Are we a cult of amateurs?

[bannerj]

I'm just sayin' we will NEVER see another band like the Beatles, with as much time in a great studio to create and learn.

I know what you are saying. There is some truth to this, but it is not completely true. There are exceptions. A bunch of them actually which I'm sure you can already think of yourself. If you are really good, you'll eventually find someone who will want to help you get even better and better.

[swelle]

The bit I find most interesting is the 'good' aspect of labels that are going away.
Bands don't get to just be bands anymore. You don't see bands have a chance to grow and mature like when a label is paying.

I agree with this... I have a friend that revels in the trouble the labels are having, and how's it's the victory of the little guys and all that. But I LOVE records labels, and owe a huge debt to different record labels for informing my tastes: SST, Stax, Elektra, Reprise, Touch & Go, Rough Trade, Sub Pop, Dischord, Ryko, ROIR, A&M, Fantasy, Trojan, Motown, Upsetter.... the list goes on and on... These are the people, for better or for worse, who auditioned, coached, nurtured, supported, and presented the artists that influenced my musical taste and direction. Granted, alot of them have had their heads up their asses for several years, but I'm not as glad as some to see the structure collapse.

Additionally, and this will irk some, is that the traditional label structure was a filter: you had to be good enough to get signed! It didn't mean you couldn't do a cassette release - early hip-hop, go-go & corrido were almost all cassette releases - but the label was a vetting process. However, in the old days, you could actually do several releases without fear of being dropped. In the last decade, at least with major labels, all too often you get dropped before your first record even comes out.

[E-Rock]

The bit I find most interesting is the 'good' aspect of labels that are going away.
Bands don't get to just be bands anymore. You don't see bands have a chance to grow and mature like when a label is paying.

I agree with this... I have a friend that revels in the trouble the labels are having, and how's it's the victory of the little guys and all that. But I LOVE records labels, and owe a huge debt to different record labels for informing my tastes: SST, Stax, Elektra, Reprise, Touch & Go, Rough Trade, Sub Pop, Dischord, Ryko, ROIR, A&M, Fantasy, Trojan, Motown, Upsetter.... the list goes on and on... These are the people, for better or for worse, who auditioned, coached, nurtured, supported, and presented the artists that influenced my musical taste and direction. Granted, alot of them have had their heads up their asses for several years, but I'm not as glad as some to see the structure collapse.

Additionally, and this will irk some, is that the traditional label structure was a filter: you had to be good enough to get signed! It didn't mean you couldn't do a cassette release - early hip-hop, go-go & corrido were almost all cassette releases - but the label was a vetting process. However, in the old days, you could actually do several releases without fear of being dropped. In the last decade, at least with major labels, all too often you get dropped before your first record even comes out.

Word.
Maybe it's nostalgia for the good old days of record labels.
Did you see the Stax documentary that was on PBS awhile back?
That kind of enviroment will never happen again. It was a core group of people who were allowed to feed off of each others energy and creativity. The sum is greater than the parts. I think the world will miss that.

[centurymantra]

This topic - esp. the point about the good record labels - has really gotten me thinking a bit. For myself as well, there have been a ton of record labels that were pivotal to shaping and influencing my music tastes. The labels that fostered a musical vision and identity really are (were?) a valuable resource. It may come down to record labels needing to re-shape and re-evaluate business models for the current age, but if there's no money to be made anymore in releasing music product then there won't be any more labels. Then you've got a million of the aforementioned smug guys chanting "victory for the little guy". OK...great. Now what? Most likely off to send grainy compressed audio streams off into the white noise that has become our mass media saturated cultural vortex. A slight overstatement I know, but it does kind of summarize things. Maybe it's really not that bad...who knows. Strange times.

I do know some people champion that..."OK...now bands will have to make money the way they SHOULD be doing it in the first place. With live performances!" Thus, we come back full circle to our other debate on this thread.

[E-Rock]

This topic - esp. the point about the good record labels - has really gotten me thinking a bit. For myself as well, there have been a ton of record labels that were pivotal to shaping and influencing my music tastes. The labels that fostered a musical vision and identity really are (were?) a valuable resource. It may come down to record labels needing to re-shape and re-evaluate business models for the current age, but if there's no money to be made anymore in releasing music product then there won't be any more labels. Then you've got a million of the aforementioned smug guys chanting "victory for the little guy". OK...great. Now what? Most likely off to send grainy compressed audio streams off into the white noise that has become our mass media saturated cultural vortex. A slight overstatement I know, but it does kind of summarize things. Maybe it's really not that bad...who knows. Strange times.

I do know some people champion that..."OK...now bands will have to make money the way they SHOULD be doing it in the first place. With live performances!" Thus, we come back full circle to our other debate on this thread.

Well put.
Of course, that leads us to the "Has live music been replaced by DJs" discussion.

The futue is uncertain, I guess we all need to do our part to shape it, and to fight for quality at every turn!

[thethingwiththestuff]

Be a really good live band."

I believe that for musicians this is the only way to really do something great.

I've said it before: forty years after Sgt. Pepper's and over fifty years after the advent of tape music, and we're still thinking of music just in terms of live bands? How incredibly limiting.

well....yes, actually. that was 50 years ago. can we move on please?

So by "move on" you mean "move backwards."

making "psychedelic", process-oriented records is moving forward? by move on, i dont imply any direction except "away." neither forwards nor backwards. "different," not "better." that approach has its place. but music neither started or ended in the 60's.

[JGriffin]

Be a really good live band."

I believe that for musicians this is the only way to really do something great.

I've said it before: forty years after Sgt. Pepper's and over fifty years after the advent of tape music, and we're still thinking of music just in terms of live bands? How incredibly limiting.

well....yes, actually. that was 50 years ago. can we move on please?

So by "move on" you mean "move backwards."

making "psychedelic", process-oriented records is moving forward? by move on, i dont imply any direction except "away." neither forwards nor backwards. "different," not "better." that approach has its place. but music neither started or ended in the 60's.

1) You're miscontextualizing: Sgt. Pepper's is used as an example of music that is not a direct representation of a live performance, not an example of a "psychedelic" record.

2) why must we move on from compositional/assembly recordings? Hell, "live" music has been around for thousands of years. It's had its day. Move on.

3) Tape music predates the '60s (hell, look at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's output through the 1950s for a start), and I'm not trying to claim that music started, ended, or even slowed down to take a photo out the side window in the 1960s.


Using recording technology simply to capture the sound of a group of musicians playing in a room is essentially the same as when, in the early days of film, cameras were simply pointed at a stage in a theatre to document a play because that's as far as their vocabulary went at the time. In the past 100 years film's vocabulary has grown immensely. So is the vocabulary of music recording.

There's nothing wrong with taking a strictly documentarian approach to recording a power trio (it has its place, if I may be equally condescending), but to say it's the only viable way to use the technology, to say it's "the only way to really do something great" is restrictive, limiting and ultimately insulting to a great many artists of the last sixty or seventy years. Music is a lot broader an art than you give it credit for.

[fossiltooth]

This thread is getting a little long winded and needlessly intellectual for my tastes....

....and I'm one of the leaders in long-winded, needless intellectualism on this board

I have a friend that revels in the trouble the labels are having, and how's it's the victory of the little guys and all that. But I LOVE records labels, and owe a huge debt to different record labels for informing my tastes: SST, Stax, Elektra, Reprise, Touch & Go, Rough Trade, Sub Pop, Dischord, Ryko, ROIR, A&M, Fantasy, Trojan, Motown, Upsetter.... the list goes on and on...

Interesting way of thinking about it. Here's how I see it: As major labels fall, it will allow room for the rise of small, important regional labels.... like SST, Stax, Elektra, Reprise, Touch & Go, Motown, Rough Trade, Sub Pop, 4AD, etc., Good stuff if you ask me! In some ways, independent music is healthier today than ever before.

We've already seen the downfall of opulent, decadent recording studios leading to the establishment of healthy owner operated one and two room facilities in an accessible price bracket. The same kind of thing will happen to labels. I welcome it.

But it's true, many artists aren't given the time and resources they need to develop. How do we fix it? We have to fight against the gear-obsessed musical economy that we live in. We have to encourage music fans with healthy amounts of disposable income to stop spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on high-end gear that they'll barely use, and encourage them to invest in artist patronage instead. Such investments are less wasteful, and more fulfilling for everyone, even if no one sees a financial "return" on their investment. (Let's face it, the average person won't see a return on their investment of gear either.)

I've been to countless private studios that have had anywhere from tens of thousands to millions invested in their construction, only to sit dormant. The incredible amounts of money spent on recording gear is wasteful. In my opinion, it would be much better for the musical economy as a whole if all that gear money was used in the development of artists, and was spent at already existing studios. It's even a problem on the low end of the spectrum. There are enough fancy preamps in circulation. Not every poor working musician needs to buy one...

Rent for rehearsal space on the other hand...

now that makes a difference.

[tunesbybill]

Is this guy serious? The internet is the cause for music being so bad? HUH?!! Maybe put that in the hands of the "industry" that puts millions of dollars into promoting shitty music like Britney Spears and all of these "The" bands (speaking broadly, but there are some that are obviously talented). Then the children learn from them and so on. The fact that musicians don't make any money in this pit is why music fucking sucks right now.

[tunesbybill]

This thread is getting a little long winded and needlessly intellectual for my tastes....

....and I'm one of the leaders in long-winded, needless intellectualism on this board

I have a friend that revels in the trouble the labels are having, and how's it's the victory of the little guys and all that. But I LOVE records labels, and owe a huge debt to different record labels for informing my tastes: SST, Stax, Elektra, Reprise, Touch & Go, Rough Trade, Sub Pop, Dischord, Ryko, ROIR, A&M, Fantasy, Trojan, Motown, Upsetter.... the list goes on and on...

Interesting way of thinking about it. Gere's how I see it: As major labels fall, it will allow room for the rise of small, important regional labels.... like SST, Stax, Elektra, Reprise, Touch & Go, Motown, Rough Trade, Sub Pop, 4AD, etc., Good stuff if you ask me! In some ways, independent music is healthier today than ever before.

We've already seen the downfall of opulent, decadent recording studios leading to the establishment of healthy owner operated one and two room facilities in an accessible price bracket. The same kind of thing will happen to labels. I welcome it.

But it's true, many artists aren't given the time and resources they need to develop. How do we fix it? We have to fight against the gear-obsessed musical economy that we live in. We have to encourage music fans with healthy amounts of disposable to stop spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on high-end gear that they'll barely use, and encourage them to invest in artist patronage instead. Such investments are less wasteful, and more fulfilling for everyone, even if no one sees a financial "return" on their investment. (Let's face it, the average person see a return on their investment of gear either.)

I've been to countless private studios that have had anywhere from tens of thousands to millions invested in their construction, only to sit dormant. The incredible amounts of money spent on recording gear is wasteful. In my opinion, it would be much better for the musical economy as a whole if all that gear money was used in the development of artists, and was spent at already existing studios. It's even a problem on the low end of the spectrum. There are enough fancy preamps in circulation. Not every poor working musician needs to buy one... rent for rehearsal space... now that makes a difference

Effin aye.

[snakeskinboots]

Hell, "live" music has been around for thousands of years. It's had its day. Move on.

I hope not.

If this is true why do so many people spend so much time watching bootlegs of live performances by bands and artists on youtube? Low quality reproductions of incredible LIVE performances.

[JGriffin]

Hell, "live" music has been around for thousands of years. It's had its day. Move on.

I hope not.

If this is true why do so many people spend so much time watching bootlegs of live performances by bands and artists on youtube? Low quality reproductions of incredible LIVE performances.

I hope you get that I was just taking the piss.

[centurymantra]

Hell, "live" music has been around for thousands of years. It's had its day. Move on.

I hope not.

If this is true why do so many people spend so much time watching bootlegs of live performances by bands and artists on youtube? Low quality reproductions of incredible LIVE performances.

Yeah...bootlegs of shows with, like 12 people in the audience, and half of that is staff of the venue and the opening band...

Well, even if it's like that around here, maybe it's not really that bad. This does bring up another whole issue I've discussed before though. Don't get me wrong, Youtube is super cool - esp. for archival footage of music that one never knew existed and/or concert footage of bands I simply will not ever be able to see, but watching a grainy low-res 6 sq. inch video stream of a live performance or a film is a pretty weak experience. Watching a concert or film this way is in no way truly experiencing said film or concert, but I think a lot of people just get off on and settle for the "idea" of experiencing what they just saw and call it good enough. On this note, it's possible that a lot of folks have stopped going out to see live music because of Youtube and similar internet phenom...

[snakeskinboots]

I hope you get that I was just taking the piss.

I'm no good at detecting sarcasm in writing. Thanks for clarifying.

Yeah...bootlegs of shows with, like 12 people in the audience, and half of that is staff of the venue and the opening band...

Nope. Those aren't the ones that I'm talking about.

I'm referring to these:

archival footage of music that one never knew existed and/or concert footage of bands I simply will not ever be able to see

[erockrazor]

The fact that musicians don't make any money in this pit is why music fucking sucks right now.

But I thought we were amateurs?

The blame for crappy music are people that are determined for fame and not musical enjoyment. So many kids are bent trying to be the next best thing that they forget to actually care about their songs. They want to be the next fall out boy but the problem is that there are already plenty of great fall out boys and I think we're all content. People need to love the music they make and not get caught up in the other horse-honky.

Record your music however you want to portray your message. Whether it be a live representation or not. I don't often see live recordings(of performances) on myspace. I think it more admirable to hear a live recording that's a good performance than a session recording. There are no crutches on live performances.

That being said, my band does not perform well live or in recordings. But I'm not bent on success! Or overfeeding people my music, they'll listen if they want.

The internet is good for music. It lets you hear more music easier. But with more music, you get more good and more bad.

Good luck in the long run music! Hope everything finds a nice equilibrium.