[Speed Gibson,
Tuesday April 25, 2006 at 10:42pm]
The Good Old Days
Doug at Bogus Gold posted an answer for a question that I hadn't even really asked, like Jeopardy I suppose. The question is: Why does modern music suck? And the answer?
I just assumed these things come and go, like sports, movies, and wine (that's for you, Doug). Eric Carmen of The Raspberries actually has a pretty good explanation, more or less than the medium is now the message. I think he's got it.
As Jimmy Durante whimsically lamented, "Everyone's trying to get into the act!" Technology has made that all to possible, to where a home PC can record, edit, and mix tracks. When all this was expensive, most "performers" were shut out. Not any more. With voice processing, even American Idol rejects can sing on key. So, like bloggers and open source enthusiasts, we all jump in, only we skipped a step.
Maybe you saw Fantasia Barrino sing "Summertime" on American Idol last year. The judges and the crowd ate it up, as did my family. I shook my head. She sang it well, very well, but it was so obvious that at age 19, she had no understanding what the song was about. She simply had nowhere near enough life experience.
Take songs like "Fever" (Peggy Lee). Teenagers can sing them, but lines like the "Daddy, oh don't you dare, he gives me fever" are but cartoons to them. As time goes by, they'll "hear" the rest of it, but not today.
We learn all this from life, from literature, the arts, and the songs that went before. But the new artists, ever more impatient, find this irrelevant. Yet, they think they have soul! B as in B, S as in S.
Alleged poets who couldn't be bothered with rhyme and rhythm have produced a largely worthless glut of "free verse." Now, alleged musicians think they can do the same.
Sorry for the rant, go read Doug's post!
I just assumed these things come and go, like sports, movies, and wine (that's for you, Doug). Eric Carmen of The Raspberries actually has a pretty good explanation, more or less than the medium is now the message. I think he's got it.
As Jimmy Durante whimsically lamented, "Everyone's trying to get into the act!" Technology has made that all to possible, to where a home PC can record, edit, and mix tracks. When all this was expensive, most "performers" were shut out. Not any more. With voice processing, even American Idol rejects can sing on key. So, like bloggers and open source enthusiasts, we all jump in, only we skipped a step.
Maybe you saw Fantasia Barrino sing "Summertime" on American Idol last year. The judges and the crowd ate it up, as did my family. I shook my head. She sang it well, very well, but it was so obvious that at age 19, she had no understanding what the song was about. She simply had nowhere near enough life experience.
Take songs like "Fever" (Peggy Lee). Teenagers can sing them, but lines like the "Daddy, oh don't you dare, he gives me fever" are but cartoons to them. As time goes by, they'll "hear" the rest of it, but not today.
We learn all this from life, from literature, the arts, and the songs that went before. But the new artists, ever more impatient, find this irrelevant. Yet, they think they have soul! B as in B, S as in S.
Alleged poets who couldn't be bothered with rhyme and rhythm have produced a largely worthless glut of "free verse." Now, alleged musicians think they can do the same.
Sorry for the rant, go read Doug's post!