What Killed the Music Industry?

It’s been a long time since I last wrote. I might not be able to write every day, but don’t worry, I will make sure that I do write something at least once or twice a week. Getting stuff out of the right side of my brain and bringing them to the left is not always easy. Anyway, here is what is on my mind. As we know, music today is not exactly inspiring. When I am in the car, the radio stays off. Mainstream music today just doesn’t have that spark that old music has. Could you imagine telling your kids that this is the music you use to listen too when it plays. Probably not, because music might be a thing of the past then and your child might not know what you are talking about.

The thing is that when you look at music throughout the decades, you will notice that each decade, music’s purpose was different to each decade. The 50’s were when Rock’n’Roll first came about, thanks to pioneers like Little Richard and popularized with Elvis and Chuck Berry. Music then was all about fun, which contrasted the black and white world before-hand. The music was popular with the youth and for the first time, the youth and the corporate world were two different worlds altogether. When the Cold War became more intense and Vietnam War broke out, America took over from the French and went to battle. Previously, no one questioned America’s involvement in WW2, but now they questioned it’s involvement in this war. Therefore, the 60’s were a time when music questioned the authorities and became a propaganda tool. Music those days were very experimental and they tried to see how much rules of music they could actually break. It was a great period of music in which the next decades would stem from. The decade ended with the biggest music event in history, Woodstock. However, that same year would be the same year where Heavy Metal formed. During the seventies, music started to find their genres and went their separate ways from there. There was metal, pop, disco amongst others. As the music divided, so did the listeners. These genres would later divide further and merge together as time would come. However, it was the advent of MTV when music really started to dominate. Although music videos already existing for a long time, now there is a channel where people can watch them all day.The 80’s were the time when music was not only audio, but visual as well. Artists like Michael Jackson took advantage of MTV and their videos were just as important as the music itself. Despite bringing music to a new level, it also had the danger of watering down the actual quality of the music as well. A rubbish song with a good music video would sell better than a great song with no music video. Therefore, in a lot of cases, it is image first, then music. However, despite these things, the 80’s was the only decade known purely for it’s music and maybe Sylvester Stallone. However, the 90’s took a different turn. The music industry was going stale and the world outside was going to hell. It was time for a change. It was about time music took a new direction. This was a very experimental time and music became more serious. The songs were now about the darkness of reality and other serious issues. However, the quality of music that came out of this short time period was at it’s height. But then 1996 came and... it was over! The 90s only lasted five years and was replaced by something else. What followed afterwards was a 15 year period where music is now churned out in quantity rather than quality. The real music like those that dominated the half-decade of the nineties was forced back underground. What the hell happened that cut a decade short and replaced it with a time period of uninspiring music that goes nowhere?

The problem is: music became digital. Even though the first CDs were released in 1980, it was the nineties where it started to replace the vinyls as the music medium. CDs are a great invention, but they have one flaw: they are compressed. Vinyls have their full wavelengths carved onto them. When you listen to the vinyl records, you hear everything of the track, even the rough parts. CD’s only have the mean points of the wavelengths. Therefore, the music you hear has been smoothed out as the points are linked together in a straight line. But it wasn’t only the CD’s that were digital. The whole music process has gone that direction. There always was tuning, but it wasn’t at the extent it is today. The old songs were recorded as a whole. Today the “artists” record, and it their music gets dissected into different streams where they digitally polish them and piece them back together. The purpose is to make music as perfect as it can get. But doesn’t this defeat the whole point?

The reason because Rock’n’Roll was popular is because it was rough around the edges. This is what made it real. Before then you had singers like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin who followed the norms of society then where everything has to be perfect. If you look at perfection, there can only be one perfect state, but countless imperfect states. The fact is that nothing in this world is perfect. If all humans were perfect, we would all look exactly the same. Ever heard of Shibusa? Shibusa is a Japanese aesthetic which takes praise in the imperfections of nature. However, this is not all there is to it. It also praises simplicity and subtlety. Why do we prefer looking at rocks than walls. Because it is natural? That’s one part of it, but the main appeal is the imperfection of it. But it is the imperfections that make it perfect. Another thing is simplicity. Why was music in the old days so catchy. It’s because not only did they have imperfections, they were also simple. Today, since the songs are polished, the producers think that they have to make it catchy by adding tricks and stuff to it. This involves samples that don’t sound like any instrument and tunes that go up and down quickly. However it just doesn’t work. What would you choose, polished song that tries to be complicated or a rough song that has a easy tune to listen to?

But this is only part of the problem. The 90’s was also a time of censorship and productivity. Music has become business, in which the ones in power have control over. But I am not going to go through this as I am sure everyone already knows.

Pursuing the Dream

What are we put on Earth for? To die rich and have your future generations inherit it? This seems to be what defines a successful life today. I may not be one of those billionaires, yet, but I also know many people who have lived a successful life, and they don’t even own a car. To me, a successful life is how close it is to your dream rather than how much money is in the bank account. I have only started to follow my dream recently after a hiatus full of detours and even though I haven’t reached it yet, I am enjoying every step of it. So what are your dreams?

When you ask a child what they would want to be when they grow up, you usually hear answers like a doctor, a fireman, a teacher, or a vet. All these have in common is that they are jobs that help people. This reflects their innocent and optimistic view on life. These jobs appeal to them because they are portrayed as good and heroic people in TV and Books. However, when they reach adolescence they forget about these dreams. They now want things for themselves rather than to help others. The dream is now to become rich and have a nice big house with a giant swimming pool with a waterfall and a garage that can hold more cars than the amount of car makes and series they know. Yeah, doctors make a lot of money, but being a singer will make you even more, plus fame. However when you reach the end of your school career, it is now time to find a job. However, you decided not to follow your dreams because your school has taught you that these are unrealistic expectations and you should do something that is more in your field. They have judged your field based on your test results and have put you in that category. Therefore, you are now working in your job now, but this is not the dream you had. Instead of living the dreams you want, you are working long hours and instead of helping others, you are just putting food on your plate. The only hope is that in the future, things might change. But how much waiting is enough?

This is why I decided to start pursuing my dream now. My interests is writing, art and psychology. So I decided to work towards these goals. I have started working at a publishing company, although business is pretty slow. But I actually make money off the internet. It’s a slow start, but at least this time, I know I am getting closer to my dream.

The Death of Conversation

As you probably realized, I totally detest cellphones. But to be honest, it is not the cellphones themselves that are the problem, it’s the people who use them. By that I mean those who want to share to everyone when they happen to have a thought. I don’t know when people started to become so dependent on each other, but this is taking it to a whole new level. It seems that everyone these days want to share their thought to every single person they know whenever they have one, regardless if those on the other side really care or not. Because of this, the SMS tone is constantly beeping for most of the day, even the entire 24 hours when they are out partying.

SMSing is another thing I don’t get. I know it is supposed to be cheaper or something like that, but all the time? Spending my last two years in a school full of the most unmotivated, non-ambitious students I have ever had the pleasure of studying with, I was the only Higher Grade student in English. Because of this, it pains me to see what conversation has become today. A typical conversation since SMSing has took off was “Yo g, watsup! r u comin 2 da pRT 2nite?”, “no, bra, i got me a hot QT 2nite. ima load her up l8er on” “Swak, bra! Send me sum pics of her wen ya dun!”. Because SMSing charged per letter, they decided to lower their vocabulary to save air time. It was amusing to see at first, but when everyone is sending you SMSes in this fashion, you really feel for poor Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 when he was constantly being barraged by Codec messages from a malfunctioning Colonel. However, Cellular operators don't charge by the letter anymore and the new cellphones even have a T9 autotext to make SMSing quicker. Therefore, cheaper SMSes plus faster typing, means more SMSes per hour. They also added a new feature to take this fad to a new level called MMS.

MMSes, as we all know, are used in conjunction with the camera. I never use the camera on the phones because of their low resolution, but that doesn’t stop people from using it’s more useful function: sending pictures to friends, family and people you barely even know. That in itself is not necessarily bad, but it is how often they use it. People take pictures of everything they do: Seeing Bono up close; watching fireworks that won’t come up properly on the photo; car crashes; two girls pouting their lips; or a picture of you that was taken a second ago. Seeing people doing this all the time doesn’t really bother me, since it is their life that they are broadcasting. But it is quite unnerving that you could get photographed at any time and the picture will be on the web before you can do anything about that. Luckily I don’t get embarrassed easily.

You might be wondering why I hate cellphones but I am still blogging with Facebook comments in posts. To tell you the truth, I rarely ever post on Facebook and I have disabled chat. But what I like about Facebook is that once you have disabled the chat feature, you can say what is on your mind in your own time. I started the blog because I actually enjoy writing out my thoughts. There is nothing wrong with that, but the problem is overuse. I often see two people dating and they are SMSing instead of talking. When I first got a cellphone, I was one of the only two guys in school who had one, and it was kind of useful. But it now seems to become a fad that is encouraged by the media. The music video for Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Get Retarded’ was the longest Motorola ad I have seen, and it had a fitting song title as well. But what’s next? Nanotechnology?

Girl meets a man for the first time:

Guy: “......”

Girl: “......”

Guy: “......”

Girl: *nods*

And then he takes her out on a date.

Not only did she accept his offer, her best friends know, and so does her mother. They done research on him and they found out his name, his age, his net worth, and sent the infortion back at her. He on the other hand impressed her with his wit that he had copied off the internet. He also found out what her favourite food is and what was her favourite restaurant is, plus what movie he should rent that night when he takes her home. And this was all before she nodded.

The Town Behind the Picture

Table View is where I live. It is part of the Milnerton ward in Cape Town. The most that the majority of people see of this place is it’s shore sands in postcards with the more famous landmark on the other side of sea. But what they don’t know is the reality of the town behind the picture.

Despite being a suburb in Cape Town, this place is a world in it’s own. It is both upper class and rural. It is situated by the sea, but it also has inland elements to it as well. On one side is Dolphin Beach, and the other side is an oil refinery. Both atmospheres are completely different that they are unrecognizable to each other. The seaside has the clean smell of salty air while the other side has this putrid stench of industrial waste. It’s is like a town that can’t decide what it wants to be, so it has each foot in each area. There are only two ways in and out of this place, so a lot of people spend the majority of their lives in this suburb. Those who try to escape are gridlocked by the rest of the population who commute to the city. So most of our time, we feel pretty isolated here. 

 

I have always lived by the seaside. I am from the Eastern Cape and I have never been more than 25km from the sea. The sea is what keeps most of people like me sane. The cold Antarctic water here makes your body numb, but there is not many things that make you feel more alive. Surfing has become more sparse here now, since most of the water is taken up by Kite Surfers, so I spend most of my time walking on the beach. From here you can see Table Mountain, a plateau with the devil on one side and the Lion of Judah on the other, like the battle of Armageddon is just a game of chess on the table between them. All these famous photographs of Table Mountain come from here, which is how this place got it’s name. 

But the beach is only the face. Inside the suburb is as far from a coastal town as can be. When you drive along the main road, you see residential houses that have been converted into shops. The only residences on the road that have survived are the complexes. I live in one of these complexes in the heart of this town. This place is the drug capital of South Africa and you get reminded of it ever so often. It’s not uncommon to hear gunshots at night, or to hear a car crash nearby after a wild night of partying. There is not a day where you don’t hear police sirens, as they battle the demons of this town. But these things don’t phase me anymore. It is like I have become numb to the anguish outside my window.