[LAU] re Subconscious Affecting Music

[Dave Phillips]

Julien Claassen wrote:
>
> ... there always is the choice and it is not, that choices are hidden 
> away in dark corners. You can look on youtube, in the stores, at the 
> internet radio landscape, even at big collections of stations, 
> including pop and/or poprock. You'll find loads of alternatives. I 
> have the feeling - at least here in Germany - that among young peoples 
> more and more turn, besides their interest in typical pop, to 
> something of their own. Indi, oldies, 70s, folk... You name it, 
> they'll like it and show it to others. I've seen that in several 
> friends and friends' children.

I agree with Julien. I teach 35 students per week, most of whom are 
young people (well, younger than I am). They don't listen to MSM radio, 
they don't watch television and they're not into MTV. They do almost all 
their music-finding through friends, iTunes and other such stores, and 
the social media sites. No-one under 30 brings in CDs any more. They 
bring in iPods and flash drives. There are currently NO music stores 
(CDs and other hard-format recordings) in this town of 45,000 souls.

The kids bring in everything from the 60s to now. They bring in crap and 
they bring in tunes that I end up using in my own shows (I recently 
appropriated Dave Grohl's Everlong). I've been listening to pop music 
since the early 1950s, and it seems to me that there has always been a 
constant amount of shite on the airwaves. Of course there is, because 
you can easily manufacture it. You can't easily manufacture the truly 
great music, IMO it's gotta come from within the artists themselves. So 
there's always been a varying amount of good stuff.

Btw, there's a strong argument that the "teen craze" sort of pabulum 
started with Disney and his ilk. Pop stars such as Annette Funicello and 
other Mouseketeers were the Britneys of the day, and manufactured stars 
such as Fabian soon took over the charts after the harder rock music 
suffered from the effects of Buddy Holly's death. Disney and Colonel Tom 
Parker determined the tastes of whole generations of listeners. They 
substituted saleability for creativity, and the rest is what's known as 
pop history.

Just my two sesterces.

Best,

dp