Sunday, October 15, 2006

My customary traipse of a Sunday morning to the strains of what I’ve downloaded in mp3 form bore a real surprise today. Jarvis Cocker’s “Black Magic” (go to Fluxblog and scroll down to the October 12th post) has taken “Crimson and Clover” and puree’d it with a little Spector and Pierre Henry. Sprinkled on some Suicide dust and come up with a very great pop song. Derivative mayhap but absolutely crying out to be a 7” single. Funny, I heard “Common People” on the wireless the other day. I’ve never been a huge Pulp fan but they've had one or three belters and that was one of them, like "Virginia Plain" by Roxy Music. “Black Magic” is up there with that. Have a listen.

Such longevity – in my opinion - is a thing of the past in terms of everything. In fact, it may have already been removed from dictionaries, etc. because a description is no longer required. Nothing, and I do mean nada - is built, made, designed or worse, even expected to last anymore. Sure, there are things that SHOULD, but the scum have no truck with that. Take YouTube, it was fun while it lasted but is undoubtedly doomed. It may provide a business model but all the good points will be spirited away. Its future is said to hinge on perceived ad "revenue". There's that word "perceived" again. Advertising, other than as a novelty, doesn't work. It doesn't bring the returns it once did and does nothing more than create a ripple of profile, if that. The arse has fallen out of printed real estate, just as it has on TV and radio because it’s way beyond saturation. Word of mouth or bush telegraph can provide the means of mushrooming but ultimately the info overload is just crushing. Even for info junkies. Being bombarded with waste be it of paper or cyber variety has disembowled any possible plus side to advertising, it’s almost all pish. Of course the word has to leak out somehow but lack of concensus means that it can’t be driven. Any kind of splash is just mopped up for the next regurgitation. There's no time to process anything anymore. Trying to make such time is mostly futile. It doesn’t even serve as the next day’s chip paper because the fast food emporiums use those terrible polystyrene cartons. Or white paper. Possibly because the ink will kill us. Whatever doesn’t off you makes you stronger (allegedly). Bring on the ink…

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