Camera fuzz and hard seats

Just something to think about ...

"The self titled Spylacopa EP with myself, John LaMacchia from Candiria, as well as Julie Christmas from Made Out Of Babies/Battle Of Mice and Jeff Caxide from Isis, is out now. Go over to the Spylacopa myspace page( to check it out and find out how to pick it up without STEALING IT ONLINE SOMEWHERE. Which brings me to the next issue.

You do realize that when you do that, steal music from bands like us, you basically take a big fat unlubed extra ribbed strap on and fuck us all in the ass with it don't you? I used to be way into the whole free downloading thing, because at first it was like yeah awesome free shit we've been paying too much for too long fuck the man blah blah! But now cd prices are reasonable and if it boils down to you not wanting a physical thing because you're only gonna listen on your computer or ipod anyway, at least go over to Itunes and pick the stuff up if you want to own it, it's a dollar per song over there for christ's sake. Intellectual property is still property you know? Think of it like this, if you had a restaurant(you can tell I'm hungry...all this talk of burritos, food, etc), and you sold food that was awesome and that you made yourself and spent shit tons of time on, and people were just pouring in and looting your place and taking everything out of it for free, just stealing everything, would you keep making it? Would it somehow be your fault? What's the make better food? To somehow give people an incentive to pay for it? Fuck that. You would kill them, or at least beat them, or at the very least criminally charge them. Imagine if you came to our show and came up to our merch table and tried to run off with a cd or shirt. I or our merch guy would run you down and brain you. But nobody would ever do that. People only steal music because it's not a physical thing. It's becoming a tragedy thats making it very hard to be an adult making real music in this day and age, and honestly I'd like to think that if I met each and every one of you in person and shook your hand and talked to you, you would know that I wouldn't steal something from you, and I would like to think that you wouldn't steal from me. I don't give a shit about Britney Spears' new single or Miley Cyrus' new album, because I'm sure they view their fans like a target audience, they are products of their record companies just like the products they are trying to sell, nothing more than a marketing face for a single that's as memorable as it is long. They would never hang with the commoners so to speak, and kick it with their fans, at least not without secretly having to swallow their own vomit from having to waste their time talking with them. We keep it as real as it fucking gets in everything that we do, and try to break down every possible wall in between us and you without all living on Awesome Island together. I see the counts from torrent sites and shit, and it's depressing, and I hope hope hope to god that it's the people on the fringe stealing the music we make, whether its Dillinger or other projects, and that its not the people that write to us on here, and talk to us after shows, people who I've looked in the eye from the stage and shared a moment of mutual respect with, or given a hug after the show, or sang along with in a sweaty hell hole somewhere. I know for a fact that if you saw me stealing from you you would be pretty fucking disappointed. Do your part and don't be that guy, unless you can honestly say that you would walk into my place with no remorse and steal shit from me and wouldn't care if I did the same. If you can say that then fuck it go ahead and download it. Just know that when you take that shit online, especially from bands that are our size who are trying to do something genuine, you aren't sticking it to "the man" anymore. It went beyond that a long time ago. The whole industry is collapsing from the inside out, this shit is like a cancer that is rotting it out from the core, and it is gonna start having huge repercussions on the quality and lifespan of bands. It only contributes to the empty attention deficit culture that we work so hard to fight, to the music culture of here today/gone tomorrow bullshit music. The record companies see that there is no value in investing in bands like us when compared to bands or singers they can manipulate as products/images to get their singles and advertising placements out of, and the people downloading for free generally give way less time to the music they download before they move on to something else, because they didn't make any investment in it. So what does that lead to? People are conditioning themselves to only have the mental capacity to enjoy simple sugary bullshit that wears off after a couple of listens, and they're conditioning the industry to give that to them. Do you think that it's a coincidence that the quality of mainstream music has fell off of a cliff compared to any other time in history? Remember when there were bands that were big that were actually genuinely awesome? A lot of them? Bands and artists that in the retrospect of music history are both massively popular and massively "good"? There's a direct corrolation between downloading and the lack of quality in the larger musical landscape. People in our scene are afraid to say this shit because they think that some kid is gonna say that they aren't "punk rock" anymore. That whole "stealing is punk rock" thing is a huge crock of shit that people hide behind to try to wash their hands and absolve themselves of their responsibility for aiding in the eventual destruction of the artists they claim to love. I'm just letting you know the reality of the situation, from someone who still gives a shit about music as an artform not just a commodity, sitting in the middle of this industry watching it happen. I'm giving it to you as real as it gets without being worried about looking punk rock at all, because I've taken guitars to the fucking face and have fake teeth in my mouth to show for it and i've held broken bones together with duct tape until they healed because of not having medical insurance and I've lived in places that made the fight club house look like a Beverly Hills mansion, in total poverty for a large part of my adult life, all to do my part to keep The Dillinger Escape Plan and music that we believe in rolling because we have true belief in what we are doing, so I don't give two shits about whether someone thinks I'm not punk rock because I don't want my shit stolen. Ben, who has more time and releases under his belt than me and whose body in an MRI looks like it was mashed in a trash compactor all because of this lifestyle too, just said something to me that's very true, that when people download our shit for free its like if they walked into a mom and pop store that had one of a kind shit, and there were no employees there and no security, and it was all self checkout lines, and instead of paying they just walked out with everything they wanted. Would those people then complain when the store closed and say it was the man's fault? Probably."

(taken from a blog written by DEP's Greg Puciato)


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