Hello Goodbye

Initial moment
The end

Birth of love
End of love

Birthday
Moment of dead

The end of Music

We seem to be on the edge of a paradigm shift. Orchestras are struggling to stay alive, rock has been relegated to the underground, jazz has stopped evolving and become a dead art, the music industry itself has been subsumed by corporate culture and composers are at their wit’s end trying to find something that’s hip but still appeals to an audience mired in a 19th-century

For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music. In this case the paradigm shift may not be a shift but a dead stop. Is it that people just don’t want to hear anything new? Or is it that composers and musicians have simply swallowed the pomo line that nothing else new can be done, which ironically is really just the “old, old story.”

Certainly music itself is not dead. We’ll continue to hear something approximating it blaring in shopping malls, fast food stops, clothing stores and wherever else it will mesmerize the consumer into excitedly pulling out their credit card or debit card or whatever might be coming.

There’s no question that in music, like politics, the bigger the audience gets the more the “message” has to be watered down. Muzak’s been around for a long time now but maybe people just can’t tell the difference anymore. Maybe even the composers and songwriters can’t tell the difference either. Especially when it’s paying for a beach house in Malibu and a condo in New York.

Of course, we could all just listen to all of our old albums, CD’s and mp3’s. In fact, nowadays that’s where the industry makes most of its money. We could also just watch old movies and old TV shows. There are a lot of them now. Why bother making any new ones? Why bother doing anything new at all? Why bother having any change or progress at all as long as we’ve got “growth”? I’m just wondering if this is in fact the new paradigm. I’m just wondering if in fact the new music is just the old music again. And, if that in fact it would actually just be the end of music.

By GLENN BRANCA

some comments:

1 .
Scott Nygaard
San Francisco, CA
November 24th, 2009
9:05 pm
Snooze. Curmudgeons are eternal. This could have been written any time in the last 30 (100?) years. The delivery system for music is going through convulsions, but there is plenty of great music out there, even if critics haven't been able to organize the music scene into discernible trends. But don't expect music to show up on your doorstep. Stop whining and go find it.


2 .
d myers
new york, ny
November 24th, 2009
9:31 pm
The end of music? Is that silence? And he the composer Cage is already standing there.


5 .
Juan Martinez
Lorain, OH
November 24th, 2009
9:31 pm
Because music allows humans to share their emotions with others. And darn it! Men want to impress and lure women!!!!

Papacito loves mamacita!!!!


7 .
Steve
at home
November 24th, 2009
9:31 pm
Great music is definitely out there waiting for you to listen to it. If you're bored with the music industry, there are always non-traditional sources of composition (such as video games)
Music is Dead. Long live sound.


8 .
fugalfunkster
Portland, OR
November 24th, 2009
9:31 pm
Music is Dead. Long live sound.
Recommend Recommended by 19 Readers


23 .
Jomah
America
November 24th, 2009
9:42 pm
Everyone should be able to express themselves through music.


25 .
Tim Brew
Alameda, CA
November 24th, 2009
9:42 pm
Love the fright wig!

Charlie Chaplin

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London, England. As a small child, Chaplin also lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street and 39 Methley Street.


Marriages
Charlie Chaplin - Mildred Harris
On October 23, 1918, the 28 year old Chaplin married the 16-year-old Mildred Harris. They had one child, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who died in infancy; they divorced in 1920.

Charlie Chaplin - Lita Grey
At 35, he became involved with 16-year-old Lita Grey during preparations for The Gold Rush. They married on November 26, 1924 after she became pregnant. They had two sons, the actors Charles Chaplin Jr. (1925-1968) and Sydney Earle Chaplin.

Charlie Chaplin - Oona O'Neill
This marriage was a long and happy one, with eight children. They had three sons: Christopher Chaplin, Eugene Chaplin and Michael Chaplin and five daughters: Geraldine Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Jane Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin and Annette-Emilie Chaplin.

Some quotes:
A day without laughter is a day wasted.

My only enemy is time.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

We think too much and feel too little.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

Douglas Gordon

Not listening to music

"And then, at some point if I feel better, the news just sounds really sad, and I want music on all the time...

"The title comes from the correspondences between a close friend and myself.
Her father used to always quiz her aggressively about whether or not she was listening to music. It was his way of establishing if she was depressed or not. She later guessed that he had noticed that wanting to listen to music or not was a quantifiable symptom of how his moods were cascading. And now, it seems, for her too. For months she could only listen to news on the radio and when it switched to music, she'd switch it off. At the time I was emailing her a song everyday.
(...)
Getting over sadness through repetition, or until something jolts you out of it, and then you crave something taht will open you back up all of the time."
Michael Queenland
in Musical Paintings

Karaoke Generation

"Today there are two words that sum up the culture: 'authenticity' is one, and the other... 'karaoke'! many artists spend their entire life trying to authenticate, make true, a karaoke culture – but you have to be a magician to make that happen."
Malcolm Mclaren
in Musical Paintings


We Are Going Nowhere And It's Now
Artist(Band):Bright Eyes

If you hate the taste of wine
Why do you drink it till you're blind?
And if you swear that there's no truth and who cares
How come you say it like you're right?
Why are you scared to dream of God
When it's salvation that you want?
You see stars that clear have been dead for years
But the idea just lives on...

In our wheels that roll around
As we move over the ground
And all day it seems we've been in between
A past and future town

We are nowhere and it's now
We are nowhere and it's now

And like a ten minute dream in the passenger's seat
While the world was flying by
I haven't been gone very long
But it feels like a lifetime

I've been sleeping so strange at night
Side effects they don't advertise
I've been sleeping so strange
With a head full of pesticide

I've got no plans and too much time
I feel too restless to unwind
I'm always lost in thought as I walk a block
To my favorite neon sign

Where the waitress looks concerned
But she never says a word
Just turns the jukebox on and we hum along
And I smile back at her

And my friend comes after work
When the features start to blur
She says these bars are filled with things that kill
By now you probably should have learned

Did you forget that yellow bird?
But how could you forget your yellow bird?
She took a small silver wreath and pinned it onto me
She said this one will bring you love
And I don't know if it's true
But I keep it for good luck

Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. Reduce.

The participant audience; the audience as an artist; the audience in control; the way we communicate and share information now in the internet age; amateur video/music covers; sampling; appropriation; re-creation.

To listen, to look, it's also to participate. It helps us map our emotions. The choices we make, what we chose to listen to, to watch, are also our way of communicating and expressing our emotions.

The title is a "sample" of the first word of the original title: "Gone with the Wind". But it also relates to the way we experience time. There is no present. Only past and future. The present moment is either expected or it's always gone, gone, gone, gone, gone now, now is gone, gone, gone...

reference: Martin Arnold

João Vasco Paiva

My task is not a grind.

This video is an appropriation, re-creation of a random choice of information available on the internet. The fragments correspond to a "sing along" version of A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down scene from the movie Mary Poppins, 1964, directed by Robert Stevenson.

I'm exploring the process of taking very familiar and recognizable film sequences from the internet, and editing it to create a completely different visual and audio output. The focus will be more and more on the sound. The visuals will become whatever it's linked with that particular sound I've isolated from the sequence. The result is unexpected.

For me to listen, to look, is also to participate. The audience as an artist is a concept growing with internet. In this Information/Digital/Attention Age we share and use information as if it is ours. Teenagers love to show videos of them playing their favorite music with a guitar in their tiny rooms. "I can be as famous as the original." And sometimes they are. The audience is more in control.

"And hence (Mary's reflection echoes: And hence),
They find (Mary's reflection echoes: They find)
(together) Their task is not a grind."

Joana Monteiro
Camberwell College of Arts
Exhibition: Inner Outside. Human Experience in the Digital Age.
November 09

A Spoonful Of Sugar Sing Along

Repetition

You can't really perceive a sound or an image until you hear it, see it, at least twice.

What age are we?

Is it:
Information Age
Digital Age
Anxiety Age
Attention age

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Information Age
The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Information Era, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. The idea is linked to the concept of a Digital Age or Digital Revolution, and carries the ramifications of a shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based around the manipulation of information.

Attention Age
The Attention Age is an idea that the current period of time, which overlaps and builds off of the Information Age, will be characterized by the increasing commoditization of attention as it relates to the increasing abundance of information available, particularly on the internet. The Attention Age is marked by the ability of individuals to create and consume information instantly and freely as well as share it on the internet using social media. The period is believed to have begun with the emergence of social media in the first years of the 21st century.

Time Goes

Second of this series:
"Time Goes"

The participant audience; the audience as an artist; the audience in control; the way we communicate and share information now in the internet age; amateur video/music covers; sampling; appropriation; re-creation; from internet to internet.

To listen, to look, it's also to participate. It helps us map our emotions. The choices we make, what we chose to listen to, to watch, are also our way of communicating and expressing our emotions.

And again. Time goes.
The age of anxiety.

reference: Martin Arnold