The XX “Crystalised”
I grew up listening to the sounds of the 60s, The Beatles and a bit of Motown, two things I still enjoy. But since I was a little kid, there were a few songs that really opened my ears to something completely new. This doesn’t necessarily mean these songs or artists are the best their respective genres have to offer, they were enough to get me to check out new things.
In chronological order, songs that changed the way I thought about music:
Dr. Dre “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” – I was in fourth grade at a friend’s house when I saw Dr. Dre come across the screen in his droptop on hydraulics. I think my draw dropped to the floor. I’d heard rap before, but never anything like THIS. This started a life long love affair with hip-hop. These days I listen to more of the underground stuff – Aesop Rock, Little Brother, and the Cunninlynguists.
I picked up Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle, Dre’s protege’s first album, a short while after hearing G Thang. My parents found this cassette and were NOT happy. I wasn’t able to buy albums with parental advisory stickers after that whole incident. Grunge and punk rock, for some reason, were acceptable. About a decade later, my parents would let me take my little brother to see Snoop in concert for his 16th birthday.
Nirvana “Heart Shaped Box” – I actually like Nirvana’s earlier albums better, but this is where I started listening to grunge music. This lead to other things, but Nirvana is pretty much the epitome of grunge.
In college I worked at a CD store and thought it was strange when the little kids came in with Kurt Cobain t-shirts. While I think grunge defined the late 1980s/early 1990s, I don’t feel like this genre transcends that period in time. I can’t really see younger generations getting into Stone Temple Pilots or Soundgarden. Maybe I’m naive, but this stuff doesn’t seem to fit in with post 9/11 thinking. Most of grunge was about suffering from addiction, feeling alone, and the crappy state of society. I mean, we have Obama now! What do we have to be depressed about?
For me, grunge paved the way to garage and punk rock.
Nine Inch Nails “Closer” – Post Industrial music. I feel this song exposed me to a bit of electronica, without moving me too far away from the distorted guitars of grunge. I know I’ve said this before, but you should really see NIN in concert.
NoFX “Philty Phil Philanthropist” - In seventh grade I started listening to a lot of bands on the Epitaph label, sort of by chance. Someone I hesitate to call a friend had one of their CDs and I decided to it check it out. I didn’t like it on my first listen – it has a really raw sound. The album actually talks a bit about capitalism and a few other moderately “political” things, so I was intrigued. I started listening to Rancid and a few other punk acts shortly thereafter.
Since Epitaph was an independent label, I started picking up samplers for other indie rock acts. This eventually led me to The Impossibles – a band that today would likely be classified as emo. I was emo before there was a word for it. And if someone did mention “emo” in those days, it wasn’t an insult.
The term originated from emotional hardcore punk. None of those guys wore eyeliner. If anything, you would have thought there were a bunch of beer swilling frat boys (unless they were straight edge, and then you would just assume they were just a bunch of asshole frat boys – there is a difference). Nowadays emo is associated with tight-jean wearing, eye-lined teenagers that hang out at Hot Topic. I’m pretty convinced that AFI is at fault for starting all that, but I’m not really sure who labeled this “emo.”
Daft Punk “Around the World” – Electronica! Like “Heart Shaped Box,” this song was my first exposure to Daft Punk. And like In Utero, my first exposure to Daft Punk isn’t what I considered their best work. As far as I’m concerned, Discovery is their masterpiece. Daft Punk lead me to Orbital and Bjork – both acts that I would fit under the electronica/house umbrella, but each with a very different sound.
And sort of like a color wheel, musical genres blend together to form new sounds. The blending of electronica and punk/indie rock brought us acts like Minus the Bear and Cut Copy. You can see how each group is a blend of my “primary” genres. Same goes for Kid Cudi and M.I.A. – both blend elements of hip-hop and electronica (I’d even say there is a bit of indie rock in there). And this is pretty cool.
Come August 1, I will have lived in my current DC apartment for three years. I can’t really complain about the experience. The building supers have been great, the building manager is accomodating (like when I went out of town for three weeks he tossed my mail under the door), and the neighbors are friendly and quiet.
But having lived here three years, I still get the previous tenant’s mail. We’re not talking about junk mail, I’m talking about hand-addressed letters.
I’ve taken it upon myself to inform the senders of these personal letters that the intended recipient of their message no longer lives at this address. I cross out the address, write RTS (mail slang for Return to Sender), followed by, “Nancy hasn’t lived at this address, for three years. If you do not know this by now, you aren’t friends.”
Marx and Engels start the Communist Manifesto with a warning: the people in power are scared of the coming changes. This warning can be adapted for our times:
A spectre is haunting the Internet – the spectre of file sharing networks. All the powers of old media have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: the RIAA, the MPAA, the corporate lawyers and government police-spies of the FCC.
After reading Lessig’s book Remix, I realized the war waged on file sharing could be made into a Marxist argument.
Current intellectual property laws give rights to the copyright holders. In most cases, this is not the artist. For musicians that sign a contract with a record label, the record label retains exclusive rights to the artists’ songs. Over time, the length of a copyright has been increased dramatically. Originally, the rights to an idea, song or movie were held for 20 years. But now it has been increased to the life of the artist plus 99 years. Since the artist doesn’t own the rights to the songs, the record label stands to gain much from this arrangement.
After years of abuse, the musicians are fed-up with the poor treatment received at the hands of their tormentors. Music sales have also declined. The price of media has continued to rise, but there has been little reason for the cost hike. Online distribution eliminates the need for manufacturing and physical distribution, so it should reduce the cost to consumers.
Marx argues that when the working class rises up to fight the unfair and oppressive ruling class, it will then redistribute the wealth so that everyone shares ownership of property. After this revolution, anything created by an individual can be used by anyone without having to ask permission. Comparing this to communism, the file sharing networks take property in the form of mp3s from the RIAA or ripped movies from the MPAA (the bourgeoisie in this instance) and redistributes it to the masses (the proletariat). Most people do not view intangible electronic files as something that one can possess due to the lack of a physical presence.
It seems the time for revolution is now.
Artists such as Nine Inch Nails and, to a lesser extent, Radiohead, are releasing their music for free. File sharing networks are most of the traffic on the Internet. The MPAA and RIAA are trying to put the kibosh on any extra curricular activity.
The Internet is the great equalizer Marx envisioned. With the Internet, any one individual has as much power as the next. If the entire Internet community united against the media companies, nothing could be done to stop it.
So, do I feel sympathy for the record companies? Not really. I do feel bad for struggling artists. If I enjoy their music, I should support them in some fashion. If I don’t buy their albums, then I should at least make an attempt to see them live or purchase a t-shirt from their website. As one of my friends told me, “albums are loss leaders for tours.” The music is the advertising used to pull in more revenue.

I’ve been ready Lessig’s Remix:Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. In his book, Lessig mentions several open-source projects and how they are made better by the community. For example, volunteers improve Wikipedia entries on their own time without compensation (other than the satisfaction knowing they are helping others). A similar attitude can be found in the open-source software community; people update and improve lines of code, usually to meet a specific need, but provide these enhancements for free to the entire community.
This type of sharing can be found on the Internet as a whole, especially with file sharing. Metcalfe’s Law suggests that the more people in a social network, the more value it has. With Bit torrent, the more people sharing the better the network. But there is also an element of comraderie. People sharing files do so because they want to help other people. It isn’t a giant “Fuck you” to the RIAA and MPAA (although it turned into that). No one dislikes the artists of the music or movies they are “distributing.” They are fans who want other fans to have the material.