tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216066561826697576.post817121234663667207..comments2023-11-29T00:37:03.771-08:00Comments on Burn Your Hits: Sequestered in Memphis: An Essay about ContextAaron Bergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16241234019286748070noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216066561826697576.post-83643085168515494982008-12-15T16:34:00.000-08:002008-12-15T16:34:00.000-08:00It is a great question you've asked (and the Carl-...It is a great question you've asked (and the Carl-Perkins-popping-out-of-Sun-Studios-for-a-beer way of asking it makes it all the more intriguing). One thing that's worth keeping in mind is that Elvis and Perkins and Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis were a bunch of rednecks--crazy rednecks, yes, but rednecks nonetheless. I imagine that what would have happened when they walked into that bar would be that they would have had a reaction that was, well, reactionary. They would have hated it and thrown shit at the band and tried to start a riot--particularly since they all would have been on Bennies. But I'm sure they would also have been fascinated by the equipment and the sheer sound quality. If Sam Phillips were with them, he'd have got the band drunk and offered them a ridiculously small sum for all their equipment. <BR/><BR/>Now, your second question, it seems to me, is essentially a Hegelian one. The history of music, like history generally, is an ongoing process of dialectic collision, with each genre, artist, style, movement, eventually confronting an antithetical style, movement, etc. The clash of the two results in a synthesis, blah blah blah. Once one style of music becomes a drag, baby, something else comes in to fill the void. I think that, if you were to eliminate all those interim steps, people's reactions would be dramatic. People might not even think of the future music as music at all (witness older generations' regular refrain that "That's not music; that's just noise!"). By the same token, as we all well know, many people form alleged musical likes and dislikes for reasons that have nothing to do with music whatsoever, but instead as a way of expressing their different-ness, their youth, their radicalism, their disapproval of what's come before. Presumably, regardless how "out there" the future music was, there would still be a healthy number of people who would voice their approval (regardless whether, in their heart-of-hearts or ear-of-ears, they actually like the music). For this reason, every generation has music that is radical (whether genuinely or not) for the sake of being radical. However, were one to graph musical evolution, although it would be a sine curve with radical extremes, but there would be a straighter line that represents the synthesis of the extremes. For example, when punk reacted to pop and disco, we saw huge extremes, but The Clash and Talking Heads and Elvis Costello and The Police and other bands were synthetic outgrowths of the collision of those extremes (regardless how Clash fans like to pretend they liked punk because they liked the distinctly non-punk Clash).<BR/><BR/>But, really, you've asked a much more personal question: namely, would I (or any other reader) personally like the music if it were music that we certainly would like were we magically transported to our future selves. I personally think that there is a string that runs through all the music I have genuinely liked since I first became conscious of music at age 8 or 9. Although I generally have pretty broad musical likes, everything I truly enjoy (and here I draw a distinction between "enjoy" and "appreciate" because there's crap I can't stand that, at some intellectual remove, I can understand and appreciate) retains elements of the things that drew me to music in the first place: meaningful and honest lyrics, a genuine melody, relatively sophisticated harmonic structures, including harmony vocals, interesting instrumentation (particularly, but not exclusively, acoustic instruments), a good or at least steady drummer, and production values. The bands I first liked when I was a young kid--Beatles, Stones, Burrito Brothers, Dylan, Beach Boys, Emmylou Harris, Motown, Stax, hell, Elton John--are all echoed in some way in the music I've liked since and that I like today. Admittedly, these "requirements" have kept me from enjoying lots of music lots of people other than me enjoy (for example, things like Red Hot Chili Peppers, which I do not permit on any stereo in my presence, or Nickleback or the vast majority of hip-hop). <BR/><BR/>I am absolutely sure that, had I heard "Two" by Ryan Adams or "On Automatic" by Michael Penn or "One Foot In The Grave" by the Pernice Brothers or "The New Year" by Death Cab or "Is There A Ghost" by Band of Horses in 1972, I would have liked all of them. On this basis, because I can expect that, 35 years from now, there will be music that contains those same elements and that I will enjoy, I would enjoy that same music were I to hear it today. By the same token, I am quite sure that I would hate Marilyn Manson regardless when I heard it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216066561826697576.post-71660198116234775062008-12-14T23:20:00.000-08:002008-12-14T23:20:00.000-08:00aaron, you just blew my mind. doesn't help th...aaron, you just blew my mind. doesn't help that it's already fried from studying wills & trusts, but now i've got to think about whether my present self will like music that my future self loves? fuck man... fuck...<BR/><BR/>best answer, i doubt it. i hated rap when i was a young teenager, and now there is quite a bit of it that i absolutely love. however, my hatred of country music remains intact. go figure...<BR/><BR/>here's a question for you though. there are a billion genres now that completely didn't exist 20 years ago. for instance, i'm pretty sure there wasn't emo in 1988. i could be wrong, but who knows. so my question is what kind of genres will exist 20 years from now? will there be so many different varieties that the word genre ceases to have any meaning? what separates acid emo punk from acid emo speed death metal? and the big "if" is will those people still want to cut themselves...Adamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11858514202768293051noreply@blogger.com