computers that concentrate more on the dramatic element than how a real-life application would function. Seriously, if I was a CSI and I had to sit and listen to a computer beep forty times a second while it searched through fingerprint databases for hours on end, I’d probably shoot myself in the fucking head. But still… Grissom can totally have my babies.
Airs: Thursdays at 8pm (central time, as are all other time references from here on out) on CBS
Rating: eleventy-billion out of ten.
CSI: Miami
Gimmick: See above, with the addition of about a half a million dollars worth of Hummers.
Review: I don’t like this one nearly as much as the original. The acting isn’t nearly as good, and they concentrate more on showing off their Hummers and their ultra-modern building architecture than on actually solving crime. Plus, every single time David Caruso opens his mouth, it’s like he’s competing for the title of “Most Dramatic Person In The History Of Existence.” Seriously, he could make taking a dump dramatic. And also, every one of his lines could probably be immediately suffixed by “you son of a bitch” with no loss of coherence. (I think I mentioned this once before, but it bears repeating.)
Airs: Mondays at 9pm on CBS
Rating: 3/10
CSI: New York
Gimmick: Yeah.
Review: Better than Miami, worse than Las Vegas.
Airs: Wednesdays at 9pm on CBS.
Rating: 5/10
NCIS
Gimmick: It’s pretty much like CSI, but with NAVY COPS rather than… um… regular cops. Yeah.
Review: I would like to issue a retraction for the statement I made last April. I like this show now. It’s got humor, it’s got romance, it’s got dead bodies, and it’s got a decently good looking goth chick doing their ballistics and other various lab work. What more can you ask for? One thing I would say, though, is that they really need to drop the whole “Ziva said some random American catch-phrase wrong and someone had to correct her” thing. The first few episodes after she showed up, it was alright, because she was new and she was from Israel or whatever. But they still do it like six times an episode, and it’s really just not all that funny anymore.
Airs: Tuesdays at 7pm on CBS
Rating: 9/10
Numb3rs
Gimmick: Hard-boiled cops solving crimes with, well, numbers.
Review: Another retraction. I don’t like this one nearly as much anymore. It’s alright, but as my wife is fond of saying every time it comes on, “A plus B minus the square root of Q equals 42 and that means he’s the murderer” just doesn’t seem very plausible.
Airs: Fridays at 9pm on CBS
Rating: 5/10
Criminal Minds
Gimmick: Hard-boiled cops solving crimes with the David Berkowitz’s psychological profile.
Review: I like this one a lot better than Numb3rs, but its premise again seems a little stretched. I mean, yeah, I’m sure there’s a certain amount of profiling that could probably be used for a little bit of prediction. But I still think it would take a lot more active detective work than profiling reference to solve real crimes. Plus, they continually refer to the killer as “The Unsub,” which I’m sure is for dramatic purpose and all, but it’s kind of annoying.
Airs: Wednesdays at 8pm on CBS
Rating: 7/10
Bones
Gimmick: Hard-boiled cops solving crimes with forensic anthropology.
Review: I have never actually seen an episode of this show, so I may not be qualified to review it. But judging solely from the commercials, I think its gimmick is probably worse than the preceding two shows combined. Bones, really? I’m sure they’re good and all, but yet again, actual detective work is key.
Airs: I have no idea, but it’s on FOX. I just figured I needed to include a non-CBS show somewhere in here.
Rating: 0/10, because I don’t care.
Law & Order
Gimmick: Hard-boiled cops solving crimes with ACTUAL DETECTIVE WORK!!! Amazing. Also, a lot of courtroom stuff.
Review: There’s like fourteen different spin-offs of this show, and they’re all only marginally different from the original. But hey, at least they’re all primarily about real detective work. Except Trial By Jury, which is about a little bit of detective work but mostly about courtroom stuff. And I really hate the main guy from Criminal Intent, because he always acts so fucking smug and annoying that I really just want to kick him in the head. Like his shit smells any better than everyone else’s. Really now.
Airs: In syndication, it runs pretty much constantly if you know the correct sequence of cable channels to scroll through. First run shows air… well… pretty much constantly on NBC.
Rating: Um, I dunno. Pick a number between 1 and… oh… 7 or so. Then apply that number to your choice of L&O spin-offs.
Alright, that’s all for this edition of Cop Drama: City Name. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. You go away now. I’ve gotta go catch the new South Park.
