THE FAB FOUR / FAB FIVE?
Hoping For A Musical Renaissance
My garage band from back in the day. We called ourselves Derek & The Fancy Lads? ... I think ... or maybe I was just fantasizing all of this during the life-changing weekend of the Monterey Pop Festival in June 16-18, 1967 ... memory is hazy. But seriously, consider the impact of all the brilliantly talented rock, pop, and soul music visionaries of the 60s, 70s, and even early 80s? Not just the Beatles who I grew up with and who are the absolute gold standard for all time. But there were so many other great musical artists whose music still has had such an enduring effect on us ... Which brings up the question: what happened since? Why haven't there been any truly great new artists to emerge since the early to mid-80s!?
Flash forward to the present: instead of inspired, stirring, uplifting rock and pop and soul music, we today have the big three major record labels of Universal, BMG, and Warner, along with the "production companies" that create many of the rap and pop acts, along with the overpriced concert venue hucksters and ticketing companies and their scalping affiliates and their enabling clickbait-seeking social media companies like FraudBook and InstaCram ... brute-forcing down our throats all the hip hop, tween pop, and faux generic non-melodic "rock" our clueless American culture can assimilate.
This is "music" performed often by helicopter-mommied millenial poseurs, illiterate ghetto street thugs with Casios-drum machines-and-rhyming-dictionaries, or selfie-obsessed wanna be pop tart divas. Performers generally with zero sense of melody, harmony, or songwriting skills. Flavor-of-the-month interchangeable zeroes listened to by the tone-deaf melodically-challenged fear-of-missing-out screen-addicted masses. And this is said with all due respect!
Various experts have broken down some of the "problems" with modern day pop and hip hop that make this "music" so unlistenable. Some of the critiques :
1) same tempo throughout the song without rhythmic variation as it is done to a click track. Boring and repetitive!
2) repetitive sounds throughout (808 drum machine bass, clap and snare and "cicada" sounds). Boring and repetitive!
3) minimal amount of chord changes - usually 3 chords at most - sometimes even less. Boring and repetitive!
4) songs never modulate into another key, which perpetuates the boredom. Boring and repetitive!
5) lack of volume dynamics - the only volume change is "additive" by the addition of instrument and additional recorded tracks and not by playing individual "instruments" softer or louder (this is often related to the fact that rappers can't play and instrument and bring in loops and don't even know how to vary the dynamics of these sounds on the computer.)
6) simple and repetitive and nursury rhyme types of melodies. The lack of melody in pop and hip hop is an embarassment. Nursery rhyme types of melodies are an upgrade. At least nursery rhymes are memorable and catchy!
7) "AutoTune" digital recording software plug-in. AutoTune has become a standard "effect" in pop music - some say a song doesn't sound like "pop" without it. (AutoTune is the name of the synthetic vocal sound effect first heard in a Cher record "Believe" from 2003.)
8) A related problem to AutoTune is "Melodyne" pitch correction. This is overused and it sanitizes the song and tries to "perfect" all vocals and instruments. The result is even more of a "fake, synthetic, contrived" sound.
9) And in general, the ridiculously lame lyrics and dumb lyrical images - (eating linguini, driving a Lamborghini, "hanging with the bro's, banging the ho's," flashing the bling, cash register ring - whatever. This is the kind of simplistic junk obtained from any rhyming dictionary is one can't think of the words on their own.) Then again, what kind of lyrics or "music" does one expect from someone who dropped out of 5th grade?
But do not panic. Despite all of the above sad musical frustrations, all may not be lost. Things may be stirring. A re-awakening could be developing. With recent Covid19 societal and cultural disruptions, maybe we are at the edge of a musical revolution? A Renaissance as old ways and old institutions and old habits are rearranged? They say the Italian Renaissance followed the Bubonic Plague. I don't know - I wasn't invited didn't go to the party.
There is also the "glass half full" view. One strong argument to keep in mind: "Rock" actually never really went away - the "rock" genre at least is still hanging in there - it remains the most popular musical art form in the world based on recent publicized analysis of streaming statistics and concert attendance. Sure its a vestige of the baby boomer generation but it also has appeal for all age groups - and there is an increase in covers of classic rock songs being recorded and released.
Will the Covid19 shake-up will create a renaissance of good melodic new music? Clearing out the past garbage like a flood? Probably not, but we can hope. Meanwhile, live music venues are really in danger of going extinct until the pandemic is under control, vaccines are developed and successfully distributed, and herd immunity develops.
On the other hand, perhaps a music renaissance is wishful thinking and wishful drinking. Don't forget that this decline has been doing on a surprisingly long time. Hip hop fans have PTSD from 25+ years (35+ ?) of this junk being in the "culture" - kids since toddlerhood have been routinely hypnotized and lobotomized, having grown up with this stuff for so long - that by now they know of nothing else. There are now parents who grew up with hip hop having 2nd generation hip hop listeners! Two generations in musical limbo and a musical coma, not being aware of any alternatives. Programmed. Sadly, in some ways they can't help it - it is all they have known since birth. Do fish realize they are in water? And an added problem: many kids today are incurious and have zero desire to explore any great music that preceded them.
Which is another irony - all the music from the past is at their fingertips yet they get sold the new junk? And if a new major musical talent were to emerge today would anybody even pay attention? I'd like to think that great talent would breakthrough but who knows. Have you seen any great talents emerge in the last decade? (2010-2020) Last two decades? (2000-2020). Last three decades? (1990-2020). Go ahead name names! See - there are none. A few who looked promising but where are they now? Coasting on one great album at best? Or one great song? And some of the great rock and pop and soul artists I can think of from the early 90's broke up because the culture had changed after the corporate hair metal era of the late 80's and grunge became big. Melody was out for a while. (The only great grunge-era band in my opinion was Alice In Chains).
Anyway, I've heard some writers even claim that today's "country music" is essentially rock music from the 70's with the added tropes of "trucks, booze, redneck lifestyle, the South, patriotism, relationship regrets, drunken nostalgia, blah blah blah etc. I could not disagree more. I find today's country music to be so incredibly contrived, simplistic, and predictably vapid and boring. It all sounds so alike. No wonder - it is all written by the same people and recorded by the same Nashville session musicians. It is a caricature of itself. A bunch of poseurs in cowboy hats. So forget that argument. An argument from people who know zero of music from the 70s.
Meanwhile, where is the encouragement in today's culture for a new major rock or pop music or soul music talent to emerge? Would anybody even notice if a new Beatles, Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, ELO, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Moody Blues, David Bowie, Cream, Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane suddenly appeared? Or a Smoky Robinson, Four Tops, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? Some say it is such an uphill battle today for a melodic artist to fight the musical borg hip hop hive mind.
Still, those of us remaining who know how vital and transformative rock and pop and soul music once was can semi-console ourselves with the fact that at least the entire history of rock and pop music is now streamable. It is easily accessed on our smart phones or iPads or desktops. So much to choose from at our fingertips. Lest we forget! It really is magical and miraculous. What a phenomenally wonderfully great era of technology we are in. And again it is ironic that now have the technology to access great music - and to create great music inexpensively with home recording technology - yet sadly the new music being created and foisted upon the masses for the most part is so unlistenable. The only thing that the record labels and mass media are selling today is that the music is "new." But new is not enough.
Obviously there is the issue of the "signal to noise" problem - too many artists and too many genres and too much music to sort through. Who has the time? Too much "content." Ironically we don't have the record label or radio gatekeepers anymore. Do we now sort of miss them? As much as we resented record labels and CD rip off prices, labels did serve a function in sorting out the junk! And record stores were fun to go to! Back then record labels kept the marginal stuff from even being recorded - and yes, some great music never reached us - there are many examples - but often the really great stuff still rose at least to the level of our awareness. Of course in the pre-streaming LP and CD days, we might have been aware of some artists but maybe never got to hear their music because it was so expensive and not well distributed and not to be heard on the radio. One could not easily "sample" like one can do with streaming services today. How many LP's or CD's could the typical person buy in the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s to keep up? What a sad irony! There was so much great stuff we all missed back then. Today at least we have the technology to look back and explore the past. Perhaps there will be a future of newly curated music presented by DJ's on various streaming services - like in the old days of radio. I hear it is being done somewhere but I am so disheartened by our current musical environment that I haven't bothered to find it on Spotify or Apple Music or Amazon Music Unlimited or Sirius. I've never heard the DJ's but perhaps don't trust the taste of the wannabe "tastemakers." Still DJ's do seem like a good alternative to help curate music if we can find DJ's we like. If this is even possible with the many niches we have today! Again, too much content!
Back to the disappointing music present in our culture: Today, with Covid19, what will become of all those retail stores and restaurants and bars that blasted dance disco-pop and faux rock and hip hop to the assembled customers in their establishments for so many years? Customers aren't showing up at these establishments anymore with Covid19 and lockdowns and social distancing. As if those patrons ever actually wanted to hear that "music" to begin with! I mean how smart is it to have your in-store music revolve around the tastes of 12 or 13-year-old pubescent teenagers? What were these businesses thinking? Catering their music to the lowest common tween denominator? Who informed restaurant and store owners that customers really want to hear tween pop, faux rock, and hip hop music? Oh well, many of these restaurants and retail businesses will soon be gone, victims of the pandemic and social distancing precautions and increased reliance on Amazon and InstaCart and burgeoning home delivery services during the massive economic reshuffling. Some like me might have the tendency to say good riddance and just as well but it is a major loss with lots of pain and economic adjustment.
Let's hope during this wrecking ball Covid19 era that somehow we get a musical renaissance. Today's new music can't get any worse than the low it has already reached in our culture. Nowhere to go but up. End of Rant.
~DM
My garage band from back in the day. We called ourselves Derek & The Fancy Lads? ... I think ... or maybe I was just fantasizing all of this during the life-changing weekend of the Monterey Pop Festival in June 16-18, 1967 ... memory is hazy. But seriously, consider the impact of all the brilliantly talented rock, pop, and soul music visionaries of the 60s, 70s, and even early 80s? Not just the Beatles who I grew up with and who are the absolute gold standard for all time. But there were so many other great musical artists whose music still has had such an enduring effect on us ... Which brings up the question: what happened since? Why haven't there been any truly great new artists to emerge since the early to mid-80s!?
Flash forward to the present: instead of inspired, stirring, uplifting rock and pop and soul music, we today have the big three major record labels of Universal, BMG, and Warner, along with the "production companies" that create many of the rap and pop acts, along with the overpriced concert venue hucksters and ticketing companies and their scalping affiliates and their enabling clickbait-seeking social media companies like FraudBook and InstaCram ... brute-forcing down our throats all the hip hop, tween pop, and faux generic non-melodic "rock" our clueless American culture can assimilate.
This is "music" performed often by helicopter-mommied millenial poseurs, illiterate ghetto street thugs with Casios-drum machines-and-rhyming-dictionaries, or selfie-obsessed wanna be pop tart divas. Performers generally with zero sense of melody, harmony, or songwriting skills. Flavor-of-the-month interchangeable zeroes listened to by the tone-deaf melodically-challenged fear-of-missing-out screen-addicted masses. And this is said with all due respect!
Various experts have broken down some of the "problems" with modern day pop and hip hop that make this "music" so unlistenable. Some of the critiques :
1) same tempo throughout the song without rhythmic variation as it is done to a click track. Boring and repetitive!
2) repetitive sounds throughout (808 drum machine bass, clap and snare and "cicada" sounds). Boring and repetitive!
3) minimal amount of chord changes - usually 3 chords at most - sometimes even less. Boring and repetitive!
4) songs never modulate into another key, which perpetuates the boredom. Boring and repetitive!
5) lack of volume dynamics - the only volume change is "additive" by the addition of instrument and additional recorded tracks and not by playing individual "instruments" softer or louder (this is often related to the fact that rappers can't play and instrument and bring in loops and don't even know how to vary the dynamics of these sounds on the computer.)
6) simple and repetitive and nursury rhyme types of melodies. The lack of melody in pop and hip hop is an embarassment. Nursery rhyme types of melodies are an upgrade. At least nursery rhymes are memorable and catchy!
7) "AutoTune" digital recording software plug-in. AutoTune has become a standard "effect" in pop music - some say a song doesn't sound like "pop" without it. (AutoTune is the name of the synthetic vocal sound effect first heard in a Cher record "Believe" from 2003.)
8) A related problem to AutoTune is "Melodyne" pitch correction. This is overused and it sanitizes the song and tries to "perfect" all vocals and instruments. The result is even more of a "fake, synthetic, contrived" sound.
9) And in general, the ridiculously lame lyrics and dumb lyrical images - (eating linguini, driving a Lamborghini, "hanging with the bro's, banging the ho's," flashing the bling, cash register ring - whatever. This is the kind of simplistic junk obtained from any rhyming dictionary is one can't think of the words on their own.) Then again, what kind of lyrics or "music" does one expect from someone who dropped out of 5th grade?
But do not panic. Despite all of the above sad musical frustrations, all may not be lost. Things may be stirring. A re-awakening could be developing. With recent Covid19 societal and cultural disruptions, maybe we are at the edge of a musical revolution? A Renaissance as old ways and old institutions and old habits are rearranged? They say the Italian Renaissance followed the Bubonic Plague. I don't know - I wasn't invited didn't go to the party.
There is also the "glass half full" view. One strong argument to keep in mind: "Rock" actually never really went away - the "rock" genre at least is still hanging in there - it remains the most popular musical art form in the world based on recent publicized analysis of streaming statistics and concert attendance. Sure its a vestige of the baby boomer generation but it also has appeal for all age groups - and there is an increase in covers of classic rock songs being recorded and released.
Will the Covid19 shake-up will create a renaissance of good melodic new music? Clearing out the past garbage like a flood? Probably not, but we can hope. Meanwhile, live music venues are really in danger of going extinct until the pandemic is under control, vaccines are developed and successfully distributed, and herd immunity develops.
On the other hand, perhaps a music renaissance is wishful thinking and wishful drinking. Don't forget that this decline has been doing on a surprisingly long time. Hip hop fans have PTSD from 25+ years (35+ ?) of this junk being in the "culture" - kids since toddlerhood have been routinely hypnotized and lobotomized, having grown up with this stuff for so long - that by now they know of nothing else. There are now parents who grew up with hip hop having 2nd generation hip hop listeners! Two generations in musical limbo and a musical coma, not being aware of any alternatives. Programmed. Sadly, in some ways they can't help it - it is all they have known since birth. Do fish realize they are in water? And an added problem: many kids today are incurious and have zero desire to explore any great music that preceded them.
Which is another irony - all the music from the past is at their fingertips yet they get sold the new junk? And if a new major musical talent were to emerge today would anybody even pay attention? I'd like to think that great talent would breakthrough but who knows. Have you seen any great talents emerge in the last decade? (2010-2020) Last two decades? (2000-2020). Last three decades? (1990-2020). Go ahead name names! See - there are none. A few who looked promising but where are they now? Coasting on one great album at best? Or one great song? And some of the great rock and pop and soul artists I can think of from the early 90's broke up because the culture had changed after the corporate hair metal era of the late 80's and grunge became big. Melody was out for a while. (The only great grunge-era band in my opinion was Alice In Chains).
Anyway, I've heard some writers even claim that today's "country music" is essentially rock music from the 70's with the added tropes of "trucks, booze, redneck lifestyle, the South, patriotism, relationship regrets, drunken nostalgia, blah blah blah etc. I could not disagree more. I find today's country music to be so incredibly contrived, simplistic, and predictably vapid and boring. It all sounds so alike. No wonder - it is all written by the same people and recorded by the same Nashville session musicians. It is a caricature of itself. A bunch of poseurs in cowboy hats. So forget that argument. An argument from people who know zero of music from the 70s.
Meanwhile, where is the encouragement in today's culture for a new major rock or pop music or soul music talent to emerge? Would anybody even notice if a new Beatles, Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, ELO, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Moody Blues, David Bowie, Cream, Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane suddenly appeared? Or a Smoky Robinson, Four Tops, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? Some say it is such an uphill battle today for a melodic artist to fight the musical borg hip hop hive mind.
Still, those of us remaining who know how vital and transformative rock and pop and soul music once was can semi-console ourselves with the fact that at least the entire history of rock and pop music is now streamable. It is easily accessed on our smart phones or iPads or desktops. So much to choose from at our fingertips. Lest we forget! It really is magical and miraculous. What a phenomenally wonderfully great era of technology we are in. And again it is ironic that now have the technology to access great music - and to create great music inexpensively with home recording technology - yet sadly the new music being created and foisted upon the masses for the most part is so unlistenable. The only thing that the record labels and mass media are selling today is that the music is "new." But new is not enough.
Obviously there is the issue of the "signal to noise" problem - too many artists and too many genres and too much music to sort through. Who has the time? Too much "content." Ironically we don't have the record label or radio gatekeepers anymore. Do we now sort of miss them? As much as we resented record labels and CD rip off prices, labels did serve a function in sorting out the junk! And record stores were fun to go to! Back then record labels kept the marginal stuff from even being recorded - and yes, some great music never reached us - there are many examples - but often the really great stuff still rose at least to the level of our awareness. Of course in the pre-streaming LP and CD days, we might have been aware of some artists but maybe never got to hear their music because it was so expensive and not well distributed and not to be heard on the radio. One could not easily "sample" like one can do with streaming services today. How many LP's or CD's could the typical person buy in the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s to keep up? What a sad irony! There was so much great stuff we all missed back then. Today at least we have the technology to look back and explore the past. Perhaps there will be a future of newly curated music presented by DJ's on various streaming services - like in the old days of radio. I hear it is being done somewhere but I am so disheartened by our current musical environment that I haven't bothered to find it on Spotify or Apple Music or Amazon Music Unlimited or Sirius. I've never heard the DJ's but perhaps don't trust the taste of the wannabe "tastemakers." Still DJ's do seem like a good alternative to help curate music if we can find DJ's we like. If this is even possible with the many niches we have today! Again, too much content!
Back to the disappointing music present in our culture: Today, with Covid19, what will become of all those retail stores and restaurants and bars that blasted dance disco-pop and faux rock and hip hop to the assembled customers in their establishments for so many years? Customers aren't showing up at these establishments anymore with Covid19 and lockdowns and social distancing. As if those patrons ever actually wanted to hear that "music" to begin with! I mean how smart is it to have your in-store music revolve around the tastes of 12 or 13-year-old pubescent teenagers? What were these businesses thinking? Catering their music to the lowest common tween denominator? Who informed restaurant and store owners that customers really want to hear tween pop, faux rock, and hip hop music? Oh well, many of these restaurants and retail businesses will soon be gone, victims of the pandemic and social distancing precautions and increased reliance on Amazon and InstaCart and burgeoning home delivery services during the massive economic reshuffling. Some like me might have the tendency to say good riddance and just as well but it is a major loss with lots of pain and economic adjustment.
Let's hope during this wrecking ball Covid19 era that somehow we get a musical renaissance. Today's new music can't get any worse than the low it has already reached in our culture. Nowhere to go but up. End of Rant.
~DM
THE FAB FIVE?
I used to play music with these lads during my time in England in the 60s. Before becoming known as the Beatles, they went through quite a few band name changes, along with some costume changes.
I guess my deciding to quit the group in order to start up a new band with Pete Best was not such a brilliant idea after all.
We were pretty good mates back then. Wonder whatever became of those guys?
I guess my deciding to quit the group in order to start up a new band with Pete Best was not such a brilliant idea after all.
We were pretty good mates back then. Wonder whatever became of those guys?
THE BEETLES?
THE FAB FIVE?
SUNDAY, 2/9/64 ED SULLIVAN'S BIG "SHOE!"
JOHNNY & THE MOONDOGS?
THE BEATALS?
THE QUARRY MEN? THE FAB FIVE?
THE QUARRYMEN?
LONG JOHN AND THE BEATALS?
THE SILVER QUARRY MOONDOG BEETLEMEN?
THE BEATALS?
JOHNNY & THE SILVER BEETLES?
LONG JOHN AND THE BEATALS?
JOHNNY & THE MOONDOGS?
JOHNNY & THE MOONDOGS?
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to those who have contributed to this site so far: Robert Stanton, Jeanne Stanton, Don Davison, Mark Smith, Joan Chapin, Kyle Wyatt, Martin Bradley, Marla Martin Anderson, Debbie Langdon Bradford, Lilly Hespen Menezes, Alan Herren, Annamarie Della Sala Stanton, Mike Welch, Mary Jane Porter Perna, Susan Turner Pohlmann, Mark Bibler, Joe Cutrufelli, Jeff Sumida, Alice Valdez Gerschler, Jon Wren, Duke Quinones, Susie Rochon Henderson, Pat Duffy, Gerald Armstrong, Carl Becker, Dennis Taylor, Mike Ventimiglia, Jack Frost, Steve Martin, Tom Russo Sr., Chuck Della Sala, Mel Hagio, Rick Hattori, Eddie Van Houtte, Victor Henry and Dennis Copeland.
Special thanks to those who have contributed to this site so far: Robert Stanton, Jeanne Stanton, Don Davison, Mark Smith, Joan Chapin, Kyle Wyatt, Martin Bradley, Marla Martin Anderson, Debbie Langdon Bradford, Lilly Hespen Menezes, Alan Herren, Annamarie Della Sala Stanton, Mike Welch, Mary Jane Porter Perna, Susan Turner Pohlmann, Mark Bibler, Joe Cutrufelli, Jeff Sumida, Alice Valdez Gerschler, Jon Wren, Duke Quinones, Susie Rochon Henderson, Pat Duffy, Gerald Armstrong, Carl Becker, Dennis Taylor, Mike Ventimiglia, Jack Frost, Steve Martin, Tom Russo Sr., Chuck Della Sala, Mel Hagio, Rick Hattori, Eddie Van Houtte, Victor Henry and Dennis Copeland.
