how 21st century music will influence the future

I saw this question on a forum today. A Guitar Hero forum, in fact. I can almost see all your jaws dropping. Har har har. Being the geek I am, I had a million things to say on this topic, but I didn't feel like catching up on eight pages of responses and fighting with little pre-teen kids whose entire internet experience consists of scorehero and myspace. The internet is an ugly place, might as well let them have what few sanctuaries they can find.

I read a few initial responses, with most of them saying how horrible it will be when our kids are singing "crank dat soulja boy" twenty years from now. I guess I'll start with that point.

There will always be shitty pop songs. Always. Some of them will grow to be endearing, some will die horrible, unjustified deaths only to be rediscovered decades later, and some will latch onto the very essence of pop culture itself and continue to torture us until the end of time. For example, in that order: The Turtles - Happy Together; the entire late-50s, early-60s garage rock sub-culture; Village People - Y.M.C.A.

I hope that made sense. I don't think it did.

The point is, history repeats itself. And nothing in music is more repetitive than pop music. Case in point: we're currently going through an 80s pop revival. Which isn't a bad thing, not at all. Look at a band like MGMT--straight out of the 80s, but with a wonderful modern touch all its own. At the same time, however, you have bands like Hellogoodbye. So it's not all good.

As far as the influence of pop music today, I'd say there will be none. There's nothing original on MTV these days. Rock bands are rehashing the 80s, and rappers are either ghetto-mother-fuckers or Biggie wannabes cashing in on their thirty seconds. Nothing is happening on the surface, at all.

But below the surface...that's an entirely different story.

To put it simply, the music industry as we have come to know it for 40+ years is dying a slow, painful death at the hands of the internet and an ever-growing revolution against paying $15 for a ten-track CD.

Can you remember the last time you bought a CD? Probably not. My last physical purchase was most likely Pink Floyd's seminal Dark Side of the Moon, and that was...11th grade.

That's not to say no one pays for music anymore. iTunes still makes a killing selling music
digitally, and has been completely dwarfing CD sales for nearly a decade. And at a pretty good deal to boot. 99 cents a track and $9.99 an album is nothing to turn your nose up at. Plus they have this new "complete your album" deal at an even more reduced price.

The record companies make a profit off digital sales, sure--but nothing like the dough they were bringing in with physical sales.

But there's a much, much, much bigger problem on the horizon. Hell, fuck the horizon--the shit has already hit the fan, whether they want to admit it or not, and it's only a matter of time before they give in to it.

Free music.

Do you remember when Napster exploded? I do. 1999-2000. I was too young to appreciate the moment my dad explained that we could download any music in the world we wanted, for nothing. File sharing, they called it, trading music, but for all intents and purposes it was stealing music. The industry's never been the same since.

Applications and websites come and go, but if you pay attention, there are a truly staggering amount of ways to get free music online. Peer-to-peer networks. Torrents. Rapidshares. Ripping audio. Shared folders. It's everywhere. It's a force that cannot and will not be stopped. Child pornography has already proven to the world that no matter how determined governments become, the internet will always win. People will always find a way. And until the record industry realizes this, they will continue to shrink until they ultimately die.

It's not just the listeners revolting against the industry anymore--now even the artists are circumventing the traditional method of music sales. After the mind-blowing "name-your-own-price" release of Radiohead's In Rainbows, artists have begun dropping their labels and releasing albums on their own terms, in many cases without a price tag. Already, label giant EMI has seen numerous artists jump ship for private release systems, resulting in layoffs and the overall decline of the company.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The Pirate Bay, one of the most influential torrent trackers in the world, just entered the list of the 100 most visited web sites on the internet, the second torrent site to do so. Record sales continue to decline. Lawsuits and government actions continue to stall and fail in court. And all the while, the record industry refuses to work with the digital music phenomenon, insisting instead on fighting an impossible battle.

Web sites, television, radio, movies...what do all these things have in common?

They make money in the same way: advertising.

Why in the hell haven't the record companies figured this out too?

If an advertising-fueled torrent tracker or P-2-P service appeared on the internet, the response would simply be unimaginable. Free music, without the fear of being sued by the powers that be, who are sitting back raking in astronomical advertising fees from companies foaming at the mouth at the thought of targeting the entire computer owning, music listening demographic, across age, race, income, and location.

On one hand, it's mind-blowing that such a venture hasn't been attempted.

(Actually, it has. Sort of. Q-Trax launched a few months ago, announcing a free, advertising-based P-2-P service supported by the major labels. Unfortunately, the labels denied such a deal, and the site never launched. It was rumored to be one big stock scam. Sigh.)

On the other hand, you can't expect a billion-dollar industry to roll over and accept vastly inferior profits.

With no end to free music in sight and the music industry unwilling to cooperate, it's just a matter of time before the industry collapses altogether, or they finally bow to the will of the internet, changing the face of music as we know it.

And that, my friends, will be the influence of 21st century music: the combined efforts of internet downloads and indie music coupling to either destroy or revolutionize music as we know it.

metal machine music

Lou Reed's experimental album, frequently cited as the worst album of all-time. It is essentially two guitars placed in front of amplifiers, using different tape speeds and reverb settings. It is automatic feedback manipulated by man, though no man is actually making the sounds coming out of the guitars. There is nothing particularly musical about it, as it is just screeching noise for over an hour. And it's fucking amazing. Granted, I would never be able to listen to more than one side at a time, but just the sound of it...it's not even music, there are no notes, no rhythms, no rhyme or reason to any of it, it's just purely artificial sound waves, but it never claims to be anything above or below that (with the exception of Reed's amphetamine-fueled explanations), and that's what makes it so fucking amazing. I'm sitting here listening to something that it is supposed to be music, but it isn't. I'm looking for musical qualities and attributes in something that is just mechanized sound waves, free of human influence beyond audio flair. And the scary thing is, if you listen to it long enough, you will begin to hear musical attributes in it. It's like to listening to nature itself, pumped through amplifiers and drowned in feedback. All an electric guitar is anyway is the manipulation of magnetic fields and physical force to create customized sound, but this...this is magnetic fields running amok, bouncing off each other to create screeching, echoing, spiraling chasms of electronic mayhem that is a product only of a few purposefully mistuned strings and a few experimentally turned knobs.

I don't know if you think I'm just glorifying some rock 'n roll song and describing it as an electronic onslaught, but it really is just feedback and noise. There is no chorus, there is no rhythm, there is no hook, there are no vocals, there is no drum set, it's just...noise. And it's amazing and I highly recommend it after a few beers.

boston

Some music will never get old. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, just timeless riffs, unmatched songwriting, and attitude out the wazoo. Another band to add to that list is Boston. I'm sitting here listening to "Rock & Roll Music," and this is truly classic, great music. Everyone knows "More Than a Feeling" because of the air band on Scrubs or from the first Guitar Hero, but then there's "Foreplay/Long Time," "Peace of Mind," "Amanda," "Don't Look Back," just perfect 70's arena rock that doesn't get the attention it truly deserves.

They don't have the same rock mystique a lot of the other guys have--hell they weren't even really a band, one guy played every instrument--and that mystique is an undeniable part of the appeal of those other guys. The Rolling Stones are the Rolling Stones because of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. (And Brian Jones too, but I never really got the appeal behind him. He played on the first few records, never wrote any of the songs, and got the other guys to experiment with Eastern techniques. But he's still larger-than-life Brian Jones. Oh well.) Appeal is the reason 90% of the people know music at all. Like the fucking Beatles, the band with more appeal than anyone in the history of mankind. I mean how do you compete with the fab four? You just don't. Plus they had Ringo, who is just the funniest looking man ever to sit behind a drum set. In all those Beatles promo pictures, the other three do their tough, macho "I'm a fucking Beatle get over it" face, and Ringo just sits there enjoying life for no real reason. Lennon was once asked if Ringo was the best drummer in the world, and he responded "he's not even the best drummer in the Beatles," which was probably true, and yet the guy is credited with revolutionizing rock percussion on "Sgt. Pepper's."

You may notice how I'm putting both song titles and album titles in quotations, which is confusing as shit, isn't it? I mean if I wanted to talk about the song "Sgt. Pepper's" on the album "Sgt. Pepper's," it looks like complete shit. But according to the paper here, that's the way the AP does it. That just seems completely fucking stupid. AMG puts albums in italics and tracks in quotes, which works so much better. Take a hint AP. Or atleast the Mountain Echo. Be trendsetters, come on.

But it's not all about appeal. Anti-appeal works just as well sometimes. Daft Punk for instance. French DJ's who perform in full on space-age get-ups, almost never showing their face. They're actually accused of letting other people play their gigs. How perfect would that be? You sit back in your safe studio and perfect your album, that let some poor fucks go out and sweat it out in that cool-as-shit pyramid-stage in those hot-as-balls outfits while the kids dance around with their ecstacy and glow sticks. But what would be the fun in that. They're lazy enough as it is--Homework and Discovery (FUCK YOU ASSOCIATED PRESS) were amazing, revolutionary club albums, and then they phoned it in with Human After All, and followed that bullshit album with a live album, of all things. Suck it up and get on tour you lazy fucks. You don't even move, you just stand there, push buttons, and nod your head.

And then there's a band like Sonic Youth. They made a living off of being ageless art-punks with guitars tuned in every imaginable fashion, while screaming about killing their idols, teenage riots, and all sorts of gloriousness. Their music is straight noise, or atleast about 90% of it is. But it's fucking AMAZING noise. Take "Total Trash," off Daydream Nation. The first four minutes or so, it's a subpar song with a creaky riff stretched and warped to become Sonic Youth's version of a hook. Then, when most bands would bring a song to a close, Thurston and the fucks break that shit down to the point that it really is just noise, to the point that no trace of the original song is left. Guitars start squealing aimlessly, Kim just starts straight up hitting her bass, Steve stops playing whatever remnants of a beat he had going and follows Kim, they all slowly get bored and fade out, and then Thurston goes "oh yeah this was a song" and takes it back to the hook for a few bars. And they got famous off that shit.

And then there's a band like Pavement. Greasy stoners from Stockton, a singer that can't sing, a drummer that lives in his own LSD dream world, and music that has no real purpose whatsoever. And they created the greatest album of all-time, Slanted & Enchanted. I got drunk at a party once and started talking music with this fat senior guy. He knew his stuff pretty well, I was actually impressed (I'm a music snob if you hadn't caught on), but when I mentioned Pavement, he had no idea. I promptly took a shot of SoCo and told him to forget my name, that from now on my name was Pavement, not Matt, PAVEMENT now say it with me man--what's your name again? Ryan? Okay--say it with me man. PAVEMENT. Yeah you got it. Enchanted and slanted. No--FUCK no SLANted and enCHANted--there you go. Yeah i'll finish that bottle pass that shit over. Ur goin to da cafe, fuc--FUCK YEAH I WANNA GO TO THE CAFE lets go man wheres nick nick NCIK oh nick left already alright cool EDWIN FUCKING EDWIN I LOVE YOU MAN alright nah man i got it dont worry im fine RYAN WHAT THE FUCK'S MY NAME--YEAH IT IS alright lets go dude im goin dont worry about it WHERE THE FUCK IS TIM oh es gone too alright thats cool i want chicken and a gatorade CHICKEN TENDERS AND A GATORDAe. yeaj us take me abnck toe mu room thad be grare thanfs mankf

That's actually very similar to what Malkmus' lyrics are like. Like somebody ate a dictionary, threw that shit up, and scooped up a bunch of words and formed sentences. And it's amazing. They don't make stuff like that anymore. It's all bullshit rap "i'm a fucking gangsta look at my bitches in the club" bullshit--enjoy your jailtime Lil' Wayne--or its bullshit Nickelback cookie cutter tame as shit pop rock handmade for the radio. I've always put my faith in indie, but even that is getting stale these days. There are still indie bands that can put out good pop music, which never gets old, mainly those goddamn Brits who fucking breed buzz bands like guitar-toting, heroin-injecting rabbits. (Get well soon Pete--Babyshambles was okay but we need that Libertines reunion to happen.) The Cribs, the pigeon detectives, the maccabees, the libertines and babyshambles...and the cribs. They're the ones to remember. No one puts out purely enjoyable music anymore except them.

Then there are those gothy-Scandinavian-jesus-and-mary-chain-worshipping fucks the Raveonettes. They put out entire albums in a single key, and they make it work. They're one trick fucking ponies, just like the chain, but where heyzeus was obliterating people with feedback, these two completely slow it down and throw enough feedback on there to keep it from being total bullshit. But its the same at its core, just pure pop with pseudo-love lyrics about girls and drugs and getting laid. Which makes you wonder why so many bands put out the same bullshit music when its so fucking easy to avoid it.

beginning

I'm not really sure what this is going to be, or what real purpose this is going to serve. I've blogged before I suppose, on facebook and myspace, but this is my first time doing writing online without my name attached to it. I may end up putting this link on facebook as it is, but that'll come later I guess.

I always have a lot to say, I always have a lot on my mind, and I also hold a rather undefined desire to have my thoughts out in the open, to a point. Not exactly sure what that means. I guess I am an attention whore, I want people to read what I have to say and I want to see how they react, but at the same time I'd like a certain disconnection from what I write, which social networking sites offer little of. If I write something on facebook, it has my name in bold print, it shows up on the minifeed, and anyone who bothers to click it when it pops up in their face can read it. It takes a little more effort to get here, which (I hope) is enough to filter out the people who don't really care. Even if I put the link on facebook, it's still better, there's still some independence, both in the blogs themselves and the way I write in them. Which is good.

I know none of that makes sense. I know in reality this is still the internet, the most open place imaginable, but still...there's something comforting about this. Whether I can fully rationalize it is irrelevant in the end.

So here I am, I guess. Found this site on a friends profile and thought I'd give it a go. The url is from an Iron & Wine song, "Each Coming Night." Music is everything to me, I imagine that's what the majority of this will be about. I don't really feel a need for a title because there's nothing here to summarize yet. So...yeah.

Edit: Thanks, Brenna.