Trollheart

Well, the way I look at it is that you can do two things: you can listen to music for pleasure or you can analyse the crap out of it (isn't there a reason why the word analyse begins with "anal"?) Personally, I prefer the former.

If someone hates my music taste, fine, **** them. I know what I like, to quote Mr. Gabriel, and that's what I listen to. I'm quite aware that not everyone will like what I do, but that doesn't invalidate my musical choice. If we all listened to the same thing there would be no need for or point in a place like Music Banter. I do take some recommendations here, and generally speaking I pay more attention to the words that recommend than the music --- which is possibly a bit silly, as I could determine, probably, with one press of a "play" key in a few minutes what it might take me ten or twenty to read, but that's how I prefer to do it. However, someone slagging off the music I like might occasionally get a response, but generally I would just think they were entitled to their opinion and leave it at that.

I'm not into deep analysis of music. My reviews are, or try to be, more than just "ooh what a guitar solo" or "this guy can really play the keys", but I don't delve heavily into the raison d'etre of a band or what their music is symbolic of. I prefer to look at it on a much simpler level. As I think I've stated before, where someone will sneer at band B for being a carbon copy of band A, as long as I like band A and band B sound as good, I really don't care. Most of the time. In fact, once I find a band I like it's gratifying to find another who sound like them: double the pleasure for me. Parodies, or bad copycats, however, are another matter altogether.

I would be, in any case, academically lost in some of the discussions/theories even sometimes treatises put up in various journals here, and I can recognise my limitations. That stuff is way over my head, and all I want to do is slap on my headphones and listen to the music I like, and then tell you why I like it. Or not, as the case may be.

As one of the (many) sections in my journal has it, "keep it simple".

And now, I go back to whatever it is I do...

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TheBig3

I love this comment. I loved it so much I threw it in here and left if for a week. I sat on it. Its the sort of populist rage that runs rampant on any musical community. "Remember when this band was good? Then the ****ing radio played them." The radio, as you're aware, is Adolf Hitler.

But Gotye is not Kings of Leon. I'm not defending the man in any capacity, it should just be noted that sane people will understand that these are not similar artists. No judgement - just different.

So at first measure this seems like an old, familiar argument. When something gets popular it becomes ****. Why? Well this is a rant for another time, but it should be known for the purposes of reading this that when you make a statement like that it says more about you than it doesn't about the band/artists/act you're attacking.

But back to the point. The sentiment, is irrational from the jump. Historically, Kings of Leon blew up when they appeared in a car commercial. Was Sex on Fire bigger? Of course it was. But what you should really be concerned with here is that Sex on Fire is the best song on a ****ing terrible album. Why does that matter? Because the radio's playing cover-up man for what the real symptoms are.

What we're to suppose from a statement like this is that the radio is the downfall of the artist here, which is really the chicken before the egg. Whether the artist gets played on the radio or not shouldn't determine our opinion of the artist, what should determine our opinion of the artist is whether or not their music sucks. It so happens that occasionally a downgrade is music is accompanied by radio play. I'd like to cite REM.

But the grave sin of the comment quoted above is not a misappropriation of blame, but of a mis-association and blame. Gotye is as bad as Kings of Leon? Where am I? Who's the President?

So Gotye got a hit. Thats true. Kings of Leon got a hit. Also true. But here's the Pepsi test.



Gotye



King of Leon

My apologies. That last one sounded like what i imagine riding in a pickup truck in Missouri to feel like. What these dickheads don't get is looking like the Avett Brothers but sounding like Creed doesn't cancel each other out. Dear Kings of Leon, go **** yourselves.

But if you can block that out and get back to the previously posted Gotye video. Is it a fair comparison?

No. So why the hell did I write a blog post about this? Fair point, sir or madam. Fair point. What I was trying to do (and didn't want to soil a thread with) was point out here how a blind rage toward commercialism mutes and blunts your critical mind. I hate to sound like a Monk of MB but if you can't steel your tastes to remain in-line with your principles, you're going to be rootless and float unmoored through an "it all sounds the same" depression.

What I can't stress enough is that looking into the microcosm and declaring a pandemic is going to achieve nothing but personal ennui when it comes to music. I hope I've expressed myself well enough. For the good of our children.

Happy Meditating.

starrynight

I'd agree with a lot of that. It's good to look at the music simply as music. Talking in general about music I don't mind going beyond that, but if it's about a specific piece it's a bit presumptuous to read lots of things into it when we didn't even write it ourselves. I suppose we all to some degree though try to identify with music we like, normally on some emotional rather than intellectual level. Some take this a step further though and worship everything by an artist which I can find annoying trait.

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TheBig3

Its February 2012 and Whitney Houston has died. It's a popular fad for the contrarian set to be vocal about their disinterest or happiness. I assume its mostly affected; I say that, I'm accused of being an ******* and met with graphs and chart about how its perfectly reasonable to feel that way.

The internet takes another chunk of civilities face to an early grave.

If you didn't see it on MB (and I didn't check to see if it happened) you probably saw it somewhere else or around the office place. its not unreasonable, Newton's Law of Motion says "o every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction." This is no different.

But if there was something to be gained from a senseless and early death, or at least something for us to chew on at the musical trough its at least these two things: The existence of the genre "Adult Contemporary", and American Society's need to dig up the past to show homage when its, at best, niceties in the wake of a passing, and at worst, the Grammys trying to make a buck.

But first things first. Adult contemporary. Ostensibly there to fill the dead silence of department stores and to drown out the screams of dental patients to the waiting and terrified patients in the lobby. If this were Luther Vandross I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But only the aforementioned contrarian set would posit that Houston didn't have talent. The woman was called "the perfect instrument" and while she isn't my cup of tea, and she's inspired to many rehashed, half-assed imitators on the Idol shows, theres no denying she could have done nearly anything with those vocal chords.

When writing on a music form on the internet, it most likely takes a Jesuits discipline to remember there needs to be a balance to what rattle through out headphones to make the world go 'round. So calling a spade a spade, Houston's work was certainly craft, and whether or not there was passion is for you to decide. It was certainly conditioned ("ok this track needs to be passionate") but it isn't disqualifying. And if anything it harkens back to a time when music was created more like films than the garage-born DIY stuff we see today. Houston's music was "American Graffiti" while many of what would follow her reign at the top sends to be the sonic equivelent of a soap box racer. Tin Pan Alley was written by Writers, played by Performers, and sang by Singers. Why is this different than Houston and why do we consider it less?

If there is any performance that settled the argument it was her Super Bowl performance of the Star-Spangled Banner. A song crafted with such a ridiculous arrangement (vocally) one might be on to something to refer to it as the vocal equivelent of the Rach 3 (Rachmaninov Piano Concerto 3).



No jingoism intended. The song happens to be very difficult to sing correctly, and as an American, we've been punished by countless no-talent hacks botching the god damn thing so badly they ought to be tried for treason. But I digress.

Its a curious thing to say, 50 years on, that what we appreciate in the here and now (the 30's) is more valued than what we've seen since the Studio's of the 70's mastered shlock. Theres some digging done on this issue that requires more time and interest than some mad jackle on a throw away blog of rambles and grumbles.

and further more, is it this too-little too-late mentality that requires that we go to the grave after ever artist dies and dig up some deep respect we have for them? As one friend posted on his Facebook "Who intentionally listened to Whitney Houston in the past 12 months?" if we're being honest with ourselves, it was probably less than 1% of the American populous.

So why the Grammy play-up? Is it just the human condition of wanting what we've lost? Is it a postmortem concession for an industry that abandons as quickly as it propels? Houston's is a genre that no longer carries water. While it may have been the Resurrection of Tin Pan Alley (or 2.0 as it were), it didn't survive the 80's. It had something of a revival in the late 1990's with a coffee house make-over. But by then the game had changed, and the nation had clearly changed. Houston was good, but in the newest incarnation she wouldn't be taken seriously.

Talent had gone, surplus to requirement. Good players were not needed to play boring chords on an acoustic guitar. Was what we're seeing sweep across the landscape a human lament for a genre that, having left its own for dead, had played by the rules so well, did everything right, and were still abandoned by a disinterested public?

The question that should remain is not about Whitney Houston but about music in general. Is there a purpose in sticking within the western scales and digestible time signatures? Has music moved well beyond craft in an age where I can get 12,000 views singing off-key versions of Foreigner songs into my webcam.

If Whitney is to be mourned, then let her be the figure-head of craft. Let her not represent a genre lost to time and filled to the gills by throw-away, over produced garbage. Instead let her be a symbol for everyone who worked their figures to the bone to be a session musician. Is there no room for them any longer?

Is there No Country for Old Men who play the saxophone any more?

Janszoon

Great write-up! I'm not quite sure I get the Tin Pan Alley/Whitney Houston comparison but I enjoyed your writing.

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25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

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TheBig3

Well what I meant to draw a comparison to was the connection between the divided up labor of creating a song. Its not, for example, Springsteen, who's sitting in his Chambers penning up his emotional manifestos.

I probably should write up something about whether or not divided labor, in this regard, weakens the product or makes it more universally appealing. Something to think about anyway.

Trollheart

Not wanting to quote your entire piece (extremely well written, by the way!) on Kings of Leon and the "played it on the radio and ruined it" phenomenon, but I would like to say that yes, I agree that people often do consider a song/artiste ruined when they play them on the radio, but why? After all, radio is, or was, the main medium through which artistes get exposure to the public. I know I'm coming from a much earlier time here, but I got into artistes like Chris de Burgh, Bob Seger, Dan Fogelberg and even Jeff Wayne via radio. It was the place to hear new music. So really, in some ways, back then, NOT hearing a band on the radio was their ruination, or could be: if you didn't hear them you may not know of them and consequently --- in an era before MTV never mind YouTube and itunes --- you had less chance of ever hearing them.

If the complaint had been, though, that a band/song/artiste was ruined through TOO MUCH radio airplay, I might agree, and yet as you say that's really a personal thing, where someone hears so much of song A by Artiste B that they won't buy or listen to album C. Case in point, my good friend James Blunt. Everyone (and I mean everyone) hated "You're beautiful" --- including me --- but was that because the song was crap? Well, yes, but really people didn't think the song was that bad, per se, but playing it every ten minutes or so on the radio drove people to murder their families. Almost.

As a result of this, many many people decided they hated James Blunt, and yet I listened to his "Back to Bedlam" album and was amazed by how good it is, mostly, with some excellent tracks. Now, "You're beautiful" remains an annoying, simpering, annoying, inane, annoying, nonsensical, annoying song, but it should not define either the rest of the album or the possibility that someone will never listen to his music.

What about Britney? At the same time as they were forcefeeding us "You're beautiful", the same could be said about "Toxic": it was never OFF the radio! And yet, no-one wrote in asking, nay demanding that it be taken off the airplay list, as they did about Blunt's song. Is this because Britney conjures up images of sex and fantasy? Is it because she was a more established artiste at the time than James? Is it, (is it?) because she's a girl? The two songs were equally annoying, equally earworms and equally bombarded across the airwaves like a salvo on Homs (sorry, poor taste I know, but you have to stay current, don't you?) and yet it's Blunt whose record sales (miniscuely) suffered and who became the poster boy for hatred of the radio.

So what does all this prove? Who knows, but I do know that if you let one bad experience colour your perception of an artiste you may be doing yourself, and them, a disservice, and I also know that it's not the artiste's fault that their record is played so often on the radio: what? Do you think they control the playlist? If so, then surely every major or upcoming artist would be ensuring their songs received maximum airplay every time?

In the end, radio is not to blame. You are, if you're so shallow that you end up hating an artiste due to oversaturation on the radio (a single/track, fine, an artiste deserves more of your attention and patience), and let me let you into a little secret if you keep hearing a song too much on the radio. One's called the tuning knob, and the other the off switch.

Try them some time. You'd be amazed how well they work.

And now, I go back to whatever it is I do...

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TheBig3

Maurice Chevalier & Leonard Joy Orchestra - Louise 1929 - YouTube

i'd be remiss if you weren't aware something like this existed.

"can it be true? Someone like you could love me - lousie!

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TheBig3

What counts for diversity these days?

Anytime I see someone posting about bands on the edge, or something new and invigorating, it really sounds like its not too far removed from the mainstream music that (usually) they detest. If we need anything on MB (and in life), its musical Monks. We need people who can push themselves to listen to things way outside of their spectrum. And I don't just mean moving it toward more artsy-noise, indecipherable to the masses, but people who listen to things that play against type.

Take the video in my last post for example. How many people would have that on their iPod next to some Wu Tang clan and Oscar Peterson? Probably not many and I think its what makes people's taste in music boring and terrible to talk to them about.

I wonder then, how is it that people find new music? Since I brought up the video above, I'll tell you that I found it digging through a Facebook group about what Boston used to be like. In one photo of a particularly unseemly woman who used to be an elected member of City Counsel, someone had posted that video (given that its her name) and made some humorous comment about it. My question now is, do other people not trip over music like this, or what they do, do they just ignore it?

I'd love to hear back from people on this one but I'm pretty sure I have a better chance of riding a dolphin to work tomorrow, so lets just go with me speculating. Maybe people don't think of it as music, or if they do, maybe its music of a by-gone era, a relic, and it has no worth to them. Like a used up glowstick found on a street after the parade, this once had a purpose, but we've moved beyond.

As I said, I'd love to hear from people how they find new music (if its interesting, if you post boring **** I will haze you), and hopefully what you consider "range" in your music.

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Engine

I would. I don't own any Maurice Chevalier but I do have some Bix and Tram on my MP3 player along with the Wu. I don't have a whole lot of symphonic vocal music from back then, mostly instrumental, but I do like it on occasion (see video below). I "discovered" the stuff from back when I relentlessly searched for music in record stores. Once I got into Jazz, I eventually wanted more and more so I had to keep working my way back in time. This is when I discovered Delta Blues from that time too (although I hate most electric blues) and I've always got Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson rotating.
Also, I used to work at a cafe bakery where we had a stereo and so I was often in the kitchen alone at 5am looking for something to listen to - and when I got bored of everything that people had brought in, I started searching radio stations and found an AM station that played all the hits from the 1920s -1940s. Most of the other kitchen staff eventually came around to liking that station too.



RE finding new music: This may bore you but...
Perusing youtube and music blogs has become the equivalent of my relentless record store searches of the olden days. I also often resort to browsing all of my own old CDs and records. I'll sometimes spend 20 or 30 minutes searching through it for something that I haven't listened to in 10 or 15 or even 20 years, and when I find something, it's sorta like finding new music.

One final note on by-gone relics, I think that the Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas video game soundtracks (the radio stations in the games) exposed kids to music from the 1930s - 50s that they hadn't heard or thought about before.. so that's pretty cool.

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I was only passing through.