No, you can't take that away from me

David Sherman

In the beginning there were turntables and records -- LPs, 45s, 78s. Sounded great. But they scratched, skipped, but encased in beautifully crafted sleeves with biographies and notes and iconic photos.

But, once we had all of the equipment, listeners to the music of the devil – pop and rock and R&B and blues -- started driving and wanted music to accompany their escape, record corporations gave us eight-track tapes and then cassettes.

Once that market was saturated, Sony decided a new format was needed to force us to buy new equipment and new discs and the small shiny, indestructible CD was invented.

It was the digital revolution. Music lost some of its richness but the corporations gained riches. They were selling the same music over and over and over again. And digital bred the iPod, a thousand songs on a key fob.

There was no bass response, no big kick drums, in fact, much of the music was lost, about 80 per cent, but records were so yesterday and we had no choice but to store our beloved record collections – they were so passé -- and go CD and maybe the iPod route.

We settled for less but we could copy what we wanted through the magic of our $2,000 computers and burn it onto a CD or load an iPod and could become our own deejays and listen to only what we wanted.

Those unfamiliar tunes, often an LP’s buried treasure, stayed buried to all but the most curious.

We were soon buried in music. It had become not only an art form but a commodity and like all commodities, the more there is, the less value society places on it.

A musician I’ve been listening to since I was old enough to spend my evenings in raucous bars listening to him and the band, customers dancing on tables and drinking 50-cent beer, told me he realized in the 80s he wasn’t going to make a living playing music.

Music schools were churning out jazz players willing to play for spare change and music unions had no choice but to let them. Clubs and bars could get away with providing artists little more than a few drinks and an audience. But, still they played and still we listened and danced and cheered.

And then came streaming. And tougher drinking and driving laws. And gentrification squeezing clubs with higher and higher rents. They couldn’t afford paying musicians playing to the faithful who nursed a beer or two all night.

They shut down or stopped hiring musicians and YouTube and Spotify and a raft of streaming services came to the rescue. You could listen to the Rolling Stones or Beyoncé or even Taylor Swift at home for peanuts or nothing at all. Just watch the ads.

The music industry became a microcosm of the world at large. A few people make all the money. And only a few would spend the ever-rising prices for concerts, average ticket price $130 at the box office but Ticketmaster, legal scalpers, were able to send prices soaring. Only the desperate and the well-heeled could fork out $600 to $1,000 for a ticket to see a pop act framed by fireworks, video screens and semi-naked women on a stage 100 metres away. Less music and more spectacle, more money.

But, despite the best efforts of the greedy, no, no, they couldn’t take that away from us.

Music is still here. It’s in your head, in your finger tips, on your computer and radio, in the strings of your old guitar or flute or piano.

Music is in our hearts and souls and lovers’ eyes. As ubiquitous as air, only cleaner, healthier -- aural pollution in the ears of the listener.

They – the all-encompassing, all-powerful, invisible legions of “they” have screwed with us in innumerable ways but there’s one thing they can’t take – music.

They can destroy the planet, ship your job overseas, take the roof over your head, but they can’t take that away from us.

Call it classical, call it modern, call it R&B or rock ‘n’ roll, call it Jackie Gleason’s Music for Lovers Only, call it punk and funk and doo-wop and grunge and hip hop and boogaloo but it’s music and no sympathy for the devil that tries to make it the realm of the wealthy.

They can’t stop us believing in magic in a young girl’s heart, that only the lonely can cry, that Layla’s got you on your knees and if Joe sets 'em up, we’re going to hear a story of heartbreak.

The music is in us, it beats with our heart, whether up on the roof, upstairs in the balcony or under the boardwalk.

Clubs have closed, music shops are disappearing, concert tickets outta sight, 10,000 songs in the palm of your hand or streamed music heard through pin hole speakers or headphones sticking out our ears to give you that Martian look. It doesn’t quite do it but it’s music.

It does more than tame the savage beast. It also inflames it.

See Apocalypse Now! and the horrific scene of helicopter gunships massacring civilians to the Dolby-amplified Ride of the Valkyries.

The scene is all the more heart-rending because of the music, something we all share, something that makes us human, predates cave drawings, accentuates the inhumanity.

Music is sashaying around your living room by yourself, or in the arms of another, singing in the shower, dancing at the Legion or on the grass at innumerable festivals.

Maybe it has no monetary value. But you can’t put a price on it.

It’s all do wa ditty ditty dum ditty do.