El Escritor Inglés: May 2012

Monday, May 07, 2012

Music Sledgehammered

I have bought musical recordings, in one format or another, since my early teens. Since then, particularly during hard-up student years, I must have blown a suitcase-load in pursuit of vinyl and CDs. One trip to a record shop, in June 1986, I can still recall. Knocked out by the video for Peter Gabriel’s Stax-style single Sledgehammer (Figure 42.1), I called at HMV on Edinburgh’s Princes Street and bought the album from which it was taken, thereby increasing my overdraft by £6.99. (The price tag is still on the sleeve.)

Figure 42.1: As of last year, Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer was the most played music video in MTV history. The animation was provided by Britain’s Nick Park, of Wallace and Gromit fame, and with whom, incidentally, my younger brother worked in his most recent films.

26 years later, a remastered version of that album is available on iTunes for exactly the same price. Under normal inflationary conditions, it should now, by my calculations, cost £16.64. Alternatively, it can be bought from the website http://www.mp3va.com for a mere 67 pence. So much for inflation, and so much for iTunes, which is fast becoming an online honesty box. More outrageous still, with the aid of one of the many file-sharing services, such as http://www.bearshare.com, it is completely free.

Of course, Internet piracy is, also, completely unlawful. According to Peter Gabriel himself, co-founder of the now-defunct digital music distribution site OD2:

‘Internet piracy, if it continues, will eventually hurt those who love to make music. Some of the young and minority musicians we work with derive most of their income from record sales. If this is all taken away, most of them are going to have to look for other work.’

He is absolutely right; but tell that to my kids, all merrily aboard the Jolly Roger, having amassed as much music as I have, despite my having had thirty years’ start. Illegal downloading has become so well entrenched under our roof, I might as well climb up there and hoist the skull and crossbones (Figure 42.2). Their shamelessness is, well, shameful. Some of today’s throwaway remarks I find quite disconcerting. ‘You can get anything for free on the Internet, if you know what you’re doing.’ Such is life in 2012.

Figure 42.2: Artists and record companies must now accept the seismic shift caused by the digital revolution in popular music. In accordance with the law of unintended consequences, yet another of Pandora’s cyberboxes has been opened.

I suppose the recording of vinyl onto cassette tapes – I did no end of that as a teenager – was its predecessor, but things were different then. In the good/bad old days of analogue, a tape-to-tape recording of a tape-recorded LP sounded as if the vocalist was singing down the phone long distance while munching a mouthful of crisps. By contrast, today’s digital copies are virtually identical, so sound quality does not fade with each transfer. In other words, online technology has irreversibly sucked the genie from the bottle. Free downloading is impossible to prevent, less still legislate against. Any attempt to enforce the unenforceable becomes an expensive exercise in futility. Conscionable artists such as Peter Gabriel can only appeal to the public’s sense of fair play. He is a principled man, trying to repel a tidal sound wave.

If there is a way to obtain recordings which are high-quality, free of charge, without need for dangerous file-sharing software, and is, most importantly, legal, then all will have changed forever. Perhaps there already is. A vast quantity of music is accessible on http://www.youtube.com. All new releases are accompanied by promotional videos. If uploaded from digital format, sound quality is generally excellent. Play it to check. Copy the relevant URL and access http://www.youtube-mp3.org. Paste the URL into the box provided and click ‘Convert Video’ (to MP3 format). When complete, click ‘Download’ then ‘Save’. The process of obtaining, say, a four-minute pop song takes just a few seconds at standard broadband speed. It really is that simple.

If this constitutes breaking the law, please tell me – before la policía do.

Friday, May 04, 2012

The Train In Spain

With regard to railways, Spain was, relative to Britain, a late starter. When the first Spanish line opened in 1848, the British had already been operating trains for 23 years. The inaugural track stretched a mere 20 miles, along the Catalan coast from Barcelona to Mataró. Today, Spain’s total route length is comparable with Britain’s, and Mariano Rajoy’s PP government aims to link all the provincial capitals with high-speed services by 2020. More about that pipe dream later.

I have loved trains and rail travel since my undergraduate days of the late 1980s. As an Englishman studying at a Scottish university, life consisted of lectures, hangovers and going back and forth across the Forth Bridge. Rail journeys are a daydreamer’s paradise. Try gazing at the passing scenery or closing your eyes for a moment while driving a car – or rather, don’t. Since then, I have sampled ‘the glorious and the unknown’ by train in every continent of the world (Figure 41.1). There is not one trip I regret having made.

Figure 41.1: On the rails (and off them) for 15 years

Back to Spain in 2o12. The economic outlook is becoming more apocalyptic by the day. 1 in 4 Spaniards are unemployed (Figure 41.2); the yield on 10-year government bonds has just risen to 6.1%; and the national debt will breach the €702 billion mark before I complete this paragraph. The only route to national economic salvation appears to be sharp currency devaluation, but this is precluded by Spain’s continuing membership of the terminally-stricken Eurozone. The current political strategy certainly feeds the vanity of the EU hierarchy but is callously destroying people’s lives. Some traders have recently reverted to the peseta, in desperation as much as in patriotic protest. More will surely rebel in the near future.

Figure 41.2: Unemployment in Spain now stands at unprecedented levels.

Countless politicians and commentators, not just in Spain, are now urging governments to invest billions in huge infrastructure projects, including railways, in an attempt to stimulate a return to economic health. This is frequently a sensible, far-sighted policy – but only if the coffers are full. With such stupendous debt levels, however, it makes me wonder where such advocates think the money would come from. Trying to borrow one’s way out of de facto insolvency is beyond absurd. (If you do not believe me, suggest it to a bank manager.)

A sad consequence of the recession is the shelving of a plan to extend what is a beautiful railway along the Mediterranean Corridor from Alicante, via Málaga, to San Roque (Figure 41.3). The need for 40 new tunnels along the proposed route has probably contributed to the decision. I have travelled on the so-called ‘Euromed’ several times, and parts of it are a traveller’s dream.

Figure 41.3: The ‘Euromed’ service, travelling north along Spain’s stunning east coast

The ultimate goal is a continuous route from Algeciras all the way up the coast to Barcelona, some 500 miles plus. At present, Spain’s rail network is radial, with Madrid as the central connection point (Figure 41.4). Any journey from Andalucía to Barcelona, therefore, involves an arduous detour via the capital. The lack of funding for the project will mean, among other things, that Marbella will be the only Spanish town with a population greater than 100,000 without access to the railway.

Figure 41.4: The red and blue lines show the proposed high-speed rail route

The completion of el corredor mediterráneo would provide an enormous economic boost to the entire south coast. A noble idea, but I do not expect it will progress beyond the drawing board any time soon.