PONDERED: Are we in a musical recession?
Posted by Mat | Filed under Music
2012 is the end of the world. Surely the current economic woes and environmental roil are proof! The Mayans knew it, John Cusack played it, and the History Channel programs around it.
Yet, seemingly, they’ve all site of the fact that said calender is cyclical. The world has begun and ended ad infinitum. reinventing itself in the process.
Music, and pop-culture at large, are also tied to these same, Ragnarok-like, ebbs and flows.
New Wave, Alternative, and Indie have been the featured, invented, umbrella terms used to describe the upswellings of listenable music over the past 30 years.
However, as it relates to public consumption, each of these movements had a shelf-life; by the end of their respective musical decades they were usurped by more visceral, feel good music.
The cycle looks to be quite clear – end the decade with crap and languish for the next five years. Enjoy that half decade of creativity and prepare for the following cultural winter.
The last turn of the wheel occurred in 2004. The change was abrupt – Gwen Steffani Covering Talk Talk and reaching farther down into the sewers of music, The Ataris covering The Eagles.
Within a month those songs were banished to the land of wind and ghosts. The Killers, Modest Mouse, and The Yeahs Yeah Yeahs, all existent bands, had broken big and the look and sound of pop-culture would follow.
The rest is present day history. The question now, is Have we left that time?
Are we a few months away from Fred Durst’s new project, or maybe Lady Gaga is the newest harbinger or the musical end times?
Alternatively, have we broken the cycle? Data and ideas move exponentially faster than they did six years ago – have the mercurial opinions that accompany disposable media rendered a decades worth of pop-cultural tending down to a month long process?
Does this even matter in the face of 2012? In the immortal words of Kent Brockman, I for one welcome our new insect overlords.
Tags: alternative, bad music, cycles, indie, mainstream, new wave, pondered
PONDERED: Taxonomy and manifesto; identity in digital media
Posted by Mat | Filed under Music
or “is it historically significant to make shit up in order to get my music noticed”
Call this a mashup between two objects of my adoration – historical analysis of century old art and interweb pop-satire.
The talk of the day comes from a post on HRO discussing sub-genre, namely the author, Carles, branded a smattering on contemporary artists with a mock-genre tag. Now these artists don’t know each other, don’t talk, and really have nothing in all in common…
…aside from sounding really, really similar.
Within the coming months, the name catches on around the online music masses, then the big name music mavens pick up on, and finally, the anti-Google, stuffed shirt, big ass deal of print media discusses it in detail.
The online mob has been co-opted and is none to happy about it.
Taxonomy
If the manifesto is the expression of “hey world, this is who I am,” than the world responds by placing us into taxonomic categories, or in the case of music, genres and sub-genres.
Named lots of “things that are like other things,” allow the listener to identify what they like in broad strokes or tow name drop at a part to sound smart – You don’t enjoy the musique concrete styles of so-and-so? such a shame. More importantly, they allow the listener to be marketed to.
Major labels have made a living for the past 30 years by lumping the sounds of relevant and unrelated artists in massive umbrella genres.
New-wave, Alternative, and Electronica add less definition to an artist than New Weird America, and yet is far more recognizable and has pushed far many more units. It would seem that useless genres have some serious worth.
Manifesto
Before social media allowed us to succinctly present our view of the world in an About Me section, artists had to work hard to convey the intent of their art.
Manifestos set the direction for an artist/collective work – when the Marinetti published the Futurist Manifesto 100 years ago, he was making it clear, “THIS is what we’re about: what we do and why we do it.” If a like minded fellow came along, he would say “me too,” and that would be the end of that.
In the modern era, apparently this notion of manifesto has been perverted. The artists who strive to make something new work actively to defy definition and to create solely to create. The artists that say, “THIS is what we’re about: how why sound and why we do it” are usually just attaching themselves to an established sub-genre – a phenomenon that can lead to a sound becoming a scene.
With artists ducking out of the race to define a sound, they lose the opportunity to control their perceived image and the direction of their identity and audience.
Who Cares
You’re reading this on the internet.
In 20 years, the web has been full of more single-minded pundits than either of the big American political parties. As the ability to find and reach an ever growing audience grows easier, the power of the online pundit to distribute a thought as fact also grows easier.
As such, it only takes a single blog post can unwillingly redefine an artist. If you have a problem with a semi-anonymous poster on the internet taking control of your art, pony up and define yourself.
Tags: alternative, electronica, elitism, manifesto, music nerds, new wave, pondered, scene, taxonomy
PONDERED: Why your scene doesn’t matter
Posted by Mat | Filed under Music
It’s 1996. Nine Inch Nails is in constant rotation and take up half of the t-shirt wall at your local Warehouse Music. Down the isle is the the Escape from L.A. soundtrack, that featuring Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills, and effin’ Ministry - talk about bang/smash/book for your buck.
Skinny Puppy and Front 242 were on MTV (midnight on a Sunday, but still they were on). The music you love has a pedigree dating back to Throbbing Gristle in the 70s. Your musical forefathers have mucho music cred, and the newest crop is rebellious and yet relevant.
Take in the sites and smells – this is the last time anyone else in the world will care about Industrial music.
We can file the numbers off and protect that names of the innocent in this scenario. It’s ‘97 and you like Ska. ‘04 and cardigan styled Emo. Two ill-spent months in ‘89 with baggy….
ad. infinitum
The truth of the matter is that while the music, your music, continues to spawn merch, tour, and inspire new bands, they don’t matter. They’re not the black sheep of the musical sub-genre family, they’re the fish head eating mutant that lives in the attic.
Why the pariah status?
Back in the early 90’s, a music critic referred to the London Shoegaze Scene as “the scene that celebrates itself,” and subsequently, the rest of the critics stopped caring. Despite birthing some musical landmarks, the Shoegaze scene got kneecapped, and went from being a sound to a scene.
The criticism was totally valid. When a sound is codified and becomes a sub-genre, the rules are set – attire, attitude, and others are standardized. With the rules set, the old fans become die-hards or drop out and the new fans come in already knowing the rules. Most importantly, with the look, the sound, and the crowd predefined, the artist stop creating and begin producing for the fan base.
Bands in the _________ scene make _________ music for _________ fans.
And this is why your scene doesn’t matter, at least outside of your scene.
Tags: baggy, emo, industrial, mainstream, pondered, scene, ska, Slowdive, sucks
PONDERED: The music elitism counterbalance
Posted by Mat | Filed under Music
There seems to be a sort of odd counterbalance when it comes to music elitism; the more obscure your day-to-day tastes are, the more you really, really need to enjoy some sort of antithetical, mainstream, evil-Kirk, music.
I’ts a common problem around opinionated friends – I’ve really started liking “Post-Noise,” it’s like the sound the occurs after you hit something and the primary noise ends – it’s all very Zen. Shit, is that Phil Collins, that’s my JAM.
It’s the Pitchfork problem – Top Tracks: Low-Fi Yak Calls and fuckin Jay-Z bitches
It’s an all too common problem, without a clear cut answer.
Do the ultra-obsessive music geeks have such a broad palette that sometimes they can’t help but enjoy media that was made for easy consumption?
Is it a subconscious subversion of the mainstream by the intelligencia?
Or perhaps, is there just some sort of reptile brain reaction to Ace of Base that you must heed the call?
Tags: elitism, mainstream, pondered, yak calls
