Way down deep where no eye can peer and no ear can hear, stuff is happening, things they be a-rumblin’ until finally BLAMMO! The volcano blows.
Though it seems the blowing comes suddenly, it isn’t sudden. There are always signs of what is to come which are ignored by the many who also laugh at the foolish man hollering, “There’s rumblings. She’s gonna blow. Let’s go! Well, goodbye, y’all. I’m outta here.”
And when it blows there’s the now-wise man watching all his friends die. Sadly shaking his head he wails to the winds, “Why didn’t they listen? Why did they ignore the signs?”
Volcanos are not the only thing that blows up suddenly…or so it seems. Take the record business. [What a quaint old-fashioned phrase that is: Record business. Now they count spins and streams, not records.] Anyway, take the record business.
“…by 1973 the record business was almost completely controlled by seven majors: CBS, Capitol, MCA, Polygram, RCA, A&M, and Warner Communications. The top four companies accounted for more than 52 percent of all record and tape sales, and the leading two — CBS and Warner-Elektra/Asylum-Atlanta — sold 38 percent of the total product manufactured by the industry.
“These companies, as with other American conglomerates during the decade, had interests in fields other than music. MCA owned Universal Films, various television stations, Arlington and Mount Vernon cemeteries, a bank in Colorado, and the Spencer Gifts novelty chain. RCA, the twentieth largest corporation in the country, operated NBC television and radio, owned the Hertz Rent-A-Car company, Banquet Foods, the Cushman and Wakefield real estate firm, and Random House and Alfred Knopf publishers. It also served as a prime defense contractor.”
(Rockin’ In Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll by David P. Szatmary, 7th Edition; pgs. 231-232)
So what, you say?
Did you see how diversified these companies were? Defense contractor? Real estate? Car rentals? Frozen foods? Television? Radio? Film? They were so successful it was like they were printing money. Then they started getting greedy and contracts with creatives began to have sneaky language levered in given wide play to the phrase “What the big print giveth, the small print taketh away.”
That was the beginning of the end for creatives businesses. Music, film, books, and technology/science research, too, as well as companies that printed, played, showed, produced, and distributed the content, began failing.
What happened next?
What happened next was that where creatives could (usually film, books, music) they said to hell with The Majors. If they were going to lose or make money, they were going to do it on their own and still own the rights to their creative content. One person who was ahead of the curve on this was Bill Withers. Remember him? Ain’t No Sunshine, Lovely Day, Just the Two Of Us, Grandma’s Hands, Use Me, and more.
Then digital technology, with huge leaps forward, brought recording and mastering to the bedroom and the desktop, along with small-batch duplication of CDs making output affordable. Commercial recording studios began folding or downsizing from swanky digs to basements in homes.
Once home to the fabled Music Row, where performing rights societies, music publishers, and recording studios lined one street and everybody knew everybody, Nashville became a creative ghost town where only in marketing materials does the old Nashville now exist.
Technology did the same thing for Tin Pan Alley and not that long ago, either. I know a man (Johnny Knapp) who worked as a composer for songwriters there. He died in 2018. He taught me how to speak to musicians to get them to do what I wanted with my songs and I taught him about the book business. His wife, Dee Knapp, was just as talented and preceded him in death by three years. Johnny asked me to read a poem at her celebration of life. Francine Reed sang at it, too.
But that type of community is disappearing because there’s no one place for creatives to go to anymore. We are spread out and holed up everywhere. Writing, editing, publishing, recording, mixing, and mastering. And every one of them is wondering the same thing:
Where are the buyers of our creations?
But don’t be fooled. Even the Big Five book publishers [Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins] and their imprints are collapsing. They put a nice spin on it. “Well, we’re being choosy in what we print and distribute and while book sales are down, book sales are up! Don’t pay attention to all the editors we just laid off.”
Music publishers and distributors? Film production companies and distributors? Same thing in both instances. Collapsing because they have cascaded one after another bad decisions and knee-jerk reactions.
Then comes technology’s big bite in the butt: Streaming.
Yes, streaming that, for a small fee, gives consumers the ability to binge watch. Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Roku, satellite and cable bundles, and sports bundles among so many more I couldn’t even list them all.
Some services only last for a short time because they don’t have the money to sustain technology that works properly and provide enough content that people like.
Then comes the Political Correctness Guessing Game.
Cancel culture is all the rage. You don’t agree with me and my buddies? We will ruin your life — Russell Brand being the latest victim of a coordinated and anonymous tsunami of rape allegations going back many, many years. Why are these accusations happening now? Could it be because he, formerly the darling of media companies, dared to change his mind and began calling out specific PC crap? More than likely. Here’s what Greg Gutfeld had to say about it.
And who’s all over it? Mainstream Media, that’s who.
What is Mainstream Media not all over?
Bill Clinton’s rapes. Joe Biden’s crime family and their traitorousness. Hunter Biden’s Big Bagman Business. Black Lives Matter’s shakedowns of cities, states, towns, and counties with threats of violence and the burning of their cities to the ground.
The United Nations’ failing at their job on all fronts. The weaponization of bureaucratic authority of the CDC, NIH, FDA, FBI, CIA, DOJ, EPA, and other alphabet agencies. NGOs used as cutouts by governments and private entities to accomplish the destruction of freedom wherever it lives.
Social Media companies who caved under government pressure to silence truthful narratives and shut down questioning. “Who? Me? Nuhuh. Not us. You are a conspiracy theory nutjob,” they all say even as we see them doing it and feel the consequences of their actions as they take their decisions.
The élite are lauded. The governments thumb their noses at law-abiding, freedom loving citizens. Big Tech says to kiss their butts. And why not? They feel no penalty pangs. Even as worldwide these double-down on lawlessness and the persecution of the law-abiding, what do we see happening?
We see individuals stepping forward around the world, pointing at the evildoers and laughing at them, making fun of them, collecting evidence of their crimes, and in other ways fighting back against Satan’s puppets and fighting for the Good that God gave.
Interestingly, immigrants who got into the U.S. and those who eventually gained citizenship, are furious at what is happening at our Southern border and that the US Government is sanctioning the secret flying in of over 220k illegals each year that they do not count in the border illegal numbers.
As I write this my neighbor, a Chinese woman born and raised in China, a legal immigrant and now a citizen, in a heavily accented fury said, “I know Communism. I hate Communism. I come to get away. You know? My English teachers love all this that is happening. They do not see Communism. Why not? My husband says they are idiots.” By the way: Her husband is a white man, born and raised in the U.S.A., thus he ought to know.
Also, comedians are starting with some pointed and hilarious segments. Yeah, a good gut-laugh is what you need. For instance, there is this guy: Frank Sanazi, Comedy Dictator who has started the Reich Pack Lounge Singers.
And Nicholas De Santo who hilariously but logically proved Nazis killed fewer babies than women who aborted their babies and showed how Disney (movies and theme parks) are advocating for the murder of their core customers.
And how about Tucker Carlson who was fired from Fox only to have Elon Musk say, “Come to Twitter/X and do your show from here.” At his Fox height, only three million cable subscribers tuned in. On Twitter/X, Tucker’s getting 300 million.
So, should anybody be surprised…
…at the cascading collapse of the foundations of freedom and society and families? No, they should not. Don’t you hate it when somebody shakes their head, wags their finger, and tsks-tsks as they say, “Why doesn’t somebody do something about this?”
Well, we should say to those shaking, wagging, tsk-tskers to get out and do something, too.
We are all in this together. The volcano of political radicals are shaking things up. They are letting us know they’re gonna blow, but you know what? They can only do it if we roll over and play dead.
One thing I’m finding is that, more and more, folks are hungering for accurate knowledge, Truth about God, and somebody to help stiffen their spine because nobody wants to fight alone.
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Born and raised in Georgia, Angela K. Durden is an author, publisher, editor, songwriter, performer, and more, living in Metro Atlanta, Georgia. She appreciates your support of her Citizen Journalism by purchasing her books. Visit her Consolidated Author Page and buy a book or three.
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