The Moon and Pluto

To an extent we are all critics, especially those of us that are either a part of a music scene or in my case simply aspire to be.  Sure in casual conversations we have at one time or another stated how we like and appreciate all types of music but before we breath our next we bemoan the state of the music industry and the banal crap we are force fed, sometimes being so irritating it makes one’s shit itch. 

As artists, we balance the notion that that music is art and free expression and can and should embrace and appreciate it all. I don’t think it is an understatement to say this is growing more difficult just as music is becoming more available and less expensive to us all.

For example, have an experiment of sorts.  Listen to 100 different songs off random MySpace band pages (and to listen to each song from beginningto end).  I’m sure there is music in this subset we like, music we can agree that is pedestrian for whatever reason, and music that is just mind numbingly not good.

I don’t think it doesn’t make us bad people to admit that there is bad music out there.  The old system of A&R guys finding ‘the new thing’ has broken down and we are now left on our own to try to find the proverbial needle in the haystack when it comes to music we like and want to hear.

Maybe we can blame it on Guitar Center and the accessibility of instruments to diluting the quality of the rock product, in just the same way I might have watered down my dad’s booze after stealing a few drinks for a friends party back in the day.  To provide credence, just look at guitar sales (in blue) over the last fifteen years.

From 2006 to 2008, there were nearly 9.6 million guitars sold and over 25 million axes sold over the last fifteen years.  Think of it this way, if all those guitars were bought here in States, one in twelve Americans bought a guitar over the last fifteen years.  There is a strange irony in this that as music is disappearing from the school systems of America,instrument sales are soaring and at record levels.  In a way, this gives me hope for the future of music given how many people have gained access to guitars.  The notion of the ‘Guitar Hero’ appears far from dead.  Hey, just maybe this is even due to a halo effect from video games such as ‘Guitar Hero’ and ‘RockBand’ (a topic for another blog subject entirely) I usually sneer at.  There will only be one way to find out: to check the pawn shops and online outlets of used instruments for an abundance of cheap guitars (note how the average selling price has dropped just as sales soared) in the coming years.

Is there a point to all of this?

Maybe not but it has me thinking.  It seems to me the state of popular music has come to a fulcrum point as the old guard (i.e. record labels) lose power in the struggle to bring music to the people. There is an abundance of music out there these days (i.e. the MySpace experiment) but the most challenging part is to find it. 

I was only 7 years old when Lester Bangs died of a drug overdose in 1982.  Some hail him as a pretentious blowhard that liked to criticize anything that was popular in music at the time.  Others though of him as thoughtful and witty (I would fall into this camp).  There have been many imitators in the years since his passing, but God forbid, we have now come to the time where we need ‘The Rock Critics’ to step up their game and guide us towards the music we are not currently hearing.  Even Lester Bangs’s most ardent critics would agree he was at his best when doing this.

On the rare days and hours when I have nothing going on, I enjoy  going back in time with the archives of Rolling Stone Magazine and read the reviews (as written at the time) of some of my favorite albums as well as music in general that was though of as cutting edge. Check out this excerpt from Bangs review of Led Zeppelin III:

Their third album deviates little from the track laid by the first two, even though they go acoustic on several numbers. Most of the acoustic stuff sounds like standard Zep graded down decibel wise, and the heavy blitzes could've been outtakes from Zeppelin II. In fact, when I first heard the album my main impression was the consistent anonymity of most of the songs — no one could mistake the band, but no gimmicks stand out with any special outrageousness, as did the great, gleefully absurd Orangutang Plant-cum-wheezing guitar freak-out that made"Whole Lotta Love" such a pulp classic. "Immigrant Song"comes closest, with its bulldozer rhythms and Bobby Plant's double-tracked wordless vocal croonings echoing behind the main vocal like some cannibal chorus wailing in the infernal light of a savage fertility rite. What's great about it, though, the Zep's special genius, is that the whole effect is so utterly two-dimensional and unreal. You could play it, as I did, while watching a pagan priestess performing the ritual dance of Ka before the flaming sacrificial altar in Fire Maidens of Outer Space with the TV sound turned off. And believe me, the Zep made my blood throb to those jungle rhythms even more frenziedly.

Much of the rest, after a couple of listenings to distinguish between songs, is not bad at all, because the disc Zeppelin are at least creative enough to apply an occasional pleasing fillip to their uninspiring material, and professional enough to keep all their recorded work relatively clean and clear — you can hear all the parts, which is more than you can say for many of their peers.

Not a glowing review of one my favorite albums, but I enjoyed reading the review because it is both visual and visceral. A growing of chorus of people might think that with interwebs and the insane number of blogs out there, we don’t need critics because everyone can or has already become one.  I don’t agree that the critic is no longer needed and would reference both the MySpace experiment and the explosion in guitar sales.  There is simply too much music out there right now to the point where the market has become oversaturated.  Maybe rock is dead, but the plethora of bands undermines that thesis.

What is dead and/or dying is the notion of the rock star.  The grandiose parade of debauchery has eroded to the point where it is the everyman.  When everybody leans on one side of the boat, it tips over which is exactly what has happened to the business of music.  Unless of course there is some machine or mechanism to build up the music.  Right now it seems the record executives have abdicated their role and there is a vacuum that needs to be filled. 

All hail the rock critic, yes the one who usually takes the music more seriously than the artist as part of my solution to revive the music business.  Then again, maybe Frank Zappa got it right about rock critics when he said the following, "Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read."

Trey