As a reader of most things musical, insofar as music creation and production goes, nothing makes me either smile or roll my eyes like the now frequent declarations that the "album" as a musical construct is dead, done in by the nefarious forces of glassy-eyed internet streaming junkies for whom listening to more than one song by a particular band or performer is like so yesterday.
To this I say: uh-huh, sure.
My apathy is not merely based on my own predilection towards theme based albums, to which my recent releases will attest, but to the overwhelming fact that along with this proclamation of era in finem, are articles of bands and artists discussing their latest releases which invariably are albums! This is not surprising for most artists are thematic, whether rock, Jazz, or Metal.
So what is going on?
Everybody talk about Pop Muzak!
Pop music has always been about singles stretching back to the days of 45's, 78's, and further back if you include that period a hundred plus years ago when sheet music and player pianos were in vogue. Most of us have fond memories of one hit wonders and those bands or groups that were created in our formative years, whatever period that may mean to you-whether it was Bobby Sherman, Kajagoogoo, the Spice Girls, or the latest K-Pop-they were not created for the purposes of thematic music; they were created for mass consumption and as such are best represented by a series of singles, assuming the first gets any traction.
I won't get into the fine art of Pop sensation creation; that in itself would take up an entire column, but will say that, much like the death of Rock-which is somewhat precarious-talk of the death of the album, and certainly the disingenuous posturing that doing one is a waste of time and resources, is total bunk.
Not everyone wants to be the next teen sensation, most musicians and songwriters have stories to tell, loves to extoll or commiserate, and injustices to decry, and even if they are released separately, their songs inevitably build upon a theme; that's how we identify with them; that is their legacy. So just keep truckin' and do your thing.
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Monday, March 19, 2018
The Past Never Goes Away
In my never-ending quest for everything to be just so, I was cleaning out the crawlspace and came across a box of textbooks from college and lodged in there with them were these old Musician magazines I'd held onto.
It was beyond interesting to re-read them. They range from the early 80's to the early 90's. I began reading and then subscribing to the magazine in the early 80's and read it religiously till it stopped being published. I didn't save very many, but the ones I did tended to reflect my interests or shocking events; the ones above covering Steely Dan 12 years apart (1981,1993), and the deaths of Zappa and Kurt Cobain not long after this edition came out.
Perhaps more interesting is the world of music at those times. In the early 80's I was getting more and more immersed in writing and recording, buying my Tascam 244 and figuring out how to use it. Unlike today, where just about everything and everybody has a website or Facebook or Soundcloud page, finding new music or what people were doing was generally the domain of magazines, fanzines, and industry newsletters. I'd forgotten how much was jammed into an issue. As an example, the March '81 magazine had interviews with Steve Winwood, coming out of a self imposed retirement, Steely Dan, finally releasing Gaucho after years of legal fighting with their label, John Lennon, this was two moths after his murder and people were still trying to understand why, record business news, Jazz news, up and coming bands U2 and the Psychedelic Furs, a look at the music scene in Austin before SXSW took it over, think eclectic country and what we now call Americana, music reviews, gear reviews, critical snark; it had it all.
The other trend, if it is that, is the new found love of the old, in this case cassette tapes of which I have a few.
Like many a poor fool I had a record collection and a tape machine and so, as was the custom, I made tapes for the car and my Walkman. That this would be making a comeback is amusing to say the least, but maybe it's not that far-fetched. Obviously, making lists of songs to share is the happening thing, but often, as one should expect, on many sites it's more and more lists created to push a particular artist or label. And there is the old school notion of actually getting together to listen to each others tapes, or playing them for one another; that human touch thing rearing its head.
As I said, interesting.
This Week's Song: The Concerns of the Holy, is from Life Without Chickens, is something of an elegy to being a holy-man in this day and age; is it for real or is it just a racket to take advantage of a bunch of rubes. Lyrically I tried to play on that ambivalence. Musically, the song is fairly simple, 2 guitars, a synth, and a drum pattern with my usual desire to have them interweave like smoke rising from a flame.
You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com
It was beyond interesting to re-read them. They range from the early 80's to the early 90's. I began reading and then subscribing to the magazine in the early 80's and read it religiously till it stopped being published. I didn't save very many, but the ones I did tended to reflect my interests or shocking events; the ones above covering Steely Dan 12 years apart (1981,1993), and the deaths of Zappa and Kurt Cobain not long after this edition came out.
Perhaps more interesting is the world of music at those times. In the early 80's I was getting more and more immersed in writing and recording, buying my Tascam 244 and figuring out how to use it. Unlike today, where just about everything and everybody has a website or Facebook or Soundcloud page, finding new music or what people were doing was generally the domain of magazines, fanzines, and industry newsletters. I'd forgotten how much was jammed into an issue. As an example, the March '81 magazine had interviews with Steve Winwood, coming out of a self imposed retirement, Steely Dan, finally releasing Gaucho after years of legal fighting with their label, John Lennon, this was two moths after his murder and people were still trying to understand why, record business news, Jazz news, up and coming bands U2 and the Psychedelic Furs, a look at the music scene in Austin before SXSW took it over, think eclectic country and what we now call Americana, music reviews, gear reviews, critical snark; it had it all.
The other trend, if it is that, is the new found love of the old, in this case cassette tapes of which I have a few.
Like many a poor fool I had a record collection and a tape machine and so, as was the custom, I made tapes for the car and my Walkman. That this would be making a comeback is amusing to say the least, but maybe it's not that far-fetched. Obviously, making lists of songs to share is the happening thing, but often, as one should expect, on many sites it's more and more lists created to push a particular artist or label. And there is the old school notion of actually getting together to listen to each others tapes, or playing them for one another; that human touch thing rearing its head.
As I said, interesting.
This Week's Song: The Concerns of the Holy, is from Life Without Chickens, is something of an elegy to being a holy-man in this day and age; is it for real or is it just a racket to take advantage of a bunch of rubes. Lyrically I tried to play on that ambivalence. Musically, the song is fairly simple, 2 guitars, a synth, and a drum pattern with my usual desire to have them interweave like smoke rising from a flame.
You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com
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