[Glitch]

Gerald et al-

> I truly feel 
> sorry for the kids
> coming up today, who live surround by brands and ads.  Will they see that life
> doesn't 
> revolve around buying things, that music can be made simply for the love of
> making music or 
> entertaining people?

At first I was skeptical about this: are things really that much worse today
than they were when I was a kid?  Then I stopped to think about it and I
think you're right!!!  The singers/bands who are big right now are so
commercialized it's scary.  And of course there are always good, new
emerging artists who make music for the sheer love of it - Ryan Adams and
Shannon McNally come to mind - but who the hell has heard of them??  Not
your average teenager, I can tell you that.  Seriously, who will be
Generation Y's Beatles, their Nirvana, their Doors, their Tragically Hip,
their Midnight Oil?  (Any Generation Ys on this list please feel free to
jump right in!)  Are there any bands emerging right now who don't sell
products?  (And are popular with kids?)  I remember PG saying something
about seeing a day when all music is inextricably linked with the product it
sells, and it made me cold to think about it.
Even the friggin Counting Crows have a commercial.  And Moby?  Hello?
Course, we now hear the Beatles in commercials too for crying out loud.
It's a sad thing.
But I still stand behind my statement that a lot of the time it's the fault
of the record company.  Some dipshit like Brittany Spears or Avril Lavigne
doesn't know what's going on when she's seventeen years old and some company
offers her a million dollar contract.  I mean what would you do with a
million bucks at age 17?  You say, sure, where do I sign?  And they say,
okay, we have just _purchased you_, and everything you say and do from now
on will be used to make money for us.  Sick.