How many times can Ourobouros eat its tail before it disappears up its own cloaca?

An interesting thing happened today.

Well... Interesting to me, anyway.

Two separate commentaries on popular music came to my attention which dovetailed nicely. The synchronicity of the two commentaries, while not necessarily new (one, in fact, is almost 30 years old!) really whacked me upside the head.

I was listening to my 'Pod while walking the dog this morning and, as usual, had it on a random mix. One of the items that popped up was Frank Zappa's March, 1978 "Drooling Midrange Accountants On Easter Hay". This is a ramble/mini-rant with some keyboards in the background. In it Frank says:

"Once upon a time, a record company had A&R people in it who would take a chance, make a decision, use their gut reaction, sign a group, and see what they could do with it. Okay? That was, whoa, a long time ago. It's not that way anymore. All decisions about who get signed and what happens to the record are made by these drooling little midrange accountants. And everything is based on the numbers games in there. And the taste of the accountants is what is ruling the mass media. It's all just the dollars and cents of exchange. And if you wanna make music that you believe in, the chances of doing it on a major label basis are nil, because they're all so frightened. Everybody's there trying to protect their job. And it's easy-- it's easier to look like a wise executive by saying no to something if it's just the most minutely fringe-oid in terms of content.

No.

The horrible part of it is the artists who are feeding this ecological chain stop making songs they believe in and start making product that they know will be airable. And they change the style of what they're doing to fit within the narrow framework that is the contemporary accepted norm for suitable, radio-sounding music. And anything that comes outside of that norm doesn't go on the air, you don't hear about it, you don't know about it. Right now there's probably hundreds of artists in the United States making great sounds and great music. You'll never hear it. You'll never find out about it."

The sad thing is that it really hasn't gotten any better...

Later today, I was reading Steven Grant's "Permanent Damage" column on the Comic Book Resources website (http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/?column=10), where, among other things, he was explaining why he wasn't doing music reviews anymore. Part of his comment was:

"I once told Bob Schreck the difference between our generation and our parents' generation is that when they heard the music we were listening to they said, 'Oh, how awful, that isn't music!' and when we hear (current pop) music, we think, 'Y'know, it was better the first time.'"

He goes on:

"(T)hat's pop music, which is almost enforcedly retrograde these days, though occasionally something interesting slips out, like The Killers or The Dresden Dolls or the Black Eyed Peas. But even on the "cutting edge" side, there's very little new material that I hear that has made any significant strides over what was being done 20-25 years ago..."

And it struck me that what these two commentaries put together indicate is that we're currently into the second generation (at least, and possibly the third) of drooling midrange accountants - who at this point ONLY KNOW the drivel-pop that THEY were brought up on - selecting and grooming the drivel-pop performers who only know the crap that the DMAs and their immediate predecessors had selected. The closest thing to something new that has happened in pop music since Zappa recorded his short screedlet is probably Rap and/or Hip-Hop... and has either of them genuinely gone beyond their creative starting points?

...And it's all a vicious, constantly tightening spiral.

Now I suppose that I should point out that I really don't listen to much in the way of Popmusic(tm)... About the only time that I get exposed to anything more than the 10-second drive-by musicking that we get here in the city is if I happen to go into certain stores at the mall.

But I fear that the problem is more widespread than just music. It seems pretty clear to me that movies, television, books, comics... in short, almost any medium/pop culture "art form" is generally populated by, and produced by, people who only know that medium and either don't know or don't care about anything outside of their small area of "expertise" and comfort zone.

And, again, as these people move further into the ranks of the decision makers, I see the problem only getting worse.

Now, I will admit that I have my interests and obsessions; but I like to think (Okay: "I like to HOPE...") that I have a broad-enough RANGE of obsessions that I might stand a chance of not mentally ossifying for at least some while, yet. (For example - keeping it in the music arena - the usual random mix on the 'Pod includes Bix Beiderbecke, Glen Miller, Spike Jones, The Dickies. Reverend Horton Heat, Allan Sherman, The Eurythmics, Leahy, Shameika Copeland, Gogol Bordello, the Pogues, Steeleye Span, Aki Takase, The Go-Gos... and... and... and... - any of which might follow one another or something completely different...)

Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to brag about how "broad-minded" and "deep" my interests are - anyone who has read this for any length of time KNOWS that I'm not particularly deep (except, perhaps, between the navel and the butt - *sigh*).

It just seems to me that, to paraphrase the famous aphorism; "Those who ignore the lessons of culture are doomed to repeat Pop... endlessly."

Closing Thought for Today:
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.” -- Frederick Nietzche