Search - Marshall (Ft John Simon) Mcluhan :: Medium Is the Massage

What is new is old again.

David Dix | Minneapolis, MN USA | 06/09/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album is more of a performance piece than a treatise. It contains masterful analogical and metaphorical "bits" that illustrate and "are" McLuhan's central theses about our media tools and extensions. The disassociative cultural psyche of the Sixties produced, IMHO, the computer culture of the 00s and created the mindset that allows the geniuses at the leading edge of the new culture to not only create but survive it. McLuhan and Leary, Fuller and Illych all contributed to this new Tsunami (to call it a wave is to underestimate its transformative force) This album is a product of and a demonstration of this force in its nascent stages. It is a brilliant production. The fact that is available only as an import demonstrates to me how out of touch American culture is with the dynamics of its media systems. I have owned my vinyl copy for over 20 years. I tape it every now and then and play the tapes until they are wornout. Every time I play it I learn something new."

Brilliant Remaster from Japan - A Timeless Treasure!

T. R. Rak | 02/21/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I purchased this remarkable CD in 2001 from Amazon.Com (retail price at that time was in the neighborhood of $40), back when this compact disc was IN PRINT and IN STOCK (what happened since!?!); because of course, my original vinyl LP from 1967 has long since succumbed to the ravages of time and the devastations of listening wear-and-tear courtesy of turn tables ranging from the high-end to the standard "classroom" variety.



Happily, I was not disappointed when this amazing audial masterpiece arrived. Quite the opposite - I was/am ECSTATICALLY DELIGHTED! Now I can employ this multi-media version of "The Medium is the Massage" in my college-level Communications classroom and course curricula effectively and successfully once again, and the students derive as much knowledge from it now as they did 30 years ago. This educational tool is REQUIRED listening for ALL serious scholars of Communication, and any course devoted to the teachings and limitless, seminal and continuously relevant influence of Professor McLuhan.



Apparently however, the Japanese have a deeper appreciation for the "Patron Saint of WIRED Magazine" than many of us "media mavens" do here in the United States? Why do I make this polemical claim? For a number of reasons. Specifically and within the context of this review: Here we have an IMPORT CD that is FLAWLESS in its PERFECT REMASTERING, a Genuine Labor of Love from Sony Music Entertainment (SME), Inc.; the resulting product : A complete digital, noise-free rendering of the original 43-minute album as conceived by Doctor McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel. A priceless gem.



But Sony went even further. They included a full-length booklet of the ENTIRE SPOKEN SCRIPT of the album (and for the most part QUITE accurately!) from beginning to end, something not even the original vinyl LP contained. Splendid!



My only problem with the disc is that the complete album is contained on a single track (that's right, Track 1: 42:42 minutes), which makes finding specific quotations "challenging," to say the least. The booklet helps though, so this is not a harsh criticism at all, because the vinyl LP wasn't tracked either (unless "Side A" and "Side B" can be considered tracks). The absence of tracking is an extremely minor inconvenience. The reward however is worth every penny paid for this international treasure.



So why is this brilliant product currently "out of print?""