Sonic Youth

Nobody has really stopped to think about the impact the MP3 has had on the music business. While college students may have embraced the compressed file format with open arms allowing them to up and download free audio files, the effect it has had on the modern music industry is robust. What possible negative consequence could the MP3 imposed on the recording industry? Less than a decade ago recording studios were responsible for quality sound. Everyone knew without a great sound no one was going to want to listen to your music much less buy it. Music after all is sound. There are aesthetics that use cacophonous sound in achieving a desired result. The Avant-Garde in the genre of jazz music pushed the envelope of sound to this extreme. To this day many people don’t get it. They don’t understand why Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and Cecil Taylor remain viable artists and trendsetters in the field of jazz music. The Avant-Garde abstracts traditional processes in music without abandoning their structure. It also uses the sheer power of sound as a device itself. While the organization of the music may seem obscured to some listeners, if you allow your senses to be effected this is no longer a requirement. Many jazz artists have said you don’t have to understand complex harmony to be able to enjoy their music. You just need to be open to being effected by the music emotionally. If you don’t allow yourself to be moved by the music, than it loses it purpose. This element is what is absent from today’s pop music. Either by choice or consequences this element has been removed from the music like an empty shelf in a stocked cupboard. Why would anyone want to remove the key element that defines art? Is it that we don’t think pop music should contain tenants of art? Is it because the industry doesn’t want the responsibility of having to deal with music at the artistic level? Is it that the music industry has devolved to a level rendering them incapable of being artistic? Artistic music doesn’t necessarily have to be non-commercial. Andy Warhol defined pop art in modern America. He showed art can be appealing and thoughtful without being overbearing and high brow. Many consider the music of J.S. Bach such, because it uses the subject of the worshipping of God as its main theme. Bach was a church organist, and during his era church was a major component of society. Some feel his music is not approachable, because the loftiness of God is intimidating. Certainly to music theorists species counterpoint has always carried this stigma. It is a regimen of intense proportions and rules. Pop simply may be the diluting of such content to reach the common person. In doing so if the idea of feeling or effecting the listener in some way has been lost, what viability does the music retain? Does it not must become a shallow device for making money? I don’t think most musicians have ever succumbed to such a low level where they were not concerned about presenting ideas through music. The venue of music has always been that, a platform upon which you can express ideas. The notion that music somehow has been reduced to a level of something else is unacceptable. Who did this? There can be no logical explanation of this phenomenon, much like there is no logical explanation for the acts of Extreme Islam. It is undefined. It only can be a product of ignorance, selfishness, and self promotion. A recent personal music experience can serve as an example of this shallow behavior. Upon embarking a particular vessel for work, the environment eerily was reminiscent of the movie “Night of the Living Dead.” Instead of encountering live, breathing, feeling human beings, I encountered an army of clones, of seeming brain-washed droids demanding your reciprocation of their army-like behavioral mannerisms. Little thoughtful reflection, thinking, or feeling was to be found with interest in finding new experiences. Instead there was callus, rude, and aggressive behavior instigated by the rote indoctrination of principles of which to be mindlessly followed. The clincher was this army was defensive, mounting an offense to defeat any aberration from their norm. There was a threshold of existence that difficultly would be broken, subconsciously representing a blind allegiance to a sectarian-like interest found in Extreme Islam. Survival reliant upon religious-like fanaticism has spread to many cultures, effecting the way people live and behave. If the world continues to fail in providing proper models of civilized behavior, surely we will succumb to the evil forces of Jihad. Increasingly the mis-education and therefore controlling of our youth is serving a nihilist philosophy, being propagated by people unknowing of their own flaws. What mass tool could be spreading this ideology? One only has to look at the TV screen to find an answer. The “reality” TV program is extreme in that it negates contemplative thought and wisdom for the immediate effect of shock. After years of influence upon the American public, children are beginning to beleive this behavior is appropriate for everyday life. This would explain the primitive mindless pursuit of immediate gratification, because we are not investing in anything to promote their welfare in the future. Unlike the “baby boomer” generation which was transfixed with accumulating money, “generation jihad” is only concerned with today because ultimately and extremely there may be no tomorrow. With over fifty percent of Americans believing the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur in their lifetime, there must be sufficient instability in the political world to merit this extreme behavior. We have all ready lost the “War of Terror,” because the roots of our country have been violated. Until a more educated generation dispenses with the childish pursuits of video gaming, cell phoning, and “behaving badly” on television, there will be few viable examples of civil life left to lead society. Are apartheid, civil war, sectarian violence, and mass genocide destined to come to America? The creation of a Department of Homeland Security was one small step in the direction of a police state. If we do not continue to be the country we once were, America is destined to become every other third world country. It’s too bad the guillotine never made it to North America, because the thought of the French Revolution should frighten the wealthy-elite into realizing someone must be responsible for the common man. We are created equal. Music throughout history has provided reason, wisdom, history, and foreshadowing. With this aesthetic and a sonic platform upon which to perform, music can provide solstice from unwanted movements such as Islamic Extremism. The advent of the MP3 effectively rendered impotent the art of music, because its compression scheme dispenses with the very medium necessary to effect its listeners. It’s funny how broadband has robbed music of its power. The bandwidth of music has been reduced with the MP3, in favor of a broadband of communications ability. How can it be that the FCC “broadbanded” the electro-magnetic spectrum to include microwave frequencies for communication, but the bandwidth of music became reduced? The traditional effective means of broadcast of full spectrum music is being abandoned for novelty! What purpose can reducing the sonic impact of music to a communicator-sized MP3 player serve? Why has there been a marked trend toward reducing the size of electronic components when size really does matter? Like the recording industry have manufacturers become too cheap to continue producing quality audio components? How can a deck-of-cards-sized music player come close to replicating the experience of live music, when formerly it took a symphony orchestra, a rock band, and a host of high fidelity audio components? Not to far in the distant past music connousieurs took pride in assembling stereo systems that rivaled NASA control panels. For such a system to provide audio enjoyment, the environment in which you listened must be quiet. That means your home must be resistant to infrasonic pollution. American homeowners must not have the money to purchase the complex systems of noise abatement necessary to shield their living environments from infrasonic noise. One particular manufacturer on the web offers a complex array of sheet steel, cinder blocks, and acoustical treatment. With this in mind it is easier to “retreat” to a contained environment such as an iPod and earbuds. In the early years of television monophonic sound was used exclusively to convey dialog and music. Many people to this day prefer and enjoy monophonic sound, because it is resistant to the phase-shifting caused by low frequency modulation. It seems for a variety of reasons quality music and their counterpart systems of conveyance have been out-sourced for a seemingly more effective means of listening to music. Just as pop music has taken over the existing airwaves, an instinct of survival has necessitated the development of alternative methods of music listening pleasure. In the process many of the core components of the power of music have been lost. Simply put without bandwidth, the ability to recreate these diverse frequencies, and a quiet environment in which to listen, the traditional method of enjoying music has been lost. Our bodies can no longer be “moved” by waves of quality sound, but rather our brains are indoctrinated by sound without a purpose. The consequent result is a populace of music listeners that are denied sensory reactions to the subject matter. We have been taught to “un-feel.” Feeling music is no longer cool, because the onslaught of ensuing feelings modulated by pollution are too complex to fathom. Hollywood celebrities have used the acronym “F-I-N-E” to sum up their now current emotional states. “Freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.” If these are the choices our current environment have provided us, then it is plausible our youthful generation began searching for and finding their own choices. To allow an underprivileged and needy generation to “school” America in their emotional choices is ludicrous. It defeats the whole purpose of education, the experiencing of the gamut of emotions through music, from which they can draw their own conclusions. In this way the MP3 has become a stumbling block for the musical education of America. As a result everyone in the food chain is suffering, including the record labels, consumers, and artists. The MP3 and the internet are effective tools for exchanging and marketing music, but in the process the very purpose of music is being lost.