Drama Queen blog, by Sebastiaan
The Objective Artist (Part 1)
Saturday, January 26th, 2008Having examined in the previous chapter the extent to which the Beatles hastened the decadence of popular music, I would like now to take a closer look at the more positive side of their legacy: the reasons for their longevity.
What is a ‘concept-album’?
Linguistically, the term ‘concept-album’ is an odd one: you won’t find an equivalent in other artistic disciplines: what writer would call his book a concept-novel? It is impossible to write a novel without a concept, a unifying idea: it is called a subject. We will look equally in vain in cinema for a ‘concept-film’ or in classical music for a ‘concept-opera’. People will argue that the term concept-album is less tautological on the grounds that the modern record-album is, unlike the classical opera, a non-narrative form of musical expression. But music is a temporal art form and as such cannot be anything other than narrative. Even pure music (classical, instrumental music) emerged only after music’s every movement had been fully invested with meaning through its age-old marriage to poetry, so that finally it became possible to tell a story without words.
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Final Part)
Thursday, December 20th, 2007Connecting people
The notion that the Internet connects people is a dreadful error. Only great art, carrying universal truth across the ages, is capable of that. When a culture no longer has the strength for universal aesthetics, it seeks refuge in the niche. Society divides itself into segments. People withdraw into zones: small cliques of apparently like-minded individuals, continually splintering into ever smaller sections, and becoming more and more alienated from one another, until finally the world is made up of segments, each containing only one totally disconnected self. The Internet is just another agent of this disintegration process, this - democratization. (more…)
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Part 12)
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007Niche art vs. universal art.
Great music markets itself. The only reason why marketing considerations are so important these days is because product is so bad. It has by now become even impossible to write a hit. Our pop tradition is so weak that even a genius will struggle to shape something memorable and universal out of the refuse to which the public is currently attuned.
In their desperate attempts to create brand recognition, our mundane and anaemic artists/marketers are forced to think up increasingly absurd niches for themselves. On the Internet these wretches have discovered their natural home. (more…)
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Part 11)
Monday, December 17th, 2007Only in it for the money
Record companies have always promoted the hit. As such they were vanguards of popular culture. Now popular music is losing its value. Britain's ‘Top of the Pops' was discontinued because it was no longer possible to turn a handful of our era's pop songs into a culturally significant television programme. Nowadays, people consume music, rather than listen to it. Music provides background noise for mundane activities: jogging, driving, dishwashing. This is music's new purpose, and as such it still carries huge economic force, but its cultural relevance is none. Even financially viable pop songs are mercifully forgotten one, maybe two, month after their release. The BBC all but admitted that ‘Top of the Pops' was axed because today's pop music was rubbish. (more…)
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Part 10)
Monday, December 17th, 2007Zombie music
Imagine it: a random teenager, having been a fan of white rock music for much of his life, picks up a guitar and manages somehow to write a song. In light of the fact that record companies expect to receive a return on only 5% (sic) of their signings, it is not wholly unimaginable that some A’n’R guy somewhere decides to put the marketing department behind precisely this song and turn it into a hit. Perhaps the teenager is good looking and speaks in a northern accent, who knows? In any case: he has a hit. (more…)
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Part 9)
Thursday, December 6th, 2007
Plagiarism is easy
Well, those who try to follow in the Beatles’ footsteps, seduced by their public image, rather then the evidence of their talent and phenomenal work ethic, predictably manoeuvre themselves quickly into a tight corner. Having never received anything but the most basic musical training, these ordinary boys can not help but be of the opinion that experimentation fosters great art and habitually claim they write with the aim to break rules. Ironically, since they are unschooled and have no instinctive grasp of the rules, they are incapable of breaking any and end up writing extremely derivative and unoriginal material.
(more…)
Plagiarism is easy
Well, those who try to follow in the Beatles’ footsteps, seduced by their public image, rather then the evidence of their talent and phenomenal work ethic, predictably manoeuvre themselves quickly into a tight corner. Having never received anything but the most basic musical training, these ordinary boys can not help but be of the opinion that experimentation fosters great art and habitually claim they write with the aim to break rules. Ironically, since they are unschooled and have no instinctive grasp of the rules, they are incapable of breaking any and end up writing extremely derivative and unoriginal material.
(more…)
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Part 8)
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007Artists are freaks
The unification of the various musical developments that informed the Beatles’ early song writing was underpinned by a rigorous unity of theme in their lyrics. Their songs ranged in subject from love, heartache and friendship, to work, money troubles and paying taxes, but can all be categorised under the collective heading: the glorification of working-class life.
Artists have always been viewed by the people as rather freakish. Indeed, to possess a talent is still something of which the common man is naturally in awe and at the same time highly suspicious. Traditionally, talent is viewed as a gift from God or something one acquires through haggling with the Devil. A poet is a travelling visionary who is everywhere a welcome guest, but who is never invited to stay indefinitely. (more…)
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Part 7)
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007The Sixties
In the field of popular music, the Sixties have come to be regarded as the pre-eminently brilliant decade of the twentieth century. Compared to our current age, one would surely have to admit that it had one or two things going for it. However, as regards musical sophistication and poetic elegance, in other words, on a purely aesthetic basis, the songwriters of the Sixties pale into insignificance next to those of the Twenties, Thirties and Forties, with one notable exception: Brian Wilson, the man who founded the Beach Boys. He alone can rightfully be linked to the Golden Age of Song. He is in the main line of the great American songwriters, such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, but only as a figure of decadence, as the art form’s last hurrah, as a final glimpse of its former grandeur.
Quite frankly: by the time Kennedy was shot, the art of song writing had been in decline for some time. Through the increasing scarcity of classically trained, highly skilled composers and the public’s consequent attenuation to increasingly impure expressions of the artistic form, dilettantes like the Beatles found themselves able to make an impact on the public domain. (more…)
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Part 6)
Saturday, November 17th, 2007Art is hard
The creative process is, of course, not miraculous. (Although it might seem so to Axl.) The conventions and creative limitations that constitute an art form can be easily explained. Anyone with intelligence, as well as the discipline to apply himself for a good number of years to intense study, can gain a solid grounding for their practical application. Of course, from lack of talent, you may yet fail to make a masterpiece, but you will have gained an understanding of the process (and can be secure in the knowledge that you fulfil the minimum requirements for a job in A’n’R.)
The Democratization of the Music Industry (Part 5)
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007Guns ‘n’ Roses
I am certain that Axl Rose did not study literature, although, in his case, even if he had, I remain unconvinced that he would have thought better of writing, in the opening line of ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’:
“She’s got a smile that, it seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories.”
Axl is here singing about a girl whose smile reminds him not of his childhood, but of the memories of his childhood. As if that were not absurd enough, it also emerges that he is not entirely sure whether her smile reminds him of the memories of his childhood, since it only seems to remind him of the memories of his childhood. At this point, already in the first sentence, Axl is at least three levels removed from reality, which, with the knowledge of hindsight, is clearly where he felt he most belonged. (more…)