A human being, like any other biological organism, is made of food. We
eat food, break it down, and convert it into cells and energy. The
more we eat the more we grow. If we don’t eat, we die. Simple.
All human beings on this
planet, aside from the few indigenous peoples we are fast
exterminating, live in a system unlike any system that has come before
it, and that no other species practices. We take all of our food (and
the means to grow it – land, etc), gather it all up, lock it up, and
make ourselves work to get it back from ourselves. This is the
foundation of our economy. We are born in to slavery.
So now
we all have to get a J.O.B. Ninety percent of all people dislike their
job. That means that nine out of ten people you see walking around are
waking up to work a forty – sixty hour a week job they dislike, from
the age of approximately eighteen to sixty five. The end result of
that job is the creation of a good or a service that can be used as a
component in someone else’s job that they also dislike. In exchange
for doing this work we receive metal and paper tokens we call money.
We then take this money and exchange it for the basic necessities of
life that we keep locked up from ourselves.
So musicians, like everyone else, have to make money. It’s safe to say
that musicians are of the lucky ten percent that like their job, but
they still need to make money from it (or they have to get another job
to make money from it). There is no way that a musician can eat, let
alone record music, without that money. There is nothing more we want
than a system in which this is not so, but at present an established
system does not exist for many (though there are those trying at
The Venus Project and
Gaviotas among other places. We also highly recommend reading
Ishmael by
Daniel Quinn).
To those of you who support musicians by buying their work – and we
assume that is the majority of you visiting this site – thank you. You
have chosen to buy music in an era in which you can steal it with
impunity. This requires a great deal of character, and we welcome you
to our music, our site, and our shows. You literally are the music –
for it cannot be made without you.
Sincerely,
Brad Lyons & Carly Paradis