Remember When Music Had A Dick?

jimi_hendrix Please allow me to begin by saying this: I am NOT a musical elitist. Unlike many of my contemporaries I believe that plenty of good music was recorded after 1976.

With that being said, does anyone remember when music had a dick? And I mean dick as pure metaphor here. Because there used to be an unwritten rule that people who wanted to record a song had to of been through some serious shit. Jimi Hendrix wrote:

Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand
Hey Joe, i said where you goin’ with that gun in your hand, oh
I’m goin’ down to shoot my old lady
You know i caught her messin’ ’round with another man

These days we mostly have prepubescent fucks who have been raised since birth to become mainstream “artists” (and I use the term “artist” very fucking loosely when talking about these shit stains). The Jonas Brothers? Hannah Montana? High School Musical? When did 8 year old girls start going through serious shit? Hannah Montana sang, “If I’m not doing too well, why be so hard on myself?”

WHY?! To get better, that’s fucking why. This is why I say that music needs to have a dick. Because it takes puberty and a level of maturity to make music that is worth listening to. These Disney Channel drones are kids writing music for kids. I understand that. But when High School Musical hits #1 on the Billboard Charts I see something wrong. How many prepubescent Americans are there? Are the parents listening to this shit to? Or are teenage boys buying this too just to jack off to the cover art of Vanessa Hudgens in her school girl outfit? Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that. The popularity of this dickless music leads me to believe that either there are too many kids in America, or that Americans themselves are going through retro-puberty. They are actually regressing back to a prepubescent state. That’s fucked up.

What’s my point? People are… fucking stupid. They want to shield themselves from thought provoking artists because hey, ignorance is bliss. If I don’t acknowledge the problems in the world then they can’t affect me. Much like children do when they shield their eyes from something bad and repeat, “I’m invisible, I’m invisible”, like a mini-Buddhist mantra.

I’m OK with the world being fucked up. Like my friend Martha Stewart says, “It’s a good thing.” Who wants safe, sterile perfection? Not me. Not anyone with a damn brain. We are condemned to be free, and I love every minute of it. So when the Jonas Brothers write a song about how they got grounded for breaking curfew… so they decided to sever their father’s carotid arteries and canabilize their mother, give me a call. Until then I’ll just have to settle for Jimi Hendrix and Tom Waits when I want music with dick.

My kids are starting to notice I’m a little different from the other dads. “Why don’t you have a straight job like everyone else?” they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, “Look at me…I’m tall, and I’m straight, and I’m handsome. Look at you…you’re all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you.” And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, “Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest.” So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.
- Tom Waits

Posted July 27, 2009 by Batousi

Posted In Music, Rants, Serious Shit

Batousi

We're arguing the same thing from different angles. It's a snowball effect: 1) Initial, genuine demand does exist for this product; 2) Marketing douche bags, through advertising, try to stimulate this demand (making consumers think that this product is more popular than it should be); 3) This causes more consumers to buy it thinking that they'll be out of the loop in terms of what's cool if they don't; 4) The artificial demand becomes realized. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

JayVig

But if nobody bought them then how long could that simulated or created demand last?

Batousi

I don't think it's as simple as supply and demand because I believe-even though I haven't read any specific research to support this-that marketing can artificially stimulate demand or even create demand where non existed.

JayVig

I agree with everything. The only entity to blame though is general consumer public that is making the purchases. Simply economics tells us that it's supply and demand and as long as we present a demand, we will be rewarded with a supply. While I place the blame currently on the purchasers of the garbage, I think the real issue stems from the great music of yesteryear. Let me preface by saying that I would change it for a minute, but the music of Jimi and others has endured through multiple generations. What does that mean? It means that I buy music from my father's generation, leaving current musicians to flounder and the corporate thieves to prey on the next generation before real music sinks its teeth into them too. Hence, we have all these fly-by-night, no talent, sanitized pop princesses and manufactured heart-throb teen dream teams of "brothers."

zooboy

great article!

Robby G

Great Tom Waits quote in the end mate. Very well written post and I agree 100% Cheers!

mrking

Many THX and Blessings for stating what should be obvious. Especially that it's the parent's fault. I HATE top-40 shit! I HATE the mindless chatter of most telly.

There are certain things I will allow into my house. By me making this choice & sticking 2 it, my Boys R well rounded. I protected them from this shit until it was obvious they would be able to DEAL. adios!

The Fat Boy

Glad you got that off chest... truth is though, it isn't the kids faults. Its the parents. Its the parents that have/let the kids watch that shit, get brain washed by that shit and then buys that shit... Then again, would you rather have young kids getting pregnant or shooting the H or would you rather them be kids... brainwashed by corporate America kids but still kids... either way look at it, 90% of the music industry is garbage but its marketed so well that parents and gits buy into that shit... its all about the greenery and not the good kind (marijuana... lol)