Part Four-rock and roll!!!

Ok I admit I am skipping over quite a bit of musical history here but what do you want from me?! Besides Im pretty sure that no one will mind as long as I talk about Elvis at some point. No I'm kidding. this is actually my favorite blog to date and the one I was the most excited to write about. I love music (cant carry a tune in a bucket) and the twenties to the eighties, give or take, is all music that i love to listen to. Not any particular type really, although I'm sure there are if I look at each particular era. I like songs that my grandma used to sing like Silver Wings or even old timey gospel.

We begin with the twenties and the rise of Jazz. Oh yes, I listen to some jazz on occasion as well as some of the other types of music that came out in the Great Depression. there were a great many young folks that believed that their ticket out of the slums and poor towns was music. You see years before a cat named Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Later down the road someone invented a radio. (Don't ask me who, I'm not really into science.) Then the ultimate genius took both ideas and invented the music industry. It wasn't quite that instant but you know how these things work.

I know it sounds really stupid and un-researched but if you watch O Brother Where Art Thou? you will hear alot of these songs and see what the music industry was like back then. Depending on who you went to, either you paid or were paid to record yourself and possibly your friends and family on a record for some guy that would then sell the record to a radio station and all of the people who told you that no one would ever want to listen to you sing had to eat crow because you were on the radio!!! Never mind that they were probably eating crow anyway, 'cause, well, you know, depression. Any way, someone decided that hey if people really like this music that much why don't we start putting music from one singer or group on a record and sell it that way! To the public itself not just to radio stations! 

Fast forward a bit and we are in rock and roll. The Beatles, Beach Boys and a couple other bands I can't think of right now. Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, the guy that did La Bamba (I know his name but I can never spell his last name right. Sorry Ritchie). Elvis, Cream, the Monkees, Jefferson Airplane, and my reason for making it through the nineties, the Grateful Dead. 

When you ask someone who lived through the 50's- 70's (Dave?), heck even someone from the eighties, one of the first things they think of is mix tapes. How you would sit for hours listening to the radio, waiting  for that one song to come on, trying to be quick enough to not cut off the first twenty seconds. I had a note book that I kept a record of the songs I wanted, which ones I had already gotten and what tapes they were on. I remember my first Mix Tape (some of you know where I'm going with this) being for my half sister's boyfriend. I had the biggest crush on him. I found the tape on my sisters nightstand later with the remains of a joint stubbed out on it. I was heartbroken. My sister was grounded when my father found her stash later. ;)

The Grateful Dead and many other bands made it big because of mix tapes. They weren't very popular until someone had the dedication to sit in a smokey bar or grassy hippie filled park and record them playing a set, then make copies and sell it to friends that had never heard them before. The bands weren't paid for it.  They didn't come back later and say, "Hey, you stole that music. You have to pay us now for all the copies you made and sold. We want our cut." Even through the smokey haze that most of them walked around in they realized that spreading their music through the underground was the way to go. Free advertisement! People actually sell these tapes on ebay.  If Eminem goes for that much....

So how did we get the point where Metallica (! shame on you James) is suing fans for getting their music for free? I know while music being about money is nothing new (minstrels remember?), when did it get to the point that it was ALL ABOUT THA BENJAMINS??  Sorry had to put that in there. lol.  Why do we have to have all these new laws in place to protect the bands from not making money? Music used to belong to everyone not just the privileged few who could afford to buy a $30 cd whenever they felt like it. I'm sorry but to the girl who put her heart into a mix tape because she was poor, those laws are just stupid. To the fan who sat for hours to catch all 20 minutes of a set, then spent forever copying the tape to get the bands name out there, these laws are crushing. 

Tune in next time when we will actually look at these laws and their impact on not just the music industry but the world.