Not at all, that's exactly what I think, in fact. What I dislike about droddey's argument is that I think it's a bit misanthropic on the one hand, and a bit anti-art on the other. People are always creating art in whatever circumstances they are in, with whatever means the have available, and I think the idea that current circumstances and means make current art somehow dishonest and invalid frankly objectionable and ignorant. He's merrily writing off pretty much everyone. Not simply as stuff he's not interested in, which would be fair enough, if a bit unadventurous. But rather as stuff that's invalid, dishonest, and contemptible. He and the horse he rode in on can go and take ride on that, frankly.

"The idea that music reached some unsurpassed peak in the mid 70s - some 40 years ago - is one on which we're very unlikely to reach agreement. The idea that were there such a peak, bloody Animals would represent it, is laughable." Again, I agree fully. I have been guilty of giving my kids the "they can't touch [fill in an artist]" and then usually i catch myself because I realize that it is one of the most subjective topics topped only by religion and politics. We like the music we grew up with because it's the music we grew up with. There are very few musical pieces I have ever heard that I could say NOBODY else could play that. In art of all kind we give credit, as we should, to people for doing things first..or at least first to popularize. An decent artist could paint a stroke for stroke version of the Mona Lisa that only an expert could distinguish from the original. That same artist could likely do things Da Vinci couldn't, yet that artist is unlikely to be seen as being as great as Da Vinci. Youth today simply have the advantage of being able to soak up all that come before them and the benefits of things that could not be created in the past. It's the same way in sports. Athletes today are simply bigger, stronger and faster. As great as Jesse Owens was, his world record in the long jump would be beaten regularly by high schoolers today. We measure greatness compared to contemporaries and somehow forget that as we age. We feel the need to somehow make our idols greater than they actually were.

"as great" is a weird way to look at art anyway. We're not going to surpass Beethoven, or Hendrix, or whoever. That's not how art works. And euqally, those things aren't untouchable. It's not like rocket design, or microchip manufacturing, and it doesn't "improve" linearly in that way. Culture mainly expands rather than progresses, I think. New stuff adds to the richness of what we have.

Which makes the one and only truly pointless pursuit in art to be trying to emulate or equate to what's gone before.

I don't really care if someone has lived in a van or anything. I'm talking more about not bothering to learn to play, but acting like you can by editing everything out the wazoo. And, to get back to a previous comment questioning who I'm talking about. Well, that's the problem isn't it?

If you listen to producers and mixers talking, it's clear that it's VERY widespread. And I don't mean just Auto-tune and things like Audiosnap. But extensive hand editing, extensive comping of parts down the word, extensive volume and EQ automation, using tools to exactly align background vocals to the lead vocal. and on and on.

And yet, hardly anyone ever admits that these things were done on their albums? And the folks above aren't going to say who they were doing it to, because they want to get paid. If they go talking about that stuff in public and naming names, they may not be the name on that person's album next time.

That's really the problem, to me. We have this music which is inhumanly polished, clearly beyond the abilities of the people involved to actually perform them. And yet no one admits doing it. So I can't say, so and so used a lot of corrective stuff on his or her album, because no one would admit it. But if you bother to look into it, you'd know how much it's being done.

That's the hypocracy that bothers me. It's just like the loudness war. People now think that they can't put out an album (at least in a lot of genres) that has real human performances, just like people think that they can put out an album that isn't crushed to crap, because it won't be competitive. I think it's just hypocritical and isn't conducive to honesty in music.

John T


"as great" is a weird way to look at art anyway. We're not going to surpass Beethoven, or Hendrix, or whoever. That's not how art works. And euqally, those things aren't untouchable. It's not like rocket design, or microchip manufacturing, and it doesn't "improve" linearly in that way. Culture mainly expands rather than progresses, I think. New stuff adds to the richness of what we have.

Wisdom for sure. 

Yes, the fact that you can't say who you're talking about is indeed the problem. 

dubdisciple

Again, I agree fully. I have been guilty of giving my kids the "they can't touch [fill in an artist]" and then usually i catch myself because I realize that it is one of the most subjective topics topped only by religion and politics. We like the music we grew up with because it's the music we grew up with. There are very few musical pieces I have ever heard that I could say NOBODY else could play that. In art of all kind we give credit, as we should, to people for doing things first..or at least first to popularize. An decent artist could paint a stroke for stroke version of the Mona Lisa that only an expert could distinguish from the original. That same artist could likely do things Da Vinci couldn't, yet that artist is unlikely to be seen as being as great as Da Vinci. Youth today simply have the advantage of being able to soak up all that come before them and the benefits of things that could not be created in the past. It's the same way in sports. Athletes today are simply bigger, stronger and faster. As great as Jesse Owens was, his world record in the long jump would be beaten regularly by high schoolers today. We measure greatness compared to contemporaries and somehow forget that as we age. We feel the need to somehow make our idols greater than they actually were.

Woh, there... Don't try to paint me as some old fogie stuck in the past. I'm far from it. Pink Floyd was actually before my time, not of my time, as were the Beatles even more so. But I love music well until the late 90s, but then it began getting pretty damn shallow, at least in the popular realm. I was heading towards 40 when the 90s ended, and I loved most of what was going on. Most of my collection is basically either 60s/70s or 90s. There was a lot more honesty in the music of the 90s.
 
Not that that's particularly suprising. Kids don't like music because of what it is, they like it because of what it isn't, for the most part. They want something different than what came before. The 80s were mostly the opposite of the 70s, and the 90s went back the other way to more back to basics, more raw emotion, as a reaction against the very over synthy, overly reverbed 80s. Not that everything sucks or is great in any decade obviously.
 
So it's pretty much expected that we'd get a swing back towards Justin Bieber and Gaga and so forth, after a decade of Grunge and such. I wish it didn't happen but it's the ongoing cycle. Perhaps my big problem with it is that it happened to coincide with the arrival in a big way of the tools of fakery. So you have a sort of perfect storm. A decade on the fluff side of the wheel (in the popular realm I mean), the destruction of the industry by theft which means that if you want to make it you better be able to sell perfume or cars or something, and the arrival of digital tools to allow people to pretend they are better than they are, and an era in which that's not even seen as questionable to do so because integrity isn't cool at the moment.
 
So it all comes out about as far to the other side of what I consider right as possible. There's a lot of stuff out there I like of course. But it'll never get close to the mainstream. Whereas, in the 90s, lots of stuff I liked was in the mainstream. Smashing Pumpkins, No Doubt, System of a Down, Radiohead, Portishead, Blues Traveler, Natalie Merchant/Imbuglia, Joan Osborne, Blur, Garbage, Beck, Bjork, and on and on.
 

I still don't get the tools of fakery part. If you can't write or produce music worth listening to, how the beep are those 'tools of fakery' going to help? They won't.  Is there really a 'soundgooderizer' or 'Turd Polisher' out there that I missed?

John T


Yes, the fact that you can't say who you're talking about is indeed the problem. 

If by that you are trying to imply that I'm wrong and it's not happening, then you are fooling yourself. That's like claiming that there's no theft because you can't personally catch all the people who are doing it. The fact that you can't prove who is stealing things doesn't mean that things aren't disappearing.