Where are the Classics?
- Written by Cary Park
What is life without the love of a song and a melody? A sequence of single notes or clusters grouped together, words that become your mantra, melodies that move your soul to the core.
Why is it that Clair De Lune, What a Wonderful World, Ramble On, Crazy, Take Five, Free Fallin’ Let it Be, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, to name a select few make me want to lay down, check out, drift off and escape to my inner world? These are timeless perfectly constructed three, four, five minute-capsules of yesteryears musical perfections. The beauty of a well written hard crafted composition, song and melody is like oxygen, one’s heartbeat that aroused a feeling and can bring a smile in the darkest of times and awaken memories long forgotten of snapshots in the past while evening out the-bends and filling in the potholes of life. Well written classic songs in continual airplay transcend the decades and remain as relevant now as the day they were released.
In 1977 Nasa’s Voyager 1 and 2 space probes were launched, forever gone from sight, but they are still with us in faint communication after 43 years. Contained within these magnificent vessels that are 13.2 billion miles away sailing through space at speeds of 35,000 miles per hour are “The Gold Records”, and they are titled “The Sounds of Earth.” Part of President Jimmy Carter’s message recorded June 16th on these gold-plated copper disc phonograph records was “This is a token from a small distant world, a token of our sounds,” these discscontain 27 pieces of music that represent our planet, our world.Among the select pieces of music and symphonic compositions are Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, Mozart’s the Magic Flute, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark was the Night, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and Chuck Berry’s timeless classic Johnny B. Goode. It’s a hope and a prayer in an infinite attempt to share our culture with extraterrestrials if ever we make contact. These perfectly crafted compositions were included in hopes to communicate part of who we are as a distant species and convey the same emotions that made them worthy of travel beyond our reach.
Sadly, we will lose contact with the Voyagers in 2025.
I’ve been a professional musician for four decades, but I often find myself longing for a connection with what is considered todays modern music. Where are the new songs and compositions that will one day be considered classics, and timeless? Joni Mitchell years back said they removed “mus” from music and just left us with “ic”. To get a perspective on my thoughts take a look at today’s popular hit song charts and compare it to that of the 50’s,60’s,70’s,80’s,90’s. I don’t care if I come across sounding old, and yes I know there were lots of duds with each period in the aforementioned. I just entered my sixth decade of life, but witnessing the dumbing down of lyrics, shortened cookie cutter instant fix, catchy cute hooks with loops created by a computer that pull me in, but then immediately make me want to claw my way out is getting harder to ingest. It’s astonishing.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still really good songs being released, with dedicated caring songwriters and true artists out there. It’s just extremely difficult to find them as they are not considered spokes in the turning wheel of today’s mainstream music industry. When there’s a blanket mentality that shoves heaps of bootie shakin’ low bass thumping shallow lyric writing and sexually objectifying women, with as many as seven writers on a song, this, to me, gives the appearance of pure laziness without a concern for real well written music to pass on to future generations. It’s about immediacy, and a shortened attention span seeking instant gratification without concern for perfection, or the brilliant twists of the simplest prose, and the deepest depth of lyric writing, journeying into the story of the song and mind of the writer. What percentage of today’s popular music will be remembered hereafter in the future, 100 years from now, revered, cherished and passed on to other minds and hearts that will bring a wistful longing aching indescribable feeling?
Here’s a final thought from the grumpy guy. Eleanor Rigby, a baroque pop song by The Beatles from their seventh album Revolver was released in 1966. It is a brilliant fictitious two minute and five second account of pure loneliness that quickly climbed to number #1 in the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and peaked at #11 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. Then, subsequently it won the Grammy for best contemporary performance in 1967.
Now, again, listen to today’s charted #1 positions, and or any position on Billboard and compare that to get an accurate idea of the extent the music industry has devolved, and how far it’s drifted from shore.
