Posted on 03/08/2002 1:00:49 PM PST by prman
No matter what newspaper writers tell you; no matter what TV critics say; no matter what recording industry hucksters may pitch – American popular music is in a sad state, and has been for years.
The televised 44th Annual Grammy Awards show embodies all the problems. In its lofty PR statement, the Recording Academy wants to recognize talented musicians, singers and songwriters, along with others in the recording industry, for their "artistic achievements, technical proficiency and overall excellence" – by industry peers, without regard to sales or chart position.
But like other groups that depend on the mass public for sales and support, the entire affair is skewed to youth demographic tastes. So we get a program that tries, unsuccessfully, to blend the disparate styles of rap performers dressed as thugs or pimps (including one cross-dresser), female pop singers attired as streetwalkers, gospel singers in business suits and bluegrass singers in cowboy garb. What's wrong with this picture?
Nowhere in this surrealistic assemblage were there any performers from the classical or jazz worlds, whose "artistic achievements" were surreptitiously honored in an untelevised afternoon ceremony.
What the TV audience had to endure, rather, was an evening of mostly indifferent music performed by marginally talented performers, in a sea of listless presentations coupled with the tasteless, nervous humor of emcee Jon Stewart, who actually began the show by stripping down to his boxer shorts. I recall this being funny when Milton Berle did it, but that was in 1948.
I tune in the Grammys every year to see if there have been any new songs that I may have missed, since I don't listen to pop music radio stations anymore. But for years now, it seems, shopping the Grammys to find good new music is like trying to select fresh produce from a bin of rotten vegetables.
With the notable exception of the artistry of piano blues songstress Alicia Keys, most of the other nominated new pop songs were mediocre in every way. I realize that judging a song to be "good" is highly subjective, regardless of the musical sophistication of the listener. Then, too, what are the standards? In some cultures, I have been told, a good song is one that makes it rain.
It's hard to imagine that the bleatings of Bono and his now-geezer Irish rock band U2 would make anyone's good music list, and yet it's endemic to almost a whole generation of rock performers.
The lead singers generally cannot sing, as that term usually is understood, but rather croak out a constricted-range melody of sorts, almost as if chanting, against a wall of sound generated by ear-bending electric guitars, while a drummer thumps a panoply of tubs as often as he can. This musical ethos started two or three decades ago in the heavy metal era, where rock concerts were attended by young people who sought the appropriate ambience to "get stoned."
Other than being merely a musical venue for social lubricity and self-indulgence, it apparently never occurs to these concertgoers to simply take a chair and listen to music quietly. Instead we get the spectacle of thousands standing and yelling, jammed together and wildly thrashing their arms or jumping into the mosh pit.
Sniffing all the dollars in adolescent pockets from which they can easily be parted, the recording industry has done yeoman work to encourage such caterwauling because it is then able to fob off hundreds of thousands of CDs each year onto these musical illiterates through heavy media marketing and promotion.
This is the real meaning of the Grammy Awards. Music has nothing to do with it. And this was revealed when Academy gasbag Michael Greene focused his annual harangue on Internet music piracy: it threatens to derail the gravy train.
The true touchstone of musical worth is its longevity. As Samuel Johnson wrote in his Preface to Shakespeare, "No other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem."
It is ironic, then, that in an event that is supposed to celebrate the most modern works, the best music at the Grammys was made by the oldest geezers there: Tony Bennett and Billy Joel singing "New York State of Mind" and Ralph Stanley's signature bluegrass lament, "O Death."
No one will be performing any of U2's music 50 years from now, nor any of the other nominated songs. But future artists will still be singing bluegrass, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Billy Joel – maybe even Alicia Keys.
You know, good stuff.
Barrett Kalellis is a commentator whose columns appear in The Detroit News, NewsMax.com, TownHall.com, National Review Online and other print and online publications.
And they will still be listening to Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and even Lawrence Welk. But all is not lost, there was a young lady in my office playing Frank Sinatra today. Her mother brought her up right.
What the TV audience had to endure
Only the idiots watching it had to endure anything.
But for years now, it seems, shopping the Grammys to find good new music is like trying to select fresh produce from a bin of rotten vegetables.
Make sure you watch it again next year, sucker.
Ninety percent of popular music always sucks, because the masses have bad taste.
Listen to unpopular music. There's tons and tons of great stuff out there.
Classic line, a real keeper.
On another note, we who came of age in the late 60's and early 70's grew up expecting music to always be exploding with creativity. And we tend to judge new music by these standards. However, as with all of human history, there are periods of renaissance, backsliding - and outright retrograde devolution. We were just lucky to live in one of history's few musical renaissance periods.
That's what I've been saying and I cannot repeat this often enough. Better yet, where I hang my beret, the unpopular music is being given away by the record stores for a few bucks per CD. These are brand new releases too - DJ copies, reviewer copies, samples with a "Not For Sale" stamp on them. Seek this stuff out, take chances. I find it usually through printed reviews, but the proof that nobody reads reviews is right there in those record stores I patronize. As you say, there are tons of great unpopular stuff in every genre out there. So let's stop whining and waiting for the big biz nanny to spoonfeed us culture!
Greetings, Brother. May the light of San Lorenzo illumine your path to the eternal Phase Dance.
~grins~
The tragic part is that the classical music is getting to be unpopular music and the big record companies are cutting down their catalogs in this area. I hate to tell you this guys, but we ought to pray that the San Francisco fairies will support opera sufficiently enough for it to survive!
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