Category Archives: Culture

No More Songs

Posted on by
2

Rummaging through a box of cassettes last week, I came across a mixtape I compiled in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It’s called “No More Songs”, after the Phil Ochs song.

Listening to the tape again after many years, I was reminded of the people, places and events associated with first hearing these songs – working at a second record shop in London where some of these songs were on regular rotation; watching Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate”; seeing a clip of Tim Buckley on “The Monkees” TV show; watching Dustin Hoffman (again) in “Midnight Cowboy”; recommendations from knowledgable friends (notably Big Star, Phil Ochs and Nick Drake).

I can hear some common themes across these tracks. Certainly, there is a river of melancholy running through this music, which may have resonated with my mood at that time. The fact that several of these artists had died at a relatively young age (and of course, several more have passed away since) may contribute to that sense of sad reflection. While many of the songs might be deemed folk music, they aren’t the typical “troubadour with acoustic guitar” that inundates the genre – and they certainly aren’t typical blues-based rock either. If anything, the music is more baroque or chamber pop. There’s an absence of guitar solos, and not many drums either. Even though these singers may not be technically perfect (and they don’t indulge in the vocal gymnastics made popular by TV talent shows), they know how to use their voices, which actually makes them sound more authentic and more moving as a result. The power and beauty in these performances comes from artists who know their vocal limitations, and from the resulting display of fragility.

There’s probably a negative reaction to grunge rock reflected in this choice of songs. Not all grunge was bad, but like punk before it, there were so many pale imitators and wannabes that it made sense to seek refuge and relief from the noise and attrition of grunge. (A similar reaction happened after punk, when artists like The Durutti Column, Prefab Sprout, Microdisney, Young Marble Giants and Everything But The Girl heralded a welcome respite from punk, adopting “quiet is the new loud” as a kind of informal manifesto.)

Some of these songs are mainstream, and appeared in the charts at the time of their release in the 1960s and 1970s – otherwise they are lesser-known but enduring classics. A couple were popularised through cover versions, and many of these artists benefitted from critical re-appraisals and renewed audience engagement via retrospectives, reissues and archive releases. In particular, the influential compendium “It’ll End In Tears” (and subsequent volumes) helped to raise awareness around much of this music.

They all still sound wonderful to me. Here is the track list in full – enjoy!:

Side A:

  1. Buffalo Springfield: Expecting To Fly
  2. The Byrds: Everybody’s Been Burned
  3. Glen Campbell: By The Time I Get To Phoenix
  4. Nico: Eulogy To Lenny Bruce
  5. Tim Buckley: Song To The Siren
  6. Simon & Garfunkel: Sounds Of Silence
  7. Fred Neil: The Dolphins
  8. Nick Drake: Northern Sky
  9. Tim Hardin: Lady Came From Baltimore
  10. Big Star: Blue Moon

Side B:

  1. Big Star: Take Care
  2. Glen Campbell: Wichita Lineman
  3. Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood: Some Velvet Morning
  4. Tim Buckley: Morning Glory
  5. Fred Neil: Everybody’s Talking
  6. Nick Drake: Pink Moon
  7. Nico: These Days
  8. Tim Hardin: Reason To Believe
  9. Big Star: Holocaust
  10. Phil Ochs: No More Songs

Next week: More unearthed mixtapes

 

Reverb-erations

Posted on by
Reply

“This is a journey into sound” reads the sub-title of ACMI’s Melbourne edition of “Reverb”, the London exhibition organised by Vinyl Factory and hosted by 180 Studios in 2024-25.

Spoiler alert: the ACMI show is a heavily edited/remixed/redacted version of the original, and because it was grafted on to the concurrent Rising festival, it feels like the original’s agenda has been co-opted due to curatorial choices.

Overall, I found ACMI’s Reverb a quite underwhelming experience – with the disappointment being compounded by high expectations. For a start, Vinyl Factory described their show as a celebration of “art and sound with [an] immersive exhibition”. 180 Studios called it an exploration of “the lasting impact and influence of electronic music on contemporary art and culture”. Both of which are big calls, and quite different in terms of scope and intent, despite describing the same exhibition.

ACMI’s re-adapted synopsis boasts that the exhibition “explores music’s influence on art, film and social movements, traversing hip hop and rap, house, techno, dancehall and Jamaican sound system culture”. Quite a different purpose to the original event.

For logistical reasons, I understand that ACMI could not simply replicate the London show, and many items were omitted. But given ACMI’s success in bringing “David Bowie is” to Melbourne, their world premiere of Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto”, and the “Light” show comprising works from the UK’s Tate Gallery, it’s a shame that “Reverb” didn’t deliver to the same level.

First, there was only one interactive work, by Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) – so hardly an “immersive” experience, unless you include the ACMI Listening Room, which served more as a passive audio space and vinyl lounge (albeit a very nice one!).

Second, the only two works that really engaged with and explored the interaction between electronic music and popular culture were: a semi-educational documentary by Jeremy Deller on the second summer of love and the UK rave culture; and an informative and creative account of the Detroit techno scene by Jenn Nkiru.

Third, as much as I enjoy the work of William Kentridge, his video installation of animated drawings seemed out of place and out of context – although it appears this same work was included in the original London show.

Not having had the opportunity to see the original version, direct comparisons are difficult. But it felt like there were huge gaps. For example, nothing about the role of music videos on MTV (much of it electronic music) in shaping the visual packaging of pop artists and how these videos themselves brought a cross-fertilisation of different sub-cultures, fashion styles and musical genres into mainstream publishing, advertising and the broader entertainment industry. Nothing about the technology that helped electronic music to propagate and which led to scratching, remixing and sampling, and also shaped how, where and when we listen to music. I could go on but hopefully the point is made.

Maybe the point is that the original exhibition was simply the source material for galleries and museums to each put their own spin on the impact of music on art and culture, like a series of reverberating events around the world.

But at the very least, surely there should have been a video of Coldcut’s classic remix of “Paid In Full” by Eric B and Rakim? Now that’s what I call a “journey into sound!”

Next week: End of the road for Lime?

 

Music, music everywhere…. and none of it very memorable

Posted on by
Reply

This past weekend I experienced a couple of musical events that were poles apart, but which also underlined how so much contemporary music is totally forgettable, due to both ubiquity and overabundance.

The first event was the Independent Music Exchange held in Melbourne. Here, a collection of small independent labels, distributors and retailers came together to promote their current catalogues. Most of the music was on vinyl, but there were also CDs and lots of cassettes. (Melbourne is allegedly the vinyl capital of the world…) Releases on sale included new product, plus swathes of back catalogue and archival reissues – some of which have only become well-known long after their initial release, or are only available again thanks to these independent companies because the original labels (often one of the big global players) have chosen not to keep them in print. I can’t pretend to have been very familiar with many of the items on display; but it was nevertheless gratifying to see the range and diversity, and to know that there is an audience for these types of music (judging by the number of punters attending the event), which is largely overlooked by broadcast radio and major streaming platforms.

The second event was an evening of Karaoke with friends, which largely featured music from the 80s and 90s (reflecting the age group), but which also included a reasonable selection of more recent tracks. I have to admit that any of the latter that I did recognise were songs I have heard as background music in public places, rather than as a conscious decision to listen to them. I’m also woefully ignorant of most of the artists behind these latest songs, and if they have reached my consciousness it’s probably as a result of a news story or social media campaign. Admittedly, I’m probably not the target audience for most of this newer music, so my ignorance can be forgiven!

The latest IFPI annual report reveals that nearly 70% of global music revenue comes from streaming platforms, around 17% from physical sales (of which vinyl is increasingly taking a bigger share), and just 3% from downloads and other digital formats. The remaining 10% is derived from performance rights and associated syndication licensing.

If streaming platforms have done one thing well, it is to help create an over abundance of “new” music. This is because they have reduced the costs of distribution, and in many cases, this new music is being self-released and directly uploaded by the artists themselves, rather than via record labels or music publishers. This applies to both the big brands like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube and Pandora, as well as the smaller players like Bandcamp and SoundCloud. However, easier and cheaper distribution has not reduced the costs of marketing and promotion; and thanks to certain algorithms, a lot of new music is being created just to get “discovered” via streaming and social media, based on listeners’ habits and/or preferences. There is also a debate about whether AI-generated music, artists or promotion should be allowed to co-exist on these streaming platforms; and if so, should they come with associated disclosures so listeners can choose to block AI-content? In some ways, it’s rather like the Enhanced Games competing with the Olympics, or consumers preferring to exclude GMO crops from the food chain – the boundaries are blurred, and once the content is in the system, everything else becomes tainted or infected.

I recently read a blog by an independent recording artist and curator who was bemoaning the current state of the music industry – specifically, the noise and hype around so much current music – the main conclusion being that thanks to the algorithms and the repetition, it was dulling his appetite to engage with new music. I can certainly empathise with this perspective – often, the announcement of this or that new album or a “sneak peak” (i.e., co-ordinated leak) of a carefully stage-managed artist collaboration is more significant than the music itself. It feels like the amount of promotion thrown at a song or a music video is in inverse proportion to the quality of the release.

The ubiquity of highly homogenised popular music is down to three main factors:

  1. The tech (streaming, AI, algorithms)
  2. Record labels (guilty of pushing “fast fashion”-type music)
  3. TV talent shows (Eurovision, X-factor, The Voice, Pop Idol) that push a very narrow agenda, and are guilty of form over substance

BUT at the end of the day, I can’t help also thinking that the public gets what the public wants (to quote Paul Weller): “You are what you listen to”. So choosing to engage with this type of content only perpetuates its creation and existence – and “helped” by this ubiquity and overabundance, most of this new music is ultimately disposable and totally forgettable.

Next week: My night with the Sex Pistols

The cost of AI

Posted on by
Reply

A variant on Moore’s law is the observation that the financial capital required to launch a new business decreases exponentially as technology gets cheaper.

Pre-internet, and using a notional geometric scale for the purposes of illustration, you might have needed $5m to found and build a new venture. The World Wide Web probably reduced that to $500k, while cloud computing brought it down to $50k. With the expansion of SaaS and API solutions, that cost might have been $5k to get going. Now, vibe coding and $500 of AI prompts can probably launch a new website, build a back end database, implement an e-commerce solution and deploy agentic AI bots to go and find your first customers.

This is a great outcome if measured by a lower barrier to market entry. It also enables founders to “fail fast, fail cheap”, and incentivises innovation by financially de-risking the process.

But even though the cost of AI tools is extraordinarily cheap in terms of the computing and processing power they deliver, there is a huge cost to our rapid adoption of AI that needs to be accounted for.

First, we are seeing corporate lay-offs among tech firms and parts of the service industry that no longer need as many human bodies and minds to operate at scale. So there is a human, economic and societal cost of increased un(der)employment.

Second, traditional skills and expertise are being hugely reduced in perceived value – why pay a graphic artist to design an image when I can use dall-e for free?

Third, as more and more creative tasks are being outsourced or delegated to AI (“create a short story about an F1 race in the style of Ernest Hemingway”) we risk losing our own innate creativity (that comes with experimentation, curiosity, play and reflection). This in turn devalues the creative process itself (thanks to cheaper, AI-enabled production).

Fourth, AI (and the Large Language Models on which it is trained) has no great respect for intellectual property. It doesn’t recognise boundaries between copyright material, content that is subject to creative commons, content that is in the public domain, and content which is publicly available. Again, if copyright owners and original content creators are not recognised or compensated for their work, why would anyone aspire to creating anything original?

Finally, there is the cost of resources (energy, water, rare earth metals) needed to maintain huge AI processing plants and data centres. (But at least this demand is accelerating the development of renewable energy.)

A few years ago, I posted a blog about the importance of the human factor, in the face of technological progress brought by automation and AI. I still remain cautiously optimistic that AI will bring huge benefits, despite the rampant growth of AI in the three years since I wrote that piece. But we are currently in an awkward and comfortable transition phase. If more jobs are lost to AI, and if human-led output is increasingly devalued, perhaps we will need to revisit the debate about Universal Basic Income and other policies to facilitate this transition.

Next week: Music, music everywhere…. and none of it very memorable