>>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:57:19 -0000
From: "Borislow, Gary" <gary.borislow@sage.com>
To: <audities@smoe.org>
Subject: Re: McCartney was God, I'm not yet over it
Message-ID:
<30E402E258191A418DAAAE74CD4F956B0433A630@GS-CLUSTER2-3.gs.adinternal.co
m>

<<At this point I view Paul McCartney as a very good songwriter and
recording artist ... but, given his highly-erratic success rate, I can
think of numerous other people I rank above him in both of those
categories.>>

OK, I'll bite, who's better?
<<

Since this question was directed at me, I'll answer by saying that over
the past 24 hours John and Jeff have both submitted to Audities lists of
songwriters / recording artists who currently rank above McCartney. My
list doesn't exactly correspond to their combined lists, of course, and
I might add some names of my own (if I were to stop and think about it
for awhile in the midst of a busy day), but their lists are a great
place to start.

I'm struck by the fact that this Audities conversation is taking place
while I'm in the midst of my annual two-week IPO Chicago marathon, the
one fortnight of the year when my appreciation of new music is at its
highest. (The two weeks after the latest SOTT batch hits my mailbox
ranks second.) I see terrific new bands -- most of them consisting of
twentysomethings, by the way -- and I end up getting my hands on new
material that I immediately want to pop into an iPod or give to others
on a mix CDR. It's a reinvigorating experience that annually reminds me
that contemporary power pop and melodic rock'n'roll in general is alive
and well.

Perhaps most importantly, these bands are not trying to reinvent the
wheel and make themselves unlistenable in the process. Some are adding
elements and changes that have the earmarks of something new -- what
Jaimie described as the revolutionary that gets blended in with the
cyclical. If the revolutionary is no longer such a high percentage of
the sonic makeup as opposed to the cyclical, so what? It gets harder and
harder to upset the applecart all the time when it's now been used to
sell apples for five decades. Any new changes rung on an old template
are that much more impressive, IMHO, because it's much, much harder to
innovate within the standard three-minute pop-song idiom in 2007 than it
was in 1967 or 1957. Others stick entirely with the tried-and-true, but
they do the tried-and-true so well that in terms of sheer ear appeal
their material stands up against anything that came before it.

It just makes me sad to think that there are older music lovers out
there, especially on this list, that have closed themselves off to new
artists and/or new music and have prejudged it all as inferior because
it isn't the music of their youth. As John said, to freeze the '60s in
amber and hold that era to be superior is silly. All artists deserve to
be judged upon the intrinsic merit (or lack thereof) of their own music,
and if you listen to them with your chronological biases intact you're
doing *yourself* a disservice as well as doing the artists a disservice.

And I have to roll my eyes at anyone on this list who thinks that he or
she is doing their kid a favor by feeding them a nonstop diet of oldies
because the alternative is to have them listen to Justin Timberlake or
Lil Kim. Give me a break! Every day Audities is replete with the names
of great contemporary acts; just this week alone there've been posts
devoted to Neil Finn, Jason Falkner, David Grahame, Mellowmen, and
Future Clouds and Radar. If you think that your kid's listening choices
are confined to the oldies you feed him or her, or the stuff that's
currently on the radio, then you aren't reading Audities very carefully.

I have a friend my age who never bought much music or went to many
concerts, and who presently has two teenage daughters. Ever since they
were born he and his wife have kept the oldies station on at home and in
the car. Those girls knew all the words to "Eight Days A Week", "Secret
Agent Man", and "Stop! In The Name Of Love" before they had learned how
to add and subtract in school. They still listen to the oldies in the
car, and they love those songs in spite of the fact that they predate
their births by two to three decades. But in their bedrooms they play My
Chemical Romance and Bowling For Soup on their stereos. And guess what?
My friend now likes those bands, too. His words: "I made them listen to
my favorite music their whole lives, so I figured that I owed it to them
to listen to theirs, too. And it turns out that some of the new stuff
they like is pretty good."

While I'm at it, three cheers for fiftysomething Mark Eichelberger, who
said yesterday, "I find it sad that some members of my generation become
fixated on a certain time or music. I am more than satisfied with the
quality of new music being released. Nothing gets me more jazzed up than
discovering new and exciting music."

Moral of the story: Arthritis of the ears is a completely avoidable
condition.


Greg Sager