Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Up in the mornin' and off to school, teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule...

photo credit: Jon Chiang

School is just wrapping up for many; Summer's fast approaching. For others, like myself, the limited Summer term (at The University of British Columbia, see photo above) is just beginning. This presents the perfect opportunity to share with you my pick of school songs. However, my main concern is to relieve myself of these nagging thoughts about the music industry. Enjoy the music, because here comes a diatribe. Perhaps you would like to listen to my picks while I rail against the music industry? In any case, my top ten songs about school (or at least songs that use school as a device to speak to more important manners, namely, love and war):




1. Homework - Otis Rush

2. What did you learn in school? - Pete Seeger

3. Wonderful World- Sam Cooke

4. School Days - Chuck Berry

5. Another brick in the wall - Pink Floyd

6. Good morning little school girl - Muddy Waters

7. Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin

8. Maxwell's Silver Hammer - The Beatles

9. Hey Little School Girl - Marquees

10. School's Out - Alice Cooper




The songs I've chosen all have something in common, a characteristic one would hope all music has, they're all about something. I'm not going to sanctimoniously argue that the only music worth listening to is moving and poetic music that transforms the way we perceive of love, school, the political arena, etc. In fact, that couldn't be further from my view, one needs only to look to the abundance of crude and superficial selections I've made. Take for instance Maxwell's Silver Hammer, what new perspective on modern life does this murderous med student give us? Absolutely none. My number one choice? No depth to Homework, the song is simply describing the struggle we've all had to do our homework when there is a pretty girl around. These songs are not tightly crafted philosophical arguments, but they have real substance that I can point to without embellishing their value. They present a particular message, situation, or feeling in a coherent manner. In essence, it's possible to answer the question what is the song about? or even the question what is this song's thesis? For example, Chuck Berry's School Days leaves one with the conclusion that Rock can save you ("delivery me from") from the oppressive and monotonous experience that is school. Pete Seeger's What did you learn in school? leaves one with the rather grim conclusion that school might just be propaganda. 




What of contemporary popular music? Well, the majority doesn't warrant discussion. One simply needs to read the lyrics and they'll see that most songs are void of substance and hold no particular view on anything. We shouldn't damn them all though, sometimes they present a sort of formulaic coherency (why can't Lady GaGa answer her telephone? She's too busy dancing!) That's about as far as popular music will take you in terms of meaning, and that's OK. 

However, the level of uniformity in popular music is disquieting. These artists would perhaps better understood as commodities. They are synthetic frauds, auto-tuned ("like plastic surgery"), their sound pre-fabricated for total uniformity, their beats tightly crafted for the purposes of selling ringtones ("There's only music so that there's new ringtones.") Even the dancing, rigid steps helped along by quick camera cuts. You can tell Michael Jackson is a good dancer because his camera panned out to let him dance, the same way Bruce Lee's camera panned out to let him fight. When you don't have a Bruce Lee or a Michael Jackson talent then you're left with nothing but strategic camera cuts and editing tricks to give the illusion of talent. Today's pop music is full of these tricks, featuring about as many quick and dizzying cuts as a Jasan Statham movie, but I digress. 




The economic structure of the modern music industry is very much to blame for the high levels of conformity in popular music. The reality of the modern recording industry is that the record itself is but a small part of a larger brand. Sponsorships, endorsements, clothing labels, perfume, ring tones, and live shows all serve to marginalize what used to be the product (that is, the record). Despite what the record industry tells you, there has been nothing better for corporate America than the dwindling record industry and the proliferation of internet music downloads. As the record loses its economic importance, the corporate world can refocus on doing what it does best, manipulating us into buying their stupid bullshit. The music is now but a delivery system. We have come so far as to embrace what used to be labeled "selling out," as artists shamelessly boast of their commercial success. Wherever our celebrities now go, they are traveling mannequins.


The heavily centralized nature of today's marketplace furthermore stifles artistic expression. These large institutions are in fact defined by their incentivization of conformity. Why would a record label or large corporate sponsor want to get behind a dangerously subversive character who has no regard for polite society or artistic convention? That would be both artistically and politically risky. From an economic perspective, such risks are stupid and irresponsible. It simply takes the most elementary of reasoning to realize that it would not be an economically sound decision to disrupt the order from which you profit.


As for indie or alternative music, we can’t as easily generalize such a fragmented market. But I’d like to again emphasis the point of coherence. Detached hipster musicians so often pretentiously hide behind their craft rather than revealing anything of themselves or their view. We often run into the problem of music being about nothing. We haven’t solved all the questions surrounding love and war, yet some artists have decided to just not sing about these things and play with their synthesizers (presumably they’re in the grip of postmodernism, or perhaps they just have nothing to say). I feel utterly hopeless when people embrace incomprehensible nonsense only to abandon it at the point it becomes too popular and therefore uncool.


So I’m not so optimistic about contemporary music, but let me temper my critique by saying that I am speaking only of general trends--there certainly remains many good contemporary finds. But take a look at the masters of old, you should never be waiting on something new to arrive when there is so much more gathering dust as it waits on you.

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