Down to the wire ...

What to talk about tonight ...

Okay. From the looks of things I haven't discussed music here yet. I don't really want to overdo things in my first post on the subject, but it wouldn't be a bad thing to introduce early on, as it consumes the better part of my brain's function.

Art, in general is an interesting thing. When you create it, you're expressing some inner thought or feeling that no one else on this planet can replicate. People can get close, but they can never be exactly the same as you. This gives every artistic expression an inherent value. But, who decides what's good and what's not? Painters are only good if they die, or are crazy or are some virtuoso kid who might not really be painting at all. So what about music? What makes music good or bad? This is where things get crazy for me and music ...

Music has become a commodity. As a musician, your art has been monetized in a way that people who don't create can understand. They see your notes bobbing down a conveyor belt in a factory and they try to determine if what's going on there is efficient enough to make a profit. Then, they market the music, and they place it on a shelf and they do their best to convince us - the masses - that we should agree that the music they're putting out there is the best the world has to offer.

So many people stop right there in their search for music that it scares me. And I'm not directing this solely to people that frequent the Top 40 section at Best Buy because this applies so often to so-called music snobs as well. People who like a band like Arcade Fire, Animal Collective or The Decembrists only because it's not what's in *the mainstream*. Tell me why you like them. What makes them so special and better than any other artist? Do you honestly believe that there's not a marketing or management team that positioned all three of these artists in that way just to catch your eye?

I would guess that the only reason they got record deals over a host of other talented acts that neither you nor I know of is that someone saw money. They knew you'd buy in and that you, as a dissenter to the mainstream, would identify yourself as someone with *good taste* by telling all other dissenters about how great Arcade Fire is.

So, like I was saying an hour and four paragraphs ago, what do good and bad really mean when it comes to music? It's probably the most subjective question possible, to ask someone if a song is good or bad.

And success musically doesn't mean your good! What's that about? The Backstreet Boys sell record-setting numbers of albums, make all that money and it takes years for people to wake up and realize they're terrible. An artist like Jeff Buckley toils away in relative obscurity for a while, gets drunk and jumps in the Mississippi, and only then do people jump on the bandwagon?

Maybe my problem is that I feel that you should be good to be successful and that being bad shouldn't be rewarded. The Backstreet Boys will live on, and on, and on, and they will be remembered as a success, and some people will say that they were good. The same is true of Jeff Buckley. The only real difference is that only one of them is an artist.

At least, that's my opinion.