Vegas
Title Town
Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Boston
Posts: 6986 |
What is amazing is how they are so interested in persecuting business owners of respectable establishments for something they cannot completely stop. Who will enforce these laws? That's one question I'd love to see answered.
There's little point in discussing reasonable actions the government could pursue first, so I will skip that.
This law is a stepping stone the government will use to take away even more of people's freedoms in this country. It began with the hearings on censorship in music and it's taken them nearly two decades to get to this point, and there is not much they have "accomplished" in that time period. Yes, there are advisory labels on albums with "innapropriate" content. Stores such as Walmart refuse to carry albums with said content, along with some that have been brought to their attention by concerned parents with, in their minds, good intentions. Is there a point to this law besides it being a step towards controlling the public? I can't think of one.
Laws like this stem from a few things. These people are afraid, they are misinformed, and they have the power to do something. In their minds they are doing the correct thing. To them, concerts could be a frightening thing: tales of sex, drugs, and rock n roll ecstacy in the midst of a gathering of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people. I have to admit, I don't know how the rest of the country works, I don't really know what people are like outside of the northeast. There is little I can base the way of life up here, I can only repeat words others have brought to my attention from their own travels. I feel like people here are a lot more open-minded in a sense, they are more willing to try something new. I hear these stories of people I'd consider uptight in Utah, people with nothing to do in Nebraska, people with nothing but drugs in California, people who deep-fry Oreos in Texas, but how true is all of it? And furthermore, who are the people presenting these laws? I don't know the answers to those questions. What I do think is that these people are afraid of a sub-culture of misfits who will destroy their suburban communities, yet the people they will be affecting are their neighbors, the people they have cookouts with and wave to when passing by each other on an evening walk. These are the people they are trying to put a leash around, even though they think they're tightening a noose around some demon.
I'm not sure there is a way to get these people to see a different point of view on the issue. Their objective is clear, their determination is fueled, their motives are seen through a fog that blurs the truth, and what are we to do? There may be no way to show these people there is more to a rock n roll show than drugs, that not all ravers are popping pills left and right, and that this will do absolutely nothing in a "war on drugs." It will tighten the ropes holding us down, it will constrict their own, and it will make no difference where they want to.
Oh yeah, don't think the recording industry will sit back and watch this happen. If their artists don't tour, don't make any money that way, they won't sign to big companies because nobody will be able to find a happy medium. The fight for royalties, rights, and money will explode and either destroy the corporations (and yes, that means jobs). It may mean a "purer" form of music but it certainly does nothing for the economy and pisses off more suburbanites who no longer have a job.
As I stated in my above post, I'll die without live music. There is very little in this world that touches me so deeply as hearing the band on stage play that one fucking song I need to hear them play, to feel as alive as possible as the molecules of air flow around, the sound of the crowd, the crackle of speakers, and amidst all of it the purity of those notes as they hit my ears and make me as happy as I could possibly be for a few minutes. I don't do drugs, I'm not a huge fan of drinking. Music is a drug to me, I love being able to intoxicate myself with whatever flavor I feel like. Music touches every aspect of my life. I hear songs I want to dance to, songs I can't get enough of, songs I want to make love to, songs that remind me I have homework to do, songs that are incredible in the musicianship, songs that leave me bewildered on their unabashed message, songs that make me want to change myself, songs that make me want to change the world, songs to cry to and songs to celebrate only what I can imagine. There are only two things in my life that I can apply to everything I encounter, and one of them is music. Live music is essential to my life, it's experiencing art to me. Art in the sense of expression, someone else's expression is touching me and the people around me, we're all in it together. You can't take that away from me, you just can't.
__________________
"There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else."
- Cullen Hightower
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RAVE and CLEAN-UP (legislation, not sordid memories)
04-01-2003 04:04 AM
