The ability to escape from your thoughts is a great concept that applies to daily life. In 2005 I think the Gorillaz released the original song and I have listened to it on my iPod thanks to Apple Inc. I have attempted to cover this on guitar myself, and listened to many variations. The original song is amazing, some covers are ok, many are not. However, one stands out.
Josie Charlwood, a young artist from the UK has been interested and learning music for quite some time now, and seems to have mastered her equipment to a point where an excellent cover of the song was shared on YouTube.com by her for millions to listen to. Yes, I am not exaggerating, today her video has been watched 1.5 million times (congrats Josie) and it’s sure to grow.
Music these days is just horrible, much of it is not to my liking, thankfully thanks to the Internet artists like Josie and Amy & Nick (Karmin) have the ability to produce and publish their own songs and covers without too much trouble for a world-wide audience. I believe Karmin actually signed to a label recently and should be cashing in big as their musical career blows up (they sure did crash the music industry’s party).
That having been said, I therefor do not wish to invest a penny in the music industry because most music is just poor (in my opinion) and they don’t license it outside of the US, for example, since Karmin signed a few of their videos are simply made unavailable to watch on YouTube. Quite pathetic. And I want the money to go to the artist. Not to the music industry, and not to those who fight piracy in the countries they didn’t make any music available at. Plus, people rip the unavailable stuff and my views will simply go to alternative youtube urls.
I like to make sure the money I spend on music is because I listen to it more than a few times, because I enjoy listening to it. Maybe because it means something to me, or because it’s great background music, maybe it’s relaxing or motivating. And when artists work on it hard without much financial backing from a label they should be rewarded.
Example. When NiN is available for free, with a donation button. They get my $99 for a simple digital download.
Or, another example. Karmin’s CD with (holy crap) 20+ songs! Gets my money from iTunes – their own cover songs, not the label signed ones.
And in this case, Josie gets 10 pounds for her Feel Good Inc cover through bandcamp, because when I asked her if the money goes to her, I got an email response explaining that it basically does. And that the songs will be in any format I want, high quality, DRM free, and none of these stupid restrictions seem to apply. I listen to it quite frequently. Giving not 35 or 99 cents, whatever she asked as a starting point, I felt more than comfortable enough to put down 10 english pounds for the song.
Not only do the artists on various sites seem real, personal, they also seem to understand that it is their music. That if someone wants to listen to it for free they will on those sites, and if they desire to pay for it, they can do so with whatever amount they please. And sure, there are downsides to not having a music label behind them, but they have the freedom of choice, the freedom to stay in control of their music, and they damn sure seem to have fun making music.
Feel Good Inc, I think it stands for more than just being a song, I think it stands for freedom from mental and physical restrains – and it’s no wonder she picked this song and did a great job covering it. Like I said, I listen to it frequently as it is great background music, easy to listen to and quite relaxing.
The reason I decided to write a blog post about it, is to express myself about the stress in my life, the things that bother and frustrate me, and the realization it’s really not worth my time and effort to feel limited in my potential.
Cognitive curb, no more. I am going to invest in Feel Good Inc. this summer.