I call almost all non-Classical music Pop, except perhaps Jazz. Pop because the music is song-centric, all else flowing from that fact. Jazz is as much about the musicians improvising as it is about the song itself, more than Rock, and even Blues. Country too is Pop, especially these days, contemporary Country that enjoys mass popularity and consumption barely recognizable as true Country. But there has always been, and continues to be, plenty of good, interesting songs and music being made that flies under the radar of commercial radio, television, and most print media. John Hiatt has been making great music for a long time, as have Loudon Wainwright III, Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Iris Dement, Patty Loveless, Gillian Welch, Danny Gatton, the two songwriters from Uncle Tupelo, NRBQ, Los Lobos, Nick Lowe, and hundreds of others. And that’s not even mentioning the younger, newer quality artists and entertainers. The ability of singers and bands to record cheaply and self-release their music has ended the stranglehold the big record companies for decades held (since the end of WWII, at least) on the availability of recorded music. Free at last! You have to know where to look, but the good stuff is out there, and at less cost than ever before (except for those boutique-pressed 180g LP’s). |
I hear the songs of a lot of young singer/songwriters, both in Portland/Vancouver bars & pubs and on TV (my sisters watch all the talent competition shows), and I have noticed a couple of things about most of them. The chord sequences are very minimal, just two chords alternated between, back and forth, over and over and over. Relatively few up-and-coming songwriters seem to be aware of classic Pop song construction, with chord "progressions"---a chord, followed by a second, then either a third, or back to the first with then a third played instead of the second again. And really good songwriters, on the second time through the progression, replace one of the chords in the first transversal with an alternate chord, to keep things fresh, interesting, and seemingly unpredictable. And it appears that the "bridge" or "middle eight" section of a song seems to be either out-of-fashion or unknown to young writers. They would do well to study the songs of at least Lennon & McCartney and Brian Wilson, for a start. Then there are the song "melodies". I put melodies in quotes because the line of notes used to sing the song's lyrics often barely qualify as an actual melody, being instead nothing more than the root note of the chord being played. Many, many songs have no "hook"---the sing-along quality of a true melody. This is nothing new---I immediately heard it in the "songs" on the first Blondie album. It's one thing to be a singer (if you want to call Debbie Harry that) or a musician, quite another to be a songwriter. The songwriting talent in The Beatles unfortunately made writing one's own material almost mandatory for a singer and group/band who desired respect from his/her/their peers. There are many groups/bands with a lot of singing and/or instrument-playing talent, but little songwriting talent (imo ;-). Another element missing in much of the contemporary music that is popular with the masses is harmony singing, which is a shame. Harmony (and it's sophisticated cousin, counterpoint) is wonderful! It is still very much evident in contemporary Bluegrass music, one reason I listen to that genre. It's quality songs is another. |
Sure do, tostadosunidos! I just programmed out the Lou Reed track ;-). |
And, one man’s treasure is another man’s trash. That’s fine with me, I’ve long been out-of-step with many of the musicians I’ve associated with. I couldn’t get the hippies in my 1971 band to listen to my Smiley Smile or Shirelles Greatest Hits albums, or the guitarist in my 1990’s Surf/Instro/Rockabilly/Blues band to my ABBA albums, but I accept that. What I don’t accept is calling the great songs that came out of the Brill Building dreck---they’re fantastic. Brian Wilson---the best songwriter Rock ’n’ Roll has produced (fact, not conjecture ;-)---shares that opinion with me! |
It wasn’t you or any of your posts I was quoting, Bill (whart). See a few posts above for the specific reference to the Brill Building by another contributor. The claim that the period between the disappearance of Elvis and the appearance of The Beatles was devoid of good music was started in the late 60’s by Jann Wenner in his Rolling Stone Magazine, and is complete and utter bs. While pure 50’s Rock ’n’ Roll did go out of style after Elvis was drafted, Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash, Jerry Lee Lewis was blackballed, Little Richard found God, and Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins turned Country (all of which the major label record company and music publishing men were delighted to see happen---they had lost control of the business when the small independent labels---who owned most of the popular Rock ’n’ Roll artists---started getting all the record sales), and Fabian, Pat Boone, and Bobby Rydell-type singers (whom the record companies could control, unlike the above Rock ’n’ Rollers) were being pushed by the likes of Dick Clark, there was still a lot of great music being made in the years 1958 to 1962. Do I really have to remind us all of The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, The Beach Boys, Paul Revere & The Raiders (very under-rated, a great band), The Ventures (and all the other surf bands and guitarists), Booker T & The MG’s, Del Shannon (whose comeback album in the 80’s was produced by Tom Petty), Chuck Berry (his recordings continued to be released even as he faced his upcoming trial and eventual incarceration), as well as a lot of great urban Pop music by Phil Spector (loved by John Lennon and, especially, Brian Wilson), The Drifters, The Shirelles, The Four Seasons, Patti LaBelle, Darlene Love, Clyde McPhatter, and many, many others? Remind yourself of the kind of music that was hugely popular in the early 60’s by spinning "On Broadway" by The Drifters. The song, an absolute masterpiece, was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil while sitting at a piano in a cubicle in.....the Brill Building. Nick Lowe has recorded a great version of "Halfway To Paradise", a killer song from the early 60’s, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin while sitting at a piano in a cubicle in.....the Brill Building. The version of the song that gives me an out-of-body experience was recorded by Laurel Aitken. As good as Pop gets! A lot of the music of this period was recorded and intended for radio airplay, and was released on 7" 45 RPM singles. It’s target audience was teenagers, most of whom owned not a single LP (or 78 ;-). Budding musicians and hardcore music fanatics (guilty) were the only teenagers buying LP’s, and then mostly of The Beach Boys and Surf groups/bands. One demographic buying a lot of LP’s were the teenager’s college-attending older brothers and sisters, who were being courted by the post-Beatnik Folk artists, one of whom---from Hibbing Minnesota---became probably the most influential songwriter (for better or worse) of the second half of the 20th Century. One thing that DID drastically change with the British Invasion was the meteoritic rise of the 12" LP format. The challenge for artists then became how to get enough material (good songs) to fill an entire disc. That challenge remains unsuccessfully answered by most artists (and entertainers) to this day! |
Brill Building "dreck"?! Songwriters like Carole King, Doc Pomus, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Billy Rose, Bobby Darin, Gerry Goffin, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Johnny Mercer, and Mort Shuman wrote in the tiny cubicles there, producing songs McCartney and Lennon loved. Listen to the first Beatles album---it’s half Brill Building songs! Two of our best contemporary songwriters who have expressed a love of the Brill Building songs are Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. It’s Pop music, not Rock. |
"Pop" became a derogatory term in the late 60's, particularly amongst my counter-culture hippie contemporaries. I didn't let that stop me from listening to the "shiny", studio-produced sounds I still preferred to the overly-long (imo), extended solo blues-based ramblings of Cream, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Dead, etc. In the late 70's and 80's, my Punk and New Wave-listening contemporaries were bewildered by my love of ABBA and The Rubinoos. Their loss! Though looked down upon by my Country purist friends and associates, I even liked Shania Twain. Steve Earle called her "Nashville's highest paid lap dancer". A guilty pleasure, for sure! |
I thank God I knew a great songwriter who introduced me to J.S. Bach when I was twenty-four. For the "richest", deepest music, I turn to him, with increasing frequency and consistently as I have gotten older. One has to listen to him last in the day, as he is a hard act to follow! |
Elvis has long been accused of merely being a white man who sang like a black man. Not so. What he did, what made him so revolutionary, was that he fused the Jump Blues he heard on "Race" records and radio shows reaching Mississippi and Tennessee, and the Hillbilly, Bluegrass, and Country & Western the white southerners were listening to on The Grand Old Opry and other radio shows. His Sun Records 78's and 45's had a Jump Blues on one side, and a Hillbilly on the other. No black man was singing Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon Of Kentucky", as Elvis did. He sang with the "hiccupping" style now associated with Rockabilly music, basically creating that music and style singing. No black man sang like that. Add in the Gospel he loved so much, and voila, you have Elvis. |
Pick any genre you want, I’ll take Country. There is what you hear on commercial radio and see on the TV awards shows, the entertainers the music business has decided to push. What they do is not actually Country, not at all. But at the same time there is an organization named the Americana Music Association which puts on it’s own awards show and has a website and Facebook page, all in the name of promoting real Country music. Artists like Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale, audiophile favorite Alison Krauss, Iris Dement, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Gillian Welch, Jason Isbell, Kasey Chambers, Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, Marty Stuart, Patty Loveless, and hundreds of others. They are all making fantastic music, and touring the country. |
I know a guy my age (67), a bass player (if you consider a Rickenbacker a bass---I don’t ;-), who does nothing but p*ss and moan about how "good" music isn’t popular anymore, like it was when we were young. It has never occurred to him that he sounds exactly like the WWII generation did when Rock ’n’ Roll replaced Big Bands as the Pop music that sold. I have tried to tell him that we had our time, that the present now belongs to younger people, but he just doesn’t get it. All he talks about is the British Invasion (especially the da*n Beatles. Enough with The Beatles, already!) and new music derived from it. Your living in the past, maaan. With the big record labels now obsolete, and small-time recording so affordable, there is maybe more new music being created than ever before. Everybody I know has recorded themselves and pressed up CD’s, which they sell at their live shows and on their websites. Just because you don’t like what’s on mass-market radio and television doesn’t mean "good" stuff isn’t around. It’s all over the place! The unpopular music business---love it, Wolf! Popularity is relative, and as long as an artist is able to sell enough tickets to travel the country (or world), they still are doing it. Joan Osborne has been to Portland (Oregon) twice in the past 18 months, and she filled the medium-sized theater she played. Dobroist Jerry Douglas (from Alison Krauss’ band) did the same awhile back. Nobody at that level is getting airplay or screen time, but so what? Neither did NRBQ, Rockpile, or Captain Beefheart! The music I have liked most has long been on the cult level. Jazz is a marginal music (in terms of visibility), as is Classical, Blues, Bluegrass, and many other forms. Let the kids have their fun, who cares? That doesn't stop me from having mine! |
A lot of the "best" music has always flown under the mass-market radar, subsiding on a cult level; Gram Parsons, John Hiatt, Rodney Crowell, Richard Thompson, Marshall Crenshaw, Dave Edmunds, and Nick Lowe, for instance. Their ARE artists of quality with a young audience around, you just have to look below the surface, like on the No Depression site for Americana music. |
