Wednesday, April 5, 2017

The Best Advertising

The Best Advertising
Back in January when those elementary school girls were taunting me in unison with sex grunts as the city prepared for an exciting Blue Rodeo concert made out of my music, I heard a beautiful song playing from the radio of a passing vehicle and wondered who wrote it. Was that Blue Rodeo's 'new hit'? Did it help them fill all the seats in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre? Is it still on the radio now?

I heard that they still had some music 'stashed away' around that time. They think that if I can't consciously recall a song I wrote in the past, it's acceptable to tell everyone that they wrote it. Since the media, apparently out of personal spite, do not want to do their jobs of presenting music fraud as a destructive and ultimately costly crime, let me do it for them. If you go to jail for committing fraud with my music, it has little or nothing to do with me and everything to do with you. It doesn't matter if I can't recall the song you stole, it only matters that you did not write it. You will be unable to prove your ownership to the satisfaction of the authorities and you will be punished severely for it. What happens to the song after that? Well, unless the business wants to return my property to me or unless I inadvertently rewrite it, no one gets to use it.

And it was a beautiful song. Yes, I think I write the beautiful hits. The business doesn't care if a song is beautiful, though, they only care if it's a hit. For instance, I recall how I used to enjoy the Billboard Top Ten on the AM radio dial as a teen back in '79. Some of the hits on that list were beautiful, such as the Boomtown Rats' I Don't Like Mondays or Nick Lowe's Cruel to Be Kind. That was such a magical time for me, just coming of age. And then I'd wait with baited breath to hear which song would be number one and it was always Joe Dolce's Shut Upya Face. It was the biggest hit on the radio that year but its beauty was considerably less than musical. And I would groan and say 'when is this song going to go away?' Songs like that must be what the pop station is referring to when they boast of being the number one hit station: the obnoxious hits. I try not to write hits like that.

The worst I might come up with would be a tune like Loose with its filler lyrics, which sound like they might have been inspired by a shopping trip to the hardware store. I tried with that one but I fell short of my goal. Incidentally, did I hear about someone stealing that song last night? A woman? Maybe she wants us all to pretend it's still 2010 when I was so clued out about all the crime these stars committed with my work. My newer works are more informed.

Who do you think is paying for this advertising blitz to make us listen to radio stations and to watch CBC? Did you pay for it by buying a ticket to see Nickleback with Fool's Paradise or Blue Rodeo with Mischief or the Crystalids with Size or Beyonce with Under My Umbrella or Seal with Bad News, etc, etc? Did I pay for it out of the millions of dollars of royalties owed to me by these broadcasters which they now refuse to pay me? Or did one or more of the wealthiest stars who stole my music fork out money for advertising in exchange for being allowed to stay on the radio after their crime? And why do they need to advertise? Is it because they can't reach you as easily with their mind control device at home or in your car anymore so that they have to come after you in the street and shove a sign in your face? Why didn't I see all this advertising around me when my songs were on the radio? I guess it's because no one needed to be forced to listen to my songs. I guess that people listen to the radio for the music more than anything else. If the radio has songs they like, they freely choose to tune them in. And when the radio loses those songs, it loses listeners. That forces the stations to spend on advertising. So music fraud is costly on this basis. Sound reasonable?

The best advertising for a radio station, then, is quite simply a popular playlist. Maybe one day the broadcasters will let me restore their profits by passing my music to them through a legitimate agent. Until then they seem determined to oppose my success.
  
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© 2017. Statements by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.

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