Watching I Trust You To Kill Me, it's hard not to be struck by something that producer Jude Cole says about his record label not being interested in any artist over the age of 25. While some of the hype of youth is understandable for acts that target a younger audience, writing off any artist because they're over a certain age is impossible to understand for those who like to listen and appreciate the art of music.
It's not as if the music industry is doing terribly well in this day and age - depending on which school of thought one chooses to buy into. Great music can often take on an aura of timelessness and the art itself feeds from a fountain of eternal youth - for those who love to listen. Our society, for all the pomp and circumstance of technological advances, seems to want to produce more trash all the time.
It's hard to imagine some of the music being made today having the same impact and longevity that music from other eras has had. That seems perfectly natural that there only be more things made that see very short shelf lives. Why not throw art on the massive pile up of waste? Toss albums, compact discs and tapes into the waste/recycle bins at the entrance to Best Buy - we're done with it all.
The sad thing is, for all of these technological advances, we're throwing ourselves away. We're creating more things that get used for shorter periods of time and then we have to have the next big thing. We've already thrown away practicality, because even that has a short shelf life. It's not practical anymore, we're done with it.
There will always be stragglers, those of us who are among the last to get the latest, greatest thing. Some of us are perfectly fine to keep things when they're in perfectly good working order. We don't want to replace it if it's working just fine. We're not opposed to getting something fixed as opposed to getting something new. Can art, specifically, music, be something that is just as easily tossed aside?
Clearly for some people, it can be. Perhaps it just doesn't play a role that's all that important to them. All well and good, but there is serious joy in the arts - and there are forms of it that are too accessible to not have them close at hand, and treasure them as the valuable enhancements to our lives.
With so much music out there that's so enjoyable, the reality of Mr. Cole's remark is hard to swallow for those who take serious enjoyment from listening to music. The marketing strategy behind the notion of a record label not being interested in any artist over the age of 25 may not be tough to see, but it seems a bit sad to write any artist with the kind of depth that Rocco DeLuca & The Burden show in this film.
Is there some dude in a suit sitting behind a desk making this kind of call? What if book publishers had the same shallow notions that authors had to be youthful to be relevant? That could easily be where our pop culture, heavy with electronic gadgets that become obsolete far too quickly, is heading. Owner's manuals are closer than ever to having an opening statement that reads in the following way:
Congratulations on your purchase of your Hipster-for-a-Minute thingy. Please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with your new device, which will give you weeks of enjoyment if used properly.
Never mind that the device itself could work for an indefinite amount of years - the device itself will be rendered useless once they develop an OS that won't work on first generation devices. All of this kind of thing will put us closer to music being encoded with a chip that will render the file unable to play for no other reason than there is too much newer music out there and the industry will decide that you can't possibly still enjoy a Beatles record when there are so many newer artists out there.
Of course by that time - and again, such a day may be closer than you think, there may not be a single soul on the planet who actually pays for recorded music.
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