For the sake of argument, I will set the starting point for the decline of American Popular Music at 1967. Ah, 1967, the infamous ‘Summer of Love’, or as Ted Nugent puts it, ‘The Summer of Drugs’. Remember Woodstock? Well, if you remember Woodstock, you weren’t there as the old adage says. Now, I’m not saying that music beyond and immediately leading up to that point in time is entirely decadent or worthless, but the vast majority of it is. Well, let me qualify that statement: the motivations and agendas that produced most of the music of that era was largely decadent, worthless and destructive.
Let’s scoot way back to ancient time. To the beginning of real mass-media driven American Popular Music. I mean, way back. Back before Elvis. Back, even, before Elvis was even born. Back to the 1920's and the machine invented almost50 years before: The Phonograph. It would be sacrilege to not mention Good Old Thomas Edison and his phonograph which made everything from CDs to Gangsta Rap available to the masses. I’m talking on-demand mass media. Just be warned that if anyone asks me, “duh, what’s a phonograph” I’ll personally bitch-slap the scussa.
It was the invention of the phonograph that, in my humble opinion, was the very beginning of modern mass media. This invention brought all manner of music to the masses in an on-demand fashion. Sort of like the internet, only you had to supply the power by winding it up and you have to have the records to play, of course. The humble little invention of the phonograph in all of it’s variations and incarnations created what we now call Popular Music. It did so by making Popular Music available to a huge audience - an audience much larger than the actual musicians could have ever reach with live performances. OK, there, I paid homage to Saint Thomas. But what does this have to do with the Decline of American Popular Music in the 1960's? Nothing, really, other than the fact that mass media on demand was invented essentially invented by Thomas Edison - a form a mass media that even illiterates could use. The phonograph was the Television of its day, but I digress...
If we take a cursory stroll through the nature of popular music from the 1920's to the mid-1960's, we see the rise of American Popular Music to a point at which it suddenly takes a major nose dive. Was this the fault of mass media? I would say so. I would say so because mass media panders to the least common denominator, the basest of the base, and in a nutshell, to what makes money. Making money isn’t a bad thing. In fact it’s a good thing, but to drive down the cultural and artistic bar and degrade society and promote it’s downfall for the sake of the almighty dollar isn’t a good thing. Once Again, I digress...
Let’s take a look at American Popular Music and the motivations and results that move it. The 1920's: American Popular Music is a cultural artifact. It was an art form that was the product of and reflective of the culture and society of the times. It was generally happy music, and it was produced by musicians who could actually read music. Example: Paul Whiteman, George Gershwin and a parade of others. OK, some songs of that era were rebellious and even made social commentary about the evils of Prohibition and there was a good market for the occasional off-color recording, but it was largely innuendo without the profuse use of the F-word. This tradition of ‘good taste’ largely survived until the mid 1960's.
Fast forward to Woodstock. Popular music moved from culture-producing and became largely counter-culture, destructive and negative in nature. It promoted all manner of depredations from drug abuse, pointless rebellion, disrespect, revolution, aberrant behavior of all description and the list goes on. Jimmy Hendrix (who I love dearly as a guitarist, composer and musician) praised the virtues of LSD in “Purple Haze”. Jim Morrison (whom I admire as a literary genius and great performer) promoted the deconstruction of society in general with a crowbar and a hypodermic needle. Janis Joplin, the Blues Goddess whom I deeply admire as a blues singer openly drugged herself to death. In all fairness, a lot of previous musicians from the 20's-60's drugged themselves with their drug of choice (Bix Beiderbecke, Gene Krupa, etc.,) but they didn’t generally sing about it or promote it. In fact, a good number of the “Woodstock Generation” musicians and their heirs ended up on the wrong side of a stretcher from an overdose or drug induced car crash. We’ve got more dead hippie musicians than you can shake a stick at. Keith Moon.John Bonhom. The list goes on. Great musicans, but quite dead out of rebellion to and refusal to promote culture or the refusal to listen to the beneficial aspects of society and culture. Hey! Anyone remember Syd Barrett? You know, then very first guitarist for Pink Floyd? He lasted until 2006. What a surprise! He consumed more acid than Union Carbide. He ended up a fat, bald, dead Aleister Crowley look-alike all because of his penchant for destroying, de-constructing and re-defining culture and society instead of building upon it and adding to it.
Now, in the first decade of the 21'st century we’ve got a whole crop of misanthropic freaks who are worshiped like gods and goddesses and who spout off inanely about things of which they know nothing about and that their mass-media buddies (who make money with all of this) promote and demand that we blindly obey. Again, I digress...
The whole point is that we’ve moved from popular music that builds upon culture and promotes and benefits society to popular music that calls for culture’s and societies demise and destruction ending up in a politically correct soup of anarchy in which all manor of decadent, promiscuous, destructive, freakish, inane, and disgusting behavior is promoted as ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’.
This is why I like music from the 20's, 30's and 40's and why those of us who do like this music have a duty to preserve, promote and disseminate that music. We are the guardians of culture and society. We are the defenders against the few seeking to warp the many to their decadent ways.
Anyone for some Gangsta Rap?
I didn’t think so.
No wonder Ted Nugent dubbed 1967 “The Summer of Drugs”.
Hit of the week:
"She Walked Right Up And Took My Man Away"Edison Diamond Disc 51242-L She Walked Right Up and Took My Man Away - Blues Song (Miles, Thompson, Willians); Ellen Coleman (aka, H. Baxter), Recorded September 9, 1923 (Transfer © 2007 Dan Gilmore undeadmedia@gmail.com - Use with attribution or permission)
