JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Collabs are rampant these days!

I like sports. I'm watching the Giants beat Washington right now. I like boxing too, watched a lot of it while I was a kid.

But the music business is nothing like sports.

Sports are quantifiable. You push someone over a line. Knock them down. Move a ball a certain distance. If you watch a football game or boxing match, you know who won. If you compare Paul Simon to Joni Mitchell, some folks won't like one, some won't like the other, some both, and some neither. So, who won? the one who sold the most albums? That would be Taylor Swift. The one that Mike C. says won? I'd say neither, I'd say John Prine won.

Music is more like politics. Or, my favorite comparison, music is like the restaurant business. But, I'm not going to go into metaphors. I'd rather talk about music itself.

When we were kids, music was more important to our lives than it is to kids today. Music took the place of the internet, the video game, the cell phone, texting, the mall, and on and on in today's world. For us, music was more important to our culture, we didn't have those other things. So we had time to really get into music. Can you win at the new video game? I don't even know what the new ones are, except Guitar Hero. My son can beat them all very quickly. Year ago, the time he spent playing video games, he would have spent listening to the latest Poco album.

Kids now, don't want music to focus on. They want music to be the soundtrack for other stuff. It's more like the 50's. Be bop a lu la. Bim bam boom. Poppa Oo Mow Mow. Blip blip blip blip blip blip blip blip, Mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum. Oooo Oooo Baby baby. That 50's pop filled the bill....it did it's job. So, was it bad? Funny, if you played "Yellow Submarine" or "Bohemian Rhapsody" to a bunch of guys cruising the soda shop in 1955, they'd have called you a sissy and slapped you. So, what was wrong? Why didn't the heavyweights from the future knock out the shallow stuff from the 50's? Why wasn't it obvious that this was something superior? Because the audience was not led to it.

Just like the audience who first heard Stravinsky's Firebird actually rioted in the theater and began burning the seats, any truly revolutionary art is often not appreciated in it's vanguard. And just like the Beatles took rock from woooo woooo to she came through the bathroom window, they started with something accessible, then moved to something revolutionary. They first created the audience, then they led them on their musical journey. Taylor Swift may take her fans on a ride as she develops. She's already entered the first phase, a lot of people talk about her and she has a lot of people who don't even know her, that hate her. Just like the Beatles did. Just like Stravinsky did. Just like Elvis did. Whether she becomes a pivot point or not, only time will tell. Who knew it would be the Beatles instead of the Beach Boys to be the revolutionary pivot point? The Beach Boys were quite possibly more talented than the Beatles. Glen Campbell could play rings around George Harrison, and they outsang them by a country mile. So why weren't the Beach Boys the heavyweights? Because music isn't quantifiable. It's based on taste and fashion, and tastes and fashion always change.

I think I'll go and listen to some Louvin Brothers. Now that's REAL music.