All Change

The business around recorded music has for the last few years been undergoing the most fundamental change in its history.

Since the 19th Century and Edison’s time the music industry has been able to generate wealth by turning performances and compositions into recorded copies that could be sold to the public in one format or another. This pay-per-unit model thrived until recently when it has been threatened by the Internet. The ability now to copy music and pass it around freely means that the century-old industrial process that took care of manufacture and distribution is increasingly redundant. Anyone can now produce and distribute their own work easily. With that the big music companies could be out of a job.

Now the problem is how can creative individuals in recorded music and their business partners turn their work into earnings. Its not just a question of how but whether. It may turn out that society no longer wants to pay for recorded music. Like poetry or photography or blogging it may remain a worthy activity but with largely no commercial value.

Whatever moves are made, whatever deals are done, clever or stupid, the next few years will determine the future. Most people don’t grasp the issues yet. Many have the standard reaction: that what is happening currently is some kind of moral outrage. They talk about how music is being “stolen” by unscrupulous down-loaders. Anyone applying the slightest intelligence knows that is nonsense. The outraged tend to talk as if this “stealing” is somehow denying them their income when the money they have made from their recordings down the years was miniscule anyway. It wouldn’t have kept them going in breakfast cereal. Yet they somehow want to stand by the old system as if it is some kind of sacred cow when it tended only to make a very small number of individuals very wealthy.

What exists at the moment is an opportunity to create a new environment. But that change could evolve different ways depending on how imaginative people in the music business are. As I say, it might be to condemn music recordings to the commercial dustbin. Or to be more optimistic, it could lead to a fairer distribution of the money society is prepared to award its music-makers. A reorganisation is conceivable whereby performers and composers could make modest amounts sufficient to sustain them. Although by no means a certainty this is a realistic possibility. There are many musicians such as myself who would be delighted to be able to pay the rent from their recorded works.

Ways of moving forward with that in mind should be sought, not inhibiting the process of change as the majority in the business seem to be doing, either by clinging to already outmoded thinking or in the case of the big players by suing their customers for embracing the future quicker than they have.

The Mythology Of Music

Some research:

A large sample of people was given forty-eight recorded songs to listen to by different artists. The sample was divided into two main groups. Group 1 was a social group. It was allowed to review the songs and have discussion. Group 2 wasn't. Its members listened alone.

The results did not at all surprise me. In Group 2 (no conferring) no one song or artist emerged more preferable than any other. Within Group 1 (conferring) the contrasts were huge.

To further their argument the researchers had divided Group 1 into eight smaller social groups each of which conferred internally but not with the other seven. Within each smaller group, one song emerged as a distinct favourite while another song bombed. The extremes were considerable. No two social groups returned the same best or worst song.

The point reinforced here is that beyond a certain threshold of talent the value of music is determined by factors other than the music itself, often by peer influences. In other words it is determined by context as much as by content. I've been saying this for twenty years: that success in music is due not, as is commonly understood, to some innate quality in the work but more to the complex social, commercial and cultural factors that surround music-making.

Saying this out loud always draws a blank. Why? Probably because it undermines the mythology of music. It's a far more agreeable prospect to believe in the mystical essence of a work, that somehow the creator is tapping into some transcendent wellspring and pouring forth; or that some ontological force is being transmitted by the piece and your well-honed sensor is suitably tuned to appreciate it. The mythos sits better with the emotion felt from music than does the considerably more mundane aspects of the process such as liking something just because others do.

The experiment points to a consensus theory of quality. It implies that good music is simply music that gains sufficient numbers of followers. Ideally it should do so for a long period toward posterity. Then it can be said to be truly good. When you live in the desert like I do due to your radicalism it is always heartening to come across findings that support your radical view.

Gold Dust

Art and commerce are not so contradictory.

They are different elements of a process. Anyone can produce a piece of artistic work if they have the impulse and the talent. Trying to get that work into circulation and make it stick is much more difficult. Artists are often contemptuous of that process as if it’s outside their remit. Yet surely there is hardly one among us who wouldn't jump at the prospect of wider acceptance. To be rewarded for your art is very nice work if you can get it. You do the thing you want to do, you enjoy doing it, and then you get applauded and paid. Who wouldn’t want that?

All the great artists throughout history were great not just because of what they did but because what they did was accepted by significant numbers. Without acceptance a particular work has no value beyond what it means to its creator and possibly those in the immediate circle. The context into which the work is presented is what gives it its value; it is as important as the work itself. That context is where commercial interests kick in. To say that art and commerce are incompatible is to ignore the importance of context. They are different aspects of the same thing. The commercial world is the environment where artworks are circulated, appraised, controlled and rewarded. This keeps the creators solvent. At least it's supposed to. That the rewards sometimes go way beyond solvent toward excess is a feature of rampant capitalism and applies to art as it does any other commodity. If you are attached to a hit you will score big.

You can't have meaning in art without context. The context includes business and money-making. Many can perform but if they want to do it to an audience someone has to find a venue, make a stage, provide equipment, organise tickets, tell others about it, sort out the money, pay those involved for their efforts and so on. Artists generally don't do this. They need players. Players control the context. They are often hated for their conniving and controlling but they are necessary beasts. Without them nothing happens. Without the Epsteins and the Geffens, the Blackwells and the Bransons, there would never have been the great cultural phenomena with which they were associated. They are the conduits and they are gold-dust.

Tribute To Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson died yesterday.

I never knew him but I knew he was one of the most unusual people ever to work the music biz. He combined an odd mix of attributes. He was clever, intellectual and cultured, yet easily able to act out like a rock and roller. He went about his business with a belief in possibility bordering on unreal.

When I heard he was ill I sent an email wishing him well. I wouldn't ordinarily do that to someone I don't know but for Wilson you change the rule. I should not have been surprised when he answered back with thanks and signed off in typical revolutionary voice - ‘VENCEREMOS’ - meaning we will win.

Cheers Tony. You didn't win that final battle but you left a mark and won the respect of many. For that your memory will be cherished for a long while to come.

McCartney

Context is the greater part of music.

If Beethoven crawled out the grave today and set about making symphony number ten they wouldn't have it. They'd be saying that the 200 years in the ground did something to him, that he'd lost it. Perhaps Mozart was the real deal.

Same with that renowned concert violinist Joshua Bell who busked in the subway and got ignored. People pay substantial sums to see him in his place but wouldn't look at him twice out of context.

Paul McCartney? There is nothing, absolutely nothing he can do short of being assassinated that would bring back widespread credibility because his time has come and gone. Competition from his dead and legendary partner aside he will always be up against his former self which was so great as to be untouchable.

All music has its time and there was no time like The Beatles. McCartney has made respectable music in his later years. Electric Arguments is a fantastic piece of work. But that's not what's important. It's all about the context and that can never again be in Paul McCartney's favour while he is still alive. All the talent in the world can't fix that.

Rock Is Dead

The rock era is over.

It's not the stupidity of bad old record labels to blame although god knows they've done their bit. It is over because all art-forms have their day and rock has had its. (And what a glorious moment it was leaving a great legacy of recorded works that will last for generations to come.)

The rock era is over also because there is now too much of it. It has no scarcity. Every other kid on the block plays guitar and is in a band. So is his dad. This contrasts the 60s when the genre was new with few numbers. The older generation then were mostly set apart from it. The ground-breaking London scene was made up of a few hundred elite players who would go on to define the world of pop.

There are more people doing music now than ever. The greater percentage don't make a living from it of course but do it as an activity. Some might have a myspace or a blog to complement the activity and to service whatever miniscule following they might have. With this, the necessary relationship that value has with scarcity is lost in the sense that it is no big deal to be in a band, to write songs and make recordings. You can even put these recordings out in the world with the click of a mouse. Until fairly recently getting stuff out was a tough business. It required major money and major determination and no small amount of serendipity. Now anyone can. In the anyone-can world there is no scarcity and as a result value is diminished. Or at least the value associated with greatness is diminished. And all art harkens to greatness. The philosopher Jean Baudrillard said that art does not die because there is no more art, it dies because there is too much. That is the rock context. Even when there is vital and original work being done it drowns in the sea of mediocrity that surrounds it.

This is why the rock era is over. But does it matter given that all forms have their moment and pass? I don’t think so. As they pass, the defining works become richer as posterity bestows them the tag of greatness. This happened with classical music and jazz. It is happening now with rock. It is not to say there isn't contemporary quality around as some assert. Actually there is quality and talent everywhere as good as ever. It is just that the context has changed. And context is king. Mass market with mass appeal is disappearing by the day. Niche is the thing. And that's fine too for what it is. But whatever it is it can't lead to greatness. Greatness feeds off a feeling of being unique. You can't be unique if a million other people are doing what you do - and are also on the platform competing for attention.

The beauty of the recorded work as a form is that it doesn't go away. It remains in personal collections everywhere in its myriad formats and will outlive it creators to be rediscovered by future generations. There will soon be no need for it to be reinvented and restated as the kids of today are doing. Although they do it brilliantly they are, just the same, only revisiting. What was done before was so exceptional that what else can they do but pay homage? The Arctic Monkeys can never be Zeppelin. The Arcade Fire will never be Floyd.

There are those who blame the corporate record companies for the current demise of commercial music. But the big labels do what they always have done. They try to chase the hot thing and commercialise it. That they might often make a bad job of it is another matter. That they are dealing with the huge changes in their industry right now with incompetence is consistent. This time though it looks like they will be unable to catch up and so the end of a great era is upon us.

The deeper issue just now is a cultural one. It is a contextual and historical shift. It is a different world for the record business from even just ten years ago. The new music format (mp3) is an excellent development for those who have a genuine interest in music for its own sake. All is at your fingertips and for free if you wish (try Spotify). Your collection can be accessed in such a wide variety of ways. Thanks to Apple's innovations you can stick it all on to a little player the size of a cigarette packet and carry it around with you. You can shuffle every favourite song you have ever had and listen at random to whatever the system throws up like having your own personal radio station without the bullshit of presenters or advertising. With myspace you can hear what the band just around the corner is doing without even knowing who they are. With another click an artist ten thousand miles away is just as accessible. This is a truly interesting phenomenon but it is also at the heart of why rock is dead. 

Long live rock.

High Bar

Music is my world. It is what I understand. I have argued that the business of it needs an elite. Arriving at this probably objectionable conclusion has come from years of thinking about how music is made and appreciated.

For long enough the record industry WAS the music industry. Nearly all the wealth generated came from recordings. Careers were won and lost based on record sales. Recently that cash cow has been dealt the severest challenge as the recording sector finds itself facing possible commercial extinction. Music as commodity (the cd) is looking like it might be about to be consigned to history. With it the craft and professionalism associated with the traditions of the recorded work are being eroded in favour of the internet culture and its user-generated content. It is becoming almost uncool to be accomplished. Rough, rude, uncut, untutored and uncontrived are preferred values in this new setting.

Similar changes are effecting other spheres of the culture world too. The elitist strong-holds of journalism and broadcasting have also been coming apart as blogs and online services increasingly have a bigger impact. As Wikipedia becomes more bloated by the hour with new information on every conceivable subject it looks like the integrity of old-style encyclopaedias and their specialising authorities are in for a rough ride also.

It's not hard to predict the problems all this might throw up if any kind of thing gets put forward simply because it can. Whether it is technically accomplished is unimportant. Whether it is factually sound doesn’t matter much. Whether it is of consensus value is insignificant. Virtuosity is an irrelevance. Specialised knowledge is for geeky specialists. The Wikipedia phenomenon seems even to embody the question of why should experts be trusted above anyone else. The answer to that is too obvious for the questioners. But it should be answered. Specialists have spent years on the subject matter assimilating knowledge past and present. They have had their works scrutinised by their peers and critics before claiming a place on the public forum. This was the old high bar that faced anyone trying to put forward almost any kind of contribution to the culture world. It was set high for good reason.

The simple point is this: it is fashionable to be down on elitism and to advocate an 'anyone can' world. But I fear that if all the elite structures were done away with completely it would only be after they are gone that their crucial function might be appreciated. That function includes filtering and financing. It provides structure and identity. It involves the assumption that just simply to have got there required being “good enough” to reach that high bar and so be deserving of public consideration. High bars are important for all kinds of valid reasons. They are important if you want to be a lawyer or a surgeon. They are important for being an artist too.

Prophecy

Back in the 70s we used to sit around, likely in some altered state, conjuring up the future. We’d predict things like music on tap, or an entire recording studio in a box, or a music world where musicians controlled the means of production and distribution free from corporate dominance.

Twenty years on I had given up on such daft notions and thought them immature. Clearly I had taken Alvin Toffler’s futurism too much to heart. Reluctantly I started to accept the status quo. The record industry was in rude enough health and saw no need for radical change. Our speculations had been youthful fancy no less. I probably took the disappointments a bit harder than the others having built a career around anticipating these radical ideas. It was simple disillusionment. I would not have been the first.

Oh but how things change. And didn’t my friends and I have our fingers on some kind of prophetic pulse back then? To say that control would fall away from the urban centres and that records would be made anywhere was not exactly a resonant view at the time. To predict the end-days of the super-stars, that there would be no more Beatles, Elvises or Michael Jacksons, would have met with derision. That tastes would become more mixed and eclectic, less tribal, and that parents might enjoy the same music as their children, something unusual when I was growing up, was a lateral thought. To have all the music in the world available to you deliverable down a line was close to science-fiction. And that these changes would revolutionise the culture industries as we knew them and a new age of less elitist, devolved creativity would be ushered in was akin to fantasy.

Yet as young men these were the kinds of notions we speculated. They were predictions far from obvious. It was pre George Michael, Madonna and The Spice Girls; it was pre rap and hip-hop, pre electronic dance music and pre grunge. With the 1990s delivering huge hits it seemed that the system was working fine as it was, deeply entrenched enough to last a few more life-times. It was time I put aside silly ideas and joined the gravy train. The technological advancements that were supposed to fundamentally alter the landscape only ever seemed to tinker at the edges of the established conventions. The record business continued to flourish and to make a few lucky individuals wealthy beyond their dreams.

Enter Apple. In 2001 Jobs stood up and announced the ipod, an apparently innocuous music player. Someone gave me a copy of the new iTunes software and I wondered how that could possibly be of any use to anyone. That sexless computer files might replace artful CDs? Never gonna happen! My powers of prophecy had clearly deserted me at this point because before long the entire record industry was fearing for its future such were the shock-waves produced by the new tech. An entire new paradigm for music-makers and creatives generally was on its way. Who would have thought it? We did.

Scots Untapped

A Scottish artist has to gain legitimacy elsewhere before being fully appreciated here. I doubt if there is a single Scot in the history of popular music who hasn't found their outlet to the world via an institution from somewhere else.

Scotland has enormous untapped potential in music most of which goes to waste due to a lack of any real support system, commercial or otherwise. If the same thing is true in other fields we could be sitting on a cultural gold-mine. Just a thought.

Snobbery

It is rare for pop musicians to cross over into the classical world but when they do critics are unforgiving. McCartney got hammered when he tried it. I'm sure the complaints made are valid enough although I'm just as sure they are mainly remarks from snobbery.

It would be simple if there was a reliable assessment scale in music from zero to ten with rubbish being zero and excellence being ten. It would make things so much easier. But that's not how it is. Artworks are complex even those absent of sophistication. Merit is not only about years of endeavour, working the craft, mastering technique and learning convention. Ultimately making a meaningful connection is the measure of any piece of art. Sometimes the work that does the business will come from some untutored source possibly ignorant of what had gone before, naive and spontaneous but still relevant. Connection is the primary arbiter not authority.

The popular music of the past fifty years is by definition contemporary and so it can't yet benefit from the kind of posterity that "serious" music enjoys which goes back hundreds of years and can look to a long history of appreciation and commendation for its validity. It may be a century from now before we know whether The Beatles are as good as Beethoven. If over the period people continue to value The Fabs then quite simply they will be.

Maligning the attempts of those in pop who adopt the classical form such as McCartney did may be justified but at this point it is hard to separate these criticisms from old fashioned snobbery.

Nice Work

It is such a simple thing to say but worth saying anyway: we should make sure our young artists can work by paying for them to do so rather than commercialising them. It was Germaine Greer who said that and I agree with her totally.

In music, instead of doing deals which tie artists contractually in order to turn their work into a commodity, record companies (or the new institutions that come to run music and recording) should employ music people whether performers, writers, or producers and give them a living wage just like any other job. They could turn up for work in the morning and make music like other workers make widgets. Who wouldn't be up for a job like that?

The old record companies didn't give a shit anyway about their artists beyond their commercial potential and their ability to lay the golden egg. Okay, the successful ones became big stars and earned huge sums but the majority earned nothing. If institutions paid for their creatives to live - to eat and pay rent - rather than force them into dead-end commercial contracts then it would provide more constructive work for more talented people and be a better service to music and society generally.

Little Hitlers

There is something almost fascist about the way people like to turn music into something argumentative.

I really can't be bothered with that, being hell-bent on asserting that this is better than that. It’s always what the fascists like that is the good stuff and what they don't like that isn't. They're not satisfied with just the liking of something and being done with it.

With this, the phenomenon of music with its amazing capacity for bringing people together is reduced to something divisive by the arrogance of those who think that their impressions are more true, more authentic, more qualitative, more essential and more cool than everyone else's. They are the little Hitlers of the art-world. They should fuck off.

MySpace

They’re always telling me I should put my music on MySpace.

MySpace is great they say. It allows you to get your music out without having to deal with the corrupt men of the music industry. I always pick up on use of the 'out' word. It’s never clear just what or where 'out' is. It seems to be some mythical place that would allow said person to become rich, famous and respected.

Actually when you look at it historically, 'out' was invariably an old-fashioned industrial process which turned your work into a commodity to be sold in shops alongside all the other stuff. That's what 'out' was. It was an almost impossible undertaking without the help of a wealthy corporation. You could of course get lucky as Richard Branson did and have enormous good fortune akin to a lottery win but in general as a musician or songwriter you faced huge odds in trying to have your work widely appreciated.

Today that is still largely the case, although the online community and all it represents seems set to change that. I haven't yet ventured to this new-found community as it seems to me futile. Why so? Well, I suspect the MySpace phenomenon is as much problem as solution. Its advocates rejoice in missing out the dodgy middle-men of the record companies and publishers. They point to a direct relationship with the public. You simply put up your tracks and then anyone can access them.

I’m not sure about the value of doing that. Such a direct relationship disregards the importance of context and the time-honoured connection that value has with scarcity. As I've argued, music (art in general) is better produced in an elite context. If it appears as something only a few people can do it retains its specialness. MySpace is an 'anyone can' world. There is no need to be particularly special here or much different to the next person.

Of the many problems that exist with music being publicised in this way, one is that it is destined to mediocrity. It inclines people to be the same as others as fashion trends do, which rather than being an expression of individuality is more often about conformity. Thus, popular music has stopped reinventing itself and now only operates in already well-established genres. This is quite unusual through the course of the past fifty years when every decade saw an explosion of great musical imagination. When I became musically aware in the early 60s, ten years previously Frank Sinatra and Hank Williams had been icons. By my time, Elvis had happened, Miles Davis had taken jazz to its pinnacle and The Beatles were about to burst on to the scene knocking the door down for a generation of British musicians to gain international acclaim. Clapton and Hendrix not only re-interpreted the delta blues guitarists, they sparked off new genres in doing so.

These stylistic differences which would emerge over relatively short periods are huge compared to music of the present day. With their emulations today's youth pay homage to my generation's music and do so impressively. There is some credible work to be found. But innovation it is not. They use the templates that were set down over past decades. Modern popular music breaks no new ground and hasn't done so for nearly twenty years since hip-hop and electronic dance music first appeared. The contemporary world lacks that very special element of innovation that historically has given music its high value. My contention is that this was partly due to music being created in an elite environment. It needed to feel like something fresh, different and new. It had to offer another perspective from which to see and feel things. I think music has to do that to do its job well. MySpace doesn't. It encourages sameness. You could probably pick a thousand pages, listen to all the music there, and categorise it into less than a handful of conventions, all of them familiar and long-established.

MySpace represents a virtual world. It sets up the illusion that you too can be a recognised recording artist. It is something of play-thing. It is populist, democratic in a way, rather than elitist. In democracy your opinion doesn't matter. What matters is that you can voice it without sanction. Having it doesn't itself give it value for anyone other than yourself and those around you. The same with music. That you can now get your recordings 'out there' does not give your music cultural value.

And one more thing: if you are calling the people who visit your MySpace site your friends then either you're adolescent or you need to re-evaluate your life. That such flimsy, virtual connections can be considered friendships is ridiculous. But I suppose everybody knows that. Yes?

What Need For Music

Broadly speaking, music is in service to the emotions. It can soothe anxieties, alleviate tensions and create meaning in a world that so easily gravitates to meaninglessness.

Music-makers in this sense are like soul-doctors, the modern day shamans, the ones who can spin and weave the fabric of sound in order to paint a picture, a picture that both expresses feeling and at the same time eases discomfort.

The power of music is the power to uplift, to put things back into a context, to the supposed intended way that has been messed up by the ordinary frustrations of life.

It begs the question, does in not, that in a world free of such frustrations, one predicated on psychological health, what need for music?

Downloading

I've defended peer-to-peer downloading of music before in these writings. This is just another formulation of some of my points.

• The music business is virtually medieval in its structures in the sense that those at the top accumulate all the wealth and power while the rest have nothing. I would be one such example. After thirty years in the business with accumulated knowledge and experience I can still hardly pay the rent. The music industry itself doesn't give a toss for me or the likes of me. It is concerned with exploiting ability such as mine in the pursuit of generating further wealth for its elite minority. So personally, I'm not sorry if by not paying for a particular download, Paul McCartney (Sir!) or Elton John (Sir!) or Mick Jagger (Sir!) are made marginally less rich.

• I think alternative methods of transaction and exchange need to be sought that don't have to involve money. These would be processes that move more in the direction of providing a social good. This would be defined by interactions that are to the mutual benefit of participants. So blind and brainwashed have we become by money and all it represents that other possible methods of transaction are never explored. This is not to deny the cleverness at the heart of the money system which on the whole is an invention of almost genius proportions, it is to say that it need not be the only means of transaction, and that by making it so, something essential is lost in human potential. Peer-to-peer is one such alternative form that subverts conventional systems of supply and transaction.

• I don't readily accept the concept of intellectual property. I think it a convention too far the idea that everything should be reduced to property. What may be fine for buildings and motor cars, for things that are spatially extended, stuff that can only be in one place at one time and can only be used by one person or a small specified group, doesn't have to apply to the arts. Creative work such as writings and music can be used and shared worldwide without imposing on anyone. The copyright system originally came about as a way of compensating talented people so they might continue to work. I say that it does that job very badly in the sense that only tiny numbers benefit in any substantial way. A better system would be one that allows more people to pursue a creative life. Intellectual property doesn't do it.

Popular Music

I’m no historian but it’s probably fair to say that since the 18th Century popular music has been good at reinventing itself.

Classical music as we know it now was the popular form of the old times. In the early 20th Century jazz appeared and became the new thing. For fifty years America honed this genuinely original art-form, from ragtime through Armstrong to the swing and big-band era, to the emergence of vocalists like Sinatra and writers like Cole Porter. When Parker's be-bop culminated in Davis and Coltrane jazz had truly matured. Rock and roll blew all that away morphing into pop which has maintained until recently. Throughout the era country music with its roots in the folk traditions was always challenging the mainstream for supremacy and at times was the most commercially successful music in the world. The new expression of urban America in the form of rap and hip-hop stole that accolade for a while in the 1990s.

I think that currently, possibly for the first time in over two-hundred years, popular music no longer reinvents. There is no shortage of quality acts of course who do what they do as well as anyone did but they are essentially revisiting the old schools. The last conceivably new genres were electronic dance and hip-hop which happened nearly twenty years ago now. Outside of an infinity of sub-genres, since then there have been few, if any, emergent contenders for the crown of fresh originality becoming a new music-kind.

Within that very broad category of ‘popular’, different genres came and went. So called serious music went from being popular to elitist. Same thing happened with jazz. Any given style has its time then disappears from the mainstream of taste. Now there is an emergent coterie of historians defining rock's posterity while a creative void is left in the wake. Currently the conditions for a new and original form seem to be absent and it is hard to imagine how that situation is going to change in the foreseeable future.

Elitist & Populist

When it comes to the creating of art, I’m an elitist.

To qualify, I mean that the people who make art should be those who are in some way removed. They are not conforming or going along with the mainstream in their life styles and attitudes. They need to be separate from all that either pulling from some inner resource or as part of a group that sets itself apart from the mass. That’s what I mean by elitist.

At the same time, I believe that when it comes to the acceptance or rejection of an artist’s work then that is best done in a non-elitist context. In other words, the majority decides by some collective means whether a work is relevant to them, whether that be for entertainment, enlightenment or just as some passing interest like a consumer item which catches the moment and is then put aside. Appreciation would correspond to something in the values associated with the time.

So the artist needs to be set aside from time and place in some way in order to create, privileged perhaps. When the work comes forward the privilege stops and the full force of populist assessment kicks in to determine its worth.

All-Good Goudall

I’m interested in what the composer Howard Goudall is saying.

His view is consistent with my experience - at least some of it. Goudall is a trained musician (not like me) and like many of the current bunch from the academies he is eclectic in his tastes (like me). He can just as easily embrace the classical world as he can the popular. He is consistently critical of the ‘serious’ music fraternity for its cleaving to old values, for its elitism and snobbery.

He is big on inclusivity and there was a time when I would have unreservedly concurred with him there, a time in the past when I was easy in my attitudes. I subscribed to an ethos then of participation for all in music and was always open to possible new structures and developments and ways in which the sonic arts could enrich lives. The employment of such thinking was how I went forward during my early professional years and I don’t like to think I’ve changed all that much with time in this regard. I wanted to see music-making brought to communities in a much more inventive and integral way to how it had been for most of the 20th Century.

What Goudall seems to be saying is that in large part this is what has actually happened. There are now all kinds of varied musical interests and activities going on in communities, schools and colleges with ever-increasing varieties of participation available whether for vocation or recreation. Even from my relatively isolated place now I can see something of this with the kinds of involvement that are possible structurally these days far more varied than when I was starting out.

There is little in any of this I would be quick to take issue with given its all-embracing outlook and my own alignment over years. And yet there is something lurking, something in the shadows here that bothers me. it is that Goudall’s perspective is fine when it’s about people ‘doing’ music. But when music is more than just something you do and becomes the thing that you ‘are’, when it is your life, when the artistry around it is what defines you and shapes your identity then the orientation is rather different. The art that really matters in the world is that which comes not from these inclusive, ‘anyone can’ situations, but from the ‘very few can’. As I’ve argued before, it is the fact that certain works come from unusual people in unusual situations that determines their appeal and relevance. True artists stand out from the crowd and derive importance as a consequence of their altered perspective.

Goudall’s argument doesn’t do much to foster that position. It wouldn’t be a popular position to put forward apart from anything else. Elitist arguments for anything these days aren’t popular which is, I believe, damaging to the world of the artist. The high value associated with music comes from the segregated, exclusive position of those who make it and that probably holds true for all creatives. Their different attitude brings to the culture something it otherwise wouldn’t have. Goudall’s case may seem all-good: about education, inclusiveness, participation and recreation. But it is perhaps altogether too good. Fuse these elements and in theory you get super-good but I doubt if it works like that. It misses the deeper and darker essence of having a relationship with the Muse.

The more primitive and primal elements of creativity, the place that many of the great artists and writers have gone in order to bring forth their valued voice is missing in this picture. The danger of the ‘all-good’ were it to become the entire vista is that the progressive qualities in music-making, its capacity to illuminate, to push the boundaries, to capture the moment in an original and relevant way, to produce work that has in-built posterity, these facets are likely to be lost and disappear into a mundane, supine ordinariness. It is the maintenance of high value that is the thing. This egalitarian notion of ‘let’s all do it together in happy congregation’ is fine and noble in some ways, many ways, but not for the art-world generally which needs to thrive on non-conformity and a lateral approach; it has to present as unique and fresh, like it has something to say which is insightful, ideally said in a voice no one has heard before. If this eclectic, inclusive, ‘everyone can have a go’ world is to take precedence then perhaps it will have to evolve its own new elite so that those who ‘are’ music, as opposed to those who ‘do’ music, will be structurally supported by the mainstream in a manner that suits their commitment and talent.


Summation and further thoughts:

The making of music and maybe art generally should be exclusive at the point of creation but inclusive at the point of appreciation. The very separateness of artists and their coming from an alternative perspective is part of what gives them their relevance. They should go against convention to come up with something different and insightful. Let the wider world make its judgement on whether they have been successful in doing that by having the presentation of the work as inclusive as possible at the point of appreciation.

With classical music the problem was that in the 20th century both creation and appreciation became exclusive. It was too elitist and as such became a turn-off for the majority. It was no longer the popular music it had been. A great creative explosion from Cole Porter to the Beatles, from jazz to rock-and-roll to hip-hop and country, filled that space in spectacular fashion.

The danger with contemporary pop is that it is becoming in some respects the opposite of classical: pop is, or at least is seen to be, inclusive at both the point of creation as well as appreciation. I think this is watering it down into the insipid offerings of the ‘anyone can’ environment. This is not to deny that there are many talented people around. There are probably more than there ever were. It is that the context in which they are obliged to work is over-populist and too inclusive for its own good thereby draining away the very value that is integral to music-making.

The right formulation for music is a mix of inclusive and exclusive. Exclusive at its source, at the point of creation, and then inclusive when it gets presented to the world, at the point of appreciation. What Howard Goudall is saying may sound laudable but his adopting of an all-good inclusivity across the board is in danger of denying music its very life-blood, its essential creative spark.

1964 - The Music

I had no trouble in being able to compile from memory a list of 30 hit songs from 1964 which captured my imagination then. I think that year was something of a watershed in popular music.

• A Hard Day's Night - The Beatles
• You Really Got Me - The Kinks
• Baby Love - Diana Ross & The Supremes
• Hello Dolly - Louis Armstrong
• Walk On By - Dionne Warwick
• Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles
• A World Without Love - Peter & Gordon
• I Only Want To Be With You - Dusty Springfield
• Do Wah Diddy - Manfred Mann
• I Want To Hold Your Hand - The Beatles
• Needles and Pins - Dave Clark Five
• House of the Rising Sun - Animals
• Dancing In The Street - Martha & The Vandellas
• She Loves You - The Beatles
• I'm Into Something Good - Hermans Hermits
• Anyone Who Had A Heart - Dionne Warwick
• Remember (Walking in the Sand) - The Shangrilas
• From Me To You - The Beatles
• My Guy - Mary Wells
• She's Not There - The Zombies
• I Feel Fine - The Beatles
• Glad All Over - Dave Clark Five
• Have I The Right - Honeycombs
• Love Me Do - The Beatles
• Where Did Our Love Go - Diana Ross and the Supremes
• Bits And Pieces - Dave Clark Five
• My Boy Lollipop - Millie Small
• Twist And Shout - The Beatles
• Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison
• Leader of the Pack - The Shangrila

Peer To Peer

I’ve been thinking about why freely downloading music using the internet might be morally justifiable. For a start I prefer to call it sharing (peer-to-peer) rather than downloading which gives it a different sense. Here are some thoughts:

1. Over the past 50 years the music industry has come to be dominated by the recorded work. The main reason for this is that music is easily commodified when it is recorded. It can be converted into a physical item and sold for a standard price in conventional market conditions. This way the infinite complications of an artist’s life and work are simplified and translated into something tangible. It has become such that this is now the singular method for how music’s relationship with the world is conducted. That’s fine. I can accept that and understand the reasoning and the history of why it has come to be that way. I think though that it doesn’t have to be the only means and measure of how music is organised or appreciated. We should embrace alternative methods beyond market forces. Sharing of music for example has a long tradition, much longer than the recorded work and the commodification of art. In some ways the internet opens up that noble tradition of people sharing. It just happens to cut across the more recent conventions of copyright ownership and turning art into a commodity.

2. The music business is damn near medieval. All the power is concentrated at the top. The wealth is mostly owned by a tiny percentage of participants i.e. major labels and successful artists and writers. All the others are struggling for a foothold and are usually penniless. The music industry is far from any great egalitarian institution concerned for the well-being of the artists and art form in its charge. In Branson’s words it is the ‘most ruthless form of capitalism’. This contrasts with other institutions in society where there is an evolved middle ground with a recognised and stable career structure. Anyone going into music as a creative under the current system has to be driven to it or just mad in some way.

3. It is argued that sharing is substantial income lost to the music industry. This will be true to some extent but I suspect is exaggerated. The assumption is that every download is a potential sale lost when in fact that is most unlikely. The idea that if you didn’t download it you’d go and buy it is nonsense. You would mostly just forget it. Actually by downloading you’re getting to have a relationship with work you’d otherwise not. In this way sharing is a form of promotion. You’re likely to talk about it to others.

4. How about the criticism that with less income major labels are unable to finance new artists? This is harder to argue against if it can be shown that less revenue would actually mean less investment for new acts. Maybe it does. BUT.... the current system only supports a tiny minority of the available artist pool anyway leaving the rest unheard and under-developed. This hardly recommends it as an industry broadly concerned with music and the plight of up and coming creatives. Also the resources squandered on these few signings would equal the gross income of small nations. Not to mention that these singings are usually penniless anyway only ever making money if they sell huge numbers of records. And that's always the exception. Perhaps a better system, one centred less around commodity and more based on the intrinsic communal spirit of music could make better use of a broader range of the available talent as well as adopting better fiscal measures. Companies and institutions employing artists and writers rather than signing them might be an idea.

SUMMARY:

• Commodification of music is not absolute. What people are doing is sharing it rather than stealing it and sharing has a noble tradition. The internet brings it back again as a possibility.

• The music industry is backward in its structures and could do with some serious thinking outside the box. The popularity of peer-to-peer is an indicator of other possibilities.

• A music file shared isn’t an otherwise sale. It can actually be a useful form of promotion.

• There are very few signings and massive sums are wasted on bad choices. A revised system is needed such as employing rather than signing.

The Sound Of Fuck You

I’ve not been much inclined to rap music as a genre.

Not that I have much difficulty getting into it if I try. Its musical bedrock is accessible enough. I’m just not readily disposed to guys talking over tracks whether they be DJs, poets or black street-kids. Also the attendant posturing is annoying. All that “yo yo” stuff feels like a whole different thing, entirely off limits to people with the wrong skin colour. It’s about as culturally relevant to me as men in cowboy hats.

Contrast the major black icons of 20th Century American music: from the spark of Louis Armstrong paving the way for decades of exploration and genius from such as Ellington, Parker, Davis and Coltrane; then into the modern era with Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson. There was no shortage of female giants too from Billy to Ella to Aretha. These names only skim the surface.

I’m grateful to Stanley Crouch for pointing out with reference to Ellington that there was an inclusiveness to his music, that it had a welcoming quality to it. Crouch described this as the highest form of humanity. Centrally it exemplified what music had always been about: it pulled people together. I think you could say that about many of these artists mentioned and their contemporaries.

It seems to me that if Ellington was saying “come on in”, then rap is saying “fuck you!” It is in the spirit of exclusivity. Delivered in this way with all the aggression and attitude it can muster it represents something of a departure and that’s why it repels me.

Subversion Lost

I’ve been thinking about the difference between the pop culture of the 60s and that of the present day. Like with many things it is helpful to look at it in terms of context rather than content.

Back in the 60s, despite the emergent trends, the social context was still very much steeped in the old Victorian structures. Society and its institutions still operated using the well-worn set of values it had inherited from its predecessors. The boomer generation began dismantling those and over the few decades since these values have been in large part replaced. The new context with its high regard for pop culture is the one the boomers set about creating.

The popular music of today is essentially from the same stock as back then. It is the context into which it is presented that is different. Then pop music was a sub-culture. It was rebellious, subversive at times, and represented something the establishment and those in authority didn’t relate to. It’s frivolity and apparent lack of gravitas was tolerated by these older traditions under sufferance at best and at a time when the wider society was still largely deferential to the authority structures.

With these old values having atrophied, the mainstream is now in sync with the attitudes of pop culture. It has no need to be subversive as the thing it might subvert has already keeled over. Good thing or bad thing? Discuss.

Julie Burchill

She talks of the “delicious foolishness that has been exhibited over what is and isn’t authentic [in popular music] and thus what is and isn’t manufactured.”

I agree with her thrust. The idea of authenticity in music is a myth, a compelling and powerful myth certainly, but a myth nevertheless. It is almost impossible to identify what so called authenticity is when looking closely at any musical work. It is projected on to the work by the imagination.

As for “manufactured” - well, there’s another nonsense term riddled with hypocrisy. There are none more self-conscious and manufactured than your average indie band on the make. Everything from their clothes to their talk is considered, often the product of their art school background. Some impresario placing an ad for singers, then undertaking the phenomenally difficult task of forming a pop act and steering it to success, is no more contrived than your average band so called cool or authentic.

Burchill has some other interesting remarks to make about the pop world. She says pop music must be performed by young people. I’m still not sure about that, although I could be persuaded. There is something rather horrendous about fifty to sixty year-old rockers. But maybe that’s unfair. We don’t like them developing their work into complex art either. What are they to do? Get a real job maybe.

She says: “teenagers like sad songs because usually they’ve experienced no real tragedy so they feel free to try on misery as a pose.” I certainly did as a kid helped on by John Lennon. Problem with me was the misery stuck! She also defends “the voice of the teenage girl” which I’m glad to see her do. She says this is “the most desired yet most despised player-pawn in this multi-billion game of snakes and ladders.”

She’s not afraid to offend is Julie Burchill and although she would no doubt offend me too if I read her more often, her observations on popular music sit comfortably with my own. Cheers.

Edward Kealey On Studio Engineers

Kealey’s insightful essay written in 1979 is titled Craft to Art. It explores the career trajectory of recording engineers in the US from the post-war era to the present.

Engineers began as craft-union types, guys who operated and maintained the equipment in studios, studios usually owned by corporations. Progress through the 1950s saw the emergence of entrepreneurialism when they were increasingly likely to own recording facilities themselves and so be able to do speculative work. Sam Phillips and the emergence of Elvis came from this background. Finally they moved on to artist status as the studio environment became employed as a creative tool.

Some of the problems of status early engineers faced is hinted at when Kealey talks of them as having a “defensive ideology, locked into a narrow role.” He says the industry had “limited expectations of them” and they had “limited responsibilities for the final product.” Exactly so. I never knew an engineer who wasn’t pissed off in his place. The more talented, the more likely this to be the case.

Kealey’s analysis perfectly describes my own experience: from radio days, to studio owner, to artist. And pissed off! It helps a bit to know one endures not exactly in a wilderness but as part of an identified pattern, even although recognised by only a few academics.

The Ontology Of Music

There is no such thing as commercial music before the event. It is only commercial after it has been successful in the market. Before then it is just another piece of work which might or might not become a hit.

This would be the quantum physics theory of hit records. If it was to be an ontology of the world, it would say that there is no necessity. Pre the event, things only exist in potential and could go whichever way.

Like I said in a previous piece about trust, it is a contextual matter. There are some records that have more potential for commercial success than others. None have a solid guarantee. Likewise in life there are some things more likely to happen than others. Very little, if anything, is certain.

Punk & Prog

At the time I really didn’t get punk rock.

It was too raw and unsophisticated for me. And despite my recent interest in the sound of the Sex Pistols’ records I still feel that punk in general represented a move backwards, that culturally it was a retrogressive step. Contrast this with the much maligned prog-rock which embodied older notions of excellence, progress, elitism even. With punk anyone could. With progressive only the very gifted could. No prizes for which of these would hold sway.

It’s easy to draw a parallel in the world. There is a distinct immaturity about the populace now. It is reluctant to maintain traditional concepts of development and growth. Excellence as a virtue is all but abandoned in the narrative. Virtue itself is hardly used as a meaningful term. Historically, culture implied something elevated or intellectual; now a culture refers to any kind of collective activity even if debauched. We abandon higher purpose in favour of acquisition, consumption, greed and immediacy. Speed is good too. Anyone who wants it can have it and they want it NOW; not after ten years of struggle and sacrifice; not after painful mastery of technique; not after careful study of past masters - but NOW. Minimum cost, maximum return. That’s the ethos.

Punk was consistent with this. It was immature; it basked in a spirit of nihilistic rebellion; it was primitive, elemental and obnoxious; it behaved liked a deviant teenager determined to hell-raise. Temperamentally, it was more in touch with the emergent world than prog. Prog is like the great Shakespearian epic. Punk is reality television (and Johnny Rotten gets to bite the cherry again).

With immaturity centre stage our society veers towards diminished accountability. The individuals in it seek to do no more than they absolutely have to for their own end. Everything else is somebody else’s job. Blame is preferred to responsibility. The average person is increasingly stuck in an adolescent loop, perpetually stunted.

I think it’s a reasonable parallel to make between punk values and the way we live now. I’m certainly no apologist for the old society. I was pleased to see its passing but it is being replaced with something little better if at all, and that’s a huge disappointment.

I’m a populist in the appreciation of music. I think there is something essential about whatever the current thing is. Music should be judged for its relevance before anything else, and ultimately judged by majority. But I believe it should be created in an elite environment. Part of what gives it its value is the very fact that only a few can summon the requirement. Music should be elitist at the creative edge. That only a few can is what makes it interesting to the wider world. If everyone could, then what’s the big deal? In this sense prog was closer to the essence than punk.

Jones & Jackson

To be both mainstream and credible is probably the holy grail for most artists.

I think Michael Jackson achieved that in the late 70s when he transcended his teeny-bopper appeal and became the leading icon in black popular music. Stevie Wonder already had his best work behind him and was now surpassed by a different but equally talented younger man.

Around that time I became interested in musical fusions in particular the crossing of pop, rock, soul and jazz. I had found Quincy Jones, famous for a raft of film scores, as well as having devised his own distinctive style of jazz fusion. When Jones and Jackson came together to make Off The Wall it seemed to me an obvious pairing. I realise on reflection it was far from obvious and was yet another example of that familiar occurrence in successful creative formulae - the happy accident. Both men were from different generations and from different musical backgrounds. Apart from the colour of their skin and huge talent, in most other respects they had little in common.

It’s curious how I had made these connections instinctively, how I had anticipated that successful partnership, one that would come to produce some of the 20th Century’s finest music. At the time, Britain was still going through punk, later new wave, and was about to embrace the New Romantics. In this context my musical leanings had no local currency whatsoever. It would be a long time after before I would understand just how prescient these instincts had been then and how they signalled an ability to identify a good pop formula. Pity I’ve been unable to put that to work in my own case.

Simon Napier-Bell

His book is “Black Vinyl White Powder” and is an excellent read.

It looks at the history of the pop-rock era from 1956 to the present charting the events and personalities that presided. His chosen contexts are the influence of drugs, and the part played by gays, especially managers of boy bands.

He says image is of the greatest importance for success in pop. Backing singers, musicians etc can be hired as necessary, songwriters can be brought in, producers found. Only the image has to be real.

Curious that. Conventionally, you would think that those doing the actual jobs i.e. writing, performing, producing etc are the real thing. Napier Bell reverses that and does so convincingly. What’s wanted is not musical artists but marketable faces with which to exploit copyrights. This is like the old Tin Pan Alley with invisible producers, where performers are manufactured and songwriters are important in the time honoured fashion.

The most interesting insight of the book is SNB’s argument that relationship is key. That the bond set up in a band situation is the driving aspect of success. It is also the world’s greatest publicity image. Even when they don’t get along it still generates publicity - maybe more even.

Kylie Minogue

She’s hot again!

More than ever and that’s just as it should be. Even the conservative, usually sneering at pop culture, Brian Appleyard in the Sunday Times gives her the thumbs-up. He contrasts her naturalness with the pretentiousness of Madonna.

Apart from an excellent hit record in “Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind” it’s her arse that doing it. It’s no surprise.... For long enough now the evidence of her exquisite posterior has been there for anyone suitably disposed.

But it’s not just that. She comes over such a perfect little package: sweet and nice but still cool and jokey enough to be ironic. I’m sure the gays approve of her too which is not a bad thing these days. A bit of everything really. Just the recipe for successful pop.