To be fair, the implication is that it's paying 20-40$ to go to a show, and 30$ for a T-Shirt, that's supporting them
I never saw Kiss live, but when they and I were young, I saw the Doors for five dollars, ten rows from the stage. I never saw The Rolling Stones either, but their concert prices were the same as everybody else's - $3 for the cheap seats, $5 for the good seats. Now the asshats are charging a hundred bucks and up. And you can't even smoke dope at the concerts any more!
Greed knows no bounds. I stopped going to top name concerts years ago, now I go listen to live bands with just as much or more talent at local bars for a two dollar cover and I can drink beer while watching!
This sorry piece of crap is proof positive of American stupidity. The cassette - the (now obsolete) four track, two-spindle, 1/8th inch, 1/78 IPS shirt pocket sized tape cassette was produced before the 8-track. The four track cassette was originally made as a dictation device, but advances in tape manufacture and head design soon gave them a frequency response that came close to human hearing's limit, signal to noise ratio low enough that you had to turn it up very loud to hear the hiss, and inaudible harmonic distortion which made them ideal for music.
Nevertheless, the 8-track was born anyway. With its transport speed at twice the 4-track cassette's speed, it should have been audibly superior. However, the "powers that be" decided that 8-tracks were going to be for automobiles, which at the time were not as well insulated from outside sounds and wind as today's cars, and with the auto's horrible acoustics, it was OK for a car's music to sound like effluent.
But the deliberately bad sound wasn't bad enough. The eight track tape had a single spindle, a very clever design where the tape fed from the center of the spindle, around a capstain roller inside the housing and back to the outside of the roll of tape. This made for an expensive setup, and one that was prone to wow and flutter, as well as having the tape get "eaten" by the tape player. And unlike a cassette, if your 8-track got ate, you might as well throw it in the trash.
But wait, there's more! This thing was deemed to be for the car, while cassettes were going to be (by about 1970 or so) for the home.
This made no sense whatever, since the "portable" eight track took up as much space as four cassettes, without being able to play any longer than a cassette. In fact, you could buy a longer playing cassette than 8-track.
But the one thing more than anything else that made 8-tracks suck like a Hoover was the fact that it had to change tracks four times during an album. This usually necessitated at least one song and usually more being interrupted in the middle!
Folks finally, after about ten years, started figuring this stuff out for themselves and replaced their 8-track cartriges with 4 track cassettes. Me? I never had an 8-track, although all my friends did. I, the geek, used the far more logical cassettes since about 1966 or 7. Hah! The geek gets the last laugh again!
I honestly think a band like KISS could get away with giving their music away for free, since they have other avenues available to them to make a crapload of money
He works for the record company, and has worked for the record company for almost 40 years. You badmouth your employer at your own risk.
I have always been amused by Lynard Skynard's Working for MCA, especially the verry beginning of the song - it starts out with the buzz of an ungrounded amp, and it's obvious (to me anyway) that they put that there on purpose.
I never heard the CD version, is the buzz still there? From all the bad remixing for CD I've heard in various RIAA fare, I'd bet it's gone.
And this is why Gene Simmons ceased being relevant sometime in the mid 70's.
Gene Simmons was never relevant, and neither are Radiohead and Reznor. They're just songwriters and musicians. None of them ever changed the world, and I doubt many peoples' lives would have been any different if these guys had never been born.
John Lennon was relevant. Beethooven was relevant. In a hundred years nobody will have ever heard of Resnor, Radiohead, or Kiss.
PS- Kiss made good music. So does Resnor. If it rocks it rocks. "Oh, we'll paint our faces to cover up the fact our music sucks" is an incredibly stupid statment. Had they no talent, no amount of makeup would have covered it up. The fact is that there are always thousands of very talented musicians making very good music who will die in obscurity because there are so many of them. The makeup was a gimmick that made them stand out.
If you're not a Conservative by the time you're 40, you have no money.
A liberal wants you to give your money to the government so the government can give it to the poor.
A conservative wants you to give your money to the government so the governmnet can give it to him. He says he's against taxes, but he's only against himself paying taxes. If you don't pay yours he's up in arms.
The guy you see risking his life and spending his sweat to build that road isn't getting the government money. His employer sits back in his air-conditioned office and pays hime a pittance from the vast fortunes government gave him to build the road.
Wealth isn't created in the board room or on wall street. Wealth is created in the factory, behind the fry cook's stove, in the programmer's cube, on the construction site. The wealthy don't create wealth, they aggregate it.
America is strange in that its "conservative" party the Republicans would have you believe that they are Christians, when Christianity is decidedly anti-capital.
No, I clicked on the link to find out what that strange word was. I found it amusing that a dictionary would contain spelling errors. Only on the internet!
I don't think the corporations themselves are good or bad; that's like saying a gun is good or bad. A.22 rifle used for squirrel hunting is good, the same gun used to kill a human is bad. It's the human behind the gun. Whether a corporation is good or bad depends on the people in charge of it as well.
Your vote wasn't "worthless" when Texas came up with LBJ and voted dem primarily until the 80s. Keep it in a little bit of historical perspective. Heck, there's debate if anyone's vote counted back then, anyway.
Gerald Ford wan't voted into office; he was appointed Vice President when Nixon's first VP, Spiro Agnew, went to prison. He succeeded Nixon when Nixon resigned. He was our history's only appointed President.
He was soundly trounced by Jimmy Carter. I never thought I'd ever see a worse President than Carter, but George Bush managed educate me about that little fallacy.
Mods? The guy was obviously being sarcastic, and trying for "funny". I'm not sure if he succeeded, but when I metamoderate I'll mark that one "unfair".
However, the parent comment was incorrect -oilmen Bush and Cheney got us into Iraq to destabilize the region so the price of oil would skyrocket, making them and their associates even richer, and to hell with what it does to their country's economy or citizens.
Now go ahead and mod me "troll" too. You might want to first check my karma status...
they vote for the joke politicians: Ron Paul, Ross Perot, whoever. Instead of sitting there with the politician they actually like and voting for them, even when they know they'll fail.
Want proof? How many people pay attention in the primaries, where the good candidates actually show up once in a while?
What you call a "joke" I call a protest. As I said in an earlier comment, neither wing of the Republicrat Party has a candidate that supports my views and interests. I'll continue splitting my vote between the Greens and the Libertarians.
The "Joke Candidate" was Ralph Nader. The corporate media slobbered all over him, even though he wasn't on the ballot in enough states to win, while the Libertarian was on the ballot in 49 states and the corporate media never made as much as a peep about him.
If you don't mind, I'll continue splitting my vote between the Greens and Libertarians, unless you can point to a Republicrat candidate who has voted to legalize drugs, prostitution, and gambling, and voted in favor of the environment.
I'm not going to waste my vote on a candidate who consistantly votes against my interests and for the corporate interests (see the votes on the PATRIOT act, NAFTA, Bono Act, DMCA, Bankrupcy reform). As to the primaries, I register with whichever wing of the Corporate Republicrats that has the candidate who most consistantly votes against my views so I can vote against him or her. Then in the general elections I split between Greenies and Libbies.
I would support increasing the voting age to at least 21, maybe higher.
I've always wondered why 16 is old enough to pilot q 2000 lb vehicle; 18 is old enough to die for your government is some senseless war; 18 is old enough to decide the fate of the country, but yet being responsible enough to drive, get credit, get drafted, join the army, and vote isn't responsible enough to buy a beer?
I was looking for the lyrics to Mojo Nixon's Burn Down the Mall but Google failed me =(
Americans, especially young ones, don't care. They've got everything they want
Not any of the ones I know. Most young people I know work their asses off for damned little pay. In fact, I only know a very few people who have most of what they want, let alone everything.
You bring up two reforms I keep telling everyone we need, but of course I'm tilting at windmills as my reforms will never happen.
First, you should not have the right to contribute to more than one candidate in any given race. If you don't agree with this statement then you obviously think bribery is OK. Sony gives $10m to the R and $10m to the D and no matter who loses, Sony wins.
Second, you should not be allowed to contribute to any candidate you aren't eligible to vote for. There's a very good reason each state has two Senators, and unless Bill Gates moves to Illinois he shouldn't have any say in who is elected to represent Illinois.
Since they keep "borrowing" from Social Security for general revinue, all they have to do is remove the $75k/year salary ceiling on SS taxes and they could pay it off as well.
Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The Constitution doesn't grant rights to citizens, it grants powere to the Federal Government.
I would consider selling my right to vote a perfectly rational, even patriotic thing to do... I figure USD$1M would do it, barely. I'd certainly sell my right to vote for USD$5M
A man is talking to a woman and says "tell me, would you have sex with a stranger for a billion dollars?"
"A billion dollars?" she says. "Of course!"
"How about a buck fifty?"
"What do you think I am, anyway?"
"We've already determined that, ma'am. Now we're haggling over the price."
I'm getting sick of this "candidates don't represent me" shit. You are not the center of the universe, get used to it.
You're right, the 1% of the population that controls 90% of the wealth, whose interests government DOES represent, are the center of the univers. You and I are just tools and we don't matter at all.
I don't think you fully appreciate the value of such an opportunity provided to you by our government at ridiculously low long term interest rates.
The government isn't loaning the money, the banks are, and they extract their usury. The Student Loans benefit the banks far more than they do the students. Student loans aren't a gift from government to students, they're a gift from government to bankers.
No one says you have to buy this new house, when the kids can double bunk in one room.
Nobody ever gave me a first house. My choices are to take out a mortgage or pay rent. Nobody "said" I had to buy the house I'm buying, but it's a hell of a lot better than renting. At least it will be mine in the unlikely event I live to be 85.
Shelter is a necessity, especially in cold climates. Duh.
And, no one says college is a right.
I say it should be. High school has been a right for generations, ever since a high school education was mandatory for work. Now that college is mandatory (all the factory jobs are overseas thanks to our corporate slaveowners) it SHOULD be a right.
Moreover, work 2 jobs and reap the benefits of serving in the Army to finance your way through college, like I did.
I did too, as well as taking out student loans, but we shouldn't have had to.
And at 0 to 8% on car to home loans, respectively, your complaining?
Yes. Nobody is giving 0% on a mortgage, and they go far higher than 8%. If you're Christian, Muslim or Jew, look up "usury" in your bible. You'll find it's a worse sin than homosexuality. According tho those three religions, all the bankers will burn in hell. I hope you're not a Christian banker!
Loan slavery? Heh. You're a slave to your own devices.
No, you have to eat, you have to have a warm place to live, you have to have transportation. You can't live off the fat of the land in your log cabin, shooting rabbits and deer for food. That life was long gone well before I was born, and I'm a geezer. You're a slave to the corporation you work for. Sure you can quit - and become a slave to d different corporation.
Unless you want to sell drugs or steal or something. Capitalism demands capital, and the only way to get capital is to have capital. A capitalist without capital is a fool.
You must be American. You make the same mistake 99% of us do, and that's thinking that there are only two parties. The corporate propaganda machine has bleached your brain.
As you say, the Democrats and Republicans have become two wings of the same corporate-facist party, and their interests don't mesh with mine. The corporations' best interest is in "free trade" so they can exploit the labor and environment of people in third world countries. My interests (and I daresay the interests of 90% of Americans) are that even though my job would be hard to outsource, my neighbors aren't so lucky. They can't compete with someone who can rent a home for thirty bucks and eat a meal in a nice restaraunt for a dollar. The corporate interests are for corporate profits and to hell with the environment. The DMCA, Bono Act, Patriot Act, drug laws, and all the other such laws that have "bipartisan" support are in the corporations' interests and diametrically opposed to mine.
The corporate media says that if you vote "third party" you are wasting your vote. I say if you vote for a party or candidate whose interests are diameterically opposed to yours you are WORSE than wasting your vote.
But we have more than two parties. Don't vote corporate Republicrat. Don't stay home and be thought apathetic, even though a choice between brick and burgundy calls for apathy. Vote for a different party! So what that your candidate loses? You've lost anyway, at least you've cast your vote for your own interests.
I personally split my vote between the Libertarians and Greens.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, the implication is that it's paying 20-40$ to go to a show, and 30$ for a T-Shirt, that's supporting them
I never saw Kiss live, but when they and I were young, I saw the Doors for five dollars, ten rows from the stage. I never saw The Rolling Stones either, but their concert prices were the same as everybody else's - $3 for the cheap seats, $5 for the good seats. Now the asshats are charging a hundred bucks and up. And you can't even smoke dope at the concerts any more!
Greed knows no bounds. I stopped going to top name concerts years ago, now I go listen to live bands with just as much or more talent at local bars for a two dollar cover and I can drink beer while watching!
Stupid geezers...
-mcgrew
I had a thing or two to say about 8-tracks a couple of years ago in Good Riddance to Bad Tech.
I honestly think a band like KISS could get away with giving their music away for free, since they have other avenues available to them to make a crapload of money
He works for the record company, and has worked for the record company for almost 40 years. You badmouth your employer at your own risk.
I have always been amused by Lynard Skynard's Working for MCA, especially the verry beginning of the song - it starts out with the buzz of an ungrounded amp, and it's obvious (to me anyway) that they put that there on purpose.
I never heard the CD version, is the buzz still there? From all the bad remixing for CD I've heard in various RIAA fare, I'd bet it's gone.
-mcgrew
And this is why Gene Simmons ceased being relevant sometime in the mid 70's.
Gene Simmons was never relevant, and neither are Radiohead and Reznor. They're just songwriters and musicians. None of them ever changed the world, and I doubt many peoples' lives would have been any different if these guys had never been born.
John Lennon was relevant. Beethooven was relevant. In a hundred years nobody will have ever heard of Resnor, Radiohead, or Kiss.
-mcgrew
PS- Kiss made good music. So does Resnor. If it rocks it rocks. "Oh, we'll paint our faces to cover up the fact our music sucks" is an incredibly stupid statment. Had they no talent, no amount of makeup would have covered it up. The fact is that there are always thousands of very talented musicians making very good music who will die in obscurity because there are so many of them. The makeup was a gimmick that made them stand out.
If you're not a Conservative by the time you're 40, you have no money.
A liberal wants you to give your money to the government so the government can give it to the poor.
A conservative wants you to give your money to the government so the governmnet can give it to him. He says he's against taxes, but he's only against himself paying taxes. If you don't pay yours he's up in arms.
The guy you see risking his life and spending his sweat to build that road isn't getting the government money. His employer sits back in his air-conditioned office and pays hime a pittance from the vast fortunes government gave him to build the road.
Wealth isn't created in the board room or on wall street. Wealth is created in the factory, behind the fry cook's stove, in the programmer's cube, on the construction site. The wealthy don't create wealth, they aggregate it.
America is strange in that its "conservative" party the Republicans would have you believe that they are Christians, when Christianity is decidedly anti-capital.
-mcgrew
No, I clicked on the link to find out what that strange word was. I found it amusing that a dictionary would contain spelling errors. Only on the internet!
I don't think the corporations themselves are good or bad; that's like saying a gun is good or bad. A .22 rifle used for squirrel hunting is good, the same gun used to kill a human is bad. It's the human behind the gun. Whether a corporation is good or bad depends on the people in charge of it as well.
Where were the mods? That was insightful.
Your vote wasn't "worthless" when Texas came up with LBJ and voted dem primarily until the 80s. Keep it in a little bit of historical perspective. Heck, there's debate if anyone's vote counted back then, anyway.
Gerald Ford wan't voted into office; he was appointed Vice President when Nixon's first VP, Spiro Agnew, went to prison. He succeeded Nixon when Nixon resigned. He was our history's only appointed President.
He was soundly trounced by Jimmy Carter. I never thought I'd ever see a worse President than Carter, but George Bush managed educate me about that little fallacy.
Mods? The guy was obviously being sarcastic, and trying for "funny". I'm not sure if he succeeded, but when I metamoderate I'll mark that one "unfair".
However, the parent comment was incorrect -oilmen Bush and Cheney got us into Iraq to destabilize the region so the price of oil would skyrocket, making them and their associates even richer, and to hell with what it does to their country's economy or citizens.
Now go ahead and mod me "troll" too. You might want to first check my karma status...
they vote for the joke politicians: Ron Paul, Ross Perot, whoever. Instead of sitting there with the politician they actually like and voting for them, even when they know they'll fail.
Want proof? How many people pay attention in the primaries, where the good candidates actually show up once in a while?
What you call a "joke" I call a protest. As I said in an earlier comment, neither wing of the Republicrat Party has a candidate that supports my views and interests. I'll continue splitting my vote between the Greens and the Libertarians.
The "Joke Candidate" was Ralph Nader. The corporate media slobbered all over him, even though he wasn't on the ballot in enough states to win, while the Libertarian was on the ballot in 49 states and the corporate media never made as much as a peep about him.
If you don't mind, I'll continue splitting my vote between the Greens and Libertarians, unless you can point to a Republicrat candidate who has voted to legalize drugs, prostitution, and gambling, and voted in favor of the environment.
I'm not going to waste my vote on a candidate who consistantly votes against my interests and for the corporate interests (see the votes on the PATRIOT act, NAFTA, Bono Act, DMCA, Bankrupcy reform). As to the primaries, I register with whichever wing of the Corporate Republicrats that has the candidate who most consistantly votes against my views so I can vote against him or her. Then in the general elections I split between Greenies and Libbies.
One hundred English pounds!!
NO!! Too much!
I would support increasing the voting age to at least 21, maybe higher.
I've always wondered why 16 is old enough to pilot q 2000 lb vehicle; 18 is old enough to die for your government is some senseless war; 18 is old enough to decide the fate of the country, but yet being responsible enough to drive, get credit, get drafted, join the army, and vote isn't responsible enough to buy a beer?
I was looking for the lyrics to Mojo Nixon's Burn Down the Mall but Google failed me =(
I thought we had it bad! Your Santas aren't even allowed to say "Ho ho ho" because it's "demeaning to women".
Americans, especially young ones, don't care. They've got everything they want
Not any of the ones I know. Most young people I know work their asses off for damned little pay. In fact, I only know a very few people who have most of what they want, let alone everything.
You bring up two reforms I keep telling everyone we need, but of course I'm tilting at windmills as my reforms will never happen.
First, you should not have the right to contribute to more than one candidate in any given race. If you don't agree with this statement then you obviously think bribery is OK. Sony gives $10m to the R and $10m to the D and no matter who loses, Sony wins.
Second, you should not be allowed to contribute to any candidate you aren't eligible to vote for. There's a very good reason each state has two Senators, and unless Bill Gates moves to Illinois he shouldn't have any say in who is elected to represent Illinois.
-mcgrew
Since they keep "borrowing" from Social Security for general revinue, all they have to do is remove the $75k/year salary ceiling on SS taxes and they could pay it off as well.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The Constitution doesn't grant rights to citizens, it grants powere to the Federal Government.
Living in a democracy is a privlege
The US is not a democracy, it is a Republic. So I'm afraid I don't enjoy that "privlege".
I would consider selling my right to vote a perfectly rational, even patriotic thing to do... I figure USD$1M would do it, barely. I'd certainly sell my right to vote for USD$5M
A man is talking to a woman and says "tell me, would you have sex with a stranger for a billion dollars?"
"A billion dollars?" she says. "Of course!"
"How about a buck fifty?"
"What do you think I am, anyway?"
"We've already determined that, ma'am. Now we're haggling over the price."
This is like asking how much would I pay to murder somebody. This question has no practical application in the real world.
I see you've never been married...
most votes are basically between a douche and a turd.
Considering how nasty my ex-wife's glory hole was, I think she should opt for the douche. Too bad nobody gaver that choice when I was married to her!
I'm getting sick of this "candidates don't represent me" shit. You are not the center of the universe, get used to it.
You're right, the 1% of the population that controls 90% of the wealth, whose interests government DOES represent, are the center of the univers. You and I are just tools and we don't matter at all.
Looking a gift horse in the mouth anyone?
Gift horse? Nobody gave me anything.
I don't think you fully appreciate the value of such an opportunity provided to you by our government at ridiculously low long term interest rates.
The government isn't loaning the money, the banks are, and they extract their usury. The Student Loans benefit the banks far more than they do the students. Student loans aren't a gift from government to students, they're a gift from government to bankers.
No one says you have to buy this new house, when the kids can double bunk in one room.
Nobody ever gave me a first house. My choices are to take out a mortgage or pay rent. Nobody "said" I had to buy the house I'm buying, but it's a hell of a lot better than renting. At least it will be mine in the unlikely event I live to be 85.
Shelter is a necessity, especially in cold climates. Duh.
And, no one says college is a right.
I say it should be. High school has been a right for generations, ever since a high school education was mandatory for work. Now that college is mandatory (all the factory jobs are overseas thanks to our corporate slaveowners) it SHOULD be a right.
Moreover, work 2 jobs and reap the benefits of serving in the Army to finance your way through college, like I did.
I did too, as well as taking out student loans, but we shouldn't have had to.
And at 0 to 8% on car to home loans, respectively, your complaining?
Yes. Nobody is giving 0% on a mortgage, and they go far higher than 8%. If you're Christian, Muslim or Jew, look up "usury" in your bible. You'll find it's a worse sin than homosexuality. According tho those three religions, all the bankers will burn in hell. I hope you're not a Christian banker!
Loan slavery? Heh. You're a slave to your own devices.
No, you have to eat, you have to have a warm place to live, you have to have transportation. You can't live off the fat of the land in your log cabin, shooting rabbits and deer for food. That life was long gone well before I was born, and I'm a geezer. You're a slave to the corporation you work for. Sure you can quit - and become a slave to d different corporation.
Unless you want to sell drugs or steal or something. Capitalism demands capital, and the only way to get capital is to have capital. A capitalist without capital is a fool.
-mcgrew
You must be American. You make the same mistake 99% of us do, and that's thinking that there are only two parties. The corporate propaganda machine has bleached your brain.
As you say, the Democrats and Republicans have become two wings of the same corporate-facist party, and their interests don't mesh with mine. The corporations' best interest is in "free trade" so they can exploit the labor and environment of people in third world countries. My interests (and I daresay the interests of 90% of Americans) are that even though my job would be hard to outsource, my neighbors aren't so lucky. They can't compete with someone who can rent a home for thirty bucks and eat a meal in a nice restaraunt for a dollar. The corporate interests are for corporate profits and to hell with the environment. The DMCA, Bono Act, Patriot Act, drug laws, and all the other such laws that have "bipartisan" support are in the corporations' interests and diametrically opposed to mine.
The corporate media says that if you vote "third party" you are wasting your vote. I say if you vote for a party or candidate whose interests are diameterically opposed to yours you are WORSE than wasting your vote.
But we have more than two parties. Don't vote corporate Republicrat. Don't stay home and be thought apathetic, even though a choice between brick and burgundy calls for apathy. Vote for a different party! So what that your candidate loses? You've lost anyway, at least you've cast your vote for your own interests.
I personally split my vote between the Libertarians and Greens.
-mcgrew
And the world, Japan in particular, is a far more interesting place because of it.
There is an old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times"