Just about anyone not completely hypnotized by the current allure of the modern music scene would probably agree that the quality of popular music has recently taken a very precipitous tumble in a very short span of time. A blog about music that happens to be written by a musician should jump at the chance to discuss music in whatever context it can get its grubby little hands on, so, here we are.
Welcome to a new series of blog posts entitled, Sounding Off. Think of it as a sort-of State Of The Union discussion oriented around music: what went wrong and how we can get the wonder back. Don't worry. I won't take too much of your time: I'll write this stuff somewhat episodically so as not to bore anyone. So, here we go.
It seems to me that one of the most pressing issues restricting the discussion & advancement of great music (and all kinds of great art, for that matter) is the confusion of personal taste with artistic excellence. In short, what I mean is that too many people today view their own subjective likes and dislikes as the absolute standard of what is good and bad. Call it narcissism or self-involvement, (perhaps it's the result of over-emphasis on the idea of relative truth for the past couple of decades), but most people walk around thinking that their own ideas of what's cool are the perfect examples of what's artistically great, whether or not they know the first thing about what makes something great in the first place.
This kind of thinking plays out like this: a person thinks or says (sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously), "If I like it, it's good. If I don't like it, it sucks." It is my hypothesis that this kind of thought process is not only doing nothing good for the cause of great art in our culture; it's actually hurting it.
When people's only standard for excellence or beauty is what they themselves instinctively deem to be beautiful or excellent, they insulate themselves from an expansion of their understanding and consciousness of art. They have effectively made themselves the center of their own artistic universe and cannot be bothered to step outside of it. A diversity of artistic expressions is as valuable to a culture as a diversity of heritage or viewpoints, and people should require themselves to be humble and honest enough to admit that they don't know all that there is to know about anything, let alone the massively diverse and varied world of music and art.
I'll give you an example from my own catalog of preferences: I love AC/DC. I own their albums and have seen them on tour. I love cranking their tunes when I'm driving or working out or just feeling the need to get a little testosterone flowing. But I am fully aware that AC/DC is a band that has essentially built a 30+ year career out of one song. They play one kind of riff with one kind of drum beat and typically don't vary it a whole lot from one track to the next. And what's more is that this one thing that AC/DC does (arguably better than anyone else, I'll admit) is not the most musically exacting. They have capitalized on a musically simple and straight-forward idea (usually a recipe for a very short-lived and brief career). They are not a band that I would necessarily recommend for up-and-coming musicians to emulate or learn from; there are much better artists and groups form which to take your leads and lessons. That all being admitted, I still love them, and probably always will.
On the flip side of the coin, Dream Theater, an amazingly talented group of musicians, has never really appealed to me. Their musicianship is obvious & ubiquitous throughout their music and they can do things that many other professional musicians will never be able to execute. But their stuff has never really spoken to me. The tuning fork that goes off in my soul when I hear an AC/DC riff is never activated when I hear Dream Theater. And that's ok.
What would not be ok is for me to conclude that Dream Theater is comprised of worse musicians than AC/DC simply because I like one and not the other. My preferences are my preferences and in no way an ultimate objective standard of what is good or what is bad. I fully admit that I listen to AC/DC and not Dream Theater, but I also admit that the guys in Dream Theater are greater players than the guys in AC/DC will probably ever be. My subjective valuing of one over the other does not equate to an objective ruling of the same.
I believe this to be an important lesson for all music and art lovers in our culture to learn. If we insist that what we like is artistically good simply because we like it (whether or not we know the first thing about how to make something good), the appreciation of the creative process will no longer be celebrated unless it serves to stroke our own egos through our own personal preferences.
The solution is simple. All we need to learn how to do is say two things:
1) "Band X may not be the most talented group of musicians on the planet, but I dig their stuff. I admit they're not the best, but they speak to me."
2) "Band Y is amazing. It's obvious that they know what they're doing and are incredible at it. I just don't dig it. And no, they don't suck just because I don't like them. Props to them for being awesome, it's just not for me."
It's not hard, folks. It just takes admitting that we're not the center of the universe.
Wow....good stuff! I really liked this :)
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