Entertainment For Lively Minds
Decline of Musicianship in Pop / Rock
Posted by JeffLeopard on 5 October 2009 - 7:38pm.
...when, in the Top 40 (or any other barometer of contemporary music), was the last time you heard
- a drum fill
- bassline
- guitar chop
- keyboard flourish
- etc
...that not only stirred your senses / lifted your spirits
but also
- clearly demonstrated the skills both of the individual musician(s) AND the collective band as imaginative arrangers?
For me? Been a long, long time. I have to hark back to the likes of this (dig the drumming):
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xn7kd_dodgy-in-a-room_music
If not here, then not long after.
From someone weaned on the likes of Police, P.I.L. and the Clash, there's no more damning indictment on post-Britpop music.
...don't you think, eh?
Eh?
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i think that
every generation has it's own Beatles.
mine was The Clash(incidentally).
i think Vampire Weekend fit the bill of "stirred your senses / lifted your spirits but also - clearly demonstrated the skills both of the individual musician(s) AND the collective band as imaginative arrangers?"
Jamie T
His track Alicia Quays on his first album. Damn fine bassline.
Never
I don't think I've ever listened to a piece of music and knowingly cared how good the musicianship is. I have however often listened to music that lifted my spirits and stirred my senses.
hear hear
hear hear
there are loads of bands
who are excellent musicians. Some fail to engage me at all with their mathematical levels of skill being accompanied by nothing interesting original or engaging. And others are awesome.
Which isn't to say that there aren't loads of bands who have less technical skill (or none at all) that don't completely engage in a different way.
A good performance can often be made brilliant by having flaws.
As for arrangements I hear brilliant arrangements all the time in modern music and old music and I also hear rubbish arrangements in both.
To try and list examples seems impossible since there are so many. Eightball says Vampire Weekend and that is a very good one.
C'mon Goosefat
"To try and list examples seems impossible since there are so many."
...joking, aren't you?
this POV is already a joke
I don't want to be offensive but REALLY! I have watched so many fantastic musicians in unsigned band nights! You hear them every time you turn on a music channel for 10 minutes.
Listing them really is a pointless activity.
And my other point is that generally I suspect my own analysis of what constitutes fantastic musicianship will be totally different from yours, since I think Dodgy are absolutely rubbish. And I get to say that since the first ever gig I went to as a teenager was Dodgy. Not that I am saying they aren't competent, even talented musicians, but they ain't got the spark that say Regina Spektor playing piano and singing, or Vampire Weekend or the millions of other great talents of musicianship.
I literally cannot understand what the hell you are talking about. There are always quality tight and talented musicians and there are always rubbish ones. There are always musicians whose flaws make them great and musicians whose talent makes them boring.
Are you suggesting there is something in the water taking the musicianship out of people? Or are you suggesting that the music industry is stopping talent from coming through (there is some argument for that, but not to the extent that there is no talent!)? Or maybe you think that modern ears don't enjoy listening to well played songs!
My point about not listing them is that to do so would be stupid. If you deliberately shut your eyes (ears!) why should I audio describe the world to you? Just open your blooming eyes!
But already on the thread people have mentioned good examples. More will probably be forthcoming.
The whole Jeff Becks thread(s)
prove musicianship can be overrated if not linked to some charisma, personality, wit etc it's not lack of musicianship that's made Beck the nearly man of pop but seemingly a lack of engagement with an audience which lesser musical talents can do in spades and so prosper.
You would go a very long way
to find a more charismatic musician than Jeff Beck.
Did you read that
dull interview in the last edition if he's the most charismatic musician around god help us. He told a story about his pet's that even the worst pub bore wouldn't bother to repeat. I think he's the perefect example of an accomplished muscian who fails to communicate his love of music to a wide audience.
What has telling a good pub story
got to do with being a charismatic musician?
Apparently charisma is ‘a special charm or allure that inspires fascination or devotion’. That’s Jeff Beck isn’t it? He is the only guitarist I’ve ever come across who can hold me riveted to my seat with just the thrill of his playing.
As Kate Mossman wrote recently, 'He taps his strings so delicately with a bottle-neck, the notes emerge like a stream of tiny comets bursting into life a thousand miles away'. That is a charismatic musician at work…
I've got nothing against Jeff Beck
But that is a charismatic writer at work. One of Kate M's finest lines.
I'm with
Twango and Paul.
It's JB's playing that's thrillingly charismatic.
(Glorious simile from Kate, too, of course...)
well chaps
I'll leave you and Jeff in your respective bedrooms noodling and doodling away particularly in light of the original post.
Jeff Beck
I saw him live at the South Bank a few years back. The best section of the show was 20 minutes with The White Stripes playing Yardbirds songs - that was a real thrill. The rest was a jazz-rock noodle yawnfest. I fell asleep.
Don't get me wrong
I dig Jeff - and your comments are all welcome - but its not as if he's bothered the charts for about 42 years, is it?
You've, uhm, missed the point of the thread
You're so right Jeff..
Musicians hardly count any more. I'm particularly saddened by the demise of the formerly noble art of drumming, now reduced (in the mainstream) to a uniform 1-2-3-4 with a uniform bit of shuffle on the three (one-two-t-three-four).Boring and infuriating! And to think drummers used to be the wild ones. Well, maybe the record producers will only employ bores like this for their sessions. Anybody know anything?
There are musicians of ridiculously high technical skill...
...in every instrument store in the country, flogging guitars to the usually less proficient stars of the future.
Whoever breaks through has to have more than an ability to play. They need that certain something... and it's 'something' that is not being aimed at us as a demographic any more.
Policemen
are getting younger too.....
but not
The Police though...
Anyway - it's all the fault of Auto-Tune and Pro-Tools and click-tracks innit?
Now, in my day...
I heard some of those things
on the last White Stripes disc
There are plenty of great musicians around
Super Furry Animals for instance are an amazing bunch of players, and imagination walks through their arrangements like a colossus.
But since when has music been solely about the playing? You mention The Police, who were fantastic musicians, but in the end it was as much about the SONG and the voice as anything. And as for The Clash...a band so much about the musicianship that in the studio one player didn't even play his parts and the other had his guitar turned off.
Personally I hear a lot of imagination in the records I'm listening to, even if they are also harking back to older sounds.
And as for great musicianship, I've worked with enough musicians over the years to know that knowing how to play and having a musical imagination don't always go hand in hand. And, additionally, some of the best music ever has been two or three chords and hardly any chops whatsoever. In my humble opinion of course.
Newton Faulkner
Can certainly play a fine bit of acoustic guitar.
I'd agree with Jeff about Dodgy. One of the finest power-pop bands these shores have produced. And Mathew Priest remains a fabulously fluid drummer.
Want a stonking guitar riff?
I've done a search and I don't think I've posted this before, for all that I'm always banging on about Ladyhawke. Anyway, despite her generally being categorised (not without reason) as "synthpop", she's obviously a very capable all-round musician. There is some very good drumming - by which I mean proper playing of an acoustic drumkit - on her album, especially on My Delirium. And then there's the magnificent last song, Morning Dreams, which features a lovely, fat, juicy guitar motif. Not exactly virtuoso playing, which may have been what the OP was after, but it hits the spot every time for me.