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New: John Ludi on Facebook

(UPDATE 6/4/2011:  My artistic muse has pulled me back into productivity mode and I am working on new projects again, though in a very different way...so I felt that it was time to update a lot of this site and clean things up quite a bit esthetically-speaking.  Therefore I have removed this little slice of bombast from the main Albums Page, even though none of my feelings about the world and our species have changed in any significant way.)

John Ludi sez:

"OK you bastards, you win...and here is what you've won:

Free music

and

My retirement from recording new albums."

"Gee, John Ludi (whoever the hell you are), why is this"?

I got a few major reasons:

• I DIDN'T "CHANGE THE WORLD":  My mission as an artist of conscience is largely over.  For 30 years I have tried to make a difference in the world and I really haven't accomplished squat, despite devoting myself heart, mind, body and soul to the task.  For 25 of those long and difficult years I tried to send a message that basically said "change your ways or you will be really unhappy about the results of your collective actions".  That didn't work at all, even amongst most of the people I've known personally, so for the past 5 years I have tried to send the basic message "prepare for the inevitable consequences of all of those actions I was warning you about the previous 25 years".  That didn't work either.  Now it's too late.  Our civilization is at the beginning stages of collapse: it's too late to stop it, and it's too late for the unprepared to cope.  If you are not mentally and emotionally (as well as physically and materially) prepared to deal with abrupt and unpleasant change, you are going to die starving.  Too bad, little monkey-thing.  As for myself, I think my job as an artist here on Earth is mostly done.   I could be wrong, but I doubt it.  You reach a point where you realize that it is best to just shut up if no one is listening.  I have reached that point.   From here on out I may play some acoustic gigs just for fun (before the grid collapses), but the time and effort involved in trying to make music of an exceptional quality level is too excessive for the nominal impact it has had in the world.  Let humanity end its days as an organized global civilization listening to content-free crap by an endless parade of 18 year old blond whores with silicone implants who can't sing without the use of digital pitch correction...it really does not matter anymore.  The Great Global Reset Button is being pressed and there will be those who live and those who die...and only our future history will be able to tell us which of those 2 groups is the better off...if there is anyone literate left to write that future history.
   
• DIGITAL PIRACY:  Despite my mounting misanthropy and cynicism, hope does seem to spring eternal in my slowly hardening heart: I rather foolishly thought that some of hundreds of thousands of people who had been downloading my songs for free off of this site over the past few years might actually BUY my new projects.  Nope.  Of the 2 albums I put out last year, the Quiet Earth Orchestra album was the one that made a small splash and racked up an initial promising amount of sales on CDBaby (sadly, the Soft War album went nowhere despite sending out a ton of promo, and I personally think that it is the better of the 2 albums from an execution standpoint).  I was greatly encouraged by those initial sales...but then something interesting happened: the sales stopped abruptly and I was able to find the entire album on Torrent sites as a free download at about the same time.  Isn't that nice?  I spend YEARS putting an album together that has quality music and thoughtful lyrics, spending hours and hours and hours perfecting the album to the best of my abilities, just to have people rip me off for the effort?  LISTEN IDIOTS:  If you rip off an Elton John album he is probably not going to give a crap...he is a fat old rich man in a mansion and won't miss the sales...but if you steal from independent and unsigned artists you may destroy what little incentive there is for us to keep making music "for the people".  Every single album we sell makes a difference to us, believe me.  If artists can't even HOPE to just break even on our projects, there will come a time when sharing our work with the public will become too expensive to sustain...and all you will be left with is crap music whose only virtue is that it has financial backing behind it or crap music by artists whose ambition to be famous far outweighs their talent.  Oh wait...it's already like that now?  Oh well, too late.
   
• LACK OF SUPPORT:  It has never surprised me that the Great Unwashed Masses never glommed on to my music...I am too preachy, hyper-articulate, lyric-heavy, and confrontational in my work for the common squalor; the "sheeple".  But what has been incredibly disheartening over the years is how so many "luminaries" in various "movements" have given my work (and myself) so little consideration.  For an artist who has been trying to spread the word on Resource Depletion, Climate Change, Civil Rights, the Environment, etc., for 30 years, most of the time that I've tried to network with these people and make them aware of my own efforts in these areas I have gotten a big cold shoulder and little else.  Most of them couldn't even be bothered to even trade links with me (see my mini-rant on the LINKS page).  Ironically enough, many of them wonder why they have not managed to create some sort of tidal response to their own efforts.  If the reception I have gotten from them over the years is any barometer, I am not at all surprised that most of them have not accomplished dick on a global scale and will die in slightly less obscurity than I will...and so will the causes they support...all in the effort to protect their "alpha-status" from other potential "alphas".  This is how the world ends: in a tide of sluggish mindless apathy, inadvertently helped along by the "leaders" of "movements" who were far too often motivated by primate egotism and tribal positioning in a self-serving public hierarchy to really engage more than just isolated handfuls of sycophants and "followers".  As for myself, over the years I have been directly involved in a great many areas of consciousness-raising and been on more than a few marches and protests in my time.  That all stops now.  And the money that I used to donate to various causes stops too.  I am now committed to spending it almost entirely on ME...and on no-kill animal shelters and animal rescue charities...anyone else can kiss my entire ass.  To hell with humans and their human-centered causes: We have proven ourselves to be planet-eating parasites and once 90% of us have died off the world will be a better place.  I only hope that it happens before we kill off any more of the planet and its other inhabitants than we already have.
   
• ROCK IS DEAD:  The time of really "quality" rock music is over: The era from the 60's to the 80's where brilliant and interesting people made brilliant and interesting albums.  The music industry and the general dumbing-down of this plastic and hyper-materialistic culture has killed creativity and passion stone cold dead.  I can't believe the crap people willingly listen to these days.  It's like someone urinating in your ears.  Vapid dribble would be a compliment.  When the most popular rock band out there is frigging Fall Out Boy, it's time to stick a fork in it.  The lack of originality out there is breathtaking.  Everyone is a pale memory of a weak replica of a poor imitation of a half-baked clone. The era of idiosyncratic artists on a mission to change the world has passed into history...and now all that is left is pap, illiterate Rap/Hip-Hop, cartoon darkness, fake sensitivity, sophomoric lyrics, banal sensationalism, and tepid retreads of far better music created by far better musicians.  And that means that MY time is over, because I refuse to make crap music for a crap audience.  I'd rather take a bullet.  As it stands, the people who used to listen to good music are all well past the age where they have stopped seeking out new artists and new music, and the younger people (Generation "Whine") wouldn't know a decent song if it crawled up their asses and laid eggs.  Let them eat Beyonce.
   
• I'M TIRED:  Really f**king tired.  Recording just takes way too much of my vital energy for the lack of reward I get.  I can't continue working in my professional career during the day (often working around 60 hours a week) and recording and promoting albums at night...it is just too much.  Something has to give, and it's the recording.  (As far as my own personal future plans are concerned, I recently bought some rural land in the middle of nowhere.  On it I will build an eco-friendly dwelling like a yurt and live off of the grid.  At some point I will bail out of society entirely and spend the rest of my days reading, growing food, and meditating.  When the time comes...as human nature guarantees that it will...I will watch the distant smoke of cities as they go up in flames...and I will quietly chuckle a sad little chuckle.)