Coincidentally, a mate in the pub on Saturday night explained to me why he wants to live in 1987 - "Back then Leds, we had comparatively shit things but we worshiped them. My Commodore 64 took 15 minutes to load a 16 colour, 2 sprite game and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. We won "Top Gun" on VHS and it was the best day of our lives". "Too true Nico" I replied, "Appetite for Destruction had just come out too". My mates rolled their eyes, laughed at me and returned to their pints.
That was a funny story!! That thing about C64 made me laugh!
I remember getting The Last Ninja 2 (sometime in the late 80's), took fuckin' FOREVER to load!
Regarding downloading/mp3's:I had some friends over for a little party the other day. I was telling them that I think it's sad that whenever you're at a party, most people play the music from a PC/Mac with shitty speakers. And if you turn up the volume the sound gets so "distorted" that it's almost impossible to enjoy.
One of my friends started argueing with me and just couldn't understand what I was talking about..... To prove my point I played him a song from ChiDem (a mp3-file) on my laptop, then I took him into another room and played him the same song of the actual CD on my soundsystem with some good quality headphones. Well, you can say that that pretty much shut him up!
(and my amplifier isn't at all "top notch")I started to prep my turntable, so he could listen to the vinyl, but he said:
"No no you've proved your point! Let's get some more beer!"It's sad that the kids growing up today, most of them are unaware how great music actually sounds on a proper soundsystem! And some people who grew up in the 80's/90's have actually gotten so used to playing music on their laptops, that they have forgotten all about it
But with that said, i have to admit that I'm a frequent user of variuos torrent-sites. It's kinda my source to discover new music and to find out what albums I want to purchuse. A few weeks ago I read a great review of a french metal band called Gojima. I downloaded the album, burned it to a CDR and cranked it on my system. Music was fuckin' brilliant (prog/metal) but the sound was horrible! A few days later i went to one of the few remaining recordstores and bought TWO of their latest albums! Fuckin love 'em!!
With the courtcase going on in Sweden against The Pirate Bay (a verdict is due today), there have been some discussions on TV and in newspapers here in Norway.
And one of the arguments I thought was a good idea is, that if you put a 20 NOK (norwegian kroners) fee a month on internet-subscriptions that will go to recordcompanies to make up for lost money. That will actually make up for all the recordcompanies and artists in Norway. I would gladly pay up!
And some would argue, "that's not fair to all those people who DON'T download music!" But then again here in Norway, out of the taxes we pay each year, millions if not billions are spent on supplying libraries all over the country with books, movies and CD's. And you don't hear people who DON'T use the libraries complain about that...
I guess my point is that, the recordindustry has "stumbled backwards into the future"! Instead of coming up with creative solutions to change with a fast moving and fast changing technologgy and the habits of the music-listening public, they have tried to fight and gag it! And that will never work! You have to change and evolve to meet your customer where they're at....
Phew..!
Prolly my longest post ever! Sorry!