Man, I’m really digging this Pomplamoose scandal. I find it hard to believe that people are up in flames about Jack Conte and his expense report for his tour. Professional musicians are like any other type of laborer, they should be rightfully compensated for their skills and time. In my own experience as a C-13 contractor and a business owner I know that when you send an employee somewhere to work you pay for things such as travel expenses, lodging, and food. I just don’t understand where people think that Jack should’ve skimped on all these basic necessities. There’s a bunch more gripes too but you can read them for yourself here, here, and here.

The main thrust of this debacle seems to focus on music being devalued by society, “...we’ve reduced American culture to a system of arbitrary donations and pats on the head.” (Sarah Manning, 2014) On one side of the coin I agree with this: people don’t want to pay for music when they can download it for free, stream it, or watch it on YouTube at no charge to them. Yet the other side of the coin tells a different story: I wonder how long people can live without a radio in their car, at work, or no music in the malls, restaurants, or even at the gas pump.

This leads me to this conclusion: we simply aren’t educated in the arts. People don’t know what constitutes good music. You can clearly see this reflected in the pricing schedule on iTunes where almost every song is the exact value of 99¢. Could you imagine buying a hamburger from McDonald’s for the same price as a hamburger from Umami? Yeah, I don’t think so ‘cause McDonald’s is like processed cardboard and Umami is a culinary equivalent of an orgy hosted by Caligula.

I remember having a discussion with a teacher about the often heard battle cry “Save the Arts” in school programs and he said something that I had never thought of. The education of arts teaches us civility, it teaches us how to appreciate the finer and subtler aspects of things, it teaches us gracefulness. So it naturally follows that a lack of this education creates brutes, our society is increasingly churning out citizens that simply cannot comprehend that which is beautiful and good.

One more point I need to get off my mind: what’s so wrong about making money (ethically speaking)? I don’t even know how to argue this one. I’m not particularly keen of Pomplamoose’s music but I got respect for them as they’ve figured out a way to ‘making it’. In the words of the great philosopher Kat Williams “Haters gon’ hate, that’s they job.” Just keep doing your thing, Jack and Nataly, mad props to you both.

TagsPomplamoose, Jack Conte, Music and Money