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| From | Benjamin Lukoff <lukoff@gmail.com> |
| Subject | Re: Music Isn't Dead |
| Date | Tue, 3 Mar 2009 21:42:16 -0800 |
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I've been meaning to reply to this for, apparently, over two months. These
lines struck me:
"So instead of ten people humming 'I'd like to teach the world to sing...',
you have ten people humming their own choice of songs. Is that such a bad
thing?"
Well, perhaps not. But there's something to be said for collective
experience. A few days after Kerry's message, I read this piece (
http://www.cityartsmagazine.com/seattle/issues/CAS019/CAS019_article1.html)
in *City Arts Seattle*:
"'A staff critic is by nature a generalist,' says Powers. 'Their job is to
cover as wide a range as possible. The blog world does not encourage
generalists--it encourages specific passions.' It also encourages xenophobia
-- fear of those who are unlike you. 'Who do we have in common?' asks the
social-networking site. The staff critic binds society together, if only by
giving everyone someone to disagree with. The new, unknown critic splits
audiences into interest groups. The critic starves on $125 a review; artists
and audiences, starved of comprehensive coverage, drift into separate,
solipsistic twilights."
It was the last clause that really struck me: "separate, solipsistic
twilights." THAT, I fear, is the danger of niche markets getting too nichey.
Don't get me wrong: I'm a blogger myself, though I've also been a staff
critic and an editor of freelance critics. I think the Internet really is
one of the greatest things since sliced bread (and honestly, I don't mind
slicing bread myself). But I do wonder if things might go too far.
~ Ben Lukoff
On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 8:57 AM, Kerry Kompost <kerry_kompost@yahoo.com>wrote:
> Whilst comfortably esconsed on my couch over the holiday, I dozed in and
> out of blissful sleep while watching VH1's "Best of the '90's", with two of
> my fat and happy cats curled up alongside.
>
> What struck me -- other than how many great songs there were -- was the
> fact that MTV, from its inception, was rather like AM radio in the 1970's,
> in the sense that you never really knew what song was going to hit you next.
>
> In the '70's -- my prime teen "radio listening" years -- I'd hear Sly and
> the Family Stone followed by Kenny Rogers and the New Edition followed by
> Beatles followed by Steely Dan followed by Carole King followed by the
> Delphonics followed by YES followed by Billy Paul followed by Pink Floyd
> followed by Dolly Parton followed by Elton John.
>
> MTV -- especially in the '90's -- was rather similar in that you'd hear
> disparate musical genres back-to-back: Soundgarden followed by Teenage
> Fanclub followed by Pattie LaBelle followed by Guns and Roses followed by
> N.W.A. followed by U2 followed by Prince followed by Naughty by Nature
> followed by Jewel followed by De La Soul followed by R.E.M.
>
> As a boomer, I've been guilty of lamenting the "loss" of that classic
> period of Rock Music(tm) Lefsetz mentions (1964 - 1975 or whatever it was).
> Watching the VH1 thing made me realize how full of shit I was.
>
> What's happened isn't that great music isn't being made anymore -- it is --
> it's that there's now avenues of delivering NICHE MARKETS where one can
> willfully choose the type of music one consumes; in the '70's those avenues
> were largely limited to the radio. Now we have radio, TV, internet and
> satellite.
>
> So instead of ten people humming "I'd like to teach the world to sing...",
> you have ten people humming their own choice of songs.
>
> Is that such a bad thing?
>
> kErrY
> www.myspace.com/nextprogband
>
> NP: Yes -- Drama
>
>
>
>
--
Benjamin D. Lukoff ÷ lukoff@gmail.com
profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lukoff | blog:
http://www.examiner.com/x-479-Seattle-History-Examiner | articles:
http://crosscut.com/account/BenjaminSPACELukoff/ | photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukobe/
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