Remixes

Reading through your blog entries, I'm noticing some of you posting remixes and having varying opinions on remixes.  I think they're interesting because it shows once again how advances in technology drive changes in music.  Invariably, change seems to be embraced more readily by the youth of that time while being dismissed and villified by adults.  Often those adults were youth of a previous era that embraced change who then turn around and say things like, "That's not music, it's just noise. They're not even playing real instruments.", or "They're not even singing."  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm some enlightened adult and that advances in technology will solve all of our ills.  I'm also not saying that we should all go back to land lines or live like the Amish.

Here are some observations.

1. The guitar got amplified. American parents became horrified. Kids everywhere rejoiced.

2. The piano turned into the modular synthesizer.  Prog rock gave nerds in capes a soundtrack for their RPG sessions.  Disco gave 70s hipsters a soundtrack for getting jiggy and being illicit in discotheque bathrooms. New wave helped some punk rockers of the seventies become the pop stars of the early 80s. Imagine Michael Jackson's "I Wanna Rock With You" without synth. How about The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic"? Van Halen's "Jump" without that intro... and that synth solo in the middle when they bring back the intro.  And yet there were bands like Throbbing Gristle, and Einsturzende Neubaten that paved the way for bands like Nine Inch Nails and KMFDM.  Let's not forget the role that synths played in these groups, and the role that Trent Reznor played in Marilyn Manson's career. Parents were definitely horrified. I don't particularly like Marilyn Manson's voice, and I don't think he's a talented musician, but he's a very talented businessman.  Wow, I just sounded old.

3. Turntables... ripped from living rooms, pawn shops, and electronics stores, they became the electric guitars of the working poor who MacGyvered them into a viable means of taking music and making new music.  America was particularly slow into acknowledging this viable American art form, and there is still backlash against it even though we're going into a fourth decade of rap and hip hop. At the beginning there was the, "They're just stealing other people's music and talking over it" argument. Please watch the documentary "Scratch" and be amazed.

If you have a spare 90 minutes, watch it on youtube, and learn about turntablism before you dismiss it's role in hip hop as non-musical. In fact, here it is.

4. Computers.  They're not just for video games, word processing, and email anymore.  Now we can use them to make art, video, and music.  However, in my opinion, there seems to be more backlash to music made with computers than with video or art.  I think that it's at least in part to the fact that art and video are visual.  While music in a live setting can be visual, the average listener who isn't a musician in the traditional sense of the word expects to SEE something that they can only dream of doing. Girl Talk is a great example, and we'll watch the documentary "Rip: A Remix Manifesto" in class which uses him in an argument for copyright law reform. I believe it's on Netflix if you want to watch it ahead of time. It's really stinking good and it'll make you think about copyright law, what it was originally intended for, how it's changed, and why many people think it's prohibitive.  Another great example is the link that follows where Kutiman takes a bunch of different youtube videos and crafts songs out of them. At least go and listen to "The Mother of all Funk Chords".

http://thru-you.com/#/intro/

So what's next? What is going to come down the pipe in the future that is going raise your future adulthood hackles? What are your children going to listen to that will make you have a knee jerk reaction? What's going to make you say, "That is NOT music.".  It's going to happen. It happens to everyone.  I'm not saying that you have to like all music, but I would encourage you to really examine what presses your buttons and why.  In the end, I think rock happened because some kids got excited about some new sounds and it pressed some adult buttons, and those kids rather enjoyed getting a rise out of them.

Thoughts?

Mr. A.