SCABs

I believe in Frank Zappa: By @rubyq

By Ruby Quince

 

I believe in Frank Zappa:

 

Remember the 60’s, you know, that era that people have glorious memories of? They really weren’t that great. One thing that did happen in the 60’s was that some music of an unusual or experimental nature did get recorded and did get released.

 

Now look at the who the executives were in those companies at those times. Not hip young guys. These were cigar-chomping old guys who looked at the product and said “I don’t know… who knows what it is? Record it, stick it out, if it sells… alright”. We were better off with those guys than we are now with the supposedly hip young executives, who are making the decisions on what people should see and hear in the marketplace.

 

The young guys are more conservative, and more dangerous to the art form than the old guys with the cigars ever were.

 

And you know how these young guys got in there? The old guy with the cigar one day goes “well i took a chance, it went out and we sold a few million unit. Alright, I don’t know what it is. But we gotta do more of it. I need some advice. Let’s get a hippy in here”. So they hire a hippy. they bring in a guy with long hair. They’re not going to trust him to do anything but carry coffee and bring the mail in and out. He starts in there, he carries the coffee. “well, we can trust him, he brought the coffee four times on time. Let’s give him a real job”. He becomes an A&R man. From there, moving up and up, next thing you know, he’s got his feet on the desk. and he’s saying “well, we can’t take a chance on this, it’s not what the kids really want, and I know”. They’ve got that attitude.

 

The day you get rid of the attitude and back to “who knows? Take a chance”, that entrepreneurial spirit, where even if you doing like or understand the record that is coming in the door, the person that’s in the executive chair may not be the final arbiter of taste of the entire population.

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