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[Phil]

Well, it used to be that....ummm....
but, with the newer...uh....

ah...the hell with it. NASCAR season started today, so I'll check back around November to see if anything important happened here.

Phil

[Bob Olhsson]

WhyKooper wrote on Sun, 13 February 2005 18:21

...while the Beatles were being turned down by every company in town.  Do you remember?  Were you there?

At least we framed our copy of our rejection letter to the Beatles and hung it on the wall! The Beatles were an utterly amazing wild-card and just about as far as one could possibly get from being a product of the music industry. The rest of the "British invasion" was pretty conventional.

The point I was trying to make is that I don't think record labels have ever had nearly as much power as people seem to attribute to them other than obviously the power to screw up.

[Bob Olhsson]

jazzius wrote on Sun, 13 February 2005 23:07

...i'm sure the 40+ something engineers/producers/musicians were saying the same thing when the Beatles, Hendrix or Led Zep were banging out their best stuff...

At least the ones I knew at that time were utterly impressed! There always are people who identify with a genre and have a hard time with anything else but there is also such a thing as just plain great music that transcends genre and style.

[stevieeastend]

@bob, whykooper

I was afraid that you gonna write this. You have to be, and you are right as you know the whole story of the record biz in america.
What I wrote has been actually true for my country and germany a couple of years ago. Because the subsidiaries  of the majors in my country earned 80% of their income with selling the international, already well known, acts they used to have the possiblity to search for talents and build them up in order to get some payback in return in a couple of years, which is, and was also true for germany but isn?t anymore as well as here.
f.e. Herbert Groenemeyer(maybe some of you know the name) has been build up as an artist because the company believed he might sell in a couple of years. Now he is the biggest act in the whole german spoken region and sells millions.

Actually this way of a "supply-driven-policy" is the way I run my label. Giving talented people the opportunity to develop over a couple of years and let them record whenever the studio is not booked...

cheers
steveeastend

[jazzius]

Bob Olhsson wrote on Mon, 14 February 2005 06:03

jazzius wrote on Sun, 13 February 2005 23:07 ...i'm sure the 40+ something engineers/producers/musicians were saying the same thing when the Beatles, Hendrix or Led Zep were banging out their best stuff... At least the ones I knew at that time were utterly impressed! There always are people who identify with a genre and have a hard time with anything else but there is also such a thing as just plain great music that transcends genre and style.

Absolutely Bob......it was meant somewhat tongue in cheek.....but the point is, if you say to a 20 year old today "did you know that music was better in the old days?", i expect you'll be greeted with a blank stare and silence....for about one second..... 'till their phone goes off with a BEP ringtone.....and lets face it, the young people are the future, like it or not....cheers!...D

[lucey]

My view of "Good Music" is diverse, but it shares one thing ... depth of character and musicianship that is present, yet not wanking.  Stars are not the ticket, the music is the ticket. In that sense I feel more British than American in my tastes.  No musicianship is okay, but musicianship that's not wanking is best.

Kind of Blue era Miles/Pink Floyd/Zeppelin/some Beatles/some King Crimson/Gabriel/Eno/JJ Cale/Talking Heads/Police/The Clash/Joni Mitchell/The Band/ACDC/Ozzy/Sarah Mclaughlin/Coldplay/some Clapton/Audioslave/Tool/some Dylan/some Bjork/Bob Marley/Taj Mahal/Jimi, etc

The whole Motown era you keep referring to Bob is your unique and interesting experience, yet with the exception of Marvin Gaye, it's not the gold standard for my musical world over the last 30 years, nor is the pop/image/sexy sensibility that's been the focus since Video killed the Radio Star.

In the UK they've had enough of this disposable crap, and let's hope they can influence US.  As a large market with GROWING sales numbers... they have a point or two.  Maybe longevity is not a young person that makes records like widgets for 30 years ... maybe longevity is a creative force that has something more than a hook and a smile to offer over time.  

Maybe love and truth still matter.   Maybe what people want is fleeting, but what they need is better music and selling what we need is better business?

Read this and see if you think they're on to something.

[maxdimario]

If record companies would only press records of 'artistic' (to paraphrase the article) young bands instead of computer-pop singers, the whole industry (and the whole country culturally) would certainly benefit.

As far as mediocre or 'green' product goes it is far better to teach the kids to appreciate real artists, be they excellent entertainers or just enough, and have the chance that those artists will grow in some way.

let's not forget that, no record executive or A&R man has ever really had any clue of what would be a hit or not for an unknown artist!

for precisely this reason execs and investors have applied the tried and true methods of mass marketing and advertising to the music industry in order to 'control' it by making only certain kinds of products accessible to the masses via MTV radio etc.

They control the money that fuels the music media.

A lot of the so-called disposable groups or artistes only last between 6 months and 2 years anyway until forgotten forever...almost.

once the kids understand that music is a cultural and artistic fenomena that can change their lives they will become more interested overall and will become better buyers.

Computer pop and rap-dance tries to eliminate the human element along with anything that resembles individuality both in sound and in artistic vision, in order to make the product fit into the existing market in the easyest way possible.

too bad that some kids think that that's all there is to music.

music need not be old to communicate something to the listener, it is the record companies that in their infinite wisdom have conditioned the market to their cost/production needs by eliminating the art of music.

music without art...HA HA HA now that's funny!!!!!

.. they'll reap what they sow.

[fadeout]

Quote:

For crying out loud, it's a business.  And the buyers are kids.  That never changes.

Some buyers are kids, not all. I think that the notion that only kids want/buy contemporary music is a throwback to the early days of rock'n'roll, when there was a truer cultural divide between the classical or big band era (parents) and the new rock/pop that the kids listened to.  

The kids - which now really means KIDS, as kids get older younger, the 16-18 year olds of the 60's are the 10-12 year olds of now - are a fickle and ludicrously short-term marketing prospect. There's a double-whammy here - not only is all this effort being put into trying to captialize on a short-term market, but we're doing little or nothing to nurture our future generations and develop their creativity and musical interest that will foster (a) a long term record buyer and (b) the creative talent of the future.

We're parents feeding our kids bubblegum instead of food, and the kids aren't gonna HAVE a future! A little bubblegum is fine, but where's the beef???!  

The word "talent" has come up a lot in this thread. This sticks out to me like a sore thumb. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but mere talent was never good enough, was it? The music industry of old was not built on talent - it was built on GENIUS.  Talent just fills in the blanks, picks up the slack, gives people something to do. Genius is what makes the difference.

Zeppelin, Beatles, Hendrix, whoever...all the names that keep coming up again and again.... these people were not merely talented. Cole Porter was not merely talented.  Bob Marley wasn't merely talented. There's a long long list. The term genius is so overused and abused (like so much of the language) that it's lost its meaning, but I do think that this is perhaps the one thing that has changed - genius has all but disappeared from the music industry. Along with honesty and integrity. As a culture, we now seem to value conformity over creativity.

By "genius" I mean not just exceptional talent, but a spiritual involvement with the art, a visionary approach, an implicit understanding of music (or whichever discipline), an ability to channel something greater than simply craft, and at the same time, the practical down-to-earth ability to develop those ideas into fully developed end-products. A level of creativity that goes far beyond the mundane. Very hard to define or describe, very easy to recognize.

The good thing about geniuses is that they raise the bar for everyone else. They light the way. One or two even minor geniuses might help us out enormously right now.

[compasspnt]

fadeout wrote on Mon, 14 February 2005 10:04

"What he said" (see above)

Very nicely said Chris!  This forum certainly has some good thinkers tuning in!

[stevieeastend]

very interesting post chris!

cheers
steveeastend

[phist]

jazzius wrote on Mon, 14 February 2005 08:50

Absolutely Bob......it was meant somewhat tongue in cheek.....but the point is, if you say to a 20 year old today "did you know that music was better in the old days?", i expect you'll be greeted with a blank stare and silence....for about one second..... 'till their phone goes off with a BEP ringtone.....and lets face it, the young people are the future, like it or not....cheers!...D

well, i can't say i agree. i'm 22 and hate over 90% of the "music" that's produced nowadays. i think that old soul/funk/etc records sound waay sweeter than all this new "r&b". i'm sure it's also because of worse songwriting but i like the sound too.

[Andy Simpson]

Now, genius is a great term, and highlights the plight of the industry....

However, what is required is multiple geniuses in the same band. That is how you get real results.

Andy

Btw, what would you do if you discovered a struggling band that were better than the beatles? Seriously?
It is technically possible......

[fadeout]

andy_simpson wrote on Tue, 15 February 2005 19:05

Btw, what would you do if you discovered a struggling band that were better than the beatles? Seriously? It is technically possible......

Offer to produce them? Beg, maybe?!

But "better than the Beatles" at what point? 1962? 1966? 1970? Before or after they worked with Sir George? They grew. And they grew because they were allowed to grow. They had help, they had resources, they worked, they kept getting better. And, don't forget luck and/or fate, depending your point of view.  

I would not doubt that there are people out there right now who are as gifted as the members of the fab four, in whatever genre.

Their challenge is not just to be discovered, it's to get past the industry!

As for the topic question, I think it's almost unanswerable, except to say that I think that the potential for greatness has increased in tandem with the potential for screwing up. Just personally, my own ability to record quality audio on my own terms has skyrocketed.

[Lee Flier]

jazzius wrote on Mon, 14 February 2005 03:50

....but the point is, if you say to a 20 year old today "did you know that music was better in the old days?", i expect you'll be greeted with a blank stare and silence....for about one second..... 'till their phone goes off with a BEP ringtone.....

Well maybe if you just say that without any context, but I've seen too many 20 year olds' faces light up of late when they first hear an old recording spin off a reel of tape, to really agree with you.

[Bob Olhsson]

Human beings respond to all kinds of music. Lynn Anderson gave me chills and tears streaming down my face in a club a few months ago yet I was never particularly a fan of her or country music. Recording Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops had the same effect.

There's lots more going on with music than just style, genre, pitch or time.