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Monday, June 4, 2012
The New Napster
You know you're really an old-timer when you mention Napster and the kids say, “Wasn't that the thing our parents used to use in college?” Well, during that evanescent moment of music striving to be free, even folks who earned their living selling goods protected by copyright relished being able to find even the most obscure tune from their distant memory, put online by some stoner from a dorm room, shared at a LAN party, and downloaded by thousands of people who hadn't heard it in decades. High times, those. But here we are now and, guess what: Napster is back! Well, not Napster, neutered and brought down by The Man, but rather its successor, owned and operated by The Man or, as we now speak of him, Google and its media front organisation, YouTube. As an experiment, I put together the kind of stream of consciousness play-list I would have done back in the days of shuffling through CDs or Napster, and then searched for them on YouTube. Every one of the following videos (many of which have mostly audio content) came up on the first page of results—most in the first five items. I did not fail to find a single song which popped into my mind during this free-association fest.- Was (Not Was) “Anything Can Happen”
- Donald Fagen “I.G.Y.”
- Peter Gabriel “Shock the Monkey”
- Rolling Stones “Waiting On A Friend”
- Jimmy Buffett “Banana Republics”
- Noël Coward “Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans”
- Weezer “Smart Girls”
- Crowded House “Always Take the Weather with You”
- Thunderclap Newman “Something in the Air”
- Alexander Alexandrov “Soviet National Anthem”
- Toto “Africa”
- Eddy Grant “Living on the Frontline”
- Queen “'39”
- Fools “Psycho Chicken” (clucked edition)
- Santana “Winning”
- Alan Parsons Project “Eye In the Sky”
- Spirit “Nature's Way”
Posted at June 4, 2012 22:55