Music, or Not... It's all a matter of opinion

I have listened to music for as long as I can remember, I don’t recall songs in the family, but ever since I listened to Uncle Mac on a Saturday morning; music has played a significant part of my life. There is music out there that inspires me, soothes me, drives me on, makes me emotional, makes me happy, and that reflects every mood you can imagine, and music that reminds me of most of the incidents of my life.

As, I think, with most people, the music I consider best, most important to me is the music I was listening to as a youth and young man, growing up, in my scuffling days. Nowadays I echo the words of my parents generation, the music is ok, but not as good as when I was younger. I always said I would never go that way… 

I have always tried to follow contemporary music, the music of the day, but my tastes are very broad, ranging from traditional, rock, blues, jazz, opera, classical, medieval… a broad range of stuff. I don’t, however, like to pigeon-hole music, it simply doesn’t work. There are some performances that fir snugly into a category, but the majority, especially when you look at albums, concerts and careers, that span many genres.

I personally prefer to consider music in three categories, I like it, I don’t like it, I am ambivalent towards it, and what fits into each category will be your own, we will all have different lists under each heading. It doesn’t mean the music I love is better than the music you love, or vice versa. Of course some music is “good” in that it conforms to the musical rules, is technically well played and sung, but that doesn’t mean it is enjoyable necessarily, as there is some music that doesn’t conform to the rules, is technically badly played and sung, but can still be enjoyable.

The thing that horrifies me about music nowadays, what has devalued new music over the last 10 or 15 years can be summed up in two words… Simon Cowell. Of course Cowell wasn’t the first to do what he does, but he is probably the best at it, and the current “master”.

Historically people made music, yes, many had managers, producers and the rest, but historically most artists, certainly the ones that lasted more than the one brief spark of fame, learned their craft on the streets, in clubs, pubs, colleges and bottom of the bill at festivals and concert halls. They learned to respond, they learned to adapt their material, they learned what was liked, what wasn’t. They could build on the good things and grow into mature quality performers. If you are playing a small club to 100 people, you can see their response to what you do petty clearly.

Too many artists now think the road to success is through the talent show route, Britain’s Got Talent, X-Factor… and of course that is the way to short term success… every series, thousands of “wannabees”  makes total fools of themselves, lining Cowell’s pockets in the process, for the sake of the life changing payday. Of course if they can invent a heartrending back story they have a better chance of being “talented”.

Listen critically to these shows, the 12 or so individuals or bands that get to the live finals have all displayed some qualities in the auditions and early part of the process, then in the finals, under the glare of a massive publicity machine, the are morphed by the show into 12 identikit acts, singing songs they wouldn’t touch in real life, in a way they wouldn’t sing them for themselves, to identikit arrangements… until they are all totally interchangeable, and interchangeable with last years class as well…it is all bland manufactured music. These people haven’t learned their craft around the live circuit, benefit parasitically from the expertise of the soulless machine that Cowell presides over to turn out mindless identikit

 music .

Look now at the music racks in the supermarkets… what percent of the CD’s on display are spawned by these talent shows? I don’t have a figure, but it is pretty high. So where is the space for the talented artists who learn their craft and do it for themselves.. no chance. At least now with u-tube and downloads they can get their names and product out to more people, but the machine will never support anyone like that, because, well, they are too maverick, they have not sold their souls or integrity…

Very few people have come through this process and gone on to develop careers as stars, there are exceptions, of course, in the like sof Will Young who is a gifted artist and entertainer, and I feel Leona Lewis will also achieve status. Others are currently very successful, mainly because of their youth, looks and charm (I’m told) such as One Direction and JLS, but do either have anything of their own to offer the world?

The most hapless and appalling offshoots though are the acts that achieve success through novelty value…such as Jedward and Chico.

I’d prefer not to comment on the singers who have been in the finals of Britain’s got Talent and gone on to “stardom”.

The other musical area which I detest, as much as the “reality show” syndrome is the bad crooner or standard singer. One thing I demand when listening to music that the arrangement and performance be sympathetic to the lyric, it doesn’t have to be the same arrangement and style as the original versions, even where the original can be remembered. It does however have to be sympathetic.

I recall watching a TV variety show, with one of these so called crooners topping the bill. He ended on a jolly bouncy song, where he danced energetically around the stage exhorting the audience to clap along to the beat. That in itself is no bad thing, a crowd pleasing jolly climax. The song he chose for this performance was a song written by Joni Mitchell, charting her frame of mind at he break up of a major relationship, a song called Both Sides Now. It is a very personal and introverted acknowledgement of sorrow and despair. It is not the sort of song that can be treated as this artist treated it.

These crooners are, in my view, parasitic performers with no soul or integrity, just cashing in on a song which was popular at the time, regardless of it’s meaning and content.

There are of course, crooners of this type who read songs perfectly, the obvious examples being Frank Sinatra and Matt Munro, both of who seemed to understand every lyric and to reflect it beautifully in the performances.

I don’t think I am a luddite when it comes to music, as I said earlier my tastes are wide, much of the music I listen to dates back before my own lifetime.. I thrill to a Mahler Symphony, the blues of Robert Johnson, the jazz stylings of Django Rheinhardt, I worship the traditional ballad singing of the Watersons, the Copper Family. Many of my favourite artists grew out of the hippy generation, such as the Grateful Dead. Bob Dylan has been an inspiration to me and a route into other art forms, and we will never see the like of the Beatles again.

When the music of my generation grew too pompous and grandiose, up came some wonderful music, a total antidote to it, and I stlll love the music of the Clash and the Sex Pistols who refreshed things when it was needed, unfortunately, the punk rising was as short lived as it was meteoric, and left behind a bit of a void that has been filled with what is, in my opinion, a bland vapid form of identikit popular music springing out of shows which valued production and formula above originality and talent, and as far as I can see despised ant form of originality or personality.

I long to see a 21^st century version of the Sex Pistols appear, in whatever guise, to busrst the bubble of mediocrity and revitalise music as an artform.

As I said right at the beginning, music is a subjective thing, not good or bad, but liked or not liked. I have tried to share some of my views on why I dislike some music so totally. In my personal opinion, this music is simply dumbing down music and art, and leads to reducing everything to the lowest common denominator, which is something I sadly regret.