When the world goes mad, there is still music to keep you sane!

 I can't pretend that 2026 has been an easy year so far. I am, by nature, a positive person and an optimist. I have always believed that reasoned argument, politeness and calmness were the secret of success. Over the last few months, this has been severely tested. I always beleive in playing the long game. Of course there are times when you need short term, tactical fixes, but overall, if you are doing something worthwhile, then I believe that you develop a plan and a strategy. Where needed you take advice. You get your ducks in line, so that most reasonable scenarios are catered for. It is a principle that has served me well in life and in business. Until now. How can anyone make any plans for anything at the moment? My business? Who knows what our energy costs will be in six months time? This feeds into everything. The costs of the musical instruments that we sell have, in some cases, increase by 50% in two years. This means that if things have been knocking around the shop for a while, we sell them and if we replace them, the replacement costs at trade what we sold the old item at retail. That is not how a business can run. There is no aspect of business that is easy at the moment. My task this week was to plan a rate rise for the studios. But to quote Donald Rumsvelt, there are too many unknown unknowns. It is a large amount of work. Our largest supplier is closing down. There are great bargains to be had, but we are too nervous about the trading environment to take full advantage of the situation. I am not cautious by nature, but I am not reckless either. 

What concerns me most though, is not my situation. It is the fact that just about every business I know is feeling squeezed. No one feels secure investing. No one is taking risks. We see tech billionaires making zillions, but none of this money seems to feed back into the economy. In fact most of it is not even real money. When we hear that a Zillionaire is the richest man, it is usually on the back of stock options in a  company that in many case does not have a tangible worth that can be measured. A company like BP or Shell has assets, and you can see where it's money comes from. There are people who work for the company in garages etc, who are ordinary working people. I had a look at the value of Twitter/X.com.

 It is now worth $44 billion. Last year it was worth $10 Billion. It hasn't got 4.4 x the number of users it had. TBH I lost interest in it. They banned me, then emailed to say I wasn't banned, but I'm still banned! I've appealed three times, been told my account is restored, but it hasn't been.

There was a time when this would have infuriated me. Now I just can't be bothered with Mr Musk and his rather unpleasant platform. I have come to the conclusion that I don't miss it. 

Most of the people who posted interesting content I know have left. There are still a few who I follow who post great stuff, but there is so much nonsense and bile on the site that it is not missed. Much of the content is AI generated slop and click bait. The same is true of Facebook, where I never seem to see what my friends post, but I get all manner of slop. It seems that there is an obsession with followers, but no obsession with quality of content. I sense that many are getting bored with the whole social media concept, of banality and AI slop.

I suspect that I'd have gone insane if it wasn't for my love of music. I have spent the week listening to my favourite albums, as I struggle to cope with the insanity that prevails. As we speak, I am listening to Prehistoric Sounds by Aussie Punks The Saints. The track on is "Save Me", an Aretha Franklin cover. No AI slop, just great musicians making great records. I am lucky, I am a musician. I can make my own music, with other musician. I go and see live music all the time. It keeps me sane. I'm assuming that if you are reading this, it is because you don't want AI regurgitated slop. 

Of course AI image generators are a new fad. People like being able to get a picture depicting their least favourite politician in an embarrassing way, with a loud and often ill informed slogan. The first half dozen you see are funny, but the human brain soon tires of it. AI is a tool and once we all get bored with it, it will return to being a tool on social media. Until that happens, my advice is to shut out the slop with some proper noise. Put on the music, shut your eyes and enjoy it. 

And why not get out and see some live music. Such as The False Dots at Nambucca on Friday 15th May, with the Silencerz. It will be a great night! Tickets available here.

 

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