fronobulax
Bassist, GAD and the Hot Mess Mods
- Joined
- May 3, 2007
- Messages
- 24,708
- Reaction score
- 8,836
- Location
- Central Virginia, USA
- Guild Total
- 5
Article on Wall Street Journal here. Text to article pasted below since WSJ articles often slip behind paywalls. Basic premise is that generationally biased (GB) listeners are missing out on a lot of new music. Sounds like some of us geezers to me :wink:
By JIM FUSILLI
It's 1955 and you're in a record shop. The proprietor puts on "Maybellene" by a newcomer named Chuck Berry. You're enjoying it, but a fellow customer saunters over: "That's nothing more than Roy Acuff's 'Ida Red' with different words," he says, pointing out that Acuff cut his track in 1939. "I wouldn't call that original."
Audiences with a generational bias are quick to dismiss new music. They probably would have dismissed Bob Dylan, too.
Or it's 1963 and you're listening to "Girl From the North Country" from "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." Someone says, "Dylan didn't write that. That's 'Scarborough Fair.' It's on Shirley Collins's 'False True Lovers,'" he adds, referring to the 1959 recording. "Dylan put new words to Martin Carthy's arrangement, that's all."
Or it's 2012 and there is a multitude of young singers, songwriters and musicians trying to develop their own sound. They're not quite there yet, so the music they make is still familiar to veteran pop and rock fans, some of whom dismiss them, often without reflection or musical expertise.
These naysayers among us demonstrate a kind of generational bias that can blunt a promising musician's career. It can be summarized thus: "The only valid music is what I liked when I was in my teens." They tend to be vocal about their disapproval and aren't likely to exploit new methods of dissemination, such as downloading or using Spotify, to hear new sounds. When they come across new music, it's usually pushed toward them by a critic or a friend, or they hear a snippet on television. Had they been around in 1955, or 1963, they might have dismissed Messrs. Berry and Dylan too.
Often aggressive and belligerent, the generationally biased—let's call them Gee-Bees—rarely attribute their affection for the music of their youth to tender memories. They present their argument as perceived wisdom: Popular music was better then. For you to disagree is to reveal a deficiency on your part. Cite examples of excellence among today's musicians and you too are dismissed. Here's a typical conversation:
Gee-Bee: "Go ahead. Name a band today that's better than (insert '60s or '70s act here)."
You: "Radiohead? Arcade Fire? TV on the Radio? Sigur Rós?"
Gee-Bee: "I never heard of them."
You: "You never heard of Radiohead?"
Gee-Bee: "I don't listen to new music. I don't need to. No one will ever be better than (insert favorite old-time artist or band)."
This kind of obduracy isn't new, but it does seem especially egregious among boomers. It may be because the recording industry in the era immediately following Woodstock was so powerful that even today some fans in their 50s and 60s still fail to realize their opinions were shaped by marketing prowess. Music back then was sold more as a lifestyle product than an art form, its performers presented as gods rather than gifted artists. At the same time, a Gee-Bee's loyalty to the music of his youth is often linked to a profound sense of identification with the period and its causes—opposition to the Vietnam war, for example, or support for equal rights for women and minorities. For some Gee-Bees, that identification is a form of validation. To say that there may be better music now isn't merely a challenge to a Gee-Bee's taste. It's a challenge to his self-perception.
It may be extreme to say the Gee-Bees are hurting the rest of their generation, but indie record labels, home to most of today's worthy music, do not aggressively market new sounds to boomers. Festival promoters have started to woo them with increasing fervor, but for the most part the closest that boomers might come to being targets of "current" music are the new albums put out by veteran artists who have been around for decades—retread recordings like the ones Rod Stewart releases, for example. At times, it feels like the recording industry thinks all boomers are Gee-Bees who listen to nothing but old vinyl and retrominded stations on the radio.
For most of us, our experience tells us that some of today's acts who use a retro sound as a foundation for growth may go on to do something great. Unlike Gee-Bees, we see these newcomers doing what countless now-iconic artists—including Messrs. Berry and Dylan, as well as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder and others—did when they were struggling to find their own sound: building on what was done by their predecessors. This is how all artists evolve, not just rock and pop musicians.
In 2011 Laura Marling released "A Creature I Don't Know," a very fine album in which we hear echoes of Mr. Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. For that reason, Gee-Bees may turn away, but Ms. Marling is 21 years old and has the talent to suggest a potential for growth that can thrill us for the rest of our lives. She's one among many young musicians who may do so. In the arts, the immediate past is rarely the pinnacle. It may very well be prelude and it's certainly part of a continuum. Listen to Radiohead's 1993 debut "Pablo Honey," for example: It's a nice alt-rock album, but it doesn't come close to suggesting how dynamic and adventurous the band would become.
Gee-Bees are free to dismiss new music, but let's remember they do so not because they know something about music we don't. It's quite the opposite. We know something they don't—that new music is a joy that enriches our lives and will do so for as long as we choose to listen.
Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @wsjrock.