let there be rant

[allicio]

Anybody wanna buy a rolex?

[Bassus Sanguinis]

Postmodernist notion of substance in seemingly superficial level relies in commenting cultural conditions, yeah, so it is can be a substantial message. It just so often isn't, how ever, commenting ANYTHING of substance or having a point to it and it can be just as shallow crap as shallow crap can be.

Doesn't change the depressing notion: shit stinks and lame mediocre celebrities are celebrated because of what they are, and crap bands that want to sound like other crap bands without any substance and/or skills are thriving. That's about it. Fuck all of it.

[RR Bigman]

Not to break up this little philosophical circlejerk, but the only Nobel prize that gives anything to anybody is the peace prize...you'd be hard pressed to find a Nobel Laureate in ,say physics, who didn't deserve the award. just my 2cents.

[dubkitty]

the Nobel Prizes are not the music market.

[SPACERITUAL]

you'd be hard pressed to find a Nobel Laureate in ,say physics, who didn't deserve the award. just my 2cents.

I sure didnt deserve mine.......

[RR Bigman]

the Nobel Prizes are not the music market.

Metal mariachi brought it up in the first post

[metalmariachi]

fuzz_pi...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR2nNMGubtQ[/youtube]

how can you not love Bananarama they did a good (subjective) cover of Shocking Blue's Venus.
I also love Samantha Fox?

Oh I'm not cranky today

MM

[coldbrightsunlight]

Not to break up this little philosophical circlejerk, but the only Nobel prize that gives anything to anybody is the peace prize...you'd be hard pressed to find a Nobel Laureate in ,say physics, who didn't deserve the award. just my 2cents.

What I was going to say! The nobel peace prize is utter bullshit, all the science ones are given out for legitimate achievements.

And I agree with dubkitty's point that things have probably never been that different. The majority of people are almost always going to like substanceless crap. The people who manufacture all the terrible music only do so because there's a large appetite for it.

There's still lots of good music out there, even good popular music, but a large amount of what's popular is always going to be whatever fake 'star' is in vogue right now.

[Chankgeez]

I love Samantha Fox as well & speaking of Shocking Blue, I found this today:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsrnfaqYVuA[/youtube]

[dubkitty]

i only rant on at length on the topic because there's this mythopoeic notion among rock-oriented people that the 60s (or 50s, or 70s depending on one's taste) was a wonderland of Nothing But Great Choons, and it just wasn't so. for every Elvis there were a dozen Perry Comos and Pat Boones, for every Rolling Stones a dozen Jan and Deans or Dave Dee Dozy et al. yes, the relative quality of the garbage may have been better because the songwriters and studio musicians were seasoned professionals--prominent US sessioneers of the mid/late-60s included stars-in-waiting like Leon Russell, Glen Campbell, Jim Keltner, and Jim Gordon, while UK studio stalwarts included Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John McLaughlin, Rick Wakeman, and Nicky Hopkins--but it was still garbage.

[metalmariachi]

Elvis was the greatest cover artist of all times.
He could do any one else’s music and it was still Elvis.

Jan and Dean were part of the “surf” movement which had two distinct sides
The vocal harmonies, Beach boys, Jan and Dean, the Tigers etc. and the instrumentalist, Astronauts, Ventures, Duals, Dick Dale.
Their competition was pretty much only very early Motown and Phil Spector.
Untill…….

The first “British Invasion”
Of course we got LuLu, Chad and Jeremy and Freddy and the Dreamer along with the rest.

Ah there was great music being created as well as AM friendly crap.
There still is great music being made.
Sadly we don’t have people like Dick Clark, Don Kirshner and Burt Sugarman sneaking it onto the airwaves for our unsuspecting youth to hear.

“There comes a time in life when you gotta dance, but nobody says you can’t pick good music” Rip Tide (WKRP)

Ah but we do have people making commercials with great music.

[dubkitty]

sure. and i'm not saying that Elvis was BAD. i like Elvis. for that matter, i like some Eagles stuff, and i like "Careless Whispers" too. you want to argue with that saxophone hook? i don't. i'm just using those as examples to make the larger point: that given a choice, the average person will usually choose the less challenging alternative (e.g. Elvis) over the more challenging (e.g. Jerry Lee Lewis) or more artistic (e.g. Chuck Berry, arguably the best lyricist rock ever produced). and that's not wrong. that's just how folks are. most people want their art to be a refuge from the day. even if they want the blues, they're more likely to prefer the finely-sanded finish of B.B. King to the acid-in-the-face shriek of Elmore James. why should they be different? they don't owe US anything. they just want to go home and do something more pleasant than the rotten crap they had to do all day to get by. no wonder people have been curling up in the audio fetal position with those little Mozart melodies for hundreds of years...at a certain point in existence i began to understand the appeal of predictable, pleasant, and consonant.

[Chankgeez]

Elvis was the greatest cover artist of all times.

I'd almost agree with that. I think Nina Simone's a bit better.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB0ZM_oXc4E[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFP0EP-Oi2I[/youtube]

[Gearmond]

though heres a point of argument:

whats harder to do: make something simple and popular, or make something complex and obscure?

i would assert that the first is more difficult to do

[dubkitty]

i tend to agree, because simplicity requires that everything's out there in the open...you have nothing to hide behind. but it depends on who's creating it...Brian Wilson famously beavered away at his songs, while Neil Young tossed off "Down By The River," "Cinnamon Girl," and "Cowgirl In The Sand" in one afternoon while in bed with the flu and George Michael came up with that unforgettable sax hook while riding on the top deck of a London bus.