The Modern Legacy

With the recent passing of Robert Goulet and Lucianno Pavarotti, my brain has been working overtime on a single question to which I am at a loss to come up with an answer and hope my loyal readers can assist me with. The Question is this:

Who will be the legendary performers, that when they die, will truly be missed and be the defining voice and music of this generation, my generation?

Before we can approach this question, we must ask how an artist would reach that level. The obvious answers are they must sustain their popularity, they must be prolific, and of course, a smart agent and label that knows how to get them to the masses quickly.

The 1950's obviously gave us the "Rat Pack", led by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Frankie Blue Eyes made it in the 40's but was able to keep performing and recording into the 1980's carrying that generation from adolescence pretty much all the way to death. The same with Dean Martin, but the days then required them to be more than music personalities but stagemen and movie stars. They were also supported by a cast of lesser known musicians. Paul Anka and other songwriters, along with the bands of Al hirt, Tommy Dorsey, and others helped these talented vocalists obtain superstar status.

The 1960's changed this whole thing. Singer/songwriters took over as the folk movement pulled musc out of the nightclubs and theaters and put it in any long haired hippie with enough money to buy a guitar and get to San Francisco. The Beatles, holy moses were they big. John and Pauls songwriting charmed just about every ear in America, as Rock n Roll was being brought to forefront on the variety shows popping up on TV as the appliance was found in almost every living room. The birth of multimedia meant that you not only had to sound good, you had to look good. This idea was HUGE in the 1980's with the birth of MTV and later, VH1. A whole channel dedicated to music, and the art of the music video.

MTV started the overflow of bands. This overflow really led to the groups getting wilder and wilder, with the long hair, bright costumes, and really the virtuosity on electric guitar. If the Beatles were around in the 1980's they would have hair to their butt, wore leopard print pants and make up to make you kind of think they were girls so they could survive this era of you have 4 minutes of air time to hook teenagers with your crappy song to sell a million albums. GO! This really continued through 90's. If you ask someone to name a great band from the 1980's everyone will disagree. Everyone liked Sinatra, Deano and Sammy Davis Jr in their hayday.

The new millinium really brought this market saturation to a new level, with broadband music sharing. Everybody with a synthesizer and a microphone has a myspace music account, every band has a separate release date for iTunes and stores for hard copies of their music. They put demos on the net. Someone actually showe dme a band that was really good, bu they don't even have an album out yet! Just 4 tracks on myspace.

So with age of oversaturation (notice I'm not saying mediocrity, because there is some really great stuff going on) how is our generation to recognize an icon of their time when we no longer have them? The segregation of genres as well these days can cause a loss of focus. There is no Rock, Rap, Folk, Jazz, Classical anymore. Its not that simple. There are atleast 4 different types of metal these days. I can't tell someone I like Heavy Metal, I have to say Progressive/Symphonic metal. To which they say, "What the hell is that?" And I say, "Groups like Dream Theater, Symphony X." "Who the hell are they?". "They have a great guitarist, drummer, and synth players." "Oh, thats cool." We can't discuss music anymore without leaving one person completely clueless within two sentences. My grandfather though could talk for hours comparing Nat King Cole to Frank Sinatra to my great uncle, Ralph Sigwald, who was a famous singer for awhile in the 1950's. He was known as "The Caruso of the South."

So really this brings up the backside of the question of, does our generation care enough? The only artist I can imagine my generation and people a few years older and younger than me really caring about when his time comes is Michael Jackson. But I hope its for his amazing dancing and his partnership with Quincy Jones that made him bigger than Elvis. Elvis, I always like to think that if he was still alive, he'd have one of those every night shows in Vegas in his own theater. He would atleast make Celine Dion shut up. Maybe she wouldn't even have her own show.

On an unrelated topic, i bought tickets yesterday to go see Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie. ALLLL ABOARD THE CRAZY TRAIN HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

An Oasis amongst the sand

As some of my loyal readers know, I took a little vacation a week or so ago to get my head back together, collect my thoughts and come back swinging. Due to poor preparation, I found myself musically isolated for a week. I was trapped in Ocean City, MD with nothing of quality on the radio, no CDs and my iPod left comfortably on my computer desk. There wasn't even VH1 on the hotel tv system, and the hotel restaurant during breakfast played nothing but canned jazz. I struggled to find any source of rewarding sound, not even expecting music. I cruised every ad I could for hopes of a local bar having a band, an outdoor festival, anything. I found none of these, for i was in a resort city off season.

The sound of the ocean, calming, rewarding, at night with a slight wind almost sang like a soprano to me and charmed me. It relaxed me to the point of my insomnia almost was cured. Coming home and back into the stressful environment of my life, dragging me away from the cliched siren song of the sea, sent my sleep back into peril. It threatened the existance of this blog even. But I am back to writing and I apologize for the delay.

This has been an interesting weekend. I went to a house warming party and was re-united with one Nate Knauer. He was a someone who I kind of looked to for inspiration early in my college music career. He was one of the first people that made actually feel like I belonged with the musicians and that I had ability. One of my first recitals was actually performing a piece of his on his junior composition recital. I had not seen this guy in about 5 years. He immediately remembered that he still had two CDs of mine and the demo recording of my old brass quintet. We talked for a good hour getting caught up on each others musical activities. It was refreshing to know I still had a connection there and someone was genuinely glad to know I was still involved in music.

My quintet has me a bit nervous and concerned. They seem to not be paying attention to the calendar. Acting kind of lax about a gig being in 2 weeks and we have no set list, and a gig in 6 weeks, 4 actual rehearsals before it, that we haven't read any of the music for yet. Today we did read through the new Christmas carols and they really liked them, but again, we were short a member and rehearsal started 2 hours late. It was incredibly frustrating. I tried to delivery my worry and urgency without being a jerk. I don't want to cause the group to break up, which it felt like it could be close to doing.

This past week, the moment I got home, I banged out two new arrangements, when idea of doing Beatles songs came to me. So Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and When I'm 64 will be added to our catalog.

Peace and even triplets to you all.