I recently read a short article in The Phoenix on Tom Morello’s new solo release. Under the pseudonym “the Nightwatchman,” the album is called One Man Revolution. It’s a guthrie-esque album dedicated to the beaten and down-trodden and those oppressed by the capitalist system (sounds like my kind of album). The record is being released by Epic Records, which is owned by the Sony Corporation; you can see how this might cause such an anti-capitalist to receive flak from other anti-capitalists, and he has.
Some have criticized Morello — just as they did Rage Against the Machine — for releasing One Man Revolution on Epic, which is owned by Sony. He doesn’t buy that argument. “You can live with your head in the sand and sell 45s out of the back of a pick-up truck or you can reach people with your message. I’m not just a musician. I’m an activist. That means I want there to be change in the world. How you do that is you reach people. If I had the personal business acumen and wherewithal to distribute records to New Zealand as well as to Newbury Comics, that would be wonderful. But that’s not the case. I’m open to other suggestions, but as far as I see it, the way to best distribute subversion is to get it to where people are.”
I agree, you can’t reach anyone by selling 45’s out of your truck. Tom’s reasoning is logical, he wants to make a difference and you accomplish this by getting out to as many people as possible. Thus Tom must use Sony to accomplish this. But in this case, I think, the ends do not justify the means. Someone should inform Tom of the Internet. With a little promotion, I’m sure he would have absolutely no trouble distributing his album at low cost over the internet – in fact, I would argue he would reach twice as many people through this method, as most people download music “illegally” anyway. With technologies like BitTorrent, all it takes is one copy, and it will spread like wildfire – and given Rage Against The Machine’s popularity – it would do so undoubtedly.
