I'm pretty sure that the statistical demons are already being used to summon chart-topping muzak at the pleasure of the hedge funds, although that wouldn't be something they'd want to draw too much attention to for obvious reasons.
Punk was pretty clearly a reaction to all this. They attempted to make themselves radioactive to the labels by adopting offensive symbolism, language, and sound. Didn't work. The labels saw the popularity, grabbed the aesthetic, cored it, and paraded around their pet bands wearing the look and sound like a skin suit. It's an archetypal example of the life cycle, from street to Wall Street, that every genre seems to follow.
The Internet, however, does seem to have partially interrupted that cycle. The atemporality has resulted in a sort of cultural freeze. Big label pop has gotten stuck into a permanent state of overproduced, algorithmically optimized, lowest-common denominator soullessness. Meanwhile mass culture has shattered into a million different subcultures, which continue to create a dizzying array of often really excellent, really creative sounds ... none of which can achieve mass appeal. They can't 'break on through to the other side', but they're also protected from being coopted, simply because the globohomomegacorp has no interest in them.
Yeah , the splintering of popular culture means that there's good stuff out there, but you really have to go looking for it, and great artists seem doomed to toil in relative obscurity and poverty nowadays. Not like 1968, when it seems you could have just gone by your local record store and grabbed whatever was popular and had your mind blown by great new music.
And to further complicate matters, the big video/audio sites are gaming their algorithms to push "acceptable" music/videos to the top of consumer's lists. This has the effect of further exacerbating the public's disinterest in "narrative control" entertainment, forcing them to consult friends, offbeat websites, etc. to find entertainment, which will necessarily included information which further degrades their mind-control abilities.
All of this helps to hasten the inevitable downfall of the current regime. What follows after will be extremely interesting.
I think I know what you mean, but let me make sure. You're saying the big tech platforms are pushing music that conveys a certain image or cultural message that they want to promote? And that people are learning to distrust the big tech recommendations and find their own music via word-of-mouth, and that this pattern will result in big tech having less influence over cultural tastes? And that this in turn will undermine the propagandizing and narrative control that is propping up the sclerotic regime, hastening the downfall of that regime? If that's what you're saying, I think I agree, although I suspect music plays a relatively minor role in that. People are learning to distrust legacy media and corporate messaging in general, and popular music is part of that, but I would think it's a small part. People distrusting public health officials is a much, much bigger deal to the powers that be than people mistrusting a NY Times music critic or Spotify's recommendations.
That is exactly what I mean. Music might be a smaller part, but it's still significant.
Mind control (per Jason Christoff) is simple: Degrade the target's physical mind through poor diet and toxins, and then repeat the hell out of the message.
What message has been pushed for the last 10 years or so? Materialistic, hedonistic, transgendered Satanism. If you think that's hyperbole, you need to peruse the archives at Vigilant Citizen https://vigilantcitizen.com/
Its pretty amazing when you find a comment just as good as the article. Also, Mr. Carter, your article about our cyborg future was equally fantastical as it was terrifying!
Inshallah, John Carter will singlehandedly be to writing what McCartney/Lennon were to rock and roll. (Although hopefully he won't do like them and sign away the rights to his material.) As long as he keeps writing, he will be the subject of documentaries and graduate seminars in a future era.
What people often forget is that the "record industry" as a gigantic money machine is itself a total anomaly hustorically that only lasted a few decades. Artists and record execs and music studios aren't supposed to be filthy rich. That screwed up incentives royally (pun intended). I think that's part of the reason why so much went wrong after the 60s.
But it's not just overproduction and financial interests IMO. It's also the gradual sucking of soul out of everything. How can you put your soul into your singing or playing if at the same time you live and believe in all those lies? If you are not in touch with your soul (if you have one)? It will be interesting to see what comes out of the new subcultures that are more awake and can go beyond ranting and shilling, and catch that muse to tap into something timeless.
Yeah, from what I can tell, the Beatles just played music because they loved music, and even though they wanted to be successful at it, they probably would have played even if there wasn't much money to be made from it. But once being a "rock star" became a thing, I'm sure a lot of guys wanted above all else to be famous, realized they had a knack for music, and decided to start a rock band instead of going into investment banking.
What you say about "soul" is interesting. Dogmatism and creativity are like oil and water. It used to be the artistic/creative types were fashionably left-leaning, with the Left being anti-war, anti-surveillance state, anti-cencorship, etc. Now, everything's been turned upside down, and the Left is pro-war, pro-surveillance state, pro-censorship, etc., and for those artists who stayed on the Left even as it got more dogmatic and intolerant, their creativity has clearly suffered. I would even say it's been spiritually toxic for them and they seem to have lost their souls in the process. Something will take their place, and it will be interesting to see from whence it comes.
The Beatles were great because they played eight hours a day, every day, for 2+ years in Hamburg. The crowds were sparse, which was perfect. They got feedback on what they were doing, but could really work and try things out without it bothering too many people.
I think that they liked making music more than being famous. It's what drew them together, and really, weather the mania that they wrought.
I started listening to popular music as a 12 year old in the mid 1970s. I didn't understand why the Beatles broke up. Their last albums were astonishing, musically. That bond of musicianship was all that they had left.
From the high quality of their initial solo albums (even Ringo's debut!) and Paul's records with Wings, you can tell they still had a few masterpieces left in the tank. God only knows how great a proper follow-up to Abbey Road could have been! At the same time, though, there's something to be said for going out on top, rather than coasting off their fading glory into a shamelessly commercialized old age like The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys eventually did. (I did see the Stones on their Voodoo Lounge tour, and they still put on a hell of a show -- hard to believe that was almost 30 years ago, and they were old then!)
I am reading about their time in Hamburg since writing this. Ringo was actually in the A band, and the Beatles were the B band at the club that they played. The first recording that the four of them were on together was for Starr's band at the time.
John already mentioned punk (and its co-option). I'd argue rap experienced a similar street-to-Wall Street conversion, almost in parallel. Rap in the early 80's was essentially black punk rock, rebelling against the corporatized Motown sound. It had flair and humor, and included some novel, ad hoc tech to produce itself. Now, I can't think of any genre more corporatized and stale.
You make some solid points, especially about the parallels between rap in its early days and punk. One obvious difference was a concern for looking fresh clothing-wise. Punk was all about ripped up thrift-store looking clothes (which of course got coopted by corporate and repacked into being fashionably, and very expensively, anti-fashion), whereas rappers have pretty much always cared about having nice outfits and the latest high-end sneakers. I suspect that gave rap a smoother and more natural transition into corporate commercialism, once it went mainstream and the big money started flowing in. But yeah, it did have a totally organic, bottom-up vibe before the suburban kids (like me) found out about it on MTV and the major labels took it over.
I have mixed feelings about rap. There are some rappers that I have enjoyed in a guilty-pleasure kind of way, especially some of the early figures that had the flair and humor you described, and like a lot of white teenagers in the early 90s, I had some Tupac and NWA on cassette tape. Tupac was genuinely talented. Eazy E was one of my guilty pleasures, mainly because he had a weird sense of humor that I enjoyed for some reason, like on "Fat Girl" from NWA & the Posse (https://youtu.be/2D14RFCcJY4). That said, I don't think of rap as great music -- fun at times, catchy at times, but never great. I know this sounds cliché as hell to say: I think rap hit its zenith with Tupac and Biggie in the 90s, both of whom I consider extremely gifted with their flow and presence on the mic; however, even at its best with those two, I don't think rap came anywhere close to the level of artistry that the greats of rock, R&B, reggae, gospel, jazz, etc. attained. (Though I'm sure there are no shortage of people who would disagree with me on that.) I mean, "Big Poppa" is fun and all, but "Between the Sheets" is better. (Maybe that's a bad example.)
Replying to your comment from Daniel D's Jan, 2023 piece on how the Beatles destroyed popular music. (He linked to that post today.) Your wrote, "Rap in the early 80's was essentially black punk rock, rebelling against the corporatized Motown sound. It had flair and humor, and included some novel, ad hoc tech to produce itself." I have a funny story about this.
I found early rap intimidating, as I thought it was intended to be. 40 years later, our family put together a Christmas playlist on Spotify. There is exactly one song with the words "macaroni and cheese" in it. Yes, it's "Christmas in Hollis" by Run DMC. You nailed the description: it has flair and humor. It stands up incredibly well and sounds great b/w everything from a country musician to a chorale arrangement. It is a very unlikely favorite of mine.
"Top-down, mass-produced mediocrity" is actually the exception. It did not exist before the 1950s. Don't forget that more than 90% of our best music was written before WWII.
I would never contest any assertion of the Beatles being the best band of all time, and when you see them playing She Loves You, even for the millionth time, it still has the power to thrill. Another commenter here already pointed out that their long residence at the Star Club, with three or four sets a day, must have been a large contributor to their mine of creativity. I read once that they had , in an effort to keep themselves and their audience interested and enthusiastic, learnt a catalogue of over a thousand songs. The amount of musical expertise, in terms of structures, harmonic variations and chord progressions etc, which that must have inculcated in them - even subliminally- is probably unparalleled. Add then a producer with the formal learning and discipline of George Martin, and the chemistry must have been amazing in a studio environment., especially with the explosion in the possibilities of studio and recording technology which was happening concurrently. The Sixties, man....the era of the highest level of social mobility (in the UK at least) and maybe that whole zeitgeist met the Fab Four at exactly the right time. I have my own theories about why music has gone to hell over the last few decades. I really must get it put down on paper (so to speak) one of these days. Great post!
Thanks for the feedback, and I look forward to reading your theories about the degradation of popular music! I'm sure there are multiple factors involved, with an interesting discussion to be had over the why's and wherefore's, but *that* popular music has declined is beyond doubt.
Just to check it's okay to give you and this post a name-check, as I did finally get round to getting all my thoughts together in the form of a rambling article in three parts, and reading your stuff here was definitely the kick in the a**e required ! I am just doing some editing and will publish it in the next few days. I don't have any followers, but if anyone sees it and enjoys it, then that's good. It is as much for my own interest as anything, though.
I'm pretty sure that the statistical demons are already being used to summon chart-topping muzak at the pleasure of the hedge funds, although that wouldn't be something they'd want to draw too much attention to for obvious reasons.
Punk was pretty clearly a reaction to all this. They attempted to make themselves radioactive to the labels by adopting offensive symbolism, language, and sound. Didn't work. The labels saw the popularity, grabbed the aesthetic, cored it, and paraded around their pet bands wearing the look and sound like a skin suit. It's an archetypal example of the life cycle, from street to Wall Street, that every genre seems to follow.
The Internet, however, does seem to have partially interrupted that cycle. The atemporality has resulted in a sort of cultural freeze. Big label pop has gotten stuck into a permanent state of overproduced, algorithmically optimized, lowest-common denominator soullessness. Meanwhile mass culture has shattered into a million different subcultures, which continue to create a dizzying array of often really excellent, really creative sounds ... none of which can achieve mass appeal. They can't 'break on through to the other side', but they're also protected from being coopted, simply because the globohomomegacorp has no interest in them.
Yeah , the splintering of popular culture means that there's good stuff out there, but you really have to go looking for it, and great artists seem doomed to toil in relative obscurity and poverty nowadays. Not like 1968, when it seems you could have just gone by your local record store and grabbed whatever was popular and had your mind blown by great new music.
And to further complicate matters, the big video/audio sites are gaming their algorithms to push "acceptable" music/videos to the top of consumer's lists. This has the effect of further exacerbating the public's disinterest in "narrative control" entertainment, forcing them to consult friends, offbeat websites, etc. to find entertainment, which will necessarily included information which further degrades their mind-control abilities.
All of this helps to hasten the inevitable downfall of the current regime. What follows after will be extremely interesting.
I think I know what you mean, but let me make sure. You're saying the big tech platforms are pushing music that conveys a certain image or cultural message that they want to promote? And that people are learning to distrust the big tech recommendations and find their own music via word-of-mouth, and that this pattern will result in big tech having less influence over cultural tastes? And that this in turn will undermine the propagandizing and narrative control that is propping up the sclerotic regime, hastening the downfall of that regime? If that's what you're saying, I think I agree, although I suspect music plays a relatively minor role in that. People are learning to distrust legacy media and corporate messaging in general, and popular music is part of that, but I would think it's a small part. People distrusting public health officials is a much, much bigger deal to the powers that be than people mistrusting a NY Times music critic or Spotify's recommendations.
That is exactly what I mean. Music might be a smaller part, but it's still significant.
Mind control (per Jason Christoff) is simple: Degrade the target's physical mind through poor diet and toxins, and then repeat the hell out of the message.
What message has been pushed for the last 10 years or so? Materialistic, hedonistic, transgendered Satanism. If you think that's hyperbole, you need to peruse the archives at Vigilant Citizen https://vigilantcitizen.com/
Its pretty amazing when you find a comment just as good as the article. Also, Mr. Carter, your article about our cyborg future was equally fantastical as it was terrifying!
Inshallah, John Carter will singlehandedly be to writing what McCartney/Lennon were to rock and roll. (Although hopefully he won't do like them and sign away the rights to his material.) As long as he keeps writing, he will be the subject of documentaries and graduate seminars in a future era.
What people often forget is that the "record industry" as a gigantic money machine is itself a total anomaly hustorically that only lasted a few decades. Artists and record execs and music studios aren't supposed to be filthy rich. That screwed up incentives royally (pun intended). I think that's part of the reason why so much went wrong after the 60s.
But it's not just overproduction and financial interests IMO. It's also the gradual sucking of soul out of everything. How can you put your soul into your singing or playing if at the same time you live and believe in all those lies? If you are not in touch with your soul (if you have one)? It will be interesting to see what comes out of the new subcultures that are more awake and can go beyond ranting and shilling, and catch that muse to tap into something timeless.
Yeah, from what I can tell, the Beatles just played music because they loved music, and even though they wanted to be successful at it, they probably would have played even if there wasn't much money to be made from it. But once being a "rock star" became a thing, I'm sure a lot of guys wanted above all else to be famous, realized they had a knack for music, and decided to start a rock band instead of going into investment banking.
What you say about "soul" is interesting. Dogmatism and creativity are like oil and water. It used to be the artistic/creative types were fashionably left-leaning, with the Left being anti-war, anti-surveillance state, anti-cencorship, etc. Now, everything's been turned upside down, and the Left is pro-war, pro-surveillance state, pro-censorship, etc., and for those artists who stayed on the Left even as it got more dogmatic and intolerant, their creativity has clearly suffered. I would even say it's been spiritually toxic for them and they seem to have lost their souls in the process. Something will take their place, and it will be interesting to see from whence it comes.
The Beatles were great because they played eight hours a day, every day, for 2+ years in Hamburg. The crowds were sparse, which was perfect. They got feedback on what they were doing, but could really work and try things out without it bothering too many people.
I think that they liked making music more than being famous. It's what drew them together, and really, weather the mania that they wrought.
I started listening to popular music as a 12 year old in the mid 1970s. I didn't understand why the Beatles broke up. Their last albums were astonishing, musically. That bond of musicianship was all that they had left.
From the high quality of their initial solo albums (even Ringo's debut!) and Paul's records with Wings, you can tell they still had a few masterpieces left in the tank. God only knows how great a proper follow-up to Abbey Road could have been! At the same time, though, there's something to be said for going out on top, rather than coasting off their fading glory into a shamelessly commercialized old age like The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys eventually did. (I did see the Stones on their Voodoo Lounge tour, and they still put on a hell of a show -- hard to believe that was almost 30 years ago, and they were old then!)
I am reading about their time in Hamburg since writing this. Ringo was actually in the A band, and the Beatles were the B band at the club that they played. The first recording that the four of them were on together was for Starr's band at the time.
John already mentioned punk (and its co-option). I'd argue rap experienced a similar street-to-Wall Street conversion, almost in parallel. Rap in the early 80's was essentially black punk rock, rebelling against the corporatized Motown sound. It had flair and humor, and included some novel, ad hoc tech to produce itself. Now, I can't think of any genre more corporatized and stale.
You make some solid points, especially about the parallels between rap in its early days and punk. One obvious difference was a concern for looking fresh clothing-wise. Punk was all about ripped up thrift-store looking clothes (which of course got coopted by corporate and repacked into being fashionably, and very expensively, anti-fashion), whereas rappers have pretty much always cared about having nice outfits and the latest high-end sneakers. I suspect that gave rap a smoother and more natural transition into corporate commercialism, once it went mainstream and the big money started flowing in. But yeah, it did have a totally organic, bottom-up vibe before the suburban kids (like me) found out about it on MTV and the major labels took it over.
I have mixed feelings about rap. There are some rappers that I have enjoyed in a guilty-pleasure kind of way, especially some of the early figures that had the flair and humor you described, and like a lot of white teenagers in the early 90s, I had some Tupac and NWA on cassette tape. Tupac was genuinely talented. Eazy E was one of my guilty pleasures, mainly because he had a weird sense of humor that I enjoyed for some reason, like on "Fat Girl" from NWA & the Posse (https://youtu.be/2D14RFCcJY4). That said, I don't think of rap as great music -- fun at times, catchy at times, but never great. I know this sounds cliché as hell to say: I think rap hit its zenith with Tupac and Biggie in the 90s, both of whom I consider extremely gifted with their flow and presence on the mic; however, even at its best with those two, I don't think rap came anywhere close to the level of artistry that the greats of rock, R&B, reggae, gospel, jazz, etc. attained. (Though I'm sure there are no shortage of people who would disagree with me on that.) I mean, "Big Poppa" is fun and all, but "Between the Sheets" is better. (Maybe that's a bad example.)
Replying to your comment from Daniel D's Jan, 2023 piece on how the Beatles destroyed popular music. (He linked to that post today.) Your wrote, "Rap in the early 80's was essentially black punk rock, rebelling against the corporatized Motown sound. It had flair and humor, and included some novel, ad hoc tech to produce itself." I have a funny story about this.
I found early rap intimidating, as I thought it was intended to be. 40 years later, our family put together a Christmas playlist on Spotify. There is exactly one song with the words "macaroni and cheese" in it. Yes, it's "Christmas in Hollis" by Run DMC. You nailed the description: it has flair and humor. It stands up incredibly well and sounds great b/w everything from a country musician to a chorale arrangement. It is a very unlikely favorite of mine.
"Top-down, mass-produced mediocrity" is actually the exception. It did not exist before the 1950s. Don't forget that more than 90% of our best music was written before WWII.
I would never contest any assertion of the Beatles being the best band of all time, and when you see them playing She Loves You, even for the millionth time, it still has the power to thrill. Another commenter here already pointed out that their long residence at the Star Club, with three or four sets a day, must have been a large contributor to their mine of creativity. I read once that they had , in an effort to keep themselves and their audience interested and enthusiastic, learnt a catalogue of over a thousand songs. The amount of musical expertise, in terms of structures, harmonic variations and chord progressions etc, which that must have inculcated in them - even subliminally- is probably unparalleled. Add then a producer with the formal learning and discipline of George Martin, and the chemistry must have been amazing in a studio environment., especially with the explosion in the possibilities of studio and recording technology which was happening concurrently. The Sixties, man....the era of the highest level of social mobility (in the UK at least) and maybe that whole zeitgeist met the Fab Four at exactly the right time. I have my own theories about why music has gone to hell over the last few decades. I really must get it put down on paper (so to speak) one of these days. Great post!
Thanks for the feedback, and I look forward to reading your theories about the degradation of popular music! I'm sure there are multiple factors involved, with an interesting discussion to be had over the why's and wherefore's, but *that* popular music has declined is beyond doubt.
Just to check it's okay to give you and this post a name-check, as I did finally get round to getting all my thoughts together in the form of a rambling article in three parts, and reading your stuff here was definitely the kick in the a**e required ! I am just doing some editing and will publish it in the next few days. I don't have any followers, but if anyone sees it and enjoys it, then that's good. It is as much for my own interest as anything, though.
Sure thing!
There you go ! It turned into a four-parter in the end. Three published so far. Big subject :)
https://leafandstream.substack.com/p/the-day-the-music-died?r=dyiq4