Lots more one-hit wonders in the world of today…..

You know, I am amazingly and relentlessly dazzled by the celebrity culture that has somehow evolved on our planet….these days, pretty well everybody has a shot at being a rock star. When I first started in the rock music biz back in the mid 1960’s, it was almost impossible to produce any type of quality recording without doing it in a for-real recording studio that had the necessary equipment and expertise….and there was a sense that you needed at least a modicum of expertise to produce a decent record. Mind you, if you could get your hands on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, you could make your own recordings – but it was ridiculously difficult to produce any type of quality product on your own.

Now this meant that there were sort of filters in the music business. They were the big, bad record company executives who were not really all that big and bad in the old days….nothing like today. What these folks did in the old days was somehow assure that the musicians they were dealing with could actually play their instruments and sing and write songs usually with some kind of melody line and who had at least some small bit of talent and ability. These days, when anyone can call themselves a musician and crack off some songs in their basement or their bedroom then pour them out into cyberspace, there are no filters. None in the least. Some will argue that this has democratized the music business and made it fairer. I’d say it’s flooded the whole system with so much crap and corruption that it is really difficult and, actually, just about impossible for the real good stuff to find the surface. It’s still out there but you’ve really got to be willing to search to find it.

The writing business is pretty well the same. Computers have totally and absolutely changed how books and pretty well everything else is written. In the old days, writers didn’t re-write stuff eight times in some vain attempt to produce perfect writing. It’s so easy to re-write and move stuff around in the body of your work these days, that most stuff likely doesn’t end up much the way it started. And I think it’s really sort of destroyed the business. Everybody can be writers these days – just like everybody can be musicians these days. And everybody can be visual artists and everybody can be just about anything else they want in the arts these days.

I’m pretty convinced that there’s not much “art” being produced today that’s going to stand the test of time. I like to look around me at the arts culture and try to imagine what in our contemporary world might last for 500 years like, say, Beethoven or Mozart of Shakespeare or DaVinci or Michelangelo…..maybe I can’t see them in the here and now because I’m too close to the whole scene right now. I think they are likely out there, but it is unlikely their stuff will last because of the way our current celebrity culture and the media work. When a song is released these days and it becomes a big hit, it tends to arc through the heavens like a comet – but then it’s gone. It vanishes just like a comet. And I wonder if the music being released these days by artists like Kanye West and Justin Bieber and Beyonce will be remembered even for a scant 50-60 years like the music of my own youth. I’m not sure the Rolling Stones and the rest of the gang will be remembered for 500 years, but they have made it to 60 years which, I think, is quite an accomplishment in itself.

These days so much new “art” is being released on a constant basis, and everybody thinks they’re an artist, so that most of society is completely overwhelmed and can’t begin to keep up – or even to manage to expose themselves to even a tiny bit of all the stuff flooding out there. So that a vast number of our so-called celebrities and artists will have almost no chance of passing into the world of tomorrows….but will exist only in the world of today. And maybe it was always this way. I get to watching old re-runs of Johnny Carson – an old talk show guy – and I am constantly amazed by the people I see him interviewing who I’ve forgotten all about. But, just for an instant, back in 1968 or 1973, they starred in a hit TV show or a big movie or had a hit record – and they had their proverbial 15 minutes of fame. And then they were gone. And maybe that’s just the way it’s always worked. But I’m guessing it’s way worse today…lots more “one-hit wonders” in this old world these days. Lots more…..