Producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed) on today's music business.

[jakeyboy1216]

Bob Lefsetz addresses the issues that are at the core of the music business: downloading, copy protection, pricing and the music itself. In response to Lefsetz’s latest newsletter, genius producer Bob Ezrin ( Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel) responded to Lefsetz, who then posted Ezrin's heart-felt letter on his blog.

Personally, I think Ezrin is full of shit, but then who am I to argue with an award-winning producer. Here is Ezrin's letter in full. You decide who's right.

"There used to be music. No longer.

In just the last few generations, we have witnessed the complete devolution of the mainstream of music from the intricacies and demands of jazz, swing and modern “classical”; the subtleties and finesse of the best of popular song writing; the mastery of “folk” instruments and vocal performance in the best of folk and rock; the singular high-mindedness of the greatest singer songwriters; and the hard-won craft of playing and writing and creating meaningful work, to four bar grids of “cut and paste” monotony over which someone writes shallow nursery rhymes about partying, trucks and beer or bitches and bling, or whines in hardly rhyming verse about their sad little white boy or girl life.

There are occasional exceptions, of course. But where are the anthems, the protest songs, the songs to march to or the ideas to fight for, the truths to believe in. Instead it’s all about “me”.

“Glory” from the film “Selma” is the great current exception – as is Kendrick Lamarr’s work. And – yes – let’s not forget the valiant Dixie Chicks!! But mostly there’s little more than a bit of catchy ear candy and nice beats.

All that talk about the “me generation” turns out to be true. We lost “us” in the 80’s and since then we only care about ourselves and our personal gain; we only want the money.

The rhetoric endures – as it does in politics. There’s not a single human working in the “music industry” who doesn’t say that they’re in it for the music, for the art form. Just like there’s no politician who doesn’t claim to be doing it to serve their country or community. But the reality is, we’re all in everything for the pay off. Period.

There used to be meaning. No more.

With our music and words, we used to fight for freedom; we used to incite change; we used to elevate each other; we used to speak for all of us and literally move mountains.

No more.

Bob Ezrin"

[MarkRhodes]

Well, that's sure one way to look at it.

[Doctor Jeff]

There always has and always will be great music and inspired musicians out there, you just know where to look.

If one looks at top 40, especially the pop and country charts, it is indeed dismaying. There was a clever article recently looking at a half dozen or so country "hits", showing they were basically literally the same (bad) song. And don't forget that funny article asking the question if Florida-Georgia Line was the worst band in the world. They could get my vote...

But hey, much as I like Lou and Peter and Pink, who thinks they were just selfless artists in it for art's sake? At a certain point Lou and the Floyd coasted on their reputations, happy to bring in the big bucks from the stadium concerts. Peter Gabriel is admittedly a special case, and one of my absolute favorite musicians, but I haven't heard him complain about moving up from cult status to megastar in the 80's. And Kiss and Alice Cooper were sellouts from the beginning, that was their shtick. They were ONLY in it for the money...

Anyway, just look around and listen. The artists are out there, making great music. You just have to find them.

[fumblefingers]

It's easy to be negative. It's easy to complain about youth and the latest generation. That said, I can't strongly disagree with Ezrin's basic premise.

I worked in discos and heard all that useless junk while I was a music major. That was the late 70s and it almost single handedly ruined pop/rock music. I thought it was a huge loss even then. And afterwards? I think that punk rock, new wave, rap, hip hop and whatever we call the Britney pablum all contributed to the great, decadent slide.

on the other hand, and reserving my comments to pop (which is targeted specifically to frivolous, carefree youth), pop has had its fair share of mediocre, topical junk since, well, since a long time ago.

[pamosmusic]

“Glory” from the film “Selma” is the great current exception – as is Kendrick Lamarr’s work. And – yes – let’s not forget the valiant Dixie Chicks!! But mostly there’s little more than a bit of catchy ear candy and nice beats.

I mean ... he's leaving room for exceptions. I sort of agree with fumble that people have sort of selective memory if they think the 60s and 70s were the golden age of pop. I mean ... maybe they were net better than the 90s and 00s but still. Pop has always been a handful of real works of art or poetry or music in a vast painfully vapid field. We've still got your Taylor Swifts who write excellent though a bit shallow songs, and your Sam Smiths who aren't breaking any new ground but still write a mean pop song.

On another note ... this guy mentions Kendrick Lamar as someone who's really making serious music. Has anyone listened to Kendrick Lamar's record? ... that dude is serious. Like it or not it is incredibly heavy cool music and everyone should take a second (or rather about an hour and ten minutes) and give that record a serious listen. For all you jazzers out there, he has Ambrose Akinmusire, Robert Glasper, and Thundercat on a lot of the tunes and his main in-the-trenches producers were apparently heavy LA jazz guys (sax and drums I think) and play on a lot of the tunes as well. It's exceptional.

[pamosmusic]

Actually ... I've been writing a blog on my website lately so if you consider this a shameless plug feel free to skip this post entirely ... but I wrote three or four weeks ago about Kendrick Lamar's new album and what I thought it's implications were for the whole art/acceptance dynamic.

Category: Kendrick Lamar - Peter Amos Music

[Doctor Jeff]

What is indisputable though is that there was more variety on top 40 radio stations back in the 60's and 70's than today. Stations were not so locked into a narrow format; you might hear Blood Sweat and Tears followed by Johnny Cash followed by Aretha Franklin followed by some silly novelty song ("They're coming to take me away...").

I used to record an hour or two of radio on a primitive Sears recorder for some reason--Jet Fli WFLI in Chattanooga, and in fact still have those cassettes, and it's amazing the stuff that would turn up just out of the blue.

There are virtually NO radio stations that play such a variety now.

Also, while I did make the statement that there is still good music being made today, and agree some of the old stuff was crap, there WAS something special about music in the 60's and 70's in every genre. I like the Alabama Shakes, but they can't compare to Aretha or Otis or Etta James in their prime, when the stuff was fresh and no one had heard it before. Bruno Mars ain't James Brown. Maroon 5 ain't the Rolling Stones. Sam Smith ain't Elvis Presley.

For some reason from 1967 to maybe 1972 the stars aligned perfectly, and that music captured the zeitgeist of the times. Respect, We've Got to Get out of This Place, Me and Bobbie McGee, the Ballad of Easy Rider, Higher Ground, Folsom Prison Blues, don't forget Bitches Brew--I mean, the list goes on and on.

[TommyCorsica2]

Ezrin should leave his house more often.

There's always been formulaic music with horrible lyrics. While the Beboppers were re-making jazz, there were plenty of big bands playing Lawrence Welk arrangements to huge audiences.

The complaints are especially rich coming from a producer of Lou Reed (consistently voted one of worst lyricists in rock) and Kiss (I LOVE Kiss but if they wrote a protest song, i've yet to hear it.)

I've heard tons of great, meaningful, artful music in nearly all genres produced in the past 10 years. Is it on the Billboard Top 10?? No, but even at age 11, i realized the Top 10 was mostly awful (remember "Convoy" by CW McCall?)

[Stevebol]

One night I put on a KISS getup and sang this:

It was at the biggest meeting in the history of the Yakuza. If people want edgy I got edgy.
Just sayin'...
Oops. The bandleader did this one. I did 'She's Strange' and 'Attack Me With Your Love' I think. Damn I can't remember.

[Boston Joe]

Hey, I liked "Convoy" as a kid. It was one of the first records I ever owned.

I'll plead ignorance to the rest of this discussion. Pop and rock stopped speaking to me some time in the 90s. I'm sure some of it is worthy, and most isn't (like everything else).

If stuff is popular, it's appealing to someone. You can argue about the reasons it's appealing, but you'd be likely recapitulating arguments that your parents made to you, and your grandparents made to them.

I've got my SeriusXM "Real Jazz" station, and my CDs and MP3s. I'm good.

[Stevebol]

Hey, I liked "Convoy" as a kid. It was one of the first records I ever owned.

I'll plead ignorance to the rest of this discussion. Pop and rock stopped speaking to me some time in the 90s. I'm sure some of it is worthy, and most isn't (like everything else).

If stuff is popular, it's appealing to someone. You can argue about the reasons it's appealing, but you'd be likely recapitulating arguments that your parents made to you, and your grandparents made to them.

I've got my SeriusXM "Real Jazz" station, and my CDs and MP3s. I'm good.

I'm hearing this a lot- early to mid-90's. So many things came together to start a downward spiral in American music. I used to ask myself in the 80's, are we just entertaining for the sake of entertainment? I decided yes and it's OK. Who's going to solve the world's problems, me? I don't think so.
I don't want to get into the use of technology but two big things happened; Rock made a furious comeback for a short time but it was very dissonant. Good but dissonant. Too drug fueled as usual. Also people stopped battle-rapping. It was the beginning of the end.
Pop which is what I do needs inspiration. It didn't have any to draw on.

[Stevebol]

Bob Lefsetz addresses the issues that are at the core of the music business: downloading, copy protection, pricing and the music itself. In response to Lefsetz’s latest newsletter, genius producer Bob Ezrin ( Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel) responded to Lefsetz, who then posted Ezrin's heart-felt letter on his blog.

Personally, I think Ezrin is full of shit, but then who am I to argue with an award-winning producer. Here is Ezrin's letter in full. You decide who's right.

"There used to be music. No longer.

In just the last few generations, we have witnessed the complete devolution of the mainstream of music from the intricacies and demands of jazz, swing and modern “classical”; the subtleties and finesse of the best of popular song writing; the mastery of “folk” instruments and vocal performance in the best of folk and rock; the singular high-mindedness of the greatest singer songwriters; and the hard-won craft of playing and writing and creating meaningful work, to four bar grids of “cut and paste” monotony over which someone writes shallow nursery rhymes about partying, trucks and beer or bitches and bling, or whines in hardly rhyming verse about their sad little white boy or girl life.

There are occasional exceptions, of course. But where are the anthems, the protest songs, the songs to march to or the ideas to fight for, the truths to believe in. Instead it’s all about “me”.

“Glory” from the film “Selma” is the great current exception – as is Kendrick Lamarr’s work. And – yes – let’s not forget the valiant Dixie Chicks!! But mostly there’s little more than a bit of catchy ear candy and nice beats.

All that talk about the “me generation” turns out to be true. We lost “us” in the 80’s and since then we only care about ourselves and our personal gain; we only want the money.

The rhetoric endures – as it does in politics. There’s not a single human working in the “music industry” who doesn’t say that they’re in it for the music, for the art form. Just like there’s no politician who doesn’t claim to be doing it to serve their country or community. But the reality is, we’re all in everything for the pay off. Period.

There used to be meaning. No more.

With our music and words, we used to fight for freedom; we used to incite change; we used to elevate each other; we used to speak for all of us and literally move mountains.

No more.

Bob Ezrin"

I'm a young boomer and I get sick of hearing this. I didn't want to feel obligated politically in music. I vote left but I lived right in my time. Being a club musician was all seedy trickle-down economics. I knew if you played your cards right it was possible to make a living in clubs. Very difficult to do but not impossible. I don't care about this 60's music+politics thing.
Music today isn't all bad. I spend a lot of time listening to amateurs do 'covers' on Youtube.

[fumblefingers]

i don't think it was the politics that made the music interesting in the 60's. it was the spirit, energy, experimentation, boldly going where no man had gone before (groan) etc.

the political expressions coming from those idealistic pot heads were actually quite sophomoric, and that's being kind.

[MarkRhodes]

One night I put on a KISS getup.....
.

I remember when KISS first came out. I was in junior high. They played a gig at Mother's Music Emporium in Nashville for 99 cents. Kids could get in----which was a first there (-so far as we knew) because the place normally served alcohol. (The term "all-ages show" had not been coined.) Me and my younger brother, a neighbor bud (-he also played guitar) and his younger brother rode to the show with their mom. (My mom would pick us up after; none of us had a driver's license.)

We got there about two hours early and hung around the door. (First in line! Actually, we spent a solid hour as the whole of the line.) The band showed up in a limo, sans makeup. So we saw them all without makeup early on. (We didn't know which was which.)
Inside, we picked spots along the stage. We spent the entire show eighteen inches from Gene Simmons' boots. I think they played every song form the first album, which we all knew by heart.
I was never the Kiss fan Mike and Tracy were. (I was more of an Allman Brothers guy, guitar solos; the make up and leather wasn't my thing.) But it was a good show and I'm glad I saw it.

[edh]

The 60's was losing the "Leave it Beaver" image.

[Stevebol]

I think the 60's was about muses and greek mythology.

[christianm77]

People are always saying this stuff. You go back to the 17th century and people are moaning about the new operas as being dumbed down rubbish.

But I kind of see his point, but I'm an old fart.

As far as the intricacies of earlier popular music (jazz and swing) go - if you go back to the 20's and 30's and look at the popular songs, you realise most of them are harmonically formulaic drivel with really inane lyrics.

We have remembered the likes of Cole Porter and Ellington, thankfully, though the vintage music/dance scene means a revival in the popularity of endless bloody records with a Rhythm A section and a Montgomery-Ward bridge, usually with a totally forgettable melody. The dancers seem to like this stuff ;-)

Anyway because I am the most boring man alive, I recently download the Downbeat 75 years of jazz interviews book. It's quite interesting reading about the likes of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman written about in a similar way as I remember indie bands being covered in the NME (back when I was into that sort of thing...)

To me Downbeat in the 30's and 40's seemed little more sophisticated than a modern rock/pop magazine in terms of its music journalism. And yet we still quote its interviews (such as the one with Bird) as holy writ.

Of course Artie and Benny were amazing musicians. It's hard to imagine skilled instrumentalists ever being celebrities like that again - but this was a different time, and they were servicing the needs of the dancers, not just playing for art's sake... It's likely most of their fans had little true appreciation of them as musicians like we do today - just empty celebrity... (the same I guess as when an truly gifted and respected actor becomes a Hollywood star.)

After all Artie hated it so much he walked out at the height of his fame.

Rose tinted glasses!

[MarkRhodes]

It may be worth mentioning that many iconic '60s recordings were made with studio musicians such as Barney Kessel, Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, Glenn Campbell, Howard Roberts. et al. That is to say, professional jazz musicians who opted for studio work and were good at it.

[pamosmusic]

Downbeat was always a little late to the party back then too. Meaning half the time they were the sticks in the mud saying that all these little kids following that heretic Charlie Parker were ruining jazz ... Or bagging on ornette or something. Downbeat is kind of a living proof that we always see the current times as devoid of artistic integrity and that he past is always the golden generation. As for the music of the sixties being pops golden era ... There's a lot that could be said about the popular music of the sixties that puts the people we consider the innovators in a slightly different light.

[fumblefingers]

i learn about a lot of new music from Downbeat these days. newbies all the time. gotta check em out, thankfully we can do that with internet sound samples now. it works.

[pamosmusic]

Oh yea. ... I subscribe to it ... It's great for staying up on what's going on. Finger on the pulse of the avant garde, it's not. Just look at the polls ... Winner of "Rising Star Guitar" last year was Peter Bernstein. I idolize that man but he put his first album out more than twenty years ago. Come on downbeat ... That star has risen ... Use your noggin and try and see who's out there.

[Stevebol]

When the Beatles came to the states Ringo said we're a pop band. What's wrong with you yanks?

[christianm77]

It may be worth mentioning that many iconic '60s recordings were made with studio musicians such as Barney Kessel, Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, Glenn Campbell, Howard Roberts. et al. That is to say, professional jazz musicians who opted for studio work and were good at it.

Professional jazz musicians continue to do this kind of work, although as the studio scene has mostly dried up, this is largely touring now. In London, many of the musos knocking around on the jazz scene have toured and recorded with household names...

[Captain Caravelle]

Bob Ezrin made everyone reach higher.
Gabriel's first album is a masterpiece and i can hear the Ezrin in it.
Listen to Gabriel's second album and compare.

If it wasn't for Kiss I probably wouldn't be a guitar player.
I wanted to rock and roll all night and party everyday and Kiss tunes were simple enough for almost any cheese eating kid to play.
That's what gave me the passion of playing.

As far as Bob goes....listen to any Kiss album and then throw on Destroyer. He could take a bunch of totally average players and make a really good record with them. The story goes that he stopped the sessions at one point and gave them basic music theory lessons.

He's also an old school guy. He as well as I remember when the bar was "this" high. We reached a level of not only brilliant musicianship but aural excellence. The sound quality of the album was almost as important as the content instead of puking out some cut and pasted auto tuned verbal diarrhea accompanied by a sine wave and a beat track that sounds like rice filled Tupperware and all pumped through a mac. Definitely rivals something like Dark Side recorded on those EMI desks going to 2" tape. Ah......how far we've come in such a short time.


As far as what Bob said?
I couldn't have said it better.
He totally nailed it on the head.

[cosmic gumbo]

Ezrin sounds like he's out of touch and living in the past.