Taking The Walk
I wrote about it before but I thought I’d do it again. Because I’m really passionate about music and feel that there is a big change needed in the music industry. So the more people know about the way a lot of bands are treated and realize what’s going on, the better.
This documentary, called Strong Enough To Break, was shown at universities and colleges around the United States, and is now part of the music business curriculum of USC, NYU, and other universities. The documentary was also honored at the 2006 Hollywood Film Festival.
It’s a documentary that started out as one that would show the making of an album, but turned out to be something much bigger than that. The struggle of a band with their label. The band (in this case is Hanson), but there are many more bands out there who are in the same boat as they were.
The music industry these days is all about making money as quickly as possible without really keeping the quality of the music and the artistic input of the artists / musicians in mind. I already gave my opinion about the music industry and today’s radio before.
Watching Strong Enough To Break made me realize how bad things really are. It even involves manipulation in a very sneaky way; labels try to have their artists work with producers or songwriters not to help them creatively but to push the labels views of how the music should be into the song.
You wonder what happened to real artistic input and musical creativity when watching this. I’m glad to see though that Hanson didn’t give in and stayed true to themselves and their music by going their own way. Parting from their label was a big step and basically a plunch in the deep end but it turned out great for them.
If you’re as passionate about music as I am this documentary is really one you should watch. Not for love of the band, but for your love of music in general. You can watch it for free if you sign up for the Taking The Walk podcast. It’s completely free and you get a second documentary about the making of an album as well called Taking The Walk (which will be released February 26, 2007). The one thing you need for this is Itunes, which is free too.
I hope you are just as passionate about music as I am, and just as worried about the current state of the music industry. You can make a change, watch this documentary and requests songs at your radio station that YOU want to hear. They should be there for us, and listen to what we have to say instead of the other way around!
Plugged: 2 Comments on "Taking The Walk"
I don’t listen to the radio anymore and if I do it’s just when my mum’s around. I have no idea how I manage to stay up-to-date with music. I think I’m living in a time warp sometimes because I still listen to Paul McCartney and Elton John. They’re legends!
It’s sad the state the music industry is in. It’s also sad the state some of the artists are in too – take Britney Spears or Robbie Williams, for example. The industry and the media has made them just a shadow of their former selves.
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Unfortunately, I don’t have an OS that supports Itunes and thus I can’t watch the podcast, but I still agree with what you say (and what you said in the entries you linked back to). I listen to the radio station I do because they have two comedians I like on during the morning, but the station has really, really limited musical taste. There are various songs that the station plays all the time for about a month (like U + Ur Hand! They played that about twice a morning all through the summer holidays…) and most of the time I don’t even like the songs the station’s addicted to playing.
The music I personally like to listen to is “classic rock”, which means I listen to a lot of 60s and 70s bands. I listen to some modern bands and artists when they have that same style of music, but usually those people aren’t the people played on the radio. (Sometimes they are, which is good… but then it’s back to Beyonce and some other people whose songs I can’t tell apart…)