music for adults that doesn't suck?

[ubertar]

Since the 50s when the term "teenager" was invented, and that age group was discovered by marketers, popular music has pandered to kids/young adults. A lighter, watered down version is sold to people with no taste, called "adult contemporary" or whatever the label is these days. Jazz has been fairly stagnant, since it was mummified by Wynton Marsalis and others. Where is the serious music for people who love music, and aren't interested in something designed to appeal to juvenile tastes? How do we change the culture so that people continue exploring music throughout adulthood and don't just either A) stop listening to music, B) listen to the same stuff that was popular when they were kids, C) accept and settle for music that's made for kids today?

In the 30s and 40s, popular music was primarily for adults. It's been aimed at teens for so long, we take that for granted.

Ok, but what about music that isn't meant for the popular market? I've addressed jazz above. Music coming out of the Western classical tradition was dealt a huge blow by the twelve-tone guys, starting with Schoenberg. Their music was way too intellectual, and not musical enough and it scared people away who never came back. The Cage crowd that followed was over-intellectual in a different way. Outside of a handful of microtonal composers, I don't really know what's going on that's new and interesting. Any thoughts? Suggestions? There's gotta be more out there.

I realize much of what I've said above is oversimplified and over-generalized, but it's meant as a starting point for discussion...

[iC]

digging your new record....

have you investigated Nico Muhly? http://nicomuhly.com/

fitting that the Bedroom Community has just been in the new tapeop...I used to work with Nico at Looking Glass...that kid (back then- he is certainly an adult now:)) could play Glass' "The Grid" like i've never heard...

As for re-orienting the commodity in the adult direction.... It seems that most advertising and social engineering is telling adults to remain kids, no?

[ubertar]

Thanks for the tip. I'm listening to the streaming tracks on his site now, and enjoying it. Hadn't heard of him before.

It seems that most advertising and social engineering is telling adults to remain kids, no?

That's true. I think a lot of that is a boomer phenomenon. They were the big youth movement, the generation gap... so much was made of them when they were young, in the 60s... I think it's hard to let go. Those people run the advertising and media worlds now (It's younger people who do the actual work, but the greybeards make the editorial and executive decisions). It seems the idea is to market to kids and not let the boomers realize they're not kids anymore.
The boundary between kid and adult was smashed in the 60s and it hasn't been rebuilt. It needed smashing at the time-- it was too uptight, too "square". But now there are no adults anymore. There's no acknowledgement of the value of experience in our culture. Everything is so technology-based. There are so many ways to consume media, but hardly any content worth a damn. And everything is about making money-- it almost has to be-- the economy is too shitty to support a bohemian-type artist's movement. In the 60s you could afford to be an artist or poet and live in the Village and do your thing. Now, the rent's too damn high (I should have voted for that guy instead of that bastard Cuomo). You can make a living doing something else, but then you can't put as much time into your art.
I should be getting some work done instead of writing on the internet...
I'll be back later.

[Brett Siler]

I don't know if you are into avant garde music very much but Tzadik is a favorite label of mine. I have a label that releases eclectic music. Most of it instrumental. You can stream all the albums for free if you like it you can buy it! hehe http://store.dyspepsidisc.com/

[JGriffin]

Since the 50s when the term "teenager" was invented, and that age group was discovered by marketers, popular music has pandered to kids/young adults. A lighter, watered down version is sold to people with no taste, called "adult contemporary" or whatever the label is these days. Jazz has been fairly stagnant, since it was mummified by Wynton Marsalis and others. Where is the serious music for people who love music, and aren't interested in something designed to appeal to juvenile tastes? How do we change the culture so that people continue exploring music throughout adulthood and don't just either A) stop listening to music, B) listen to the same stuff that was popular when they were kids, C) accept and settle for music that's made for kids today?

We need to better educate them when they are kids. The sorry state of music education --even when you and I were kids-- leads adults to really only have the three options you've outlined. They maybe just don't know what other options exist.

On the other hand, when I see grownups who have essentially abandoned the search for new music, it's often because they have kids of their own now, and not only is their cultural reference centered around the kids' tastes and experiences, they also don't have time to seek out anything new or different for themselves, so they continue to lean on the music of their youth. This may be a dodge, and I don't know how valid it is as I don't have kids, but the breeders around me claim it is so.

[joelpatterson]

Okay... it's only ONE SONG... but it's a start!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_c38wfCx9U

[kayagum]

Check out the rest of the planet- not all music is recorded or performed in Brooklyn

Seriously, what ethnomusicologists and label dorks call "World Music" has always been a bottomless well. A lot of my favorite guitarists have referenced or flat out stolen from foreign musicians. Without Richard Thompson or Jeff Buckley, I wouldn't have heard about Qawwali or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Ry Cooder, Ali Farke Toure- you get the idea. Of course, there's the domestic variety of folk, blues, country, bluegrass, etc. too.

I think the paradox that's hurting music is that the very technology (the internet) that should enable better sharing and access of different music styles is actually creating and obscure subculture-like genres. In simpler terms, musicians used to be more omnivorous- now they're more eclectic.

[;ivlunsdystf]

in my opinion, wilco is totally aimed at "adults". example: there is a print ad for their new album in a recent issue of the New Yorker.

and if by "adult" you mean "somebody over age 35 who wants to hear new bands/styles every year", in my opinion, the stuff that's played on stations like KEXP and KCRW and (in my home state, MN) "the current" is totally aimed directly at that demographic, and that demographic gobbles it up like manna from heaven.

[ubertar]

I guess by "adult" I mean "serious music", if that makes any sense... probably not bands (though there could be exceptions) but "art" music, music that explores new musical ideas and forms... music that's sophisticated without being stuffy or bland.

RE: world music (kayagum): that's a great suggestion, but I think I've got that pretty well covered (see my reply to Joe below).

;ivlunsdystf: Wilco is ok, but they kind of bore me. I don't think they're doing much that's new that isn't superficial. I don't dislike them, but it's not something I'll put on when I've got lots of better choices.

KEXP is a good station... or at least it was back when it was KCMU. I haven't really heard it since then; hopefully it hasn't changed much. They used to play my old group a lot, in the mid/late 90s. I guess I could check it out online-- I'm not sure I have the patience for radio anymore though.

Joe (dwlb): Since my daughter was born, I've been doing a ton more listening than I have for the past, I don't know, 20 years. Partly b/c there's not always much more I can do while I'm watching her, and partly b/c I want to expose her to as much as possible. So we listen to lots of gamelan, Indian, Persian, Arabic, music from all parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, all kinds of jazz, baroque, classical, romantic, 20th century art music, etc. At first we went through the stuff I already had-- a lot of it cassettes I made from the vinyl collection of the music library at my college station back in the day, then I started downloading more from blogs, quickly more than doubling what I had. So having the kid has made me seek out more music. But not much of it is current. Which makes me wonder if there's some great stuff out there I'm missing out on.

Joel P: Great bass line! I'm torn between wanting to hear them with a drummer (the song could have more drive and impact) and thinking that would ruin the charm of it.

Brett: RE: Tzadik: I guess I've been turned off by the cliquishness of the Zorn crowd in NYC. I've bumped into JZ a number of times since I moved to NYC... sometimes he's been nice, but the last time he was a real jerk. I suppose I should check out what's on the label all the same...

Thanks for the tips, everyone. Keep 'em coming!

[joelpatterson]

There IS a cool, multi-slappa-dappa-whoppa-do drum guy who plays with them sometimes... I think I just invented and labeled a genre, right there... it really opens it up in a way, there's so much mileage to get from blistering brush rolls and full stops with this kind of blues music, to stagger the beat a little... as long as it's endlessly inventive, that is!

Over time I've found this group is really somewhat quirky and even difficult and stubborn at times... that's "adult," yes?

[Brett Siler]

I live in southern Indiana so I am pretty far removed from that scene in personal sense. From an outside perspective I think that label is solid. There's a lot of stuff put out on there that has nothing to do with Zorn.

While not a label WFMU has a lot of real wild stuff on there.

[ubertar]

I live in southern Indiana so I am pretty far removed from that scene in personal sense. From an outside perspective I think that label is solid. There's a lot of stuff put out on there that has nothing to do with Zorn.

While not a label WFMU has a lot of real wild stuff on there.

Cool... I'll give Tzadik another chance.

A couple of my students were interviewed live and performed on WFMU, a while back. They wrote about us, too:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/05/h ... ld-an.html
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/08/a ... iuses.html

[JGriffin]

I guess by "adult" I mean "serious music", if that makes any sense... probably not bands (though there could be exceptions) but "art" music, music that explores new musical ideas and forms... music that's sophisticated without being stuffy or bland.

I think that a larger question might be: What is it that is supposed to drive "adults" into seeking out new music with which they're not already familiar, or that they already don't think they like? In your previous model, where music was marketed to grown-ups and not teenagers, those grown-ups had not had music marketed to them as teenagers. So they were more or less tabula rasa in a way that today's newly-minted adults are not. Setting aside your own individual drive to discover new music (and I think we might justifiably exclude all musicians from this discussion), what will drive the average punter, once in adulthood, to step beyond the music s/he heard in high school or college? Why would someone weaned on rock or punk or pop/country suddenly develop a taste for something more "serious?" Are we defining an "adult" as someone who suddenly throws away their comic books and learns to appreciate and seek out Rothko and Rembrandt? I don't actually know any adults like that.

As far as Wilco is concerned--I think they are "adult" music, just not in the way you'd like. I think (and I'm speaking as someone who enjoys some of their records) that they are "rock" music for middle-aged people--all the trappings of rock music without any of the awkward misdirected anger and confused sexuality. They're the Sting solo albums for the kids who grew up in the '90s.

[vvv]

Just picked up the new Tom Waits ...

[plurgid]

I don't really know what's going on that's new and interesting. Any thoughts? Suggestions? There's gotta be more out there

Your point regarding marketing is insightful. The post war baby boom created a huge mass market that has been catered to since they were infants. So if you're looking for interesting new music, you're not likely to find it via label marketing or FM radio. That's just the way it is. This world will be catering to my parent's taste probably until I'M in my sixties.

I think there's a secondary thing at work though. For the majority of us, as we grow older, our tastes naturally calcify. We get set in our ways. I've met a fair number of older musicians, and almost without exception, they are simply incredible musicians within their chosen genre (usually that's Jazz, Blues or Classic Rock in my circles). They'll beat any youngster out on their chosen instrument in their chosen genre, hands down but don't ask 'em to step outside that comfort zone.

I think the same thing happens to listeners. The vast majority of adults are not REALLY interested in new music. Sometime in their mid-twenties, they decided what they like and they really don't want to hear anything "new" that isn't just a repackaged reflection of that.

Most people don't care, and that's why you can drive coast to coast with the radio on and hear the same 12 songs over and over in every damn town you go past.

For the people who do care, though, the world has never been more full of new and interesting music. Alright nobody's getting paid, but it's out there on the internet (as in your own bandcamp page). Before the internet, I'd have never known your music existed. Now I do, and there are literally thousands more at my fingertips.

What's missing today, is the filter that used to be the record store.

For every great new and interesting thing, there are a billion pages of crap. We need tastemakers to filter the crap. A few exist. In my circles NPR's "world cafe" show is an excellent crap filter. Some prefer pithfork, etc but there are others. I've discovered more than a few great bands, just by hanging out in this forum for instance.