1238 - Easter Theatre

Didn’t I tell you there’s a pawnbroker in Josefstädter Straße, just for all those photographers in need? Well, yesterday I looked there again, and as always I found something. Lush and oriental. It’s not Easter yet, but the eggs are on the table 🙂

While I yesterday wondered if I should link to CDs or to digital downloads, today it is terrifyingly simple: I must take what I can get. In 1999 XTC, one of the best English bands of all times, returned with the album “Apple Venus Volume 1”, to be followed a year later by “Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2)”, two extraordinarily good albums. When you look at Amazon today, you can get both via the marketplace, but both albums have been discontinued by the manufacturer, none can be had as digital downloads.

Believe me, I’m not at all communist, I am not against private property, I am not even completely against intellectual property, but what we desperately need, what the world, what our culture needs, what society, what our species needs to further advance, is a return to the premises: Intellectual property is not property at all. You can’t own songs once they’ve been sung.

You can have a right to get paid for the publication or even the performance of these songs, that’s all well, but we need a system where you waive your rights by refusing to publish. I remember all those years when it was not possible to buy David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks”. Someone kept it in his safe and waited for a time when he would make the most money by publishing it. That’s simply not acceptable. We can’t tolerate paintings by Van Gogh and movies by David Lynch to be locked away in safes.

Not publishing music was excusable in the age of vinyl, in the age of plastic, but now, with digital downloads, there is no excuse. Publish or give it up. You stifle our culture.

Easter Theatre” is the song, YouTube has it.


There are 4 comments

Flo   (2010-03-05)

Andreas, I love this image. It's feeling is warm and cozy - I've just come from outside where it's hovering at the freezing mark! If you were a songwriter or composer of music, you'd feel just as proprietary about your hard work as photographers do about their images! It doesn't matter whether an image has been printed, or if it exists as a film negative that has never been printed, or as a bunch of pixels/photons on a hard drive, that image represents a photographer's hard work - and is given the same copyright protection as other property, such as paintings and sculptures, whether it ever is published or not. So I don't understand why music should be any different. All of us have seen paintings, sculptures, photo images, and other art work that we'd just love to be able to own - but we can't just go and take them for our own use. But you want songwriters and composers to be willing to fork over their hard work to you for nothing, if they choose not to publish their work! I'm just not sure I understand what you mean by "publish or give it up." You give something up only after you die, as you certainly can't take it with you! Should I give up all my images because I choose not to "publish" them, which means putting them on the internet or printing and hanging them in a gallery?

💬 Reply 💬

J. L. T.   (2010-03-05)

Oha, time goes by... Great atmosphere! Have a sweet weekend!

💬 Reply 💬

andreas   (2010-03-05)

Thanks. Flo, this deserves an answer that will likely end up being the next post. Expect it in an hour or two 🙂

💬 Reply 💬

Steve Weeks   (2010-03-05)

For your music links this may be another source; http://www.actionext.com/ They have the song you mentioned, but no real way to link a song that I could find.

💬 Reply 💬