It’s October and Halloween is just around the corner, so now’s a perfect time to bring out Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Not the compilation of Edgar Allan Poe stories, though that’s good, too, but the Alan Parsons Project album based on various Poe stories and poems, though most aren’t from that specific collection - only “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Back to serial experiments lain. Layer 10: Love starts with our cityscape, but no voice-over this time. Lain and Eiri have a conversation in which they speak in each other’s voices, and Eiri explains how he put his consciousness into Protocol 7. Given his power he’s arguably a god, but to truly be a god he also needs worshippers, so he made himself a cult - the Knights. At school, Lain’s desk is gone and everyone is oblivious to her presence. As she starts to wonder if maybe she doesn’t need a body after all, Alice, or rather someone speaking through Alice, confirms this. Lain goes home, but the house is eerily empty and unkempt. Her room is messy, but none of her computer equipment is there. Mr. Iwakura appears in the doorway, says his work is done because Lain must have figured things out by now, that he loved her, assures her she’s not alone because of the type of being she is and everyone she can connect to in the Wired, and leaves.
So, right now I’m trying to write a critique of a live concert by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for a class I’m taking.
The problem is, all I can really say about it is that I enjoyed it, though it suffered from some problems to be expected from an outdoor concert. Somewhat unclear sound, sirens from a passing fire engine, and some other miscellaneous distractions. However, I made the critical mistake of not taking notes at the concert. Even driving home from the event, I could scarecly have said much about the early pieces performed (out of seven or so total). Since I got home a bit late and had to wake up early the next morning, I made another mistake in not writing anything down before going to bed.
I present to you, my reader (yes, I’m pretty sure it’s “reader,” singular), the modern system of economics, as proposed by those in favor of music piracy:
1: Artist produces something
2: Artist gives said something away for free
3: ????
4: PROFIT!
Actually, this system has been thought through more than that chart. According to this article from the Illinois Business Law Journal, this story from the New York Times, and a number of other places, step three is “Artist gives concerts and sells merchandise.” At first, I thought this sounded fair enough, but then I realized that step three is a non sequiter. It isn’t related to the original product.
“[iTunes has shown that] the natural unit of the album is the track.”
This is a quote (more or less direct) from David Weinberg, and I was reminded of it while reading Chris Anderson’s article “The Long Tail” in Wired magazine, when he discusses the online music industry, since he appears to assume a similar viewpoint to what Weinberg stated explicitly.
Put briefly, they are both wrong. The natural unit of the album is the album, and the track relates to the album as a chapter relates to a book.