In the past decade, being a music
fan means following music blogs (local and national, broad and specific) and
signing up for Last.fm, then Pandora, then Grooveshark, then Spotify and buying
vinyl records and complaining when they don’t include a digital download. It’s
an embarrassment of riches – and one that allows us to complain endlessly in anonymous
and absolutist terms about what’s wrong with everything and everyone. The
Internet – while not a flying car or a hover skateboard – has transformed the
way we communicate and is the defining futuristic element of the 21st
century (so far, we have a little time left).
Narrow that blossom of technology
to focus on music, where I think three really significant things have
happened. First of all, anyone is
now capable of complete distribution of music – (theoretically) unfettered by
geography or wealth. Second, personal computer recording software has made it
possible for anyone to make a decent
sounding recording of their music. I know that Larry Crane would disagree with
me, but a piece of software like Garageband absolutely kills the fidelity and range
of possibilities that home-recording hobbyist once achieved on the cassette
four-track, and for someone boasting a few choice microphones, outboard gear,
an innate talent for engineering and mixing, it provides the ability to make
professional recording at home, for $0. That’s fucking amazing – its an
incredible leap forward. No matter what anyone tells you about the tape
machines and EMI boards at Abbey Road, the Beatles would’ve scrapped those digs
in a second for a Macbook with Garageband.
The third thing is the taste-making
power of music blogs and sites (like Pitchfork, Stereogum, Aquarium Drunkard,
you local music blog – I currently live in Austin TX, where there’s a hundred
about local music). In the mid-00’s, Pitchfork famously boosted the careers of
Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – while it seems that’s power has
ebbed somewhat, its still an astonishing change. If you’re a fan of music, your
opinion of music blogs probably falls somewhere on the “Fuck That ----- I Love
That” spectrum, mostly at one extreme or the other. The power of the music blog
– and ultimately the instantaneous distribution and the daily incorporation of
bleeding edge that it represents – is transforming how we think about music.
The Young People
One thing I’ve noticed about this
transformation is that we’re seeing younger
people gaining attention earlier for
their recording work. I think of folks like James Blake, Wavves, Best Coast,
Odd Future, Arctic Monkeys, Youth Lagoon, Smith Westerns, etc. – you know:
youngsters. Part of their boilerplate bio was to mention how old they are, as
in “holy shit, have you heard that James
Blake album and can you believe he was 21 when he recorded it?” (“yeah, but
I prefer his early stuff.”) We’re meeting artist in the first flower of their
talent, in the moment that the preceding years of musical discovery has led to (remember
how that felt? discovering music as a teenager. Someone, somewhere, is 15-years
old and listening to Dark Side of the
Moon for the first time.)
I think this is great and its also
awful. In the varied spectrum of my personal taste, here’s my personal and
inevitably flawed opinion on a microcosm: I think that James Blake’s
self-titled album is nearly perfect, but I wish that Wavves’ Nathan Williams
had cut his teeth in a couple crap bands before his gift for surfy-punky
earworms caught national attention.
The Old People
As of this writing (draft: March
2012), I’m thirty-six years old – I’m impossibly old by the standards of the
music I have loved, as a serious fan and failed artist, for twenty-five year.
But I’m still shocked by my love and my fandom – and even more shocked by my
desire to continue creating music.
In thinking about The Young People
– and how we’re now subjected to their very first recording – I started thinking
about the Old People: shouldn’t the democratization of distribution and
recording be yielding brilliant work at the other end of popular music’s age
spectrum? Aren’t there long-suffering but unlucky talents out there still
making music, despite the fact that opportunity failed to knock (or they failed
to answer); People who missed their chance or never took it, but cannot stop
making music, living and breathing it, because its their passion? Because
something in the person they are won’t let
them stop creating?
What shocks me – as a musician and
attempted artist – is the relief that I feel when I admit that any chance of
critical or popular success is beyond me, and yet I’m still giddy about making
music.
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