What the h... is wrong with music today?

[Black Cloud]

I did write listening to while and not listening to instead of. Not sure what is presupposed by the difference being overlooked and used as a set up to a "walking and chewing gum" comment. Talk about a Golden Oldie!

I think he just wanted to show off, as do I.

I can write, listen to music, chew gum, and clean my oven at the same time.

Top that!

 

[Worm]

Just want to let you know that there are a few others who have very similar thoughts to you and try to figure things out doing very similar things. I am telling you this, because one American whom I had a lengthier conversation with at the hotel in Oslo before I went to the Morrissey concert said "There have to be more like us out there." I was suprised that he said this, because I met quite a few in hostels of the international youth hostel association over the years, not so much the independent hostels that are all for partying. I met some academics there whom I'd never have expected to even go to a hostel still... who had studied at the London School of Economics and such likes. I also had a lengthier conversation about what you wrote with people at Jesus College when I was in Cambridge for the Morrissey concert, even though I have come to wonder if the real reason I was there were not rather those conversations.

Thank you, Silke, it is very heartening to read this. I don't care if anyone agrees with my particular line of reasoning or not, it's just nice to know that a few others believe we took a wrong turn somewhere. It will be interesting to see if the passing away of the old culture means we're going to see the rise of a newer and better one. I really don't know.

EDIT: Qvist's post (No. 145) is so dead-on that I think it should be the final word in this thread. Except, if I replied to say that, it wouldn't be.

 

[Qvist]

I just remembered something which sort of represents the attitude some of us are looking for here. It's a legend Coil used to put on their record labels, and it reads like this:

"When you listen to Coil, do you think about music?"

Answer: No, I don't. But for the same reasons, it makes me think about music after I've listened to them. And that's what good music should do for you.

cheers

 

[fuckfrankie]

"f*** Frankie", who was there on page one, and did not barge in and interrupt the discussion, made a remark about entertainment that was perfectly valid. He then had his words rephrased to be some nonsense about "artists", and it all went downhill from there.

thanks

my main problem with this thread (which actually is fairly interesting in a sick way) is that it's so non-productive. in 8 pages there has been relatively little discussion of actual music.

originally i had the impression that Qvist was seeking recommendations and looking for current good music. i named off a few bands i think are great, only to be snidely poo-poohed.

then all the talk of bygone eras, quotes from Sartre and dismissing bands because they put out demos on MP3 instead of a cassette tape...

i never said anything close to "Just shut up and let yourself be mindlessly entertained, like I do." though i did point out that you might enjoy music more if you didn't expect everything to be the next musical gift from the gods

and Qvist, surprisingly, we are in total agreement on Coil. a perfect example of cerebral but entertaining music. anyways, did you check out Foals yet? or are you too busy searching wikipedia for Aristotle quotes?

 

[Qvist]

Yeah I have. They're not bad. It was a good recommendation.

But I'm a little concerned to hear you find Coil entertaining. Personally I find them disturbing, which is what I've always assumed they try to be.


cheers

 

[Anaesthesine]

my main problem with this thread (which actually is fairly interesting in a sick way) is that it's so non-productive. in 8 pages there has been relatively little discussion of actual music.

Non-productive? No music? This thread has been all about music: music production, music theory, musical culture, music history, the way music makes you feel. You may mean there are not that many actual bands mentioned. That is a very different thing.

Also, what exactly is so sick about this discussion? I think that's rather snarky (not to mention snide) of you.

then all the talk of bygone eras, quotes from Sartre and dismissing bands because they put out demos on MP3 instead of a cassette tape...

What's wrong with bygone eras? What's wrong with Sartre? I must have missed the MP3 demo discussion - that's silly.

i never said anything close to "Just shut up and let yourself be mindlessly entertained, like I do." though i did point out that you might enjoy music more if you didn't expect everything to be the next musical gift from the gods

You know, this thread would be three posts long if everyone just shut up and was mindlessly entertained. Where's the fun in that?

But I'm a little concerned to hear you find Coil entertaining. Personally I find them disturbing, which is what I've always assumed they try to be.

I find disturbing music to be the most entertaining.

 

[Worm]

Too bad, I was hoping Qvist's post (No. 145) would have wrapped it up with a bow.

I noticed something interesting at the foot of the page. Thanks to the Internet and David's wonderful site, we can jump in a little time machine.

"What is wrong with popular music today?" is a thread originally posted by Unrulygirl on March 9, 2001. The thread survives in the archives.

Unrulygirl's critical method is less rigorous than Qvist's but still pretty accurate: "Dave mathews band and MOBY.. They should all be shot! arrrgh! just had to vent a little ;-p". Just so, Unrulygirl.

What follows is a discussion about current pop music. Some attack, some defend, just like in this thread. Guess what, naysayers? There's nothing wrong with pop music today!

Moby is what's right with music in March, 2001. So are Coldplay, Travis, Eminem, and Dido.

Here is a list of indie bands, namechecked in the thread, offering proof that rock and roll is doing just fine, thanks very much:

Boards of Canada, Death Cab For Cutie, Montreal, Broadcast, Doves, Autechre, Mojave 3, Joan of Arc, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Tarflyer 59, Elf Power, Apples In Stereo, Low, Sunny Day Real Estate, Return of the Frog Queen, Mercury Rev, The Essex Green, Helio Sequence, Starsailor, Alfie, LowGold, Bravecaptain, and Kings of Convenience.

Of course, it's just one thread. Hardly representative. Interesting to see the same sort of discussion taking place then, though.

Here's suzanne, a writer from Austin, Texas:

I can speak about this because for the last few years, I've involved myself with the music festival at south by southwest, marketed as the place to hear up and coming artists and find out the latest trends.

You wonder why i work with this bunch despite the fact that i admit that it is a bloated and exploitative event, riding the backs of starving artists and giving them false hope. The place is a great case study and I've learned lots from it's many weaker points.

this is part of my point. You listen to Low or Mercury Rev and you weren't shocked by them. You may have been, "hey, this is good music" but I'll bet you ANYTHING you didn't run home and tell your friends about this band that has changed your life. I'll bet you didn't say, "oh my god, I've never heard anything like this in my entire life!"

Instead, they were simply a good version of what is already being done, that appealed to a very select audience. To me, the very fact alone that you can take Mercury Rev and make it appeal to the same crowd that shows up for Sonic Youth and have it liked by nobody else says that haven't done anything that spectacular.​

Emphasis mine.

 

[Worm]

You may mean there are not that many actual bands mentioned. That is a very different thing.

It is a different thing. It's sitting in a room trading records or emailing MP3s back and forth over AIM.

Maybe that's healthier, but in any case we are in a discussion forum. "Like what you like...just lighten up and listen" means no discussion is possible. Qvist didn't start a thread saying, "Hey guys, hook me up with some cool tunes". He said he made a "concerted effort" to track down as many recommendations as possible through the web and then listened to "maybe 40-50 different acts" before making up his mind (which, in fact, doesn't actually seem to be made up at all). This was the spirit of the thread: "Is music mediocre today, and if so, why?"

"A, B, and C suck, you should listen to X, Y, and Z instead" discussions are fine in some contexts. This isn't one of them.

 

[Black Cloud]

I noticed something interesting at the foot of the page. Thanks to the Internet and David's wonderful site, we can jump in a little time machine.

"What is wrong with popular music today?" is a thread originally posted by Unrulygirl on March 9, 2001. The thread survives in the archives.

I'm a huge fan of Suzanne's work, but let's not stop there. This same discussion has been going on since, oh, Elvis joined the Army? Maybe earlier? Everybody has their own theory, it seems. Here's my entry for the "What's Wrong With Rock Music Today?" anthology:

Better Than the Beatles (and DNA, Too)
by Lester Bangs
The Village Voice
Jan. 28-Feb. 3, 1981

- - I have been getting whiny letters from a lot of you lately complaining about the general state of the art. "What is all this shit?" you ask. "We thought New Wave was supposed to be this awakening of New Avenues of Self Expression and Freedom, resulting in new musical verities and new insights into the human condition even! Instead we went out and spent all this money, and all these records are shit!"

- - You're right about about one thing at least: all those record are shit, and you might as well have burned all those dollar bills. (Closer, 12 bucks, haw haw haw!) But those records aren't shit for the reasons that you think: those records are shit because they're all too good!

- - That's right. All those stupid bands were so stupid they plumb went out and learned to play their instruments, a process as ineluctable as the putrefaction of a corpse. Teach 'em a chord or two, then just watch those little bastards practice till they can switch off, back and forth between those two chords (then three, then four . . . never shoulda learned even one!) deft as Al DiMeola if he wanted to play that which he probably will soon! Damn!

- - Which is why the only hope for rock'n'roll, aside from everybody playing nothing but shrieking atonal noise through arbitor distorters, is women. Balls are what ruined both rock and politics in the first place, and I demand the world be turned over to the female sex immediately. Only hope. Valerie Solanas was so much greater a prophet than Warhol that I can only pray she might consent to lead the group I'm forming. The absolute best rock'n'roll anywhere today is being played by women: the other night I saw God in the form of the Au Pairs, the Slits are stupendous, the Raincoats are better than London Calling or anything by Elvis Costello, Chrissie Hynde doesn't count, Joan Jett deserves her place in the sun if not reparations, Lydia Lunch is the Female Role Model for the '80s besides being one of the greatest guitarists in the world . . . the list is endless. (Patti, come home!)

- - But credit must be given to the foremothers: the Shaggs. Way back in 1972 [sic] they recorded an album up in New England that can stand, I think, easily with Beatles '65, Life with the Lions, Blonde on Blonde, and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks as one of the landmarks of roll'n'roll history. The Wiggins [sic] sisters (an anti-power trio) not only redefined the art but had a coherent Weltanschauung on their very first album, Philosophy of the World. Basically what it comes down to is that unlike the Stones these girls are saying we love you, whether you're fat, skinny, retarded, or Norman Podhoretz even. Paul Weyrich. Don't make no difference, they embrace all because they are true one world humanists with an eye to our social future whose only hope is a redefined communism based on the open-hearted sharing of whatever you got with all sentient beings. Their and my religion is compassion, true Christianity with no guilt factors and no vested interest, perhaps a barter economy, but certainly the elimination of capitalism, rape, and special-interest group hatred. For instance, in their personal favorite number, "My Pal Foot Foot," they reveal how even a little doggie must be granted equal civil rights perhaps even extending to the voting booth. Hell, they let Nancy Reagan in! They also believe that we should jettison almost completely the high-tech society which has now perched us on the lip of global suicide, and return to third world-akin closeness with the earth, elements, nature, the seasons, as in my personal favorite on this album, "It's Halloween," which emphasizes that seasonal festivals are essential to a healthy body politic (why d'ya think all them people in California got no minds?).

- - Unfortunately the Wiggins's masterpiece was lost over the years -- it came out on a small label, and everybody knows the record industry has its head so far up its ass it's licking its breastplate. But this guy from NRBQ had the savvy to rescue it from oblivion (in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, he compared their work to early Ornette Coleman, and he's right, though early Marzette Watts might be more apt), so now we got it out on the Red Rooster label, which of course is a perfect joke on all those closet-queen heavy-metal cockrockers. How do they sound? Perfect! They can't play a lick! But mainly they got the right attitude, which is all rock'n'roll's ever been about from day one. (I mean, not being able to play is never enough.) You should hear the drum riff after the first verse and chorus of the title cut -- sounding like a peg-leg stumbling through a field of bald Uniroyals, it cuts Dave Tough cold and these girls aren't even junkies (of course!). They just whang and blang away while singing in harmonies reminiscent of three Singing Nuns who've been sniffing lighter fluid and their voices are just so copacetic [sic] together (being sisters, after all) you'd almost think they were Siamese triplets. Guitar style: sorta like 14 pocket combs being run through a moose's dorsal, but very gently. Yet it rocks. Does it ever. Plus having one of the greatest album covers in history, best since Blank Generation. God Bless the Shaggs. Now if they will only emerge from (semi?) retirement (?) no one ever will have cause again to say "Rock'n'Roll is dead, man . . ." Up an' at 'em, Valerie.

 

[Anaesthesine]

^^
Yes, Suzanne was insightful and clever. Also a bit of a troublemaker (and I say that with some affection).

God bless Lester Bangs, he makes some good points. I remember when women were supposed to save music from itself. I also remember Shaggmania; it was a very silly, pointless thing. My Pal Foot Foot is justly forgotten.

He's right about Joan Jett though, and her moment is coming...

 

[Worm]

I'm a huge fan of Suzanne's work, but let's not stop there. This same discussion has been going on since, oh, Elvis joined the Army? Maybe earlier? Everybody has their own theory, it seems. Here's my entry for the "What's Wrong With Rock Music Today?" anthology:

I like Lester Bangs as much as the next guy, Black Cloud, but could you go into more detail about your reading of this article?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're trying to point out that even the great Lester Bangs was disappointed with music in his day which we, almost three decades later, regard as "classic". The bigger point being, complaining about music is to be expected. The dogs bark, and the caravan moves on. Worm will look back on 2009 as a great year in music once he gets his head out of his ass. Etc.

First, it's not out of the question to read Bangs' dissatisfaction with the scene in '81-- and I question how disappointed he was, considering the 'article' seems more like a blog-ish entry containing heavy doses of irony and bluster-- as one of rock's greatest critics perceiving the approximate moment when rock music was derailed. There's an argument to be made that the forward momentum of rock music died with post-punk. The best critic of my generation is Simon Reynolds, and it's telling that he ends "Rip It Up And Start Again" right around 1982 and his next book, "Bring The Noise", picks up the thread in the late 80s with an emphasis on electronic and hip-hop music. I'm not saying (nor was Reynolds, a big Smiths fan, saying) there weren't any good rock bands in the mid-80s, just that the vitality bled out of indie rock around '83 or '84.

Second, consider that Bangs liked the Shaggs for a particular reason: "They embrace all because they are true one world humanists with an eye to our social future whose only hope is a redefined communism based on the open-hearted sharing of whatever you got with all sentient beings. Their and my religion is compassion, true Christianity with no guilt factors and no vested interest, perhaps a barter economy, but certainly the elimination of capitalism, rape, and special-interest group hatred." He backs the idea that music should say something universal (his word is "religion") rather than exhibit simple fluency (the current crop of New Wave bands who commit the sin of knowing four chords). He specifically wants rock and roll to be reinvented by musicians who have something to say.

In short, Bangs articulated (much better than we have) ideas which reveal, not a critic lost in the woods, but a guy who probably saw what was going on before the rest of the world. Seems to me Bangs' article scores a point for the "music isn't as good today" camp. Or was that your intention?

And if I can throw one more thing out there-- thank God there were people like Lester Bangs for whom music was a life and death matter. Morrissey is one of those people, too.

 

[Worm]

Lester Bangs died in 1982, so we don't know what he'd have thought of The Smiths, hip-hop, and the rest. I suppose we can guess. Having said that, here are his thoughts on rock and roll and music in '82...

Here's an interview from 1982:

Good rock 'n' roll... [long pause] I don't know. I guess it's just something that makes you feel alive. It's just like, it's something that's human, and I think that most music today isn't. And it's like anything that I would want to listen to is made my human beings instead of computers and machines. To me, good rock 'n' roll also encompasses other things, like Hank Williams and Charlie Mingus and a lot of things that aren't strictly defined as rock ‘n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is like an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Like anything can be rock 'n' roll.

On New Wave:

The only trouble with New Wave is that nobody followed up on it. Everybody thought that the initial gesture was all they had to make. Richard Hell made that one album and got too lazy to make another one, or the Sex Pistols breaking up. Although it's good they broke up. But very few of them followed through. But it was really an exciting burst there for like a year, year and a half.

On current music:

Q: Your reply to Christgau's Pazz & Jop poll ["Almost all current music is worthless"]...

A: I was wondering when you were going to get around to that.

Q: Yeah, well... Do you think that's too pessimistic?

A: Do you?

Q: Well, what I think is that if you don't monitor the... say, 99 percent of what's being released is shit, but if you don't monitor it, you might miss an album like the Velvet Underground's first album.

A: Well, see, I monitor it. I listen to everything from Quarterflash to the Circle Jerks, O.K.? I monitor it. But you've got to be honest about what you find there. The way I look at it, the only reason I have any credibility in the first place is because I'm willing to say things like that. And if anything does happen again, I'll have more credibility for the fact that I did say it. It's interesting, since that came out, rock critics and people have been like, "Uh-uh." But anybody who's a musician or in the public totally agrees with me.

...

These days, there's so little that is rock ‘n' roll or that has any kind of vitality to it. It's almost like it doesn't exist right now. Don't you feel that way?

...

I think a lot of the music that's out right now and a lot of the writers who are out right now, they both deserve one another. Because they both have no personality and no real style of their own and no soul.

 

[Worm]

Here's a young Simon Reynolds at university, in 1985 ("What's Missing?" the lead-off piece in Bring The Noise):

Something's wrong. Everyone knows this, acknowledges it, but it's still hard to point out, precisely, what's supposed to have slipped into abeyance, eluded us in pop. It isn't faith in music as threat-- even the purveyors of overtly oppositional rock no longer believe in rock's missionary power. Nor can we constitute the problem as one of poverty of ideas and change in music-- there are still records to buy, 'progress' is pretty much at a constant, at least as strong as it's ever been.

John Peel caught the shape of the lack well when he said: "I don't even like the records I like". Direction and meaning seem to have seeped away. ... Groups and writers just seem to be plugging away. Writing, in music papers and fanzines alike, is almost all the level of relentless specificity-- this record, that gig-- rather than what it all amounts to. ... Paradoxically, it is precisely the fecundity of activity, documentation, debate, even-- to some extent-- of quality, that prevents a unity of alienation occurring: if a period of enforced silence, dearth, boredom, prevailed-- then maybe something as sensational as punk would emerge. As it is, a pernicious adequacy keeps us muddling on...just vaguely aware that all the motion and meaning may be going nowhere and meaning...less.​

"The fecundity of activity, documentation, debate", "relentless specificity": this has increased a thousandfold with the web.

Was Reynolds a crank who couldn't appreciate good music back in 1985? From the same article:

[The Smiths] invade the pop citadel, subvert pop by a greater glamour, expose its pallor, make it look cheap. ... Not as a solution, something to imitate-- but a proof that sensation can still exist within the pop arena. The Smiths lie at the confluence of all the felt needs-- for something new but still accessible, for dissent and poetry, for passion and thought. And their music...a sound impossible to identify either as 'soft' or 'hard'...seemingly implacable in its crystalline drive, yet incredibly fragile...a gentle flurry of chords like razor blades in your heart. For me The Smiths reinstate both the strangeness of pop, its otherworldly elegance, and its connection with reality.

...

For many The Smiths are the only group making a connection between pop and (their) reality-- the experience of adolescents, the unemployed, the f***ed-up, are written out of pop's script. ... The Smiths speak of obsession and devotion, advocate dissipation, resist brutalization and the senses-dulling forces of materialism, fashion, cheap thrills. Their enemies are those who laugh at the idea of sensitivity, who abet what comes with the new conservatism-- an entrenchment of normal sex roles and sexuality.

The 'opposition' of The Smiths is vested not in slogans or preaching, but in the body of their sound and the body of their singer. Perhaps their ideas are spent, but they've left a swathe of sombre glamour across eighties pop. They've about twenty great songs, and strange-- although they're described as dour or (snigger) angst-ridden-- they are more exultant and alive than almost anything I've heard.​

Like Bangs, he was unafraid to say when he thought artists took wrong turns, and so, as with the rest of indie rock, Reynolds didn't have much time (at least in print) for The Smiths after they split. I think he's wrong to pass over Morrissey's solo career without appreciation but he's right in a more general sense: there wasn't much for Morrissey to do except repeat himself over and over again, which is exactly what he's done-- and more or less the problem with most indie rock since The Smiths. Even in 1985, Reynolds realized-- correctly-- that The Smiths could not, and did not ask or expect to be, imitated. Two years later Morrissey said "the ashes of pop music are all around us if we will but see them."

 

[fuckfrankie]

But I'm a little concerned to hear you find Coil entertaining. Personally I find them disturbing, which is what I've always assumed they try to be.

i'd say it depends on the era. i doubt the silly acid house period Coil were aiming for "disturbing" while Unnatural History and Musick to Play in the Dark were definitely very disturbing.

but like i said before, "entertaining" has different meanings. i think TG's Slug Bait is very vile and disturbing, but since i'm purposely listening to Throbbing Gristle, it's entertaining, yeah?

 

[Black Cloud]

I like Lester Bangs as much as the next guy, Black Cloud, but could you go into more detail about your reading of this article?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're trying to point out that even the great Lester Bangs was disappointed with music in his day which we, almost three decades later, regard as "classic". The bigger point being, complaining about music is to be expected. The dogs bark, and the caravan moves on. Worm will look back on 2009 as a great year in music once he gets his head out of his ass. Etc.

First, it's not out of the question to read Bangs' dissatisfaction with the scene in '81-- and I question how disappointed he was, considering the 'article' seems more like a blog-ish entry containing heavy doses of irony and bluster-- as one of rock's greatest critics perceiving the approximate moment when rock music was derailed. There's an argument to be made that the forward momentum of rock music died with post-punk. The best critic of my generation is Simon Reynolds, and it's telling that he ends "Rip It Up And Start Again" right around 1982 and his next book, "Bring The Noise", picks up the thread in the late 80s with an emphasis on electronic and hip-hop music. I'm not saying (nor was Reynolds, a big Smiths fan, saying) there weren't any good rock bands in the mid-80s, just that the vitality bled out of indie rock around '83 or '84.

Second, consider that Bangs liked the Shaggs for a particular reason: "They embrace all because they are true one world humanists with an eye to our social future whose only hope is a redefined communism based on the open-hearted sharing of whatever you got with all sentient beings. Their and my religion is compassion, true Christianity with no guilt factors and no vested interest, perhaps a barter economy, but certainly the elimination of capitalism, rape, and special-interest group hatred." He backs the idea that music should say something universal (his word is "religion") rather than exhibit simple fluency (the current crop of New Wave bands who commit the sin of knowing four chords). He specifically wants rock and roll to be reinvented by musicians who have something to say.

In short, Bangs articulated (much better than we have) ideas which reveal, not a critic lost in the woods, but a guy who probably saw what was going on before the rest of the world. Seems to me Bangs' article scores a point for the "music isn't as good today" camp. Or was that your intention?

And if I can throw one more thing out there-- thank God there were people like Lester Bangs for whom music was a life and death matter. Morrissey is one of those people, too.

Actually, now that I think about it, I didn't mean what I thought I meant.

On one level, yes, Gusano, I dredged up that piece from the sewers of history to show that somebody is always lamenting the quality of "today's" pop music; like pizza it was either always better in the olden days, or there's this new stuff you've never had which is more genuine. Everybody's always running around looking for the Next Big Thing, and if there isn't one, then they're going to make one. Like BF Skinner said, "Here we are now, entertain us." But then, I don't believe in the saving power of pop music, and I think the fact that something ultimately so trivial is being elevated to this level of significance indicates that there's a huge vacuum in our culture. Or is that just because my band never got signed?

 

[Worm]

But then, I don't believe in the saving power of pop music

I haven't explained myself very well if my position is taken to mean despair that music today lacks "saving power".

I realize we talked a lot about "universal" music and what it can do socially, but that was really a tangent. I don't believe music has a "saving power", necessarily, although it often does. The more primary element in music that I respond to is its rootedness in the here and now, music that reflects the world outside. Contemporary indie rock sounds rootless, and I don't mean that in the complimentary sense of "timeless" (The Beatles sound like the Sixties and lots of their songs are "timeless"). To try and be clearer, I hear this lack even apart from the words-- that is, even if today's songs were entirely instrumental, I'd still be disappointed in many cases.

and I think the fact that something ultimately so trivial is being elevated to this level of significance indicates that there's a huge vacuum in our culture.

It's one of those "in a perfect world..." arguments, isn't it? On the one hand what you've said is hard to argue with. Nothing's more trivial than three minutes of a guy warbling about losing his baby. On the other, for better or worse, pop/rock music is a major art form in our time and you can make the case that it's imperfect but far from trivial. If you want to believe it's trivial I can't argue against that, so what I've done is pointed out, a few times now, that we're all gathering at a site dedicated to following a guy, Morrissey, for whom pop music was the very air in his lungs. Maybe you're right that pop music is trivial, but I wonder what our music collections would look like if everyone believed that? Or is the idea that entertainers are allowed to take this seriously but the rest of us can pay our money, see the show, and move on when it's over?

Or is that just because my band never got signed?

At last, the truth is revealed!

 

[El Manzo]

i'm not a music encyclopedia.

Ma smettila!

 

[nogodsnomasters85]

I was reading an article on the death of Michael Jackson by Michael Malone, columnist for ABC news, when I came across this passage, which I think is extremely relevant, and reiterates what has been said by myself, and others in this thread and on this forum.

But, unlike, say, Dylan or Lennon/McCartney (even though he owned their music), I think Michael Jackson was not necessarily a genius, but a supremely talented entertainer. And, so, around his small bag of tricks, Jackson essentially built a persona and a musical empire out of pieces borrowed from more creative sources. Unfortunately, the copy is never as good as the original -- and once you got past the small corpus of great songs and the moonwalk, to me, Michael Jackson's shtick grew tired and shopworn real fast.

"..And, remarkably, even in that, Michael Jackson became a creature of this new era. Ours is not an age of originality -- at least not at the level of art. Television, YouTube, the Web, digital music, not only have ferocious appetites for content -- making sure that every plot device, every character cliché is repeated a million times each day -- but they also make omnipresent every filmed, photographed or recorded piece of creative art. As such, the idea of anyone coming up with something so fundamentally new and appealing that it knocks the world on its collective ear -- as Michael Jackson did in the early 1980s -- is almost absurd."

This is what I've been thinking. That the omnipresence of media, the homoginization of culture, and the simple passage of time have uploaded so much into the collective consciousness, the memeplex, that it's impossible to create really interesting or fascinating permutations because they already exist. That the possibilities are finite, and we're presently scraping the bottom of the barrel.

 

[Worm]

I was reading an article on the death of Michael Jackson by Michael Malone, columnist for ABC news, when I came across this passage, which I think is extremely relevant, and reiterates what has been said by myself, and others in this thread and on this forum.

But, unlike, say, Dylan or Lennon/McCartney (even though he owned their music), I think Michael Jackson was not necessarily a genius, but a supremely talented entertainer. And, so, around his small bag of tricks, Jackson essentially built a persona and a musical empire out of pieces borrowed from more creative sources. Unfortunately, the copy is never as good as the original -- and once you got past the small corpus of great songs and the moonwalk, to me, Michael Jackson's shtick grew tired and shopworn real fast.

"..And, remarkably, even in that, Michael Jackson became a creature of this new era. Ours is not an age of originality -- at least not at the level of art. Television, YouTube, the Web, digital music, not only have ferocious appetites for content -- making sure that every plot device, every character cliché is repeated a million times each day -- but they also make omnipresent every filmed, photographed or recorded piece of creative art. As such, the idea of anyone coming up with something so fundamentally new and appealing that it knocks the world on its collective ear -- as Michael Jackson did in the early 1980s -- is almost absurd."

This is what I've been thinking. That the omnipresence of media, the homoginization of culture, and the simple passage of time have uploaded so much into the collective consciousness, the memeplex, that it's impossible to create really interesting or fascinating permutations because they already exist. That the possibilities are finite, and we're presently scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Very intriguing post.

I don't think that's really the problem, though-- close, but not exactly. You know, "Hamlet" wasn't original either. It is precisely in its "interesting permutations" that its genius resides. Originality in art is a relatively recent criterion for judgment. Before the Romantics they would've raised an eyebrow if you talked about being an original artist. I think, instead, that the missing spark is in people's ability to re-use what already exists. The mother of the muses is Memory; imagination is merely a reconstituting and reshuffling of memories. The "originality" of The Smiths could be put down to the different ways Morrissey and Marr recycled their influences. The finite number of combinations is of course an important limit, but it's something else-- some other unquantifiable element in the mix that's just not there anymore.

 

[nogodsnomasters85]

Very intriguing post.

I do try...

I don't think that's really the problem, though-- close, but not exactly. You know, "Hamlet" wasn't original either. It is precisely in its "interesting permutations" that its genius resides. Originality in art is a relatively recent criterion for judgment. Before the Romantics they would've raised an eyebrow if you talked about being an original artist.

Well, I think here it's more a problem of the limitations of language...

I think, instead, that the missing spark is in people's ability to re-use what already exists.

This is essentially what I meant.

The mother of the muses is Memory; imagination is merely a reconstituting and reshuffling of memories. The "originality" of The Smiths could be put down to the different ways Morrissey and Marr recycled their influences.

Yes. Now, if tomorrow a new band came out with a fey, celibate frontman, who's influences were sixties pop groups, classic literature, the New York Dolls, and British kitchen-sink dramas, we'd say, "Oh, it's just a Smiths/Morrissey rip off." That has been added to the memeplex, to the collective consciousness. First, one has to create a reconstitution of elements that is sufficiently unique, that also has to have some ineffable appeal. I think the possibility for that has shrunk dramatically.

The finite number of combinations is of course an important limit, but it's something else-- some other unquantifiable element in the mix that's just not there anymore.

On this we can agree.