Friday, February 25, 2005

GET THE LED OUT - It seems that the popular music
of today is taking a turn for the worse. I mean, come on, let's get
real here for a minute. Please don't tell me (for any of you suckers
who actually watched the grammys in entirety) that you didn't
HATE every single band that both performed and won awards
that night. Maybe I'm simply becoming a music snob like one of
those guys from High Fidelity who works in a record store and
critiques almost every new band that comes out in mainstream
format. With the slight exception of Green Day (who have a new
hit song that is really contrived and boring, a poor follow up to
American Idiot and Boulevard) who I don't even really like, let's
do the list; Maroon 5, Los Lonely Boys, (I didn't know these guys
took themselves seriously - the first time a friend played me
'How Far is Heaven' on his computer, I thought it was a joke
song, like a bunch of musicians trying really hard to suck)
Franz Ferdinand, Gwen Stefani (let it go, she's mediocre at
best, more of a model than a musician), Black Eyed Peas
(ok, these dudes are decent but get a new song please
because 'Let's get it Started' got old the second time I heard
it. I know they want to get it started. It started and ended
a long time ago. Let's get it stopped.) and some others I'm
sure I've forgotten due to mental scarring. These bands were
the bands who performed in the opening sequence of the
GRAMMYS? Come on, please. How could Master Bono of
U2 lie so blatantly later on when he said 'this has been the
best Grammys he's ever been a part of' and why the hell wasn't
U2 in the opening sequence or Green Day for that matter?

Let's pause, in all brevity, for a moment.

Yesterday, while walking to work, I took 2 CD's to listen to
along the way; 'Who's Next' by The Who and my recently
acquired and added to my re-built collection 'Led Zeppelin
Four' by you know who. With one guitar, one bass, one voice
and a kickass drummer, these bands created complexity
and ethereal compositions out of mere simplicity. Sure, they
screwed around alot in the studios and layered all the tracks
a thousand times over but in live performance, they still
managed to make the unbelievable sound come to life. Their
legendary music lives on in my mind now, as vividly as it
did when I was 19 (thats almost 10 years ago). They put
into their music what cannot be described by words. A
feeling, a theme, an essence.

In my mind, there really can be no comparison between
then and now because as Billy Corgan stated very plainly
in an interview when the Smashing Pumpkins broke up
'The Music industry has gone the way of the entertainment
industry. It's really not so much about the music anymore
as it is about the performer, the clothes and the make-up
they wear.' Though I see that statement as not completely
true, I understand what he was getting at.

'The Mainstream,
though, will always shine brighter than the underground
river but just remember all that glitters ain't gold.' -JA
don't forget the truth is out there.

U2 Run DMC
Pavement Foos
Moneen QTip's Tribe
Tori

posted by Matt McKechnie @ 7:47 AM Comments: 5

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