MP3, MP4*, iPod…GO!
I was listening to a random old mixed CD this morning and C30, C60, C90, Go came on by Bow Wow Wow. Now I have an amazingly soft spot for this song, with its ice cream carton tub thump and Annabella’s yelping sub stream of consciousness. As a kid I particularly liked its subversive Home Taping Is Killing Music challenge, and if this was the kind of music coming out of home taping fans then I was a happy boy. It is probably one of the reason why later I enjoyed Pop Will Eat Itself, the only vague subversiveness of the Sample It, Fuck It, Loop It manifesto appealed to the home taper in me.
(An admission, when The Theme To S’Express and Beat Dis came out I made very long, very rudimentary extended mixes of them using just a tape to tape deck, which I felt made me part of this movement. It didn’t.)
So we are now back in the same boat, except that it isn’t home taping that is killing music, rather ripping (how macho) and filesharing. So where is the firebrand song celebrating this: where is the iPod Bow Wow Wow? Can it really be that I felt more subversive as a seven year old taping Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick and trying not to get Richard Skinner’s voice on the end of it?
Well I want my MP3 (cheers Dire Straits) anthem. Can I suggest the Go! Team write it?
*As they always say on Pimp My Ride, MP4 is like MP3 but one better.