Music has changed

After a chat I had with friends yesterday I got the feeling that music industry had changed for the worse.

I remember trying really hard as young teenager to be part of the punk scene that my friends were in.

I shaved my head, take the piss out of hip hop, and swan around with my mohican headed friends get drunk and jump into our beloved mosh pits and sing along to bands like the Sex pistols, The Clash and cool local bands. We felt apart of something. We were the rebels!

Anarchy in the UK was our favorite song, we didn’t even know the meaning of it, but obviously it was about rebellion, that was enough!

And the funny thing is that we didn’t have much to protest for, I was a rich kid who lived in a € 1 million worth estate, located in the heart of one of the poshest coasts of Italy, but I had passion and anger inside me and I felt the need to go out and fuel that as a young teenager.

But I connected with bands like the Sex pistols because they were the voice of a frustrated generation, who had the uncontrollable need to scream about their opinions in society. But fundamentally they had something to say, they had passion and ideals and thats what connected them with people.

As Dave Grohl said himself:

“When I think about kids watching a TV show like American Idol or The Voice, then they think, ‘Oh, OK, that’s how you become a musician, you stand in line for eight fucking hours with 800 people at a convention center and… then you sing your heart out for someone and then they tell you it’s not fuckin’ good enough.’ Can you imagine?” he implores. “It’s destroying the next generation of musicians! Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy and old fucking drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they’ll suck, too. And then they’ll fucking start playing and they’ll have the best time they’ve ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they’ll become Nirvana. Because that’s exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some shitty old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass shit, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again! You don’t need a fucking computer or the internet or The Voice or American Idol.”

I think he made a point.
More importantly they had something to say, they stood for something. That can happen again!

I’m not saying that there aren’t any good musicians around anymore. I work at a venue every week listening to bands, waiting for something great to happen, and there are some good bands out there but you’d bet I’d never see a mosh pit or anything that has anything of the energy that Nirvana had.

What I mean is that there is not a big Ideal behind music anymore, what counts now are numbers, money and views.

Music has changed, London is losing a loads of important venues because of what the big city is becoming, artists can not afford to live in East London anymore.

When I was a teenager I used to read iconic magazines and watch international tv channels to be updated about new music from all around the world, what SCA would call a ‘badges’ for people, “we are those people who are interested in good music with a value and a message for society”.

Because they stood for something musicians wanted to be apart of it. If you were on one of those magazines you were making good music.

And what do we see now? One Direction on the front cover? Don’t we have enough of temporary pop artists?

Now those magazines or tv channels are just out to reach the a mass market just so they can pay their stiff collard suits around a board room table who have no idea what people want and what people are missing.

We’re bombarded every day with celebrity gossip in the paper and all over the internet so I don’t need a ‘music’ magazine doing it as well.

Give me artists that will inspire me, that I haven’t heard of, that I can get behind and support and be proud to know and tell my friends about.

Music is art, and what is art? Art is a medium, the artist is the one who is able to communicate to the what’s going on in the world in a unique and interesting way and drive people into a change.

I was born in the 1990 and I still listen to music produced in the 60s, will our kids do the same? Will we remember Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber for decades? Jesus christ I hope we won’t!