Posted

Oct 7th 2006

Mood

Disappointed

Music

American Pie ~ Don McLean

The first record was made in 1850 by an English physician, Thomas Young. If you saw one of Young's devices, you probably wouldn't associate it with today's records. Let's say it was hardly made of vinyl. Records had their Golden Days in the 60's. Rock 'n' Roll had revolutionized the way people listened to music in the 50's with people like Bill Haley, Elvis Presley and so on, paving the way for Hank Ballard, the Rolling Stones, Brian Wilson, The Beatles later. Under the high demand for these popular artists, there arose the cultural landmark of the 60's: the record store. They started out small. Local little shops where rebellious young teenagers could get lost between the shelves of vinyl, searching for that one special album that would set their soul on fire. From there, the chains were built. Virgin, Warehouse, and, my personal home away from home, Tower Records. They thrived off music because music was the one thing people had that could take them away from the cold and silent reality of every day living in hard times. In the early 80's, CDs were born. Records were slowly replaced with these small plastic discs that opened up the music world to a more general public who had previously been confounded by the technical intricacies of records. CDs played on their own. Stick them in, press play and you're off. The transition was relatively smooth. The record stores caught on to the new technology and widened their purchasing from the distribution companies. Many of the originals, the small and locals, perished in the raging fire of change. But the corporations lived to sell a new generation a new form of music. A sacrifice was made, but essentially the idea survived and music went on as it always had, but in smaller cases in bigger stores. I spent a good deal of my childhood in these libraries of possibility, exploring the very boundaries of artistry. Record stores allowed that. One could walk in, unawares of their purpose there, and come out with the answers to the universe. That is what the stores offered that nothing could replace: the ability to browse. To find of one's own accord. Discover a new band, a new recording, a new album by oneself or with the companionship of fellow music lovers by your side. And that is what the internet took away. Suddenly, in the 90's, a massive database of everything ever recorded began to form. Something began to gain popularity. Something that changed the face of the music industry forever: The MP3. The word 'download' began to be a household term. Why buy when you could 'download'. Perhaps the starters of the internet, in their great multitude and anonymity, hadn't anticipated this new surge of theft from their creation. Perhaps they had. But when Napster, Kazaa, Limewire came into existence, it was clear of the effects. Artists were going unpaid. 'Sharing' became a worldwide phenomenon. In all fairness, control was taken back. iTunes was created. Laws were made. MP3s became purchaseable files and purchase the people did. In March 2004, iTunes hit 50 millions downloads. In the same year, purchases from record stores went down nearly 10%. Piracy still exists of course and is a major problem to both forms of music business as well as the artists themselves. But thievery aside, the clear separation and competition between physical and virtual music buying was becoming a serious threat to music as we knew it. The battle went on for almost a decade. New measures were added to each. The record stores got stingy. The online sources got into advertising. MySpace was made. Sites that had free streaming music all the time. The record companies themselves suffered too. Every half-ass little band that could play a guitar and shout some pseudo-poetic lyrics could get a record deal and play a cheap tour through tiny, co-headlined venues because they could be a hit on MySpace and then break up to get real lives a year later just so the record companies could suck their short artistic strings dry financially to survive in a world where music was suddenly taking a backseat to fad. Good bands were now more of a hinderance to them than the cheap, naive fools that could hardly play their instruments. The majority of these bands never even released their record beyond the boundaries of the net, leaving the already failing stores with an entire generation of music unavailable. Beyond that, those that did release albums, released crap ones. They had their one or two hits and then 9 more songs that don't deserve to see the light of day. No one in their right mind would buy the whole thing when they could just buy those hits, on their own, for 99 cents each. Over those 10 or so years, it has gotten increasingly worse for both the stores themselves and artistic integrity in general. The music industry has slipped off the edge of the Capitol Tower that built it and continues to freefall until it'll hit the parking lot that in its prime, great bands had stood upon and played their hearts out. Warehouse was the first to give in. Then Sam Goody. Music Trader. Virgin began to close every store but the flagships. And yesterday, the last standing record store announced that it had been bought by the liquidation company. I have come here today to mourn the death of Tower Records. No words can describe my deepest affection for the store that I was a part of even in the womb. My mother has worked there since long before I was born. My brother works there. My father's bands have played there. I am the child of the music era. My father was a roadie, a production manager. My mother, a fan. A groupie without the sex, following bands on the road and spending her entire life surrounded by them. Music is a huge part of who I am. To me, record stores are a huge part of music. And Tower Records was a huge part of record stores. To me, this is a death as tragic as the death of a family member, if not more so. It is not just a physical death, but an ideological end. I am furious. I am disappointed. I am devastated. Yes, I am also worried as my family's only source of income and health insurance is now gone. But that, to me, is far less important.

Music is dead. It has been murdered by the MP3. Blood is stained upon all our hands. We are all to blame. We have killed our only escape.

Congratulations everybody, we've killed art.

Rest in peace.