Iggy Pop Addresses Piracy In John Peel Lecture
![](https://www.theransomnote.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/7ff7f4dc-461e-463c-911c-a695cbd74acf.jpg)
Last night (Monday October 13th) Iggy Pop delivered the annual John Peel lecture. Listen to it in full over on iPlayer.
Pop, who has spent the last year enjoying a stint as a 6music presenter, used his lecture to deliver a rambling, informal examination of the music industry. From opening by declaring that "The Stooges we were organized as a group of Utopian communists," Pop went on to detail his general disgust with record company executives – "a good LP is a being, it's not a product. It has a life-force, a personality, and a history, just like you and me. It can be your friend. Try explaining that to a weasel," before highlighting a few characters who saw as good guys (Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel, for the record).
At the heart of his talk was a rumination on the nature of music as an increasingly free product. Whilst he seemed to have a vague disapproval of piracy, he had a stronger reaction against the society that created a piracy culture, saying –
"So is the thieving that big a deal? Ethically, yes, and it destroys people because it's a bad road you take. But I don't think that's the biggest problem for the music biz. I think people are just a little bit bored, and more than a little bit broke. No money. Especially simple working people who have been totally left out, screwed and abandoned. If I had to depend on what I actually get from sales I’d be tending bars between sets. I mean honestly it’s become a patronage system. There’s a lot of corps involved and I don’t fault any of them but it’s not as much fun as playing at the Music Machine in Camden Town in 1977. There is a general atmosphere of resentment, pressure, kind of strange perpetual war, dripping on all the time. And I think that prosecuting some college kid because she shared a file is a lot like sending somebody to Australia 200 years ago for poaching his lordship's rabbit. That's how it must seem to poor people who just want to watch a crappy movie for free after they’ve been working themselves to death all day at Tesco or whatever, you know."
Must Reads
David Holmes – Humanity As An Act Of Resistance in three chapters
As a nation, the Irish have always had a profound relationship with the people of Palestine
Rotterdam – A City which Bounces Back
The Dutch city is in a state of constant revival
Going Remote.
Home swapping as a lifestyle choice
Trending track
Vels d’Èter
Glass Isle
Shop NowDreaming
Timothy Clerkin
Shop Now