Friday 15 August 2008

Pop pap

PAMJjustinkyle3-770692 I like this observation from the blog The Gods of the Copybook Headings (great name too):

Lovers of classical and jazz divide themselves by styles and artists, much less so by eras. The reverse is largely true of pop music...
The listener of one decade finds the music of the following decade unfamiliar and unintelligible, though its basic form might be the same. It's a type of chronological balkanization... A present tense culture's present tense music, unified only by its anti-effort delivery system. It's froth with nothing beneath it, like the celebrity culture its "creators" inhabit.

Read the short piece here, and feel free to argue the point either here or there. The difference between jazz and classical on one hand, and pop on the other, is that for the former you actually have to listen, whereas the latter "requires little focus and has all the nutritional value of bubble gum." We're talking 'music' that's literally untouched by human minds. It is 'grasped' and regurgitated instantly, just like the fast food with its empty calories that it so much resembles. Justin Timberlake Kylie Minogue Britney Spears ABBA Avril Lavigne The Jonas Brothers Snoop Dogg

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, you've got to widen your taste of music, not just classical, jazz & banjo but also to funky, reggae, house, rock (except heavy-metal), etc... I have a taste in all of the above.

My favorite classical one is the Soll ich dich Teurer nicht mehr sehn (Mozart), and here is another one of my favorite too (X my ...). This Tongan group was awesome and if you want to listen to their whole CD, you can borrow it from me, though. I am sure that once you seen that Youtube video, then you're more likely to like funky music as addition to your other tastes.

Anonymous said...

Not metal, FF? What's wrong with you?! One of my favourite boyfriends was a roadie with Whitesnake ... (a long time ago - and a long way from learning classical piano as a kid!) :)

Anonymous said...

Alright, so Whitesnake's not Metallica (for whom I also have a soft spot - no puns required) .. but you get the point.