The End of the Road?

Wall Street Journal ^ | 07/09/10 | JOHN JURGENSEN

[AtlasStalled]

The concert business is supposed to be the music industry's one sure thing. But not this summer. The Eagles, Rihanna and Maxwell have canceled tour dates. A wobbling "American Idol" tour has flooded the market with discounted tickets, and the resurrected Lilith Fair tour has called off concerts from Dallas to Salt Lake City. Even teen idols the Jonas Brothers announced this week that they're scrapping some shows. * * * With the continued evaporation of recorded music sales, acts at all levels of the talent pool must lean heavily on their live-performance earnings. That's forcing artists to tour more, and to keep their ticket prices high, despite the weak economy. This has created a glut of seats.

[GOPJ]

Monkees with less talent.

LOL - great way to turn a phrase...

Here's what I think happened: the baby-boomers blocked out the culture when they were coming of age - what they thought was great - WAS GREAT. And being young - boomers wanted music. That caused the most talented - to move toward the power, prestige and influence of music.

A few decades later, the most talented moved toward computers. Many decades before it was exploration - before that "art"... and on and on. The best and brightest find what's hot - always have. Look at the quality of film makers in the 20's and 30's... a time the industry was being invented - the best were pulled in.

People with the intellects of a Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, or Paul Simon move to where the competition is keenest and the fields wide open. In today's world, I doubt any of them would have gone into music.

[Sawdring]

Nowadays it’s just manufactured flavor-of-the-month pablum.

I remember when my Grandpa would tell my Dad about Elvis. The good old music of the 30's and 40's in the Big Band/War era was what he thought was good and the rest of it that was from my Dad's era was crappola. It is good to know that the generations are following the familiar pattern of disowning the younger generation's music.