They sure used to give kids more musical appreciation credit than they do now

I was just browsing some old Sesame Street videos, I LOVED this show as a kid in the 70's and I'm pretty sure it reinforced my love of good music...some of the tunes they had in it in the 70's were thoroughly awesome. It's just amazing to listen to tunes like the classic pinball sequence as sung by the Pointer Sisters, and listen to the kind of sophisticated rhythms and harmonies they exposed kids to back them. Compare this to the kind of utter crap which passes for kid's TV music nowadays, when bland melodies and safe harmony rules. I mean just listen to these jazz changes, "outside" playing and quartal voicings, it really is a great piece of music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGLECptnEbM

And here is one of the infamous "Jazzy Spies" sequences, featuring music by Danny Zeitlin (who is still going strong and is a fantastic jazz pianist) and vocals by the one and only Grace Slick. Sound quality is pretty bad, but check out the harmonic chaos in the music, it's so colorful...lots of dissonance and #11ths..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutRoCkKS2Q

Ernie in "Put Down The Duckie" - absolutely classic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acBixR_JRuM

And finally, Ray Charles singing the alphabet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUMu3uB7VKQ 

No I could not stand Fraggle Rock! Anyway by the time I was a stoner, Ren and Stimpy was all the rage. 

I was watching that Adam Sandler animation movie not that long ago - pretty cool, until they got to the part w/ songs - pathetic pop w/ the mandatory Cher-effect vocals...

Why oh why are we doing this to kids? They don't even stand a chance. 

I mean, we had a chance, we heard good music, and yet, look how much we suck, look at the music we put in kid movies... Can you imagine how terrible their legacy for the next generation will be?

Absolutely. That's one of the things I was discussing w/ my wife after watching that movie. If you grew up watching Disney and such, you were at least exposed to music - not just pop songs and odd non-musical elements.

Growing up w/ my parents,  I probably would never have been exposed to classical and orchestral type of music if not for movies and TV.

These days, even the orchestral movie scores seem to be moving towards texture and ambience - The Dark Knight is a great example of a memorable soundtrack but w/ very little music in it... I love that soundtrack, but its world apart from things like the Soundtrack from The Omen, or John Williams work.

My house-mate's grandson is in his high school marching band. Since the school system no longer supports music education, each kid has to pay to be in the band.
For Winter Band, the kids had to sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts to pay the band director.

Rain

57Gregy


My house-mate's grandson is in his high school marching band. Since the school system no longer supports music education, each kid has to pay to be in the band.
For Winter Band, the kids had to sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts to pay the band director.

Really?!! Man, that's sad.


In Quebec, when I grew up, music lessons where part of the program until the 7th grade, then, optional. I'm not sure about nowadays. But as w/ anything public school, it was all very basic and by the end of your 7th grade, you could walk out of there not knowing a thing. Same way the majority of the people I went to school w/ can't speak english to save their life, even if we had the same lessons. 


I was talking to a friend from Switzerland a couple of years ago and their education system held students to a much higher standards. You couldn't just sit through, and you actually learned - so she did get a musical education, whether she wanted it or not. lol

No kidding...  You'd think the Taliban (who have laws against music) were in charge.

I remember meeting my music teacher from 3rd grade years later at an event where I was playing w/ my band. He was happy to see that I'd finally gotten into music.

Poor man - teaching a bunch of hyperactive 8 year old brats how to play the recorder must have been a heck of a job. 4 or 5 out of 30 may have paid attention - usually they were the kids who also had private music lessons outside of school... They were easily spotted too - they were the ones who didn't play the same basic plastic recorders as the rest of us.