new scheme

I had a great idea walking back from Rocksteady this evening which I will put to you succinctly. It will really work. 

You know how there is a scheme where artists whose work is resold (by a public entity, not between private individuals) over the value of $1000 get 5%? Well that should totally be the case for musicians too. 

I was listening to a podcast recently it was an interview with the guy(s?) who started Discogs and I thought gosh - it'd be piss easy for them to incorporate a small percentage payment to the original artist anytime someone buys a record. Of course, the big winners would be shit like Pink Floyd (in fact, PF's Dark Side of the Moon was the example given of an album that probably has more pressings than any other). But, and not to make this about me, I have been involved in some records that are now selling in the $300-$400 range on Discogs, or at least they're priced at that rate I don't know if they're actually selling but that's not the point. 

The tipping point needs to be lower for records because there are more of them, they're not unique art works so let's say - $100. Every time someone sells a record to someone on discogs for more than a hundred dollars, the people who made it - assuming they're registered with the appropriate official arbiter - should get 5%. It's only fair. It will also recompense all those people who put in all the work all that time ago and then didn't really have that career in music they possibly deserved and they wasted their lives and are bitter and a drain on resources. Also, people like me who don't really need the money but, you know, it's only fair. 

Spotify should use its excessive wealth to make this happen and then maybe less people would hate Spotify. Think about it, Spotify! Because you are quite hated! 

Record collectors are not quite the scum of Spotify but they're on the scale. They also deserve to pay extra for being allowed to continue living on Earth. I hate them too. I mean Pink Floyd are the worst of the bunch. 

sneaky feelings 'better than before'

I woke up around 6:20 with two cats on my bed and this song in my head. It is one of those songs (unquantifiable, there are surely hundreds if not thousands) which 'live in my head rent-free' as idiots on tiktok will sometimes say. In my head, it played right from the beginning which by the way is cut off in the video I linked to above, but who knows if that youtube version will last a long time, I don't, the song was 'Better than Before' by Sneaky Feelings.

Of course although the version in my head was pretty fine, I wanted to hear it IRL through my actual ears, so I looked for it on spotify - no. I thought well maybe it's not by Sneaky Feelings and I got that wrong, so I went searching on just 'Better than Before' and - no. Raising my blood pressure was the fact that spotifuck has no faith in my / our ability to remember song titles, so I was presented with numerous incarnations/interpretations of Fleetwood Mac's 'Don't Stop', in amongst songs actually called 'Better Than Before'. So then I gave up on that platform and looked for it on discogs to just establish whose song it was. Yes, Sneaky Feelings, and they do have a couple of LPs on spotifuck but not that one. So I got to it finally on youtube, a video I had never seen/have no recollection of ever seeing, which was/is cut off at the beginning so the bit in my head, the unaccompanied intro, is still only in my head but that's OK. It's a fabulous song, and a fun video of its time (1986), which would surely have been a huge production and I suppose largely improvised on the spot ('and then there were these school kids who just showed up' etc). (+ subtext 'you couldn't do it these days, they'd all need notes from their parents'). I've never been to Dunedin but I assume this is a sentimental journey from anyone who lived there in the mid-80s. I bet in real life it wasn't so washed out. 

The other SF song I always really loved was this one. But reading about them on wikipedia it sounds like their two most recent albums (the only things of theirs on spoti) are critically acclaimed by people with taste, I think I should check them out and if you like, or I do actually do this, I'll get back to you about it.  

i'm turning into a cuban

AT LAST! Thrown on my own freakin' resources, and to a certain extent forced to use some of those muscles that were possibly always dormant or at least unused for a long time. 

I realised a few weeks ago that I had misplaced, or possibly comprehensively lost, my 'ear buds' (I grimace at that phrase but I guess that's what they're called). I actually went to JB last weekend to buy some new ones because - fuck it, right? But I forgot, JB is freakin' closed, like everything except, you know, BWS. On searching the drawer of batteries and weird ephemeral electrical/audio cords I maintain, in the hope of finding some more ear buds (ugh) I found that I had some bluetooth ones, that were probably once given to me as part of some package or other of nonsense with a new phone. GREAT, WHAT ARE THEY. They came with no instructions but I have finally learnt, after twenty years, that you can usually google shit. So I squinted and strained (they're tiny) and found out the make and model and looked it up. As usual, the instructions were available, but written by a piece of shit with no capacity to communicate, certainly not to me, and possibly not to anyone. I certainly couldn't see how on earth, having charged these ugly things, you then turn them on. There was no off-on switch, labelled anywhere in the exploded diagram (not that exploded really, they're too simple to explode, do you break a butterfly on a wheel?) and just no indication of how this is done. I got really frustrated and felt like I was being taunted. To be honest on the one hand this is what it's like feeling old, but also, I have always felt like capitalism was only filling 85% percent of its part of the deal and that 15% was crucial. So, the instructions said you had to separate the bud backs to turn them on. What the actual fuck, I took out my corn cob pipe and croaked through my whiskers, is that supposed to mean? It literally does not make sense. The 'buds' are already separate, if joined by a thin cord. It took about three days of trying, giving up, and coming back to the thing to try and figure it out. Ultimately, I reasoned that to separate the bud backs one would first have to put them together. So I did, back to back, and realised they were magnetic. Why? I don't know, but it doesn't matter. You can put them together, and they join together, then you separate them, and suddenly the fucking thing is pairing with your device, and you can go out and listen to the Slate Political Gabfest, or spotify's fucked up suggestions for what you would be satisfied with in place of what you really want to hear, while you're doing it. Bloody nora. 

OK so in fact I'm actually glad that I was forced to use something I had, rather than hold onto it for a decade and finally throw it away or toss it in a brotherhood bin or something. This could catch on.