"Popular music doesn't really seem to have a viable adulthood, especially for white people"

[koganbot]

I was on the radio a couple of nights ago, Resonance FM in London, and you can now hear it as a stream over at Freaky Trigger. I'm on for seven minutes, prerecorded, coming in the middle of a strong discussion about kids and (and in) pop music, the panel hosted by Elisha Sessions and featuring Alex Macpherson, Alix Campbell, and Magnus Anderson.

Elisha's Skypephone recorder makes it seem as if he's caught me in a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine, but what I say is discernible. I'm curious if any of you have an opinion on that quote of mine up top ("popular music doesn't really seem to have a viable adulthood, especially for white people"), or on what I say a little earlier, about most people no longer playing music themselves, about their not really being in the music. Of course, I've argued the opposite elsewhere, insisting that blogging and chattering and driving with the bass beating in your car etc. are creative ways of being in the music, that music encompasses the whole thing. But I wonder how many adults actually are involved daily in making musical sounds, not just switching the sounds on and switching on their opinions. I have a couple of friends who are in church choirs, and some who are musicians, but I'll wager that a smaller percentage participate in musicmaking than would have a hundred years ago, when e.g. many homes had pianos.

Brenda Lee Dynamite by beatnickbandit

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Haven't been in the right headspace to listen yet -- visiting a friend today just out of hospital, and v.low as a consequence (they were, not me) plus ow ow still with the back ache, not helped for four hours driving thru hometime traffic

will respond to various things over the next couple weeks, i hope -- class, notatation as a paradigm, h.bloom as a paradigmatist (or not), incommensurability, dilittante project, and age-and-pop

(if pre-bop jazz is popular music then this falls, surely: louis armstrong was still a pop celebrity -- in big-audience TV, drawing sell-out crowds -- till the day he died...)

[koganbot]

Oh, there are a number of performers who stay popular throughout their lifetime. I think the question (in the context of what I was saying in the interview) would be whether they're doing - and whether their audience wants them to be doing - something significantly different from what they were doing when their audience was young.

Also, I'd assume that my generalization might hold better for people who rose to popularity post-WWII. But presumably, AC and urban AC would be counterexamples, some country as well.

Another question that we discussed a little in the interview but that didn't make it to the excerpts was why was the love and romance song so ubiquitous over the last 100 years in Anglo-American music. Again, most adults don't spend a lot of their time falling in love and breaking up - not to the extent that teens and early twenty-somethings do - but love and break-up lyrics are what adults listen to.

Of course, most adults don't spend time consorting with vampires or solving murders, either, but a lot of popular entertainment involves vampires and murders. My thought here is that adults want their entertainment to be dramatic without particularly wanting their lives to be dramatic. Another thought is that the issues of adolescence don't actually go away for adults, but whereas adolescents try to work through things, adults realize you have to live with them or work around them, but are nonetheless drawn to entertainment that reanimates the issues that adults will let lie in their actual living. (This is all speculation, of course; how would we test these ideas?)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

I've argued the opposite elsewhere, insisting that blogging and chattering and driving with the bass beating in your car etc. are creative ways of being in the music, that music encompasses the whole thing. But I wonder how many adults actually are involved daily in making musical sounds, not just switching the sounds on and switching on their opinions.

My uneducated guess: More who switch on their opinions (if not just switch the sound on). Because for one thing your Bobos in Paradise enjoy taking participatory music classes with their toddlers where kids and parents together make various non-Western rhythms with their mouths and with percussion instruments. (Well okay, those are more likely weekly not daily. We took Annika, who is now two years old, to one free sample class you could just drop by for -- Lalena has taken her to a couple more -- and it was fun, but to sign up for the actual sessions cost way more than we were willing/able to spend. Still, I get the idea that such theoretically educational endeavors are getting more prevalent, not less.) Also....There may not be a piano in the parlor anymore, but there may well be a guitar and drum kit in the man cave. (At least there were in I Love You Man; not sure about real life. Though we've got a couple guitars in our apartment, that get played -- not by me -- now and then. Not to mention small keyboards, little plastic drums, coffee cans, glockenspiel, etc.) Finally, there's Guitar Hero and Rock Band and games where participants try to sing American Idol-style, right? Do they count? (I'm not sure; I've never actually played any of them, but I get the idea lots of other people do, many of them grownups, I presume.) And also: Karaoke.

By the way, I listened to that podcast. Entertaining. Have vague memories of the discussion you said we had almost two decades ago, where I insisted grownups actively participate by getting super excited about going to concerts or whatever, but did I really say that the music they listened to was not new? Guess that's possible, though I vaguely remember Shania Twain (and, I don't know, Hootie and the Blowfish?) being major parts of my argument, so you might want to check your notes. (Or I may be confusing different discussions.) Still, if I did say that, trends in the concert industry since have kind of proven my point; top 20 seat-selling acts of the '00s, according to Billboard Boxscore, were the Rolling Stones, U2, Madonna, Springsteen, Elton John, Celine Dion, Dave Matthews Band, Kenny Chesney, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, the Police, the Eagles, Tim McGraw, Aerosmith, Toby Keith, Neil Diamond, Cher, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, and Metallica, in that order. Not exactly a list of music for under 20s. (Closest artists to "new", interestingly, are the country guys.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Man, I will never learn to close-bracket my i's and >'s right, will I? Oh well.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

More who switch on their opinions

Actually meant "More than switch on their opinions" here, by the way. (And I was also probably really really wrong, when you consider that grownups are switching on their opinions all the time, not just by telling co-workers what they like and don't but also, say, telling their kids that it's okay to listen to Taylor Swift or Carrie Underwood but not to Ke$ha or 3Oh!3 or whoever. (When I wrote that, I was equating "opinions" with "online message board posts" or "record reviews." But that's only a fraction of a bigger picture, obviously.)

[koganbot]

Would seem to be a losing proposition telling kids what not to listen to in the age of computers* (not to mention radios), though I'm perhaps making the incorrect assumption that when it comes to music, kids will naturally disobey their parents when they think the parents won't notice.

*Where you can pretty much listen on demand without actually buying, or for that matter can steal without paying (I assume parents are more likely to find out that you're paying than that you're stealing, though I don't know). Of course, I don't know how ubiquitous it is for kids to have their own computers or have consistent access to the family's computer.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Well, I've had some parents tell me that they'll track through their tweens' ipods, and delete songs they deem offensive. But sure, it's a loser's game, always has been (and right, was long before the digital age) -- Surest way to get most kids to listen to a song is to tell them it's bad for them. (Not sure how many kids have their own computers; I assume a lot, though I'd guess the question has been market-researched plenty. Though some parents do still set a schedule for the family computer -- my sister, who has three daughters, does this. That way, you could monitor what's downloaded, if you want. Maybe even what's being streamed, if you're dilligent. Though there's of course no way to prevent songs from being heard otherwise.)

[koganbot]

did I really say that the music they listened to was not new?

No, I'm the one who said it (not necessarily then, but now). But an assumption of mine is very questionable: e.g., I'm deciding that people going to hear the Eagles are still basically listening to the sort of thing they were listening to when young. Whereas it's possible that the Eagles' music is growing and changing along with their fans, and the fans are into the new stuff. I wouldn't bet on it, but it's possible.

Just looking at video clips, I get the sense that older Clapton sounds nothing like he did with Cream, even when he's playing the identical song. So maybe this would be an example of someone "growing" and changing with his audience.

I forgot all about the existence of Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Btw, someone who plays musical instruments a lot less than he did when younger is me.

Of the people I get car rides from, only a few consistently play music when we're riding. One, my friend Leslie, either listens to new country or old rock. (Satellite radio, generally.) My friend Mary has been playing Creedence and '90s U2 and Rodrigo y Gabriela, none of which coincide with her teen years (too young for Creedence, too old to be teen for the other two, the last of whom are definitely an act from this millennium). My friend Nathan, who leads an alt countryish band, plays CDs, definitely new stuff, alt (though not necessarily alt country or alt merely rock, in that there's often a touch of jazz or cabaret in the stuff he listens to, and how would one define Devotchka?). Say what we will about indie and Pitchfork, their audience/readers definitely include people older than young twenties.

trends in the concert industry since have kind of proven my point

Well, they support both our points, yours that older people are still interested in and caring about music, mine that yes, but it's music from their teen years.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

mine that yes, but it's music from their teen years.



Right -- that's why I prefaced "have kind of proven my point" with "if I did say that," "that" being "music they listened to was not new." (Though, apparently, I didn't.)

[koganbot]

New link for Cream's "Crossroads":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVH_si6N5pM