It’s a little off-topic for me, but I want to point some little attention at this speech by Steven Van Zandt, which he gave at SXSW Music in March. In the speech, Van Zandt says that amid all the talk of distribution models, pricing and piracy, one aspect of the music business gets routinely ignored: the music.
The reason nobody wants to talk about it is because it mostly sucks! It blows! It is sucking major moose cock! Who are we kidding here? Nobody’s buying records? Because they suck!
Rock n’ roll, he says, is working class music, not often thought of as art. The Beatles changed things and made rock n’ roll more of an art form, but Van Zandt wonders if maybe that was an aberration because, in his mind, rock n’ roll is dance music. “One day we stopped dancing to it and started listening to it and it’s been downhill ever since,” he said.
We had a purpose. We had a specific goal, an intention, a mandate. We made you dance or we did not work – we did not get paid – we were fired – we were homeless. That requires a different energy. It is a working class energy. Not an artistic intellectual waiting around for inspiration energy. It’s a get up, go to work, and kill-energy. Rip it up or die trying.
The advent of the video was just the final nail in the performance coffin, a coffin that had already been constructed by years of excessive immersion in ganja, hashish, and all forms of water cooled bong therapy. You didn’t have to make people dance anymore. They were too stoned to dance! You didn’t even have to play your instrument anymore – all you had to do was act!
Now, Van Zandt says it has become uncool to play the hits, to play the songs you know work, the oldies and goodies, the classics. These days, performers are expected to write their own songs, which allows them to skip a bit of the performance-based learning process — you know, the phase where they actually become good performers who can please an audience. It also lets them skip the lessons they would have learned from playing those classic songs.
He also worries about the do-it-yourself spirit that’s infused the music business lately. Big labels hesitate to spend the money to develop young talent, so more and more musicians have to go it alone if they want to succeed. The problem, Van Zandt says, is that not everybody’s cut out to be a music star. But without the experienced mentoring and teaching, there’s nobody in the industry to tell them that, to encourage them to pursue other music directions or opportunities (or completely different careers).
As a result, he says, we drown in a sea of mediocre records produced by a generation full of DIY-ers who don’t have the guidance that the experienced musicians and producers can provide.
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Michael Becker has been blogging about academia, digital culture and journalism since 2005. He is the Web editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
Whither rock ‘n roll?
It’s a little off-topic for me, but I want to point some little attention at this speech by Steven Van Zandt, which he gave at SXSW Music in March. In the speech, Van Zandt says that amid all the talk of distribution models, pricing and piracy, one aspect of the music business gets routinely ignored: the music.
Rock n’ roll, he says, is working class music, not often thought of as art. The Beatles changed things and made rock n’ roll more of an art form, but Van Zandt wonders if maybe that was an aberration because, in his mind, rock n’ roll is dance music. “One day we stopped dancing to it and started listening to it and it’s been downhill ever since,” he said.
Now, Van Zandt says it has become uncool to play the hits, to play the songs you know work, the oldies and goodies, the classics. These days, performers are expected to write their own songs, which allows them to skip a bit of the performance-based learning process — you know, the phase where they actually become good performers who can please an audience. It also lets them skip the lessons they would have learned from playing those classic songs.
He also worries about the do-it-yourself spirit that’s infused the music business lately. Big labels hesitate to spend the money to develop young talent, so more and more musicians have to go it alone if they want to succeed. The problem, Van Zandt says, is that not everybody’s cut out to be a music star. But without the experienced mentoring and teaching, there’s nobody in the industry to tell them that, to encourage them to pursue other music directions or opportunities (or completely different careers).
As a result, he says, we drown in a sea of mediocre records produced by a generation full of DIY-ers who don’t have the guidance that the experienced musicians and producers can provide.
Related posts: