This Week in
OP History

J.J. McCullough, OP Contributor

 

 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

This week in the time machine we take a look at the Other Press issue 4, volume 13; October 14
to 28, 1982.

Top retro headline: “Music too commercial”

Here’s another entry for the “the more things change they stay the same” file. 24 years ago
an upset Douglas student churned out this column, bemoaning the contemporary state of pop-
ular music in Canada. The author, Glen Nazaruk, was upset over the fact that, increasingly, all
he was hearing on the Canadian radio was the “same kind” of music over and over. Music, he
writes, was being treated more like a commodity and less as an art, which “directly constricts the
public, by limiting their choices and right to listen to vatious musical forms, and restricts musi-
cians who are forced to play what is deemed to be ‘commercial’ to the record buying public.”
As a case in point he angrily cites the undeserved popularity of contemporary pop band Van
Halen, while bemoaning the status of the ignored, alternative group XTC, which he categorizes
as “almost flat broke.”

At the root of the problem are the record companies, Nazrauk argues. Record companies
want to get a good return on their investment, and in 1980's investing in a new band was often
a shaky financial endeavor, unless the company knew for sure that the group would be a surefire
hit. The next Van Halen, if you will. But what made the big labels so tight-fisted in the first
place? Well, a new technology had recently been introduced. A technology that allowed people
to get their favorite songs for free with very little hassle, in turn making them less and less
inclined to go to the music store and actually bzy albums. This new technology sent the record °
industry into panicked convulsions, and they desperately sought to minimize and outlaw the
spread of the practice. I refer, of course, to the ground-breaking phenomenon of cassette
tapes.

 

Bottom retro headline: “Students expelled”

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

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