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	Phil's Blogservations Friday, September 13, 2002 Posted by philgomes 8:50 PM "Yahoo? I Was Into Them Before They Got Into Broadband": I'm a big music fan. I have hundreds of CDs. I own four guitars and a bass. I go to concerts. I buy t-shirts. I read a lot of interviews with musicians. When a band comes out with a new album, it will often undertake a press tour to promote that album worldwide. All-too-often during the resulting interviews, a band will make negative comments about its early catalogue while promoting the current record. For example: I was watching VH1 a few weekends ago and I saw a brief interview with Scott Stapp, the lead singer of the incredibly sanctimonious quasi-Christian band Creed. He said that there were songs on the early records that he just could not listen to anymore and had to skip when listening to them on CD. As you might guess, there were no skip-worthy songs on the new record, as is always the case when musicians take this direction with their interviews. I've always thought that this common musician soundbite amounted to nothing more than a slap-in-the-face for a band's early fans. "Hey!" one might say. "I liked those songs! I still do! And now you're ashamed of them?" With this in mind, get a load of this Yahoo! executive during an AP interview regarding the recently announced Yahoo!/SBC broadband partnership: "We have been programming to the lowest common denominator until now," said Jim Brock, a Yahoo senior vice president who oversaw the project. "This is going to change the broadband landscape." Waitaminnit... I'm a relatively savvy computer user who is on a pokey dial-up at home. That makes me the "lowest common denominator!?" I like Yahoo! precisely because, for the most part, it loads quickly on my nibblenet connection and I'm always one click away from news, finance data, a disposable email address, and so on. Must Yahoo! diss the tastes of its early fans for the promise of DSL-wielding johnny-come-latelies? Do they think we like the moniker of "lowest common denominator," arguably the majority of their "eyeballs?" You see...Metallica always took the right route. During interviews related to their self-titled fifth album, singer/guitarist James Hetfield admitted that the first album Kill 'Em All was very "Judas-Priest-let's-just-go-rock-out." He quickly added, though, that he wasn't at all ashamed of it, since the record reflected what he and his bandmates were feeling at the time. When Yahoo! is rocking out in the dot-com world's 50,000-seat broadband arenas, I hope it doesn't forget those of us who crowded the dingy dial-up clubs in the early days. HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes[[dot}]com SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.