Posted on 09/11/2014 4:45:53 PM PDT by WesternCulture
Or sooner; What has the US done to the music tradition of Western Civilization?
There are plenty of Americans who understand and appreciate great composers like Beethoven, Vivaldi, Albinoni, Bach and Mozart, but something must be wrong with a nation that year after year produces crap like the music of 50 Cent, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.
I'm European and I admit we make a lot of worthless music too, but at least we Europeans are fostered in the great tradition of composers like the giants mentioned above.
Thanks for the Bob Wills links. I’ll close with one my mom used to sing us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdS2dlwGLM
San Antonio Rose.
That clip makes me laugh every time I watch it.
We play AC/DC over a loudspeaker, while kicking someone’s ass on behalf of your lazy ass...
ROTFLMAO!
A MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART! (With a razor.)
Rag Time Baby. 100% American.
America constructed the first electrically amplified guitar. Period.
This was back in 1931.
Swedish legendary guitar manufacturer Hagström has been around since 1925 and already from the start they realized what electricity could do for the performance of this instrument. They experimented some with electricty more or less from the start, but it’s not fair to say they invented the electric guitar. Around 1930, the company of Hagström was chiefly occupied with making accordions even if some employees happened to have other plans.
Anyhow, we Swedes know how to play the guitar. Jimi Hendrix and Kirk Hammett impress me, but they are not Yngwie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pc9C_D2ibM
While we’re busy bad-mouthing jazz, let me play a couple I like a lot.
The first one I first heard in soundtrack to the movie Sorcerer (1977). The movie closes with Roy Scheider in a jungle bar dancing with the old barmaid to Charlie Parker, I’ll Remember April.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbUuGPN5bBw
April in Paris I discovered looking for the other one...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPBAIVK-JRA
I like both of them.
Zimmer’s kind of overrated, imo. He recycles the same themes over and over in most of his soundtracks. It’s beyond just having a thematic style, because you can instantly recognize Zimmer is the composer for a film from the first few seconds of any trailer (just listen for the long, booming bass notes with reverb).
Morricone did that a bit too, using the same themes only varied a little bit for multiple scores, but that was the exception rather than the rule with him. With Zimmer, it’s the other way around. The only thing different that he’s done from his standard fare (at least that I’m aware of) are the “Sherlock Holmes” soundracks, which I admit were very good.
I’d rate Elfman a superior film composer to Zimmer any day, even though I think he limits himself by working with Burton a bit too much. Elfman manages to have a distinctly recognizable sound, while at the same time not really adhering to a single style, which is pretty impressive to me.
I agree with you on Rap - it's not music in any sense of the word, but "jazz is "bad" music? Really? You’ve evidently never listened to good jazz music. And I would even consider some heavy metal and some hard rock as being darn near symphonic.
Chuck Berry borrowed a lot from a lot of different sources. He got his guitar acrobatics from T-Bone Walker, songwriting patterns from country guys like Willis, and most of his “signature” guitar licks were just adapted versions of boogie woogie licks that his sideman Johnny Johnson was playing on piano. Yet, Chuck is the one that put them all together and made the magic happen, so he is the one that is going to go down in history getting the credit.
Did Yngwie(sp?) go down to the crossroads, get down on his knees and sell his soul to the Devil?
Thank you for opening up my ears to these gems.
My brother (who was fronting a never-sober heavy metal band 20 years ago) keep telling me:
You’ve gotta listen to Charlie Parker!
Okay, I will. Okay, I will.
True, but both bluegrass and country music were influenced by the blues (and influenced the blues in return).
“Did Yngwie(sp?) go down to the crossroads, get down on his knees and sell his soul to the Devil?”
- Nope. Yngwie grew up in a nation that already had sold its soul to Socialism.
As a young man, Yngwie decided to become a guitar hero and make lots of money.
The Social Democratic Party of Sweden denies that Yngwie has ever existed.
L O L !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXtbW95PJ-k
Sorry to hear that. This is Captain Senor Mouse written and performed by two Americans.
“True, it kind of fell of the cliff with the arrival of atonal “free” jazz in the 1960s, but so did European classical music fall off the same cloff after the 12-tone crap took over.”
The problem is the same with many styles of music. Everyone tries to push the boundaries to sound unique and differentiate themselves. Then, they end up pushing too far and wind up untethered from the conventional elements that make music appealing to the listener in the first place.
That’s why pop music is so successful, it’s built on the premise of sticking to the most fundamental, basic elements that appeal to listeners. Conventional, familiar harmonies, simple hooks, memorable choruses, and danceable beats are the bread and butter of pop, and listeners never seem to get tired of those.
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