the day music died?

so once upon a time this summer i decided that i needed to learn more about music. not like reading musical notes or even musical theory but mostly about the history of rock and roll. i've always loved and appreciated music, but i am hopelessly bad putting an artist with a song title, naming lyrics {confession: i thought the "boulevard of broken dreams" by green day said, "sometimes i wish a polar bear would find me" instead of "sometimes i wish someone somewhere would find me." yep.}, and recognizing genres. so a friend of mine lent me a gigantic book from the rock and roll hall of fame that looks a bit like the book hermione gets out "for a bit of light reading" in the philosopher's stone....

{aka it is about the size of medium sized pet}

...and it reads a lot like a vh1 behind the music or e! true hollywoods story...

{which i am almost as much of a sucker for as top 100 shows}

although i am only in the 1960s in the book, i have decided to share some of my new, improved, and semi-educated brainwaves as a result of this book.

despite having potentially one of the most insanely lame names of all time, roy orbison does not in fact suck.

and in fact i find this to be true of many older artists (buddy holly, sam cooke, etc.) he's really not a looker either, and some people found him to be attractive. so, yet again i am forced to admit that i have previously judged a book by its cover and found myself to be wrong. you should therefore probably not ever listen to my advice or judgments no matter how forcefully i write them.

difficult bass lines are sexy. sexy like justin timberlake in "friends with benefits" sexy. not like justin timberlake in "bad teacher"--which is just vanilla.

i've always been a lyrics girl. it's the words of a song not the intricate musical patterns that stick to me and make me listen over and over again {even if i imagine that buckcherry is saying "i'm sorry i'm bill" when he's really saying "i'm sorry i'm bad"}. this book, however, talks about certain patterns and changes in music that make songs and artists unique or special. so i've been listening a little more closely, and i've found that i am attracted to bass lines the way that i am attracted to tall skinny guys: that's just how God made me. and today, in the car, i realized that korn's "got the life" {a seriously slammin' 90s hit} has a really sexy bass line:

{potentially, you may not find this sexy. potentially, you may find this video disturbing. i ask you however to listen in for the bass-line and see if your mind is blown}

the way to a woman's heart: frank sinatra.

so. frank. technically not a part of this rock n roll hall of fame book. but my appreciation for him has been growing a lot. it's potentially true that a man could ask me to lick fungus of his toes with frank playing in the background, and i would consider it for more than 22 seconds. i am definitely not the world's most refined woman {i just talked about licking fungus...i'm also a youth director. it's in the job description somewhere that all youth directors must use 60% of their vocabulary on fart jokes and poop humor...70% if you work with junior high}, but there is something about a man who holds a door for a lady and a night of delicious italian food {a challenge for me to keep my clothing unstained and my breath non-toxic}. it's that lady and the tramp moment every little girl dreams about:

{spaghetti especial-iani, heavy on the meats-a-balls!}

there's nothing new under the sun.

previously, i judged artists based on their originality and uniqueness. and i suppose there is some validity to that approach. but i'm not totally sure that anything is original anymore. or unique. when i think about truly great moments in rock history (elvis. bob dylan. the beatles. nirvana.), they took an old cocktail, mixed with something else, popped it in the blender for 2 minutes, and served up a brand new milkshake for the public. and sometimes it was marketing pretty much the same music in a different way. success in the music industry (and fashion and any other form of art) has more to do with timing than anything else. 

today's "top 100" songs ought to be printed on toilet paper.

dear today's adolescents: don't you want to hear SOMETHING that is not backed by a techno beat? the answer is yes. yes you do.

are we at a crossroads?

i find it really interesting that the beginnings of rock n roll bridged gaps between genres of music, creating a new one. that it took elements of multiple races and ethnicities to make groovin beats that everyone can listen to. it also appealed to a new audience: teenagers, a group of people who were just being born as a group to be marketed to. i've been told that today's music shares some qualities with this time period. that today's music seeks to be marketable to multiple genre listeners {you can see this in crap-tastic country music being played on every station...and i don't mean that as a slight to all country...} and multiple races. and one of the main groups being marketed to are "tweens"- or kids who are like 4th-6th grade. not quite teens, but children who have grown up way too fast {and been spoiled worse than veruca salt}. 

i will argue this. i think there is a major difference between mixing genres the way elvis did and watering down your own musical style in order to be played on every radio station like taylor swift. it seems to me like a lot of early rock n roll legends reached new levels of discovering their talents and identities in experimenting with musical styles whereas i think today's artists who actually have talent hide their talents behind a universal, synthetic beat and lose their identities as they say yes to too many people, groups, and places. 

i do find this whole idea of the new "tween" group interesting {maybe more than a little frightening considering how this affects sex trafficking...}. i'll be interested to see if i become like old fogies who thought rock n roll was for the riff-raff.

at any rate, like i said, i am just learning all this now, and i'd like to hear your thoughts. comment away, my friends!