From Greg Earle Sent Sun, Jan 4th 1998, 22:44
From Greg Earle Sent Sun, Jan 4th 1998, 22:44
Stuart sadly writes:
> I was the other person, I don't have any handle on Gil's business
> exploits but as one who was at the recieving end of a public witch
> hunt after I had lost my home, record collection, income, business
> & nearly my family and couldn't send out a few lousy records I can
> empathize..
Perhaps one shouldn't engage in record trading in the midst of personal
crises?
> In my 2 1/2 years on this list Gil has been one of the handful of
> sane minds in an ocean of insular-childish bullshit concerned
> with such irrelevant peripherals such as limited editions, label
> worship and one-upmanship
Oh, and like Gil's rants about Luke Slater & NovaMute and his pathetic
"mirror" rant before New Years' weren't "childish bullshit"? The "mirror"
rant in particular was all about "label worship and one-upmanship" if you ask
me ... "you pathetic IDM'ers are ignorant scum because you still talk about
Autechre et al. while you ignore Mego and A-Musik etc." ... spare me ...
like someone else said, if IDM'ers suddenly started buying Mego and A-Musik
releases then Gil would be back in a while going "You pathetic IDM'ers are
ignorant scum because you still talk about Mego and A-Musik while you ignore
Plug Research and Schematic etc." or somesuch bullshit ... it's all the
fucking
same mate
> IDM is an institutional organization of ignorance
>
> IDM is now the home of the passive consumer, more concerned with
> the cosmetic value of the finished artifact than understanding
> the *true* price being payed [sic] by the artist gifted with a creative mind
Can you translate that into plain English please? :-)
Look, I'll do some ranting myself [warning ... long ... skip now or die ...]:
<rant>
Anyone that's been on a world-wide mailing list for 2 1/2 years should DAMN
well know by now that the list will most often resemble the Least Common
Denominator of the experiences of the group. How easy is it for someone
living in East Buttfuck Iowa (apologies to Kent (-: ) or South Africa (Iain?
Irene?) to get ahold of this stuff in their local shops? "Use mail order!"
you cry ... yeah, right. Maybe if CD's and vinyl cost a quid/US $2 a pop I'd
use mail order and try out that Mego or this A-Musik ... if I could even find
'em, that is.
But in case you haven't noticed, music is *fucking expensive* to buy now and
if I go down my nearest Virgin MegaStore and pick up Claude Young's "Soft
Thru" and Stacey Pullen's "Kosmic Messenger" comp. and Download's "III" and
the "Pacific State" comp and Bjork's "Batchelorette" remix CDS and Curve's
"Chinese Burn" CDS and Luke Slater's "Freek Funk" CDS and Reflection's "The
Errornormous World", I *really* don't need 2 poncers prattling on about how
"ignorant" I am after I've just spent nearly $200 on music (that's half a r/t
plane fare from L.A. to ol' Blighty, in case you need some fucking perspective
mate) that I happen to LIKE ... even if it isn't fucking on Mego or A-Musik.
(Oh, and did I mention that I didn't really like the Reflection, and paid $28
for a fucking single CD? Not going to make *that* mistake ever again ...
sure ... "Take a chance on a new label like Mego or A-Musik" ... haha ... )
Another reason Mego and A-Musik et al. don't get discussed - in addition to
the easily-sussed "They aren't easily obtainable" - is because I suspect most
of their output is 12" vinyl; sorry mate but I just can't be arsed to spend
money on the worst value-for-money there is in music, the (usually) imported
12" vinyl record ... US $10.99 (and up!) for 2 or 3 tracks is just not my idea
of a useful expenditure ... maybe some people think US $70 for a box set of 5
slabs of Metalheadz vinyl is worth it ... I sure don't ...
People like yourself and Gil Gershman need to get out of your virtual Ivory
Towers of record-dom and come live amongst the proles who don't have anywhere
NEAR the access you two guys - because of your business/label, and because of
Gil's reviews writing - have to this kind of music.
> IDM is dead
IDM (the mailing list) will be dead when the last post has been posted to it.
Sorry Stuart, I'll be sad to see someone with as much knowledge and background
in music history as you go, but as the saying goes ... "if you aren't part of
the solution, you're part of the problem" ... and if your retort to that is
"I have been mate, I've posted scads of reviews on worthy stuff, sinks without
a trace, no one talks about it" then fair enough, welcome to a world-wide
mailing list, please see above for reasons why your worthy labels/releases
don't get discussed so much. And it'll *always* be that way as long as music
distribution & CD/LP prices remains the way they are ... nature of the beast.
(Do I really need to insert my "Why I think all music should be MP3'ized and
put up on the Web" rant here? Is it really *that* hard to understand that
people are naturally hesitant to blindly buy music on obscure labels that they
haven't heard ahead of time? Especially when it's so costly?)
</end rant>
- Greg