On Thu, 17 May 2001, Tim May wrote:
> I think there are multiple reasons for the current trends in the
> music business. The MP3/recordable CD technology effect is only one
> of the reasons, and, IMO, not nearly the most important.
It's not a reason for the trends, it *is* a trend. Get the
difference?
>
> There is less excitement/interest in music today. Wandering recently
> through a Tower Records that in its heyday was _crowded_, I saw far
> fewer teens in the store, and almost no adults over 30 at all.
> Fifteen years ago this same store was generally crowded with folks
> stocking up on the then-new CD format. (OK, CDs appeared in 1983.)
>
About the time you retired as a millionaire, right?:) OK, Tim,
I'm of course kidding about that, but you do sound like some
one who didn't like Alan Freed in the late Fifties. Rock N Roll
transcends media, my friend.
> Even MTV has switched from playing mostly music videos to various
> execrable "reality" shows. (What little I see of it when channel
> surfing is bizarre.)
>
I couldn't agree more, and we couldn't date ourselves more. Not
only because we regard the content as bizarre but because we
regard channel surfing as something out of the ordinary. Get a
horse.
> Pop music is now mostly a series of one-hit wonders. The latest being
> some bleached-blonde black chicks who sound like chipmunks and are
> called "Destiny's Child." (Most of these new groups don't actually
> have _vocalists_, in the sense of singers who can really sing, or
> even good guitar players and such...they have young boys and young
> girls who are "staged." That they come out sounding like chipmunks is
> because their voices really don't have range. There are exceptions,
> of course.)
>
Between the advent of Elvis, and in particular his departure for
the US Army, it was almost all one-hit wonders. How do you think
Phil Spector made a living, much less millions of bucks? Nobody
could really sing back then except Dion and anybody who was
black and getting truly ripped off. That's the stuff the Beatles
and the Stones discovered and delivered back to white teenagers
in the mid-sixties. The rest of it, say Bobby Rydell, sank
like a stone, without a trace. You're too young Tim.
> Now, is this malaise--which is confirmed by recording
> industry--caused by rippers and burners? I doubt it. Music is all
> around us, more so than ever, but it no longer creates the buzz it
> once did. (And there's the Toffleresque issue of "overchoice": Tower
> Records is jammed with more tens of thousands of CDs than ever
> before, but the choice is overwhelming to many. Maybe this is why
> people order CDs to complete their collections but less often browse
> these mega-stores.)
>
Music no longer creates the buzz it once did for you--or for me,
I'll acknowledge. But you ask my three teenage kids if it doesn't,
and they'd say you're fulla shit. And, frankly, each one of them
has turned me on to at least one good record that I'd have missed
otherwise. See, eg, anything by Galactic or the Dirty Dozen Brass
Band.
> I think much of the focus of pop culture has shifted to movies.
> Movies are much more talked about today as a "common cultural
> experience" than they were in the 60s and 70s. Maybe the trend
> started with "Jaws" and "Star Wars" and other blockbusters; just
> speculating.
>
Movies have never understood Rock N Roll, while the converse
works with a vengeance. The movies think they are the
encompassing medium, while RnR just laughs at that silly
notion. Compare a two-hour Matt Damon movie to a three-hour
Springsteen or Phish concert and tell me which one delivered
more for the money.
> DVDs are flying off the shelves the way CDs did a decade ago.
>
> Too soon to conclude that technology has killed the music business.
Or helped it. Just another medium.
MacN
