Less Thrills, the RIAA Way

Belle bought me a really great CD for my b-day. The Thrills. The album is "So Much For the City". (That's just an Amazon link. The band's website seems to be in a state of profound non-constructedness, so I won't link.)

They sound sort of like, um, Steven Malkmus of Pavement, backed by the High Llamas, very sweetly trying to sound like the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds"; with twangly, wingly Byrd's rickenbackers and banjos. Maybe a few cherub-like Burrito Brothers flapping around the studio, musing and bemusing. Touch of Teenage Fanclub, but in a good way. A couple of band members are trying hard to look like Burrito Brothers. The stitching. A couple others are pushing the dorky sweaters for hipsters envelope pretty brutally. They've all got that 'a little girl could beat me up' winsome pidgeonchestedness. They're Irish. Not like I think that means they have to wear green bowlers or look like U2 or anything. But does every song have to be about Santa Cruz, Big Sur, Hollywood, Las Vegas, Elvis, or the sun? Ah, well. We are all allowed to dream any weird thing we want. Especially when every song is a sweet pop dream, as I find is the case.

Except that I can't play every song on this CD for which my wife paid good cash dollars. I can't play track 1, "Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far)" - even though it's one of the better tracks. It wouldn't input into iTunes on my iBook. I tried it in my iMac at school. Result: spinning beachball for 20 frickin minutes before I got the poor, stricken angle-poise affair to barf the offending silver disc lodged in its cybercraw. Why do I think this has something to do with this kindly announcement on the back?

NOTE: for copyright protection, this CD incorporates copy control technology. It is designed to be compatible with CD Audio players, DVD Players and PC-MS Windows 95 blahdy blahdy ....Mac OS 8.6-9, with the CarbonLib extension and Mac OS X.

Should be me, right? Oh, this next bit covers my case:

Neither the CD manufacturer nor the CD distrubotr however makes any representation or warranty with respect to the nature and compatibility of such copy control technology with any audio-visual devices or equipment and shall not be held liable for any loss or damage arising from the use thereof blahdy blahdly ...

Oh, that's all right then. They never said it would play on equipment I buy to play it. Alles in Ordnung, Herr Valenti. To be precise, I can input all the tracks but one at home, and I can play the final track at home if I actually go and get the CD out of its little slip in the large volume of CD's under the sofa. So I can play. One. Lousy. Track. (Good track, though.) I can't even get track 1 to play at work, and I have to make sure not to have repeat on, in which case I go round back where I started and it's spinning beachball fun for me! (Go get coffee while I wait for my iMac to get ready to hawk up this silver hairball.)

So: can I recommend that you buy this great album, on which every track is a winner? Frankly, I wouldn't have bought it if I knew it was going to be a jerk about it. Although I'm still glad I've got it. And maybe you are not one of the cool kids who likes to be able to use these new-fangled MP3 things to play music on a sort of 'hard disk'. But me: I'm bleeding edge cool. I play music on my computer.

I'll never buy another disc with one of these RIAA warning labels on the back. Seriously. Lots of good music I'll miss out on because I'm no longer willing to risk it.

And inside the case there's this little note they wrote me, thanking me for doing something I'll never do again if I can help it and assuring me piracy is killing music and hurting artists. Gee, with friends like these, I sure hope music and artists don't have any enemies.

I was actually roommates with Jack Valenti's daughter for a summer. She was a real nice young lady. And she moved out and left behind her White Album CD, which I still have, because I honestly don't have the slightest idea where she is.

Comments

[Charles Stewart]

Good points, but awful rhetoric. Why do you call the mildly Italian-American-sounding Jack Valenti "Herr"? Is it because germanifying his title makes him sound ruthlessly authoritarian? Perhaps you can make him sound like he is part of a global jewish conspiracy by using labels with semitic connotations? OK, not fair, but appealing to national stereptypes to throw pejorative assocaitions isn't nice.

[jholbo]

You are probably right that it's a good idea never to imply that people are Nazis unless they simply are Nazis. Godwin's Law is a good one. I suppose I was just going for the 'sinister control freak' connotation, a la Soup Nazi. I suppose as well I am amazed at the control freak plus nothing is working aesthetic. Because now that you mention it, here's the scout's honor truth. I was actually flashing back to some or other godawful war movie - couldn't tell you the name - in which a glazed German WW II Leutnant is standing in a bombed out command post, addressing his superior officer. Alles in Ordnung, Herr General. Flames flicker in background. The Yanks are obviously about 200 yards to the West at this point. Stuck with me. The RIAA strikes me that way, frankly. I am such an absurdly law-abiding person. I don't share files. I don't steal music. I feel like they just came over to my house and peed in my shoes when the new CD I bought can't be imput into iTunes for my convenience. Sorry for calling Jack a bad name, if only because I sort of know his daughter and we were friends long ago.

[Realish]

Oh, and give me a break about the "Herr" thing. Don't we have enough real things to be offended about these days?

[Realish]

John, try this: hold down your computer's "shift" key while inserting the CD. I've heard that this prevents the anti-piracy software from loading up, and you can play/copy it normally after that. And report back here whether it works, would you? I've never bought a copy-protected CD, and I don't plan to.

However, I have downloaded The Thrills' entire album, and I quite enjoy it. Frankly, given the way their label is fucking over folks like you, I don't feel bad about it. If I want to get some money to them directly I'll go see them live.

[Realish]

Oh, and one more: if you like the Thrills, I highly recommend you check out Rilo Kiley's latest album.

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006LLN5

It's a similar vibe, if somewhat more literate. Also, in addition to the whiny male singer they have a very cute and smart female singer. And they do harmonies. Love them harmonies. There aren't many CDs I can recommend without reservation to almost anyone who asks, but that's one of them. I think you can download a song or two off their website (legally!) if you want a preview.

Oh, and it's not copy-protected.

[Realish]

Hey, somehow my second comment got posted above my first! Causing me to write a fourth!

Got to... stop... commenting...

[jholbo]

Realish, thanks for the advice. I actually tried that already. It didn't work, sadly. Same problem. I've got everything in iTunes but track 1.

[Realish]

Hm... bummer. I've read about a few other cracks, like blacking out the outer ring of the CD (the data track) with a magic marker. There's also this:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/533

It sounds like Mac users are particularly screwed, though.

[dsquared]

Fewer Thrills, you bloody American savage, FEWER!

[jholbo]

Somehow it just sounded better LESS, when it's a band. As in: 'there's less George on this album, because John and Paul were mean and wouldn't let him write'. Ergo, less thrills. Treating it vaguely as a mass noun. Quite intentional, my dear, stuck-up sticky-beak solecism sniffer.

[jholbo]

To put it even more simply: fewer Thrills would imply the RIAA was killing music by killing band members a few at a time. Even I wouldn't accuse them of that.

[W. Kiernan]

dsquared mistakenly sez: Fewer Thrills, you bloody American savage, FEWER!

which would imply that "thrills" are measured by integers, which obviously they are not.

[dsquared]

Stop rationalising, guys. It's a count plural noun with a bloody great "s" on the end to prove it. "Fewer thrills" or "Less Thrilling Experiences" or at a pinch "Less of A Thrill".

[jholbo]

Dsquared, suppose I remarked, in an off-hand way, "There's less Rolling Stones on the radio these days, because the kids coming up all love Eminem." You might say: that's ungrammatical, just like lots of stuff that pops out of people's mouths. But suppose I said, 'There's less Mick Jagger on the radio ...' This might seem ungrammatical, too. Just a short way of saying 'fewer Mick Jagger songs'. But I think we have actually switched over to a sort of fluid or time-unit talk. 'There's less rock and roll on the radio ... ' Rock and roll is a mass noun, like water. I think in a weird sort of way 'Rolling Stones' is a mass noun too, in the way it gets used. And 'Mick Jagger' is even sort of a mass noun - though he's pretty wiry, I admit. Reason: Mick Jagger is being used as an abbreviation for: Mick Jagger music. Likewise, Rolling Stones music. Likewise rock and roll music. Likewise, Thrills music. Ergo, Less thrills.

But seriously, I was aware of the dubious grammatical overtones of my header. But now I've convinced myself it's on the up and up. So there.

[dsquared]

metonymy is the last refuge of a scoundrel :)

[W. Kiernan]

Dammitall dsquared, you so wise about numbers and their limitations (I was going to link this one old article of yours about cooking statistical data but your archives done dead gone), why do I gotta explain this to you twice? "thrills" is a plural idiom used to label a decidedly non-countable thing.

Or else I go to a bar and have a drink (#1) where I hear a good song (#2) and meet my girl, (#3) we go to her place and make love (#4); Joe visits the park and goes on eleven roller-coaster rides. Damn! envy envy I had fewer thrills than Joe.

[dsquared]

Your arguments are indeed persuasive, but sadly the Clash wrote it, I believe it and that's the end of it.

thankyouandgoodnight

dd

48 Hours

friday or saturday, what does that mean
short space of time needs a heavy scene
monday is coming like a jail on wheels

48 hours needs 48
48 hours needs 48
48 hours needs 48
thrills
48 thrills

so tell me an' i'll take the tube
you know a girl, yeah well she's bound to be rude
can't get nothing at the places i've been

i've combed this town from top to bottom
i try to get around but my legs are broken
every time i miss it 'cos i ain't got a ticket

48 hours needs 48 thrills
kicking for kicks

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(note the implied ratio of 1 thrill per hour being regarded as the height of hedonistic excess; Britain's national malaise was quite great in the 70s)