When did the music die?

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When did the music die? Is there any hope? What was the last album you bought which gave the impression that the band were actually interested in making music?

-- Nicholas E. Grinder (me@impolex.demon.co.uk), July 16, 2000

Answers

last album question, for me, The Pixies' 'Doolittle'

-- richard jones (rjones@hivresearch.org), July 17, 2000.

I'm always wondering about this and I have no answers. I bought a CD by the palace brothers, this weekend. I'm listening to alot of accoustic based stuff. Tried listening some 'experimental electronic' stuff this afternoon, but had to turn it off. Sick to death of eratic chopped up drum samples. I've got a theory, about 'newness' in music - its all down to personality. How much someone puts of them self in somthing. Anyway I keep an open mind. I don't know much softmachine. Though I read a very interesting interview with robert wyatt in a fanzine a while back. um... one good thing we have these days is lots of small bedroom record labels, which are easier to find out about with the internet and stuff. There is good music out there, but you must hunt it down. ok enough nessi

-- nessi gun (nessi_gun@yahoo.com), July 17, 2000.

Music began to get ill when it started being more about beats per minute than about collaboration between musicians. Naturally i blame disco. Now there is a whole area of music that is created in order to generate sensation in dancers' bodies. It's applied post-modernism where every other artist's work is fair game -- raw digital material to be reformatted into this week's slightly newer sonic collage.

I have a number of friends and aquaintances who are musicians. Mostly they toil at uninteresting and lowly day jobs that allow them the mental space to keep writing and performing. They finance their own cds and play for tips on the free stages around town. For these people it's about the quality of the songwriting and the quality of the performance.

The tricky part in any sort of creative career is how to make art on your own terms and get money for it. Making "good art" isn't enough. One must also apply skills associated with marketing and distribution. Or learn to write a really hot grant proposal. Or get signed to a major label and hope you don't end up "selling out".

The major label behemoth has grown so large that it must continually generate lucrative world wide hits capable of sustaining its own massive body. It can't afford to be about just the music or it will perish. That's why we have Celine Dion recording each of her products in english french and spanish. That's why we have Tommy Hilfigger sponsoring tours by Britney Spears. Hope? A major transformation in the relationship between artist and listener has already begun.

Last album I bought where the artist cared about music? Melissa Stylianou's collection of jazz standards. I bought it directly from the artist herself after her set at the Rex Hotel. I really like her voice, and the sidemen in the trio are so good they are terrifying. [If you are interested, you can hear Melissa on remixes by Gavo at MP3.com. Go to www.mp3.com, then search by artist: gavo.] It is becoming easier to buy music directly from artists. It is also becoming easier to simply take music and pay nothing. But that is a whole separate discussion.

-- SallyHewson (sallyhewson@sympatico.ca), July 17, 2000.


Does putting my hand up as a newcomer invalidate my views, or does it just mean that my glaring errors are gazed upon as the fruits of youth? Hmmm, just errors. I got Coldplay's album as soon as I could last week, which was old and hackneyed by the time anyone had even heard about it, I know, but popular support doesn't mean they're all bad. Covering a VengaBoys track means a band is all bad. I adore the record, admittedly the last track is lamer than Grand National also-ran, but the rest is great. So great in fact, that I've already given it away to my girl to prove that music without a bassline still exists. It was hard to do.

On the other hand, why in God's good mercy is "UK garage" (bo selecta - one more time, ma DJ) so bloomin' popular? Is it the drugs? Have the producers been giving out cash sweetners with the singles? Have I missed out on both? Damn.

-- Andy Quin (_aquin@yahoo.co.uk), July 17, 2000.


The responses to this post from Canada and the British Isles make me realize how constricted the choices are for an American music listener. I think all the U.S. radio stations, with few exceptions, have been playing the same seventeen or thirty bands since I entered high school. The music may have been alive up to that time -- I couldn't say from personal experience -- but, even if Regatta de Blanc and the first Thompson Twins album sounded fresh when they appeared, it doesn't seem like the music has evolved much beyond them. Every new artist sounds a lot like someone who came before.

One big indication that the music has indeed died is that parents and teenagers now can listen to the same pop music with no disagreement -- unless your teenager is into hip-hop, of course. It's obviously time for a new revolution. Of course, it doesn't matter to me personally whether it ever arrives, because whatever alternative the youth settle on as the new pop standard, I'm the one who's going to be revolted, if that's the right way to put it.

-- Tom Dean (tsd@ogk.com), July 19, 2000.



Personally, I don't think the music ever died - it's our youth that's eluded us. Bands and songs remain just as much a personal preference as they ever did. People insist that "they don't make 'em like they used to" but In 10 years time somebody will be saying that about Ms. Spears. They make them exactly how they used to but they mean different things to different generations and it's the memories associated with past times that I value as much as the songs themselves. They were almost incidental. The earlier decades preened their artists and packaged them in such a way that they'd appeal to that particular generation, regardless of their musical talent (or lack thereof), the same as they do today. It's all about fashion.

Music will never die, it'll just evolve, as will we. That said, I wish Ms Minogue would spin her talentless hot pant clad arse off the face of this earth, preferably colliding with a Russian missile en route.

-- Polly (diem99@hotmail.com), July 20, 2000.

Funny thing: music didn't die, it just got compressed into CD. I've recently discovered that it is so-o much better on vinyl. For some people, it's not better: just different. For me, a born again audiophile, the depth is so-o much more detectable.

-- Cabana (cluchase@earthlink.net), July 30, 2000.

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