Thoughts on stuff ('n junk)

Kristin Hersh, who has been blogging longer and better than me, wrote a piece a few years ago called Thoughts on Sustainability. It is in part an introduction to her Cash Music enterprise which allows listeners to purchase music via her various projects' websites (and obtain some for free) with no label involvement.

The essay briefly touches on the survival of of the blandest phenomenon in present day music. It got me thinking that poor quality music gets a break because art is supposedly subjective and therefore exempt from having to meet any sort of standard before being made available for purchase. A dishwasher that doesn't wash your dishes would be pulled off the market; an album that doesn't entertain is permissible. There should, of course, be standards. Metallica fans tried to return their Death Magnetic CDs because the brickwall mastering the band approved introduced distortion that was not present in the master recording. I applaud them for taking a stand against a practice that should be unacceptable. A company that intentionally builds an undisclosed flaw into a toaster and doesn't factor it into the price would be prosecuted. Vinyl is less affected by modern mastering trends, but is overpriced and has its own limitations.

The quality of the music itself has no bearing on price either, despite the fact that it is not entirely subjective. You might prefer Wesley Willis to The Beatles and The Shaggs to Pink Floyd (or claim you do), and that's all well and good, but to say that they are better is not. But I'm not talking about music recorded cheaply by people of questionable musical talent. I'm talking about music recorded expensively by people of questionable musical talent. Music that goes through a homogenisation process at every stage of its development with the end goal of creating a product to be consumed by millions should not cost the same as music created with the end goal of creating a lasting work of art. Check used CD shops - while they stil exist - for a more meritocratic pricing hierarchy. There you'll find Hanson's Christmas album for as reasonable a price as can be. Fast food is cheaper than restaurant quality food, and with good reason. Both music and food produced by giant corporations by definition has to be stripped of any unique flavour in order to be palatable to a huge market. We all feel like a hamburger every now and then, just as we all sometimes feel like a song we can nod our head to in the car and then forget about; we just shouldn't have to pay as much as we're being made to.