Phil
The Day The Musuc Died
May 23, 2009
In 1972 Don McLean wrote the classic "American Pie", and in the song he sang the words "The Day The Music Died", Even though I was a rock fan there was something in that statement that was a bit haunting, Was it because we all thought it was something that could never happen?
I have been in a musician most of my life, although I have never made mega money it always supplied a kind of famine / feast kind of living, I have seen it metamorphose into various cults and crazes, I started playing in bands about 1968 and in them days nearly all the top bands such as The Stones, Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, I could go on forever and that is without even mentioning some of the monster acts which were coming out of the USA.
What did nearly all these acts have in common? If you think about it they mostly came from working class backgrounds, The other thing they all had in common was that they could all churn out massive world wide hits, classic songs that are still around today either in there original but remastered formats or covers, Just think of all the successful UK / USA bands or artistes from around that time and then try and think of the classic hits they had, You would be thinking for a long time.
I think most would agree that the classic hit is a thing of the past, Nearly all the so called hits in the charts nowadays are just like tins of beans rolling off the production line, mass produced rubbish to be consumed for a week and then thrown away, Why has the music business gone like this? Did it happen when we all started using computers? The answer is yes but computers are only a part of the cause.
Let me explain, If we go back to sixties again and imagine our working class heroes, In them days it was seen to be cool to be playing and touring with a band, People imagined that life out on the road was glamorous, I did it for years and yes it was fun but it was not glamorous, It was hard work, no sleep, out on the road for days, in short hard knocks and dirty socks, It was this kind of life style that moulded these guys into hard nosed rock and roll stars, The same guys wrote them classic songs in the back of a Transit van on the way to the next gig, You just had to be a tough outfit or you would be eaten alive.
So where am I going with this? Well I said computer were only partially to blame for the lack of classic songs nowadays, the reason for this is that computers allowed people who already had money to muscle in on the scene, Out went the Transit along with everything else what made our music great, All of a sudden all you needed was to be rich, good looking or preferably both, You no longer needed any talent, you did not even have to sing in tune or learn anything or know how to write a good tune, Money and computers could do it all, One thing I can say if you put most of the assholes we call "Rock Stars" nowadays in a Trasit van with five other people they wouldn’t last five minutes.
Don't get me wrong I am not knocking computers, In fact I have used them myself since the days of the Atari 1040 and Steinberg Pro 24, What I am saying is they have a rightful place, The introduction of them into music was as important as the introduction of the camera into the visual arts, However when we invented the camera we did not just exclude the real painters, sculptors and artistes, In fact I reckon that most artistes would tell you the advent of the camera was a real milestone in the art world, For a kick off they did not have to freeze there nuts off if the wanted to paint a winter scene, They could just take a photo and paint it in the studio, People like Andy Warhole used both paint and photography and mixed them together.
This is my point, the above cannot be said about the music business, You can hear that the more time goes on the more things just all sound the same, same tempo "120bpm will do Jarvis",
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