Page 22 - RYAN'S GIG GUIDE AUGUST 2014

The autumnal term time was always a mixed
blessing of ambivalence and excitement returning
to our childhood Shawshank of schooling 'neath a
canopy of leaves turning golden brown in the
slumber end of the seasons
Vivid oranges and browns leaped about the skies
as leaves tumbled and fell showered our brows
and carpeted our tread and making the drains
overflow when it rained
And mixed amongst the foliage and fauna a careful
eye could spy the thin trailing tail of an unwound
cassette decorating the branches and ensnaring
the birdies in a pastiche of rebellion to some
unknown frustration against the lyrical content
felt by whomever had flung the thing up there
As a medium for music the cassette tape was the
fore runner of what the kids today call MP
Players a plastic dual spooled gawking rectangle
of one time cutting edge technology; movies set
in some distant future time would portray just
how far ahead their civilization had become by
making the cassette capable of holding many
giggly bits of info inside an incredibly tape tiny an
unannounced visual indicator to the audience that
yes they were indeed witnessing the future
Three for a pound blank cassette tapes and a copy
of the latest Madonna album from the library used
to be the cornerstone of increasing one's music
library More Blue Peter than blatant piracy the
notion of recording the contents of one tape onto
another in real time was a commitment to time
wasting laughable in the almost instant copy n'
paste mp era Patience was paramount for those
determined to have the latest Iron Maiden album
gratis and having to wait sixty minutes for a sixty
minute album to be copied is no easy sit for a
generation without iPads to distract or more than
channels on TV to complain about
Half the neighborhood 'round my way owned the
entire back catalog of both Queen and Bowie once
my dad got a tape to tape cassette player slash
recorder with built in radio and four sliding dial
equalizer (oh yes; it was a glorious beast to
behold!) the next door neighbor testing the limits
of maximum 'borrows' his library card would allow
and the limits of my fathers god graces when
turning up with an armful of borrow's and a pack
of TDK's finest
But along with the mysterious disappearance of
white dog poo the future has removed the un
wanted wait along with the need to pay hire
charges to get the originals to be copied
Technological leaps of Asimovian confection have
left us standing in a landscape where the entire
knowledge of Man is never more than an internet
connection away and Google is practically a verb
Acquiring and enjoying the musical fruits of an
other's labors is practically painless and as such
has left us able to get the music we want when we
want but left the responsibility of paying for it up
to our own conscience
Despite offering more ways to pay than the Tele
vision License many of us still surf the seven seas
to the port of Pirate Bay when looking for some
playlist plunder any number of similar inclined
sites allowing you an open invitation to the table
of plenty to heap forkfuls of ill gotten gain onto
our memory cards and into our ears
Records labels bemoan the state of the market
now being one where the artists make no money
from album sales instead needing to pay their
rehab costs with over priced merchandise and sky
high ticket prices Illegal downloads they cry are
killing off the industry
PASTICHE OF REBELLION
PLAYLIST PLUNDER
ROBERT BAKER
roblems
iracy
RGG August 2014 - p.22