spirit in cellophane
Everything on the radio sounded like nonsense to me this morning. My usual alternative/heavy rock stations are playing the abused and worn out hymns of depression and violence against spouses, government, culture, whatever. Angsty teens re-phrase the same angsty nonsense every self-centered, small-perspective, over-entitled and under-educated person has been saying for the past twenty years in the style popular with today's producers, and then Green Day has the disgusting audacity to act like it's new, and that they're doing this for the people, and that it's about the music, and crap like that. It's insulting to the depressed.
Adjusting my tuner to the Christian station, I'm again subject to the senseless repetition of five to ten meaningless phrases, usually relating God to other happy things like oxygen and rain. It reduces the themes of redemption and grace to 3.27 minutes of commercialism, and then the station plays an add about how their music is better because it's positive and encouraging, and that it's okay to exploit worship in the name of the almighty dollar if it's cleverly juxtaposed to the name of God.
If I was sadistic enough to listen to country, the exploited theme would probably be something very sentimental, like having children or loving women or being a tragic hero in times of trouble, or patriotism, and how great our country is, and how much better America is than anyone else. With Rap, it's almost exclusively sex, and sometimes money, and the various strange ways of showing that one has it. And then there's pop, which is unashamedly inconsequential, and usually focused on the cheapest parody Avril Lavigne can blend into her eyeshadow or Britney Spears can fit between her breasts.
American Music is, largely, inartistic crap. The artists, the musicians, are forced to sell out to make a living appeasing we-the-masses who really can't stomach anything that can't be wrapped in cellophane. As if depression could be summed up in power chords, as if patriotism was only about being tough, as if the spirit of the living God could be printed on business cards and billboards and t-shirts.
When Jesus kicked throttled the hypocritically businessmen out of the temple with his homemade whip of chords, they went to straight to the arts - to Madison avenue and Hollywood and Nashville - and the result was our culture of neither style nor substance, but enough flash and bang to keep our libido's satisfied.
At what point do "rants" against culture become just as cliche as the culture they're ranting against? I almost don't even want to post this. Validate me, please?
posted by RJ @ 12:23 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I think the problem with music in America today is that the average person has absolutely no art education. They would rather listen to Green Day than Mozart. In fact, they probably think that Mozart is boring because his music isn't loud and doesn't proclaim a simple message which does not apply to them but makes them feel cool by pretending they understand.
Its the problem with all the arts today. How many people do you know who can tell the difference between the artistic merit of Picasso and Thomas Kincade (or however you spell his name)? Probably no one. Why is it profitable to make Blade Trinity and Underworld 2 but not Shakespear? Why do WalMart romance novels sell better than Wordsworth, Yeates, Keats, Shelley, or any decent writer? The accessibility of art to the average person has resulted in its degredation. It used to be that only the discerning could afford to pay for art, so only good art lasted. Today the masses fund the arts, so you survive by appealing to their uneducated desires for instant gratification. The average person can't tell the difference between good art and the crap their 3 year old made in day care, and in the absence of the rich patrons of old good art has degraded itself to their crass tastes -- and the result is a nation with no culture or soul. In conclusion, I hate consumerism.
so you think it's a class issue?
I'm stuck in the middle. I want capitalism and good art. The problem is, as you've pointed out, the masses don't. The other problem is that good intellectuals, who should appreciate good art, like J. Morgan Caler, would take any sort of senseless brit-pop over Steve Vai or Dream Theater any day.
One of my best friends is a music teacher in a suburban Detroit elementary school. She says all her students want to be the next Eminem or Britney Spears and it takes a while for them to warm up to the classics. She says that they eventually see some of the value of Mozart, chant and traditional African tribal music (which some wouldn't consider "classic" but whatever). I think music education is a tough subject and you're not (without being a SUPERB teacher) going to get kids to fall head over heels for Dvorak.
I think you're underestimating the independent musicians, though. Sure, they make WAY less money and tour much less auspiciously, but they're around. I mean, Ben Folds had his fifteen seconds of mega-fame, but he's been around for years. He writes clever lyrics, lovely and original music, and he embodies much of his generations failed hopes in an artistic fashion. So you probably won't hear "Rockin' the Suburbs" at the grocery store. You can still buy it, download it, and make it the soundtrack to your roadtrips and Saturday afternoons at home. If anything, though the bad will proliferate with the good of course, the digital age will make it easier for unknown artists NOT to be rooted out by the former keepers of the cultural gates - record companies, radio conglomerates, mass-market art purveyors.
Mozart was not really available or interesting to most of the masses for centuries. He did write his "Magic Flute" for a vaudville audience, but it's so different from our current popular spectacles that its "more out of touch" than "apex of the people's entertainment." Does that mean it's a class thing? I don't know. I think it's an exposure thing. It's a matter of what your parents played in your childhood environment. It's a matter of whether you end up an orchestra nerd with a clarinet in hand and Bach on your music stand. As always, I think it's about falling in love with the art form and the artist who manipulates it to communicate something stirring and profound or just damn gorgeous.
As you probably realized from my name-dropping, I'm much more a music nerd than a lover of the visual arts. I wish I knew more there, but I'm learning my Picasso from my Kinkade (who I know realize SUCKS. Fortunately, I only liked him for like 2 years in high school, so I'm absolved. Please?) and trying to explore the local galleries and exhibits. Where are the modern-day Cezannes? I'm less well-versed on that question, but I'm searching.
But Steve Vai and Dream Theater completely suck. They are like human computers; just because you can shred your axe with lightning speed and make wicked sounds with complex arrangements of effects pedals doesn’t mean you are making music. In fact, it probably means you aren’t. You are probably making crap.
That said, I completely validate you. I think you are right; I just don’t know what alternatives there reasonably are. But I am right there with you, man.
PS – don’t confuse country with hick-pop. Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Toby Keith, etc. are not country musicians; they are rednecks and they make pop music.
Look, while I hate the evangelical hype surrounding Kincaide, I gotta give the guy credit - that is not bad art. It might not be great art either, but it's not on the same level as Green Day. He's a talented man. Picasso and other more "artistic" artists who helped bring us into modernism did lots of anti-art, where they refused to submit to objective rules of symmetry and form and decided instead to experiment with deconstruction, deformation, and destruction. Does that make them more artistic? There's a case to be made there - they have a message, where as kincaide simply has a pretty cottage - but it's not as clear cut as I think you've said it is.
Computer noises? Come on! While there is some progressive rock and heavy metal that play fast and complicated for no reason other than to do so, DT isn't one of them. They're amazing because they play fast, complicated stuff that still has a profoundly musical side to it. There's melody and inversion and all sorts of stuff in there.
The fact that you couldn't churn out an entire DT album in 2 hours shows that, if nothing else, it's on a vastly different playing field than Britney Spears. I could easily right a computer program to make pop songs - making one write dream theater would be insanely difficult.
Anyone heard of Steve Reich? That guy rocks my face off.
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