We cannot blame everything on the free streaming of music in the jungles of streaming services though it’s stating the obvious that all this everything that’s often literally nothing has devalued music horribly.
Nile Rodgers says no modern record label would give David Bowie a chance in cut-throat streaming climate: “Those days are truly over”
Perhaps, more importantly, there’s a need to retrace our steps and see where and how and why Big Picture creativity has lost its importance, and with it, the incentive for many to create, something that has evaporated the need for creative product in all its many forms.
Was it just one thing that has caused this tsunami effect, or is it that many of us have been too distracted, and haven’t managed things that matter better for decades while forgetting pretty much everything about teamwork, something which has always been the foundation for making good things happen?
Watching the “Get Back” series, some of us saw four friends who were pretty average musicians in Hamburg and Liverpool become the most successful and creative music garden variety in the world who eventually came apart at the seams.
Maybe they had done all they could as the Beatles and needed to go their own separate ways and create new songs of their own while keeping the door slightly ajar to get back together when the stars were better aligned?
What all of us can do these days is look at the band’s legacy and everything they did when still in their early twenties. This was before the band possibly suffered from creative fatigue and menopause a few short years later and disbanded.
For those of us who grew up and down with John, Paul, George and Ringo (and producer George Martin), all they made come together during various stages of their magical mystery tours, technology has made these musical side trips readily available. And by revisiting them, there’s always something new to see and hear.
And learn.
The music is a magic elixir. It’s also extremely inspiring. How many bother to visit this music that’s available to listen to for free- and learn? Hmmmm.
For however long we’re “there” on Abbey Road or lost in Revolver and Rubber Soul and bass lines, guitar riffs, harmonies and melodies and false endings, everything in the world is alright and that nothing is impossible.
There’s always a burst of positivity fuelled by passion and honesty.
At least to me, what’s gone walkies is this passion- this important and burning, yearning inner belief in the inner light that makes one veer well away from not following the herd, but instead, following one’s own god-given instincts.
How many times have I wanted to just seek refuge in this place- this completely honest place where there’s nothing to hide- and be around evolution and revolution and leave that helter skelter world of going around the mulberry bush with the Nowhere Man to others?
As George Harrison once warned in song, beware of darkness- and maybe that’s it- too much darkness, too little light, and too much of whatever often leads to a weird combination of quicksand and terminal negativity awash in toxic waters.
As the song says, we are prisoners here of our own device, or to be more precise, technological devices, where the end game often sees the tail wagging the dog.
This is something that always, always, always reminds me of what was drummed into me almost a lifetime ago by the brilliant adman and my mentor Keith Reinhard: The Technology Is Not The Idea.
Keith also reminded us creatives way back then to Break The Pattern.
This “rule” makes me wonder about things like why we need to hear a bluesy version of “White Christmas” by Eric Clapton just because the Christmas season will soon be upon us- and with another new year to celebrate a few days later?
Isn’t it all rather formulaic and a wee bit corny?
Didn’t we learn anything during those lockdown years when many of us promised ourselves that if we ever broke free from that vaccine bubble of fear the good Dr Fauci how we would change everything in our lives forever- and create a new abnormal?
Why must we listen to “Christmas music” just because it’s Christmas?
I went through that hellish ritual when married and which made me more grumpy than the Grinch as it reeked of quasi religious shallowness and do-gooder hypocrisy.
It’s kinda like being with those who might be nice enough and maybe those you have known for decades, but who you now find to be terminally boring and with nothing to feed your head other than gibbering flatulence with a side order of fries.
What we often forget is that we’re all different and with various ways of looking at the world and knowing that different ideas are needed to fill in the blanks and potholes.
It’s about not reaching for another brick in the wall.
It’s about tearing down walls and building new bridges.
