The Usual YouTube Rant.

I wanted to listen to Bob Dylan’s original recording of Boots of Spanish Leather tonight. It used to be on YouTube, but it isn’t any longer. Instead we get this:

Bob Dylan – Boots of Spanish Leather (Original)

Only it isn’t original; it isn’t even Bob Dylan. It’s some guy who can pluck a few chords on a guitar, but none too well. He doesn’t sing so brilliantly either, and his rendition is utterly devoid of the strident melancholy that made the real original so worth listening to.

There ought to be a law against it. There should also be a law against vested interests taking songs off YouTube once the artists and recording companies have earned more from one song in a few years than a deep sea fisherman makes in a whole lifetime of risking his life among the tender mercies of forty foot f****** waves! There should.