Fergus Cassidy

It's only rock 'n' roll

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
                        -- The Who (1971)

BACKING out of the late 1960s, The Who were putting plenty of distance between themselves and the peace and love 'revolution'. The high of Wavy Gravy's "we have in mind breakfast in bed for 400,000" at Woodstock was followed shortly after by the death knell at Altamont, where the Hells Angels made Mick Jagger look like the angel Gabriel.

Over the last thirty years, counter culture became record shop counter culture and the music business grew into a global machine, now dominated by the just five record companies. And technology has been a great friend.

From vinyl to 8-track cassette and on to cassette tape and Compact Disc, technology has allowed the record companies to step up the quality, lower transportation and distribution costs by reducing size and thereby increase profit margins. Selling the same music over and over again as delivery methods were upgraded, contains all the economics of a bottomless pit. It was a good run while it lasted but then the technology went bad. Very bad.

Booming record sales was just the lift the equipment manufacturers were after. They couldn't do enough to keep the record companies happy. Hi-fidelity, Dolby noise reduction, separate amps and players topped off with loudspeaker enclosures the size of small wardrobes.

It was a match made in heaven and no matter how innovative the manufacturers were, they knew the golden rule. Don't mess with the record companies.

And then the Big Bang happened. Computers arrived with their heartbeat of digital technology. By a bizarre twist of fate, a great chunk of the generation that had worn flowers in their hair on the way to San Francisco, kept going until they reached Silicon Valley.

In digital technology, the record companies have their Altamont and a different set of security problems. Computerised systems are a threat to the business model of rock and roll, because they offer a viable alternative to it.

While much ballyhoo has been made of the internet's role in all this - Napster in particular - the net plays only an ancillary role. Napster only worked because the music was in digital form in the first place and music in that format can be replicated ad finitum flawlessly with no diminution in quality. Up to now the record industry never really had to worry about what happened to the music after it was bought.

The response of the record industry to this very real threat has been nothing short of savage in its intensity and scale, particularly in the United States the citadel of the global industry. In one shape or another, Bill after Bill is being proposed to Congress with a sole aim. To get control of the technologies used to play and listen to 'product' from the entertainment industry. The music (and film) business wants to move to a leasing arrangement, similar to software licensing. The worst 'death rattle' yet is surely the recent demand for self-administered justice by the recording industry.

Congress will soon be asked to pass laws which would authorise copyright holders to electronically break in to file-sharing computer networks if there is a "reasonable basis" that piracy is taking place. The legislation would immunise groups such as the film and recording industries from all state and federal laws if they disable or block a "publicly accessible peer-to-peer network".

Senator Fritz Hollings, who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, is a big fan of moves such as this. He said recently that "when Congress sits idly by in the face of these file-sharing activities, we essentially sanction the internet as a haven for thievery" and then went on to charge "over 10m people" with stealing.

Through all of this, the silence of the artists themselves has been astonishing. Those voices have only appeared once, when Napster was at its height. Bands such as Metallica and The Corrs rallied to the cause and performed the required cheerleading duties.

With the closure of Napster, all is quiet from the artists and it can only be presumed that their fears have been dispelled. Because the silence from musicians is deafening when it comes balancing their own legitimate copyrights with the rights of the record buyers, without whom a copyright wouldn't be worth the paper it's written on. Until now.

Janis Ian has been writing and singing music for a long time. She is a well-respected songwriter, making records and touring regularly. The song she's most remembered for is At Seventeen, which was a hit 25 years ago. Her first chart success was in 1967 with Society's Child. It was a song about inter-racial love and the divisiveness around the song landed her in Life, Time and Newsweek.

Lately though she has spoken out in a way not heard from artists previously. In her regular column in Performing Songwriter magazine last May, she wrote a lengthy piece called 'The Internet Debacle'. She focussed on the future for artists, buyers and industry in a changing world: "the internet, and downloading, are here to stay.... Anyone who thinks otherwise should prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap of history".

In reference to the perceived threat to artists' copyright, she wrote "am I suspicious of all this hysteria? You bet. Do I think the issue has been badly handled? Absolutely. Am I concerned about losing friends, opportunities, my 10th Grammy nomination by publishing this article? Yeah, I am. But sometimes things are just wrong, and when they're that wrong, they have to be addressed".

She wrote a follow-up piece last week and said she was even more convinced than before that the net and digital technology can benefit creativity: "their [record labels] profit comes from blockbuster artists. If the industry moved to a more varied ecology, independent labels and artists would thrive - to the detriment of the labels".

Ian received 1268 emails with only nine disagreeing with her position. The article appeared on 1000 web sites and was translated into nine languages. She got 16 offers of help to convert to Linux and 31 offers of server space for downloads of her own songs.

But there is one statistic that speaks volumes for artists like Janis Ian. The sales figures for her records. Since she started putting some of her songs online, her album sales have increased by 300%.

Maybe '60s guru Timothy Leary was on to something (or on something) when he proclaimed computers as the new brain-change drug of the times.

The Sixties - they never went away you know.

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Links

Janis Ian's column called 'The Internet Debacle' as it appeared in Performing Songwriter magazine in May 2002. link

Her follow-up piece which is on her web site. link