rdiakun

One of the more prophetic lines from a “political song”… Here’s a lyric written in 1975 that fits in 2007….

“They’re building safer cars,
and rocket ships to Mars,
from men who’d sell us out
to get themselves a piece of power…”

“Harry Truman”, by Robert Lamm of Chicago

Then, his political muse went on permanent vacation

Rich

PS I think this thread has spawned a couple of ideas for new discussion threads: “political songs” and “guilty pleasures” to name a few.

Since we’ve looked at this from a couple of directions, let’s try yet another tack on this…

Is the sad state of music our fault? Before diving all over this, consider that the so-called “baby boom” generation and several subsequent sub-generations are the first ones to whom the combination of technology and disposable income had been available enough to create and support the ungodly behemoth that has become the recording industry. Did we make it too important in our lives? Thus, as we get older, and the next set of generations comes along with other forms of entertainment to distract them, are we seeing the shift of the wave from “music with meaning in our lives” to something else that will take a central place in peoples’ lives? By other forms of entertainment, I include not only television, radio, video games, etc., but the old standards that have kept mankind going long before we had all of this technology: wars and other ways of proving Darwin right, all sorts of religiosity ranging from the quiet and personal to the in-your-face and coercive (if going into THAT realm, even in a seemingly oblique way, doesn’t get the banning stick, nothing will!!!), and even sports (which have taken on an almost religious tone over the past few decades). Anyhow, maybe it’s all a moot point. Music may just be experiencing a swing in the pendulum that will temporarily relegate it to background noise status until a new set of issues and poets and bards come along to swing it the other way. If such is the case, hey… we had a hell of a run, so let’s just enjoy what we hold dear to us and not worry about the poor misguided youth of the world. They’ll find their way in the world just like everyone else has before them.

I think that pretty much covers another side of this!!! I’d love to hear more thoughts before I consider this dead horse kicked.

Rich

When I was riding to the grocery store, I heard a song on the radio, which my wife immediately said she hated. So, I kept quite… my problem: In spite of all of the good music that I love, and the diversity of my record/tape/CD/MP3 collection, I have to admit that I have a really bad soft spot for late 60s/early 70s bubblegummy pop. The song on the radio was Elton John & Kiki Dee’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, which Lisa said was one of the most insipid songs she’d ever heard. My feelings, I sheepishly thought (of course, how DOES a sheep think – I may never know) that it was so disgustingly cute that it was sort of endearing. Then, I was in the supermarket, and The Cowsills’ “The Rain, The Park & Other Things” was on the in-store music, and I caught myself not only humming along with, but knowing the words (gasp!)!! I must admit that I own a copy of “The Archies’ Greatest Hits”, a couple of Partridge Family albums, and a couple of those hits collection albums on the K-Tel label with some absolutely unadulterated crap on them — and I actually like pulling them out every so often and listening to them.

I feel better. The more I muse about the state of pop music in the 21st Century, and ask questions about where it is or isn’t going, the more the tiny seed of guilt grows in the background. Having come clean, I can now resume my pseudo-highbrow inquiries into where the hell the good stuff is going to come from next.

My next driving concern? What song should I use for a mash-up that makes fun of some local radio stations? The Kinks’ “Around The Dial”, Reunion’s “Life Is A Rock”, or The Dads’ “Radio 101”? Any thoughts on this?

Thank you all for your indulgence.

Rich Diakun

Maybe what I was shooting for was not so much along the lines of “does today’s music suck?” or “is there anyone out there who’s as good as back in the day?” but “is there anyone out there who is making music important to the latest generation?” I think we can all agree that the initially cited cases (Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, and Madonna) all struck a chord with a significant enough segment of the youth of their time such that it made the listening to and the purchase of (whether it be albums or concert tickets or t-shirts or music books or whatever) music very important to them as they determined who and what they would be. In that vein, I dismiss the recent Brittney Spears and boy band phenomena, as we’ve always had the bubblegum scene aimed at “tweens”, which they quickly grow out of (i.e. The Archies, Banana Splits, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, etc.). I see that music more as a toy than a legitimate artistic force in one’s life. Now THERES a sicsussion that would be fun — bubblegum “tween” music: art or toy?

On a scale a bit lower than those, I could cite a few other examples where this importance reared its’ head. In the early 70s, Chicago made it cool to be a trombone player in a high school band, and there were scores of music geeks who learned to write and arrange music because of the sketch scores books that they put out showing exactly what they were playing (other than Terry Kath’s solos). The late 70s punk movement made “the f word” an almost accepted part of the vernacular, and kids wanted to dress that way long after the Sex pistols self-destructed (in the truest of punk spirit) and the Clash gave in to commercial pressure and released “Combat Rock.” Heck, for most of us, Bruce Hornsby made being a piano player cool again, kinda like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and Paul McCartney and Rick Wakeman did before him. There was even a brief spell when the hip-hop scene made people want to wear tons of ugly jewelry and pants with no belt (originally because they took the belt out when you were in jail so you wouldn’t hang yourself). I think it’s safe to say that even Eminem is passe now, and Snoop Dogg is a parody of what he once was to a generation.

Is this current generation so self-absorbed with iPods and video games and cell phones, and so fractured with Satellite Radio and the extreme segmentation of radio formats, that there’s nobody that they want to follow or be like? Is music and the music culture just not important any more? Who do kids want to be like? This will tell us a lot about how good a job we did or didn’t do raising them.

Rich