One of the most offensive articles I’ve read this week (but it’s only Wednesday):
5 Issues That Grammy Voters Need To Know (And What to Do About Them) – Billboard
“Goodlatte and Conyers’ proposal would give the Copyright Office more independence, which would probably be good for the music business.” Right. Like dismantling the Office of Congressional Ethics “builds upon and strengthens” it. Yep, that Goodlatte. When that story broke – gawd, just the other day – I thought “that’s like a joke name, like ‘Bonperignon’”. Every single day closer to the swearing in brings another example of the 1% shitting in our mouths and calling it a sundae.
The Billboard article links to the “advocacy” page of The Recording Academy (GRAMMYs) site where they describe themselves as “The only membership organization representing all music creators” and they state, along with other fecal amuse bouches, “Through advocacy, education and dialogue, The Recording Academy protects the rights of music makers and advances their interests on important policy matters.” When did that organization EVER give a shit about anything beyond how much money a recording makes for a handful of people who already have more than their great-grandchildren could ever spend? They protect the rights of copyright holders, to be sure, the very wealthiest copyright holders – the remaining two or three major labels and their empires built on the backs of ten thousand artists and a handful of lottery winners complicit in the vandalism of American culture.
It all just seems so pathetically transparent to me, their appeals to our love of music and the people who make it. You only use language like that, lie with that kind of conviction, when you know you’re wrong. Or, OR – I almost forget sometimes that we’re talking about corporate entities – psychopathic.
They’ll keep pushing until the veneer of civilisation splits right down the grain.