“The Jay-Z of his time”
15 responses to ““The Jay-Z of his time””
-
Egad!
-
And in case the resemblance didn’t jump out at you: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61BtOaM4otL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
-
Wow. It’s really obvious there.
AMDG -
It has taken me a week to get over this. If I have.
-
I have a co-op student who is trying to buy concert tickets to see Jay-Z, so I was just explaining to him that I recently heard about Jay-Z because Bob Dylan’s grandson said… — and then he said, “Wait a minute. Who is Bob Dylan?”
I threw up my hands, and, taking a deep breath, launched into a long explanation. Inevitably, it ended with my saying, “He was the Jay-Z of his time.”
I am ready to do penance. -
And you’re not even very old. Imagine what a foreign country it seems to a geezer like me.
-
Becca didn’t seem to think it was odd at all. She does know who Bob Dylan is, but yesterday she asked me who Barbara Streisand was. Actually, there have been at least 3 people whose names she hasn’t recognized this week, but I can’t remember who the others were.
AMDG -
I suppose I should mention that I have only a vague idea who Jay-Z is. I’ve been assuming from the name that he’s a rapper. No doubt I could dispel the fog of ignorance in a few moments on YouTube.
-
Dang. This dude is worth almost half a billion dollars. I don’t think Dylan was ever that successful in his heyday. His biggest-selling album was released in the ’90s (at least it was the biggest-selling then).
-
Egad!
The tickets that my student is trying to buy cost about $250 each. Apparently it doesn’t count as robbery if you do it through TicketMaster. -
I cannot imagine paying $250 to see…well, much of anything, really. I thought the Tom Waits concert here a couple of years ago was outrageous at $75 or so.
-
I pointed out that one could presumably buy the man’s entire discography several times over for the price of one concert ticket. My student pointed out that, actually, if one is just a little bit clever the entire discography can be had for free. Could it be that the willingness to pay high ticket prices is a way of assuaging guilt for having pinched the records in the first place? I’d like to think so, but I doubt it.
-
I don’t know if that’s operative on the buyer side or not, but on the seller side, there’s definitely a move toward looking at recordings as a form of advertising for concerts and other forms of revenue.
-
In other words, there’s a recognition in the industry that recordings are no longer going to be nearly as profitable as they used to be.
It appears that a lot of people under 30 or 35 simply don’t feel any sense of obligation to pay for recordings. There was a revealing comment a while back from someone at eMusic complaining about the selection: “I expect to be able to find what I want, especially if I’m paying for it.” -
I might add, in a futile attempt to compensate for my ignorance, that although I didn’t know exactly who Jay-Z is, I do know who Phife Dawg, Q-Tip, and Black Thought are.
I admit I kinda like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8
Light On Dark Water 
Leave a reply to Mac Cancel reply