"In our day, the record companies never interfered with you creatively, they were just happy to be there" - Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin
"You can't kill Rock & Roll, it's here to stay" - Ozzy Osbourne
Looks to me like the era of the CD will end up being remembered as the "good old days" of the music industry. Staggering greed and an almost manic obsession with mediocrity on the part of the record companies, along with Napster and Bit Torrent, have taken their toll in a big way. Even the mighty iTunes cannot stem the flow of red here. The love affair, it seems, is over.
Incidentally, I think we may have also seen the end of the Rock & Roll era and just don't realize it yet. Note the plummeting sales of rock music, the sudden death of the Guitar Hero franchise and the massive worldwide success of Rap and Hip-hop. I don't know a single kid Zach's age that listens to rock (except him, and that's just because of me). His generation has far more of a connection with the various forms of Hip-hop and Rap (which I also mostly like), and also that insidious crap that the record companies have been manufacturing in the last decade (which I can't stand - boy bands, girl bands, and pretty much anyone named Justin).
Alas, from my generation very little music has made the transition. Michael Jackson is one exception - he has had more staying power than Aerosmith, Journey or Van Halen. Punk is still with us, but as an influence only. American folk music, once a vibrant genre handed down by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to people like Jim Croce and John Denver, is deader than dead. If you want to see a blank stare, go up to a middle school kid and mention Fleetwood Mac or Boston or REO Speedwagon or even Journey. It's all gone, and when something like that is gone, it never existed. The Beatles recently put their catalog on iTunes and sold millions of pretty much everything, but I'll bet if you analyzed the sales you'd find that they sold almost none of it to anyone under 45.
Which is all cool with me actually. Change is constant. Yeah, it makes me feel old, but I know the new generation (gen Z?) needs their own voice. I just wish it was really their voice and not an entertainment company's marketing implant. I think the days of originality when a band could write their own music and the record company didn't have much of a say in the final product - those days are gone.
1 comment:
It seems so sad but change IS the constant. Maybe rock n roll is dying but you can't kill creativity. Whatever the future brings won't be OURS but it will be music.
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