Great post/rant/ramble, Vince.
Regarding pop music, cycles of growing up and looking back,
and 'twas ever thus', one thing that I think is different now than
back then is that the music industry now is major major major
corporate energy. Yes, we had the Monkees, etc being marketed,
but people (even us kids, I was 10 in '66 when they came out, and
I liked them, had the record, watched the show) were pretty much
aware that they were a manufactured, contrived product. But most
of the big music acts were consumer driven. You didn't buy
Ten Years After or Joni or Tull because it was being mass
injected by trillions of advertising dollars. You bought it
because you heard it at your friend's place or on the barely-
making-it late night FM radio station. The ratio of (for lack of
a better term) 'people's music' to commercial pap in dollars was
maybe 60/40. Now it is more like 90/10. The people marketing
music acts are the same ones that are pushing burgers and Gap
chic and SUV's. Maybe Woodstock and the birth of a mega music
market was the worst thing that could have happened.
Another thing that changed around the early 70's (Elton is the anti-
Christ) was the shift away from music that made a statement and
had some sort of meaning into empty entertainment. We got fooled
again. The money took over, and when that happens, the lowest
common denominator always seems to win.
I was driving one day, listening to a tape of the BeeGees
("unplugged") singing "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"
and I almost cried listening to those major seventh chords and
thinking about how the stuff that the kids listen to now is,
for the most part, stripped of a crucial element of good music:
melody. And harmony. So much of it is tuneless beat. I'm not
putting that down, but that's what I hear alot. I feel sorry for
them.
I think something has been lost. Maybe that's what our
parents thought about the Beatles. Maybe the cycle will
come back around. But for me, a drum pattern is not a
song, and a burger is not a meal.
RR
Vince Lavieri wrote:
> What follows is long and boring but has nothing parisan and political to
> offend anyone.
>
> For the thread about young people, "those gosh-darn kids" and the state
> of music today and such things:
