{"id":673,"date":"2013-12-11T17:09:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T01:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2013\/12\/dave-allen-on-rock-music-and-the-internet.html"},"modified":"2014-01-07T15:52:57","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T23:52:57","slug":"dave-allen-on-rock-music-and-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2013\/12\/dave-allen-on-rock-music-and-the-internet.html","title":{"rendered":"Dave Allen on Rock Music and the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>RECENTLY I&#8217;ve been corresponding with Dave Allen, bassist for the British post-punk group Gang of Four. His ideas on digital culture &#8212; mostly strongly opposed to those of David Lowery and David Byrne &#8212; are as forceful as his bass playing on <i>Entertainment!<\/i><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;ll point out that I disagree with Mr. Allen on much of what he says; I&#8217;m less optimistic that the new system will work out for musicians (and I have seen from quite a close perspective how it works out for most journalists.)<\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-cng-NIGAPhk\/UqkMsE1MmcI\/AAAAAAAACiw\/yKI1cNtyBt4\/s1600\/220px-Entertainment!.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-cng-NIGAPhk\/UqkMsE1MmcI\/AAAAAAAACiw\/yKI1cNtyBt4\/s320\/220px-Entertainment!.jpg\" width=\"320\" height=\"318\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>For example, he argues that there has been no golden age for musicians, that making a living has always been hard, and so on. Well, of course, that&#8217;s all literally true, but just because a system was not perfect does not mean it has not gotten substantially worse.<\/div>\n<p>I could argue to anyone who tells me, say, that Congress has run aground that we&#8217;ve always had conflicts in Washington, going back to the 18th century, and that Ted Cruz is just a latter-day version of whoever&#8230; Same with arguments about income inequality, or anything that matters.\u00a0This argument does not help clarify where we are at present: You do not have to acknowledge the existence of a golden age to want things to be better or to resist and criticize the way they have gone.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But Allen&#8217;s an extremely sharp guy, a lively writer, and he deserves to be heard. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2013\/12\/12\/dave_allen_stop_blaming_the_internet_it_has_always_been_hard_for_musicians\/\">Here&#8217;s<\/a> our Salon conversation.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RECENTLY I&#8217;ve been corresponding with Dave Allen, bassist for the British post-punk group Gang of Four. His ideas on digital culture &#8212; mostly strongly opposed to those of David Lowery and David Byrne &#8212; are as forceful as his bass playing on Entertainment! I&#8217;ll point out that I disagree with Mr. Allen on much of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,32,38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-creative-class","8":"category-indie","9":"category-internet","10":"category-rock-music","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}