Nick Jaina’s Little Box of Lies: Dinosaur Armageddon-- Local Cut

Nick Jaina’s Little Box of Lies: Dinosaur Armageddon

September 11th, 2009 [3:46PM] Posted by: Nick Jaina | 4 COMMENTS

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a new weekly column by Nick Jaina. A longtime LC tour diarist and a talented local songwriter who should surely—by Portland standards—be referred to as a “veteran” of the city’s music scene, Nick has been given free rein to cover whomever and whatever he wants in this weekly spot. You’ll be seeing his name in the print edition of WW from time to time, as well. We’re happy to have him aboard.

You are probably not interested in reading any more words about the death of the recording industry and the end of compact discs as the dominant medium for transporting music to the public. But I’m guessing you might be interested in reading about dinosaurs riding in rocket ships. Am I right? But maybe you didn’t realize that these two things are essentially the same subject.

Imagine the Earth 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs ruled. (And I don’t mean “ruled” like “they were awesome”—which they were—but rather that they RULED the Earth. They were in charge.) But just also imagine an intriguing twist to the known history. A twist that could make for a blockbuster movie if someone with Hollywood connections were interested in adapting this column into a screenplay. In this version of our Earth’s history, dinosaurs managed to develop sophisticated technology. Let’s say they evolved to the point where their civilization looked pretty much like ours. They had dinosaur warehouses with dinosaur security guards. They had dinosaur swingsets, dinosaur gift baskets and dinosaur walkie-talkies. That is to say, they MADE it as a species. They developed internal combustion engines, microchips, George Foreman Fat Grilling technology. Everything. Now, let’s say that despite all this success, they still had some rough times. After all, it happens to any civilization at some point. They had trouble maintaining their food supply. The rich dinosaurs became richer and the poor became poorer. They failed to continue investing in their infrastructure. They got lazy, complacent, greedy. The dinosaur glory days had passed them by. Their whole species was vulnerable. And just at that moment of weakness…

Something to rally around! A bright light in the sky! An asteroid the size of Texas headed towards the Earth! (And following closely behind it, an Aerosmith ballad.) There wouldn’t be much time to argue about the proper response. The head of the dinosaur space program—a drawling but compelling Billy Bob Thornton-esque dinosaur, let’s say—would have to just go find some bad-ass dinosaurs who were experts at drilling. He would have to get a rocket ship together and train the drillers to become astronauts and send them up into space. He would assemble a team of rough-and-tumble dudes, who were intent on saving the world. Meat-eating, hard-working dinosaurs, like Triceratops, Stegosaurus, etc. A couple of them wouldn’t get along, there’d be some arguments about the best way to do things, and the leader would be resentful of the kid because the kid was dating the leader’s daughter. The kid and the daughter would sit in a field as the sun set and she would say, “Do you think that it’s possible that anyone else in the world is doing this very same thing at this very same moment?” And the kid would say, with strings swelling behind him, “I hope so. Otherwise what the hell are we trying to save?” Crescendo. A scrawny little dinosaur who looks a bit like Steve Buscemi would make wisecracks in the corner while a hunky Bruce Willis-looking dinosaur would strengthen his steely resolve…you get the idea. (This is all going to relate to the music industry in approximately three paragraphs).

At some point the dinosaur-astronauts (dino-nauts?) would reach the asteroid and drill on it or blow it up or whatever they would have to do to save the Earth. And the dinosaurs of the world would rejoice and they would go on living. They would continue to dominate the planet for millions and millions of years. A touching, uplifting story. BUT, you see, their dominance would mean that other species would never be able to gain sentience. Dinosaurs were such efficient predators that their continued existence wouldn’t have allowed any mammals bigger than rats to survive, and the whole dinosaur species would rally around their successful asteroid mission and continue to live for millions of years. And human civilization would never exist. We would never be given a chance, because the dinosaurs would never have moved on. They built their rocket ships, they blew up the biggest threat to their existence, and they just stayed King of the Mountain forever. (Unfortunately, the Bruce Willis-looking dinosaur had to stay behind to personally detonate the asteroid and therefore didn’t survive to see the wedding of his daughter to the kid.)

Now, maybe this whole scenario is something you never really considered before, but now that I’ve brought it up aren’t you glad that dinosaurs never had rocket ships? That would’ve really screwed us over. I’m not saying that one good thing has to die for another good thing to live, but…no wait, I AM saying that. For the purposes of this particularly awkward analogy, imagine if a similarly Texas-sized asteroid were headed toward the Earth today. Humans would certainly make every effort to find a way to blow it up and save ourselves. And if we succeeded, if the Bruce Willis-type fella accepted the mission and diverted the asteroid, we would all rejoice We would have saved everything we’ve ever known, everyone we’ve ever met, every scrap of matter and culture on the Earth.

But. At. What. COST?

Now. I hope you’ve kept in mind that this is not just an article about dinosaurs riding rocket ships (although, just to reiterate one more time, wouldn’t that be SO AWESOME TO SEE?) but it is indeed simultaneously an article about the state of the recording industry. Permit me a few words about that and try to forget about dinosaurs for a second.

Speaking as a musician, it is strange to be at a point in the evolution of recorded music where you can be working on material and you have no clear idea as to what the best way to release that material is. And this matters for two reasons.

One is that in the past the medium has dictated how long a work of music is. When it was vinyl LPs it was around 35 minutes. When it was compact discs the allowed length expanded to 74 minutes. Now that compact discs are declining in popularity and will never again be the dominant medium, it is unclear how long a work of music should be. Should a musician just focus on making one song? Three songs? Twelve songs? A hundred songs? Where do you find bigger arcs or themes in what you are doing? Should a musician bother sequencing songs in a special order and tying them together sonically, or will they all inevitably be broken up into pieces because the dominant medium is currently undefined?

The other reason that it matters what medium is ideal is because a working musician packaging and selling his music needs to know in which format his fans want to buy his music. Should a musician invest in CDs with cardboard covers? Won’t those just be thrown away after they’re ripped? Should a musician put the music on a memory stick? Isn’t that kind of crude and inelegant? How about a download card? Does anyone feel good about spending $12 and walking away with a card? What if the musician were to have a laptop available at the show, and people could just plug their iPods in and download the music directly? It’s as if a farmer didn’t know how many eggs should go into a carton, or a car-maker didn’t know how many doors to put on a car.

Certainly music is as at least as popular as it has ever been, it is as integral to people’s lives as it has ever been, but no one knows how to properly package and sell it. The death of compact discs is coming and perhaps there is no other tangible medium that will follow. (Strings swelling.) There is an asteroid on its way, and we probably realistically can’t blow it up. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe what seems like the end of the world only seems that way because our world is the only thing we’ve known, and we can’t imagine anything else.

We could frantically try to load up our rocket ships, train Bruce Willis to trigger a nuclear warhead and blow up the asteroid that is about to decimate us. Or we could just presume that something better is waiting to evolve in our place. (Strings still swelling, becoming overbearing.) Let the asteroid come and we’ll just see what happens. The dinosaurs before us never had a chance to survive. They never walked directly towards the camera in orange suits, carrying their space helmets in slow motion. They never had rocket ships. (Oh man, can you imagine if they had been able to build rocket ships? That would’ve been so cool.) The end of one thing is the beginning of the other. If something can’t save itself, maybe it wasn’t meant to survive. (Drums kick in, Steven Tyler’s voice bends up to an uncomfortable note while his daughter bites her lip.) Maybe WE are the dinosaurs. Maybe we’re not the best thing the world has to offer.

I guess I had more to say about dinosaurs than I did about the record industry. That’s probably because dinosaurs are so much cooler. And they lasted a lot longer.

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Jaina illustration drawn by Casey. For this one, imagine there’s a dinosaur riding a rocketship in the background.

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