The music scene as we know it today was created in 1969, at Woodstock. Half a million musical adherents, dozens of artists, and the politics of the times came together at a ‘big bang’ moment in our history to create what would eventually transform into a corporate behemoth, a multi-billion dollar music industry focussed primarily on revenue generation.
Over the last twenty years, with the advent of Much Music, MTV and compact discs, followed by music industry downsizing, corporate consolidation and Internet piracy, a scenario has been created where a confluence of factors — a ‘perfect storm’, if you will — seems on the verge of wiping out the recording industry as we’ve known it.
In a PBS Frontline documentary, titled The Way The Music Died, which aired this past Thursday, the programme examines how the business that has provided the soundtrack of our lives seems on the verge of collapse. Although incomplete in its coverage, the programme is still worth a look.
PBS will re-air this documentary in the coming days. For those of you living outside of the Vancouver area, consult your local television listings. In the Pacific Northwest region, the The Way The Music Died will be re-broadcast on PBS channel KCTS 9 (Cable 27), at 1:30 a.m. Set your VCR’s.
PBS has also made the programme available online. Click here for access.

Courtney Love flashes the masses

All of this continuous nattering about Courtney Love and what a disturbed personality she is, and what a terrible mother, and how dreadful that her life – from time to time, and certainly at the moment – revolves around drugs.
Who says that Courtney Love has to live like the rest of us? You? Me? Nope, I don’t think so. And, even if we thought so, when was the last time that either one of us composed music as raw and energetic as that which Love consistently produces, even if it is potty-mouthed and substance-fuelled?
Gritty, chaotic, unorthodox, ragged and raw, the life and ‘flash the masses’ times of Courtney Love is to be celebrated.
Turns out that the Executive Editor of the Village Voice finds himself in accord with the sentiments published above, and much much more it would seem. Comparing Love to Janis Joplin, Richard Goldstein writes …

“When I watch Courtney, I see the same failure to distinguish between persona and self, the same refusal to draw a boundary between expressiveness and excess, the same insistence on showing pain that made rock music in the ’60s so intense.”

Celebrating breast baring as an act of power, discussing Love’s ‘signature of civic strength’, and writing about the artist who has chosen “to grin and bare it at an hour when all good children are asleep, having whacked off in their beds”, Goldstein’s very readable cover essay may be found here.

With the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide days away, The Smoking Gun has published an assortment of Seattle Police Department documents compiled during the investigation of the grunge star’s April 1994 death.
The chilling records range from reports from the first officer on the scene to the receipt for the shotgun Cobain, 27, bought a week before his death. A second group of police reports detail previous run-ins Cobain and wife Courtney Love had with the local cops.
The BBC makes this audio available in their story on Cobain’s regrettable passing, first published April 8, 1994.
In their latest issue, Rolling Stone publishes this Nirvana Anthology.