Give a Man 100 Million Followers Who are Plugged Into His Creepy Inner Voice and a Clown Becomes a Philosopher, by Davin Michael Stedman

Do people still listen to albums ever so still, tracing every word and phrase, unlocking the mystery of every rhythm?

When I was a kid an album had a real value. $19.99 was over $30 then. That inevitable scratch was a tragedy.

Sure, it was a safe bet when we could leave our collection at home, and only carry a binder of once blank CDs in our cars. But it was the beginning of the end.

Because people stole music then. Not Pirates with their toothless FBI warnings of 6 months in prison and $500,000 fine, bloody thieves.

Pawning the collection that defined you, that you spent years gathering mowing lawns and punching pizza clocks because music mattered in that car with your friends because you had those songs.

You listened to those songs like medicine, like shamans. Music mattered more. If you made a CD of your own music and it was hot garbage, it was still given a listen. It was something.

The CD itself was the cliff for music. There was no turning back. Mix tapes were no longer tapes, Records were just recordings. Albums were full of the most bummer skits because 70 minutes is an awful long time, and everyone thought they could rap AND be Richard Pryor.

The Doors and The Eagles invaded our generation with their coke smeared rock shlock of easy listening and unstepped-upon Oliver Stone cocaine blues,

…because they were the first to feed us the baby food of their Greatest Hits, robbed of the realism of their filler, as with Led Zep with their boxed sets that followed, they sure seemed like poets.

This was supposed to just be that lone question, but the silence took me back to the days when recorded music filled my heart with song, and the music you chose really meant something.
Many of us dressed in the uniform of our chosen taste, forging identity because buying music, often more often than clothes was part of our disposable, or just otherwise disposed of income. It was the music that we wore and paid for.

Broke kids like me taped our favorite things off the radio, often during those top ten count downs because when music had a value the radio was a warm spring of good fortune and ads from the “Shane Company, Seattle’s Diamond importers,” ol’ Tom Shane seared into my brain.

Now that music has no value, even I am afraid I am making back ground music. What if writing great songs for the sake of pure listening is a lost cause?

Why should rappers today waste their bars with words when the real focus is promoting their professional career killing face tattoos and (not selling) photography on Instagram. Why practice when you can slide in some DMs. Why even really sing?

Do we still really listen? Did we deeply listen then? Was it the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end?

Now I have all the songs and I don’t really listen. With influx of endless chimes, time itself seems to be commodity. The smart phones sure made us dumb, or at least endlessly interrupted. Ping, Ping, Ping, this next thing.

Let’s just blame the 8 track, and the inevitable march towards mediocrity and complacency so deep in the thinnest skin of our dying culture, for someone out there is still arguing that Kanye West is a genius.

They aren’t really listening.

Who is Patient zero?

There is too much information. Now mysteries are lost. Mystique is rare these days if you’re just a song and dance man.

Artists traded click bait for the bioluminescence of just being COOL. I don’t want be king of Twitter. That sounds like becoming a desperate junkie.

I paused when I saw what happened to John Mayer as social media circles jerked his ego, and he thought himself clever.

There were no rumors about John Mayer. They were all true because he promoted and time stamped his demise.

Oh Yeesus.

A genius, Kanye, still as always, he is not.

For he is our Andy Warhol: a giant empty vessel of Campbell’s soup and envy. Full of sh☆t, because that is fine art too, when you lower the bar then dig a hole and bury it in an unmarked grave.

Kanye doesn’t know he is only a clown with dead medicated eyes and no pitch.

But you give a man 100 million ‘followers’ who are plugged into his creepy inner voice and a clown becomes a philosopher by proximity to your cerebral cortex. Tune them out if you can. It’s a trap on every side.

Kanye is Play-doh, not our Plato.

In a world where we devalue good art and prop up popularity with illusion of scarcity, lets face facts.

Trump is still not Good at business, like Hitler was never ever good at f☆cking.

Just because you have enough power to get people to care enough to let you smash, doesn’t mean you are really any good at it whatsoever.

Kanye West is America’s micro penis screaming that he is a giant.

Confidence wins the room, especially really dumb ones.

But the Empire has no clothes, bro.

if smart phones didn’t count as a modern instrument…John Mayer wouldn’t be hiding out behind the closing door of the once Grateful Dead, having made the world hate him one tweet at a time, like the prophetic first victim of digital climate change.

Every tweet was like he was climaxing. John Mayer hit twitter like a crack pipe.

In my youth were clowns then too, but we see now the strongest did not indeed survive. Not in terms of artistry.

Maybe in terms of Pharmacy.

– DMS

Davin’s new song has been released and has become a global earworm and Caribbean dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN. The video is now available on Youtube.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com, and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. This past spring he spent weeks networking in and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. His single with British band Sherlock Soul is now available as well.