CBS Presents: Fashion Rocks.
This
star-studded extravaganza kicked off Fashion Week in NYC just as I
expected it to: with extreme mediocrity. I am a sucker for punishment,
so I dropped myself on the couch for this tasty morsel. Pretty clothes
and flashing lights dazzled my eyes while my eardrums dodged
gold-plated turds for the majority of the show. This was a stellar
presentation of what happens when the major labels try to shine shit
and force-feed it to the public. Let me first say that Alicia Keyes,
Usher, and Mary J Blige made this concert worth the pain I’m going to
revisit for you in the next few minutes. They killed it. Talk about
talented musicians – these are the people that deserve to be broadcast
to millions of people. Now that I’ve given credit where credit is due,
let’s move on to the fun stuff. I’ll try not to dwell on any one
“artist” for too long.
Fergie… whatever. I’ve never been able to
respect her since she informed me about her humps. Nothing new in that
department… NEXT.
J-Lo… NEXT.
Chad Kroeger from
Nickelback did a WONDERFUL job at proving to me that he doesn’t deserve
to sing into anything but a bar of soap. Talk about a tone-deaf singer,
that dude was WAY out of his league in front of Santana’s band.
Jennifer Hudson’s butcher of Aerosmith’s butcher of The Beatles’
“Come Together” made me physically angry. I almost opted to watch
Rachael Ray over this travesty. I’m ok with covering tunes. Re-doing a
song to send a valuable message to a different audience gets no
argument from me. However, when the words to the song are meaningless,
I don’t see the point. Come Together is drug-induced gibberish. BRILLIANT gibberish, but entirely unnecessary to be turned into amateur slam poetry. And Joe Perry? Ugh…
Joe
Perry and Carlos Santana share the “retire already!” award hands down.
Joe Perry is either so high that he can’t count beats in his head or he
has a ridiculous case of rheumatory arthritis and can’t move his
fingers like he did on “Toys in the Attic.” He couldn’t groove his way
out of a paper bag, and he even played a wrong chord while destroying Come Together! This is the 2nd time I’ve seen him do this on a network music broadcast (the first one was Sgt. Peppers with Kelly Clarkson in '06).
Santana
needs to just pack it up and call it quits. Come on, this dude has been
playing the same patterns of the minor pentatonic scale since the
fucking 70’s. GIVE UP. He has surrounded himself with the most talented
musicians in the world and he STILL can’t be more creative than he was
when he was whacked on LSD and mescaline?! Just because you have a
guitar named after you doesn’t mean you should keep playing it for us.
This
is the best the music industry has to offer me? Of all the music in the
world today, I have to watch has-beens and glorified mediocrats? To me,
the most powerful part of the night was that the backing bands of all
of the “superstars” were phenomenal. There were some
unbelievable musical performances by some serious pros that (in my
book) should have stolen the show from all the garbage that the
spotlights were pointing at. Particularly impressive were the
performances of the Motown hits “Do I Do” by Stevie Wonder and Aretha
Franklin’s “Respect.” These guys (including Usher and Mary J Blige)
deserved a standing ovation for that medley.
Why is it that the
record labels are trying to pump out individual stars? Why do we keep
getting over-run by individuals taking the credit for the music created
by a dozen people standing in the shadows behind them? We’ve regressed
to the days of The Funk Brothers playing on legendary Motown
tracks without credit! I wonder if the average consumer realizes that
most of the crap that the major labels are putting in their ears are
manufactured, auto-tuned, digitally edited, versions of songs that the
label bought from professional songwriters and then hired professional
players to create. It’s only an afterthought that their favorite pop
icon is singing the song.
I’m optimistic that during my lifetime I will put myself on the couch to watch a network-sponsored music broadcast and hear talent dominating the program. I want to hear something that is not manufactured pop, not bullshit, but something musical, something meaningful, and something that the audience genuinely relates to, understands, and respects for what they have heard and seen from the performers, not the flashing lights or the costumes or the production. Maybe someday soon producers won’t have to create such elaborate light shows to cover up for the music that can’t stand on its own.
Maybe
the musical utopia I envision is unrealistic, or maybe my vision of
“good” music is too subjective and the average consumer listens to
music for a different reason than I do. Regardless, it’s not like this
music doesn’t exist in the world today, it DOES! If only there were a
way for the world to hear it and decide for themselves. Unfortunately,
it’s not our decision what we hear on the radio. The decision belongs
to Universal, Sony BMG, EMI, and Warner Brothers, and will continue
to belong to the big four until something is done to take it away from
them—something to challenge their power and bring the next wave of real music to the people. Music WRITTEN BY THE MUSICIANS.
Who is going to step up to the plate?
You?