The end of music.

It's been a busy start to the year. In a continuing trend of the music industry festivals have eaten live music as one can easily see in the increase in number of festivals verses the decrease in the number of middle level touring acts. From the slightly embarrassing local council gig to the corporate sponsored monolith of the national touring scene individual tours become harder to remain viable as festivals suck the cash out of the ticket buying public.

I don't beget the promoters right to have a go, and most definitely there are some interesting concepts and lineups out there however it's the two edged sword of art verses social event that is beginning to effect quality and diversity. Along with the hit and miss nature of outdoor sound the ever increasing rules and noise restrictions there is the changing face of the festival attendees. How many times have I walked out into 'punter land' as those on the inside oft refer to public areas and just wander through a vacant mass of heavily sedated walking wardrobes, C.U.B.S (Cashed Up Bogans) more pathetic than a zoo full of endangered animals where all the males are sterile...Is anyone watching the gig, does anyone really give a shit?

I may be dramatic and as far as shit goes I'm not one to shit in my nest, indeed due to nature of my work a significant amount of my income is derived from these events, but I'm not alone in saying if festivals stopped tomorrow I wouldn't be overly disappointed. People would go somewhere and people will always want to collect in groups to check each other out, its social anthropology and necessary for continuing the virus on the earth otherwise know as the Human Race.

But there is a problem.

Music is dead. As a commodity and as a tangible entity this seems patently evident. I feel an underlying sense of dread every time I update my music player watching the listeners connection with recorded sound drift further into a sea of zero's and one's. When compact disks have been extinguished all you will get is an authority to play a file on a object that changes faster than the subject of the material. What happens when laptops don't exist, when you can't afford or be bothered with updating the operating system of current music player? It's happening now.

The great liberation of ideas and information stemming from the internet and such technologies as the ipod has some at the cost of quality. No one seems to care as the hunger for content outweighs the desire to listen to quality recordings. I shudder at the sound of a highly compressed mp3 coming out of a mobile phone. And the delivery system is far from the utopian democracy the internet claims to be. This is most evident in the huge lawsuits made against individuals under cover of copyright laws. Large companies scrambling to reinforce dwindling share holder returns, music is just fodder for online marketing, something to listen to in the background when you are masturbating in 3D on your virtual gaming console. In the very near future it will be impossible to listen to music unless you are connected to the company who are supplying the data, every time you play a song the internet will register with some shadowy database. Notice how every time itunes updates the song count returns to zero? Thus making sure the latest uninspiring 'Kings of Leon' release stays near the top of every playlist. You Tube, itunes, the historical revisionism of 100,000,000 'hits' on you tube won't make 'Short Stack' anymore listenable or relevant in 2 years from now.

You are currently listening to ...... you told facebook what going on with you they told google who knows what you are doing anyway, which side of the bed you like to sleep on and how you have your coffee, and they own this information, you don't in any tangible sense.

But in the face of this fake immediacy lies the artists chance to gain back creative control and live music remains the place. Even in the seemingly alienating ever expanding global discourse the opportunity exists to do something new. Back in the day before recorded music people would wait months for a touring orchestra to come and play some new music and in that it was performed live it has an immediacy and originality that still to this day can't be captured in a download.

It's in the sunburn you get from the outdoor concert, the shitty taste of cheap beer in a can (or worse plastic) the ruined shoes, the dust and mud, the portable toilets, the glazed eyes and over excited kids passed out by 2pm. Get the hire car, back the truck up, load the gear, sweat through your shirt, do the gig, smash a few beers (unless driving), never look at what time you got home just what time you gotta get up and do it all again. Have a laugh at the munted punters and think yourself lucky every night is Saturday night and your doing your bit to make sure these kids have a good time. It's a great gig and still better than a real job.

See you out there.