Music Matters

Woebot, as part of his re-investigation of The Beatles (which has me thinking of pulling out my own cds; I haven't really paid much attention to them in quite some time):

I’m particularly interested in The Beatles at the moment as because of this fascinating and iconic battle which has been staged (again) between Apple and Apple. This time round it’s a battle foundering on the issue of whether Steve Jobs has instituted a record company (he’s successfully and convincingly argued he’s running a kind of record shop) but I’m perhaps imaginatively construing it to be a cosmic struggle between two ideas of what music is. I’m obviously on The Beatles side, and what they and (coughs) I are saying is that music matters. We’re letting it loose like a cougar. We’re celebrating its transformative powers. We’re saying it deserves to have a physical presence, to be embodied amongst us. We’re the good guys. What Steve Jobs is saying is that music needs to know its place. He’s saying: “Feel the pleasure you get when you tame this wild animal.” He’s actually capitalising on all the energising work me and The Beatles have done saying, kinda slyly, “Doesn’t that feel nice”. Did you notice the evil way Apple pretended to extend the olive branch; offering to sell The Beatles's tracks at the iStore having crushed Macca in the lawsuit? Jobs is damping the whole thing down. I think if we’re ever going to stop the rot that’s eating away at music, we need to go back and have another look at The Beatles.