The posts in this category: Pop Cult Op-Ed are specifically for my opinions on the industrial military complex co-opted music business, and the acts that are involved. I know that sounds really political and jargon-ish, but the point is to look at the commercial music business and see how it props control of the masses by the industrial rich nations.
I will usually see a huge act and some current event press release info about them – feel a the hand of big brother poking into music consciousness and need to make a note of it. Sometimes I get snarky and negative, but it’s mostly just to note that these things are actually happening and that big press is trying to pretend that they are related to music. Go figure.
Here’s a couple of quick items.
1. Michael Jackson wanted to work on making a comeback – getting back, lets say onto the good side of the industrial press. I mean, Michael has fans, they didn’t go anywhere. Anyway, he didn’t live long enough to make that thrust but now Sony has picked up the ball and run with it – see how it is all related to banking information? The industrial press continually pound the logic into the public that the status of the arts are related to how well they sell – particularly in the music and film industries.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Heading toward its October 28 release,Michael Jackson movie “This Is It” looks like a box office winner forSony’s Columbia Pictures movie studio with one estimate saying it could make more than $600 million worldwide in a limited two-week run.
Jackson’s many fans are hungry for one last chance to see their idol sing and dance on screen, and the film’s makers promise an image of him that is more like the pop star who ruled the charts in the 1980s, and less like the frail paparazzi target he seemed in recent years.
Industry watchers say the unique nature of “This Is It” — part documentary and part concert film starring a legend who is no longer living — make it difficult to judge how successful it will be for Sony Corp unit Columbia Pictures because there are few, if any, comparisons to it.
Based on the $60 million Columbia paid to release the film, plus marketing costs, and taking into account distribution fees it will earn, industry insiders predict the film needs to make just over $100 million at worldwide box offices to profit. ==>>> more
This is from Pop & Hiss, The LA Times Music Blog:
Live review: U2’s 360 Tour at the Rose Bowl
“Enough of the folk mass!” declared Bono during U2’s historic Rose Bowl performance Sunday, leading his band and the nearly 100,000 fans in the stadium out of a singalong and into a dance party.
To me, this is the forefront of the evolution in 1984’s Big Brother. The stage is designed to give the illusion that this is an intimate experience between the artist and the audience. Of course, in good faith, everyone must look at these things this way, but on the other side there is the actual effect it has on the way that we relate to music performance, media, and the acceptance of industrialized art delivery.
Ringed by a ramp that the band members usually reached via moving bridges, enclosing a good chunk of the crowd within a welcome pen, the Space Station truly conjoined U2 and its audience. The Rose Bowl’s relatively low walls enhanced the illusion that mere footsteps (and sometimes less than that) stood between the men unstack and their elated devotees. When Bono crouched at the ramp’s edge or the Edge strode across it, churning out a riff, they seemed as touchable as superstars could be.
bono pawned - will he make it to the other side and become king?
Here’s a U2 fan, making the usual compromise in an articulate way.
“But as the band mixes in its activism and spirituality, the rock concert as rally and revival could be redemptive or creepy, depending on your perspective. Since I’m not nearly as cynical about the sheer pretensions of the tour as others outside the U2 fan community, I remain entirely open to the possibilities for reaching magnificent plateaus, beyond any lines on any horizon, in my moment of surrender to the sheer spectacle of it all.”
That’s all I have to say about this – I mean, sure – I like some things about U2’s music, but I’d rather get into music that isn’t part of the war machine. It’s absurd actually – the double speak of the Tutu message included in this fiasco, and the con of the whole U2 political influence.
Here’s another sample of big music and big messages.
Tags: mainstream
