Comments on: Everything Bad Is Good For You, Except Music

By: mort

mort — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 18:16:12 +0000

My generation certainly shudders at the increasing complexity of the world. There is nothing new in this. Every generation has this trouble. I remember watching the moon landings with Papa Hymie in 1969. I had a hard time explaining the concept to him and at first ridiculed his ignorance. Then I realized that he was born in 1880, and was 20 years old before there were airplanes, radios, cars.
That art and entertainment also becomes more difficult and complex should not be a shock. Evolution is directed that way. Johnson’s observation, that games and other concerns of popular culture also increase in complexity, logically flows. They serve a psychological and educational need — the need to feel capable of understanding, solving, and controlling our problems. Games have become training wheels for technological survival. Entertainment has evolved to match the increasing complexity of interpersonal relationships: family structures, sex rules, competition, values, politics, violence, happiness. Popular culture has always reflected the issues currently on the collective conscience.
Whether this trend to complexity will continue, however, is impossible to predict. One of the fallacies of prediction is assuming linear continuation of current trends. “1984″ passed and was superceded in fact by events of 1989; “2001″ did not happen either. There is an ebb and flow to events, a pendulum, a retrenchment before the next leap forward. Progress is not straightforward; neither is the descent into hell.
I have seen popular music turn from complex (late swing and bop) to simple (early rock and blues) to complex (Phil Spector) and back to simple (early Beatles) and to complex (electronic Beatles), then simpler (punk) and so forth. And I stopped caring in the early 80’s.
The only absolute in all of this seems to be that change is inevitable for its own sake. The only continuing trend is that change occurs with ever greater frequency.

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 19:43:50 +0000

Sorry this is so long, but…I think some of the differences between the curve of music & that of TV come from the fact that the song form is so much older than TV. TV had a bit of its early, asinine nature built into it, when people came up with the technology in the ’50’s, and then suddenly had to come up with programming to put on it. Predictably, especially since viewers were going to be enamored, for a while, no matter what the network(s) put on TV, early programming was totally formulaic and non-challenging. I heard an interview with Johnson, and he talked about how the current HBO-esque drama series is akin in complexity to the serialized 19th-century novel, which I agree with and think is very exciting. But part of the reason that 19th-century novels could be complex is that their less complex forerunners (Fanny Burney, Aphra Behn) had paved the way.
The song is so much older than the novel OR TV, let alone video games, that I think some of the development of complexity in that genre has become invisible. Take ancient Greece, where it was only acceptable to sing songs using certain musical modes, about certain subjects, and the mode you used had to correspond to the subject, and there was also a corresponding rhythm that you had to use. In other early civilizations, the development of chords, rather than successive single tones, was viewed with deep suspicion. Compared to this, the modern song form has become radically diversified and much more complex–rather than just following a vocal line and a flute-type progression of single notes, there are complex harmonies, competing rhythms, lyrical freedom, etc. Maybe the song curve is just moving more slowly than the TV curve.
But I also feel what you’re saying about recent innovation or lack thereof. If the HBO series is a modern reworking of the serialized 19th century novel, maybe pop music needs to get into reworking the concerto or symphony forms (a la the Decemberists’ recent “The Tain,” perhaps?).

By: Mikey

Mikey — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 18:00:41 +0000

I wonder if the lack of innovation you see is related to the troubles being faced by the major labels. Perhaps they are promoting and showcasing music which just doesn’t appeal to us any longer… hence less record sales.
Is there a correlation between media that is performing poorly and it’s lack of ability to adapt to a more complex form? The first thing that comes to mind is newspapers… talk about simple. Mostly rehashed AP stories, little original reporting, almost no in depth investigations, and no follow up on older stories.

By: matt

matt — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 16:30:50 +0000

very interesting post, greg. i’ll have to chew on it for a while.