Don't Get Me Wrong

So while it's true I've kept one ear on the '60s and another on the '70s, I've got a third vestigial ear on whatever is happening in my present. Occasionally I'll get excited about someone "now", e.g., The White Stripes, The Black Keys, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, De Danaan, etc. But such bands are the exception to the rule nowadays. And there are many equally creative, talented bands out there we fail to hear about because they never find a way to escape their regional stomping grounds; they don't know the right people, don't have access to the right connections, don't have an appealing physical look, don't have "catchy" pop hooks, are deemed "too old" to be marketable, came around "too soon" or "too late" -- the ensnaring variables go on and on. But there was a time when people with vision and talent more often than not did get recognized if they had their sh*t together, because more people were paying attention and more people had a better general music education to have an ear for good music. There were more public venues, and more people were out and about taking in what life had to offer, instead of stuck in some compulsive internet cul-de-sac of a mental existence! (ahem!) And there were more record companies interested in real music that they were willing to accept on the musicians' own terms and motivated to promote in a way that was accurate -- because the fans were hip and the musicians were more about their long-term credibility than the fast money. Most of what I see now that manages to penetrate into the national or global awareness, flashes in and flashes out of real inspiration, because the record company machines eventually flatten them out to the lowest common denominator of taste, replete with musical tropes and electronic digital effects that seem rented out among the Top 40 like overused bowling shoes. And we'll not even talk about the ill effects upon the creative potential of popular music due to the monopolies on radio stations and video channels. And then there is the current era's hyperactive use of distortion. If it were just here and there, strategically placed to create an evocative sonic texture, or give concrete artistic meaning to the odd song with a particular sort of mood, fine. But now inarticulate noise is employed as a full fledged instrument in of itself. "That's Doug; it looks like he plays a guitar, but he's really our rhythm distortionist." Distortion is now aurally sculpted across endless galleries of undeveloped songs disguised as music, created the way a sculptor trapped in solitary confinement might go mad and start forming an array of sculptures from his own dung. If the innumerable bands who are using all this distortion are trying to say, "life sucks!!!", then I got the point well over a decade ago. You've been beating that pathetic horse so long it's become just a scrap of bones. Now let's move on and learn to play our instruments, shall we?