A breath of fresh air...

[Hard Truth]

I agree that the arts, especially music, should not be a competive sport where some are considered the best and some win awards etc. The rash of talent shows on TV just adds to the bad trend of marketing artistic expression like sports.

 

On the other hand, I support anything that gets people to explore new music. especially music that does not get much mass media exposure. Most people just absorb music passively, accepting whatever they are fed. So if people buy new music because it made a critics list, that is overall a good thing in my opinion.

[Lee Flier]

Anyone see the problem here (spelled out in Raymar's quote) if everyone takes the advice in the first quote?

 

Nahh. Once upon a time people did used to take time to listen to albums all the way through, repeatedly. And it was during that period of time that music sold more than ever.

[MrKnobs]

 

Nahh. Once upon a time people did used to take time to listen to albums all the way through, repeatedly. And it was during that period of time that music sold more than ever.

 

 

There were a lot fewer albums for sale.

 

Quincy Jones said that track downloads have killed album sales, since people just cherrypick the hit single off the album. I'd add that listening to albums in the past, there was always the song on it that made me buy it, and that song soon became irritating to me while the others grew on me slowly. The mark of a great album was one that distributed it's "nourishment" over time, like a good breakfast vs some sugar donut rush that quickly fades.

 

Terry D.

[nat whilk II]

 

There were a lot fewer albums for sale. Quincy Jones said that track downloads have killed album sales, since people just cherrypick the hit single off the album. I'd add that listening to albums in the past, there was always the song on it that made me buy it, and that song soon became irritating to me while the others grew on me slowly. The mark of a great album was one that distributed it's "nourishment" over time, like a good breakfast vs some sugar donut rush that quickly fades. Terry D.

 

 

Good observation, that.

 

Seems part of the whole paradox of "excessive choice" - faced with a zillion uber-convenient choices, people quickly weave a personal cocoon of familiar, unchallenging, instant gratification items.

 

Same thing happens with political ideas - people have so many media options available now, that simply recycle a person's pre-existing opinions back to them in amplified, pseudo-corroborated form. Like the old WWII vet next door who plays radical-conservative talk radio shows ALL DAY LONG.....

 

nat whilk ii

[D Charles]

A mashup is one song, if done well. See Ozzy vs. A-ha with "Take Me on a Crazy Train"

 

Wow, I haven't heard anything this cool since someone (and I'm thinking it might have been Lee) posted a link to two (think it was Nickelback) songs that were the same key and same tempo and one panned hard left and one panned hard right. LMAO! :-)

[Ara Ajizian]

The most important take away from this article is that everyone should check out Portugal The Man.

 

[video=youtube;GGDQOECShw8]

[nat whilk II]

The notion that one could continue to re-discover music from their past, and not "need" to get new music (the "they just don't make it like they used to" approach), is really nothing new. People heavily identify with the music they listened to in their younger (emotionally-developmental) days and most (after some indeterminate age) have difficulty "getting" new styles. The thing is, older people sticking to the music they know and like really doesn't have much effect on overall music consumption (again, disregarding whether it's purchased or acquired by...other means..) Young people will always have an appetite for new styles. That's one of the hallmarks of youth - seeking that which is new and unexplored. So while older people may have the money to purchase music, it's the younger people who have the larger appetite for it. This is generally speaking of course. But it's the rare person who remains truly open to new music as they get older. I know when I was younger I always told myself that I didn't want to get stuck in my musical path. That I wanted to remain open. Yet I see myself going down the usual path as I get older, having a harder and harder time getting into new music. And I'm only 31. I remember when I was a teenager a friend's mother came to us asking for some new music suggestions. She said she was concerned that all the music she listened to was 30 years old. I thought that was cool (but I thought everything she did was cool because I had the hots for her ), but in hindsight the one artist she ended up really liking wasn't that different from her 30-year old music - Blind Melon. Just kind of a revamp on the hippie rock style.

 

To respond to new music in your 40s the same way you responded to new music in your late teens/early 20s does not happen often, and I think there are reasons for this.

 

One reason is that, in one's early, formative years, you aren't just being introduced to this or that song or artist, you are being introduced for the first time to the energy, the miracle, the fun, the emotion, the sheer wonder of the musical experience. No wonder these early tunes imprint so deep, and become archetypes as it were against which all later musical experiences are compared and contrasted, consciously or unconsciously.

 

I won't say it's impossible to have more than one transcendent musical moment - say for example someone grown up on rock encounters The Rite of Spring and things are never the same again. But all too often, the early archetypes become frozen as ideals and then take on the character of conceptual barriers, and the ability to receive and appreciate radically different material gets lopped off. Doesn't have to be that way, but so often ends up that way. There's a paradox here - that the sheer strength of the early experiences make the archetypes all the more powerful until they act as it were like idolatrous gods, jealously demanding worship of themselves and no other.

 

I'm always hankering after new material, new ways to hear, new pathways to lay down, new music to enjoy and, to the extent I can, understand. My internal archetypes have to be overcome in some instances, and it can take something like work to do so at times.

 

When I first came across the great electronic music of the late 80s, early 90s, I was fascinated by the sheer inventiveness of the synth programmers and sound designers. It seemed like the creative muse had departed the rock/pop world and landed in Brighton or Detroit or some such place, inspiring knob twiddlers and sample manipulators. But I couldn't get past what seemed to me to be the gawdawful repetitiveness of almost all electronic music. Looping seemed like a crime against fundamental musicianship. But I kept at it, kept buying stuff, kept listening, let it simmer in the back of my mind, and then the light finally started to glow - it was a simple issue of expectations. The old Beatles-ballad and blues-tune songs (my archetypes) set up certain expectations that were frustrated in electronic music for the most part - where these old styles were essentially story-telling styles that moved from beginning to middle to end, electronic music was essentially music of the body, of dancing, of chanting, of a sort of timeless ecstatic state. Once I groked that, and submitted to the experience, I was a goner...of COURSE they call it Trance...

 

But the deeper the archetypes lie, the harder it can be to overcome their dictates...

 

Anyway, my musings on the subject....

 

nat whilk ii