Lanier, Chap. 9: MUSICAL STASIS

I understand what Lanier is saying about popular music constantly copying older forms, for the past 20 years or so. I was in middle school and high school in the late 80s and early 90s and I spent a lot of time listening to Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, U2, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Jane's Addiction, The Doors, Simon and Garfunkle, Paul Simon, Billy Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and whatever music the local Classic Rock radio station would play...
I would avoid listening to theTop 40 stations because all the songs sounded the same to me, and I would hear weak re-makes of older music.


Lanier makes a good point when he describes the early stages of popular music (1940's... 50s... 60s...) and the huge changes in musical textures and combinations of sound that occurred from Lead Belly... Chuck Berry... Elvis... The Beatles... Janis Joplin... Eric Clapton... Jimi Hendrix... etc. etc. etc. I understand his hope that music would continue to be an art form full of exploration and discovery, and searching for new possibilities, especially with the interconnections we have today through WWW and the opportunities to hear so many different types of music... so what's up?


Check out this music from HIDDEN CITY. It's a band I played with about 2 years ago, and I still play with them on occasion - all of the music is improvised, and sometimes I really like the sound of it. At other times I feel like we get stuck in a rut of repetition of familiar forms.


I'm playing in CAFE RACERS now. The singer-songwriter (Rick Cashman) and the musical director (Lynne Bowden) have pretty clear ideas about how they want the songs to sound, so I do my best to follow their directions, even when they seem a bit tame for my taste. The music is basic singer-songwriter folk, but I'd like to integrate electronic and other exotic sounds with a lot of different instruments... we'll see...


Here's some of my original music - JAY LOOMIS - if you listen through a few songs you will find a wide variety of different styles and experimentation.

JML
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