The Golden Age of Music

[Georgia Avenue]

This is a very interesting post...I'm amazed cuz I was expecting, "Dude like the internet, y'no?"

Here's the thing...(Warning Sober Post!)...

I agree with the advantages of the new fluidity and availability of music nowadays, but in some sense this embarrassment of riches is causing a devaluing of the product. In less obnoxious terms, when I was a kid (around when you were), going to see a show (say, my first show: King Missile) was a big deal. A huge deal, really. It had a sort of mystical rituality associated with it…it felt like I was doing something with real importance. I couldn't hear or see this band anywhere else...The great new music was very hard to find…there was one good record store that I went to (Phantasmagoria in Wheaton MD) and I trusted the stringyhaired proprietor with my life. Even then, tho, the power of music was dying, because of the prevalence of mix tapes. Just about everything that was good in the late 80s I heard first because of mix-tapes. I can only imagine how precious and life-changing a new punk rock 7” in the late 70s must have seemed. And even more to my point, I saw a documentary recently about a Baltimore dance show (Amercan Bandstand-style, the basis for the show in Hairspray) that was a huge hit with African-Americans, even though it was blatantly racist and wouldn’t let black people come to the tapings, simply because it was the only place they could hear or see the performers they loved. I’m not talking some obscure musicians, I mean like Little Richard. Now I can’t get 50 cent, or even Talib Kweli, outta my face! I can’t avoid Sage Francis! Music is like a universal pop-up ad now, seeping between the cracks of everything. Sure we can FIND anything we want…but it’s a lot less valuable.

Bob Mould has some great stuff to say about this in the new Believer magazine…some of it is just grumpy old man grumbling, (see above) but some is spot on. Music is in danger of becoming wallpaper. Maybe this wouldn’t be the end of the world…but it would make me sad…This must be how a Jazz fan felt about electric guitars in the late 60s. “Geez, these things are everywhere now…maybe they won’t go away?!11!@”