"Dark Side" Victory Against the Rock n' Roll Spirit

Last weeks decision by the British judiciary preventing EMI from selling individual digital recordings of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was, indeed, a victory for artistic integrity. Pink Floyd, an inarguably influential rock band, secured the right to keep their ubiquitious album from being chopped up by buyers who enjoy shuffle. As a result, DSOTM will maintain its cinematic character in your musical device, whether you like it or not.

Now there are obvious defenses of Pink Floyd's action, the best probably being that DSOTM is awesome when you strap on the headphones, dim the lights, and listen straight through. But PF's insistence that listeners not have a choice (at least digitally) raises some questions.

Remember cassette tapes? Why didn't PF insist on manufacturing special tapes preventing listeners from fast-forwarding or rewinding mid-album? Why didn't they protest the multitidudes of bands, both good and awful, reinterpreting DSOTM ad-nauseum? Clearly, last week's legal decision proves that PF only want us to hear DSOTM one way: from beginning to end. If they don't want us skipping around the record, or just buying a piece of it, why are they only speaking up now?

I think the answer lies in the fact that other bands reluctant to sell individual tracks digitally (The Beatles, AC/DC) have something in common with PF: their age. In the age of Rock Band and the custom playlist, old but important rock bands have been revealing some conservative streaks. They don't want you jumping around the album, discovering their music through video games, or committing some other as-yet-undiscovered act of consumer defiance. They want you to hear the music the way they intended it and don't make them give you what for, because they will. *shakes cane* There's something else all these bands have in common: their canonical status. And it's obvious that being revered for so long by so many has gone to their heads.

It's ironic, certainly, PF getting crotchety over how you experience their most popular album. Didn't these guys come of age in a time against the Establishment? Against being told what to do and how to do it? In truth, PF never sat down to make DSOTM thinking, "We're going to make something no one will ever be allowed to f*ck with." They likely thought, "We're doing good. Let's make the best thing we can and also make it unlike what's come before it."

And that's the great problem with influential art. When you paint a picture or write a song, you don't attempt to make something that is sacred. You attempt to make something that endures. But if it endures long enough, you might start thinking that it can't be touched. That it is, indeed, unf*ckwitable. And that goes against something else that is fundamental to art: the need to challenge convention. As artists, Pink Floyd don't have the right to make you experience their music in only one way. That makes them essentialist. That makes them establishment. That makes them everything that rock n' roll is not.

So f*ck Old Man Pink Floyd. Their records are great and they helped rock be what it is now. But they don't get special privileges as a result. They recieved millions of dollars, a place in a history, and more drugs and women than any one person would know what to do with. I say rip a cd copy to your iTunes and skip around as much as you want. If DSOTM gets played straight through by you, it will be because you chose it, not because Pink Floyd was the boss of you. In the spirit of rock n' roll, I can't think of a better way.