Before the Music Dies
This is a trailer for a documentary about the production of music today. I don't know you care much about music, but if you do it will make you angry to see how the art of music is being created in a lot of places today. If you don't care about music, this may point to the reason why. For more information, go to www.BeforeTheMusicDies.com.
posted by Chicago Typewriter at 5:52 PM
3 Comments:
This wasn't exactly what I was thinking when I asked you to post more. But it works. Only depressingly. Is depressingly a word?
i want to see that movie now.
the antidote for that movie is dave chapeplle's block party. i love dave chappelle's block party. especially the part where eryka badu's fro wig falls off.
I'm skeptical. I don't really listen to modern music (I just haven't made it that far yet, having started from the beginning), but people have been declaring music dead for as long as it's been around. We had the focus groups and the ready made pop stars in the 60s too. The Monkees have struck before, and Andy Gibb will strike again (figuratively).
Yet we've come through it. There are still great bands out there, or so I'm told. Perfect Circles, Fish, and NIN, whatever the hell that is. So I'm optimistic.
What I think is going on is this: people have great individual tastes--very varied, very nuanced. But where their tastes overlap, they overlap in the most asinine areas. So somebody may love some obscure hip band nobody else has heard of, like--I don't know--The Pogues? But not many people love them. But the same person mildly likes cheap pop. Nobody loves cheap pop--but nearly everyone mildly likes it (we've all caught ourselves singing something from Phantom of the Opera at one time or another, and then have cut ourselves as penance).
So when you mass market something, you aim square at that common insipidity. So if you want something you'll really treasure, you just have to look a bit harder. I'm not optimistic that people will suddenly start to love the music I love with the intensity that they should--but nor am I terribly scared of it losing all popularity.
I'm still bitter about Arrested Development.
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