As I begin writing this I'm not sure if it will be a cohesive article or simply a rant. As long as I get my point across and someone reads it I guess it will have served its purpose.
I'm a music fan. Wait, that's an understatement: I'm a music fanatic. I can remember as a young child listening to songs and being taken away by how musicians can manipulate our thought processes and emotions with a song. That was in the 1970's when some great musicians were larger than life. Led Zeppelin, KISS, Peter Frampton, Queen, The Eagles, Pink Floyd, ELO, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, and other great artists had an aura of mystique surrounding them. They wrote songs about things we could all relate to: Love, hope, dreams, despair, uncertainty, and pre-grunge angst. They also wrote songs about things that we could only experience through the art of music and film: Gypsies, Vikings, space, historical events, faraway lands, etc... But no matter what the song was about there were artists who could evoke an emotional response from the listener that made Southern Baptist preachers green with envy. Perhaps that was the real reason they were playing records backwards to scare us into thinking that "meeerop si koontaw va amma" sounded like "satan is my god". Who knows.
But the music moved people. We drew the logos of our favorite bands on our notebooks and bought tee shirts to let the world know that we rocked. Because rock was cool and we were too if only by association.
In the 1980's things began to change. Music started becoming more of a commodity than it once was. Some say that the 1980's was a musical wasteland but there was still a lot of great music being made. Van Halen, Guns n Roses, U2, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Police, The Violent Femmes, REM, The Cure, and Duran Duran all found their way to success in the 80's.
Then came the 1990's and the grunge scene exploded from Seattle providing a much needed cleansing from the corporate bastardization of pop and metal that were ubiquitous in the previous decade. So what did the record companies do? They bastardized grunge by thinking that all it took was to get four guys wearing flannel shirts to detune their old garage sale relic guitars and have the singer sing about how fucked up everything is in his best "yarling" voice. Then came Nickelback...
To be continued...
I'm a music fan. Wait, that's an understatement: I'm a music fanatic. I can remember as a young child listening to songs and being taken away by how musicians can manipulate our thought processes and emotions with a song. That was in the 1970's when some great musicians were larger than life. Led Zeppelin, KISS, Peter Frampton, Queen, The Eagles, Pink Floyd, ELO, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, and other great artists had an aura of mystique surrounding them. They wrote songs about things we could all relate to: Love, hope, dreams, despair, uncertainty, and pre-grunge angst. They also wrote songs about things that we could only experience through the art of music and film: Gypsies, Vikings, space, historical events, faraway lands, etc... But no matter what the song was about there were artists who could evoke an emotional response from the listener that made Southern Baptist preachers green with envy. Perhaps that was the real reason they were playing records backwards to scare us into thinking that "meeerop si koontaw va amma" sounded like "satan is my god". Who knows.
But the music moved people. We drew the logos of our favorite bands on our notebooks and bought tee shirts to let the world know that we rocked. Because rock was cool and we were too if only by association.
In the 1980's things began to change. Music started becoming more of a commodity than it once was. Some say that the 1980's was a musical wasteland but there was still a lot of great music being made. Van Halen, Guns n Roses, U2, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Police, The Violent Femmes, REM, The Cure, and Duran Duran all found their way to success in the 80's.
Then came the 1990's and the grunge scene exploded from Seattle providing a much needed cleansing from the corporate bastardization of pop and metal that were ubiquitous in the previous decade. So what did the record companies do? They bastardized grunge by thinking that all it took was to get four guys wearing flannel shirts to detune their old garage sale relic guitars and have the singer sing about how fucked up everything is in his best "yarling" voice. Then came Nickelback...
To be continued...
