I've been around for a while. Not as long as some, by any means, but long enough to have been in enough studios, meetings, and shows to know my way around the music world fairly well. I've taken on many topics and discussions, and have won just as many as I've lost (if you're looking at them objectively). But there is one re-occuring topic that seems never far from the minds of both the listeners and media alike:
Is He/She Venting Or Whining?
It's a fine line to some. Someone going on record to let loose about their hopes, failures, dreams, or fears can be a double edged sword to the fullest extent. It bears fruitful results for some, such as a more connected audience, even a feeling of personal closeness brought about by being able to relate to that band. For others, it comes off as cliche` of a 'dead' musical era, most commonly linking itself to 'nu-metal' and it's subsidieries.
I'll be the first to admit that some acts use it as a tool in order to latch on to a listening base. I believe that the ability to cope is a big part of what music is about. I see music as not only a skill, but as a way to deal with things that bother or haunt you, keep you awake at night or make you wish you'd never wake up. After all, isn't music about working with feeling, expressing what you can't always say with words to everyone around you?
We'll take a much debated topic as example: Guitar solos. Any man or woman can, with time, play a sequence of notes, maybe (hopefully) they're in key, maybe they're a variation on some eccentric scale. If they're nothing but notes on the neck of a guitar, the solo comes out cheap and contrived sounding. It's got nothing behind it, it's hollow.
Now, take that same scale, those same notes, and give them to Satriani or Vai, Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton, and they come alive. Why? There is soul behind it. Now I'm not talking about roller skating afro-sheen get down funky soul, I'm talking about every note seeming as if it is just on the cusp of becoming a word, and each word in turn just about to breach coherent vocabulary and become a sentence. You can feel each ringing note, each roll of vibrato, each nuance and bend in your stomach.
This applies as well, I believe, for singing. Sure, there will be some artists who use such tools as nothing more than a way to try and connect to a group of people, most likely the best looking demograph given to them by some label exec, and sell billions of records. But we can tell, at least I hope we still can, where the fine line between bitching and coping still lies. After all, it's not as if we need to cope with the good things in life, is it? When you get a raise or you're coming out of bankruptcy, do you need a shoulder to lean on? When your dream is realized or your child is doing well in school, do you need a crutch to help you out?
Music is a powerful tool to help us heal, understand, become more than we could be without it. The importance of using music to deal with your problems and issues, from a listener's standpoint as well as an artist's, is an intricate part of the art itself.
But if you're still not convinced, there's still that other kind of soul I mentioned before. Afros and quad skates are waiting for you in the happy land of inconsequence. ;)
