CRYAN' SHAMES Newsletter

THE DEATH OF ALL THAT'S SACRED?

"The same hollow looks of disbelief seen in the eyes of the workers at GM in the last century can now be seen in former 'Rock Stars' ",

"Music is sound organized for the purpose of expression...'a dream that can be heard' .Period."

"It's all good"

By James Fairs / CEO, BWP International / Bananawhale Productions

Throughout the last century, the thoughts had been deeply implanted...by events, by hope, and at least in part by a longing for an almost utopian form of stability. Thoughts like: "If you've got a job at GM, you've got a job for life"...or: "America has never lost a war"... and the list goes on. And one by one, like spinning bowling pins, these axioms fell...only to be replaced by new ones. When the Soviet Union was disbanded into smaller nation groups, the new axiom was: "Nothing can stop us now"...which led to "Greed is good". Few seemed to factor in the unattended needs of Nations and groups long ignored, or the determined pursuit of excellence that had come to define certain Nations in the Asian basin, and elsewhere.

But in one prescient season, before being absorbed by the machine, Bruce Springsteen's CDs were a tour through hollowed villages with closed factories, where the axe of the new global realities had truly fallen.

We see the same process in the creative world. The big band era gave way to rhythm and blues, and the emphasis shifted from the moving voices in the horn section .to the beat. The musicians of that time could trace the evolution of their style from the music of the 1800's...and even farther into the past. This evolutionary process had been accelerated slightly by the Gutenburg press...

And now, with a lick from Chuck Berry, a shake from Elvis, and a wink from James Dean...it seemed to be all over.

The Blues has a set of changes all its own, and the training grounds have been scattered across the globe in clubs and lofts...a sacred passage, of sorts, to be made by all those with the nerve to make a claim of being "real". And for most other genres as well, there was just no shortcut.

Until the music video. "Video Killed The Radio Star" was, in fact, taken from the Variety magazine article which spoke of " 'talkies' killing the silent film star". Whole careers began and ended with a few videos, and perhaps a few CDs. The proliferation of technologies had geometrically accelerated the pace of artistic and cultural evolution.

And now, we see it again. The very notion of "chord changes" as a foundation for a "song" has been replaced by the Rap/Hip-Hop Nation. The change was natural; sound fragments and samples marked new areas of thought as clearly as "bridges" and "chord changes". The same hollow looks of disbelief seen in the eyes of the workers at GM in the last century can now be seen in former 'Rock Stars", who knew...well...chord changes.

It's time for some clear thinking:

1) It's all good.

2) Change is inevitable. The oldest stories tell of a Persian King who was tired of writing new speeches for each occasion. He summoned three wise men to write an all-purpose speech, and they came up with "These things, too, shall pass away".

3) The World Order, however distasteful, is a more realistic representation of the souls currently living in it than was the distorted version which emerged after World War Two...which found the rest of the world devastated or in chaos, and the U.S.A. untouched and tooled up, by virtue of geography.

4) Music is sound organized for the purpose of expression. Period.

...or, as a song from the Big Band era put it, so succinctly..."A Dream That Can Be Heard"

5) Expression doesn't die...at least not easily; it often lasts longer than the culture which fueled it, or resulted from it, to be discovered and rediscovered time after time.

6) "He not busy being born is busy dying"*

peace out:

james@bananawhale.com

* Bob Dylan. 1964