Tom Rush's Video

http://bit.ly/Rw7lTX

The problem is Amanda Palmer! Don't you get it? A scrappy young 'un who understands the new technology is ripping off her brethren, all the classically-trained musicians who've got no idea who she is who were thinking about strolling down to her gigs to play for free.

Don't you get it? This is exactly how the wealthy want it. Us fighting us. While they count their billions in private. Yes, billions.

You can't make a billion making music.

You can make a billion creating a music service. Just ask the guys at Spotify. But at least Spotify's on the right side... The right side you say? Spotify is ruining the business, crippling my royalty account, those Swedes must be stopped!

Just like progress. Musicians abhor it. They want a world in which CDs cost $13 and you have to buy 'em to hear them. While you're at it, why don't you charge for YouTube and e-mail, why not monetize everything you've come to know as free?

Wait a second. I'm getting too deep for you. I want to make my point.

Amanda Palmer is not the enemy. The bankers and the super-rich are! We've been sold such a bill of goods that most people have no idea of the truth. They want their taxes lowered when they don't pay any. They're against health care even though they've got no insurance. Did you see that the life expectancy of poor people is going down in the U.S?

Yup, if you're a poor musician, you're gonna die young. That's the world we live in.

And the "New York Times" can't stop it. Money can't stop it. The only thing that can stop it is music.

Yup, while the business is focused on television singing competitions, with "stars" hosting for the cash, as if Britney Spears ever had a cogent thing to say about anything, the media is all wrapped up in whether Lady Gaga gained weight or not.

Last time I checked, music was something you heard. What difference does it make what she looks like? And Adele has proven the calorie-challenged can succeed despite what the body police have to say.

But one thing Gaga has not done, she has not gone on record about the inequality in our economic system.

Now she's focused on bullying, I'm only singling her out because she's got so much power.

How about that nitwit Taylor Swift. Even though she's leaving Nashville behind, she still has the mentality. That you say nothing against rednecks, that you support the Republican line. As if all country music fans were rich!

But that's one thing the extreme right and the extreme left have in common. Anger. And they should be united instead of carping at each other.

We just ain't got enough. Romney doesn't care about poor people and Obama is beholden to the bankers. It's not good on either side.

But the media and the moneyed interests have us grasping for each other's throats. While everybody with traction tries to screw those below and climb the ladder.

Did you see Phil Williams's expose on Justin Bieber? The Beeb scalps his own tickets. Do you see a brouhaha? No, because in this winner-take-all society no one stands up for the downtrodden and we put our faith in faux artists when there are no real ones to go around.

Now Tom Rush is a septuagenarian. He comes from an era when musicians stood up for what was right, not what paid the most. I've got no idea if his video will go viral.

But you, the public, determine this. You, the public, made "Gangnam Style" a household term. We are not beholden to radio, we are not beholden to bankers, we've got the power, that's what the Internet is all about, we need to USE IT!

How about a competition for the best protest song. Hell, they can be right or left, I don't care. Sunlight on the subject helps us all.

If you want to make it, you've got to make a difference.

That's what's wrong with our phoney-baloney society today. Not welfare moms and Medicare matrons, but wimpy automatons who think their job is just to get along.

Now I'm gonna piss you off. All you wannabes recording protest songs in your basement. If you can't write and you can't sing, you're never gonna make it.

In order to succeed, you've got to be fantastic!

Even Bob Dylan is not that good anymore. Heard anything about "Tempest" recently?

Even Taylor Swift's paean to the past is fading.

No, that's how you can tell if something is great, it STICKS!

Like the Yankees and the Lakers.

Then again, those leagues are limited, anyone can play in music.

And with everybody playing, we end up with two camps, the untalented and the sheep. Both abhorrent.

But in between are the geniuses.

Prince, Don Henley, Elton John... Where are you today?

Not that you have to be old to have any power. It's just that the old people remember when music could change the world...

Bono? If you're all about saving the world, can't you write a song about it? Release it without worrying whether radio will play it?

Ah, but Bono's sold out. He's a venture capitalist now.

He followed the money.

There's nothing wrong with money.

But you've got to put art first.

Art hasn't been number one since AOL burgeoned and the Internet blew up in 1995. We've been following the technologists ever since. As if you could eat an iPhone, as if it could keep you warm at night.

We've got a crisis all right. It's an artistic crisis. Movies are crap and so is most music.

Oh, don't e-mail me about this and that band, if they were really that good, they'd have gone viral, and they haven't.

Did you know that "Gangnam Style" was subversive? A put-down of a culture?

Where's Jay-Z's rap video where's he's putting down the wealthy culture? Oh, that's right, those are his friends now, he can't make fun of them.

But Jay-Z is just a figurehead for Barclays Center.

It's Ratner and the Russian dude who really count. The people who promised housing but got their arena first.

Tom Rush is doing his part... What are you doing?

"Documents Show 'Bieber Is Scalping His Own Tickets": http://bit.ly/Qg3fQ5

"Leon Cooperman and Relative Wealth": http://bit.ly/SUbaET

"Life Spans Shrink for Least-Educated Whites in the U.S.": http://nyti.ms/OLLPGy


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