Mellotronists

> From: john barrick <astroboy@...>
   > Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:50:36 -0500
   > 
   > Instant gratification and lowered expectations happened.  Every
   > child wants to be a star NOW - the next hip hop mofo.  Very few
   > kids are willing to take the time or effort to learn to play an
   > instrument.

I disagree, I don't think it's right to blame the kids.

The music media, that conduit through which they take in culture, has
let them down in a big way.  Listen to what's out there; there's very
little new music of any substance worth getting excited about.

If this was the early 70's and someone asked you to name some virtuoso
musicians, you could name dozens without hesitation.  Today, ask any
kid who follows the music scene to name a single virtuouso musician,
and they'd say, well, they'd say "What does virtuoso mean?".  But it's
true; it's really hard to name a single recent musician who's made a
serious statement on their instrument.  And without virtuoso musicians
it's very difficult for a kid to find the inspiration to master an
instrument.

The music biz of decades past found talent at the local level and gave
it wider reach, and popular music was thus a reflection of youth
culture.  The music biz of the last couple two decades takes input
from focus groups and dictates from above what people hear at the
local level.  So the clowns running the popular music biz are
effectively defining youth culture.

(That's quite the claim, Don.  Got anything to back it up?)

The has a really weird side effect: note that you almost never see
local bands play their own toons in the style of the stuff that's in
the top forty.  Local bands can be found playing jazz, metal, blues,
prog, folk, whatever, but you almost never hear of a local band
playing music that sounds like Britney Spears, N'Sync, Snoop Diddy
Flav, or whoeverthehell is big right now.

   > From: jeffc@...
   > Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2007 01:44:48 -0500 (EST)
   >
   > On Sun, 14 Jan 2007, jonesalley wrote:
   > 
   > > Whatever happened to a cool music subculture like we used to
   > > have?
   > 
   > hmmm...
   > i wonder if our parents asked the same question... and their
   > parents?

By that logic it's impossible for any generation's music to suck
because every generation's music is functionally equivalent.  No way,
dude.  Look, I fully understand that it's the job of every generation
to piss off the previous generation, and that's completely fine, but
there's a serious problem here, and covering it up with a weird
abstraction is not helping any.

The cool music subculture was effectively killed by a music industry
that was more concerned about making deals than making music.  Sure,
the music industry has always been more concerned with making deals
than making music, but the dollar value of the transactions involved
got way out of control.

All is not lost though.  It turns out that in the process of killing
the music, the music industry has effectively killed itself.  Short
term gain has trashed the chances of long term survival.  (Darwin
would say that that sucks if you're an evolving species.)

I'll predict that the music industry we've come to know is turning
into ash, and a whole new music industry is rising from the ashes.

  -- Don

-- 
Don Tillman
Palo Alto, California
don@...
http://www.till.com