Steven is mostly right

[OOO]

And what the hell is that "auto tone" shit kids use today to make their voices sound like robots?

 

[jff]

Vodcoders I have no problem with - I was an impressionable little kid when "Frampton Comes Alive" came out. But using technology because you can't sing well enough to sing in key FOR AT LEAST ONE FUCKING TAKE IN A RECORDING STUDIO? Oy. Go work at the mall.

 

Frampton used a Talk Box, not a vocoder. Actually, maybe he did use a vocoder, but the vocal effect most commonly associated with him is the Talk Box.

 

Sorry, I'm not trying to be nit-picky.

 

[Central Scrutinizer]

Actually if there are more people there is bound to be more talent. But it is not simply the issue of talent it is also the issue of young people being able to access better equipment, learn how to play, sing, read music, listen to a wider range of music, etc. There is no doubt that people now have many more recources at their commands, including the ability to record themselves successfully and mix and reproduce that music with little interference.

 

I have said this repeated here over the years, your average musician is far better now than in the past. Simply having electronic tuners which can help anyone play in tune, is a big advantage over musicians in the past (not to mention far better equipment...)

 

LouieB

I would say the percentage of people with artistic talent is a constant. There are for several reasons more capable guitarists than at any time -- those reasons include better low-cost equipment (Chinese made bang-around guitars are better made than bangaround Mexican, Korean or Jpaanese guitarists or at least before they could be efficiently mass produced and distributed) but most importantly is the access to online insutrction, tabs, lessons, reinforcement -- as opposed to dropping the needle over and over again on a record in order to learn a song yourself -- certainly along the lines of what Stevie is implying, but I think today's guitarist has a shortcut.

 

that said, being technically better and having the financial means to produce, record and distribute music does not guarantee that the music would be quality or at least above the curve. Consider the percentage of popular music that's novelty song, the overproduced, easily distributed pop; all of this cacophony obscures the quality music. There may be more of it, but there's so much more noise -- and alternatives to sitting down and absorbing music -- that it's hard to find because it's thrown into the mass pool of available sounds.

[Central Scrutinizer]

I agree...see no argument. Being able to write a decent song has nothing to do with better technology.

 

But clearly if there are more people AND more people accessing better musical raw materials including equipment, recording equipment, music education, access to others who are high quality musicians, etc. this ups the ability of a person to sound and play better. If an individual has access to all this and the time to practice like crazy (which is also germain to the conversation) they will end up sounding great, which doesn't actually equate with writing and performing music that is truly moving, which is ultimately what Little Steven is saying...

 

LouieB

I think there is documented proof that what you describe does not equate to an increase in quality music.

 

It's called YouTube. Try a few hundred random songs recorded there. Lots of people have access to audio and video equipment and have the ability to make sounds. It doesn't mean they should. Even accounting for the larger number of views for a video being proportional to the quality of the video, what you have ready access too is predominately shite.

[tinnitus photography]

this thread is turning pointless because there is no way to objectively quantify 'music quality.'

[jff]

I think there is documented proof that what you describe does not equate to an increase in quality music.

 

It's called YouTube. Try a few hundred random songs recorded there. Lots of people have access to audio and video equipment and have the ability to make sounds. It doesn't mean they should. Even accounting for the larger number of views for a video being proportional to the quality of the video, what you have ready access too is predominately shite.

 

Of course they should, and this is precisely where Van Zandt's entire point falls apart (actually it's one of many places where it falls apart). He says bands should do what the Beatles did and go play cover tunes in clubs for five years (what he calls woodshedding). Young musicians doing cover songs on Youtube, for better or worse, IS the modern day version of woodshedding.

[Good Old Neon]

I agree...see no argument. Being able to write a decent song has nothing to do with better technology.

 

But clearly if there are more people AND more people accessing better musical raw materials including equipment, recording equipment, music education, access to others who are high quality musicians, etc. this ups the ability of a person to sound and play better. If an individual has access to all this and the time to practice like crazy (which is also germain to the conversation) they will end up sounding great, which doesn't actually equate with writing and performing music that is truly moving, which is ultimately what Little Steven is saying...

 

LouieB

 

I agree to a point, but if there were a strong correlation between technology as it relates to improving an individual

[Nobody Girl]

This guy sounds like every other old man sitting in their rockers claiming things were better back in "their day".

 

 

 

That's the way it was and we LIKED it!

[Central Scrutinizer]

this thread is turning pointless because there is no way to objectively quantify 'music quality.'

What is a constant? Technology isn't. Virtuosity could be; but that is not a threat of what is univerally considered the greatest music of the mid/late 20th century and early 21st. Art is harnessing the creative element and making a statement artistically. Rather than simply "too many notes." It's the haunting echoes that rattle around Sam Phillips' cramped studio. It's what Joey Ramone and Co. did with 3 chords. It's hi fi and lo fi and complex and simple and profound and brilliantly insipid.

 

But comparing the business of music in Stevie's time to the essense of quality today is comparing apples and earwax.

 

Great music is just as elusive; even when there are stinkin' boatloads of it being made every day. Technology gives an artist a better shot of being heard; the odds are still stacked against him creating anything worth hearing.

[Central Scrutinizer]

Of course they should, and this is precisely where Van Zandt's entire point falls apart (actually it's one of many places where it falls apart). He says bands should do what the Beatles did and go play cover tunes in clubs for five years (what he calls woodshedding). Young musicians doing cover songs on Youtube, for better or worse, IS the modern day version of woodshedding.

I stand corrected. Everyone *should* create music. But Stevie has a point in that what made the Beatles great was honing their craft doing five shows a night and practicing in between. It was playing and replaying and dissecting the elements of the songs in order to borrow and build upon those elements to make arguably the greatest music since.

 

Why shouldn't artists woodshed? They have much better tools than their ancestors, more basics at their disposal to recreate the greatest music.

 

Young musicians doing cover songs in their bedrooms and videotaping it -- practicing a song a few times and recording it for their own ego trip and dumping it on the Web, is musical Twitter. It's masterbation. There's no feedback, there's no relation between audience and artist. It's panting, squirting, done.

[John Smith]

this thread is turning pointless because there is no way to objectively quantify 'music quality.'

 

Yes there is...what I like is quality music. If you listen to the same stuff as me you hae good taste. If you listen to other music, you have inferior taste and listen to lower quality music. Isn't that the way manny music arguments go?

 

Of course they should, and this is precisely where Van Zandt's entire point falls apart (actually it's one of many places where it falls apart). He says bands should do what the Beatles did and go play cover tunes in clubs for five years (what he calls woodshedding). Young musicians doing cover songs on Youtube, for better or worse, IS the modern day version of woodshedding.

 

Do you honestly believe that?

[jff]

Do you honestly believe that?

 

 

To the death, although I should have said it is a version of modern day woodshedding and not the.

[jff]

I stand corrected. Everyone *should* create music. But Stevie has a point in that what made the Beatles great was honing their craft doing five shows a night and practicing in between. It was playing and replaying and dissecting the elements of the songs in order to borrow and build upon those elements to make arguably the greatest music since.

 

That's certainly one of the things that made them great. Another thing was their natural talent.

 

Plenty of bands followed the same woodshedding course as the Beatles and never got very good artistically or commercially.

[jff]

Young musicians doing cover songs in their bedrooms and videotaping it -- practicing a song a few times and recording it for their own ego trip and dumping it on the Web, is musical Twitter. It's masterbation. There's no feedback, there's no relation between audience and artist. It's panting, squirting, done.

 

You're right, but you're ignoring the fact that many people on youtube are very serious about playing music and they use youtube as a way of getting their performaces in front of people, where they can get feedback and encouragement and hopefully improve. A lot of these people are way too young to play in clubs, so why wouldn't they use Youtube as an outlet?

[John Smith]

That's certainly one of the things that made them great. Another thing was their natural talent.

 

Plenty of bands followed the same woodshedding course as the Beatles and never got very good artistically or commercially.

 

I believe that the beatles honed their talents in the bars, which is what Steve is saying. Learnign to play those songs and becoming intimate with the great music of the day allowed them to learn songcraft. Natural talent? Or hard work? Perhaps a combination of both.

 

This has to be looked at in perspective also. Those are the bands Steve grew up on, they were the ones he honed his chops on, and his bands learned the same way.

 

Yes many bands spend their time paying their dues, but not all make it. The same can be said of almost any profession. I am an accountant and have been doing it for 20 years. Do I know my craft? Sure do. Have I paid my dues? I think so. Will I ever run a fortune 500 company? Nope. I recognize that. In the case of the music not every band is going to reach the mountaintop and sell 2million copies of every release or fill stadiums around the world. The point of the article, I think, is that the bands who are selling albums and tickets are not very good and that he thinks they could have sttod to spend more time learning their craft.

[OOO]

So basically, it should be harder for bands to get famous and they should have less outlets to display their stuff, so that only the very best ones that have put in years of hard work can "make it"?

 

I sort of understand the logic, and I'm sure if the Beatles had been signed before their stint in Germany, they wouldn't have been as good as they ended up being. However, I think Youtube, myspace, etc. are excellent for musicians. As stated before, by allowing EVERYONE a forum to post their stuff, you obviously get a low signal-to-noise ratio, but at least everyone can have their voice heard. If you are talented enough, you can amass a strong internet following without the help of any label or management. I think the ability to do it all on your own is whats really exciting. Besides, masturbation is fun.

 

I am biased since I don't enjoy playing music live at all and prefer youtube as my outlet. I am not a talented musician at all, but I definitely would not be writing/playing music as much as I do if it weren't for the feedback/views/comments I've gotten on youtube. I'm not interested in becoming the Beatles or being signed or making money with my music, but some people enjoy my shit enough to watch/listen to it. Thats good enough for me.

[Central Scrutinizer]

So basically, it should be harder for bands to get famous and they should have less outlets to display their stuff, so that only the very best ones that have put in years of hard work can "make it"?

 

That's not what I'm saying at all and I don't think you believe that either. Talent, artists are rare commodities so it's tough to get a break, all things being equal. Whether it's 1 to 1,000 or 1,000 to 1,000,000.

 

I sort of understand the logic, and I'm sure if the Beatles had been signed before their stint in Germany, they wouldn't have been as good as they ended up being. However, I think Youtube, myspace, etc. are excellent for musicians. As stated before, by allowing EVERYONE a forum to post their stuff, you obviously get a low signal-to-noise ratio, but at least everyone can have their voice heard. If you are talented enough, you can amass a strong internet following without the help of any label or management. I think the ability to do it all on your own is whats really exciting. Besides, masturbation is fun.

 

My point is there is more of an opportunity for *anyone* to have access to the process. If the Beatles didn't develop like they did musically as well as artists, performers, writers and how they developed popularly, the whole DNA of music today would be different. They defined, as much as Dylan, the performer as artist, as writer/producer/icon. That is the indefinable quality of this whole equation, and that's what the "man" and every wannabee clings to -- including yours truly. That's what we know and the rock myth was wrought from such DNA.

 

But just like real sex, it takes two to make it happen artist and audience. The talent has to be accepted and embraced. The audience has to give back ($, following, adoration, underwear tossed on stage, verbal accolades etc).

 

I am biased since I don't enjoy playing music live at all and prefer youtube as my outlet. I am not a talented musician at all, but I definitely would not be writing/playing music as much as I do if it weren't for the feedback/views/comments I've gotten on youtube. I'm not interested in becoming the Beatles or being signed or making money with my music, but some people enjoy my shit enough to watch/listen to it. Thats good enough for me.

I have a simple question: why? What is the purpose you post yourself playing music -- your own or cover songs? At the end of the day, what tangible do you derive from "feedback/view/comments" on a Web site of millions of videos? I've read responses posted to videos? How much constructive feedback is gained? I don't mean this to be negative, I'm curious because if this is the rock n roll myth today, I'd say the vision that Stevie embraces is dead.

 

It's not to achieve it. It's the goal to strive for it; something bigger and more intangible than 30 or 40 views.

[OOO]

That's not what I'm saying at all and I don't think you believe that either. Talent, artists are rare commodities so it's tough to get a break, all things being equal. Whether it's 1 to 1,000 or 1,000 to 1,000,000.

 

And I suppose I would say these days its easier to get a break. Not only are there more venues to showcase music, but you don't have to fit into one particular style. No one is going to break as big as the Beatles did, but smaller success is still success.

 

I have a simple question: why? What is the purpose you post yourself playing music -- your own or cover songs? At the end of the day, what tangible do you derive from "feedback/view/comments" on a Web site of millions of videos? I've read responses posted to videos? How much constructive feedback is gained? I don't mean this to be negative, I'm curious because if this is the rock n roll myth today, I'd say the vision that Stevie embraces is dead.

 

It's not to achieve it. It's the goal to strive for it; something bigger and more intangible than 30 or 40 views.

 

I am not interested in living the rock and roll dream. There will never be women throwing panties at me, and I'm not going to sell out Madison Square Gardens and retire as a millionaire. But who cares? If all I want to do is play music and have a few people hear it and possibly enjoy it, then youtube is the perfect venue for me. The feedback I get is almost better than what I would get playing at some dive bar, because its fairly easily quantifiable, and can help me improve. If one of my videos gets 100 views, and one of my videos get 100,000 views, then I can try and figure out what I did better in the latter video. Some videos may have higher ratings but less views, and I can figure out why. And some videos might have some comments that say "UR GAY!!!", and even then I can gauge the audience reaction and adjust my next song accordingly.

 

If you play a live show, you can maybe listen to how loud the applause is, and see how many people stay after the show to say how great you were, and its probably a better feeling in the moment, but as far as knowing what exactly you can work on or what is your best song, etc. that feedback is far less concrete.

 

Jeff Tweedy talks about how great it feels to create something that didn't EVER exist before you made it; thats really what its all about. Getting enjoyment out of creation, as well as the narcissistic want to be validated by other people, whether they be online or in real life.

[Vacant Horizon]

You're right, but you're ignoring the fact that many people on youtube are very serious about playing music and they use youtube as a way of getting their performaces in front of people, where they can get feedback and encouragement and hopefully improve. A lot of these people are way too young to play in clubs, so why wouldn't they use Youtube as an outlet?

 

 

one of the big issues here is that there are a lot of very serious people who play music and are really bad, no matter how much they work at it. at the same time, there is also a good number of folks who like these folks. they have no sense of what's good or bad. any given night in atlanta one can find several bland songwriters who are 'really serious' and a crowd that just takes it all in. interesting.

[bjorn_skurj]

There's no accounting for taste, but I just can't believe any argument can be made that the popular music today is as good as the popular music of, shit, even the '80s, much less the '60s and '70s.

[tinnitus photography]

There's no accounting for taste, but I just can't believe any argument can be made that the popular music today is as good as the popular music of, shit, even the '80s, much less the '60s and '70s.

 

who included the 'popular' qualifier? not me.

[jff]

I believe that the beatles honed their talents in the bars, which is what Steve is saying.

 

The point of the article, I think, is that the bands who are selling albums and tickets are not very good and that he thinks they could have sttod to spend more time learning their craft.

 

It's true that the Beatles honed their talents in bars. That's indisputable. Unfortunately, the opportunity to play five sets a night five nights a week in a nightclub (like the Beatles did in Hamburg), or even to be the house band at a club and have a consistent gig (like the Stones, Yardbirds, etc. did in England), things which once were the norm, are now virtually nonexistant. So, Steven is out of touch, at best. Maybe instead of bad mouthing bands he should hassle club owners to make things the way they once were.

 

If that is really the point of the article, it seems odd that Steven made his address at SXSW...a place where the hardest working up-and-coming bands from all over the world go to showcase the product of their efforts.

[OOO]

Right, If we are talking about the quality of the bands who have sold the most tickets at their peak over time, I think I could get behind the statement that quality has gone down. But its probably also the case that there are a lot of better smaller bands. And its pretty easy to ignore Hannah Montana, Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, etc and just enjoy the plethora of good bands that are definitely out there and have earned their popularity.

[mastershake]

Steven says what i've been saying for a while now, except I think it's just a problem with the record labels and what they promote as "good music". There are plenty of bands out there that are inventive and make great music but they are not the bands that are getting the millions of dollars in promotion by record labels. It's the shitty bands that keep getting promoted, and the music industry is digging it's own grave by continually spamming Nickelback, Staind, Linkin Park, etc. to the masses instead of focusing on bands like Wilco, Spoon, etc. who fly under the radar when it comes to national media attention. The bands that rule the airwaves these days are terrible, produce similar song after similar song, and give the listener no real incentive to actually go out and pick up the full album when it's released. Instead I suspect that the majority of people who listen to mainstream Clear Channel radio, if they buy music at all, just buy the singles on the internet and don't bother picking up the full album. This is what I do with regard to rap tracks that I hear in clubs that I want on my iPod - I go download Flo Rida's Right Round but I don't bother spending $10 to get the entire album because I know that all the other tracks will be horrible. Thus there are declining music sales because there was a time in the past where people would buy the entire album just to get one song. That is no longer the case anymore. I think if good bands like Wilco were mainstream radio you'd have better album sales because you can expect to pick up a Wilco album and hear 10 good (if not great) songs - making the money spent well worth it. That is not the case with Hoobastank, Nickelback, Limp Bizkit, etc. etc. etc.

[Moss]

Steven says what i've been saying for a while now, except I think it's just a problem with the record labels and what they promote as "good music". There are plenty of bands out there that are inventive and make great music but they are not the bands that are getting the millions of dollars in promotion by record labels. It's the shitty bands that keep getting promoted, and the music industry is digging it's own grave by continually spamming Nickelback, Staind, Linkin Park, etc. to the masses instead of focusing on bands like Wilco, Spoon, etc. who fly under the radar when it comes to national media attention. The bands that rule the airwaves these days are terrible, produce similar song after similar song, and give the listener no real incentive to actually go out and pick up the full album when it's released. Instead I suspect that the majority of people who listen to mainstream Clear Channel radio, if they buy music at all, just buy the singles on the internet and don't bother picking up the full album. This is what I do with regard to rap tracks that I hear in clubs that I want on my iPod - I go download Flo Rida's Right Round but I don't bother spending $10 to get the entire album because I know that all the other tracks will be horrible. Thus there are declining music sales because there was a time in the past where people would buy the entire album just to get one song. That is no longer the case anymore. I think if good bands like Wilco were mainstream radio you'd have better album sales because you can expect to pick up a Wilco album and hear 10 good (if not great) songs - making the money spent well worth it. That is not the case with Hoobastank, Nickelback, Limp Bizkit, etc. etc. etc.

 

I have played in bar bands for years and it never ceases to amaze me. You could play the hell out of even the most well known Wilco song and you will hear crickets chirping. You bust into "Pour some sugar on me" or just about anything by Nickelback and the place goes absolutely nuts. Even if Wilco were on the radio all the time, I just don't think you will get that reaction. There is just a huge contingent of people that want to hear simplistic, spoon fed music and find something like Wilco way too challenging. That sounds grossly patronizing and that's not how it's meant. I can respect someone who likes Nickelback, I don't understand it but I respect it, you like what you like. Just like the vast majority of people will never "get" sonic youth. I just feel lucky that I do.

 

Ah hell, I'm not making sense but I'm too lazy to change anything.