MUSIC

A weary traveller, upon arriving at a new city, spaceport, dimensional gateway, record executive's office (if you find yourself at the door of a record executive you probably know everything you need to know on this subject and can move on comfortably to a new chapter), can make quick money by recording a hit single and submitting it to a record executive.

The first trick lies in understanding that record companies care very little for the actual records themselves and are concerned solely with the upkeep and care of their calculators' well-being (only well-adjusted calculators can cope with the staggering numbers and equations that get tossed about when presented with the daunting task of determining just how much money has been made. A lesser calculator would not stand the first barrage of zeroes that it was attacked with).

The second trick lies in understanding how to make a song that is criminally apalling in its creativity and talent level and never actually says anything or has any sort of meaning or point to it but, instead, dances lightly around things like "boy meets girl" and "girl rejects boy" or "transdimensional being conjoins with hyperspatial lifeform" and "hyperspatial lifeform consumes transdimensional being". These are tried and true formulas for success.

The reason that this second trick is so important to learn lies in the understanding of the general apathy of all creatures and especialy record executives. Many years ago it was decided that instead of spending time, energy and money investing in a young artiste's career and future, nurturing him/her/it as they matured and grew into successful musicians competent and in charge of themselves and the direction of their future, they would instead fabricate "cookie cutter" artistes that they could have complete and total control over. This meant that they could pay the artistes practically nothing while making large, mountain-like, piles of money. In the span of one generation of music audiences the appreciation of musical talent slipped away forever. When once there were bands like the Who, Led Zeppelin, Oolon Colluphid and the the rest of the Colluphid family with true musical backgrounds and talented inspiration, the face of music began developing acne. Groups named Teen Dream, and Zaltarian Soda Pop 4 and Britney Spears began emerging lowering the bar for what people considered "good music" and increasing record executives' power and wealth.

Today the situation is so completely out of hand that truly terrible music equals success. The worse the music the more likely you are to be picked up by a record company to do a hit single.

Actually the job can be highly rewarding and profitable if you are one of the few individuals who can read Vogon poetry without succumbing to the need to remove your eyeballs from your skull with a spoon whilst swallowing your tongue as you writhe in a pool of your own drool. The transformation of plagiarized Vogon poetry into hit singles is one of the best kept secrets in the galaxy due to the fact that no lawyer could ever posibbly come close to reading a Vogon poem to any degree that a lawsuit could be filed against a plagiarist.

Hands down, the best (or worst depending on how you look at it) music on the market today is ripped off Vogon poetry, and in fact many Vogons in a staggering break with tradition have left the battlefields to become disgustingly rich in the recording studios.