May I ask a dumb question?

from: Plenty of equipment

How does buying equipment make up for a talent deficit? Do you have any idea how much HARDER that equipment is to operate than any musical instrument ever thought about being? If you have no talent, THE LAST THING you should ever do is invest a lifetime's worth of dough into it. The first thing that happens is the equipment informs you thru your own ineptness in no uncertain terms how dumb you actually are, and, even worse, the higher resolution of the system allows you to see and hear quite clearly the difference between the rosy red glow of your own mental "memory lane", and the undeniable evidence every 2 or 3 beats that's popping up just like it always did, but it doesn't have that dreamlike wonderfulness that was so compelling. In fact, if you've ever done a lot of music and finally get it onto a CD, if you can listen to that and not be utterly horrified and crushed as you have to admit to yourself maybe it wasn't so fucking fantastic after all, then I think you might have a good shot at being my next singing sensation. Let me whip up a completely produced CD for you real fast. Hell, no, I won't dip into already recorded "oldies", that's no fun. The whole point is to write a whole CD and record it even faster. Band meeting? You're kidding, right? By the time you organize 3 people to be in the same room at the same time to discuss a prearranged idea, I could have the SMPTE laid, the drums tracked, 18,000 synths layered, AND the vocals so fucked up from VST plug-ins that mutate audio, you're fucking band meeting wouldn't have even started and I'd already have it being played on your local college station AND, there'd be an article all about your lovely new "excrement" in the local excrement "paper". Yep, you'd be big dog for about 15 minutes of raging glory. Then, you'd wake up the next day and pop that baby on, and the digital clarity and fullness of sound would send you into a clinical depression you would have never known about, if only you hadn't spent all your car & house money on a silly little delusion you used to "jack yourself off" with 15 years ago.... or was it 25?... 33 years of playing these stupid plastic switches to trigger cheesy oscillations to accompany the "hairball in your drainpipe" version of the LAMEST Archie's on your block? You may not know it, but the Archie's records sound like Frank fucking Zappa compared to that piss poor, worn out, portastudio, portacannibal, phone answering machine you used to call a "multitrack recording studio". And best of all.... check out those customers ripping each other to shreds fighting over who will get to sit thru your next 60 minute release of "audio torture" first. After a while, I just realized, hey, I'm not even doing this for you, I'm doing this for me, especially if its LOUD, and especially if its damn near impossible for you to even think straight while its going on. Yes, it is a rather abrasive assault on the concept of "American entertainment". Think of it as a propaganda war, like when the US Marines blared Black Sabbath down on Noriega when he was holed up in the embassy in Panama. The military sets up the equivalent of 5 or 6 rock concerts worth of sheer speaker area and wattage, and then blares Ozzy on their enemies non-stop at jet engine volume, as loud as they can get it to go, and then the just sit back and wait, because after a week of the same heavy metal album playing at mind crushing volume for 7 days your body will succumb not matter how much you think you wanna party. If they played Boston or the Eagles, I'd surrender in the first 2 minutes. Why don't they play Bolton? I bet that would clean out a few foxholes, eh? I don't mind being slaughtered with a bayonet in hand to hand combat, but please let me be annihilated without my last moments on Earth contaminated by toxic pop waste! And get that digital quality away from me! The brighter the light, the uglier I already am!

another grim product of the anti popeye-x fan club © kurt otto 2011