>Some way to treat the people who made them rich and famous.
(Refers to the band's recent lawsuit against Napster users for
distributing computer files containing Metallica's precious intellectual
property.)
>They would have sold their soul in the early 80s for half the fame and
fortune
>they have now. I guess they want to buy some more mansions and
Ferrari's.
Remember: Liberace's rings. Liberace's huge, greedy-ass fucking
diamond rings. Cut to: apocalyptic future of _Robocop_.
>Metallica fucking sucks!!! I remember Metallica from the mid
> 80's when they were bad ass.
"I used to like this before it sucked." That's the most trite and most
oft-replicated meme in Amerikkkan sub[sic]culture. No one will admit
that they were WRONG: that it always sucked, because people trying to
entertain others is annoying and banal. It's just another pathetic
dead-end "career," except it's louder and can afford expensive cocaine.
>Cliff must be rolling over in his grave seeing the sell out faggot
losers they've become.
You had to bring up the dead guy, didn't you? And I like how the
homophobic slur "faggot" is used as a substitute for "big jerk" or "rat
fink." This piece of shit is just one of many others exactly like it:
Starts out political with the word "boycott," and then moves into a
public display of insecurity and homogeneity. This robot is mentally
cutting and pasting these opinions from another clone's mind (probably
overhead at the football field in 7th grade) to fill the void of an
opinion he can't create for himself. Kevin Mitnick can't touch a phone
or a computer, but we let this idiot masturbate and jizz his uninformed
opinion of a massive political issue onto the walls of usenet?! WHAT THE
FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD WE LIVE IN? I try to calmly remind myself
that none of it makes sense.
"Selling out," a rock band getting their way payed by a giant
corporation, happens every week. A rock band rallying for the political
cause of criminalizing access to a remote computer to obtain data that
you have been offered permission to take has never happened before on
this scale, and is more accurately described as "being co-opted by the
Conspiracy." It must be the Record Industry P.R. woman's dream to have
one of the "hippest" and most daringly creative heavy music bands speak
out for their right to exploit.
Don't ever listen to the excuse that digital music will "cost people
jobs." That's bullshit. At the WEA manufacturing plant outside of
economic wasteland Scranton, Pennsylvania where Metallica's "certified
platinum" multi-million selling back catalog is still pressed to meet
consumer demand, the assembly line labor was streamlined into efficient
"cells" years ago in the interest of maximized profits. All the layoffs,
and there were many, were done years ago with no regrets.
As for the bands themselves, if you make music, you might consider
actually performing music, rather than selling people pieces of plastic
with carefully rehearsed, highly edited and overproduced versions of
your "songs" (you'll have to excuse me, the concept of a "song" makes me
want to fucking puke) for $16.00 -- if you make $8.00 an hour at your
job, well over minimum wage, that's two hours worth of life-sucking work
for 74 minutes or less of listening pleasure.
Last year rock band Phish, also on Metallica's label, Elektra
records, issued a fan-pleasing statement regarding the trade of its
shows in digitized form. With a few reasonable caveats, the band
encouraged such trading. Considering that Metallica, like Phish, set up
provisions for fan taping in the past few years (why anyone would
collect duplicates of the exact same boring setlist every night still
puzzles me), it would make sense for them to imitate Phish's progressive
policy with regard to digital trading. Nothing makes sense, I might
remind you.
What if people wouldn't have ever bought your album in the first
place, but would listen to the songs for free, just as they might on the
radio or on MTV? Is that stealing? According to Metallica, a band who
postured as critics of fascism for their entire career, if I store it on
my hard drive (read: own it, even though "it" is a replica of data and
not the original) and make a conscious choice to press the play button
and listen to it, instead of getting it force-fed up my ass by a DJ or
programmer who knows what's good for me, then it's stealing. Freedom of
choice is implicated in the crime. Also, they make it sound as if
everyone has access to a computer, knows enough to launch a web browser
and type http://www.napster.com into the location field, download and
install the free self-executing zip file (I've never paid for .zip
compression software, but I bet you that whoever invented it lives
comfortably anyway) and figure out how to get it configured and working
properly. Certainly not everyone has the ridiculously overpriced access
to high-speed data lines need to fully take advantage of the service. So
why the fuss?
It's Metallica and the Recording Industry's fear of a _Mad Max_
future where you don't need them, and don't pay them (as much.) If
Metallica doesn't have the extra millions of dollars, they won't be able
to hire highly-paid artists to come up with brilliant conceptual ideas
for their videos. (And they'll only be able to afford 16 tons of TNT for
the colliding trailer trucks, which will make a measley 40 ft. mushroom
cloud in the video.) When it comes time to repair the liver damage from
20 years of over-the-edge alcoholism, or getting rid of that nasty case
of the clap had by fucking gorgeous female fans who don't know or give a
shit what MPEG layer 3 encoding is, they'll have that fancy health care
that will cover the best doctor and get the softest bed in the hospital.
Basically, Metallica and everyone who makes a dollar off them want to
extend their posh, all-frills-included by delaying the inevitable: YOU
standing up for your rights and saying "fuck you, I will not serve, I
will not pay."
Maybe if Metallica wants to make sure that it possesses the
excessive capital necessary to drive racecars, fly planes, and compete
in extreme sports (one of the most damning examples of the vanity of
18-30 year-old Caucasian-Americans, and also the most ubiquitous
advertising motif), instead of buttfucking their fans, they might
consider talking with America Online, who owns Time/Warner, who owns
Elektra who owns Metallica. With the ironic "eye in the pyramid"
Illuminati logo, this shrewd business-machine cum media juggernaut has
the clout and the liquid funds to feed millions of starving people, I
mean... umm... use for capital to get bigger and richer. So there you
go, Metallica, go renegotiate your contract with America Online and go
fuck yourself, and don't you even fucking DARE monitor my computer
activity (spy) on Napster or anywhere else, EVER.
What it comes down to, ladies and gentlemen, is essentially the
issue of human freedom vs. expensive jewelry, haircuts, clothes, and
vacations for whiny, overstimulated, well-fed Caucasian fucks: one of
the above is going to happen at the expense of the other. I can feel
that day drawing ever nearer. Hasta la victoria.
Advertisement
***COMING SOON!*** In honor of the Metallica/Napster controversy, I'm
going to be offering MP3's of experimental remixes of Metallica's shit
music that will attempt to utterlydestroy it. I doubt that I'll be able
to deface it worse than Kid Rock has with his latest single (a real
stinker), but I'm sure as fuck am going to try. What you might hear:
"Wherever I May Roam" barely recognizable behind considerable
electronic manipulation, with every other beat missing, mixed with a
backwards Catholic Mass, loops of a rape scene from an afterschool
special, the soundtrack from a KKK cross-burning, dialogue from both
_Paradise Lost_ films (they wore Metallica t-shirts, that's why they
were arrested in the first place) and me pissing, (not particularly in
that order). If you see the "Wherever I May Roam" (Chupacabra
Evisceration Mix) be confident that the artist (me) wants you to
download it and wants you to struggle with the cultural and political
issues that it represents.
Bob is not amused. Take a Valium and join the capitalistic wave. For
only $23.00 we can save even YOUR soul. Slack for Dummies.
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
Packet Loss wrote:
*snippage*
> I'll tell you exactly "what I am." I am nameless wildness. I assert the
> transdisunicity of Reality, an incarnate condemnation of the your idea
> of truth and system that butresses it. This essay, like so many others
> of its kind will not be read. You will not read it because it is...
...incredibly long winded and quickly degenerates from interesting
cultural commentary to political diatribe.
I've often found that a bit of tirading loses all impact when it starts
out sounding like it has a cogent point, and winds into an
unintelligible morass of "everything and everyone sucks!" For Bob's Sake
man, if everything sucks, JUST COME OUT AND SAY SO! Don't lull us in
with anti-capitalist/music industry commentary, jump right in with,
"EVERYTHING FUCKING SUCKS, AND HERE'S WHY NO ONE WILL ADMIT IT,
GODDAMNIT!!!" Then we'll all know to get riled up in advance.
--
-Rev. Knezek
"We must dance like crazed weasels atop the furniture of life!"
-some guy from "Alaska Men" magazine