The record companies are struggling to find their way in this modern world. Their business model is old and outdated, and the bloat of their own selves is choking them. They are barely holding on, and want little more than to either roll back time, to a better day (for them), or force their business model to still somehow work (which goes against the whole “the government is of the people, by the people, for the people” thing.)

The guy with the guitar, playing on the corner with his hat on the ground, is in the music business. He is creating content, has found an outlet, and it making money. While he makes new content, he has a reasonable chance to make money. When he stops, well, those memories linger for only so long, as do the chances of his being compensated by fans.

Sure, long ago, record labels played a key role in connecting musicians to fans. They provided that service, of funding the recording, of distribution, of getting the music to the point of sale. But wordpress and other free web hosting sites do that now, too, and they do it for free. That exclusive service that the record companies provided, well, it’s not so exclusive any more. The music industry is still thriving, people are still making great music and are being compensated for it — it’s just the record labels that are being left by the side of the road.

And I’m OK with that. Musicians that generate good content will get my sales, generally, be it on a CD, or a DRM-restricted format like in iTunes, or free and clear MP3′s that they release to the world.

A hit single by convicted pedophile Gary Glitter is to be removed from coursework for a British examination after complaints by child abuse campaigners.

British children’s charity Kidscape said Monday the inclusion of “I’m The Leader Of The Gang” in a list of “related listening” for GCSE music coursework aimed at high school-aged students was inappropriate.

The glam rocker’s name was spotted on briefing notes sent to teenagers by a school teacher who told The Sun newspaper he thought it was “completely inappropriate.”

How many signers of the American Declaration of Independence were slave owners?

Is slave ownership on about the same level of badness as the crimes for which Gary Glitter was tried, convicted and sentenced? I suspect that it is, in the eyes of many. Yet we don’t discount those who worked to gain American freedom.

Leave the music in. It did nothing wrong; Glitter did.

The Sex Pistols were punk rock. I don’t know how else to describe them. They weren’t all that good — well, they had some good songs, but they also put out a lot of crap. But they were one part music, one part attitude, and one part culture. And the first to put the three together.

Why did it all work? I think it was the era. Late 70′s, coming out of Vietnam and Korea, the rise of disco and the sexual revolution, and the rebellion against, well, everything. And there were lots of other things going on, too — the Weatherman, the Black Liberation Army, the Patti Hearst kidnapping and the SLA. The modern music branches from Elvis and the early pioneers were branching more and more — in some good ways, and some bad. And punk was a whole new thing.

I can remember curling up with my radio in my room, trying to tune in distant stations like KALX at UC Berkeley and stuff out of San Francisco. It was a good time to be living near SF — with punk bands like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Clash actually cranking out records, I could also tap in and head some awesome local stuff and hardcore punk like the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Minor Threat, TSOL, Circle Jerks, others that spilled over into the early 80′s.

From the Sex Pistols, I went on to favor bands like Bow Wow Wow and Siouxie and the Banshees, 7 Seconds and the Misfits, before settling in with what remains my favorite — the Clash.

So when the movie Sid & Nancy came out in 1986, I was a bit excited to see it. I had read a bit about it, and the controversy. Is it anything close to telling the actual tale of Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols, or is it more fiction? Does it glamorize drug use?

And how do you make a movie about someone like Sid Vicious, without involving guys like Johnny Rotten, Paul Cook, or Steve Jones? One of the chief complaints was that it’s a movie by a bunch of folks not involved with the scene at the time, talking about people they didn’t even know. It doesn’t feature actual music from the Sex Pistols or even Sid Vicious. How do you do that?

Well, you just do. It’s a very good movie, and captures the spirit of the time. It’s not accurate — the laundry list of factual errors is pretty long. And parts are just made up. Doesn’t change things, though — It’s a good, good movie.

Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb star as Sid & Nancy. This is Oldmans first movie, his breakthrough. He got so into the role that he ended up in the hospital trying to get to the rail-thin, drugged out look of Vicious. He’s pretty good in this. Chloe Webb? Not so much. She comes across as annoying and whiny, probably more than the character deserves (I read the biography of Nancy that her mom wrote, years ago — the kid was a train wreck form birth.)

There’s a lot of drug use in this film, and it’s not glorified. If anything, it is clearly the cause of their downward spiral. Had it not been for the drugs, what would they have accomplished? Who knows. But the drugs were their boat anchor, for sure. Seeing this, I doubt anyone is going to run out and try drugs.

They will, though, want to go out and buy the soundtrack. Good, good music in here. The Pogues and Pray for Rain offer up some good filler. Too bad the soundtrack doesn’t really include the music of the day, because back then there was a ton of great music.

I can watch this movie only about once a year. It’s pretty depressing. These two are a complete train wreck, and the movie is more about their downfall than it is anything else. Were it more of a celebration of the effort, of the culture, I’d watch it more. But really, the second half of this movie is a free fall towards their deaths.

Would I recommend this movie? Probably not. I like it, I watch it, but more so because it reminds of where I came from, and a lot of what shaped me. It’s why I still listen Green Day and Stiff Little Fingers. But it’s one of those movies that if you see it once and like it, you’re going to see it twenty times. I sure have.

Ad remember the premise of Bubba Hotep? Of Elvis being alive, and in a retirement home? We need that kind of tale, only with a Sid Vicious that did not die of an overdose but instead slipped off into oblivion.

It sounds like you’re on the verge of announcing a tour. That’s great news.

Please include Baghdad among the stops. It’d be a nice gesture, and it’d give me a hair of a chance of seeing you.

Otherwise, I’d have to look at using my R&R to fly somewhere to see you guys, instead of going to Hawaii to see my family. I’d much rather use that time to see my family.

Have you considered Honolulu? We’ve got a lanai — I could fire up the grill or something.

Please bring Dave Grohl with you. That’d be nice.

Thanks.

All play music. All synch from the same iTunes library on my MacBook Pro.

The shuffle just does audio. I have a nice set of nested Smartplaylists that serve up music for me to listen to when running, which is pretty much all that I use the shuffle for.

But the iTouch and the iPhone both play video. I have the same music library for them, but really, should I be loading audio? Or should I be loading music videos?

Internet rock star Wil Wheaton today mentioned Dark Side of the 80s, saying to get it if you can. It’s on Amazon (here), and it’s uncommon, and it’s expensive. And if I saw where he mentioned it, so did 33,000 other internet rock stars. It only became that much more rarer today.

So, I went to YouTube. And I put together a playlist in my iTunes of the same songs, just with videos from YouTube instead. Almost all of them are studio-produced music videos, but a couple are live performances (when there weren’t other choices). And I think I had one song for which I could not find a video, so I added the MP3 file that was already in my music collection.

Will I pay attention to the video screen while the music is playing? Probably not. Is battery life a big deal to me? No, not really. I think I’m starting to see the merit in the music videos now, finally, after all these years. And that’s only because the iTouch and the iPhone are nothing but video screen; seems a waste to not play the video when I want to hear the music.

Why can’t my music CD be more powerful?

When I buy a DVD and throw it in my DVD player (not computer, just regular old DVD player), I often find that I have options. Full screen, or letter box? Theatrical cut, or Director’s Cut? With audio commentary over the movie, or not? English, Spanish, or Portuguese? PG-13, or R?

As best I can tell, there’s a core of data in there, and then other stuff is added or removed on the fly — but all based upon that core data on the disk.

Why can’t I get these types of features on the music CD’s I buy?

I ask this, because on my run on Sunday I was listening to Rhymefest: MAN IN THE MIRROR (download, right click here), which would be an ideal candidate for this.

They are a bunch of songs that are just fine when played by themselves. They’d also be good when played nested together, overlapping each other as one long medley. They’d be good with the narration over the music, like the commentary you hear on a DVD, and they’ve be fine without it.

But they just don’t make music CD’s like that.

Maybe it’s the lack of an interface on the CD players.