beauty, meaning, and other things out of fashion...

[rutgers!acfcluster.nyu.edu!rbm9295@cmcl2.nyu.EDU]

	A recent listen to The_Red_Shoes, after a while leaving it
on the CD rack, brought home to me that it is indeed a fine album.
I was touched again by those subtle feelings and unique talent that
first drew me to her.
	Problem? This album, like most other high-quality albums
to emerge in recent years, has apparently plummeted without a trace,
in the commercial sense.
	I was hardly expecting Kate's next album to be a wild commercial
success, certainly not here in the States. But golly, what does a person
have to do nowadays to get his/her music played and heard?
	Any theories on how we went from an age, in the '70's, when
truly great music had a decent chance of becoming popular, due to
the strength of its appeal, word of mouth, etc, to an age in which
Marky Mark and Snoop Doggy Dog reign atop the charts?
	I myself have a one-word theory: MTV. I have disliked the
network for some time, and now thoroughly despise it. Seduced by
the quick, the flashy, the trendy, the politically correct, this
all-powerful medium has done more to destroy music than any single
source I can think of.
	I must go now and pine for better days.