New Years day was hot, and I spent much of it lazing in the pool with Estrella. Everybody was pretty shot from lack of sleep. In the afternoon, there was a reprisal of last nights party, with a contigent of the family empire returning to scarf the leftovers from dinner to call it lunch. I watched a couple of movies. Lenzis 1975 kidnapping/revenge picture, Syndicate Sadists, and a 1961 inheritance murder mystery from Hammer, A Taste of Fear. Both were just interesting enough to watch through to the end.
Like so many people, I gag myself when reading facebook posts. These virtual rap sessions inevitably end with someone proclaiming End of Discussion. I often wonder if there were any discussion to speak of, or if one news source was simply arguing with anpther news source.
On a songwriter page, someone was explaining what a time signature was, and another person, one who was boasting abut his hot new tracks, offered profuse thanks, confessing that he hadnt even known what a time signature was. I was tempted to tell him that if he had learned to play an instrument in elementary school, he would have learned all about time signatures before he was eight years old. But I stifled myself.
Back in the 1990s, when teenagers were running away from their small town homes to Seattle, a kid asked my opinon on something that had been troubling him. He wanted to know what he should do first. Learn an instrument or start a band? I suppose his reasoning was that it would be pointless to learn an instrument if you were not in a band but once in a band it would be neccessary to learn how to play an instrument. At the time, the issue seemed absurd, but today Im not so sure. It is possible to make something that sounds like a hit record without any knowledge of music or literary skills. One can use computer apps to generate a random chord progression as well as a melody connecting the harmonic changes, design a list of words and phrases associated with your song title sugggested by the computer and organizes them into lines to fit the melodic phrases, and finally employ the magical band in a box to drape the whole thing in a winning arrangement in any genre and era that you like. And presto, you are a songwriter.
Next step is to complain that you are not famous. When I was at that age, being famous was the last thing on my mind. I was happy with receiving a passing grade on my composition for music theory class. And even after I had graduated, there was good reason for my not being famous. I was not good enough. I played in bands for five years before getting my first gig. Back then, people formed bands because they were musicians not because they thought they were cool.
If you were a singer, you were not Jim Morrison. If you were a guitar player, you were not Jimi Hendrix. If you were a songwriter, you were not Bob Dylan. So who were you? Maybe if you stuck with it, you would become somebody Until then, there were plenty of people to learn from. The people who were famous were famous because they were better than you. Even the local bands that played regular gigs had more on the than you did.
That is not true today. Any half witted teenager with a computer loaded with writing and production apps could generate something as good as Eddie Sheeran . So when that kid with no musical or literary skills posts his surefire hit song onto soundcloud or YouTube, and wonders after 48 hours why he is not famous, perhaps he has a point.
Cinema Afterlife 