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| From | "Michael Bennett" <mrhonorama@hotmail.com> |
| Subject | Vocals, anyone? |
| Date | Thu, 05 Feb 2004 23:19:26 -0600 |
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Mark --
I would agree with you wholeheartedly about vocals. The biggest thing with
'60s vocalists, is that so many of them were inspired by blues and R & B.
So folks like Steve Marriott and Colin Blunstone aspired to the lofty goal
of having tons of soul. And as the British Invasion took root, so many
tried to sound like Paul McCartney and other leading lights.
As punk broke, the 'quality' of the vocalists may not have been so high, but
folks like Joe Strummer, Pete Shelley and Feargal Sharkey had very
distinctive voices. When I was in college I could listen to folks from
Peter Garrett to Jason Ringenberg to Morrissey. All had great personalities
(and Jason does have a great instrument IMHO).
I think that as rock has moved toward an anyone can do it aesthetic, that
too often anyone thinks they can do it, and apparently no one tells them
otherwise. Whether it's lame singers during the hair metal era (think Brett
Michaels and Vince Neil), all the pop-punk bands (Blink 182, Good Charlotte,
etc., all who adopt that nasal tone that is two parts Milo, three parts
Billy Joe and two parts valley dude, and never sounds good) or even emo-pop
(I dig Beulah and Death Cab and others, but most of them aren't much in the
vocal department). Frankly, a lot singers don't try. And the music can
suffer, because if you're writing to a lame voice, well, it limits the type
of songs you can do.
Insofar as the latter point -- this would take days to go over. I think
that we are in a media age where things happen so often and so quickly, that
every trend has a half-life of a year. Welcome New Garage, See You Later
New Garage, The Hives, Who Are They Again? So the development of rock and
pop music is so accelerated -- from innovation to bandwagon hopping to can't
get arrested takes so little time. Therefore, a lot of developments
nowadays are much more incremental. There will always be new things, but
it's much harder to be radically different.
I wonder if it is much different for scientists -- you can only discovery
gravity or relativity once -- the rest is just testing and refining the
theories...
Mike Bennett
NP: Shoes -- BLACK VINYL SHOES
Record reviews and more at http://fufkin.com
>From: Mark London <mrl@psfc.mit.edu>
>And this leads into one of my pet peeves regarding present day vocals.
>Compare pop vocalists with, let's say, 1960s pop vocalists. Where are the
>great unique and expressive vocalists? US rock and pop vocalists from
>that era were often expressive with distinct accents, i.e. southern or
>countryish. Even if they had weak songs, you always had the vocals to
>listen to. And look at what started the New Wave era. UK vocalists, and
>US vocalists that had distrinctive vocals (i.e. strong NY accents, such as
>the Ramones). However, nowadays, I turn on any radio station playing
>modern music, and no vocalist catches my ear at all.
>
>And this leads to my present situation. After 40 years of listening to
>music, I've finally gotten to the stage where it's very rare for me to find
>a new album, that has something distinctive enough for me to want to pay
>money for. It's seems like I've heard it all. Same vocals, same guitar
>sound, same lyrics, etc. Which leads me to wonder, has pop music reached
>the limit as to be able to create different sounding music? Unless you had
>a unique vocalist, the only other possibility would be to spend a ton of
>effort in production, to create different sounds for each song. In other
>words, it would be the equivalent of a movie that had a huge budget to
>spend on special effects. Unfortunately, few people seem to have the time
>and money to do that. And why spend the money to do that, when you have a
>host of novice music listeners that still are willing to send money on
>generic sounding music,
>
>On the other hand, I do feel great that I now have more money available to
>spend on other interests. so I guess I shouldn't be complaining.
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