Sounds like? I think not!! by Mark Bingham

Here’s some BS I thought about writing to Garageband.com, a “service” that has taken the place of A+R and put it in the hands and ears of other music lovers who have no economic interest in whether they like something or not. Sounds like a good idea, but they, too, are dealing with search engines like Pandora, to supposedly help us find other music we like that sounds like music we already know we like. Hmmm. Please remember that I am an IDIOT and nothing I say should be taken seriously. However, I can still do music well, which doesn’t require much thinking, or very little, if that...

I'm sorry but this "sounds like" business is very depressing and indicative of just how out of hand the old models and new web based variations on "the music biz" have become. I'm forever trying to find - "doesn't sound like".

Shuffling humans into lists and categories is very 1984 in the Orwell sense. It further de-humanizes, in an even more sinister way that the old system did. It makes for a convenience for people who utilize music (broadcasters, advertising people, film people), but not necessarily for people who listen.

The new world iPod listening experience is literally ear numbing and at a lo-fidelity not heard since 78s were scratching along. Gosh, there’s no HISS, therefore it must be OK sounding. Oy!

However, there is the genius of having a sound source, however crappy, stuffed in your ear, all yours, in private, minus that bulky Walkman to haul around. Tinnitus doctors around the earth are salivating and making vacation plans. Gear manufacturers are selling more compressors than ever and audiophiles are being herded into sonic concentration camps where they are accused of terrorism and never heard from again.

Music as we know it, in every style, form, genre or sub set you might care to create, is a very conservative art form, where little has changed in 1000 years aside from volume, as in more people doing it and more amplification. "People who break the mold" is what interests the tiny sub set of music lovers. We also love those who summarize what has come before in ways often more beautiful than those before had done, as in J.S Bach, Radiohead and Robert Johnson.

Yes, given an in tune E chord on an electric guitar played loud enough through a good amp and speakers, you can hear all the sounds in the universe. No talent needed. No organization. No career strategy. No songs, no pre-production, no vision, no nothing but a room that loads up and some receptive eardrums. Scroll through CD Baby and see how many people and bands come up to the level of an E chord played loud. 5%? 10%? - hard to say, since you can’t get to 2% of the offerings. Does this mean these people and bands should quit? No, it just means there’s no way for us to ever hear them all in our lifetime.

The tiny percentage of artists using the tools we are given to do anything even remotely new or interesting musically should be noted and rewarded, not cast into the fiery pit of "sounds like". That's for critics and A+R people... who are no longer running things. Why does Garageband.com proclaim to be trying for a new system while basically doing the old A+R soft show under the guise of populism? Last I looked there was already a McDonald's in every town and a hundred wannabe bands to eat at them.

Thanks to the new mediums, I can spend an entire month of 10-hour days listening to nothing but derivative so called music in dozens of very tight genres, sub-genres and absurdist cross pollinations (who thinks up all the AllMusic sub genres?), all presented sterile and professionally, in the most artless of software driven audio presentation. But that’s MY PROBLEM. I want inspiration, right into the mainline, not SOUNDS LIKE.

Musicians return to the command center after a take with instructions on where to pull the audio from to fix their mistakes. I almost said, “control room”, but I caught myself. I laugh, because I do the same thing now. We are all such cowards anymore (is that a Hal line?)

Maybe the old system wasn't so bad- all those poor bastards in their offices with piles and piles of CDs, with their alcohol and coke and $ habits - they took the hit for the rest of us. A flawed system, yes, but it didn't require half a lifetime of my space surfing to find even one artist with something to say... not something to SELL, something to say. What good are collaborative web sites if the very basics of music have been reduced to mush by instant gratification technology? Modern Times, indeed...... There are 4000 "jazz " students spewing forth from the college factories each year now- where every one of them comes out doing a passable Trane or Bird solo, all very formal and yes, like classical music.

So those people go on to teach stiff formal jazz to the next generation. Yikes. So now, everyone has a band and Garage Band will sift through the mass of sludge and deliver the geniuses to we starved listeners. Allmusic will compile who did what. CMJ will attempt to be as corrupt as their fore fathers while professing to be holier than thou and there will always be 100,000 kids who can't play or sing or write hoping that this doesn't matter and they will become rock stars. It's 2006! How can this be? Music is holy. Don't forget why you're doing this. Why did the moron go into the music business? For the money.....

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