The following article was written by Ryan T. Jacobs:
A friend of mine asked a drummer I played with recently if he “liked my music.” Now I personally, having played with this guy a few times, didn’t assume that he particularly “liked” my music per se, nor did I assume that he particularly disliked it, due to the fact that he was playing with me for no compensation apart from the little bit of recognition that comes with being on stage. Frankly though: I didn’t care. I needed a drummer and I got one. This particular drummer is an incredibly proficient player and has more experience than I in certain aspects of the music business, though we want two totally different things from our music and have completely different tastes (he loves jazz fusion and Phil Collins’ 2 drum set solos for example. Me, not so much…). His answer to my friend’s question was “it could be harder/heavier.”
Here is my thinking on this subject: hard or heavy music is not the tempo of the music, rather it’s the weight with which the song hits someone. Just like in the 70’s when “that’s heavy” followed by the impervious “man” (watch the cult classic Dazed and Confused if you’re not sure what the vocal inflection on the “man” part of that sentence would sound like…). So in my mind, thrash metal isn’t necessarily “harder” just because of tempo, than say Simple Man, by Graham Nash, which hit me very heavily when I first heard it.
And a propos Mr. Nash, having been listening to his classic album Songs for Beginners often over the last few months makes me wonder about the music of today and where it has arrived. This is by far no new topic and I’m sure I sound like some old codger with a tye-dye Grateful Dead t-shirt on, trying to bask in the “glory daze,” but I feel there’s a certain earnestness that’s lost in today’s music, or at least the attempt, the striving towards a seeming of earnestness. The chorus refrain in the song of the same title, “be yourself” is something today that is almost unthinkable and you can almost envisage the critics licking their lips as they prepare their snarky, sarcasm basted comments, and I must admit, upon hearing the lyric in this current day and age, it seems a bit naïve at best and quixotic at worst. George Harrison’s also classic All Things Must Pass for example, would most likely also receive this treatment in today’s musical climate. But why? Well, I’ll give you my opinion in the next paragraph.
The form in which Nash expresses himself in his songwriting, i.e. the: I’ve-been-there-listen-to-me, I-might-know-something-you-don’t, for example in the myriad advice of Better Days is nearly unthinkable, or at least very, very scarce, in today’s popular music landscape. The idea that you would have something you could tell me or advise me on, seems to be something that not many people believe in any longer. This is most definitely a reason for why the honesty of 60’s and 70’s music, or at least a similar message, delivered in our day and age, falls upon skeptical ears.
I know we like to label the 21st century, modern man, as being more a complex creature than his 1960-70’s counterpart, but more distractions, more ingredients, don’t always result in an increase in complexity. It can also just end up diluting and convoluting, to where the quantity of what you have, has effectively corroded the quality of the good thing it was you were so intent on adding to.
