Tom Petty famously went to bat for consumers aka his fans when his new, now classic Hard Promises album was slated to be one of the first albums to carry the newly jacked up $9.98 list. He went as far as having an album cover photo shot with a box of LPs marked for $8.98, making it basically politically impossible for the record company to carry out their evil scheme. This nearly quarter century old controversy probably was still resounding in his mind when he wrote:

all the boys upstairs want to see
how much you'll pay for
what you used to get for free

This part of the song particularly does not ring true today, though. The boys upstairs may WANT to figure out better ways to rape the consumer, but they're fighting a losing battle. What with Napster and CD burners, they're struggling with figuring out how to keep us paying the price for what they've been use to screwing us for. Now that we're getting used to burning CDs ourselves, the purely abusive nature of seriously demanding that people pay $15+ for a 10 cent disc ain't looking so good. We may pay some premium to buy factory CDs in order to get nice printed jackets, a full professional quality product, to save fooling around with downloading and slinging files, and just to blend in with society and see that everyone gets paid.

Let's not get stupid though, Mr. Record Dude. Your prices get TOO stupid, we CAN just buy one copy and pass it around amongst friends, or download the damned overpriced things FOR FREE from the net. You can't stop us. You're fighting a losing battle. At this point, people do in fact have the power.

In Tom Petty's prime days, we couldn't make our own records. If we wanted music, we had to buy their plastic. We don't now. The record companies can work with the consumers, or they can get swept away. The bastards can't BUY enough congressmen and judges to stop us. Ha!

Indeed, there are more people out speaking their minds for public consumption than ever before. How many MILLIONS of people have websites now?

well, he got him a station
down in mexico
sometimes it'll kinda come in

Well, if the guy would just invest a modest few bucks on some decent server connections, he could make that sucker available in full digital worldwide 24/7. Indeed, before long it'll be so cheap and easy that everyone can have their own custom internet radio station running off a hard drive of mp3s on their desktop pc and beaming down to your car via satellite link -and coming across to anyone else who wants to join the flow. Brothers and sisters, YOU are the last dj.

Viva the last DJ!