But Chris, you said you’d stop posting here so much this month yet you haven’t missed a day yet… Yeah, somehow I need to figure out how to add all these blog posts to my NaNo project; this is 1100 words that won’t count toward my 1667 daily goal… I’m still ahead of schedule though!
But I had to take a break last night. Tuesday was the release of Slayer’s new album, “World Painted Blood”. We were extremely busy Tuesday night and I was barely home at all. Last night I was home, but I had no money. iTunes sat there and taunted me all night but I couldn’t even cheat the credit card account the few bucks it would have cost to buy it online. I think that’ll be my new expression about how broke we are right now, “So broke that I couldn’t afford to buy the new Slayer CD”. I listen to many kinds of music and various different bands but Slayer is in my blood. I’ve been waiting for this album for over a year and now that it’s here, there is no possible way I can buy it.
So, I “borrowed” it from my many anonymous bit-torrenting friends online. You know I’ll buy the damn thing as soon as I can, why is it such a crime for me to get it early? I could understand the uproar if I constantly stole CDs and movies with no intention of ever buying any of them. But I just don’t get the problem with sharing music. There will always be free-loaders who never pay for the music, the rest of us support the artist by buying their works (if they’re any good). And that has been my platform for justifying my occasional bit-torrenting of music. But now I have another justification. I’m fucking broke! The justification may not be right, it may not hold up, but it helps me sleep at night. When I listen to new music for free and when I feel guilty (and I do sometimes), I think of all the times I bought the CDs or sent the indie artist a Paypal donation and I sleep just fine. I’m sure Sony will remain financially sound until I can finally cough up the cash for the CD.
But enough of my weak willed, mamby pamby justifications for stealing music, what about the new CD?
Slayer: World Painted Blood. It fucking rocks! While they may be my favorite band, no one will ever accuse them of being exceptionally deep or dynamic. It sounds like a Slayer album. And THAT’S why I love them. Something those pussies over in Metallica could take a clue from. Slayer still gets my money because they give me something worth paying for, a solidly written and perfectly executed thrash CD. I never know what the fuck I’m gonna get from some of these other bands. When I buy a Slayer CD, I know it isn’t going to include flutes or introspective insights into the songwriter’s inner child personal issues… it’s going to include some fast tempo, high energy music full of lyrics depicting the angst and rage I still feel inside.
Some of these bands decided to grow up and move into the arena of the well rounded, fully developed adult. What shit! I’m pretty sure I’ll never grow up into that realm. I’m still pissed off all the time at all the shit going on in the world. I keep getting told that I should “grow up” and stop being angry all the time but that is just another way of saying, “give up” and don’t care or think anymore. Well fuck that! I’m not going to become one of those pacified zombies that walk around with their biggest worry being whether or not they’ll have time to stop for a mocha-latte before they get to Dr. Prozac’s office. Metal was never intended for those assholes. This isn’t therapy, it’s thrash! Hey Lars! Hey Hetfield! Get out of the psychoanalyst’s recliner and embrace the music that once made you great! Go to a real show: no orchestra, no fancy bullshit. Just a shitty bar filled with two or three dozen rabid fans beating the shit out of each other to a soundtrack of chaos. Leave the “grown adult” shit to Sting, Bono and Phil Collins.
Henry Rollins once made the perfect observation about Slayer, “…Slayer never broke their promise to the fans. It’s like they keep them frozen in a block of ice between albums. Every few years they thaw them out and yell, “It’s still 1983, make a new album, go, go go!!!”
And that’s all I want. Fast, hard, aggressive and unrelenting music. I don’t need a ballad and I don’t need the band to explore new ground to grow as musicians. You don’t have to change your art to perfect your art. Kerry King is a much better guitar player now than he was on “Show No Mercy”. Just because the band didn’t “explore new genres” doesn’t mean they didn’t get better. If I want to hear an acoustic twelve string classical guitar solo, I’ll pop in an Andres Segovia CD not Metallica’s “Re-Load”. Your band does not need to encompass all forms of music. Pick a genre, do it well, do it right. Don’t believe your own hype about being a renaissance man. You’re a rock star and that should be good enough! Put down the ego and pick up your instrument. Stop playing nice with the establishment and join the rebellion. Even if you can’t do anything about it you can at least scream about it! Or I guess you could just whine into your microphone about how you hate your fans because they bit-torrent your albums…
Why is it that every time I talk about music it turns into how much I hate Metallica? The pain I felt from their betrayal knows no bounds. I just can’t let it go…
This new Slayer CD is great. Lombardo’s drums are still the inspirational thunder pulsing in my veins and Araya’s vocals are surprisingly crisp for a man who has been screaming at the top of his lungs for 27 years. The lyrics make you want to throw those horns in the air, punch the stranger on your left and scream till your throat bleeds! In fact, there is one particular song (Hate Worldwide) that I absolutely fell in love with already. I only started listening to it yesterday but this song is already on pace to rival “Raining Blood” as my personal Slayer anthem.
“I’m just a godless heretic not a god-fearing lunatic. That’s why it’s become my obsession, to treat God like an infection.”
Slayer’s still got it. Fuck yeah baby! Good times.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
The problem is the basic idea that you have a right for some reason to decide anything about the work. If Slayer, or their designee, has decided that they don’t want you to have the album until you pay for it, it’s wrong for you to download it, because they created the work, and it’s their right, not yours, to decide how the work is handled, since they created it.
This is no different from anything you’ve created. If you decided that something you created wasn’t worthy of publication, and someone goes behind your back and grabs it and spreads it all over Facebook, it’d be just as wrong, for the exact same reasons. The money part of it is only incidental. It’s the disrespect of not honoring the Artists wishes of how they wanted their work handled that is the important point.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
True. I fully acknowledge that my reasons are not only weak attempts to justify my thievery, I also admit that my reasons are outright wrong on many, many levels. I still applaud and support the artists that give their music away for free, hoping to build a paying audience but if that’s not the business model of the people I’m taking from, then it is wrong. But a level of wrong I am willing to live with as long as I balance out the scales by buying it later. That might not be 100% accurately balanced but again, I’m willing to live with it. What I did was illegal, but I don’t see it as truly ‘wrong’.
With full intent of paying for the content at a later date, I made a copy of the original from someone who (presumably) bought it and therefore I did not decrease the number of products on the shelf available for legitimate purchase. When I finally buy it, it will most likely be a digital purchase through iTunes so it will be as though I handed my money over to someone after inspecting their work. The normal business model is: give me your money and hope the CD is good. My ideal but naive model is, this CD is good I am willing to pay money for this. BUT, you are absolutely right, until that officially happens, what I am doing is illegal. I can’t steal a car and then come back three years later and drop $12,000 through the mail slot.
But I think your analogy of someone stealing unpublished works doesn’t quite hold up. They put this work out and expect to get paid for it. I am paying for it, I’m just incapable of doing so at this time so by rights, I should do without it until I can get the money together. But if someone steals the blueprints for your new design or the rough draft of your new novel and puts it out there for all to see, you have been deprived of compensation for your intellectual property. Worse, the risk is there that someone will take your work and pass it off as their own. But once you complete it and release it to the world, your compensation relies on your audience’s reception of the work. If they are willing to pay for it or if they aren’t. The merit of the work, the amount of advertising, societal readiness… There are a lot of factors in the release of a artist’s work and they should be the ones to decide when to put it out there. Even I can’t justify stealing someone’s unfinished or unpublished work…
On the other hand, that tape of Linda McCartney singing along with “Hey Jude” is some funny shit!
November 6th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Do as you will (You will anyway…. smile) I answered the question you asked: “why is it such a crime for me to get it early” And I gave you the answer.
the basic idea that you don’t see the two things as the same is the problem, though. If I create something (published or not) then it’s my right to do as I see fit with it, and it’s wrong for you to take my rights away. The money is irrelevant, the published status is irrelevant… those things are just legalese used to allow me to put my creation out there so that people have the choice to listen, read, or watch under the conditions I, the creator, offer. If you don’t like those conditions, then the right thing to do is walk away, not take the work under the conditions that you find acceptable.
the published status of the work is only relevant in terms of how I choose to distribute the work. if you take a copy without following my wishes as creator, the wrongness, and the removal of my rights is absolutely the same whether it’s published, privately collected, or unpublished.
The difference is the amount of legal protection I have on my work, and how badly I can mash you for going against my wishes. The wrongness is the same, regardless.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Sooo…… what you’re saying is, I’m going to Hell because I downloaded it and have absolutely no intention of paying for it?? But Chris will be there with me because his good intentions don’t mean squat. I tell you what though… I think I might be becoming a Slayer fan. You know I wasn’t a big fan of their old stuff, but this was just a bit different. I could handle the vocals a lot better. I think I really like it. (Haven’t listened to all of it yet)
November 10th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Well, since I don’t believe in Hell, and pretty much never use the phrase, probably not.
On the other hand, Yes, whether or not you pay for it later, good intentions don’t mean squat, morally it’s the same.
And I’m not saying don’t download, even, I’m just saying don’t delude yourself into thinking that there is anything right about it, or that you actually have any rights in how the work is distributed.