Is music headed towards a beautifully vegetative state where boundaries are ready to be broken down, now that the big record companies have less impact on what we are supposed to be listening to? It kinda feels that way to me lately. It’s either my blindness to the ‘actual’ state of music or there really does seem to be a blurring of the categorical genres that the record companies created in order to properly feed us whatever rubbish they chose to place in said categories. The fact that a band as genre-defying as Gnarls Barkley being in the super-mainstream seems to point to a blurring of what’s cool and what isn’t.
This article on one of the better new bands, MGMT, was refreshing to see. Here are a couple quotes from the boys in the band:
“We have pretty good taste,” says founding member Andrew Van Wyngarden. “We’re fans of the Grateful Dead and psychedelic music. We have crazy jams in our rehearsal space and we’re trying to eventually bring that out more on stage.”
“I think that pretty much everybody in MGMT secretly loves jambands — well, not so secretly. We always have,” Richardson admits. “Around 2000 or something, everybody really wanted to be ‘indie’ and now it’s just swinging back, I guess. I don’t know if that’s true, but I hope it is. I just want to break down those barriers. Segregation has existed too long between the jambands and the artsy-fartsy bands, and it doesn’t need to be there.”
Now isn’t that kinda nice to see that these young guys who are hotter than hell in the ‘Indie’ scene would rather just everyone got along. Animal Collective is another Indie darling group which has admitted to all being Dead-heads as young men. Well, it just so turns out that these are the type of groups that I end up liking, and I don’t think it’s because I also like the Grateful Dead…because these guys are making music that is nothing like the Dead. But they are making good and interesting music that fits just outside of any genre or scene. Shit, check out Of Montreal playing “Shakedown Street” at Langerado. So I think what I like is the fact that these bands are playing music because they love making music and care less, if at all, about making scenes.
I’d like to think that music is heading into a new post-ironic Renaissance, where if you say you like Journey, you don’t have to asterisk the statement with a “I only like them ‘cuz they’re gay” type of qualification. I’m sure that I did that at some point, but I’ve come to a place where I refuse to qualify my taste. Goddammit, ‘I like Kiss’, period. ‘I love Yes, actually’. Or any other number of examples (Phish probably having several examples on their own). Sure, I dig plenty of music that is considered hip and/or smart or what have you, but there’s also plenty of music that is considered hip and/or smart that I just don’t connect with. It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you. I think emotional levels transcend anything external or cerebral.
Unfortunately, some of the people that consider themselves the most liberal sort, can create the harshest boundaries for what is good and bad in art. I realize that this is probably because they are people who are artists or very wrapped up in art in some way, so you can’t help talk about what you love. Shit, it’s unnatural how much I talk about music. But the over-analysis of music seems to keep the boundaries in place, because when we talk about music we can’t help but compare and rank things. And once we come to a super-well-though-out ideal of what is ‘good music’, we defend it by propping up the qualities that we approve of and ripping apart the things that work against the ideal that we’ve constructed.
And since the record companies are dying out, there is the opportunity for us to let the boundaries break down, as we don’t have these companies to package things to what they think our tastes are. I think it’s up to us bloggers and networks of friends to keep things all loosey-goosey and nurture diversity in musical taste.
Remember hearing all the stories from the 60′s and early-70′s about how concerts would be so random and cool? The bill would consist of something like Cream, Melanie, and the Chambers Brothers. Maybe we’re seeing that again with these festivals, like Bonnaroo and Coachella, that keep growing year after year. These festivals bring together fans of Widespread Panic, Metallica, Prince, MGMT, Cat Power, Robert Plant, Kanye West, and so on and so on. As the music industry as we know it, dies…live music thrives. Here’s a cool Times article about just that.
Music will never die. To me it’s the reflection of the underlying beauty of the imperfection of human life. Thank goodness we’re all so flawed. It makes the music so sweet! What we’re witnessing is the sloughing off of the big business that had become too bloated and corrupted by maximizing profits by tapping into the life-giving roots of peoples’ emotions…the people creating the music and the people appreciating the music. This is the same big business which has tried to bait the two emotionally-involved parties against each other, and in a lot of cases, succeeded. Now the greedy middle-man obstructing your view is being escorted out of the venue for being drunk and disorderly. Love wins out over greed. I hope.
What do you guys think?
Hey all, I just had another piece published over at Blog Critics blog and it looks good if I get some clicks over there…and some comments. So do me a favor and check out the piece over here (it’s the same as the piece posted below), and it’s about a really good band that I can’t believe I haven’t heard until 2008! It just goes to show, there’s always music out there perfectly suited to your tastes just waiting to be discovered, so go find it!
MAN: The Best Band You’ve Never Heard In Your Life on Blog Critics magazine
The Welsh band, MAN, is certainly one of the Best Bands You’ve Never Heard In Your Life. Much like their Welsh peer band, Budgie, MAN has managed to have a loyal cult following since the ‘70’s, but just never was able to break through to major radio hit success like their fellow Welsh band, Badfinger. But then again, if you’re familiar with the fate of Badfinger (suicides of 2 of their primary members), MAN is probably not envious. In fact, MAN was a band that seemed to embrace the underground spirit of their music.
Radio hits or not, they certainly can hold their heads high, as they’ve left behind some of the most interesting rock music of the 70’s… and that’s saying a lot! Although mostly remembered as a progressive rock band, MAN did progressive in a way that was completely original from most other progressive bands, blending together the best elements of psychedelia, blues, vocal harmony, and West-coast style jam-driven rock and roll. Very much in line with such opinion-polarizing counter-culture bands The Grateful Dead and even Phish, MAN were praised for their live shows, which were never the same twice. But MAN’s jamming was less loose and laid-back than the Dead and a bit more gritty, thereby actually sharing more an affinity with Phish, especially in their use of the occasional silly lyric…“I like to eat bananas, because they got no bones…I like marijuana, ‘cause it gets me stoned” (from their live show staple, ‘Bananas’).
Check out these albums:
- The Grateful Dead and Merl Saunders – The Twilight Zone (from the 80s TV show)
- Lenny Bruce – Let the Buyer Beware (Frickin’ huge box of the amazing Lenny Bruce)
- Fela Kuti and Africa 70 with Ginger Baker (‘nuf said)
- Morgen – Morgen (Killer US psych album)
- Pink Fairies – Kings of Oblivion (Great Psych-rock album)
- Colosseum – Live (great jazzy bluesy rock)
- High Explosion – DJ Sounds from 1970 to 1976 (Reggae and dub)
- Funkadelic – Maggot Brain
And don’t forget to support artists. Buy good albums and go to live shows by good bands.
Me, Franny and Gabbi are headed to Boston this weekend for a hippie-style wedding at a venue called “Earthdance”. I guess I can leave my facial hair alone and leave my deodorant at home (especially since homeland security prohibits us from bringing grooming products in rental cars). I will also bring a bevy of live Grateful Dead jams on my iPod. I have been known to embrace hippyism, so it should be far out. So here’s a few things for you to check out over the weekend….
Perfect fodder for hippie wedding weekend, check out thursdayborn’s Awesome Tapes from Africa. There’s tons of killer authentic African jams there!
Pitchfork tells us how the Animal Collective are corrupting our children!
The new epic Neil Young song is B.A. Baracas. Listen to it now at the awesome Recessed Filter blog.
Never Get Out of the Boat serves up some killer early Dead, brah…. and that chronological George Harrison’s Beatles compilation from a few days ago. Willard’s the man!
Latest Indie Rock band with an animal name….Bald Eagle. There’s also We Are Wolves (since there weren’t enough ‘wolf’ band names).
The RIAA starts making folks pay for their god-awful crimes.
Van Halen really ‘hit the ground running’ with this tour…no Police-style warm-up for these boys! These recordings make the case. Thanks to Hidden Track.
And read on for proof that the Flaming Lips actually played on Beverly Hills 90210…
