Big Ditto !

Here’s what led up to me presenting this topic…..

For the last few weeks I’ve been observing the mediocrity and gradual demise of music as we know and experienced it years ago. There are those who say it’s just music in another form…I say it’s not music even in it’s death throes! Then they say “the same thing was said about rock & roll and that came to be accepted!” And every genre that came out after that was invited into the inner circle. Up until the nineties when music took a nosedive. What we’re hearing now is “tolerated” at best. It may be “accepted” thought it won’t be as music but rather as a replacement for music.

Back to my story:

It started with watching these awful, awful, AWFUL bands that the late night talk show hosts present to their audience to stay connected to their teenage fans. I’m at my desk at night multitasking (working and watching). Here’s what I observe with most of these groups:

The lyrics of their songs I wouldn’t present to my psychiatrist….they’d drive even HIM up a wall.
They sing sounding like they have chronic colitis.
Women dressed as if they buy their clothes at the Salvation Army or else going to the Vampire Ball.
The guitar kings never look up at their audience instead burying their heads somewhere between the strings.
The rap heroes flash their hand gestures like street gang members and strutting their stuff up and down the stage deluding themselves about how good they are.
Most of the bands so hyper my guess is instead of a Johnny Walker before the show, they took massive amount of Viagra!

Back to my story:

Thursday I stopped in to a music store to try out a baby grand (I have a love affair with pianos). I’m talking to the salesman who turns out to be an ex-working pro. He told me pianos are the next instrument to take a hit. No one buys them for their kids anymore to learn music on. Instead, he said they buy them Casio’s and then get angry and frustrated at their children for “not being able to learn properly (on the Casio)!”

Later that night I go on the Internet and see this gentleman’s promise of hearing what one man can do to sound like an orchestra. And I’m foaming at the mouth to hear what a working pro does to entertain on a cruise ship? After listening, that was it for me. I recognized at that point the bar had been lowered. That no one actually plays music anymore. Musical craftsmen have vanished from the face of the Earth. I’m feeling isolated!

Lucky

“…more power to anyone who wants to make music”

Dave...a fine pianist like yourself? You’re the last person I’d expect to hear say that! You’re not actually referring to this as music? I’ve heard civil rights demonstrations more musical than this!

"...the fact that people are singing along with his cruise ship gig means that they are being entertained, which is the idea, correct?”

Yes, you're correct but they’re a captive audience, aren't they. I’d bet the rent that if they had a choice between attending an Andre Riu concert and this piano bar routine even the most musically oblivious would know what route to take.

“Would you like them to come forward publicly with their opinion of you, especially if you didn't ask for it?”

Yes, yes and yes! You don’t grow without suffering pain and if the pain comes from criticism, so be it! Tchaikovsky had his share and I believe he would never have left behind such beautiful music without it.

Where’s the incentive to improve yourself if everyone accepts you at street level? Remember everything in life has to keep moving. Where does music go from street level? There’s nothing below that!

Lucky

I think it would be even nicer if we emailed and posted to each other (some useful suggestions). In all the time, I've been on this site, I have yet to hear anyone talk about "playing"....what ideas they have in arranging a song, producing keyboard sounds, how they practice, do they practice?, etc

Still trying to figure out why that is?

Lucky

Whatever was popular with our generation (whichever it is!) when we were kids was as equally excoriated by our parent's or grandparents (ESPECIALLY our grandparents ) at the time...

I'm sorry, but unless you CAN produce music that sounds identical to what the kids are doing (never heard ANY here, that's for sure ), you are in no better position to criticize than your grandparents were back then! I don't imagine YOU had much respect for their scathing opinion of Led Zeppelin, or the Beatles, or even Bing Crosby (who was panned badly by earlier generations not into that newfangled 'crooning' ).

I thought WE were the generation that was NEVER going to become like our parents! But, I guess EVERY generation says that when they are young!

Just be grateful that the current generation is NOT as focused on learning to play keyboards... I can't think of a single player under the age of thirty or so playing professionally in my area. More gigs for me! I know my father's generation's keyboard players were NOT happy when I took their gigs away Guess it served them right for ignoring the current crop (at the time) of pop hits, and refusing to mess with those newfangled synthesizers!

Try to remember them burning Elvis's records, before you get too harsh about today's crop of pop...

What goes around, keeps going around!

Somewhere along the way you have to take a stand, reverse this "dumbing down" syndrome, and give back to the system that gave to you. Entertainers and others in the public eye say they are just reflecting what people are all about. I say those of us who were given talent to lead others should lead them in a positive direction, not bring them down even further. Re-introduce them to quality music..it's what we need more of these days to help many folks cope.

Lucky

I never saw how 'A wop bop a loo bop, a lop bam boo!' was exactly leading THAT generation forward musically OR linguistically Or 'Inna gada da vida', or 'Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got love in my tummy'!

Personally, I don't see THAT much 'dumbing down'...

I reckon we were pretty much all dumb to start with! The kids merely have a different way of expressing that 'dumbness'

'Hope I die before I get old'....

Like I Care…

I think that you DO care or you wouldn’t have taken the time out to sign up here and write what you did!

Now you’re probably a very nice fellow, but you should be ashamed of yourself advertising like this. First and foremost, this type of musical presentation does a disservice to true OMB’s. When I also became a DJ in the 90‘s, in the transition period from live music to canned, what I heard repeatedly from my new DJ clients was how live musicians “don’t cut it anymore.” Listening to your demo’s, I can understand them saying that. If you’re going to do what you do, I have no problem with that. Just don’t advertise yourself the way you do…..one person producing the “sound of an orchestra!”

You wrote: “My focus on the ship was to make as much in tips as I could.”

I have no problem with that either, but please, have a little class about it. When I lived in Europe, I busked in the streets! I played for long lines of people at the Tower of London with a tin cup attached to my accordion. I did the same in Petticoat Lane on a Sunday. I had the same goal…make as much in tips as I could. But I did it with class. I played Strauss waltzes, military marches, polkas, and even the William Tell Overture. I introduced them to music they don’t normally hear or music that they could relate to. I walked away each time many dollars richer but even richer in knowing that I enriched the lives of others. (Plus......I got &*^% a lot too!)

You wrote: “…for all those that are so interested in what I am doing musically, I sent those same demo files to an agency and booked new years from 7-9PM for $600 on Acoustic piano.

Lucky requests: the phone # of the agent who is paying you $600 to play piano for two hours based on your demo’s. a) I want to contact him to see if he realizes what he did, and b) quite frankly, I don’t believe that. But I’m willing to reverse my non-believer status and eat humble pie if this is true!

But, as I said previously, you seem like a very nice fellow just out to earn a buck, so I’ll wish you and yours a Merry Christmas back.

I have one more posting to do about this.

Lucky

In all fairness to "Like I Care," my beef was more with his audience than with his act. After all, he IS earning a living and apparently having fun at the same time.

Most of you know by now I've been totally frustrated in buying a new board for myself. Can you imagine how I felt when I saw what kind of music people were responding to these days. That put the nail in the coffin for me and a new kb for now. I should have known this as the listening public has tolerated me with my 10 year old Roland (celebrating it's 11th birthday next month).

Time to retire?

Lucky

Yes, Diki, every generation of new music was initially rejected. But in the long run, it eventually became accepted because it was STILL music.

Of course, the big Labonza of an example of the musical revolution was R&R in the 50's (and Ed S. only allowing Elvis to be seen from the waist up). Looking back over our shoulders, we see now what we didn't see then. Although R&R was the new kid on the block, there was still melody in the music and still a "beat," only a different beat now. And what makes it even more interesting is these guys made great music and thousands of songs with simple standard 3-4 chord progressions.

Now here's the proof that today's music is not accepted and probably never will be. I still stay in touch with the DJ world. Every 7 days I go to the Billboard site and enter the names of the latest tunes into my database. Been doing this for years. The one thing that stands out is how a new song can land on the charts in the Top 10 overnight, and be completely gone again in a few weeks. High School Musical was the hottest album for all of last summer for the kids I work with. This year it was High School Musical 2 and that didn't even last to the end of the summer before it was forgotten.

These kids today don't remember a song from 2 weeks ago, Britney Spears is completely out of the loop together with Justin Timerlake and the Backstreet Boys, etc.

Compare that with folks today who are still remembering and singing 50's songs. 'cause it was music!

These late nights are killing me!

BTW.....what does "excoriated" mean?

Lucky