I Hate The Music Industry

by Isaac Airbourne

Carlos Santana Has Been Doing The Same Thing For 30 Years, But Suddenly Everyone Gives A Shit Because His Label Came Up With The Idea Of Bringing In Current One-Hit Wonders And Now He’s Got 8 Grammys.

Talk about contrived bullshit! Am I supposed to just sit back and believe that Carlos Santana, without the help of his publicists and record label, has become the hottest thing since All-Nighter Diarrhea in merely a few weeks?

He seems so innocent: a spiritual latino guy with a PRS, noodling a few pentatonic minor licks in between vocal phrases, but nobody gave a shit 6 months ago if the guy played for 200 people a night and starved to death in a cheap motel somewhere. This recent boom in record sales and heavy rotation on MTV is not a spiritual, grassroots phenomenon as it is made out to be. I’ve got nothing against a guy playing guitar, writing songs, and selling albums, but that isn’t what this is about. It isn’t about honoring a legendary Woodstock-rocker for his years of hard work. This is a marketing tool, planned carefully by business suit wearing dudes.

Hey, guess what? I’m psychic. This is what the people at his label were thinking: “Let’s put a new spin on this old guy. We’ll let him jam with some of the popular here-today-gone-tomorrow pop-rockers and we’ll sell a shitload of albums for six months, then this whole Latino-rock imagery we’ve force-fed to Gen-Xers will all be over and he’ll be gone again before you can say Spice Girls.”