JAIMIE VERNON – AMERICAN IDLE

Goodbye American Idol. Your reign of mediocrity shall not be mourned. You were what’s wrong with the music business. I say good day. It was about creating brands – all attached, umbilically, to the Idol brand. We now have a generation of karaoke singers who believe all that it takes to make it is get up on stage and emote. You know that ongoing echo chamber of complaints from music lovers who say “How come new music sucks?” It started right here with Simon Cowell’s vacuous talent extrusion procedural.

JAIMIE VERNON – MUSICAL VALUE VILLAGE

I’ve been slowly re-imbedding myself into the Dante’s Inferno that is the current music industry with a focus on promoting good, new music [see some of my previous blogs for my recommendations] cause, let’s face it, talking about the mistakes the labels made over the last decade is like discussing that guy at Decca Records that passed on The Beatles [his name was Dick Rowe and he made up for the faux pas by later signing the Rolling Stones].

JAIMIE VERNON: UN-MERRILY DOWN THE STREAM

This week came the revelation that digital music streaming services are both ripping off artists AND generating no revenue. Rarely has there been a non-story generating so much sucking and blowing simultaneously.

JAIMIE VERNON – TIDAL WAVE

During the 50 years preceding the collapse of the music industry – i.e. Before Napster – the music we knew and loved was carefully spooned out and fed to us proportionally by record companies who knew how much we’d consume and for how long. This was done via a sifting process controlled by radio.

JAIMIE VERNON – FREE TO BE U2 AND ME

JAIMIE VERNON – YOUTUBE KILLED THE VIDEO STAR

A week ago Bell Media Megolithic Oligarchy Inc. gutted many of their TV channel networks including CTV, E!, Space, and the formerly music oriented MTV Canada, MuchMoreMusic and MuchMusic by laying off 91 people.

Darrell Vickers: A Tale of Two Shities

Corporate greed can be a very comical thing at times.  Not when these soulless, maniacal money whores’ allow their unquenchable lust for gold to transmogrify into evil incarnate, of course.   Certainly not when these insatiable, insensate, vulturine feeding machines get so avariciously engorged that all bonds of human decency snap like Walmart chair legs and they vomit blood and misery over everyone in their path.  Recent history is replete with insidious incidences of these greenback gorgons happily committing acts of unmitigated commercial barbarism for the sake of expediency.

Frank Gutch Jr: Who’s Making Up the Rules, Marc Cohn at the Aladdin Theater in Portland Oregon, and Whatever the Hell Else I Want To Write About…..

I’m tired.  I mention this at the outset because this inevitably is going to turn in to one of those stream-of-consciousness tirades in which logic does not play a part.  But I don’t care.  I need to get something off my chest and I don’t care if you stop reading right now, but the stench of what is wrong with the music business has me gasping for air and there is little oxygen available.  But before I start…..