| Am I Alone in This? Bill Bottrell in the January 2001 New Settler |
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role-model that right now. There was a certainly a period when I grew up when the Beetles hit and it was records - recorded music, mediated art was the thing. And that was the beginning of post-modernism. John Lennon was one of the first people on Earth qualified to point to post-modernism and see it as the evil system it is; he put out a record called 'Plastic Ono Band'. The system where everybody consumes mediated music - through the media - as opposed to live is a terrible thing. The cost of making a record, though it has come way down, it's still very prohibited. It's a barrier to an artist. And good for that barrier. It's better for people to lift off their behinds and go where the music is being made. BILL: Yes. |
What I say to young musicians is:
"You want to be a musician, PLAY -
at your house, at your neighbor's house,
on your front porch, on the streets.
Anywhere, play music. If everybody
got a little more down to earth about music,
the global media would lose its power.
Napster and the Internet. . . BILL: That's evidence of the final stages of the media explosion that started in the Sixties. With digital, recorded media - including movies and video and records - becomes ubiquitous and nobody can control it. I used to produce an album for somebody and it would end up on these large two-inch tapes and it would be two shelves full of these things. These are the precious $200,000-cost recordings of this artist's work for this year and it could be very valuable or it |