40 Years Ago

1968... 40 years ago.  I was barely a thought, in fact I was about 20 years away from being a thought.  Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed.  President Lyndon Johnson after signing the Civil Rights Act into law stepped aside and passed the stewardship of the American-Vietnamese War to Richard Nixon.  Hippies crowded the Washington Mall in protest of the pointless War; the smell of marijuana in the air and through the smoky haze sat the Lincoln memorial.  It was a revolutionary time for politics, justice, and the culture, especially the music.

2008 marks a significant anniversary for fans of the great music of the 20th Century.  1968 may have been the most creative time in modern music; an experimental era that revolutionized the recording, production, promotion, and live performance of music.  Studio trickery was being explored by the Beatles, the British heroes of rock, with the help of music genius George Martin.  The infamous Woodstock (1969) and other unprecedented music festivals allowed artists and audiences to build a musical coalition against the War and the untamed political machine.  And who could forget the Fender Stratocaster lit up and perverted by Hendrix.  All of the elements were there: the music, the drugs, the inspiration.  In a way, the late 1960s and early 70s are comparable to the founding period of the United States in that the best of the best were gathered at the right time and in the right place to make music history.

By the early 1950s, music lovers were being introduced to the earliest forms of what would be Rock 'n' Roll and the vision of innovators like the Elvis and Chuck Berry.  But the real innovators were preparing to change the face of music and the world.  Looking to the great music coming out of America for inspiration, British blues rockers like Led Zeppelin and Cream and pop rock stars like the Beatles began pushing the limits of music in both style and production.

Concept Rock

One of my favorite groups, the Moody Blues, had been one of the first to develop what they called a “stage show” and it would become one of the first “concept albums.”  Concept albums, in short, tell a story through a series of songs.  The songs were usually recorded separately, but unlike modern albums (if any truly exist anymore),  in the final mix they were stringed together, or faded into one another, seamlessly, leaving little or no audio silence between tracks.  It's like listening to a Broadway musical except a concept album is much better.

The Moody Blues were masters of this brand of album making.  Their first album, “Days of Future Passed,” followed a day in the life of one person, from morning to night.  The unintentional brilliance the album, and many other concept albums, is that their abstract compositions leave room for speculation and imagination on the part of the listener.  Today's record industry and most of its signed artists wouldn't hear of something that makes their audience think.  It's comparable to watching “The Family Guy” versus watching “Lost.”  Certainly, there is always room for both, but one is more intellectually stimulating than the other.  But concept albums didn't entirely fall off the map in the 1960s.  Pink Floyd would also later create two of the best concept albums, “Darkside of the Moon” and “The Wall.”

To Stereo and Beyond

The Moody Blues were also one of the first rock groups to explore stereophonic as opposed to monophonic recording.  Justin Hayward, guitarist and lead singer of the Moody Blues, who wrote their hit “Nights in White Satin” (1967), discussed the events that led to one of the first hybrid stereo/concept albums ever created.  “[Decca] came to us and said they wanted [us] to record a rock version of Dvorak's 'New World Symphony,' as a demonstration record to demonstrate that stereo could be as interesting for rock 'n' roll as it was for classical music. When stereo started, it was confined to classical.

“So we said, fine, we'd do the demonstration record if we could just have five days alone in the studio without any record company executives coming in and telling us what to do. Decca hemmed and hawed a bit, and then finally they said OK.”  “Days of Future Passed” went on to become a classic masterpiece of rock. Robert Gibson, a Chief NASA Astronaut, was such a fan of the album that he brought a cassette version with him aboard the Challenger, Endeavor, and Atlantis space shuttle trips.  All in all, "Days of Future Passed" orbited the Earth 420 times and travelled 10 million miles.  The cassette can be seen in the Los Angeles Hard Rock Cafe.

The “space” provided by stereophonic production allowed the artists to be more elaborate in their creations and experiment with the positioning (or panning) of sounds to create an imitation-surround experience.  For example, a studio engineer could reproduce the effect of an instrument or vocal circling around your head (listening through headphones) by rotating a pan knob.  Stereo, originally pioneered in the late 50s, gave sound room to move in any direction whereas mono left it stagnant and lifeless.  By the mid 1970s, quadraphonic (early authentic “surround”) albums were being made.

The audio revolution continued and we now have technologies like digital surround sound (Dolby Digital and DTS) and SACD (Super Audio CD), which produces high-fidelity audio.  Compared to a standard CD (16-bit resolution with a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz), an SACD, with a sampling rate about 2.8 Mhz, holds more audio and sounds a lot better.  The hybrids are playable in both CD (stereo) and DVD (surround) players.

Is the music over?

Arguably, the best music, then and now, has come from the U.K.  From this side of the Atlantic, the best we could offer was not that great in my opinion:  The Beach Boys, The Doors, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Eagles, Sly and the Family Stone, The Allman Brothers Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and The Ramones.  Our British friends gave us such greats as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Genesis, The Who, Cream, and The Beatles.

What about newer music?  The music industry today is in the midst of revolution.  Thanks to Napster, and MySpace Music, artists and their fans are essentially communicating on a direct line rather than the Billboard charts.  It's not so much about album sales anymore as much as the downloads of singles and concert sales.  There is no more of paying for entire Britney Spears albums when you just want that “Baby One More Time” song.  I've used Amazon.com's new “MP3 Downloads” site many times to purchase and download (yes, legally) my favorite new songs.  Whether it's a good song by Green Day, a nasty song by 50 Cent, or a electronic/rock track by Muse, I can hear and save what I like with the click of a mouse (and the use of a credit card).

Concerts have evolved, not just in technology such as digital audio systems, laser light shows, LED backdrops, acrobatics, and explosions.  The audiences have changed.  Last fall I flew to Los Angeles to see Genesis in their last tour ever (probably) and the tickets were not cheap.  Prices for good seats ranged from $300 to $1000 and the merchandise was also costly.  The audience was calm compared to the sights of newer hard rock bands like Disturbed, whose audience reverts to primitive screaming and insane bouncing and shoving.  For perspective, talk to anyone who saw Zeppelin in the 1970s and they will tell you a different story.  The tickets were cheap, the drugs were plentiful and fairly distributed, and the women freely showed off their natural God-given twins to anyone who would look.  The audience demeanor?  Content.

Good music is still being made, but it's not mainstream.  If you want to find salvation you must look below the surface and the Internet is a good place to start.  The local scene has its good and bad aspects.  There are new bands, such as My Chemical Romance, who have stayed true to their unique style and never had a chance to see a contract with a big label.  However, with the help of MySpace and YouTube, that artist has a platform.  What's bad?  The last gasp of conformity from those newer bands who get signed to big labels in order to milk their genre and regurgitate the same old and tired chord progressions and glass-shattering vocal melodies about love and suicide.

The revolution is ongoing and the winners will certainly be the fans.  After all, who needs FM radio or a record label with mobile media players and YouTube at our fingertips?