Interview: Guitar Army Author John Sinclair (Part One) - Page 4

So that's coming full-circle too?

Mostly they concentrate on the technological change because that was a challenge to control the stuff on the internet. Which to me iTunes and that whole thing is the greatest thing to happen in my lifetime. I've been collecting music since I was 10 years old, but now you can get all the tunes you want on your desktop and it has the name and the date, and it's labeled with where it comes from. I used to spend countless hours writing all this down on cassette boxes. I have thousands of them.

So have you taken all your boxes of cassettes and digitalized them?

No, they're all in my archive. Eventually, the University of Michigan will allot the funds to transfer it all to digital media, then I'll go back and put them on my iPod.

Early in Guitar Army you talk about the sense of restlessness you feel at that young age you were. Don't you think that's a pretty universal feeling across generations?

Young people don't have the reflection today. We were trying to reflect in the music, through rock 'n' roll. That's what rock 'n' roll is all about, intrinsically. In reality it's about that coming out and the industry smothering it. It just hasn't busted out in a long time. There isn't a target. The charts, the radio, it used to be you put a record out and you try to get it on the radio. Now [with the decline of radio], everything is just so scattered.

The other side of this is you can do whatever you want. You don't have to wait for some A&R guy to discover you. To go into the studio to record a record it used to be you had to wait to be signed by a record label through your work. Now anyone can make whatever record they want.

You just have to build a website, and a myspace and you're all set?

Yeah, you can do the promoting yourself, but you can also record it by yourself at home with your computer, or get some friends together and form a band.

Please continue reading part two of this interview with John Sinclair.

Article Author: Connie Phillips

Wife, mother, aspiring novelist, and music editor at BC Magazine, Connie Phillips spends most of her time in a fantasy land of her own creating. In reality, she writes about music, television, and the process of writing, when she's not cheering on her kids at equestrian events. …

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