Mark's Pages

April 26, 2006:

The contempt, on those message boards.

They hate the musicians. They hate the music-buying public.

They're the gatekeepers. The offspring of those men at Abbey Road who wore white lab coats. We'll tell you what to record. We'll tell you what it will sound like. We have the knowledge. You are merely the talent.

Much of their vehemence is based in panic. That the old brotherhood is doomed, rendered utterly futureless by the evolution of technology and, paradoxically, by the existence of these very message boards. Where neophytes with ProTools learn The Secrets.

Yet some of it, I think, is a form of class resentment. Artists and producers have their achievements recognized, while technicians coil cables sometime after dawn.

In a strong sense it's all moot. They're dying, soon. The waters even now lap their chins. Where their very existences are redeemed only partially by their obvious love of craft.