Commentary from Christopher M. Wright

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Commentary
from Christopher M. Wright

June 2008 New or Good?, That is the Question
I received a complaint about my most recent 'From the Collection' pick - Finally We Are No One from Múm, a quirky electronica band from Iceland. The complaint was that I selected an old album instead of one of Múm's newer albums. The criticism completely misses the point of this site. The selections on AdventuresInMusic.biz are here because they're good, not because they're new. Especially when it comes to my 'From the Collection' picks which, as expressly stated, feature old favorites.

Pop bands have a way of peaking and declining. I don't know whether that's the case with Múm but I kept coming back to Finally We Are No One after sampling Múm's other albums. It seemed to me to be the pick of the litter. So, if you want good, come here because I've got 'ears' ('If it's on here it's good'). If you want new, go somewhere else. And stop making silly complaints about how chocolate ice cream isn't strawberry ice cream, especially when it's chocolate ice cream being advertised. There, I said it.

May 2008 Stravinsky on Lasting Truths and Passing Truths in Music
National Symphony conductor Leonard Slatkin and other panelists took up the question of integrity in pop music at an American University event in February 2008 ('Sound Investments: How Music Shapes Our Lives' at the Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C.). The view was expressed that pop music is in crisis because technology is making it too easy to make bad music. The songwriting process is completely different now as 'creators' have dispensed with the discipline of learning musical instruments, instead basing their songs on pre-recorded beats. Technology is debasing the songwriting craft; consequently, there won't be any more master works like those of the Beatles to bequeath to future generations.

Hold on a minute, came the response. There are lasting truths and passing truths. The music of today speaks to today. The genuineness of someone else's emotion is not something that can be judged, nor is it possible to say that the music of today is somehow less worthy or will not last. As for the music of the future, it will be different because people and cultures continually change.

Interesting point about passing truths. 'Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I Got Love in My Tummy' said something about the '60s being a more innocent time. Put that Top 40 hit side by side with the cop-killer lyrics of more recent vintage and you get some idea of what speaks to today.

Granted, you can't tell whose music will last because nobody can tell the future. But that's a separate question from whether a song or other piece of music is any good. Is it possible to judge a piece of music by a more or less objective set of standards? Igor Stravinsky thought so. In a series of lectures delivered at Harvard (Poetics of Music), he said that "all art presupposes a work of selection," i.e., not just any jumble of sounds constitutes music. He also spoke favorably of criticism, the art of judging a work, and himself slung harsh words at Richard Wagner whom he accused of single-handedly destroying vocal music with "continual bombast" and mere improvisation. As for a piece of music enduring, Stravinsky was of the view that the public may decide the fate of a piece of music (i.e., whether it's popular and for how long), but is not qualified to judge its intrinsic worth.

AdventuresInMusic.biz is all about standards and being selective. I don't have to pretend that every song or work is as good as every other. With hundreds of 'me-too' bands concocting indistinguishable schlock and radio execs admitting they are not in the business of playing good music, there's a need for free agents like AdventuresInMusic.biz to fill the editorial void and steer willing listeners to music that's a cut above - music worth the time it takes to listen to it. The finds publicized on this site are for those self-selecting individuals who are generally bored with the music being produced today and who are looking for new and satisfying adventures.

Pop music today suffers mightily by comparison to high points reached in the past, like the painstaking craftsmanship of Tin Pan Alley or the incredible creative crucible that was the '60s and early '70s. It's no accident that the biggest grossing concert acts still are from the Eagles and Rolling Stones era. The music was better then. But the word 'crisis' overstates the case. There most certainly is worthwhile pop music being written today, as the Discoveries, Honorable Mentions, and From the Collection picks on this site attest.

If you want to sell a lot of copies, stick to pre-recorded beats. If you're trying to do something worthwhile, learn the craft from the ground up, drink in the strikingly original from Scott Joplin to Joni Mitchell, and write from the heart. As Stravinsky said at Harvard, creators must continually work to refine their taste.

February 2008 Critics want U.K. arts bureaucracy to lighten up. Fat chance.
Government arts administration in the U.K. has come in for a spate of criticism over the past year. Notable Sir Peter Maxwell Davies said the government's approach is "utterly philistine." Charles Saumarez Smith, outgoing National Gallery director said Gordon Brown is “completely deaf” to certain important artistic values. Another representative of the subsidized arts sector, Barbican Centre Managing Director John Tusa, in a piece entitled "I'm Sick To Death Of Meddling Philistines", argued that arts policy in his country has become too bureaucratic. A longtime proponent of higher state funding for the arts, Tusa gave a nod to the need for oversight then wrote: "Too often the cry of 'accountability' is used as a none-too-transparent cloak for interference. The proliferating forms in which accountability is demanded only get in the way of the creation of the arts for which the money is given in the first place. This is not an accident, a byproduct of a bureaucratic tic for tidiness. It is usually a deliberate — and nontransparent — way of exerting control that would not be tolerated in other circumstances."

Prokofiev would sympathize. In his music, he liked to play jokes on the officious know-nothing apparatchiks who presumed to declare his music 'bourgeois' and antithetical to Soviet tenets. Undeniably, life in a nanny state can be chafing. However, those decrying the situation in the U.K. do not fully appreciate an inescapable fact of life: Where state money goes, state control follows. To think otherwise is naive. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

December 2007
Bad move, Prince.
The artist currently known as Prince has reportedly told fan sites to remove unauthorized photos and lyrics. If true, it's a strategic mistake. It's not a good idea to attack your fans. It's hard to see what Prince would gain by alienating supporters in this way or preventing his likeness and words from being more widely disseminated. Illegal file-sharing is one thing, but photos and lyrics are promotional items, not revenue-generators in and of themselves. The reported move seems kind of self-defeating to me. If he cares to explain, I'll print it here.

November 2007
An Apology
Recently, I recommended the Hiptronica channel on Accuradio.com. I was attracted by the chill instrumental grooves for their rhythmic inventiveness and exploration of electronic sounds. Now that I've listened to more cuts, I realize that the channel airs vocal tracks with potty-mouth lyrics which, to me, are an instant turnoff. Such lyrics are the last refuge of the artistically bankrupt. People who have nothing to say resort to four-letter words to fill up empty space and sell records. Given hip-hop's sorry history in this regard, I should have been more careful before recommending the channel. I've let my loyal readers down and I'm sorry.