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Sunday, December 16, 2001
What is with the people on file sharing serivces? I mean, you go on trying to find obscure, rare, live, unreleased, etc. songs from a band, so ou go and do a search. OK. Now look what shows up. Songs on albums you already have. Fine, I guess that's to be expected, but it's still annoying. And yet, people are so STUPID with them. I mean, I just did a search for "Beck". People have the song "Loser" named "Looser", "I'm a loser baby" "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me", and I'm sure theres someone out there that's calling it something like "Loser at the cruise control" or "So open the door".
This is the problem I see with these services. Not that they're gonna destroy the record sales industry (which i doubt WOULD happen anyway), but that they're gonna destroy the artist's vison of the song, cause now people are gonna be acting liek morons and calling the songs stuff that they shouldn't be called, andho look, now when these people go to a show or write them fan mail, they're calling it that, and either the artist is gona be like "why can't they call it the right name?" or even "What the hell song are they talking about?" I mean, when I'm talking about a song, I'll even include anything in parethansies jsut to be clear what song I'm talking about, even if it's not needed.
But lets say that the artist doesn't care. OK, fine. What about the hardcore fan? The ones that look for the unreleased and rare and live stuff and such. It's like, you're looking over it, and then you see these sogns that sound like they might be they'res, or the might not be, and so you go and download them, and either they turn out ot be some REALLY common song, or it's like not even by that band. Look at Mr. Bungle. You do a search for them, you're gonna get a cover of "Opps I did it again" up, and it's not even BY them, it's by the Ping Pang band. OK, maybe that's kinda easy to mistake, cause really, how many people know that. But what about something like where you're labeled "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan didn't even DO that song. It's Stealer's Wheel. Thats a pretty damn big mistake really.
And then look at Weird Al Yankovic. I mean, lets ignore the fact that people are calling him Weird Al YankovicH for some reason, but why is it that EVERY LAST PARODY in existance has to get credited to him. I mena, come on, even crappy morning zoo parodies get credited to him, like anyones gonna really think it's by him. Quite hoinestly, I dont think he's gonna be doing anything using the f-word anytime soon.
Another thing. Just as a form of ettiquite, at least LABEL WHERE YOUR SONG IS FROM. I mean, if you're ripping it from a CD, label it as such. I'm sure theres other versions of songs out there that are jsut liek intresting, non-remix variants, but how the hell am I suppposed to know what the hell they are if you're jsut label them as "band - song". or even WORSE "song". You should label them "band - song (album - year)". Same thign with live stuff. If you at least KNOW the date and place of the concert, then at least label it as such. don't just say "live".
Thats another thing kind of unrelated but still annoying Why can't these concert bootlegger guys actually do a GOOD job of it. I mean, I've downloaded a TON of Oingo Boingo concert bootlegs. I'll admit that. But what's with the quality of them? I mean, bad enough it sounds like the guy's up in the rafters or something, but then you end up having him talking to his buddies OVER THE DAMN SONG. Why are then ever letting this out into the public? I mean, come on, I want to hear "Dead Man's Party". I want to hear "Cry of the Vatos". I want to hear "Out of Control". I DON"T want to have to hear your damn frat buddy screaming out "PLAY FREEBIRD!" and then telling the girl his with about how much he rank last night wit the band or how cool the song is, or SINGING ALONG WITH THE DAMN SONG. GAH! As much as I can't stand the Grateful Dead, at least they were smart enough to actually put in a specific area for peopel to record their shows. Or thats what I've heard anyway. Why can't more bands do that? Screw the profitability of being able ot put out a live abulm. Most live abulms suck ass anyway. You get a bunch of crappy hit syou've heard a million times before not played any differently, and maybe even remixed in the studio to sound better, you never get any good amount of audiance interaction (which is what I really like to look for), and even if the whoel alubm is decent you just feel kinda ripped off when it's only like one disk of stuff. Seriously, what bands should do is like record a damn show and just release it as is. Don't adjus the sound, don't cut out talking, jsut edit it for like intermissions or something, that's fine. You buy a live album to get the "REAL" concert experiance from a band, and how the hell are you gonna get that if they go back into the studio and adjust everything on it? That just means they picked a suck ass concert date to record and/or they suck live.
This is only part one in an on going series of file sharing rants anwyay, goodie for me I guess, or something.
Nick The Bard 4:35 PM
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