I admit, I’m something of a music snob. Not that I only listen to the one type of music and deem it far superior to anything else available and anyone who listens to anything other than this is an insufferable oaf, but that I feel there are more than a fair share of genres not fit for usage under the umbrella term music.
Apologies, umBERella.
Next time you’re in any shop that has the album chart in it, stop and take it in. Sainsbury’s, for one, has the top 100. Although it doesn’t. You can’t buy Bon Iver in there, despite hi supposedly being at number 40.
Anyway, that’s still a lot of albums (for some people. Yes, more snobbery). Yet nearly every album is a pathetic excuse for noise. Not fit for my money. Listened to by the aforementioned oafs. (tick. More snobbery.)
As you may have read, I don’t like commercial radio. But this encounter with the top 100 made me realise that these purveyors of so-called music actually make albums. That means they have more than one of these pathetic wastes of bang-on three-minutes. That’s, say, eleven predictable key changes. Or eleven uses of the same Boss drum beat. And there are 100s of albums.
Most of the time it’s not even their own rhythm section. Eh, Chris Brown?? Who needs your own when you can steal Calvin Harris’.
Still, he had nothing to do with it. He just entered the words given to him into a note matcher, I should imagine.
You may have noticed I mentioned Calvin Harris. And yes, he’s a dance music-maker. I’m not sure of the official term. But he, like many dance-music-makers, properly makes dance music. It’s complex, clever, requiring of talent and actual ears. Unfortunately for every good’un (he’s not my thing, but I can appreciate it) you have a thousand shit’uns that have more success than most bands that disappear into oblivion.
I would readily admit there aren’t currently many bands suitable for the word greatness, no band will really go on to have the success of a 90’s Oasis. And the All-American Heroes of Brucie, Young, Dylan, Jimi are a thing of mythical history. But there are endless lists of bands worthy of recognition that will forever elude them but to a small few.
I realise music goes in random cycles, anything could be in vogue next week. But with the impact clubbing has had on our whole society it will not do much but a chip into the toenail of the big, bad monster. It’s irreversible. We’re stuck in this pit of electronic, emotion-less, noise.
I’m going to pass my record collections on and they’ll be comparable to nothing more than drawings in a cave. The pictures of today painted by Conor Oberst, the landscapes crafted by Justin Vernon, the bizarreness of Thom Yorke, will be nothing to most in the same way Nick Drake is to most today.
Truly brilliant lyricists are being cast-off into the void for people who can press play.
I fear for the children.
