The Divine Miss K - A Pandomag.com Column by J. Kim

Miss me? Well, probably not, but nonetheless please accept all apologies for my taking a self-imposed sabbatical recently. Preparations for my impending move to France have caused me to neglect virtually every aspect of my life (including grooming habits such as leg shaving, which could probably explain more things that I care to share at this point). Also, few things happening in music have inspired me to write as of late. So instead of writing a great feature on an amazing band I saw recently, I am treating the Pandemonium faithful to several things crawling under my skin as of late.

Napster and MP3s

Only would whiny, selfish Americans insist that they have every right to distribute the copyrighted work of an artist for free. Just who these people demanding that musicians should just give their music away for free think they are is beyond me. No where in the U.S. Constitution does it say "Right to free Metallica." The number of things wrong with that notion deserve a column unto itself. The Civil Rights Act also missed the "free MP3 clause" also. Though Brittany Spears makes far too much money (and Maria Azevedo of Battery makes far too little), musicians support themselves through the sales of CDs, T-shirts, concert tickets and other bric-a-brac. Just imagine working for a company, then at the end of the two-week pay period your boss says to you, "I don’t have to pay you a salary, I just MP3ed you." You may have a hard time paying rent. At the very least you would feel outraged and cheated.

Sure, people taped songs from commercial radio stations onto a cassette, but several things prevented that cassette from hampering CD sales. First, the obnoxious radio personal would either talk over the beginning or the end of the song, whichever was the best part, as states Murphy’s Law. Second, you could never tape an entire album from one station in a particular period of time (the whole Album Oriented Radio thing never really took off and the "King Biscuit Flower Hour" was always on when people had other things to do, like watch "The Simpsons.") Third, bootlegging is cool, if you snuck a tape recorder into a punk show and had it wedged into your sternum from the mosh pit; bootlegging is also cool if the DJ from the club (or, back in "the day") the park/basketball court/street handed you something he mixed by a couple of guys before they made it big. Downloading an MP3 off the Internet is too damn easy to be considered bootlegging. Fourth, you could never with your crappy little cassette distribute it en masse as you can by posting it on a Web site.

For one brief moment, let us together snap our heads out of short term mode and look at the long term. If your favorite artist’s sales of CDs slows down dramatically because too many people can access all her material for free, then her record label will drop her. She will then have to find a day job and will no longer have the time to make the music you so crave. Then, you will have to find someone new to download and they may very well suck.

Kid Rock and Eminem

Maybe they bother me just because I cannot decide which one is less terrible. Rap needs to revisit the whole East Coast-West Coast rivalry, or a near facsimile. There is something wrong with the universe when Tupac Shakur dies and these two buffoons live. How many times do people have to hear it, "White men can’t rap unless they are Jewish." Did Vanilla Ice teach us nothing. Excuse me while I locate my Eric B. and Rakim cassette tape (which I purchased 10 years ago) just to hear the real thing.

Return of the Bitches and Hos

Everyone must be so proud to see peonic moronic bands like Limp Biscuit bringing back the "women as pig slut to be slapped" back into music. Maybe musicians got a little scared when they saw that South Africa now has 39 times the number of rapes as does the United States. Maybe musicians like Kid Rock thought the United States needs to get back on track and show women where they truly belong. Maybe they saw Xena and thought, "We can’t let women get all empowered and shit. Next thing you know they won’t suck our dicks whenever we want." But, you boys sure set women straight at Woodstock now didn’t you. You showed women their place in rock – as far away as humanly possible apparently. Music needs less man-childs like this and more men like Adam Sherburne and Alec Empire. Anyone who thinks these little porn-star loving dolts are hardcore have never heard Atari Teenage Riot. What the world needs now is some hardcore righteous women to come back into music and start taking names.

Kathleen Hannah

She has returned, and her new band Le Tigre is amazing. This trio takes the fury that Hannah had in Bikini Kill and infuses it with a much wider spectrum of sounds and styles. From the songs I have heard, Le Tigre is much more accessible than Hannah’s solo release as Julie Ruin. DJ John Richards has been kind of enough to play a couple of tunes from their debut album for Seattle’s grateful listeners. Hopefully Le Tigre’s songs will not end up as free MP3s everywhere and the band will sell enough records so they can continue. We need them now more than ever.

Adam Sherburne

Speaking of Sherburne, if anyone has heard the new Consolidated album, Tikkun (which is Hebrew for something I am sure is profound), please let us know. If it sounds like Dropped, then please save your comments, but if it even approaches The Myth of Rock, please notify Pandemonium at once. We are waiting with baited breath.

Smartest State in the Union

Finally, a state has come to its senses; Vermont will now recognize the union between same sex couples. I cannot understand how the marriage of two people, total strangers, could be so threatening to someone else’s marriage. If the sanctity of a piece of paper is the only thing holding a marriage together, than it is one without love, and it is one without substance. On a more public note, how can any heterosexual couple say, with a straight face, "sanctity of marriage" after "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" aired? Come on people, fifty percent divorce rate, who are we kidding? Vermont is now officially the smartest state in the union. Massachusetts used to be because it was the only state that Nixon did not carry (and because I was born there), but now it’s Vermont. However, the sale of Ben and Jerry’s surely spells the beginning of the end for all that is good in the world, so it is just a matter of time before Vermont joins the dark side of Jesse Helms.

Jesse Helms

For the simple fact that Jesse Helms is the leading opponent of the ratification of the United Nation’s treaty to end the discrimination against women (the CEDAW), he should be thrown out of office. The United States is the only industrialized nation that has yet to sign. Helms needs a sex scandal very soon.

Dumbest State in the Union

Washington, my current residence, decided as a state that people who can afford megabucks SUVs (stupid, useless, and vomitous) should not have to pay proportionately more in taxes to the state. The people of the state decided in fact, that government really does not have the right to collect taxes in the first place. The initiative has been declared unconstitutional, but the early ramifications caused domestic violence shelters to lose funding. It caused ferry and bus services to be scaled back (Seattle has the fourth worst traffic in the nation, so how anyone can say public transportation can be scaled back is beyond me). But the passing of this initiative proved one thing: people who drive SUVs are inherently morons. If you are so frightened that at any given moment you could be in an accident and therefore need a civilian tank, then you need driving lessons. If this were a perfect world, one could bring Tiffany from the cartoon Daria around to these vehicles and say, "Sport... (pause)... utility... (pause).... vehicles... (pause)... are... (pause)... sooooooooo... (big big pause)... wrooooooong." And she should be doing them all a favor. I say this only because I care, you look like giant dweebs in those things, trade them in for a Volvo or something equivalently respectable at once. Or better yet, stay home altogether.

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