Unpopular music opinions

[LizzieMaine]

Nobody alive now knows how to write a traditional musical comedy -- Rodgers and Hammerstein pretty much killed off the frothy Cole Porter-type book shows and the George White-type revues in the fifties, and all we have now is bad Sondheim imitations, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and merchandising tie-ins for Disney properties. That's a nightmare world for anyone who really cares about the musical theatre and its legacy.

The civilization that could produce something as brilliant and sophisticated as "The Little Show" or "Three's A Crowd" has been ruthlessly killed off, and we're not a better people for it.

 

[Fletch]

What. Happened?

Fletch explains it all...lol

Country got to be a consumer commodity sometime in the 70s, about the time more country people went to work in factories than on farms. It was always a storytelling music, but now the stories are generic and express cultural tropes - ideas about what kind of person a country person is, or ought to be.

The trend from songwriting to singer-songwriting is easy to explain. Having one person do the work of two saves money. The "artistic" excuse is that the work is more immediate and individual and less likely to be traditional and dull and in a rut...maybe in 1965. The secret is that SSW has long since become a genre, barely even pretending to be individual - it long ago dug its own rut.

Broadway, cut off from the pop culture on so many flanks at once, has survived by turning inward. It really is either theater for theater folk - plus a narrow and somewhat predictable urban set - or an activity for tourists visiting urban areas (who need to be offered non-original material to get them in the seats). Musicals, especially, are as standardized as anything by Disney - in part because of college theater programs and the professionals they turn out.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bah. Bring back vaudeville. Ed Wynn never went to college.

 

[Rundquist]

Maybe this belongs more in the Unpopular Movie Opinion thread but it seems that in the past they would produce a Broadway musical and then perhaps a few years later make a movie version. Now its totally the opposite. It seems that so many Broadway musicals are now based on movies and TV shows.

I have always hated musicals. They’re just not me. But some very fine songs came from old musicals (even if I didn’t perhaps like the original incarnation of the song). Today’s musicals are like the rest of today’s music (garbage).

Where Or When is a great old one from a musical. Love that song.

The swinging Oscar Brown Jr.
[video=youtube;qtlgtfJe7xA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtlgtfJe7xA[/video]

The polarizing Frank Sinatra (who ironically was bi-polar).
I pick and choose what I listen to from Frank. Some of it was great, some of it not so much.
[video=youtube;DtDOQMyUAU0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtDOQMyUAU0[/video]

 

[martinsantos]

Explained very well, Fletch! :eusa_clap

I don't know why, but looks that the guys from here visiting USA "need" to see a show by Andrew Weber. Not long time ago this lounge almost lost a member - because I said that Weber is "corny". I never will understand how so many can hear his music.

I hearded only a few full musicals scores - but I trully believe that "Strike up the Band" is a great one. And VERY better than anything like Weber.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Well, after seeing some of the recent comments, I guess I have another unpopular opinion...

Although I used to dislike the Grateful Dead, I eventually grew to like some of their material. I never could get into the cultural aspect of their music (filling myself with narcotics, quitting my job and driving from one smelly hippie hole to the next), but I did grow an appreciation for what they were doing musically. [huh]

I like "Touch Of Grey." But I get embarassed if it comes on my iPod and people are around....

 

[martinsantos]

Sinatra at Capitol was really a great singer. But from all records he made to Capitol, THIS ONE is a masterpiece. We can find with other ingers an almost as good record (or ever a so good as) for every song. But as collection of records, the constant mood, etc, it is just a marvelous, brilliant LP.

Where Or When is a great old one from a musical. Love that song.

The polarizing Frank Sinatra (who ironically was bi-polar).
I pick and choose what I listen to from Frank. Some of it was great, some of it not so much.
[video=youtube;DtDOQMyUAU0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtDOQMyUAU0[/video]

 

[LizzieMaine]

I hearded only a few full musicals scores - but I trully believe that "Strike up the Band" is a great one. And VERY better than anything like Weber.

A *flop* show by Gershwin, Kern, or Porter is better than anything to have come out of Broadway in the past forty years. A show like Porter's "Jubilee" from 1935, which ran for a season and then disappeared forever gave us two immortal songs -- "Begin The Beguine" and "It Was Just One Of Those Things" -- one that *should* be immortal -- "Why Shouldn't I?" -- a great patter/list song -- "A Picture of Me Without You" -- and a cute novelty -- "Me and Marie." And that was one of Porter's *dud* shows -- his *hit* shows should be considered transcendent achievements in American popular culture. Except nothing happened in the world worth knowing about before 1955.

 

[Kahuna]

I like "Touch Of Grey." But I get embarassed if it comes on my iPod and people are around....

As fun as it is to knock musicians we don't like, the purpose of music is to give us enjoyment. Musical taste is as individual as a fingerprint and doesn't always make a lot of sense but, if you enjoy a piece of music, then that music is "good" for you. You should never get apologetic or embarrassed for enjoying something. I've got over 3,000 CDs with everything from musical saw to classical and including many of the musicians who've been knocked here. Although I know they're not equally musically important, I enjoy them all so they are "good" to me.

 

[martinsantos]

As I wrote, unhappilly I never had heard full lengh scores except a few. "Strike up the band" is one of these few - in fact came as an opera!!

Why 1955? "Kiss me Kate", by Porter? do you think iit's the "last one"?

 

[Fletch]

The musicals of the pre-R&HII era not only wouldn't serve the needs of today's audience - they wouldn't even qualify as musical theater by today's professional or critical standards. They were too much music and hardly any theater.

The situation parallels that of jazz in an eerie way - as if there were greater forces in play than just the genius of R&HII or Parker and Gillespie. There was a war on, true, but even that didn't totally scourge the old popular forms. So what did? Rock and television? Consumerism and suburbanization?

Maybe...but what about the birth of serious pop culture criticism, which didn't remember anything before it came, and in so doing, defined popular history in terms of what it did remember?

 

[LizzieMaine]

That was pretty much the end of the line for the traditional musical comedy -- after that, everyone tried to either imitate Rodgers and Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim until Webber came along and shoveled the last clods of dirt onto the grave.

Of course, in a larger sense, 1955 is also the start of what's generally considered the Rock Era, and of course, the only things that matter prior to that date are those aspects of culture that somehow contributed to the evolution of rock. Anything else is utterly irrelevant, at least to the eyes of modern "scholars" and "critics," all of whom ought to be sewn up in a sack and dropped off the nearest bridge.

As far as Rodgers and Hammerstein go, I've always found their stuff to be insufferably pretentious -- as if they really want to be operettas, but they're afraid to admit it. Rodgers and *Hart,* now, they knew how to write a show, but Hammerstein -- feh. Any man who helped give the world "Golden Dawn" ought not to think so highly of his own abilities.

 

[martinsantos]

Just can agree with you about Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart - as far I know their work. From Hammerstein I like his lyrics of "Ol' Man River", but I can't say much more... Hart was one of the most fabulous. A man who can write "My Funny Valentine" or "10 cents a dance" is just the top.

That was pretty much the end of the line for the traditional musical comedy -- after that, everyone tried to either imitate Rodgers and Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim until Webber came along and shoveled the last clods of dirt onto the grave.

Of course, in a larger sense, 1955 is also the start of what's generally considered the Rock Era, and of course, the only things that matter prior to that date are those aspects of culture that somehow contributed to the evolution of rock. Anything else is utterly irrelevant, at least to the eyes of modern "scholars" and "critics," all of whom ought to be sewn up in a sack and dropped off the nearest bridge.

As far as Rodgers and Hammerstein go, I've always found their stuff to be insufferably pretentious -- as if they really want to be operettas, but they're afraid to admit it. Rodgers and *Hart,* now, they knew how to write a show, but Hammerstein -- feh. Any man who helped give the world "Golden Dawn" ought not to think so highly of his own abilities.

 

[Fletch]

I always called 'em RH positive and RH negative.

Liz, before we go house-to-house on the critics, can we at least take a stab at where and when this whole pop culture criticism started? I actually don't know much about it, except that film became the first fit subject for serious review - sometime in the '40s (probably because of the work of German academics in the US). After film, somewhere along the line, stuff like Broadway and jazz became reviewable in the middlebrow press. It was after that (quite awhile) that books started coming out, and eventually, they made their way into higher ed curricula.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it started in the thirties, actually -- the whole New Masses crowd was examining American culture thru the lens of Marxism before the war, and I think you can trace a lot of modern-day cultural studies directly back to that. Paul Lazarsfeld and his followers were writing a lot of long-haired criticism of radio during that same era, and you had the whole Delaunay-Blesh crowd writing on music by the turn of the forties, all of them trying very hard to be very proletarian in their views while at their same time turning up their highly-educated noses at the things the actual proles actually liked. And then it really took off after the war.

 

[martinsantos]

Some critics only make noise about something they don't know anything about.

In the same theme we could also take a look about operas. They were popular; nobody tought opera as something just "elegant" or "for rich people". My great-grandfather could play and sing the whole "I Pagliacci" - and was just a newspaper seller, arrived from italy in 1910. But saw Caruso here in SP in 1922. What matters is the music, not anything else.

Critics usually say Sullivan and Gilbert opperettas are not-great-classical-music. They are not Beethoven, but they are great. But just a few theaters still play their music.

I think that from 50s and 60s pop music found a trail about what should be the music representation of those generations. All options you gave are correct - and probably a few more can be added.

The musicals of the pre-R&HII era not only wouldn't serve the needs of today's audience - they wouldn't even qualify as musical theater by today's professional or critical standards. They were too much music and hardly any theater.

The situation parallels that of jazz in an eerie way - as if there were greater forces in play than just the genius of R&HII or Parker and Gillespie. There was a war on, true, but even that didn't totally scourge the old popular forms. So what did? Rock and television? Consumerism and suburbanization?

Maybe...but what about the birth of serious pop culture criticism, which didn't remember anything before it came, and in so doing, defined popular history in terms of what it did remember?

 

[Amy Jeanne]

As fun as it is to knock musicians we don't like, the purpose of music is to give us enjoyment. Musical taste is as individual as a fingerprint and doesn't always make a lot of sense but, if you enjoy a piece of music, then that music is "good" for you. You should never get apologetic or embarrassed for enjoying something. I've got over 3,000 CDs with everything from musical saw to classical and including many of the musicians who've been knocked here. Although I know they're not equally musically important, I enjoy them all so they are "good" to me.

Hehe. I just kid! I get embarassed because I always say how much I hate the Grateful Dead and there they are in my iPod -- just one song. lol I usually laugh if someone says something.

But I will proudly blare New Kids On The Block, Milli Vanilli, Girls Aloud, Spice Girls, and any "old fogey" music (20s/30s/40) and not care what anyone says or thinks. Haha.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

You wanna talk about embarassing music on your iPod, that you really don't want others to know you enjoy. I was cruising with my buddies, going through my iPod on the truck radio. Waylon Jennings, Kenny Rogers, Conway Twitty, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, then boom Abba...... Others in my truck were exchanging glances.

 

[Blackjack]

Thank God no one mentioned they're still listening to Culture Club...

 

[Blackjack]

I think it started in the thirties, actually -- the whole New Masses crowd was examining American culture thru the lens of Marxism before the war, and I think you can trace a lot of modern-day cultural studies directly back to that. Paul Lazarsfeld and his followers were writing a lot of long-haired criticism of radio during that same era, and you had the whole Delaunay-Blesh crowd writing on music by the turn of the forties, all of them trying very hard to be very proletarian in their views while at their same time turning up their highly-educated noses at the things the actual proles actually liked. And then it really took off after the war.

-Music critics became a profession during the Romantic period. Music criticism was a source of income for both Hector Berlioz and Robert Schumann.