so after thinking about david banner's posts
for a few days, i started to wonder...
how DID those golden eras come to be?

it's easy to say that most music was always shit,
and most music always will be... but that's not a complete
explanation. i realize music is subjective, but facts are facts.

when you look at geniuses like George Clinton and Stevie Wonder
and Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney and Miles Davis and Bill Evans, you can't help but wonder... what happened?

true, it's not as if the charts were FILLED with artists of that caliber, but one wonders why artists of THAT level of quality
seemed to stop popping up.


even i, as an old person, have to wonder
why there hasn't been a talent from this generation
that knocked me out and forced me to put them in the same
category as the greats.




but i was listening to "thriller" the other day
for the first time in a while, and i asked myself...
how is it that an album that came out 30+ years ago
STILL sounds sonically superior than anything that has dropped since.

the mid-range is clear. the bass knocks. the high ends are crisp
without being piercing. and the album sounds fantastic
whether you play it on a cheap boom box or a high end system.

how did they do that?



but then i realized that the talent pool that created that album
could not exist today.


consider quincy jones:

he was a jazz trumpeter.
he did work as a jazz arranger, television/ film scorer, and a band leader.
while doing this work, he was working with legends.

learning from geniuses like count bassie and frank sinatra and
ray charles.

and building relationships so that when it came time to
assemble a team to work on "OTW" and "thriller,"
he could just call up Toto and the Brothers Johnson to do session work, and call bruce swedien to be the engineer.


assuming one wanted to find someone to produce
an album that sounded as good as thriller today,
where would you even find a producer that had THAT type of experierience to draw on? where can the new quincy jones
even work on his chops nowadays to become quincy jones?





believe it or not, MJ was in the same category.
the Jackson 5 were a polished act by the time they came to Motown.
part of that was mike being a genius. but the other part of that
was the fact that they used to play on their local circuit,
working gigs as the house band before they had even left gary Indiana.

enter Motown.
in which Michael Jackson watched, observed, and obsessively studied
geniuses. you wonder how could one man create such genius work?
it might have something to do with the fact that he was in the
room when stevie was recording "innervisions" and "talking book."




what artist today
can be in the room
while another genius is in the process of creating something like
"innervisions" and "talking book?"


and how did stevie get that way?
remember, he studying as a kid... under the funk bros.,
some of the baddest musicians on the planet,
musicians that developed their chops by cruising the jazz scene.

what scene exists today
that could nurture this talent in a young artist?



when you listen to "thriller," you aren't just hearing the work
of MJ and QJ. you are hearing hundreds of years of experience
that is being focused into this one album that came out
with a touch of right timing and god also wandering into the studio.







most people talk fondly of the golden ages of hip hop.
but the way it started, i think, is that there was a scene
that existed so that talent could grow and be nurtured.

cyiphers. parties with DJ's and MC's.
hopping from club to club, hearing up and coming rappers
that were experimenting in a genre who's rules hadn't been
invented yet.


THAT's what creates an environment to create
something like a "illmatic."
it's not just nas you are hearing on that record.

you are hearing what he heard on a scene
where he could hang out, have fun, learn, and grow into a genius.







i don't think it's a accident that he last black band standing,
the roots, is fronted by questlove. because questlove's history
didn't start with hip hop.

he toured with his father, playing drums since the age of
probably too young to be a working adult.
he inherited his mom's and his pop's records collection, as well
as their taste.

and he was also in that hip hop scene where he learned and grew,
and eventually created a scene of his own... where ppl were
learning and feeding off of one another.


it's not just eyrkha and quest you are hearing on mama's gun.
it's hundreds of years of collective experience.




what scene today exists
where this kind of talent can be nurtured?
where are the musicians and rappers hanging out together?
where are they connecting?

some things you can't master sitting alone in your bedroom studio,
mailing tracks to other ppl.

for some things, you need a scene. a movement.
it comes up spontaneously but there is no substitute for it.
getting your 10,000 hrs of practice is in critical,
but all 10,000 hours are not created equal.

stevie's 10,000 hours came with mentorship by the funk bros and
marvin gaye.




but who's training justin beiber?






i guess this post is my rebuttal to david banner's.
i clown him a lot but i never explained why the things he says
aren't the complete truth.

it's not just the labels that have created the artistic landscape
we have now. (although they did drop the ball on finding and
nurturing talent).

and it's not just the fans that don't demand more from their artists.



most of the problem is that the music industry is missing something today that it's never been missing before in the 60+ years that
pop music as we know it has been a thing...


there is no organic scene where musicans and artists
can just go and jam and learn from each other.

that's it.
that's the biggest problem.

i don't know that it can be fixed.


when miles davis was learning his chops,
he could walk to one part of town and hear dizzy and cross the
street and hear bird and if he was lucky he could sit in
and learn something.


George Clinton could assemble a band with
doo wop vocal chops, Motown trained songwriting ability,
JB's horn section, background players with jazz chops,
and Hendrix style guitars thrown in for good measure.

what's more, they were influenced by everybody
that happened to be playing on local radio...
bands we've never heard of...
jamming in places we'll never read about.




if lady gaga wanted to become the next joni Mitchell,
where could she even go to learn?




did i make this post already?