Dear Randy and Bocalisters:
Your comments brought forward many thoughts for me.
You wrote; >Yes, corporations are dictating taste to a certain degree and that's what >happened right before rock and roll hit. Pop was pretty lame at that point, >something new comes along and then unfortunately because of momentum the >record complanies seize it and commercialize it. Something new will come >along but I have no idea what it is.
COMMENT: When I graduated from High School in 1952 the pop music field was a strange mixture of the former (I choose to not call it "old") big bands and swing, Nat King Cole, etc. and the new which included Johnny Ray ("Cry"), Rosemary Clooney ("Come on'a My House"), the ever present Sing Along with Mitch Miller (A professional Oboist, yet) and such nonsense as "Chabba, Chabba", "Marzy Dotes, Dozy Dotes", etc. Of course Franky, and Perry, et al were still big and, after being with Frankie's Rat Pack for awhile even Sammy Davis became a great singer.
Lets see, in about 1956, we attended Elvis Presley's first movie and we never hear a note he sang because of all the screaming in the theatre in Appleton, Wisconsin. (Shades of Frank Sinatra in an earlier time). I am sure there were Rock beginnings prior to all this time but it was not in my consciousness. Not until the big business of music promoted it in some way or other. And, oh yes, there was this rather new recording medium, the 33 1/3rd and 45 rpm recordings that could be pressed by very small pressing machines which gave the performers the opportunity to build or buy their own record companies. (I suppose that is not possible anymore with CD's?)
Now, I am embarrassed to admit, it appears that I will likely live through another revolution, post rock (in all its many and various forms). I knew rock was dead when it began to be studied in Universities as part of the curriculum. It pretty nearly killed Jazz so now it was rock's turn. And that all began about 20 years ago. Universities have a way of detecting a popular movement rather late but they can make up for it by including it in their courses of study immediately upon becoming aware of its "importance" and, in that way, are able to help remove it from its former position of being popular.
You also rote >Pop music now sounds so cliched. All the territory that can be mined from >its influences has been mined. It reminds me of the musicals written in the >50s and 60s that still had an old school influence (hello dolly, music man, >etc) they sound incredibly cliched. It took the introduction of rock (JC >superstar, etc) to bring a freshness to it. > >Whenever something seems as stale as rock, pop, r&b seem now it's a sign that >something new is around the corner. Let's just hope it's interesting.
COMMENT: I would agree. However there is one person that, in my opinion, has done more than anyone else to revive the Broadway musical genre, and that is Stephen Sondheim. Rock musicals have never really become the take-over model they were first touted to be. At their best they barely get into the area of quality musicals regardless of the genre of music one applies. "Rent" seems to be as good as they get and, good as that is, it is not good enough in my opinion. I have often thought about the comparison of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Stephen Sondheim to that between Antonio Salieri and W. A. Mozart.
-- Lloyd W. Hanson
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