I’m not exactly sure what the definition of the term ‘rock star’ is, but I do know that I can identify a ‘rock star’ when I see one.

Recent times have turned up an ugly trend. We’re living in an era where most people – no, everyone – wants to be a rock star. They might not have the long hair and might not play guitar and might not be stalked by droves of groupies, but they still dream of being a rock star.

This problem is evident in the state of music today. Not to sound like a Generation Xer taking a leak on the scene of generation Y, but what the heck has happened to music? Suddenly, pop stars, country stars, rap stars and polka stars all have something in common – they strive to be rock stars.

Pink can get inked up until she’s unrecognizable and Hannah Montana can bleed to death in a mosh pit, but they will never be rock stars. Oh sure, they have money, fame and a following, but they’re missing those intangibles that can’t be bought in the Ed Hardy section of some discount department store.

I never thought I’d be the guy checking the box to erect silos. But the inability to classify things into neat little compartments is actually quite annoying. It f*cks up the music charts and misleads the next generation on what a rock star is supposed to be. And what that means I’m not sure, but I’ll know it when I see it.

If it’s true that fads always wear out their welcome, the same cam easily be said for Internet memes and viral videos. One gag that has clearly outlived its 15 minutes of fame is Rick Rolling.

For those of you living under a rock, or who are intelligent enough to not even know who Rick Astley is, he was (is?) a singer who experienced success in the early 1990s. His two big hits were “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “Together Forever.” These ditties flew up the pop charts and dominated radio play.

For some unexplainable reason, the former pop star rose from the ashes, another phoenix rising as a result of the Web. Some clown, somewhere along the way, decided it would be funny to serve a Rick Astley video instead of what you though you were clicking on. The phenomenon, known as Rickrolling, was born. On April Fool’s Day, the silly prank jumped the shark when YouTube Rickrolled every video on their homepage.

Now, as the dust settles and the sun sets on Mr. Astley again, there are ‘entrepreneurs’ who won’t let the gag die.

RickProof, hoping to defend the world against bad pop songs, promises to protect your Website from becoming a Rickroll victim.

Enter any suspect URL into the field above, and you’ll never get rick rolled again.

Our proprietary RickProof™ engine is trained to sniff out even the slightest mention of Rick Astley. It can spot his dance moves in bytecode, and has his entire discography stored in a database.

You no longer need to suffer the embarrassment of being rick rolled, just check the RickGauge™ and decide if visiting the URL your friend sent you is worth it.

I can only wonder what will spread next. Perhaps Tag Team will experience a resurgence when ‘Whoomp…There It Is’ plays every time you open an e-mail. Or perhaps, every time you exit a Website, Marc Cohn can have you ‘Walkin’ in Memphis.’ And for you XXX surfers, you get treated to Cathy Dennis’ ‘Touch Me.’ Better yet, you should be treated to a video of your parents fully engaged. Now that would be a meme guaranteed to cut down on Internet porn.

I’m all for things dying naturally and running their course, but sometimes, a meme just needs to be put down.

Kanye West accomplished the unthinkable: He successfully got the Grammys to stop the music designed to prompt him off stage. The honoring of his wish (demand) officially sets the bar: If you talk about the recent passing of a parent, the music can be stopped and your speech time extended.

What’s going to happen the next time a person demands the orchestra drop their bows and turn silent?

Maybe, in all these years, all stars had to do was ask. Instead of vaguely addressing the music, ‘Oh my God, already?’ – the just needed to say – ‘Please stop the music.’

What’s going to happen when someone wants to talk about their favorite charity or their stance on the War in Iraq or their sister’s eating disorder? How will the producers and directors of award shows prioritize?

What if a loved one passed away a year ago and you want to honor them? Will there be a statute of limitations? Kanye’s mom passed away three months ago, so if you’re inside that timeframe, your wish request should be honored. But what if it was a year ago?

Is someone’s deceased mom more valuable than someone else’s? You have to wonder what would have happened if Pauly Shore or even Dave Grohl wanted to speak beyond their allotted time.

Were the Grammy folks scared of offending the least threatening rapper on the scene? Or were they just petrified they’d look bad? In the end, their decision making will come down to what will bring the highest ratings to its nationally televised awards ceremony.

The passing of Donda West was sad. And our condolences go out to Mr. West. However, there are rules. Whether you’re an A-lister or an assistant makeup artist at the Oscars, everyone gets the same amount of time to make their speech; it’s up to you to use it wisely. If not, the Sandman is coming for you. And he shouldn’t be stopped.

Television’s reality darling American Idol is poised to return for its seventh season. And for some strange unexplainable reason, 30 million of you will tune in. Well I won’t. Here’s why:

THE AMERICAN IDOL FORMULA NO LONGER WORKS

When every participant is guaranteed some level of fame and success, what does anyone have to lose? Nothing. Eliminated contestants might not become the next American Idol, but they do become:

Sex tape stars: Olivia Mojica
Soft porn subjects: Antonella Barba
Felons: Jessica Sierra
Circus sideshows: Sanjaya
Red carpet staples: Katherine McPhee
Walking stereotypes: William Hung

And so on.

One thing they all do have in common is a paycheck, likely bigger than your humble author’s.

I’m not saying that the shows’ winners and losers are not talented. But if the contest is about finding the best singing talent in America, I have the solution. Listen up Simon Squared:

LOSERS OF THE SHOW SHOULD BE BANNED FROM THE MEDIA FOR ONE YEAR

Can you think of anything more exciting then watching people’s dreams get put on hold as they push for the ultimate prize? It’s a dream deferred that would even make Langston Hughes proud.

Imagine the motivation. The desire. The tears! It’s the ultimate sacrifice; Potentially giving up your dreams in order to pursue the ultimate dream. Not being able to use the buzz generated from American Idol would raise the stakes. If you’re truly talented and memorable, America will be waiting with open arms, one year later once the media embargo is lifted.

Likewise, and I’m not delusional enough to think any of this will ever happen, there should NOT be an American Idol tour. Show “losers” should not be paid to do what they love.

I hope you think about this when voting starts in less than two weeks. There’s no point in becoming emotionally involved with who win. They ALL win. The contestants, the judges, the producers, the network, the advertisers and AT&T.

The show is predictable. They’ll be the salacious scandal, the underground movement to vote for the worst singer, and speculation about Paula’s drinking and Ryan’s sexual orientation.

At least with TV like this, the writers can stay on strike forever.

Keep those text message votes to yourself and go start a blog or something.

Managing an online service can be quite complicated. Not only do you have to think of the costs of bandwidth, servers, utilities, and even administrative overhead, you also have to worry about the legal implications. For instance, if you were to run your own blog or website, it would be your responsibility to make sure you do not post illegal or potentially damaging stuff on your site. But if you host millions of people, and let them have the power to put up just about anything they can then you can expect complaints to come left and right.

Take for instance MySpace and YouTube. These pillars of the user-driven content world have been snapped up by the big fish–in this case News Corp. and Google, Inc.–for billions of dollars. These allow multimedia uploads from just about any person who signs up for an account. MySpace was founded on the creators’ love for the indie music scene. YouTube, meanwhile, was designed from ground up for sharing of user-contributed videos (but the tendency is for users to upload television shows and movie clips).

However, with this is the very high likelihood that users will upload their favorite songs and videos that are copyrighted, and this is tantamount to illegal music and video sharing. It’s very easy to just rip all the songs of your entire CD collection into MP3 and upload them to your MySpace account. Before, there was no one stopping you from doing that, and MySpace would only remove your illegally-shared files upon request from the artists (or any authority). But now, we have news that they’re changing that.

MySpace’s policy, like that of YouTube, has been to remove copyrighted material when requested to, but the move to harness Gracenote’s technology marks a more active role in preventing copyright violations. It is tied to the news that MySpace.com will soon start selling songs from unsigned bands, with an eye toward eventually marketing songs from major record companies as well.

MySpace is thinking of banning the upload of copyrighted material outright, even as you upload them. While I think this is a noble effort to curb online piracy, I don’t think it will work in the long run. It seems like MySpace is kissing up to the music industry bigwigs and sacrificing their users in the process. And with user-driven sites like MySpace, it’s all about the users. If you start pissing off your clientèle by starting to become too strict, then you risk losing the best thing about your business, and that is its popularity and the freedom enjoyed by the users.

So can you really prevent copyrighted media from being uploaded and shared online? I’d say yes. But it would be a bit nasty.

[tags]copyright, news, myspace, youtube, video, music, file sharing, mp3, intellectual property[/tags]

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the epitome of the copyright police in the western world. Imagine having the tenacity to uphold copyright strictly even if it meant suing 90-year old grandmas and 13-year old schoolgirls for downloading music free online (even if it’s sometimes not their fault). Imagine employing bully tactics even to the extent of suing a family that doesn’t even own a computer!

The RIAA has been hailed as the music mafia. But they’re here to stay, and it’s quite hard to fight the 900 pound gorilla with brawn. It seems, though, that the RIAA is flinching from its original stance that all free music downloads are bad. They’re finally willing to admit that people who share music online must be great music fans and probably a great market, too!

[I]t’s almost funny to see the Wall Street Journal with an article about how record labels are finally admitting that file sharing is a way to market to the biggest music fans (found via Broadband Reports). While it’s laughable that it would take the industry this long to even venture to admit what was obvious to most everyone else, it is a tiny step in the right direction. Combined with the recent admissions that DRM can be annoying, that you can make money without DRM and that you have to compete with free content, it seems like the entertainment industry is finally starting to put together all the little pieces that lots of other folks tried to tell them seven years ago.

And this is rightly so. I would tend to think the RIAA is still living in the stone age with how it views business. What can we expect from the same kind of people who opposed VCRs due to fears of movie piracy (that was the RIAA’s cousin, the MPAA)?

In fact, many in the music and recording industry–particularly the independent artists–are now turning to alternative business models, which take into consideration the popularty of online music sharing. Remember MySpace? This social networking site, which was bought by News Corp for a whopping $580 million (not as whopping as Google’s $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube, but still a big amount!) last year, started out as a place for new, unsigned bands to share their music. And it has proven to be popular. MySpace is said to be the site with the most traffic lately. And it would make sense for people in the music business to market their stuff on such a site. After all, if you’re a relatively unknown band, what chances do you have in competing with the big names that have contracts with the big record labels using the traditional methods?

As for the business model? I think free is the operative word here. While a lot of people would be willing to pay 99 cents per tune, a helluva lot more would be going for something free. And just how can one earn from free? Easy. There are ads and sponsorhips. And for artists, I think making one’s work available online would be a great marketing tool for getting signed on to gigs, concerts and other potentially revenue-generating activities.

Sure, a lot of sites that offer legal music downloads are popular–like iTunes and Yahoo! Music. But I think pretty soon, the world will be seeing free legal music downloads as the norm.

[tags]copyright, DRM, RIAA, music, downloading[/tags]

Reading Dread Pirate Yarr‘s articles here always makes me think about Pirates of the Carribean. I loved that movie and its sequel. I dig the great action scenes, the story twists and of course that charming Keira Knightley girl (who doesn’t?). There’s something about Pirates that the entertainment industry has romanticized. And to some extent, there is something about being a pirate of that kind appealing. Even one of my favorite literary characters, the Count of Monte Cristo, had dealings with pirates in his time.

But there’s another kind of piracy today that can be considered a real pain in the ass. And that’s piracy of software and piracy of content (a.k.a. copyright infringement).

Software companies are taking a hardline stance against piracy. But try as they may, pirates still get to find ways to work around copyright protection schemes. Microsoft, for example, has tried time and again to enforce restrictions on Windows, but each attempt has been foiled by patches that can be applied in 30 seconds and serial-numbers that are easily obtained from the Web. Music labels have been campaigning against music sharing, to the extent of suing everyone and his uncle for downloading “free” music online, and locking down their digital music such that people can only play them on a limited set of devices.

I hear Windows Vista will be so protected that the moment Microsoft detects you’re using a pirated copy, you’ll lose your OS’s functionality a bit at a time (like being automatically logged off after 60 minutes, or losing the ability to print a document, and the like).

The losers here in the end are the users.

Software makers keep prices high to compensate for losses, and this leads to users turning to bootlegged versions to save. Music sits put in too much copy restriction, and users will just find the “free” versions online so they can use it in more than one MP3 player or computer.

I think the best way to fight piracy of this kind is to look for alternative business models, like how some companies offer their products or services for free but ad-supported, or like how websites offer applications for free online, but with some ads. Therefore, even if a piece of software or content is distributed and redistributed, the author does not lose anything. In fact, the author (and the advertiser) gain with the advertising getting better mileage.

It’s not pretty, but I think it’s a good way to go.

Look out your window, baby, there’s a scene you’d like to catch,
The band is playing “Dixie,” a man got his hand outstretched.
Could be the Fuhrer
Could be the local priest.
You know sometimes
Satan comes as a man of peace.

He got a sweet gift of gab, he got a harmonious tongue,
He knows every song of love that ever has been sung.
Good intentions can be evil,
Both hands can be full of grease.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Well, first he’s in the background, then he’s in the front,
Both eyes are looking like they’re on a rabbit hunt.
Nobody can see through him,
No, not even the Chief of Police.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Well, he catch you when you’re hoping for a glimpse of the sun,
Catch you when your troubles feel like they weigh a ton.
He could be standing next to you,
The person that you’d notice least.
I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Well, he can be fascinating, he can be dull,
He can ride down Niagara Falls in the barrels of your skull.
I can smell something cooking,
I can tell there’s going to be a feast.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

He’s a great humanitarian, he’s a great philanthropist,
He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed.
He’ll put both his arms around you,
You can feel the tender touch of the beast.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Well, the howling wolf will howl tonight, the king snake will crawl,
Trees that’ve stood for a thousand years suddenly will fall.
Wanna get married? Do it now,
Tomorrow all activity will cease.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Somewhere Mama’s weeping for her blue-eyed boy,
She’s holding them little white shoes and that little broken toy
And he’s following a star,
The same one them three men followed from the East.
I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

With thanks to the official site of the mighty Bob Dylan

There was a time that I genuinely believed that my generation in the UK (i.e: now aged 31-40) would be different and change the world for the better. This probably has something to do with certain chemicals I was using at that time, ahem, recreationally. Summer of Love, 1988. The place to be in the early nineties was Manchester. With well know outfits like the Happy Mondays and start-ups like my friends Ed and Tom, still going strong today as The Chemical Brothers, it was a non-stop party. But there was also an idealism, a hope- that we, as ravers, could do what our parents couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Our recreational pursuits (somewhat purer, chemically, than today’s offerings…) were not hedonistic, they were internal journeys- or so we thought. Jonathan Porritt had released his book warning us of the impending doom to the environment if we didn’t act. Bernard Mandelbrot had discovered the Chaos Theory. We were just doing what our ancient, tribal forefathers had done and we were the Timothy Learys of the New Age. Pity nobody mentioned the word serotonin…

The only experience that I have to go on, in evaluating my US counterparts during the same period, is during the summer of 1991, when I worked in a hotel in Montana- Many Glacier Hotel, part of Glacier National Park. If you haven’t been there, btw, a truly beautiful place and well-worth the visit. When you watch The Shining (one of the greats, Jack!)- the opening scene shows Jack Torrence driving to the remote “Overlook Hotel” and that is the Many Glacier. Anyway, as a summer job, it was intriguing. The hotel is closed for the winters, so hires its staff on a holiday basis from all over the US and just about every state seemed to have one representative. With such a wide cross-section of students, I felt it was a good barometer, comparatively, of the differences with my own mates in the UK. This especially, as one of my big life “what ifs” was having chosen not to go to University in the US, despite being offered a place at Brown, where some of my friends from school ended up going to (in the UK- University is effectively free, so money was a big part of my decision).

I found that nobody was “into” the same stuff that I was, especially on the “house music” scene. It was really all Grateful Dead stuff and if not the beer, then the green stuff- or rather, the obsession of the wheres and hows of scoring it. I made some good friends and found that my US counterparts were much more “active” than us in the UK- who, while we talked a lot, were really just a bunch of slobs. No, my US friends were signing up petitions to protect the lake where we worked and a bunch of other do-gooding stuff from the get-go. I didn’t get the whys and whats of most of it- mainly, it seemed to me, was just doing things for the sake of it.

What I got passionate about (and this was more as a consequence of the aforementioned search for green stuff- than philanthropy), was the situation with the local Native Indians, the Blackfeet. I don’t have time here to tell the whole story, but it was a real eye-opener staying on the reservation in Browning. I bought into the whole sense of injustice hook, line and sinker. 10,000 year residents- their land now stolen, beaten by missionairies, given a rubbish tip in land compensation- man, I was an active protester handing out flyers en masse to get a Blackfeet to a position higher than dishwasher! Oh- and I learnt that alcohol and Joe Last Star don’t mix. And then I got fired from my job at the hotel as Gift Shop Assistant Manager, for “demonstrating“, and that was that. When push came to shove, all the do-gooders disappeared and seemed more worried about their bonuses, than doing the right thing- standing up for Native Indian rights.

What I learnt in terms of the difference about my generation in the UK, as “ravers“, was that we were just all talk, no action. And my peers in the US were in most respects the opposite- openly admitting and even celebrating hedonism, but at the same time actually trying to do something to make the world a better place, but with a lack of moral certitude.

So it seems that the change is in the doing, as well as in the conceptualizing and there’s no doubt, as ravers and as do-gooders, or Generation X, we all failed miserably then and nothing has happened since to change this opinion. In fact, if anything, on both sides of the Atlantic- it’s just gotten worse with age.

Joel. A. Barker summarizes it well enough-:

Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.