[Dixielandjazz] American Idol - Redux

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

Pat Cooke77 at yahoo.com at patcooke77 at yahoo.com wrote:

I've never watched "idol".   I have no plans to watch it.  Nowadays, it's
the singers who are the "idols', and what they're doing is not what I would
call singing.  I remember when the band leader's name was on the record
label in large print, and all the sidemen's names in smaller print.  The
singer's name was also in very small print, if it was mentioned at all.

I have been guilty of watching Idol from time to time (not this year) and it 
drives me completely insane.  I have never been able to understand how 
perfectly good people get booted off sometimes and keep the losers.

I thinks it's too simplistic to put it all on "it's a popularity contest". 
Let's put it where it's at.  The American people are visually oriented (T & 
A) and have for the past 50 years in pop music become less and less 
discriminating.  Intonation means little and the MUSIC (like notes and 
chords) and musicians have become of less and less importance.  Many of the 
Hit tunes have canned rhythm, especially drums.

(As an aside if they listed the musicians names then that would give away 
the fact that some of the musicians aren't people or that the band was one 
very clever guy with a computer)

This was a concept that would have never occurred to musicians even up into 
the 70's.  The first guitar player who found out you could use a fuzz box to 
cover up poor playing helped accelerate the trend.  The first rap which 
wasn't called rap and I really don't know if they called it anything also 
helped bring down the house of cards.  Many people think that Rap is a 
recent Black invention but it's really not.  The Beatniks would sit around 
and recite rhythmic poetry to congas and bongos.  I remember going places 
where that happened but no one called that music and everyone knew the 
difference.  Today the same thing with a lot of four letter words and 
heavier beats sells millions of CD's.   All you need is a good drum machine. 
I'm also not sure that the majority of people know the difference anymore. 
It seems the nesting place for melodic music today is in the Country Western 
/ Gospel music areas.
Larry Walton
St. Louis