Posted on 07/13/2002 4:55:42 PM PDT by Wondervixen
Why has music entertainment gone into the sewer the past 25 years and who is to blame?
Nobody seems to be able to tune in to a music program (short of Country Music Television) without seeing what today's young music executives strive to convince us is "popular music entertainment". In the words of ex-ELO Drummer Bev Bevan, these up and coming manufactured superstars are performing "Rubbish". I tend to agree with him and here's why.
Over the course of Rock & Roll history, it became a classic staple that was added to and subtracted from, but rarely deviated from...A lead guitar...A bass...Keyboards...A set of drums. Those who PLAYED them also sang and I don't think I need to tell you that it took considerable practice to do it well. Walking and chewing gum at the same time is the joke. Singing musicians are where the talent is!
Then, along came Michael Jackson. Sure, the Drifters, Spinners, Temptations, and many other Motown legends performed sans instruments and dazzled audiences with some very cool dance moves, but their vocals were the drawing card. The moves were the icing on the cake.
Then, Jackson splits from his family band and goes solo. The vocals were catchy but the dance moves took attention away from the sound. Youths were imitating the Moon Walk and the strutting around Michael would do (even the crotch grabbing). The shame here is that some idiot in the music industry saw this as the wave of the future because from Michael's moves came New Kids on the Block, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Britney, Christina, and all the rest of the "Dancing Bears" who dominate music today.
It is no longer imperitave that you have musical talent, just that you're willing to wear the revealing clothes and DANCE, DANCE, DANCE. Voice mixers will straighten out the fact you can't carry a tune in a designer handbag.
Forced to "the reservation" of oldies summer tours are the real talents. Real BANDS like The Eagles, KISS, The Who, Cheap Trick, Doobie Brothers, Electric Light Orchestra, REO Speedwagon, and Styx are all but ignored by contemporary radio and only heard if you're lucky enough to have a good oldies station signal. Kids today have little appreciation for these talented icons of the bygone days of playing your own music. No, they cast their adoration upon the Dancing Bears who likely cannot play a radio.
Like the state of education in this country (ie; the "dumbing down" of our children), we have grown all too accustomed to accepting this laziness in music that now glorifies the least talented while the more talented get paid for hiding in the studio or standing in the dark of the stage providing the Bears the music to dance by.
Shame, shame, shame. At least Nashville and CMT still have it right.
What is the world is acid rock??? I vaguely associate the term with Jimi Hendrix, but other than that whatever it was was such a tiny subculture that it had no impact whatsoever on the music scene.
Music really started downhill when schools stopped teaching music due to the cost. Back in the 70's in grammar school (long before I took up guitar!), I took violin for three years - today there is hardly any public school with a music program like that, Kids grow up with no musical foundation, and no way to tell what is good from what is trite and repetitive. So we get thousands of thuggish, illiterate rap bands and thousands of Britney Spears clones.
There are great, musicianship-oriented rock bands out there like Dream Theater and Spock's Beard, but too many of today's listeners lack even the basic musical understanding to discern the difference between these groups and the dumbed down retreads the record companies are pushing on them.
He is known to have others play his part on recordings now and then. KISS and ZZ Top are as real as it gets, and they do just fine.
Another vocalist of that order that belts it out is Terri Nunn. Berlin, pretty smooth.
While, classic acts like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis existed, it was slim pickings until the Beatles arrived.
Throughout the sixties while there were classic acts like the Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Grateful Dead, The Who, and various Mowtown acts like the Supremes, let's not forget clones like The Monkees, Herman's Hermits, The Turtles, and every other band who wanted a name and sound like the Beatles.
While the 70's had Jimi Hendrix, The Eagles, Black Sabbath, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, KISS, Styx, let's not forget David Cassidy, The Bay City Rollers, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Menudo(yes they started back then).
Into the 80's cool bands like The Police, U2, Aerosmith, and Van Halen popped up, but so did Debbie Gibson, Stacey Q, and Bon Jovi(sorry, jersey).
Into the 90's grunge brought about bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Foo Fighters, but it also gave us New Kids on The Block, Back Street Boys, NSYNC, and Britney clones. My point really is crappy music is nothing new, it just seems like it's bigger now because we do grow older and detach ourselves from new new music(good or bad) all the time.
I like Smash Mouth a lot, but that's probably the only group that's come out in the last 15 years that I listen to.
Elvis, Linda Ronstadt, Jerry Jeff, Jackson Browne, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Emmy Lou Harris, the Pointer Sisters, the Dirt Band, CCR, Jerry Lee Lewis, Al Hirt, Chuck Berry and (only when Don Rich was doing the fiddle and guitar) Buck Owens.
My all time favorite songs, Hot Rod Lincoln, Emmy Lou Harris version of Pancho and Lefty, LA Freeway (Jerry Jeff), Fairy Tale (Pointer Sisters), Panama Red, Take it Easy, Chantilly Lace, Lookin Out My Back Door, Jailhouse Rock, and (doggone it, alzheimer's moment) what's the song Tommy Lee Jones puts on the 8-track when they're driving upside down in MIB?
All time worst song ever recorded, "It's a Sunshine Day" by the Brady Bunch, possibly tied with Sugar, Sugar and anything by Tony Orlando and Dawn.
It seems that just about every song/TV show/movie features a dad who is a "wife-beating SOB."
Independence Day justifies (glorifies?) the death of one family member by another. It was PC to the max. Why write a song about such a thing?
...LA Freeway (Jerry Jeff)
You just sold two records, I'm interested. Thanks.
Good point. I rephrase my opinion to simply say music started to go downhill in 1972. Glitter rock (which s*cked) was the rock genre. But you also had awful soul (which s*cked unlike the Temptations and the Supremes of the '60s) the Captain & Tenille, Tony Orlando & Dawn. Disco (which really s*cked) was on the horizon.
There were a few bright moments -- Springsteen, southern rock, Willie & Waylon and country outlaws, Bob Dylan's best stuff -- but it has been pretty much downhill.
There are great, musicianship-oriented rock bands out there like Dream Theater and Spock's Beard, but too many of today's listeners lack even the basic musical understanding to discern the difference between these groups and the dumbed down retreads the record companies are pushing on them.
Good point, but I'll blame the music industry and the homogenization of radio -- remember when commercial stations would actually play an entire album for the lion's share of the decline.
First, set up a Woodstock Festival featuring ALL of the Dancing Bear Stars.
Second, select a worthy cause for them to get together...I like "Lost and misdirected MAIL"
Third, just sit WAAAAAYYYYY back away from the stage & wait on the singing to get on the disgruntled postal workers last nerve.
Problem solved.
Music has been going down hill since Bach got too stiff in the fingers to play the organ.
By the way, what killed modern country music was Garth Brooks, or more precisely, his financial success. Garth proved that a guy with a hat, a flashy rock-style stage show, vaguely pop-country songs, and chiched faux-country lyrics (described by Joe Queenan as sounding like they were written by the "Drugstore Cowboy 1.0 software") could sell a gazillion records. When the major labels saw that country didn't have to be a niche market and could pile up huge sales, they fired or demoted all the Nashville execs who had been in the business their whole lives and really knew the music, then replaced them with pony-tailed, coke-snorting record weasels from L.A. These carpetbaggers moved into Nashville and immediately imposed their "formula": young artists who look hot in videos, crossover-aiming songs with almost no detectable country elements, and totally non-controversial pop cliche lyrics. Country songwriters were told not to even sumbit a song about drinkin' anymore because it was politically incorrect!
Only a group like the Dixie Chicks, that already has tons of power and popularity, can get away with doing a song like "Goodbye Earl," which is considered really scandalous because it sticks out like a buoy in a sea of pap, due to the fact that it actually says something. But all country music used to say things about serious adult subjects: alcoholism, infidelity, unemployment, even murder of a lover (I can play you a great 60-year-old recording of "Banks of the Ohio" if you don't believe me).
Want to improve country music? Run the L.A. record company weasels out of Nashville and back to L.A. Then sign Merle Haggard, Don Williams and Jerry Jeff Walker back to major label contracts again.
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