Yes, I’ve been locked up in the house listening to Dub Housing and The Day The Earth Met The Rocket From The Tombs for the past week. David Thomas on the MySpace experience:
Any artist who seeks approval and/or validation is onto a loser. Any scheme which encourages this way of thinking is damaging. This is the Oprah Winfrey Effect foisted on a generation of men who, consequently, have no spine. Screw the audience. Ars Longa, audience brevis. If you create a product they want, they buy it. That’s the end of the transaction. It’s not friendship. It’s not family. It’s the marketplace – which is one of the few places left where a man can stand stand free and upright in the light.
and
Making independent music means saying Screw You! to everyone who is NOT in your band. If there had been a REAL punk movement that would have been the enduring message. But the avatar of the punk movement, as you know I’ve said endlessly and fruitlessly, is Oprah Winfrey. Everyone is creative. Everyone has a (valid) opinion. Let’s all be cozy together and respect each other. “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…” Blah-blah-blah. Well, harmony makes my flesh crawl.