There was a time when being a successful musician actually required talent. Those were the days of Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Doors, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. These Gods of Rock perfected the craft of blowing minds away with their rock. Their music actually meant something and the source of their rocking originated from one very innate and passionate desire: to stick it to The Man.
What? You’ve never heard of The Man? The Man controls everything. He’s the one that’s polluting the world and killing all the little forest creatures. Hell! The Man doesn’t even cut up those six-pack plastic rings before throwing them away. But that isn’t enough for The Man. The Man even took control of music with a little thing called MTV. (And to a lesser extent, VH1.)
These are the guys that claim to be so cool that they tell you what’s cool. Don’t give in! It’s all just a bunch of glitter and jazz hands with fake boobs and no real talent! MTV only injected the poison that is target marketing and commercial image into the music scene. Before MTV, it did not matter if you were amazingly hot or looked like a cow’s foot. Look at Ringo Starr from the The Beatles. Not the greatest looking of men but an invaluable member of the band nevertheless.
And it’s only gotten worse with the success of such “musicians” as Justin Timberlake, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, and the very ill-fated Britney Spears. These people can just crap any old thing out and make millions while the people with the real talent struggle to catch up.
The increasing popularity of “American Idol” only fuels this twirling inferno of untalented and undeserved success. “American Idol” is a direct result of wussy parents telling their children that they can be anything they want to be. Don’t get me wrong, people can do whatever they want if they really set their minds to it, but from the thirty second intervals of the show that I see, it is clearly obvious that some of those contestants are self-delusional and have no business trying.
The Grammy Awards have also become a joke in the most recent years, judging more on the number of record sales than actual talent. Fortunately, the 50th Annual Grammys threw a curveball and actually awarded talent by giving the album of the year to Herbie Hancock, a jazz musician, instead of the insufferable Kanye West.
There is still hope but the music industry is in a decline in one way and an incline in another. Record companies are making more money than ever, but in exchange, they’ve traded real talent with fake boobs, skimpy outfits and bling.
Let’s raise our goblets of rock in honor of our fallen legends.
