| Aside
from being the rock geek that you all have come to know and
love, I am also a fan of classical music. I'm not a geek about
it (although, for classical music, “geek” is too
familiar of a term. Let's say, “connoisseur”),
but I do like it enough to consider myself somewhat well informed.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, while at work, I was listening
to the classical radio station and they played a piece I had
not heard before. I could tell that it was a modern piece,
modern in the parlance of classical music being composed in
the last hundred years, but I was unfamiliar with the composer
or style. The piece was amazing, causing me to stop reading
my book (I do very little actual work) and turn up the radio,
which is not something that classical music normally begs
you to do. On completion of the piece, the DJ informed us
that it was the First Symphony by an American Composer named
David Diamond, who had passed away the night before. Upon
returning home, I turned on my computer and purchased the
piece from an online music store.
What struck me about this, was, in four (alright five) years
of studying music in college, playing in orchestras, and learning
as much about orchestral music as I could, I had never heard
of David Diamond. In the ten years since graduating from high
school and going through college, a time when my knowledge
of music moved from almost exclusively heavy metal to almost
everything, I couldn't even remember hearing his name.
The blame for this oversight rests not on my college professors
for not alerting me to his presence, nor the orchestra I played
in for not playing his works, the large symphony orchestra
in town for not playing anything, or even the radio station
for waiting until his death to put something on. The reason
for my ignorance of him stems from the general stagnation
that has settled in on classical music. Unfortunately, there
is not much of an audience for orchestral music any more,
along with chamber music, opera, and the other "classical
forms." Naturally, as the audience has shrunk, the ensembles,
radio stations, and record labels have veered sharply to the
middle to the road to try to pump up the revenues. A former
teacher of mine--a principal player in the local symphony--often
complained about the reliance on the "hits." As
someone with tremendous talent and creative spirit, he enjoyed
playing all manners of new compositions as a soloist in a
recital setting. These types of events are not expected to
draw any big numbers, and are often free--which allows for
more experimentation. Because of this, he was able to commission
new works and new arrangements, and mix them in with the standard
repertoire. Ideally, what he and many of the symphony musicians
would like would be to do the same thing with the large ensemble.
Unfortunately, the dollar amounts need to run a symphony orchestra
precludes this from happening. Just to afford to have
a group limits what the group can do. The result of this is
a creative stagnation. The only place to hear new classical
music is at the colleges, where the works are primarily composed
by the professors and performed by the student (read: free)
ensembles. Hell, the chair of the composition department at
my school didn't even bother having his works published anymore,
because the only people who would play them were other college
groups, and he'd just give them he music for free.
The question today is, “could his happen in rock music”?
Now, I don't think that it is happening, at least on a large
scale, but I've seen a couple of things that lead me to believe
that it could occur in some form or another. Obviously, rock
groups are small enough that they shouldn't ever need the
massive amounts of (often public) funding that a symphony
orchestra requires, but shrinking audiences and artistic resonance
are possible.
The first thing that I've experienced is identical to the
problem facing orchestras on the whole, only here it effects
individual artists--let's call this "Greatest Hits Syndrome."
Never was this phenomenon exemplified better than on an episode
of The Simpsons, when Homer saw Bachman-Turner Overdrive in
concert at a county fair. As the band introduces a song of
their new record, Homer shouts “Oh no--no new crap!
Get to TCB." Artists, of sometimes amazingly large stature,
are put in the position often. A few years back I saw Paul
McCartney live, and he downright pleaded with the
audience to stay and listen to a couple new songs. Of all
the people, you would think the crowd would want to hear what
he's been working on--He was a fucking Beatle, for Christsake--but
sure enough, the exodus to the restroom and concession stands
began. He even knew it would be a losing battle, and put the
two new songs back-to-back, giving the crowd enough time to
piss and get another beer and still be back in time for "Back
in the USSR." Chuck Klosterman notes a similar occurrence
at a Warrant show in his book Fargo Rock City, where
the lead singer of Warrant bargains with the crowd, telling
them they'd play the hits if they just sat through a couple
new songs. You'd kinda expect that from a group that has turned
out to be a nostalgia/novelty act, but from Sir Paul, maybe
the most respected songwriter in rock music? That's kinda
sad. But there's got to be a logical progression towards it.
I would wager that crowds at a Green Day show are primarily
interested in stuff off American Idiot. I'm sure
that they appreciate stuff off Dookie, but they're
mainly there for the new stuff. By the time you get to the
age of someone like Springsteen, it's probably evened out,
with fans being equally receptive to stuff off of his new
album as they are to Born to Run. But at what point
do you slip past the point of new material? Am I going to
be in my mid-Fifties, going to take a leak while a reunited
Radiohead plays something off a new album, hoping I can get
back by "Karma Police"?
If the first ominous sign of rock's stagnation is with the
old, the second is with the young. You see, I work in a music
store, and at the store we have guitar teachers. Therefore,
due to our less-than-adequate soundproofing, I get to listen
to about a dozen lessons a day, most of them being adolescent
students. When I started the job, I expected to hear al the
latest stuff coming out of the guitar rooms--metal, punk,
and emo--stuff that the kids are supposedly wild about. And,
to a certain extent, I do--although far less emo than all
of the music magazines would lead you to believe. Mostly what
I hear is stuff right off of classic rock radio. If you gauged
just on the amount of times kids learn their songs in guitar
lessons, the three most popular bands in the world would be
Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. This never ceases
to amaze me. Kids come in with their skateboard company t-shirts
and emfro's (the white-boy emo afro) and want to learn to
play "Back in Black." They don't go any further
back than Zep--maybe the Doors--and rarely go further
forward than Metallica and Nirvana. Granted, it's not an absolute;
there are the hardcore metalheads learning Slipknot and System
of a Down, and "Seven Nation Army" by the White
Stripes had a pretty good run, but the overwhelming majority
is right off the playlist of a generic, ClearChannel-owned
FM classic rock station. I have wondered about this for some
time, so I asked the teachers why they thought it was. The
standard answers, being older and mostly coming from that
scene, were that there's just more to that music, guitarwise,
than there is to the new stuff. That makes sense, and considering
most punk musicians are self-taught, it's probably not all
that surprising. But if it indicates a larger trend, if most
kids this age are listening to older music, will the appetite
for new rock dry up? In 30 years will the majority of rock
album sales and concert attendance be for "classics,"
and new albums and performances become niche interests? In
short, will rock end up like jazz, something most people would
say they like and appreciate as America's most important cultural
contribution, but not actually own any recording
of--other than maybe a few standards--and never see it live,
unless it’s at a wedding reception or gallery opening?
Will Revolver become the new Kind of Blue--a
groundbreaking album turned cliche that is issued to college
freshman across the country as they check into their dorms?
But on the other hand, if Dark Side of the Moon becomes
the 20th century's version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,
I guess that's something. But is rock music suited to trade
in cultural resonance for classical esteem? |
