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Good article you're going to hate.


Lee Knight

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I already knew I hate radio. From the 1980's when I was trying to help work records I'd worked on. It's a corrupt snake pit full of tin ears. Just like the rest of the music biz.

 

The real question for me always is, why would I want to try to make music in styles that I find annoying beyond tolerance and then try to sell that music through people I have utter contempt for to artists I think are complete garbage?

 

The people on these panels are among the first I'd put up against the wall...

 

 

There's new music I love, but almost entirely, it is the music that is growing up through the cracks in the concrete. And these industry types are the concrete.

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I already knew I hate radio. From the 1980's when I was trying to help work records I'd worked on. It's a corrupt snake pit full of tin ears. Just like the rest of the music biz.


The real question for me always is, why would I want to try to make music in styles that I find annoying beyond tolerance and then try to sell that music through people I have utter contempt for to artists I think are complete garbage?


The people on these panels are among the first I'd put up against the wall...



There's new music I love, but almost entirely, it is the music that is growing up through the cracks in the concrete. And these industry types are the concrete.

 

 

We can be together....

 

[video=youtube;cxA3Q96a8XE]

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Up against the wall, Fred.

 

 

 

That's the music politics I grew up with (although the band was, in many ways, past their prime at that point) but look what happened to the vocal core of that band when they decided to sell out.

 

Can anyone look at the complete and utter tripe that the Starship put out and think that there was any musical, artistic or cultural merit in the devolution from the Jefferson Airplane to the commercial enterprise known as the Starship? Meanwhile, the musicians from the Airplane stayed true to their music. They didn't end up making as much money, but Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady have a lot of good music in their wake -- and they still have their musical integrity, something that certainly can't be said for Grace, Paul, and Marty.

 

We can be together

 

Ah you and me

 

We should be together

 

We are all outlaws in the eyes of america

 

In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge f--- hide and deal

 

We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young

 

But we should be together

 

Come on all you people standing around

 

Our life's too fine to let it die and

 

We can be together

 

All your private property is

 

Target for your enemy

 

And your enemy is

 

We

 

We are forces of chaos and anarchy

 

Everything they say we are we are

 

And we are very

 

Proud of ourselves

 

Up against the wall

 

Up against the wall fred [they don't say
fred
]

 

Tear down the walls

 

Tear down the walls

 

Come on now together

 

Get it on together

 

Everybody together

 

We should be together

 

We should be together my friends

 

We can be together

 

We will be

 

We must begin here and now

 

A new continent of earth and fire

 

Come on now getting higher and higher

 

Tear down the walls

 

Tear down the walls

 

Tear down the walls

 

Won't you try

It was 1969, the height of the Vietnam war. Every week, there were hundreds of casualties and many deaths among US soliders -- and many times more among the Vietnamese. Richard Nixon, who had promised to 'end the war in six months' in 1968 was settling in for a long ride -- and a long war.

 

Meanwhile, the music biz was trying desperately to get us to buy "Yummy Yummy Yummy, I Got Love in My Tummy."

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I think I remember showing the lyric sheet to my mom (the album came out right around the time I was graduating high school) and saying, see, they don't say what you think they say. She was not fooled. ;) She actually liked some of the folk-rock stuff on Surrealistic Pillow.

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I think I remember showing the lyric sheet to my mom (the album came out right around the time I was graduating high school) and saying,
see
, they don't say what you think they say. She was not fooled.
;)
She actually liked some of the folk-rock stuff on Surrealistic Pillow.

 

It's an incredibly white and awkward "mother{censored}er" but "mother{censored}er" it clearly is. On a somewhat related note, Miles Davis is the all-time king of "mother{censored}er" usage, both on quality and quantity. :o

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What i did read, I'll say they are right; pick a genre you like and try to fit in. I'm always skeptical of what-to-dos that come out of Nashville. They're always so colored by the Nashville Country machine. hardly anybody I admire comes through there. Darrell Scott. But he's pretty anti-country at the same time as being classified as country. (read the words to Long Time Gone).

 

I went to a Nashville Songwriter's meeting once. Got a critique by some guy over a internet video link. He reportedly had won a few awards as a co-writer on a few hit country tunes. He was working positively with others in the meeting who had songs with the most mundane lyrics in the world. I'd shoot myself in the head if that's the best my mind would come up with. When it got to my song, he looked confused and called it "Canadian." And said it had no commercial value whatsoever. I actually love a lot of Canadian Folk artists and found it a backhanded compliment.

 

I have to wonder about a song that has 6 or 7 people credited as writers. Like what'd you do to get credit, change a verb tense? Wow, that's being creative.

 

But still the point is well taken that you should pick a genre you like, study what works in that genre, and see if you can make your creation fit into it. Music is about communication. If nobody understands what you've communicated, you haven't communicated anything.

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I already knew I hate radio. From the 1980's when I was trying to help work records I'd worked on. It's a corrupt snake pit full of tin ears. Just like the rest of the music biz.


The real question for me always is, why would I want to try to make music in styles that I find annoying beyond tolerance and then try to sell that music through people I have utter contempt for to artists I think are complete garbage?


The people on these panels are among the first I'd put up against the wall...



There's new music I love, but almost entirely, it is the music that is growing up through the cracks in the concrete. And these industry types are the concrete.

 

 

nice

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To paraphrase a guy who used to post in BSWTB:

 

You don't have to chase tail lights, and you don't have to give people exactly what they ask for. You do have to appeal to an audience, and you do have to give people what they want, but that can take a lot of different forms. :poke:

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. . . , But still the point is well taken that you should pick a genre you like, study what works in that genre, and see if you can make your creation fit into it. Music is about communication. If nobody understands what you've communicated, you haven't communicated anything.

 

 

OK. What do I win?

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"Now me, I went to Nashville, tryin' to beat the big deal

Playin' down on Broadway, gettin' there the hard way

Living from a tip jar, sleeping in my car

Hocking my guitar, yeah I'm gonna be a star

 

Now, me and Deliah singing every Sunday

Watching the children and the garden grow

We listen to the radio to hear what's cookin?

But the music ain't got no soul

 

Now they sound tired but they don't sound Haggard

They've got money but they don't have Cash

They got Junior but they don't have Hank

I think, I think, I think

 

The rest is a long time gone

No, I ain't hit the roof

Since I don't know when

Long time gone

And it ain't coming back again"

 

Darrell Scott.

 

[video=youtube;oQ0Ra_ubK10]

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I melted under the unbearable strain of cynicism.

 

 

Ooops.

 

I think the major points of the discussion you posted are VERY relevant to EVERYBODY here.

 

It's true, we are all at different places in our creative journeys. For nearly everybody here, commercial musical success is never going to happen. Nevertheless we all have found creative work in the musical commercial world that cuts through the din and hits the target both artistically and commercially. Like the Darrel Scott tune above. The Dixie Chicks ran it up the commercial (and yes, Country) charts. So there are lessons to be learned.

 

But because we're not realistically concerned about putting food on the table with this work, we all have a tendency to error on the artistic side, rather than the commercial side in our personal quests.

 

But truth is, if we (myself very much included) ignore the nuts-and-bolts (so called commercial) side of music, we are doomed to never acheive what we set out to create. Because music is communication. If we continually ignore the tools of communication in favor of the whims of our personal muse, then we will never grow and realize our potential.

 

, . . . , or not.

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