Quote:
Originally posted by bleeckerx
I have to wonder if pop music really has any effect on " music's evolution" anymore. If anything its an adverse effect. Instead of drawin people to new creative sounds, its pushin people AWAY from old commercialized souless sounds. The real artists and innovators in music arent listenin to the radio, they dont give a shit about pop music. Because its stagnant. Its an artistic wasteland. True artists; those responsible for music's evolutions, have their ears to the underground. This is the last real vestage of talent and creativity. The pop world takes what the underground is doing, sucks the soul from it and packages it in a user friendly form. ( we all know this ) When a genre or a style or sound goes pop- that is its death. I truly believe this. Whose to blame? The music legends; The king, The Beatles, Kirk Cobain etc. These people cheapened the music they performed and bastardized it for the rest of the world.
I say fuck the legends.
Give me the underground.
Give me art.
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Bearing in mind that some of the legends you mentioned were underground musicans at the begining of their careers, on the whole, I agree with your "Fuck the legends" philosophy. I can think of a number of truly great musicans that never got the really phenominal exposure that some mediocre hacks got; the hacks got really rich, the truly talented people just got a cult following. From my perspective, the guy that got the rawest deal was Frank Zappa; he's been discussed in another thread, but I still think that he was one of the most inventive musicans of the 20 th century, and if mentioning him again gets him a new fan, that's great. Off the top of my head, I'd also suggest David Bromberg as another innovative, but not very well-known artist. As far as groups go, I'd say Little Feat (when Lowell George was still alive) were the equal or better of any band that was contemporary with them. There's tons of bands that were really excellent, but due to various reasons, just never really clicked with the public, but I have to say that the root cause of failure for any really talented group or individual musician is marketing; the public can recognize great artists, but if there's little or no initial publicity for real talent, the public doesn't know these people exist. One of the underlying reasons for the lack of marketing by the recording industry is that they are targeting a segment of the population that really isn't looking for quality, they're just looking for an image. Boy Bands, Divas and that ilk are just images that the market segment the recording industry targets wants; the youth market. That's where the money is, and that's what the bottom line is; quality has little or nothing to do wih pop music- it's strictly money.