Why Music Has Lost it’s Charms (Article)

@mahgister

Everybody know who Biden is....More despicable than the clown Trump, who at least never encourage war...

I am sorry for us and for America....

Even Biden’s most ardent admirers must be having a few second thoughts by now, surely they must?

Isn’t it obvious that he’s a patsy, fall guy, beard for someone else - albeit an avaricious self serving one?

Someone with a terrible sense of humour.

As for the rest of the US electorate, they have my sympathy too.

Not everyone can relocate to red states like Florida or Texas.

Some say that it's the music you hear in your teens that has the most lasting effect.

Iny case I was into the Beatles whilst everyone else was into disco and ELO.

Even if new music as an art form is reaching the end of new combinations/permutations of notes and chords, there's the still the bewildering back catalogue of stuff that has never been so readily available.

Just then you think you've heard it all, you'll hear something new for the first time. I only recently found this gem on a Peter Sellers LP of all things. I now hear it's all over social media.

@tony1954

Good music lasts.

Why are there so many "oldies" stations these days? Because the 60’s and 70’s were the golden age of popular music. It’s not nostalgia, it’s that the music was just that great.

Good music certainly does last.

People all over the world are still enjoying music written hundreds of years ago. Virtually all of the classical genre that has survived was written before we had any means of playing it back at home for ourselves.

That’s quite impressive, isn’t it?

Even from our own lifetimes, we can be fairly certain that some pieces of music will last as long as the human race does.

The 1960s in particular remains endlessly fascinating. That miraculous decade more or less featured everything that followed since.

On the other hand, if you take away the recency effect it’s hard to see which albums from the last 20 years will make the cut a century from now.

But then you could also argue the same for other art forms such as painting, sculpture, literature, television, film etc.

It would appear that human creativity has now moved on to other equally profitable areas of endeavour.

There’s already millions of attention seeking YouTube channels for example and new computer games coming out every week.

Then there’s the worlds of business, politics and finance...

That old Warhol comment about fame has never seemed more true and making money has never seemed so glamourous.

@mahgister

Murder Most Foul (+Tempest) are 2 obvious candidates for recent songs that will endure for a very long time to come.

@tylermunns

Making movies or making music has nearly always been about primarily making money.

Lasting works of art in these fields tend to be more accidental than planned in my opinion. Especially when you consider how the business side of them both work. It’s no exaggeration to add that sometimes the business side becomes more interesting than the product side.

How could it not when you have characters such as Louis B Mayer, Harry Cohn, Howard Hughes etc all involved?

And it was little different when Stan Lee was ordered by Marvel Comics publisher (his uncle Martin Goodman) to try to come up with something to match DCs Justice League of America.

A swift change of direction saw Marvel move from churning out westerns, romances, horrors into churning out superheroes.

At no point was Lee instructed to produce great works of art.

Here’s comics historian Barry Pearl writing on the matter for the Crivens! Comics & Stuff! website.

"No matter what fans want to think, producing comics is a business - the art and story come second. Stan’s job was to make money for Marvel, produce comics on time, and increase sales, something which he did very well.

Even Jack Kirby said that his job was to "sell magazines" - not necessarily to create good ones, but to sell them.

In 1960 Marvel was selling 16,000,000 copies a year. By 1966, Steve Ditko had left and, even though he was no longer on Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, Marvel was selling 35,000,000 comics a year."

https://kidr77.blogspot.com/?m=1

Is any of it art?

Well, that’s usually down to the eye and ear of the beholder, isn’t it?

@tylermunns 

The wonderful documentary, “Heart’s of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” features recorded conversations of Francis Ford Coppola with his wife, Eleanor.  These conversations feature Mr. Coppola expressing enormous anxiety about whether he is making a “sh***y, pompous, bad movie.”  He had assets, set pieces, clout, bankable stars, plenty of stuff that could have caused him to be content, rest on his laurels, and get away with an unscrupulous attention to detail, emotional resonance, truthful social commentary and truthful examination of human nature.

He didn’t.  These concerns drive him to the brink of madness because he cared about them deeply.  

I think we can recognize when artists care in this way, and when they do not.

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I've seen that documentary a couple of times and it's certainly well put together.

Nevertheless, wasn't there an awful lot of frantic improvisation and rewriting required after Marlon Brando turned up in an unexpected physical condition?

When you also consider that Martin Sheen suffered a minor heart attack during the making of Apocalypse Now, there's no doubting the seriousness of its director's intentions.

The fact that Coppola somehow made it all work out and still pull in a healthy profit just shows the unpredictable power of art that can sometimes transcend the intentions of its creator.

The real trick facing all artists, whatever their medium, is how to create something of artistic merit that also succeeds commercially.

Remember the old 10cc line?

"Art for arts sake

Money for Gods sake"

I believe some of us certainly can distinguish between a sincere artistic effort and a purely calculating commercial one.

Unfortunately, for us at least, it seems as if far too many people cynically opt for the second part.

Either way, whichever one is more important to the creator will be difficult enough to achieve alone.

To succeed at both is quite something else.

@mahgister 

"Stanley Kubrick will not be possible today, he will not be free to do his own art...He will be a slave to a movie business...He will kill himself because he was so talented... Who kill Orson Welles genius? Corporate powers...Nowadays they are more powerful because all united and controlled by very few men ...

Where is the human, poetical, philosophical content of most movies nowadays ?"

Let's face it, even such noted auteurs such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Woody Allen took some time to buy their freedom from the 'corporate powers'.

According to a Robert Mitchum biography (Baby, I Don't Care) it doesn't appear as if things were that much different back then. Back in 1950 Howard Hughes recalled arty director Josef Von Sternberg out of retirement to shoot RKOs 1950 movie, Macao.

Things didn't go so well for the autocratic von Sternberg who soon found himself reminded of his place in the pecking order by Mitchum himself when he threatened to fire the rising star for disrespectful behaviour.

"If anyone gets fired around here, it'll be you "

What disturbs me is that the 'corporate powers' now seem to have an all powerful grip on the entire production chain from creation to the delivery outlets.

And everything in between.

Independent movies still exist but who gets to see them?

For example, how many folks have heard about celebrated UK comedian Rik Mayall's final film, 2014s One by One?

Given what's happened since, this film now seems to be highly prophetic.

So why then isn't it shown more?

If they can so easily airbrush out the work of someone as well known as Mayall, it looks as if something rather unpleasant has happened to both our freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

It's definitely not a good climate for artistic production as it now looks as if we're following the same old cold war policies of the USSR or China's CCP when it comes to what can and what can't be allowed in art.

Only now, it's being exercised by the power of corporate money rather than communist show trials.

Give them time, give them time...

Let them make a demonstration of Julian Assange first.