[Dixielandjazz] Where is the music going?

[Steve barbone]

A while back we had a thread that started with the lamenting of a loss of
audience share for the Grammy's, despite a plethora of "live" performances.
Most of us agreed that it was because the music sucks these days.

Probably not. Here is another take on what might be happening in
"entertainment", snipped from a Frank Rich column in the NY Times.

-----start snip

The selling of the Oscar show is the latest indicator of the most telling
disconnect in our politics: in the post-Janet Jackson era, "indecency" is
gaining in popularity in direct proportion to Washington's campaign to shut
indecency down.

Hollywood can read the numbers. Once the feds vowed to smite future
"wardrobe malfunctions," the customers started bolting the annual TV
franchises where those malfunctions and their verbal counterparts were once
apt to occur. An award show sanitized of vulgarity and encased in the
prophylactic of tape delay is an oxymoron. And so the Golden Globes lost 40
percent of its audience in January on NBC, the Grammys lost 28 percent of
its audience this month on CBS. The viewers turned up instead at the
competing "Desperate Housewives" on ABC, where S-and-M is the latest item on
the carnal menu. 

Though this year's Super Bowl didn't have to go up against that runaway hit,
its born-again family-friendliness also took a ratings toll; the audience in
the all-important 18-to-49 demographic fell to an all-time low. The viewers
perked up only for a GoDaddy.com commercial parodying a Washington
"Broadcast Censorship Hearing": TiVo reported that the spot's utterly
unrevealing "wardrobe malfunction" gag was the most replayed moment from any
of the game's ads, much as the Jackson-Timberlake pas de deux that inspired
it was the TiVo sensation of the year before.

-----end snip

The rest of the article points out the hype for the Academy Awards
Presentation is full of double entendre and sexual innuendo in an effort to
retain share, even though nothing like the hype will actually occur.

Yep, seems as if we all love SEX. Perhaps we do protest too much? After all,
which is more harmful to pre teens. A Jackson boob for a fleeting second, or
those Condom ads appearing in prime time and their implications?

Where is the music audience going? Towards Sex. Nothing new here. Been that
way for centuries. So? Carpe Diem - Throw them beads. :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone