Has anyone seen the quote in the newest Dawg article?
Here it is,
I just can't relate to popular music. I don't listen to it. I don't like it. I don't see any value in it other than providing income for a bunch of people. The whole idea of technology in the past 50 years has gone nowhere except for making it easier and easier for people who have no talent to make records.
-David Grisman
He's not only a fantastic musician but he's honest too!
Pretty bombastic statement, imoOriginally Posted by
Tell that to Roy "Futureman" Wooten. Or should he go back to pre dawg-approved technology and just bang two stones together?
Oh please, obviosly this quote was directed at the "main stream" market. You can pick it apart all day long and have the guy sounding like a murderer but the fact remains that technology has made it possible for people with little or no talent to make music and I point to the recent Country Music Awards as proof.
Myself, i'd rather listen to the banging of "two stones" than to today's popular music.
A bit too dawg-matic for my tastes, but so be it.
I did raise an eyebrow in that interview somewhere where stated something about electric guitarists and the fact that only an acoustic guy can show real musicality or real talent (or something to that effect).
Carlos Santana, FZ, Steve Cropper, countless blues guys, etc., etc. - I haven't heard these guys too much on acoustic, but tell me they are any less than a Tony Rice or Martin Taylor, etc., etc. - albeit on different styles.
YMMV.
I launched a successful magazine for music stores in the 1980s. I would go to the National Association of Music Merchant's show in Anaheim, California, and hang out in the "Third Hall" where the new companies no one had ever heard of like J.L. Cooper and DigiDesign would exhibit, and I remember talking to the guys at DigiDesign who had a $30,000 Macintosh based digital audio studio. They were telling me that some day this would be on your laptop. While many Beatles albums were recorded in analog two-track and four-track formats, today I record music with my sons in a 16-track digital audio system called Audacity that I downloaded free on the Internet and use on the same laptop I use at work. Last month I was back in Anaheim for a computer show, and I was recording podcasts on my laptop in what is now the third of six halls. Technology has done much good. Dawg himself has done much to preserve art in the face of monolithic record companies -- and he has leveraged technology succesfully as Scott does here to bring together folks of common musical interest. I venture to say Acoustic Disc would not today be alive if not for technology. I do get Dog's point. When desktop publishing first came out, there was a great debate over whether it truly expanded the first ammendment or just created a lot of ugly newsletters. Technologies, including the technology to stretch a taut string over a box filter, are only as valuable as people who use them. But today the pyriamid of control is broken, and we should applaud our ability to express ourselves both here in the Cafe and at home in home production. Well, that's my speech for today at least.
Eastman 605, Strad-o-lin, and Kentucky 300e mandolins.
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while a bit harsh, i think he is def. on to something. i think we are living in the most unintersting time period, as far as music/entertainment goes. i cant imagine another period of history where less talented ppl are setting the standards. there are some good singers/players out there....dont get me wrong, but some of whats considered "good" today is nothing more than polished production at its finest. i gave up on radio years ago.
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I like listening to the radio in the car. They usually play a nice mix of new and old music. My wife likes the new music because there are more female singers, not to many to speak of in older music. She also likes the musicianship of todays artsists. Problem is, if we put a CD on of a newer artist, we can't seem to get through three songs before our heads start splitting from the modern recordings. As much as I love the mandolin chop, it just gives me a headache when it's so present on every beat of every song. Modern recordings seem to also sound overcompressed, putting every instrument right up front to be heard clearly all the time.
I like the radio because they mix it up and I can hear new artsists and then some older stuff mixed together. This format makes the new recordings more tolerable.
I prefer older music because it has soul 'vs' the souless recordings of today. Just goes to show you....doesn't really matter how many notes you play, as long as they're the right ones. That said, I also can appreciate the chops and musicianship of todays aftists. They all seem to be very sophisticated in terms of formal musical training.
-jonathan
And now for today's weather....sunny, with a chance of legs
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln
All generalizations are wrong!
"First you master your instrument, then you master the music, then you forget about all that ... and just play"
Charlie "Bird" Parker
As I see it, the Dawg is making two different points: #he "doesn't like popular music" (no disagreement from me there, with a few exceptions) and "technology in the past 50 years has gone nowhere except for making it easier and easier for people who have no talent to make records." #On that I'd disagree. #
The advent of digital recording and home studios has certainly has made it easier for ANYONE (talented or not) to make records. #In the old days, you had to have what the record companies thought of as "commercial potential" (their equivalent of "talent") in order to make and distribute recordings. #Now anyone can do it. #
That is both bad ("the bar" is lower, so you get more people putting out stuff, some of which is dreck) and good (the number of very talented but "non-commercial" acts that are able to release their music has increased exponentially). #
The Dawg used to have a major label deal, but no longer does. #I don't know if that's by his choice or not. #But he's still out there recording and releasing his own music, thanks to the "technology" that lets him bypass the major labels.
EdSherry
some of it may be sour grapes as well. dawg is a MONSTER player, but ask the average person who he is and who john mayer is and you're likely to get blank stares on the dawg and an "oh yeah, i know him..." on mayer. i can see where that would have to bother someone like dawg. even if its on a slight level.
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It is a sad day in Muddtown when your award winners come up throught the ranks of Karaoke joints far and wide. Then someone will say, "Technology makes the best even better." I don't belive that. What's there is there. And i know how many CDs you have to sell for double platimun status. Eveywhere i haunt i hear the same disaproval of modern music. Who the hell is buying this #### music? But alas, folks will follow a bad example the same as a good one, if they're not exposed to the difference. (thanks again L.L.)
FJ
Here is the quote in context:
Grisman has been profiled in numerous publications, and it has been written that he started his quintet due to perhaps feeling that he was an outcast and didn't fit in anywhere else. He's outspoken in his opinions when questioned about the subject. "I don't know about an outcast, but we don't fit in if you turn on the T.V. and hear music. It's probably not going to be something that resembles anything I do. I don't particularly care. Early on you run into people in the music business who want you to conform to whatever is selling. Most musicians get steered in commercial directions. To me that's what's wrong with the — see I can't even call it 'the music business.' 'The entertainment business' is better. It's gotten so far away from musical values or artistic values. I find that abhorrent. I'm really turned off by that. I think that has nothing to do with creativity or expression. There are so many styles that are underneath this really bad façade of manufactured ####. Underneath it all, it's all supported by the foundation of — like the blues, country music, classical. All the real music of the world holds up this garbage. Usually they have to involve real musicians somewhere in the process, but it's gotten so distorted by the business people, that are just trying to make a buck, I just can't relate to popular music. I don't listen to it. I don't like it. I don't see any value in it other than providing income for a bunch of people. The whole idea of technology in the past 50 years has gone nowhere except for making it easier and easier for people who have no talent to make records. That's what the technology has been all about since the multi-track tape machine came. I'm not saying I'm a saint or anything, but I pretty much have avoided being influenced by contemporary musical trends because they are in themselves being manipulated by the business. I can't really believe that anyone was born to produce the stuff that you hear. Recordings are a recent phenomena. We've only had recordings for about 100 years. So this whole thing, the first 20 or 30 years of it was really just documenting music that people were making for artistic reasons or at least to dance to or whatever to entertain themselves — you know, the early country music, the various ethnic music, classical music. Not all had musical purposes. As soon as the companies started making records and then this one sold 200,000 and that one sold 25, and they started feeding that into the equation, it just all turned to kaka. If that's what I'm an outcast from, I welcome it. I'm just doing my own thing. I kind of dropped out of the mainstream musical business. I've got my own CD company, I've got my own band. I've managed to have my own audience."
Ah yes, 50 years ago when I was listening to classics like "Tan Shoes & Pink Shoelaces" and "Rama Lama Ding Dong" -- now, there were songs crafted with artistry, insight, and musical virtuosity!
Sounds like someone's getting old, and saying the things that 60-year-olds usually say about the music of 15-year-olds. The same technology that Mr. G criticizes, is what enabled him to release wonderful recordings of vintage instruments playing great traditional music.
We are in an era of unparalleled musical diversity, when each of us has access to not just the products of a few commercial music companies, but millions of individual songs and tunes, posted on the internet, recorded and released by songwriters and bands around the world, available in a variety of formats. A lot of it isn't very good, true, but much of it is interesting, entertaining, and stimulating.
What we don't have is the "Top 40" environment, where all of us are listening to a limited selection of music. Every year when the Grammy nominations are announced, I'm surprised by how few of the songs I've ever heard. Must confess to some nostalgia for the time when everyone listened to Dylan or the Beatles (or even "Dueling Banjos"); but when I see how many of my friends, and local musicians I admire, have produced their own recordings, gotten them played on non-commercial broadcast or web radio, and received distribution that they could never have hoped for in the past, I can't share Mr. G's grouchiness.
Allen Hopkins
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SternART -- Thanks for the context.
EdSherry
arbarnhart.......You hit the nail on the head. Remember, even a skunk smells good to another skunk (at least,I think so). What we smell, hear, and see, appears different to everyone.
Jack
"It's never too late to have a happy childhood"
Too much mediocrity in the arts in general... too much product to keep track of. Too many movies, CDs, concerts, TV... nothing is really "special" anymore. People eat what's fed to them, and nobody can feed slop to the masses like the good ol' USA. As long as people eat (buy) all this junk they'll just keep pumping it out with the artistic bar set very low. Worse yet is how this mediocrity has influenced amazing musical cultures the world over... such a shame sez me... When all is said and done, MTV and the advent of the music video are the real musical assassins.
I am really resonating with that post. I experienced a real-life example. I was at a large, well organized community fair that had two performance venues. On one end of the fair, an old-time string band with some great players from the local area were turning out some outrageously good traditional music through a small PA.
On the other end of the fair, a Country and Western one-hit wonder guy from Nashville was performing. He didn't bring his band, so he was singing and playing guitar to backup tracks played on a kareoke machine, mixed with his mikes and pumped into a giant PA. He was a stereotype of a "Country Pop" singer: Overdone "hick" accent (even though he grew in up suburbia, I later found out), songs full of hackneyed C&W lyrics, cowboy hat and boots. He really wasn't that good, but he had a current single on the charts.
Each to his own, but his PA was so loud, it was drowning out the string band on the other side of the fair and they had to stop. Of course the herd at the fair was listening to the one-hit wonder. I thought it was such a clear contrast between the string band playing real country music (with a small "c") and the blasting Country Pop music that most people there were listening to. I thought it made a sad statement.
interesting. the logic used is, "well, this guy's on the radio, so he MUST be doing something right...."I am really resonating with that post. I experienced a real-life example. I was at a large, well organized community fair that had two performance venues. On one end of the fair, an old-time string band with some great players from the local area were turning out some outrageously good traditional music through a small PA.
On the other end of the fair, a Country and Western one-hit wonder guy from Nashville was performing. He didn't bring his band, so he was singing and playing guitar to backup tracks played on a kareoke machine, mixed with his mikes and pumped into a giant PA. He was a stereotype of a "Country Pop" singer: Overdone "hick" accent (even though he grew in up suburbia, I later found out), songs full of hackneyed C&W lyrics, cowboy hat and boots. He really wasn't that good, but he had a current single on the charts.
Each to his own, but his PA was so loud, it was drowning out the string band on the other side of the fair and they had to stop. Of course the herd at the fair was listening to the one-hit wonder. I thought it was such a clear contrast between the string band playing real country music (with a small "c") and the blasting Country Pop music that most people there were listening to. I thought it made a sad statement.
wrong.
BRING ON THE PORCH PICKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Dawg has been a champion of "acoustic" instruments his entire career.
Yeah, his stuff can be downloaded at his web site, but it IS "acoustic"
music. Everyone needs to sell via the media the potential customers are
currently using, be it records & cassettes, CD, digital download, whatever.
I think part of what David was referring to was synthesizers, effects, etc
used on electric instruments.
I'm not much of a "dawg" fan - HOWEVER, I absolutely AND positivily AGREE with his "stated opinion" as given. Music genres are a VERY subjective AND obviously very personal area(s). I'm so 'biased" that upon first glance re:...the king.." I thought the topic was about Jimmy Martin - who is IMHO "The King of Bluegrass" - RIP Mr. Martin -thanks for the wonderful music - and the...entertainment thereof. ricardo.#
Although I would agree there is an awful lot of junk on the airwaves these days I don't share Mr. G's sentiment on technology. It reminds me a little of the attitude of the jazz snobs. Maybe he's a technology racist...can't we all just get along?
You got time to breathe, you got time for music.
www.acousticfriends.com/hepcatmando, www.myspace.com/1groovycat,
arbarnhart
You did not complete the entire quote #"All generalizations are wrong, (including this one)!
Linksmaker
I think music and in particular vocals that are artificially/electronically engineered and enhanced to manipulate them on key and in pitch is what's being hit on here. And I agree- nobody's perfect and everybody has their bad nights, but with the amount of money being thrown at professional recording artists/performers these days, they ought to be able to hit and play those notes on a regular basis without artificial manipulation. I also suppose it is cheaper for studios to alter recordings than to spend time with multiple takes to make up for "real" day in day out talent. I also have nothing against all you guys making a living as studio musicians, but I never liked the stories of studio guys playing the music on records because the "famous" band members really couldn't do it that clean without the cover of live noise and distraction. Those famous guys are taking the money....take away the studio musicians and electronic engineering and then stand up and let us hear you play and/or sing.
"The older I get, the better I was!"
and above all that . . Everybody is prejudice because no two people have the same point of view. i at least am up front about my bias and don't deny them.
C'mon everybody, Let's all be sanctemonious!
I agree with David 100% if my interpretation is correct. Technology has helped people make their own amateur records off their laptop. Do you really think he is knocking this? I do not agree. Pop music pretty much bites and commercialization, image and lack of substance sell. The image helps mask the latter. Corporatization, corporatization, and corporatization. They even got Dylan (IPod and Victoria's Secret commercials). Dylan said "the pump don't work cause the vandals took the handle." Looks like he may have some profits from the handle now. And I love Dylan...
The other article on the Cafe main page says something about people who plug in. Again, there are numerous musicians that plug in who can plug out and make powerful music. And their music plugged is is killer too. No way I'm a purist, even though I prefer acoustic. I mean Dawg's good friend Jerry made a little living out of this, one of his musical heroes John Lennon did so also, and his son, Monroe, is a "rocker." I try to read between the lines and assume that Dawg cannot make such huge assumptions. Maybe I'm taking a leap and he can't stand anything plugged in.
As per Dawg being old, I'm not half his age and find myself with him on many societal, and musical issues.
Art had it right by posting the context in which the article was written.
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