i'm stealing this from Robert Christgau, btw...




back in the day, not all the popular music was good.
BUT, most of the great music was popular.

if i want to find the great music from the 60s and 70s,
it's pretty easy to know where to start.

Beatles.
stones.
motown.

of course, there was more than that.
but i can be just fine as a music snob if i start with the top sellers and weed out the crap.
that's enough to keep me occupied for quite some time.





so what went wrong?
I've said this before... i blame "thriller."
"thriller" made companies like CBS start to care about their record division.
so the suits who used to let record companies be run by ppl that love music
started to want a say in what got released and how.

is that a bad thing? not really.
the tension between "do great art" and "we need a single" is responsible for most of the music i love.



the problem, though... is the suits started to feel that
they could make any artist as popular as MJ if they put enough money behind it.
what the suits forgot is that artists like MJ and prince and even Madonna were true artists did their own quality control. they were geniuses, and money alone ain't what made them popular.




so this "thriller" boom lasted up through the 90s...
and everyone from garth brooks to n'sync benefitted.


but then companies got greedy.
they wanted every artist to do thriller numbers on their first album...
lest they got dropped.

they stop developing talent.
blow up immediately, or you get dropped.






add in napster and the fact that they quit selling singles
and you have a generation of fans that never paid for music
and are not gonna pay 20 bucks for a CD with one song they kinda like.





here's bammer's point:
indie artists can't flourish just b/c the old model is gone.
the old model had benefits.

it's easy to find new, good music.
there is excitement. blockbuster albums.
if that model collapses (which it has) how will new artists find a voice?




but here's where bammer misses the entire point...


when the Beatles started out...
there was no way to get rich playing black music.
they did it because they liked it and accidentally made a career out of it.

same goes with the first rappers.
same goes with the first jazz musicians.


they did it b/c they loved it,
and that created some great music.

what bammer misses is that of ppl realize
that you can't get rich playing music...
ppl that don't give a fuck about music will quit making it,
and it can go back to the "innocent" place it came from.

2 turntables and a mic.










it almost doesn't matter if nobody hears it.
what matters is that somewhere there is a guy with an ipad
making music beause that's what in his heart.

that's the type of energy that, no bullshit, can change the world.
bammer is right, we've lost that.
but it's not a lost cause.


it's just starting all over again.
in a good way.

ps I'm drunk.
I'll regret this post in the morning I'm sure.