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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | The Wisdom of Avril, and other short stories |
| Date | Tue, 02 Nov 2004 00:37:29 -0600 |
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Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 12:30:07 -0500 (EST)
From: moteeko@telerama.com
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: The Wisdom of Avril
Message-ID: <1099330207.4186729f5b5ce@webmail.telerama.com>
Quoting "John L. Micek" <jlmicek@mindspring.com>:
...and produced by the Matrix, good.
>
"Produced by" is the tip of the iceberg - they also wrote or co-wrote most
of
the songs as well! Wonder what Avril's songs would sound like without the
help?
I wish that we could get to the point where mentioning that a recording
artist or band doesn't write most or any of their material is no longer
meant as an insult. Sure, it's mostly used in this list (and in other places
where music snobs congregate ;-) ) to describe big-money, big-label,
watered-down pop aimed at teenagers in which the singer or singers are
mostly used as good-looking and stylish props for marketing purposes. But
the implication seems to be that artistic credibility is somehow damaged
when a singer or band doesn't write their own material, and I think that
that's a premise that should be discarded.
Over the years I've come to realize that musical ability and songwriting
ability represent two entirely different skill sets. I wouldn't be at all
surprised if they are skills derived from two completely different parts of
the brain. The world is full of musos who have chops that can bring down the
house, but who couldn't construct a halfway-memorable song if their lives
depended upon it. Likewise, there are plenty of people out there whose
instrumental and/or vocal abilities are less than facile who nevertheless
are highly gifted songwriters.
While there were rock'n'roll acts in the 50s who wrote their own material
(Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, etc.), it was the Beatles who really
made it a standard requirement for rock'n'roll acts to have to write their
own songs. And that was, IMO, a mixed blessing. While they did more to put
creative control in the hands of the artists themselves (as opposed to
producers, managers, or A&R men) by supplying their own material, they also
raised the bar too high for a lot of bands that might've otherwise been
perfectly decent acts. As anyone who has ever been wowed by a cover band in
a bar will attest, the number of really smoking bands out there that don't
have original material is legion. Always has been. But it's pretty much a
necessity for any such band to produce a songwriter(s) from within their
midst in order to get a recording deal -- and, let's face it, songwriting
talent doesn't grow on trees. Nor do good musicians and good songwriters
constitute identical constituencies; taken together they represent a Venn
diagram of two distinct circles with a limited amount of overlap.
I wish that it was acceptable for good rock'n'roll acts to be critically
viable without having to write their own stuff. There's so many good but
obscure songs out there that a band could easily make a career out of
recording nothing but covers; heck, you could probably do it just by buying
all of Greg Shaw's eight zillion *Pebbles* anthologies to supply your song
base. That, and getting access to songwriter demos.
I don't think that there's any particular virtue in being able to say that
you write your own material. I think that the virtue lies in putting out
good recordings of good songs, which is another thing entirely.
Interpretation and arrangement are important musical skills, too. And as far
as independence from producers, managers, and A&R men is concerned, it's
still possible to retain that without writing your own material if the act
retains gatekeeping control. In other words, the act finds its own material
and makes its own decisions about what to play live and what to record.
I'd rather hear a musically talented band that does good obscure or unknown
songs by outside writers and makes them their own than a musically talented
band that plays lousy songs that they wrote themselves.
I'll be interested in seeing what some of Audities' musicians have to say
about the connections and contrasts between musicianship and songwriting.
Gregory Sager
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