Concerning the Ostensible Lull in the Music Industry

This is the real PCP for the week, and I think it confirms my earlier thoughts on the issue. I'm never happy with the way these things turn out. And for some reason I used sufficient or a variation thereof about five times in three hundred words. Unbelievable.

One of the distinct advantages of living in the UP is its cultural isolation, though, now that I think about it, this may have more to do with my tendency to shun the world so as to stay in my room reading various books. The reality, of course, is that the American culture has little to offer in the substance department, as evidenced by its vacuous television programming, seen-it-before blockbusters, or, worst of them all, cookie-cutter bands who lack not only creativity—that is, the mark of an artist—but anything vaguely resembling talent.

I cannot recall the last time I listened to a radio station that was neither WMTU nor on the AM dial, but a trip to Yahoo's music video section ensured me that while it had been a substantial period of time since I had bathed in the cesspool that is popular music—who in the devil is Akon, and why does he feel the need to “Smack That”?—I had not been missing much.

Yet this is nothing new. The moment when popular music ceased to be of substantial value cannot be precisely determined, but their was sufficient impetus for The Dead Kennedys to break musical barriers with their 1980 debut, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables. Certainly good records still appeared, especially from established bands—witness Bruce Springsteen's 1984 Born in the U.S.A. —but gradually good music all but disappeared from corporate hands, though the underground boomed.

So long as “My Humps” is deemed sufficient for those who enjoy music primarily for its booty-shaking potential, the industry will have no reason to seek out good musicians, assuming it has the ability to do so.

There is still plenty of good music out there, if one is sufficiently ambitious to look for it.

Interestingly enough, I'm actually listening to some new music right now. The Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America is, like their previous two releases, phenomenal. Check it out.