Carl Dershem wrote:
Dean M. Estabrook wrote:
I can just hear Dick Clark's kids giving it a 10, because it has a
beat and you can dance to it.
(Probably dating myself)
From discussions I've had mith my nieces and nephews and their
contemporaries, most of the music fans now want the same thing they
wanted 50 years ago - something they could dance to. The percentage
that actually gives a damn about the musicality of the piece are few
and far between.
For most people, music is background sound, or just a beat.
If you listen to the music of most available generations (the last 100
years) and then talk to the people who lived then, a lot of the emphasis
was just on "something to dance to." Glenn Miller and AWB were
different only in the details - they were just a beat you could dance to
with sometimes a nominal melody. Only the great stuff transcends
generations.
And the less than great stuff is often less than pure joy to play.
I have to disagree here -- to Glenn Miller, melody was supremely
important. Being able to dance to the music was important as well, but
melody was very important.
I think it was because for the audiences for which he played, dance
music had to have melody AND beat.
Otherwise his recordings would have been endless jams instead of the
carefully written out arrangements with essentially the same solos each
time.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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