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" : ...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