Just One More Reason To Hate Steve Jobs

Leave aside the teacher bashing and his insistence on employing slave labor in China for a few dollars a day to make his ipads - he killed the radio star:

Jon Bon Jovi has blamed Steve Jobs for shooting the music business through the heart.

In an interview with London's Sunday Times magazine, the 49-year-old rocker lamented the fact that young listeners no longer can buy an album "based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like," because iTunes has supplanted the traditional record store.

"Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business," Bon Jovi said.

The "Shot Through the Heart" singer called the days of records a "magical, magical time."

"Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album," he said.

Apple declined to comment.

I'm showing my age, but the loss of records and record stoes around the city has hit me hard.

Remember when Bleeker Street was full of record stores?

Remember when you could go look for imports at the small record shops and snag that import only Siouxsie and the Banshees 12 inch?

Remember when you actually had to pay for music but you got an album with it and it had art and liner notes and sounded really, really good?

I remember those days.

Now we have ipods, which sound like shit, and bit torrent, where you can steal your music for free, and fewer and fewer music stores by the year so that as far as I can tell, J&R and a couple of stores in the Village are the only ones left.

Yes, Amazon is too blame too, and so am I for buying from Amazon.

But the biggest reason the record store has died is digital media.

Not completely the fault of Jobs, but he certainly shares some blame.

Ironic thing is, I can think of few things that make music sound shittier than an ipod.

Nothing like lossy music files of records that used to be 2 GBs but have now been compressed down to 125 mbs.

As for the rest of the evil Mr. Jobs does, I can only hope that when he finally leaves this mortal coil (and I hope that is a long time from now), he comes back in the next life as an Apple factory worker in China working 18 hours a day to make Apple ipads.

That would be universal justice.

POSTSCRIPT: Regarding Bon Jovi, I would prefer to NEVER hear anything by this particular artist, but if I HAVE to listen to a Bon Jovi song, I prefer it to be lossy.

That's one set of songs I would rather not hear crystal clear.