Music for Rent...Sort Of

Do you remember the song playing in the background when you had your first kiss? Presumably it was something sweet, eg "Summer Breeze" by Seals and Croft, or "Oops I Did It Again" by Britney Spears, and not something awful like "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot or "F*ck Like A Beast" by everyone's favorite, WASP. Memories of our youth, whether our first kiss, the first time we had sexual relations (with someone else present, natch) or the first time we drove (without someone else present), are littered with the by-products of musical creativity.

These days, post Live-Aid, Woodstock (1967), Woodstock II and "We Are The World," music has evolved into something far different than what it once was. When Willie Nelson sang "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys," what he really should have been singing was "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be recording artists." Willie built an amazing career, wrote great songs, and his legacy will be that he pissed it all away and owes the IRS the clothes in which he'll be buried.

The spirit of freedom and social responsibility that spawned countless numbers of socially aware bands, like Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Grateful Dead and The Byrds -- not to mention those groups/performers that began commenting and indulging within the drug culture that grew from LSD and other psychedelic fare -- was a mirror for the late 1960's both here and across the pond in the UK. The Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen" was a sarcastic but relevant look at established ruling class(es) and didn't as much crave anarchy as much as change. And bands like The Who and The Rolling Stones did plenty to flip the established classes (ie parents) the proverbial bird. There are few albums which more flawlessly portray self-aware youth than The Who's Quadrophenia and Pink Floyd's The Wall, and the struggles with adolescence, adulthood, parents, drugs, fitting in and belonging to something.

The 70's further entrenched both The Who and The Rolling Stones as socially aware; the biggest rock band of the 70's, Led Zeppelin, concentrated more on love, sex and freedom than anything in particular. The Who, however, looked at social change and society, and the Stones focused on sex, drugs and rock and roll. The 70's whirred by in a blur and landed square in the 80's.

MTV was like, I later opined, a bunch of kids buying their own candy store and putting the model on its ear; a bunch of young adult music fans created the network and thought "Wouldn't it be great if we could SEE the music?" It made sense; TV and cable was in every house, and selling advertising would make radio obsolete (or so The Buggles thought in their hit "Video Killed The Radio Star"), and to a large degree, MTV did. Seeing the music revolutionized the music industry, changed who could and who couldn't be a star, and realigned the priorities of musicians throughout the world.

To wit: would Madonna, Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera be household names if not for music videos and MTV's constant barrage of skin and celebrity? Not likely. How a performer looks is more important than their level of talent (Ashlee Simpson, anyone?) and this isn't even disputable anymore. The use of lip-syncing as an industry tool was once as guarded a secret as the "scripted" nature of professional wrestling. But in our post-2000 world of jaded cynicism, the secret is out -- and the real news is that nobody even gives a shit. Whether it's Ashlee Simpson or Milli Vanilli, performers without talent is as much a shock and a disappointment as seeing Madonna french kiss Britney Spears is tittilating.

So where is this all headed, beside the toilet? Music videos have been rated R (Madonna's Justify My Love and Duran Duran's Girls on Film), music itself requires parental warning labels because the more prurient among recording artists describe what they'd like to do behind closed doors. And previous pioneers in music like the Stones and The Who, bands that interspersed vulgarity as an accent as opposed to the focal point of their music, are these days considered tame. Whether these newer bands are going for "street cred" or are simply too limited in their vocabulary to be bothered, the envelope is being pushed -- for better or worse. If nothing else, this part of the discussion is best exemplified by the movie Old School, in which the wedding band sings an Air Supply song and makes sure to infuse a few extra eye-opening lyrics...what this taught me was that if Air Supply covers can be vulgarified, anything can.

The modern incantation of the music industry is file-sharing and the sale of music. These two items are not opposites; the first, ie the advent of Napster, Gnutella, Limeshare and digital duplication of CD's, means that until the music industry provides either copy-protected media (not likely) or product that demands purchase (possible), this phenomenon will continue. The recently-released U2 album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, was released on November 23rd, but it was "leaked" all over the Internet up to a month prior to the official date. The band was so irked by this that they contemplated changing the release date. The internet has taken music from its owner and its master, namely, large record companies, and put it in the hands of whoever has a large hard drive, a speedy internet connection and some free time. Apple Computer established the "iTunes Store," a web-based download service which, for a dollar or so a song, you can purchase whatever you can download; play it back on your PC, your iPod, or burn it onto a CD if you so choose. Essentially, you pay a dollar for the right to listen to a song whenever you want: this, of course, is an improvement over spending $17 for a CD with only one listenable track. Music "rental" has its pros and cons: everything fits on a hard drive as opposed to in a closet or a shelf. But if that hard drive crashes -- and it will, it's just a question of when -- it's gone.

The "sale" of music, in my definition, isn't akin to spending a dollar to buy Milkshake or some other two-and-a-half-minute celebration of ineptitude, but instead the phenomenon that, every time you turn on the television, you're more apt to hear your favorite music than you are some random jingle about curing your hemorrhoids in the key of C. Next time you see a Cadillac commercial, lament, as do I, the fact that Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll seems to be that company's new mantra. Or how about Aerosmith's Dream On selling (or at least trying to sell) the Buick Lacrosse? About the only decent meshing of brand and music was Nike's use of The Beatles' Revolution. And that was as sacrilegious, if not moreso, than Led Zeppelin uniting with Cadillac or Aerosmith teaming up with Buick. Considering Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page are nearly (if not past) 60 years old, the Cadillac move isn't that far off; but Aerosmith and Buick? I could see Aerosmith hawking Lamborghini or Ferrari; but once Buick moves on, perhaps Steven Tyler and Joe Perry might want to offer "Same Old Song and Dance" to the makers of Fixodent. It's a long while since either Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith were "young" -- but seeing artists who could (and who STILL could) fill an arena after less than an hour of ticket sales, it's pathetic to see (and hear) these artists selling their creative souls. And knowing Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open The Door" is the theme for the Christmas season at one of Target, K-Mart or JC Penney (as if there are differences among said retailers) is, for me, the sour cherry on the past-expiration cake.

The tag-line for The Rolling Stones, prior to being self-hailed as "The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band," was "Would you let your daughter date a Rolling Stone?" These days, they should ask their fans "Would you let your grandmother date a Rolling Stone?"

Lamenting the death of the past and the bleakness of the future isn't my intent herein; however, it does disappoint me that the future of American music is a smattering of performers like N'Sync, Britney Spears, Robbie Williams, Jennifer Lopez and a roulette wheel of one-hit wonders. How many of today's artists will be viable performers in five years? How many will we even remember? How many will we want to remember? Musicians age, and our tastes change; ten years ago, Pearl Jam joined with Nirvana to voice the angst of youth. In another ten years, there will be another act to share that angst. What worries me the most is that teen angst will be sponsored by K-Mart, sold to the masses in the aisles at Wal-Mart, and divied out on a per-minute basis by Nike. And as technology improves, perhaps telepathic sharing of music will replace radio, and merely thinking of a favorite song -- say, Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll -- will incur a dollar fee. Unless, of course, it's in a Cadillac dealership and you're buying.