78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



The Market Economy Model
2005-02-11   4:30 p.m.

Do I want to see Jet? No, not especially. Do I like The Killers? Yes, I suppose. I know I've said it before, and I most certainly don't want to turn into my brother or my father in expressing my frustration with the "garbage they expect us to listen to these days". However, I'm immensely frustrated with the garbage they expect us to listen to these days.

Franz Ferdinand becomes Modest Mouse becomes Snow Patrol becomes the Strokes becomes Interpol. I like these bands, and in fact have albums by all of the above that I like very much. But I have to be honest - there's a sameness to their work, and while that suits me fine enough, it's just so repetitive sometimes that it's kind of sad.

It's sad because it makes me remember that music is now formulated around the Market Economy Model. If it worked once for one label, in other words, other labels - or the same label - jump all over "it" so that we wind up with a hundred carbon copies of the same band, same sound, same look.

I just feel like there's a uniqueness that's missing in music right now - something that other decades seemed to have plenty of. I'm envious that we lack such innovation and excitement now. Every time I hear a new band and think that they're extremely innovative, in the next few months strings of similar bands come out and get plastered all over the scene, until I am sick of them and the original band I'd first heard.

This is no sudden realization I'm having, and I understand that this model has been around for decades. I understand that it goes in waves. But at the same time, I also understand that record labels are very unwilling to "take a chance" on a band that doesn't sound like all the other bands that are "in" right now. And that means that what's new really isn't new, or if it is, it will become old very, very quickly.

I think what's made me frustrated with all of this all over again is my recent re-discovery of my old Talking Heads albums. I found one in the trunk of my car, the other under the couch. I've been playing them all week.

They were not a hot young band of shaggy-haired hipsters who knew how to play a few instruments and "drew influences" from dozens of other bands before them who also all sounded alike. They were an ugly group of adults who were professionally trained musicians, and were like nothing else anyone had ever heard. I'd still pose that you can't really find a band that sounds like Talking Heads, even though it seems perfunctory to cite them as an "influence".

My point here isn't really to talk about what an innovative song writer David Byrne is and was or even to talk about how good Talking Heads' records are. It's that at one time, it seemed much more likely that labels would sign more "risky" and experimental bands - certainly with the intention of making money off of them - but perhaps without the intention of raping and exploiting them and their sound, producing dozens of clones and bombarding radio stations with them until we couldn't take it anymore. Now, that's just not economically savvy - and so rather than having music be about music, it's about profit margin. Why else would there be five versions of Brittany Spears? Or 50 Cent? Or the Hives? Shouldn't one do?

I'm still extremely full from lunch. That's rare with Turkish food, as it's typically pretty light, small portions and all that. I think it was because I ate slowly over a two hour period; Jen, Marne and I talked a lot and took our time, eating a few courses. I did want to go swimming now, but I might skip it in favor of going shopping for some new turtlenecks. I will be democratic about it all and see what my dear husband wants to do.

xo