Oviedo Festival Video

We arrived in Oviedo, Spain to find a local day-long festival taking place. It was fun to see the parade through town, that included several different bands and many marchers in folk costumes.

Jim

The Fragmentation Of Rock Music

David Brooks in today's New York Times:

"...cultural history has pivot moments, and at some point toward the end of
the 1970s or the early 1980s, the era of (musical) integration gave way to the
era of fragmentation. There are now dozens of niche musical genres where there
used to be this thing called rock. There are many bands that can fill 5,000-seat
theaters, but there are almost no new groups with the broad following or
longevity of the Rolling Stones, Springsteen or U2. People have been writing
about the fragmentation of American music for decades. Back in the Feb. 18,
1982, issue of Time, Jay Cocks wrote that American music was in splinters. But
year after year, the segmentation builds. Last month, for example, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an essay
in The New Yorker noting that indie rock is now almost completely white, lacking
even the motifs of African-American popular music. Carl Wilson countered in
Slate that indie rock’s real wall is social; it’s the genre for the
liberal-arts-college upper-middle class."

Interesting. The age of the super-group is gone. I suppose that's not a bad thing because there is such a variety of musical expression out there. There is something for everyone, even me. I am not a Springsteen fan, or a U2 fan, or for that matter, I've never been a great fan of the Rolling Stones. I like a lot of the music of the Beatles, but I suppose I've never been much of a fan of the super groups. I've always tended to like the less wildly popular, more unusual rock bands. The only exceptions I can think of are Chicago, which I liked a lot in their early days, and more recently, Brian Wilson, who does seem to be able to pack large houses when he performs. Brooks seems to be unhappy that indie rock is completely white, or upper middle class. But rap is almost completely black, isn't it? So what? Each to his own.

Jim

What's Happened With The Recording Industry?

I went into Borders yesterday to buy a Handel CD to listen to and to add to the music library out at the beach. The selection of classical CDs was meager, and most of them were priced extremely low: $5.99, $7.99, etc. I found some nice bargains including a couple of CD featuring Holst as well as the Handel I was looking for. However, I was alarmed at the paltry selection and the low prices. What has happened to the whole idea of purchasing and owning music in some hard format other than digital?

Tower records went out of business recently. A few years ago I would have thought that Tower would never go under. I used to love to browse in their stores and buy CDs from time to time. Recenly, the Recording Industry group, RIAA I think, sued a woman for something like a quarter of a million dollars for sharing copyrighted music on the internet. They won. A rock group recenly announced that you could pay what you want for their music, or not pay at all for it, presumably.

What will be the effect of all of this? I worry about the future availability of music, particularly classical, jazz, and the other less wildly popular types of music. Is the record business caput? If so, what will that mean for artists, orchestras, etc.? Or, is digital somehow going to ride in and save the day?

Jim