THEY'RE NOT MAKING MUSIC ANYMORE

    
     You can tell a lot about a society from its music. Our music ceased to be music around 1980. Being of a Liberal persuasion, I like to equate the death of American popular music with the coming of the Reagan presidency. Of course, he didn’t set out to do music in; it’s just another symptom of the disease that came into being when corporations assumed power, labor unions all but disappeared and the ordinary citizens lost hope. And so you can add to that equation: the disappearance of good music.

     I define music as being comprised of melody, rhythm, harmony and sometimes lyrics. After 1980 melody disappeared altogether and lyrics became either violent or meaningless. Why write something and call it a song if it has no real melody. Just write a poem or a very short story and get it over with. But don’t make believe that you’re creating music because you are not.

     I was fortunate to grow up on Mozart, Beethoven, Leonard Bernstein and his Young People’s Concerts at Carnegie Hall, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Lerner and Lowe, Johnny Mercer and later on Paul Simon, the Beatles, early Elton John and Steely Dan. (In many ways I consider the Paul Simons and the Steely Dans of the world to be the Mozarts of the second half of the twentieth century). In any case, I know music when I hear it, and folks they’re not making music anymore. They try to cover up that fact by producing those elaborate, expensive videos which are the definition of “much ado about nothing.” It’s all a lot of glitz and extravagance with your eye unable to focus on anything for more than a nanosecond before it changes to something else and then to something else until they repeat the cycle of something elses until it mercifully ends. All that fuss just to hide the fact that the song itself is not a song at all. And, of course, the younger generation thinks it is music because they don’t know any better. They don’t know the difference between music and noise. Like they’re really going to be singing any of those bleak rap or hip hop songs 50 to 100 years from now.

     Your Honor, the prosecution submits exhibits one and two in the form of the following two popular song lyrics as evidence of the decline of American culture:

Exhibit One:

“THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY”

BY Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin

The night is bitter,

The stars have lost their glitter,

The winds grow colder,

And suddenly you're older

And all because of

The man that got away.

No more his eager call,

The writing's on the wall,

The dreams you dreamed have all

Gone astray.

The man that won you

Has run off and undone you.

That great beginning

Has seen it's final inning,

Don't know what happened

It's all a crazy game.

No more that all-time thrill

For you've been through the mill,

And never a new love will

Be the same.

Good riddance, good-bye.

Every trick of his you're on to -

But fools will be fools and where's he gone to?

The road gets rougher,

It's lonelier and tougher.

With hope you burn up,

Tomorrow he may turn up.

There's just no letup

The livelong night and day.

Ever since this world began

There is nothing sadder than

A one-man woman

Looking for the man that got away . . .

The man that got away . . .

Exhibit Two:

“Ain't No Thang”

By Outkast

I'd do it if I have to

bustin caps with this a heat and load it clip up after clip

I'm packin my gauge, if I feel it

The glock, the gat, the nine, the heaters

See I be bustin caps like my amp be bustin speakers

So how do you figure that Big Boi be scared to blast ya

You 'posed to be quickest draw, but man, I hail em faster

1-2-3, you need to think about the future

Before I shoot your ass and dilute your blood with lead

From my hollow tips, I'll send you to an early grave

Your honor, the prosecution rests.

January 28, 2010