Laughter in the Mountains

“Right Dear”.

It will happen, probably has already. A mother sealing the history of the greatest creative music phenomenon ever to happen. Of course, that’s just me. But the Dumbing Down of the World continues, including the use of digital audio pitch used in vocals. It was fine when Devo did it, when it was a novelty, but now it is coming into mainstream music. Check out this video to see what I mean:

And didn’t wearing numbers on your shirt -especially sport jerseys- go out a few years ago? C’MON! Any dickhead with a camera and Garage Band can put out a vid. Throw in some tits, and some digital tone enhancement, and… Ta Da! Look Mom, I’m a white trash punk singer.

Why have singers at all? I guess when you have now talent like Britney Spears singing, (Below is what she REALLY sounds like) you get the picture of how the digital age can change the paradigm of talent.

I really don’t know if I would have mined the depth of my talent and worked so hard on it if I had been brought up in the digital age. I have some ADHD goin’ on here and I know sure as briars disturb the stitch I would have never been practicing as much as I did back growing up in the late 50’s and 60’s. Every day for hours my brothers and cousins would tirelessly - at the expense of a normal childhood - practice harmonizing, playing, singing, and choreography.

The Lewis Brothers: Bucky, Timmy, and John

Of course, it’s so easy to record anything nowadays. Everything we taped back then however was a big production. You just didn’t bring a reel to reel tape recorder with you to record shows. It was very rare to get “live” shows recorded and put on Vinyl. The only time that ever happened was in Vegas or a Music Hall. If you look at your vinyl collection you will see that. Even in the early rock and roll days, the styles of play was developed by presentation. Hammering the keys was the only way that Jerry Lee Lewis (no relation) could be heard over his band.

So we have the plus side of digital: recording everything. Whether it is on the cell phone or the IPod, it’s all good.

Where did the Talent Go?

When the CD format came out around the early 90’s, it started to make new talent less of a priority for Record Labels. They knew they owned countless libraries of the Talent they had signed for a song, and now it was time to Reissue. There became an explosion of “Classic Sounds” from the 50’s 60’s 70’s and 80’s.

There will always be new talent coming out, but between PWM (people with money), and the countless ways that the digital age has made it easy to “create talent”, you have to weed through that much more grey noise to find it. The problem is, are we lowering our cognitive senses as well as our standards as a result?