COMPRESSION RECORDS news: Talkin' Trash.

THE MUSIC BIZ: "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!"

All right, everybody, listen up, cause they're at it again. Amid the vitriolic haze of misanthropic miscretia and bucolic pandering sometimes known as the music business, the ninnies are again touting and re-touting the latest threat to their carcinogenic little fiefdom. To wit: the advent of the web music services. With the same fervor as Dorothy and Toto chanting "lions and tigers and bears, oh my," the same handful of fat, ponytailed, cigar chomping, baseball cap wearing backward, hooker-abusing and booze swigging old men who run the music business for greed and power are crying "foul". And their cry is closer to "MP3's and Music Streams and Memory Cards, oh my." These idiots are actually suing people, claiming unfair competition after decades of avarice and profit mongering that would shame Attila the Hun at the gates of ancient Rome.

Wanna know why? They don't like the fact that now you can do it too, only better, faster, cleaner and cheaper than them. But it's too late. Simply put, this is the deal. The music business is like the Titanic. Only instead of one big-assed iceberg, there are millions of smaller ones out there on the web and this time the ship will actually complete it's maiden voyage, except that by the time it arrives, it'll have so many holes in it that all the cargo will have leaked out and it'll finally list and then heave to, right at the docks and just sit there for all of time, a fractured and dead behemoth and few will bemoan it's fate as the legions all come to bear witness to the death knell of the beast and chime in singing "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead."

And thatÕs the good news. The bad news is that it's gonna take some time. With the death of the CD a scant ten years or less away, those same assholes who run the business are gonna try and re-cap their profit stream the same way they did when vinyl bit the silicon dust: By repackaging the same tired old shit they did last time around. Wanna buy "Good-Bye Yellow Brick Road" for the third time? Only this time their line-up of "classics" will read closer to the Bangles, Mr. Big and Aldo Nova. And maybe a few Billy Squire and Billy Idol reissues on MemCard and MusStream for good measure. Sounds about as tempting as an all night kosher-Italian restaurant in 1944 in Berlin, with Joseph Mengela as your personal waiter. Is it safe?

And finally, here's the really good news: Don't listen to the hype, the crap of the forecasts, cause all the music business "observers" and "experts" couldnÕt find their own assholes with a truckload of Charmin in a Port Hueneme toilet stall on a clear day. They're guessing in the dark, just like you and me. Bottom line: New tech like MP3, Streaming and Memory Cards are gonna allow you and me to shape our own musical horizons cheaper and sometimes free, in the new musical millennium. (Which actually starts on Jan. 1, 2001, so learn to count, dumbass!) As consumers, that is. As creators, it's a whole new world, baby. Just strap on your sampler and Pro Tools and hit the net in search of the latest sounds, download and record, mix it and uplink and the whole world can hear it at once, if destiny and providence be yours. But remember this: you are still building a business from the ground up, so be patient, work hard and enjoy the process. Or else get the fuck out and go work in a shoestore like all the A&R guys from every major label will be doing in a few precious years' time...

CHARLEY of EUROTRASH