Of Punk and Lady Gaga and Rebecca Black and Generation Terrorism: A Facebook Disagreement

Sometimes I get into discussions online and I wonder if I am talking out of my ass. This is one of those times. Let me know if I am:

(Identities withheld to protect the innocent or guilty or whatever)

ORIGINAL DUDE: the result in "DIY" music ethic is a general lowering of standards. Less talent, less experience and fewer mentor relationships results in an overall diminished quality of music, IMHO. I'm not sure what anyone sees in "Friday"; I've thrown away better songs and I know plenty of other songwriters have as well. But as Terry Knight once said.." Art becomes art not when it is good or bad but when it simply can't be ignored. " Maybe, but I'm doing my best, Terry.

ME: What pretentious drivel. DIY helped spawn punk rock which was a revelation to many; in fact, most of the music I like originated with or was influenced by a DIY aesthetic. But even if you write off everything I like as bad (feel free), Rebecca Black didn't lower the standards of music because it was DIY since "Friday" was written and the video was directed by music industry snake oil salesmen, the complete opposite of DIY! You think she did it all herself? She did almost nothing other than provide vocals and do what she was told in the video... Rally against it if you must but your sentiments are no different than throughout musical history where people complained about what was popular at the time and how it was sooooo lame compared to the stuff that wasn't popular that they liked. The only difference is that Black got popular through a different medium than MTV in the '80s, radio in the '70s and fucking sheet music in the decades before that.

OTHER DUDE: DIY helped spawn punk rock? QED for @ORIGINAL DUDE's argument. And I think they had radio before the '70s...

ME: And they still have sheet music now, so what? I have to list every medium known to mankind and their dates of importance in a Facebook post? I didn't even get into wax cylinders... As for your other snark... you want to argue the merits of punk or the semantics of my phrasing? If it's the former, I care as much about whether you like punk as I do DUDE likes Rebecca Black. If it's the latter, everyone knows that punk's origins read like that of a boy band today (Ramones on Sire, Sex Pistols manufactured, blah, blah, blah) but the movement inspired a slew of people who didn't have Seymour Stein or Malcolm Maclauren pulling strings, people who self-released and self-promoted. That same spirit was taken up by the NWOBHM and those bands were among the best of the era for metal. Anyone who argues that making music easier to make makes for less good music is really silly, just like the curmudgeons screaming at MTV for spawning vapid pop music when I was young. There's good independent music and bad, just like all music. Cry because someone with less talent gets popular... Real original. Or do I have to mention every recorded example of that cliche to make an accurate point in your world?

OTHER DUDE: Punk rock generally was crap. Plenty of other music is crap too, or has elements of it that are crap, but punk rock took a pride in being crap. Punk has been a plague on UK music since its tiny stunted misshapen life flickered into being and then died. It has elevated style over substance, 'attitude' over talent. I have no problem with DIY music, but the statistical likelihood is more people pushing music out there the level of quality is going to fall.

ME: Your arguments against punk were used by jazz fans sneering at early rock and roll. Elitism ain't new either. It's just boring. Like you.

ME: ‎"These lads cultivate a vague allusion to being musicians, in a gurgling sort of way. They tote instruments, but blandly assure their fans they know not a note. (All their notes are in the bank.) Their production seems to be a haunting combination of rock ‘n’ roll, the shimmy, a hungry cat riot, and Fidel Castro on a harangue." - New York World Telegram Editorial, February 8, 1964 about The Beatles.

ORIGINAL DUDE: well played Brian. But, as someone who teaches young musicians, I can compare where they are to where I was at, at similar ages and there is no comparison. I was loving the blues, country, R&B and pop and was building my playing on their models. That isn't happening much in 2011. They are exposed to bands with very limited musical palettes, and are copying them rote. They are rarely interested in older music, and when they are, they struggle to integrate it into their own music. As a result, bands are ill equipped to write and play music based on sound fundamentals. The Beatles were never guilty of laziness or of ignoring that which came before them. Many of today's young musicians are, and it shows in the lowered quality of songs and in the short lifespan of bands.

ORIGINAL DUDE: I think punk and DIY were spawned out of the same mindset: a complete dissatisfaction with celebrity music culture that didn't touch the simple issues people lived with on a daily basis. Patti Smith was being told she couldn't sing, but her message and poetry overruled any limitations her voice has. The Doobie Brothers could sing well, but had nothing to say. Punk and DIY simply eliminated the gap between musician and audience. They made them one in the same, and in that sense have a common origin.

ME: @ORIGINAL DUDE: Oh my God, the kids are stupid and lazy and uneducated! No generation EVER has felt that way... Seriously dude, relax. In every generation the majority of kids do not create art and many do not appreciate art on any level beyond the cursory and in all art, a large percentage of it will be considered poor and an even larger percentage of it will be commercially irrelevant. But in every generation there are ones who do. Besides, Rebecca Black, who you lambaste, is not sitting around not caring about art, she is creating it! Maybe it's art you do not like, but how is she the enemy when she is doing something to express herself? Does the fact that kids don't appreciate art bug you or the fact that the ones that do express it in ways you cannot tolerate? Sorry but I disagre with the former as a blanket statement and don't care about the latter. The fact is there are millions of other Rebecca Black's out there. Maybe you'd like a few of them but you haven't heard them yet because they didn't become an Internet Meme. I suggest you try and find them instead of bitching about contemporary music. Only old farts do that. You want to be an old fart?

ORIGINAL DUDE: Brian, say what you will, but The Beatles and Stones were not lazy, and they drew heavily on the music that came before them. You try teaching a 12 bar blues to a 17 year old "musician" in 2011. Unlike me and you, they aren't listening to music that contains the fundamentals, like I did, and many who came after me did. I learned to play bass from a Cream record. It has all the elements I needed to make sense of jazz, blues, soul, funk, metal and even punk. Find me a record released since 2005 that can say that. Name it.

ME: I don't say The Bestles were lazy. I take umbridge with blanket statements of a generation that is lazy and I take umbrage at saying Rebecca Black is typical of her generation, including but not limited to laziness, and how DIY is bad for music. I only point out that what you are doing is generational pissings and nothing more.

ME: This kid shows that the kids are alright, know the blues and you don't have to be Rebecca Black to get on the YouTubes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGTfDf4b5oE

ORIGINAL DUDE: I suppose you can think that if you like. But are you teaching young people and listening to their comprehension of what music is and what goes into it ? I am, and while I have some razor sharp students, I have a hell of a time convincing them to listen to older music. No one had to tell me twice to listen to Hank Williams or Robert Johnson. I heard the sustinence in it and embraced it readily. I don't care where Rebecca Black's junk came from, be it board room or garage. I'm not arguing anything about her song, except that it's shite of the worst kind. Punk made the audience part of the band and the band part of the audience...that was why it matters 34 years on from " Talking Heads '77" That has had an effect of unintended consequence...any knucklehead who can afford a $99 guitar or a cheap synth can start a band and get attention. It's not about one generation pissing on another, my friend, it's about learning and growing in an organic way and that has pretty much stopped. Rebecca Black proves it. BTW...name me that record that has all the fundamental elements in it that has shown up since 2005. Maybe U2 or Pearl Jam. Maybe not.

ORIGINAL DUDE: I'm not making a value judgement on a specific type of music, but I am singling out certain performers as emblematic of a problem that I am experiencing as a teacher with young students. I watch and listen to current music carefully, I'm no fuddy-duddy trapped in the 70's. I think Radiohead has revolutionized pop music, but since "OK Computer" very little innovation has taken place. That, I would argue, is because musicians are simply not knowledgeable of the basics. We are in a terribly stagnant period of not just music, but pop culture.

ME: Sorry but you come off like an old fart screaming about those damn kids and their music.

ORIGINAL DUDE: then you are not listening to the details of my argument, Brian. I'm listening to The Arcade Fire as I write and I'm 56 years old. How is that an "old fart" ? This is the exact same argument, if you are a sports fan, that Michael Jordan and Larry Bird make about young AAU-trained basketball players who can't dribble or make free throws. They're not trained in the fundamentals that make the game work and make it fun to watch.

ORIGINAL DUDE: and I'm still waiting for you to name me a record since 2005 that provides the building blocks for understanding different types of music. I will gladly concede if you provide it.

ME: Um, the list is so long it's ridiculous, not that an old fart would know this. Try the last releases by The Black Keys, Arcade Fire, Agalloch, Kanye West, The Roots, LCD Soundsyatem, Destroyer, Spoon, Swans, M.I.A. - those are just from last year, incidentally... And none of them sound anything like each other.

ME: And those are just the ones whose commercial acclaim is fairly wide. Lotsa stuff that isn't as fortunate but still worth listening to.

ORIGINAL DUDE: see, I never said there isn't music worth listening to. Arcade Fire isn't blowing me away, but it's decent. I'm nuts about The Foo Fighters. I like some of Spoon's stuff...I live in Austin and not liking Spoon here can get you prosecuted......I dig the new Black Keys a lot. Same with The Black And White Years. Heard of a band called Ghostland Observatory ? They remind me of some early Pink Floyd tracks. I'm just sayin' that I am not meeting very literate musicians, and many of them may have no use for The Beatles, which is fine. But finding no use for anything older than, say, 2000, is not an attitude I have confronted before. When I get a student who really likes a blues, R&B, jazz or funk record that is a major find. It's about finding value in music other than the three you are restricting yourself to listening to, be it The Stones, Spoon or Beethoven. That's my gripe.

ME: So I provided tons of new music which has an audience and fits the criteria, yet you steadfastly say that nobody is listening or creating. Funny, I don't think that 56 year olds are the target audience for the albums I mentioned, yet they are selling. The people making them are a lot younger too. I can also add Lady Gaga who I think is brilliant, who writes her own music, was a trained pianist and singer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM51qOpwcIM

...and who incorporates things such as glam rock into her pop music, and who you can find a metric shit-ton of kids (really young people) covering her songs. The music is there, you just remain convinced that it's not as good because of nostalgia. Which is fine, I get nostalgic all the time. I just don't let it stop me from enjoying new music, let alone doubting any of it worth listening to exists!!

ORIGINAL DUDE: I agree with you about Lady Gaga for the most part, even though I wouldn't pay a buck for a carload of her records. Like Madonna, she has a lot of the qualities for success that a young female artist needs. I prefer Pink, from a listening standpoint to Gaga, personally, and I like Pink a lot. I've stated that there are a series of current artists I like. I didn't ask you to show me decent music from the last five years. I know it's there. What I wanted was music that performed the function that Best Of Cream did for me...it made jazz, blues, funk, metal and punk familiar idioms all on one record; stylistic diversity that still had sound musical fundamentals. That's what I want to hear in a record from the past five years. Current musicians spend a lot of time trying to hit three pointers, when they should be working on their turnaround jumpers and free throws, and that's not about generational differences. It's about what creates lasting quality within an artform and what doesn't. I can dislike an artist...like Lady Gaga...and see that she is doing her homework.

OTHER DUDE: Gee, @Brian, I guess you win the argument. I yield to your rapier wit and Wildean bon mots. I am an old fart, (Well, I'm 5 years older than you), and I am elitist (I still think talent holds out over enthusiasm), and therefore I am indeed obviously boring. I'll stick listening to 'dull' stuff like the Thunderbirds, or Tull, or the Strawbs, as completely random examples.

ME: @OTHER DUDE: Being an old fart isn't an age thing. I am 42 myself but I spent a bit of money to pick up a bunch of the best albums of 2011 as decided by Decibel Magazine and listen to them a lot more than relics of my past. If I could choose the music playing when I died, it wouldn't be some song from my past, it would be something new that I am hearing - and loving - for the first time. And the day I decide that there is no new music to discover is the day I may as well be dead.

OTHER DUDE: @Brian - last additions to my iTunes were - Sam Hare - Down to the sea (2010), Brett Mclaughlan - Intro EP (2011), Pura Fe Trio - Live in NC (2010) VdGG - A grounding in Numbers (2011) Bonamassa - Dust Bowl (2011) Geoff Achison & Randall Bramblett - Jammin in the Attic (2010) Henrik Freischlader - Still Frame Replay (2011). Got no problem with 'new' music.

Of TL and DR and Message Board Terrorism: An ILX Didntreadit

...

I tried to read that like five times. Mostly it sounds like two old Guitar Center employees arguing about these kids today, I guess.

I am 42 myself but I spent a bit of money to pick up a bunch of the best albums of 2011 as decided by Decibel Magazine and

heavens

See, at some point you have to allow the fact that there is TOO MUCH musical history to catch up with.

See, if you consider Rock and Roll to have a year/day zero (usually ascribed to "Rock around the clock" or "See you later alligator", latterly it's "Rocket 88" or "The Fat Man"), you can have an assimalable amount of R&R history, but only if you start around 1961. Unfortunately, the kids today are starting in 2011, and the turn of the millennium seems as good a place as any to them, to start.

People say "Oh, the internet has made all the old music more accessible", which is true, but in fact it only means you can see the enormous mountains more clearly. And that's more off-putting.

Let's pick 1971 (for me), the Beatles were close enough to be a living memory, there are occasional R&RRevivals that still had some vibrancy, and the prog/rock axiom was there if you seeked it out. And, soul/reggae was around and visible.

All that, irrigated the music being made to some extent.

Forward from that, cyclical revivals of the Beatles, R&R, blues, etc, kept these alive, sort of. But then it tails off, and once a page is read, the mystery is dead...

(someone else carry on? I've no idea what I'm on about now)

OK, summary:

in 1971, music that had 'currency' was made between 1955 to 1971

You would 'like' that in 2011, that date range would expand both ways thanks to the internets, but it's too big to take it all in. Certainly, to some band trying to make their first album, let alone Rebecca Black.

(OK, I'm out)

I've gotten into similar arguments and the only way to win is to learn not to have them anymore and just let whoever you'd be talking to take their stupid opinion to their grave

I wonder if that Randall Bramblett record is any good.

"I'm listening to The Arcade Fire as I write and I'm 56 years old. How is that an "old fart" ?"

We need this guy on ILM now.

ORIGINAL DUDE and OTHER DUDE remind me of Rik from The Young Ones.

RIK: None of you ever give the slightest consideration to a word I've said!
VYVYAN: That's because you're very boring!
RIK: Oh! Oh, and I suppose you think ideas like peace and freedom and equality are boring too!
VYVYAN: Yes, they are!
RIK: Ha! Fallen into my trap! In that case, why isn't Cliff Richard boring, clever-trousers? Tell me that!

{VYVYAN pushes RIK's face down into his food}

I go with sleepingbag's philosophy though a friendly debate can be enjoyable.

Excellent Young Ones reference, snoball.

NYCNative, I enjoy your posts (though I can't believe you typed that all up!). I think your perspective is correct and the whining-about-kids-these-days guys have too narrow a view, not to mention miss the fundemental point about DIY/punk.

It feels like we're still too close in time to understand the trends, many of these issues are still playing themselves out and, of course, broad generalizations are easy to counter with a few specific outliers. So let's check back in 40 years.

LOL @ the stupid pre-fame Gaga video. I still don't think it proves shit. Every Little Monster uses it in an argument as if to say "Look! She can play something and write! She's valuable!" as if she's the first artist to do that. I seem to remember Madonna's infatuation with playing the guitar and when Britney used to play piano during the Onyx Hotel Tour but nobody else does.

I'm nuts about The Foo Fighters

Should of just ignored him from there lol

Is it possible we're getting to a point where rock'n'roll is as relevant to todays kids as, say vaudeville or classical music?

I'm thinking about the whole Brit Awards "Who The Fuck Is Arcade Fire?" thing that happened a few months ago. Reading that massive collection of tweets and statuses saying "What the fuck is this? Rock music is dead" really shows how pop music culture has finally eschewed those last few trad-rock straws from its back.

Knowing how to play blues licks, let alone digging them, is becoming an increasingly academic pursuit for this generation. I think the elephant in the room is there's little space for 12-bar blues on pop radio. You're almost as likely to hear a Cream-style guitar riff in a modern pop song as an oboe or tuba - maybe less likely, since modern production can replicate these instruments pretty well these days.

The idea of a young kid wanting to be the next Clapton as opposed to the next Terius is quaint to say the least. Sure there are going to be a few pasty oddballs who sit around learning Hendrix riffs and wishing it were the sixties, but this is their grandparents' eras. It's like someone getting obsessed with World War aircraft - it's nerdy, peculiar. There's little cultural cache in knowing about this kind of music to the current generation.

Wondering what post-2000 music is inspiring these kids to take guitar lessons. Are they all metalists?

Reading that massive collection of tweets and statuses saying "What the fuck is this? Rock music is dead" really shows how pop music culture has finally eschewed those last few trad-rock straws from its back.

But that's just it. The only sample to which you're being exposed is the tweeting/tumbling/facebooking kids. For every one person saying something like "What the fuck is this?" there are 10 others who just silently stand back and absorb however much or little new music they're introduced to. Be it Arcade Fire or Ke$ha, they make up their own minds about things without going online and screaming about it.

I think the problem here is twofold:

- devaluation of music education across the board, blocking many kids coming up now from seeing the link between the fundamentals dude is blathering about and the music they consume on the radio

- devaluation of current music production techniques, which in some cases wholly bypass the framework dude is so heavily invested in as a dinosaur music educator

The baseline complaint of "why aren't people doing exactly what they were doing 30 years ago" is and should always be inherently laughable. Where dude is going wrong is thinking that turning these kids into style mimics makes them good musicians; he should be easing off of studying specific styles and leaning on theory so that the kids can take their samplers and keyboards and guitars and sequence their own music.

^^^^ over/under on elapsed amount of time before that is copied to "posts very much in character"?

xxpost Not sure what you're saying there Johnny, other than (and I agree with this) that obv not all kids feel exactly the same way, but it is a truism that guitar-based music is becoming increasingly irrelevant today and a number of people (including people on this board) do not see it as relevant to their lives and actively ignore or rebel against it. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Genesis, The Smiths, Blur all knew their way around a fretboard, and how. But modern pop is 50 years old this year, and really the only guitar music that seems significantly relevant to teenagers is metal and the odd terrible Britpop band (many of whom are content to chug away on rhythm).

Back in the late 80s when Slash inspired a bunch of kids to take up guitar lessons they probably didn't see it as much of a stretch when their teacher wanted them to learn Clapton licks, but to some kid today who wants to play Death Metal or Mall Punk, the Yardbirds must seem like jugband music or something.

I dunno. I take guitar lessons, and I often ask my teacher what young kids are asking to learn. He's as surprised as anyone when they bring in, say, the Kinks or something like that, but I can't imagine anyone that gravitates toward an instrument being totally unaware of that instrument's foundations and fundamentals, if only as something to rebel against.

Can I just point back to my "devaluation of music education" point, which encompasses much more than just my theory hobby horse, but also history?

Have to take issue with some of your points Dog Latin. Firstly, Cream and Hendrix does not equal 12-bar blues. Anyhow, how is it relevant that blues-based rock is not on pop-radio? It ISN'T pop, so has no pop-audience. Mainstream rock has hardly been on weekday, daytime 'pop' radio in the last 30 years, and only really found at all in niche shows in the evenings and at weekends. Fragmentation and the proliferation of radio, TV and online channels means that actually nothing's irrelevant and rock, pop and every flavour thereof have healthy audiences in today's generation.

So are you saying that because modern-pop isn't rock-based, that rock is irrelevant to the current generation. Surely that's just one market though? To a significant proportion of the 'current generation' modern POP is not of much interest and classic and/or modern rock is what they're into. There ARE lots of metallers, but actually many teenage kids want to play like Hendrix these days. Mainly because it's now actually possible to do so - cheap guitars actually sound pretty good and information about the artists (techniques, online lessons, tabs) are all freely available. Lots of schools do rock guitar lessons, you can do exams with rock, funk, jazz content.

But modern pop is 50 years old this year, and really the only guitar music that seems significantly relevant to teenagers is metal and the odd terrible Britpop band (many of whom are content to chug away on rhythm)

Not in my experience - which is my own teenage kids, their friends and kids I hear wailing away in guitar shops!

My guitar teacher when I was 15 always seemed to be obsessed with "the blooos" and I was like, fuck that, I wanna play Welcome To Paradise. Obviously, he'd despair and we'd normally just end up jamming around the pentatonic scale. I think if you're seriosu about learning an instrument then yeah, you should know all this stuff - it's good to know. But for many, it is a solitary and academic pursuit that would get you some strange looks from your peers. A bit like if at school I'd been a massive fan of George Formby or Gilbert & Sullivan or whatevs.

sorry that was xpost to Dr C.

I'm definitely not saying that all rock music is irrelevant to the current generation. I said upthread that a number of kids will always be interested in picking up the guitar, but that number will dwindle over time as trad-rock becomes increasingly relicised. I think someone of a younger generation would be more interested in learning how to create beats or how to rap or sing than learn about the tawdry "fundamentals" applied by some old gimmers who made music when grandpa were a lad.

Knowing these so-called fundamentals will help, but they're no longer essential to the modern musician with a small studio setup. Even if you did want some neat blues licks on your record, you can always sample it.

Forget it though. Point is, you can't blame a generation for wanting to make music that's relevant and influenced by the world around it, and IMO we're at the end of an era where pop/rock is about traditional beat-combo setups (bass/guitar/drums).

It's not "elitism" to say that the results of most DIY musicians are unsatisfying. Reverent defenders of punk are boring. Sorry I clicked on this as I don't really want to get into it.

It's not elitism to have standards for god's sake.

So is your complaint about trad rock not having a market share or about trad rock not having any impact on youth? Because we got into this a little bit on the 20th Century poll thread. Boomer generation music is still very pervasive in pop culture, starting with Elvis/Jerry Lee/Little Richard/etc and especially with The Beatles/Beach Boys/Hendrix and so on. It's largely resisted the "it's your grandfather's music" stigma that artists from our grandfathers' generation are dogged by. I think a large part of it is that this music is still on radio, still used in advertising, still used in movies, and can be framed as contemporary still because of all its exposure.

xps to dog latin

It's not "elitism" to say that the results of most DIY musicians are unsatisfying.

There is an irrelevant "DIY" in this sentence.

Will it be able to escape the oldies designation forever? No. But there's still a healthy interest in it.

I said upthread that a number of kids will always be interested in picking up the guitar, but that number will dwindle over time as trad-rock becomes increasingly relicised

And I'm saying that that number will INCREASE, because of various reasons all coming together. The 'world around them' includes the internet, where everything instantly available NOW. It's easy for kids to pick up on virtually any genre from the past now and plenty of them seem to like old rock. IMO, kids are not really making the kind of judgements that you seem to be claiming about what's 'relevant'. I don't think they give a stuff if what they are listening to was made in 1968 or 2008.

Also how does your argument explain the revival and reinvigoration of an old-hat genre such as Folk?

and IMO we're at the end of an era where pop/rock is about traditional beat-combo setups (bass/guitar/drums.

But the guitar-bass-drums as norm end when synths became cheap, reliable and available to all - in around 1980?

By the way I'm not arguing that it's good or bad that kids play blues-rock. I don't care either way.

xxxposts

Is it though? Last time I listened to Radio 1 I heard very few 12-string guitars or boogie-pianos or rockabilly riffs. Much commercial pop/r'n'b's taking its queues from Ibiza trance right now - about as removed from trad rock as it gets. And like it or not, this is the starting point for most kids getting into music right now. Whether and how they move on from this is down to them - but the music being played on mobile speakers, at school discos, on MTV, on the car radio etc WILL be this music. Maybe this is a UK thing, but now that the New Rock Revolution has all but died down, there's very little mainstream rock music out now to replace it.

Whereas before we still had the Strokes, the Arctic Monkeys etc, I'm almost tempted to say we're at a tipping point where for the first time in pop/rock's history there's a significant dearth of rock-based music coming to mainstream audiences. Unless there's some huge revival, the next generation may have no use for rock music at all.

xpst - Good point Johnny about use of old music in films etc - another example of 'the world around them'

um mumford & sons? xpost

Radio 1 = what the kids are listening to, DL? Surely not!

http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com/

Information is at people's disposal, true, but you'd have to actively seek out a Yardbirds Youtube than be exposed to a Lady Gaga song on the radio. I really don't agree with this argument that people will be drawn towards certain cultural touchstones just because they're lyign around on the internet.

Maybe this is a UK thing

Maybe so, because US radio is still littered with Nickelbacks and Three Doors Downs. Distasteful as most of us here would find that, it's at least music that's still rooted in some kind of older tradition and shows absolutely no signs of dying anytime soon. tbqh, The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys made about as much impact here on popular culture as any "cool" rock band who was popular last year or the year before. There's an sustained undercurrent of interest, but no one like that has blown up on US charts since the 80s.

mumford and sons? who listens to that?

the kids!

yes, and they're telling their dads to switch it the fuck off.

lol

A bit like if at school I'd been a massive fan of George Formby or Gilbert & Sullivan or whatevs.

If we were all still working in our local area providing house-to-house services, then George would still have the relevance that made him a success at the time. That he doesn't now means that he has a historical relevance.

That the Beatles have some sort of currency thesedays is down to them having a fairly modern sense of personality, that has some (albeit smaller than the sixties) currency. How much remains, is a matter of opinion. Suffice to say, if it was purely about the "hold yr hand" days, they would be gone.

but you'd have to actively seek out a Yardbirds Youtube than be exposed to a Lady Gaga song on the radio

both of these require "active seeking" btw. the difference between turning on the radio and tuning it to a pop station (also lol at radio btw. that's OLD MEDIA) and typing "Yardbirds youtube" into a search engine are essentially negligible.

http://www.last.fm/music/Mumford%2520%2526%2520Sons?ac=mumfo

self-selecting group, but peruse the listener profiles

I just realized what we're really doing here is having an "Is Rock Dead?" discussion, which is my least favorite activity in the world (except maybe dental work). Have fun y'all.

is Ibiza dead?!?

C'mon Shakey, that's nonsense. You'd have to know about the Yardbirds to type it into YouTube and find a decent video to watch whereas Gaga's basically unavoidable wherever you go. Also, the radio medium's just one example I've mentioned so far - you're much more likely to hear Flo Rida when you switch on the TV or walk round the supermarket or get in a taxi than anything by the Yardbirds.

You simply can't say "kids are equally exposed to old rock music as pop music because of the internet". It doesn't work like that.

Still, I have to empathise with any young person who gets sat down by his guitar teacher and told to listen to Cream - it's the wrong way to teach music for a start. I was put off reggae for years after a school music module attempted to formalise it for me. You can't say to people "Oh if you wanna learn guitar, you have to listen to Robert Johnson" and I feel this way about Mozart and Shakespeare and any other past master, Beatles included. These are all important, fantastic contributors, historically and methodically. I hope that anyone should come across them and enjoy them. But being told you have to learn from them as opposed to anyone else (or better still, coming up with your own style) makes learning a chore.

The reason this is wrong isn't because you're being given an example of something done by a previous person to learn; it's wrong because there's no context behind it beyond "this is good". Like, if you were talking about specific fingering techniques that can be practiced via a specific Cream solo, that is a good use of past work; you have something that is referenceable so you know what it's supposed to sound like, plus you are learning a skill that is applicable outside of the context of that one solo. Ditto with a bunch of Mozart piano pieces; they're valuable because they teach specific pieces of piano technique, not because zomg Mozart wrote them.

Part of coming up with your own style involves learning how your instrument works; it's fair enough if you decide not to use a specific technique to get a result but at the same time there's not too much point in re-inventing the wheel.

ORIGNINAL DUDE came by this thread. Here was his response:

Boy, I was about as popular as a barbed-wire enema, wasn't I ? Here is the irony for me: many of the people in my age group hate bands I love like Coldplay, Alice In Chains, Gomez, Kings Of Leon, Pink and Foo Fighters. To them it's all weak-kneed derivative rubbish. So, I remain unmoved, as I await a 16 year old girl student whom I am teaching songs by The Plain White T's, Vampire Weekend and Miranda Cosgrove. Then we move on to Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon. If that makes me an old fart...then guilty.

guitar sales for last decade...def up from the early decade:

Total Guitar Sales

Year Units % Change $ Retail Change Avg Price
2010 2,991,260 -9.6% $1,151,290,000 -4.1% $372
2009 3,302,670 0.2% $1,158,592,050 13.3% $350
2008 3,201,220 41.0% $1,022,861,000 13.3% $309
2007 2,341,551 20.5% $903,261,000 -1.9% $386
2006 1,942,625 11.4% $921,057,000 -.13% $529
2005 1,742,498 5.6% $922,280,000 -0.1% $529
2004 1,648,595 23.3% $923,522,000 21.2% $560
2003 1,337,347 15.9% $762,185,000 9.6% $569
2002 1,153,915 5.8% $694,883,000 -2.2% $579
2001 1,090,329 -.33% $710,769,000 -.63% $652

What makes him an old fart isn't liking Gomez, it's thinking that Rebecca Black got attention because anyone thought her song was any damn good.

when i started playing i didn't want to learn old shit either. like i wanted to learn metallica and iron maiden and stuff but my teacher made me learn the bassline to "rescue me" the old motown song, and i secretly liked it

and then later we learned phantom of the opera by maiden and slide it in by whitesnake

did ppl ever like gomez? i had that one in our gun album it was p good i thought

Two years ago, my 15-year-old nephew's favorite artist was Elvis Presley. Today it's L'il Wayne. My friend's 12-year-old daughter, who takes guitar lessons, likes The Beatles, Cheap Trick and Big Star. My 22-year-old nephew used to like nothing but Zeppelin and Bob Marley, now he dresses like and listens to Kanye. Who the fuck knows with kids?

i want to chime in on original dude's point about DIY lowering quality of music.
i have this theory that you get great quality in any medium when the barrier to entry is either really high or really low.

you get the worst quality when you have a barrier that's high enough that people who have gotten over it can just crank
out barf and everyone has to just eat it. (I'm thinking of 80s sitcom Small Wonder here -- is there any doubt that a DIY
version of Small Wonder would be superior in every way? Likewise, if you raise the barriers to entry, you'd have gotten Metropolis.)

Original Dude is Chakki?

But wasn't the same thing - a lack of humanity in music - said many times before? It as said when disco got big, it was said when hip-hop took off, it was said when drum machines became prevalent (though nobody laments the loss of drummers, yes, that was a drummer joke)... Whenever popular music takes a turn away from the organic people are quick to decry it as the death of analog.

Well, it ain't died yet. Why is now any different?

― Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative), Wednesday, 27 April 2011 22:48 (Yesterday) Bookmark

I've been thinking about this a bit, and to be honest I wasn't going to reply because I'm worried about going into hypothetical territory and then being accused of wild fantasy. As a caveat, I'd like to say I truly don't believe in the death of rock or the end of musicianship or anything like that.

Still, if we are talking on a purely theoretical basis, then there are a couple of arguments that could be made for it.

You mention disco, and how people were up in arms saying it was the "death of humanity" in music. Disco's warmth and feeling aside, we still had virtuosos working in this medium from Chic to Arthur Russell. People were worried about synths taking over the place, but you still had formidable guitar and basswork going on.

It wasn't until the '80s that popular music became truly synthesised, but granted you still had fantastic rock musicians and traditional song structures being applied to even the synthiest of pop songs. Not until the late '80s / early '90s did dance music really start appearing in the charts and on the radio, at least in the UK. Even hip-hop until very recently has always retained some semblance of the organic, be it through sampling or live instrumentation.

But we're now at a point in history when people born in 1994 are legally able to have children. This generation of young parents has grown up with dance music and hip-hop and non-rock music in general being played around them - possibly more non-rock than rock depending on their backgrounds. It's possible that their own kids will be brought up without rock music in their day-to-day lives, that rock music to them will seem like a quaint antiquity; something people listened to in the olden days etc...

I ended up in a short discussion after reading this article where it was mentioned that US mainstream audiences never fully embraced dance music like the UK did, until now. The proliferation of Ibiza/euro-style trance structures and sounds currently dominating US pop and mainstream r'n'b indicates that this iron wall is coming down. If it works, this could be a last bastion for traditional rock music.

I'm also struggling to come up with a mainstream answer for rock right now. The beat-group set up has been a staple in pop/rock since its inception, and there have always been brilliant players associated with almost any aspect of it - from Jimmy Page to Nile Rodgers to Johnny Marr to Graham Coxon to Jack White. And now I'm struggling to think - who are today's true guitar heroes? Since the end of emo and new rock revolution, it feels like the first time where there doesn't seem to be a major rock scene going on. Sure, we've got Vampire Weekend, Mumford & Sons (who I'm not satisfied are leading any sort of youth movement) and plenty of underground, punk and metal bands - but who is the major rock inspiration for 2011?

Again, this is all widely speculative, I know, and there's no doubt in my mind that rock isn't dying out at all.

inception = conception. duh, films.

i think that part of the difficulty in discussing this stems from the fact that it's too easy treat "rock music" as a cultural commodity, an available flavor in the pop marketplace. i mean, it IS that, along with rap and dance music and teenpop and whatever else, but it's also a human activity. rock music is what happens when people get together in small groups with certain machines and interact in a specific way. in this sense it's like funk, country, disco, jazz, blues, folk and so on, tied back to a long history of human musical endeavor. rock music as a thing in the public sphere begins not with a song on the radio or a recording for sale, but with a warehouse party, a basement show, a non-paying monday night club gig played to 12 people. it grows out from there, drawing people who want not only to experience "music in public places," but the spectacle associated with this kind of human musical interaction.

in this it's very similar to rap music and similar in a distant way even to DJ gigs, but it's also different. i suspect that one of the reasons it persists pasts its point of seeming redundancy is that many of the competing musical forms that have come along in the last 20 or 30 years don't offer the same kind of instrument-aided-human-interaction-in-real-time experience. entirely electronic music long ago abandoned the four-people-with-four-synthesizers format that briefly flourished in the 80s. hip-hop shares much in common with rock, but offers a very different vibe and dynamic and still remains culturally distinct. in traditional hip-hop, the only (non-vocal) instrument you can really slay on = turntables. hip-hop usually places primary emphasis on the MC and the producer, placing live musical performance in a subordinate role.

rock music is like a sport, there's an element of human instrumental athleticism involved, even in its most deliberately crude forms. that's been a draw for as long as people have been listening to music. the lure of learning a physical instrument and then showing people what you can do with it LIVE is still strong, especially for kids.

i guess my point is that this allows rock music to flourish as youth culture, as a social activity (not a genre) shared by kids, even as the music fades from the radio, loses its pop market share. in time, of course, dog latin will be right: all genres die, change, are consumed or rendered quaint. rock isn't magic and can't resist time indefinitely. but it persists for the moment because there's no other alternative. kids don't have any other way to get together in small, sweaty, smelly spaces and hone their ability to collectively make a hellish, joyful, hormone-fueled dance racket for their friends.

placing live musical performance in a subordinate role.

should read: "placing live instrumental performance in a subordinate role." duh. and yeah, i'm blithely overlooking go-go, the roots, countless counter-examples...

kids don't have any other way to get together in small, sweaty, smelly spaces and hone their ability to collectively make a hellish, joyful, hormone-fueled dance racket for their friends.

There's always homegrown porn.

Ned no

I had trouble reading the post in general as I can't get past these "kids these days" rants lately without rolling my eyes.

like was there ever a period where someone wasn't saying that? Even Plato's time ffs

Yeah, that was my point exactly. Just read my posts then. :)

xp Or homegrown wrestling, unless you think that that's really a genre of porn.

xpost I read most of yours, it was the other dude's that I had trouble stomaching.

xpost hip-hop involves plenty of "organic" group youth activity -- cypher/battle/freestyle culture is the rough analogue to basement shows and it is romanticized in countless raps. I'm not just talking about "undie" dudes but ordinary kids who rhyme with each other on the bus or on the corner or in organized cyphers at cafes or wherever.

personally I'll be glad if no more Kenny Wayne Sheperds enter the world

re: homegrown wrestling, weren't all these pros warning against backyard wrestling as too dangerous for kids (even ones that came from backyard rasslin)?

it's a weird problem. how you gonna go pro if you don't diy piledriver for a while? not everyone can afford rasslin school.

re: hurting

yeah, agree totally. i'm not putting hip-hop down as a music or a culture, just saying that rock's emphasis on small-group instrumental musicianship & composition makes it distinct - in some way, to some degree. of course hip-hop moves out through basement shows, parties, whatever, but the onstage performance dynamic is subtly different.

basically, what i'm saying is that as long as young people are learning to play physical instruments, they'll want to play together in small groups, to write their own songs, and to play out. others will want to see this, to be present in the moment that the instruments smash into one another as guided by youthful exuberance. this is a part of human society that has persisted and will likely persist for quite some time, and it will necessarily find some kind of expression in the pop marketplace.

when we fantasize or theorize about the "death of rock," we are, i think, informed in some way by the death of jazz, we're attempting to map the death of one genre onto another. we do this because jazz DID die, and it seems to have died at the hands of rock. rock and rock-derived-pop replaced the jazz-derived dance music of an era because rock appealed more strongly to youth - to white youth one might say. it allowed kids to get together with their friends and to make New New Youth Music by their own rules, with their own instruments, their own hands. this very quickly pushed the jazz tradition to the cultural margins. when kids no longer wanted to get together with other kids and speak through that language, it died, became the property of museums, conservatories and preservation societies. it folded itself into the outgrowths of funk and rock, hid away in the cloisters of serious art and academia.

this hasn't happened with rock in part, i suppose, because no viable instrumental replacement language has emerged. so kids still play it, still go out to hear it played in clubs, and will continue to do so until an instrumental replacement language arrives.

Define "die" here, because last time I checked jazz was still alive (in fact, a jazz musician was just won a Grammy for Best New Artist)

Just because something isn't in the popular spotlight doesn't mean it's "dead", otherwise you could argue that the only forms of music alive in the US at the moment are rock, pop, R&B, hip-hop and country, and anyone making that argument should rightfully be laughed at as a blinkered ignoramus.

is Jazz somehow lessened for the kids when it is sanctioned by educators?
i'd argue dondero high's cover of "fox on the run" brought the rock in a way Sweet couldn't.

fair enough. i'm defining "alive" here in a very fuzzy sort of way, clearly. i would similarly and comfortably say that poetry is dead (as a literary form), though people continue to write poetry and give each other awards for it and publish it in the new yorker where no one reads it. hell, i write and read poetry. but relative to, say, cinema and pop music, it seems a moribund art form.

i say that jazz is dead because it is no longer culturally vital, no longer redefining itself, exchanging fevered DNA with other musics, exercising a strong pull on creatively engaged youth. i could go on splitting imaginary hairs forever in some lame attempt to "prove" this dubious point, but this poor thread hardly seems the place. instead i'm just gonna hang my hat on the assertion that, as a culturally relevant pop form, jazz has withered significantly in the last 50 years - in large part because kids no longer wanna get together and play it or dance to it.

i do get the irony though...

i say that jazz is dead because it is no longer culturally vital, no longer redefining itself, exchanging fevered DNA with other musics, exercising a strong pull on creatively engaged youth.

As someone who has spent a good amount of time in the area of Boston between Berklee School of Music, New England Conservatory and Boston Conservatory, I can't help but feel that this assertion is self-selecting bullshit.

I fully accept an argument that jazz is no longer mainstream. It certainly isn't dead, and it certainly isn't true that there aren't any young people interested in it; same goes for classical/baroque/opera/folk music/(insert whatever genre isn't dominating American Top 40 here).

Nothing is dead if it's alive.
Alive and thrive are not mutually inclusive.

Also, things that were once considered dead never died and wound up coming back. Vinyl, for example, which was a lot more dead than almost any musical form around.

http://makeshiftrecords.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/vinyl_kills_mp3_industy.jpg

Latin is a dead language, but it is still taught in Universities and still relevant in law.

Polio is dead except we have the virus still in test tubes at the CDC.

My parents are dead. They ain't coming back much as I would like to consult one or both of them every damn day. But nothing else ever really died, not really.

well, maybe that's a kind of rebuttal to the ORIGINAL DUDE -- that cultivating an atmosphere of institutional mentorship and tutelage actually saps the genre of some vital essence, and hence DIY isn't the problem but the solution.

If you never go to a church that does choral music, you are never going to know about the ever growing sacred choral music scene; it wouldn't make any sense to opine that sacred choral music is dead or that "kids" don't care about it just because you don't see it dominating the pop charts, largely because that's not how that type of music functions and marking something out as a failure in a game it never played to begin with just seems dumb.

xp: I cannot OTM NYCNative enough times, really (although I do wonder how he's defining "thrive"; it seems like everyone is playing a zero-sum game of musical dominance which doesn't actually reflect how music communities actually work).

actually I think people actually take my posts more seriously the more I actually use the word "actually"

When I was in (a performing arts) high school my friends and I were very much excited about jazz and checking out jazz records and playing jazz. It didn't feel dead at all - we fantasized about forging new directions in the music. When you go hear a lot of the young contemporary guys that play at NYC clubs you don't get the sense that most of them are rehashing or paying homage or pantomiming some dead play at all, in fact I'd say the last 10 years have really seen a strong move away from the "young lion" kind of reverent blowing and toward jazz that weaves in the sensibilities of rock and hip-hop and contemporary classical/post-classical and post-rock and anything else you can think of. And what I really like about jazz right now, too, is that it's no longer about these corny, forced "fusions" of different musical styles (Buckshot Lefonque, etc.) but instead the elements get blended much more subtly and seamlessly. Digression I guess, but yeah I don't find jazz to be dead, it's just a niche thing.

i agree with most of that (except the part where my argument is "self-selecting bullshit"). everything that anyone is doing anywhere is "alive" in some sense, anything that moves between people is culturally valid. so jass must be, right?

but what major permutations has jazz undergone since the fusion & freedom splits in the 60s and 70s, and have they really been vital to the musical culture at large? even to jazz itself? there's no real answer to those last two questions - i'd say no, you'd probably say yes. neither and both of us right.

it seems to me that the late 70s and early 80s were the last era in which american culture at large was still engaged with jazz, and vice-versa. an active (living, recombining, self-challenging and changing) jazz culture was then tied into many other active american cultural streams. thinking here of no wave, miles' last hurrah, ongoing, pop-relevant exchanges between jazz, prog, classical, funk, punk, etc. i'd say that since then, jazz has retreated into itself, cutting itself off from the dynamic engine of contemporary pop culture. even its exchanges with hip-hop have since felt trivial, adding "jazzy" period coloring to rap music without transforming it, without allowing either music to becoming something new.

but that's just me & mine. i'd likewise argue that symphonic composition is dead (except in its curiously healthy afterlife soundtracking films), and i'm sure there are many who'd take me to task on that point.

what i mean is that sure, the people who are still engaged with jazz (not a small number) are interested, naturally, in engaging with other forms, other artists, other aspects of culture. this at least opens the door to transformation, rebirth, whatever. hurting OTM in that no art form ever really dies. but they may slow down, lose focus, become marginal - from time to time.

for the moment, not many other culturally dominant (and yeah, i recognize the vast continuum from moribund to vibrant to dominant) arts traditions are pulling direct inspiration from what's currently going on in jazz. not in the way that painting, rock, film and even politics were taking inspiration from jazz in the middle of the 20th century. or if they are, it's on the fringes. nothing wrong with that, and the dominant isn't the only thing that matters.

is mime a living or a dead art in america? there are still mimes. i'm sure there are committed, creative, forward-thinking mimes who push the medium to new syntheses and furiously engage with the living culture around them. but in a very general sense, mime is still (for the moment) pretty much dead.

I'm still waiting for a coltrane of prop comedy.

but what major permutations has jazz undergone since the fusion & freedom splits in the 60s and 70s, and have they really been vital to the musical culture at large?

This is the least important question a person could ask about a musical genre.

It is basically looking at music as a business person, statistician or a historian, and not as a musician or an enthusiast.

exactly. speaking as a musician or an enthusiast, everything you're enthusiastic about is, by definition, vital and alive and relevant and all good things etc. so there's no point, from that perspective, in even asking these questions.

personally, i'm approaching this more from an armchair philosopher/sociologist's viewpoint. i.e., what's going on in the culture at large, and what might it mean?

i say that jazz is dead because it is no longer culturally vital, no longer redefining itself, exchanging fevered DNA with other musics, exercising a strong pull on creatively engaged youth.

There is literally not one true statement in this entire sentence. You might just as well have typed "anything I can't see from my couch doesn't exist."

what's going on in the culture at large, and what might it mean?

Nothing "means" anything, except to the people who create it and/or those who witness that creation (whether in person or listening to a record or whatever). There is no "culture at large." There are a zillion cultures all existing simultaneously, overlapping and crossbreeding. I am a culture unto myself. So are you. If/when we interact creatively, that's a new culture. If one of us interacts creatively with a third person, that's a new culture.

I am a culture unto myself. So are you. If/when we interact creatively, that's a new culture. If one of us interacts creatively with a third person, that's a new culture.

wait, what?

Since the near-monoculture of the 1950s has been atomized, is there any point in asking about the impact of ANY art form on the culture at large? I seriously doubt there will ever be a replication of the impact jazz had on American culture, by any art form, ever again.

Nothing "means" anything, except to the people who create it and/or those who witness that creation (whether in person or listening to a record or whatever). There is no "culture at large." There are a zillion cultures all existing simultaneously, overlapping and crossbreeding. I am a culture unto myself.

eesh, i'd agree with all of that. with the small caveat that i DO believe in a "culture at large," or rather in the existence of larger and smaller movements within culture(s). i mean, to some extent i might go along with the idea that there is no superculture but intermixed individual cultures, but not in a macro-level discussion like this.

personally, i think it's fairly easy, in a very rough way, to perceive the waxing and waning of large cultural/artistic movements within american society as a whole, at least within its more influential niches. there was a point in the middle of the 20th century, for instance, when abstract expressionism was a dominant mode not just in painting, but in art in general, and even in american intellectual life. that's no longer true. i might not say that abstract expressionism is "dead" (unless i wanted to make a point), but its era of conceptual dominance seems to have wound to a close. in a similar fashion, youth crew hardcore came and went, though of course it lives on in zombie form.

for most of the 20th century, jazz was a hugely influential part of american cultural life, arguably its most important hinge. it mixed and remixed with other musics, with fine art, with literature, with politics and so on. same might be said of rock and of hip-hop, in various ways at various moments. it seems to me that jazz is no longer "hugely influential" in this sense and that rock and hip-hop, for whatever reason, still are (though i'd agree that rock has lost quite a bit of its late 20th century social centrality). i take it that not everyone agrees...

as others have pointed out, nothing is ever completely "culturally dead," and there are certainly people out there still playing jazz and mixing it up with the rest of their culture. i'd never say otherwise. but i would argue that the stakes have changed dramatically and, in many ways, that the million million eyes of mass/pop culture have, for the most part, moved on. if there are signs of jazz's continued hold on america's cultural mainstage, i'd love to see them - or, really, to see more of them. cuz traces are scarce. and i don't think that this is entirely a product of my couch-induced myopia.

I seriously doubt there will ever be a replication of the impact jazz had on American culture, by any art form, ever again.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

one could seriously and, i think, convincingly argue that rock and hip-hop have each had a comparable impact, not to say that these things are equivalent

hi sarahel!

one could seriously and, i think, convincingly argue that rock and hip-hop have each had a comparable impact, not to say that these things are equivalent

Yes, I thought about that, but it seems that jazz had a unique position in American history, because of the time it flourished, the paths it flowed and the way it seemingly broke down barriers. I'm no expert on the subject, doubtless there are wonderful books written on the topic. For the last 20 years it's gotten easier and easier to escape popular culture so at this point it's really ones friends and family that are the biggest influence on what young people are culturally engaging in. If your folks like rock, you're much more likely to as well (does that mean teen rebellion's dead? I'll let you know in 5 years).

I agree with the critique that many of us are speaking about our own views from the couch - for example, where I live there's not much of a public religious vibe, so in places where that's central to the local culture, it's going to be more visible than from my couch.

I'll stop now as my couch isn't facing the right way.

some random thoughts:

original dude seems to be missing the point. the blues is big-time DIY.
was lightnin hopkins "ill equipped to write and play music based on sound fundamentals"?
was john lee hooker "guilty of laziness or of ignoring that which came before him"?

also: the blues, rock, punk, country - these are not music fundamentals.
chords and scales and such are music fundamentals.
if you want to sound like Cream or the Stones, then there are certain genre conventions and stylistic approaches that could be considered fundamental.
if you want to sound like cryptopsy or mogwai or teenpop mallpunk hitmachine or some crazy shit that no-one has ever heard before, why learn the 12 bar blues?

also: i am excited about hearing the music that kids who are growing up with more recent launchpads will make. what's it going to sound like?

also: the blues, rock, punk, country - these are not music fundamentals.
chords and scales and such are music fundamentals.

lol THANK YOU OTM

For the last 20 years it's gotten easier and easier to escape popular culture so at this point it's really ones friends and family that are the biggest influence on what young people are culturally engaging in.

That's kinda the way it's always been though!

just attempted reading the o/p, stopped here: I'm not sure what anyone sees in "Friday"

― goole, Wednesday, April 27, 2011 6:55 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm chris tucker kills this