Whether Americans are truly interested in world events or whether they would say yes to a blanket question about it are two different matters entirely. If you looking comparatively to test marketing, consumers usually do not appreciate ingenuity before it becomes a status quo. Take the walkman, test marketers said they would have no use for it. Now, moreso than ever, you are given a plentiful smorgasbord of world news providers via the internet, to the extent that what big networks provide is virtually irrelevant as a proportion of total media coverage. This is huge change from 50, even 20 years ago.

TV media companies are simply providing what the average television is interested in, what catches their attention and keeps them tuned in. Sure, you could argue they perpetuate ignorance, but they are simply following the basic forces of capitalism and profit maximisation.

Whether they are the chicken or the egg is irrelevant. As I see it, the very expectation that a corporation will make an about turn and pursue an altruistic and presumably unprofitable market catering to a niche interest is no better than blaming MCD for making you fat.

That's some old school Mannheim Steamroller for ya! Fresh Aire 2 I believe... Not that I used to sit in the Mac Lab back in the 80s and listen to this on my Sony Walkman or anything...

8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain
by Jim Carroll


1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance

Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift

Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns

Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust
In timeless illusion

2/
The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right thru
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverbrating
In your mind

And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding

From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving

And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds

3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings

Your will could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration

4/
Here's synchronicity for you:

Your music's tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you

I listened them...
It was all there!
Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light
Until you hit solid rock

The drill bit broke
and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassible in time,
As time itself stopped.

And the walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging

The world outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect

7/
But Kurt...
Didn't the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
Make you think twice?
That's what I don't understand
Because it's kept me alive, above any wounds

8/
If only you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Roma...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellinni or Rafael's Portraits

Perhaps inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms
Where it all began...

No matter that you felt betrayed by her

That is always the cost
As Frank said,
Of a young artist's remorseless passion

Which starts out as a kiss
And follows like a curse

Adobe != "uh-dohb".

Tens of millions of years ago when I was in highschool I remember being surprised they'd let us bring our walkmans into our final exams and listen to them. Then they nailed Chris Fournier because they noticed he was rewinding and FF'ing unusually much. Of course he'd recorded all the answers on the cassette that was in there.

riding home on a wet chicago evening after smoking grass lessening to the klf was not chilled out. more like freaked out. going over the train tracks was like being in a k-hole. bikes are kool but drugs are not because no one knows the correct dose. it was fun to do drugs put on the walkman and ride all over but not recommended.

I wanted to thank you for posting your comment about the loudness wars. It cut through the crap and made a lot of sense. I was upset when I first saw the vid, as I didn't know such remastering was done. I do see how some rock albums, like greenday, wouldn't suffer much from having a brickwall of sound.

One thing, though: given a more ideal audio listening situation (a decent home theater system or monitors, instead of a portable CD player or walkman radio), wouldn't the song always be better off with less normalization and processing? In terms of releasing a song to consumer CD's, is normalization and all that really just meant to compensate for poor sound systems, and improve SNR?

Thank you!
-Ryan

In reply to your comment:
“To Add my .02 worth:

I'm a professional Mastering Engineer, this is the most asked question I get these days from people who notice such things. They usually ask how I stand on the idea of all this, and I usually say that it has its place. The last Green Day Album would be a perfect example of an album that having a "brickwall" or "2x4" waveform is fine, but put that same kind compression on re-mastered CSN or Grateful Dead and we have a problem.

I was saying just today at lunch when this question was raised that it's a shame that more of today's young engineers haven't had to deal with analogue tape. Tape was on it's way out as I got my start in the biz, but at my first job the fellas there MADE me work in analogue to get used to the care that it takes when it comes to levels and compression. Much like learning to draft, you have to learn with paper and pencil first to get a "feel" for it.

Great vid! Thanks for sifting it.”

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Haven't heard this song in yonks. Reminds me of my model 1 walkman, one of the first tapes I bought for it.