Music Matters - part 2

Back finally for another post, which was pressured by Cassie. All about music again. More about what I was talking to Nick about last night - about how music has just become an industry and less of an art.

I mean, look at it. Music that is solely produced for the masses, and is only made to move units and make money. It's become an industry similar to, say, steel. Where it's created solely to make profit.

I hate to sound like that guy that's like "It used to be about the music man", but it is, music is slowly losing it's soul in all areas.

Such as why I have a stance again downloading music - both legally through iTunes and asorted digital stores, or illegaly, like Limewire. It just seems to be cheapening the whole experience for me. I don't care if you pirate music, other than if you're a jerk about it and go boast about how many albums you downloaded last night. And plus, if you hunt around, you're likely to find a physical copy of the CD for less than what it is online. It's not that hard.

Tony Brummel, who founded Victory Records, and, according to Joel, is a jerk to his artists, has the same idea that I have:

"...it (iTunes) makes music disposable. It makes it a faceless impulse item. It steals its soul"

"I absolutely believe that allowing people to cherry-pick the tracks they want from each album cannibalises full-length album sales and is ultimately detrimental to the artists who created the music..."

And also in Showbread's song Stabbing Art To Death, describes pretty much how music has become something that is made not to be art, like almost virtually opposite to this. Showbread tends to say music is dead, seeing that their symbol is two quavers with a circle and slash through it, like a No Smoking sign, are claiming that they'll only create noise with music destroyed.

The song's pretty much about how music has been ruined for corporate gain, and how art is in ourselves, not in the world that deceives us so much.

But the lyrics to the song just sum up what I feel perfectly, and is the perfect way to close this post.

Art is not the world, art is in our heart

And so I am the prince of sounds that make ears ring
my princess kiss me with your sweet lips and lo,
my heart will sing if art is in yourself,
or in a class at school if art is ego and selfishness,
and at the mercy of primitive tools we sing sweet good-byes in screams and screeches
and bury these knives in your heart
no paintings or poems to let you live on
we've seen the last of art as servants and lovers
we wash your feet and cry out into the dark the noise, the beauty,
the love you bring me stabs these knives right into art

art is not the world,
art is in our hearts

Stab art to death...

Music Matters

In music the other, while discussing The Devil Wears Prada, and how one of their songs includes the line "don't be ashamed of your faith" and how that line apparently "ruined the song" because it has a religious agenda behind it.

Wait a sec, these are the kids that listen to songs like this and this. Hmm. Too blind to realise that they themselves are literally being spoon-fed Suicide Silence's own atheistic agenda?

This really annoys me that somehow it's ok for you to listen to someone telling you an entire album that God is dead, but when you listen to an album that has maybe one mention of Christ and it's deemed "too preachy".

Then another guy says "tell them about that shirt we saw", which apparently said "What the f**k is up with Christian Hardcore". What? So telling you there is no God or that life is worth nothing is ok, but telling you there is hope is not? I really hope people start to realise this depressing trend in music and reject it for more hopeful tunes.

Who are you?

Have you ever stopped to think about who you are? Like, what made you who you are today?

I seriously think about how if I never met someone how different I would be. Like as I mentioned in a previous post, how I probably would be a gamer today without Josh, or how I would never be into the music I am today without Stuart, and vice versa (most recently for Stuart). It seriously does my head to think if I'd never met these vital people, never changed churches to my current one agos ago, didn't choose to go to my high school I go to today, I wouldn't be who I am.

It's unthinkable of who you might be without certain things happening, and it makes you think how amazing it is that somehow you made these choices, met these people, and how crazy it is that these happened, how huge the consequences of something that seems so small at the time.

I guess I'm happy that I am who I am, and happy with the people who have made me, and the who I have, in turn, made too. It always surprises me when I realise that I have actually impacted others lives. Maybe you should stop and think about it one day too. Hopefully it makes you feel loved.

The Doctor

Do you ever get that feeling when coming out of anything medical related that you should of said something else to one of their questions? Like, you got out of the doctors, and then think out what the doctor asked you, and you think about your answers, then are like "AWWW NAWWW" when you realise you probably should of said something?

I got it just then when I got out of the doctor's. I coughed a bit, and then remembered how he asked me if I had a cough, and then I thought "AWWW NAWWW".

Ah well, too late. Hindsight is 20/20. And there were all these Swine Flu alerts everywhere as well.

Like Gordon Freeman, minus the sweet goatee...

Yeah, I lost my voice yesterday, on my birthday of all days. Yeah, it got worse throughout the day, until finally at night I really couldn't say anything at all unless I pushed word out through my diaphragm. Yeah.

So i thought, while also thinking about one of my heroes, Gordon Freeman, about how easy it would be to be a mute. I mean, like how you would never say anything you didn't mean, or swear, or put anyone down with your mouth.

But then I also thought about how much it would suck not to be able to talk at all. To never express yourself, or use the phone, or anything really at all that require communication.

James 3:9-12

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

The mouth is both a dangerous tool and an amazing tool, yet we continue to abuse it, most of the time saying things we don't mean, or are careless with what we say. We really do need to try and control our mouths, no mater how hard it is, and try not to be the small spark that sets the great forest on fire.