Cleaning out the musical closet. Wags, what the heck are you getting at now?
Picture this. You’re a kid. You go into your toy chest or closet where you keep your games and toys and you start rummaging through some old stuff and to your surprise, find a box of marbles. Man, you remember when you used to play marbles.
And then you open up the box and there they all are. Your aggies, mibs, shooters, the whole lot. Man, you haven’t played marbles in so long. So you take ’em out and start reliving your not so distant past. All of a sudden, marbles are fun again.
Music is kind of like that, believe it or not. Or have you not noticed that throughout the years, especially since the dawn of rock and roll, a lot of music has come and gone and come again.
In 1972, a guy by the name of Robert John did a song by the name of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” which shot all the way up to number 1. Now, by itself that doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Except the song was an old tune from back in 1961 that was redone and very much in the same style as it was done originally, with that late 50s, early 60s sound.
Going back to 1933, a song by Gertrude Niesen was recorded for the first time. The name of it? Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. Now that could have very well been the end of it except it was also recorded in 1958 by The Platters and then again as an uptempo version by rock group Blue Haze.
I won’t even attempt to go over all the other times the song had been recorded. Too many to count.
Truth is, songs and even whole musical styles get recycled all the time. The question is why?
Well, I am sure there are a lot of theories and speculation as to why songs and even whole styles of music get recycled. I’m going to toss some of my own into the ring. These may or may not jive with some of the stuff that you’ve heard or believe.
At the top of the list, from a business perspective, songs and styles get recycled because, if they were hits once, maybe they can be hits again and make some people a lot of money.
Face it, as much as you might not want to admit it, music today is big business. If there is a way to make a buck off of something, the big wigs today will find a way to make it. And one way is by cleaning out that musical closet to see if there is anything in it that might just ring that bell.
But that’s not the only reason that I think musicians themselves clean out the musical closet. I think boredom is another one.
After a while, we get tired of hearing the same old thing. I am actually surprised that rap music has lasted as long as it has since it all sounds the same. (Ducking for cover). In all honesty, most musical genres or sub genres don’t last that long. Look at prog rock from the 70s. It’s dead. I sometimes wonder if it’ll ever come back. I think one of the main reasons it’ll probably never come back is because of the length of the songs. People today have less of an attention span than ever and just don’t want to sit through 10 minute tracks no matter how good they may be.
So because we get bored with things and there is only so much “new” under the sun, we look to old stuff to see if we can maybe resurrect and old song or even whole style and maybe update it a little bit to make it fresh. Personally, I think we’re running out of ideas. Most of the really “unique” stuff is under the radar. You don’t hear it on the popular radio stations. You find it on YouTube or on private web sites of the artists themselves. A lot of it is on Soundcloud. In fact, Soundcloud might be the best place to find some of the cutting edge stuff if you can stand wading through all the garbage.
Personally, I’m always looking for new sounds. It’s why I’m always on the lookout for the latest advances in technology to maybe give me a spark of inspiration.
For example, last night I checked out Omnisphere. Now, while not new, it was new to me. First time I ever even heard of the soft synth. Not sure how it got past me but it did. All I can say is, wow. If that thing doesn’t inspire me when I get it, nothing will. It is without a doubt the synth to end all synths. Someday, I will review it for everybody.
And finally, I think we recycle old things just for the nostalgia. We remember a simpler time in our lives and these old things remind us of those simpler times. It’s why I still love music of the 60s and 70s when I grew up. I have stronger memories of some of that stuff than the stuff more recent. In fact, very little of the new stuff does anything at all for me.
Point is, for whatever your reason may be, cleaning out the musical closet can inspire new ideas or at least ideas that are going to be new to the current generation.
Remember, a lot of the kids around today don’t remember the 80s let alone the 60s and 70s. My daughter was born in 1988. By that time, I was almost done with popular music is was getting so bad. There were still a few good tunes on the radio, but it wasn’t like the old days. I was so uninspired, I wasn’t even doing that much writing back then. Know what got me inspired to write again?
Old classical music from the 17 and 18 hundreds.
Now THAT is what I call cleaning out the musical closet.
You should try it sometime.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim