By ‘Rebel’ Rod Ames
What is music to you guys? To me it is something very deep and meaningful, but at the same time, something intended to be incredibly entertaining. It’s meant to penetrate not only the ears and then stop, but to penetrate the brain, the heart, and if it is really special, the soul.
That is precisely what I don’t get about mainstream music today. Or any other day as far as that goes. It is designed to stop at the ear. Why?
If people were that way, why do we have brains? Are we beginning to devolve now because we have made ourselves so susceptible to this simplistic form of music that resides so commonly out there? Music that is about as complicated as refined sugar. From what I’ve witnessed, that maybe exactly what is occurring.
How long before our brains, seize functioning at all without very basic commands. Commands not unlike we would shout out to a pet. “Sit”, “roll-over”, etc. You get the idea. Before too long, if it keeps going the way it is, we will all be these mindless zombies, listening to the same shit, with the same beat, over, and over, and over again!
The world would be as if George Romero and Quinton Tarrentino got together to direct a film that Rob Zombie wrote (only with some imagination)! We could call it “When Shit Stops at the Ear” or “The Day People Stopped Demanding Quality!” or “The Attack of the Same 3 Notes Repeating Themselves Over and Over Again Forever!” Eeeeeeek! I can hear the shrill screams echoing though out the theater already.
What are we to do to stop this exercise in mind control? It’s simple really. We start demanding quality. I’m not saying the musicians that are putting this barrage of bullshit music out there are talentless. I’m just saying that they are stopping short of quality and settling for quantity. They have become comfortable in their wealth (that is our fault-we keep buying the crap) which stops the inspiration, which stops the quality. They do not have to work so hard resulting in this very simple, mindless, unimaginative, junk we hear on mainstream radio. Therefore, the answer is really very simple. We save our money. We stop buying this Lady Gaga, Hannah Montana, and sorry kid, Justin Beiber bullshit and force them to start writing music that means something again.
Imagine back in the 1600’s and for the following two centuries, when music was extremely complicated. Listen to a Chopin or Mozart composition. Listen to the complexity to it all, but most of listen to how it penetrates the ears, the brain, and eventually winds up penetrating the very soul.
Now, let’s lets jump up into modern times, the twentieth century. The time between 1901 and December 31 of 2001. Think back to the days of ragtime, folk music, the early prewar blues, it all came together to create what we all came to know and love today as Rock ‘N Roll.
However, now days Rock ‘N Roll has suffered from the disease of simplicity. Try putting on a mainstream Rock station today. It can be challenging to distinguish one artist from the next. It’s become homogenized. Sad but true. We must stop encouraging these shameful acts of musical simplicity and demand quality music.
For the time being, I’m going to do my part by continuing to dig up the best of all of these different genres from past artists and current artists that still believe in what they are doing. Artists who have not yet become completely lazy and still demand quality music from themselves. Artists who still write from the heart and the soul instead of the pocket book.
I’ll keep doing that, and you guys keep listening, and maybe, just maybe we can put a stop to this madness and divert this mindless adaptability to shitty music to another universe far far away from our own.
See you on the radio!
