| The End of Music |
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| Written by Roger Born | |||||||
Page 3 of 5
WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE So let it out and let it in hey Jude begin your waiting for someone to perform with And dont you know that its just you hey jude you'll do The movement you need is on your shoulders Da da da da da da da da da HEY JUDE Beatles These last 500 years have been a wild ride in the development of music, but the POP tunes of the Fifties, among many other things, changed our perception of time forever. Is this the fault of RCA who supplied the form factor? I believe so. Or can we say it was RCA only following the dictates of the Post War Era culture of the Baby Boomers? Which defined which? You decide. RCA was the Microsoft of its day, having stolen the technology of radio transmission from one inventor, and the technology of building cheap radios and record players from two others. The company was also ruthless in driving out all other competition. When the dust cleared, it was the only company around with its hands in every part of the media of broadcasting. It was run in its heyday by General Sarnoff. This guy wore an Military General's uniform to work, as a reminder of his war time service, and had to be saluted by everyone. Read RCA's history sometime. This is great stuff! The happy thing about RCA's history and its parallels to Microsoft is that we can all have the hope that one day Microsoft will also be a marginalized company owned by the French. THE FINAL TREND IS CHAOS If the world should stop revolving Slowly spinning down to die I'd spend the end with you And when the world was through Then one - by one - the stars - would all go out And you - and I - would simply fly away IF Bread You probably have noticed that I have not covered the newest music. There is a reason. It does not follow the previous trend in the shorter and shorter length of time of the music. This is great news. Otherwise, all our hit songs today would only last fifteen seconds! Why did the trend stop? The length of the music now is all over the place, From "In-a-god-a-veda" and "Stairway to Heaven," to "Color my world" and "If." I believe music has changed for two reasons. One, our American culture has exploded. We were pretty insular for a long time. Even ethnic influences in this country had little direct impact on our music. Elvis, for instance, might have brought some great elements of Black Jazz into our musical culture, but those black innovators could not have played it in the media of that day. Our culture needed changing, and we got that needed change beginning in the Sixties. It is still changing, isn't it? Please notice that the Web has only accelerated this process. Therefore, any person's music today can come from any cultural background, and even be a complex combination of many musical histories and traditions. Music is converging too, from Country/Rock to Jazz/Rap. This convergence will only continue, fueled of course by the Web. Two. The reason music has no longer any particular length, is that the Music Industry itself is driving this. They are not looking for diversity, however. They are looking for the "Next Big Thing." That search is becoming more and more desperate. Why? They are running out of music. |
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