Archive for April, 2009
So did the great man foresee a better way to allow music lovers to indulge their passion? In Frank’s own words, from The Real Frank Zappa Book:
We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company’s difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user’s home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12).All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the customer, etc. would be automatic, built into the initial software for the system.
The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape.
Providing material in such quantity at a reduced cost could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it would be available any time day or night.
Monthly listings could be provided by catalog, reducing the on-line storage requirements of the computer. The entire service would be accessed by phone, even if the local reception is via TV cable.
This certainly sounds very similar to the business model of the Internet music business…
Now here’s an outlaw whose end simply begs to be made into a Takashi Miike movie: Big Nose George Parrot. Jailed for killing a Wyoming deputy sheriff and a Union Pacific detective, Parrot was sentenced to death. Not content with waiting for the authorities to do the job, a lynch mob numbering around 200 people snatched Parrot from jail and he was promptly hung from a telegraph pole. In a series of increasingly suspect medical studies, Parrot’s body suffered the following indignities:
- The top of his skull was sawn off.
- The piece of skull was presented to medical assistant Lilian Heath, then 15 years old.
- Heath used the cap as an ashtray, pen holder and doorstop.
- Skin from Parrot’s thighs and chest was removed.
- Together with his nipples, the skin was tanned and made into a pair of shoes and a medical bag.
- The dismembered body was stored in a whiskey barrel for about a year.
- Parrot was finally buried in the yard behind the office of one of the doctors who mutilated him.
Read more on Wikipedia.
