Do it for the children...

Posted over 4 years ago

so i was djing for my friends wedding a couple weeks ago, the unorganized mess that it was, and decided to play more tasteful than "dance" music in respect to the parents of the young couple. well, as the older guest slowly drove their tractors and john deereâ€™s home (seriously, farm town), i decided to switch gears to more beat oriented songs to give the boozed up kids something to get retarded to. a girl with pink and black hair wonders over to my quarters and asks if i have "bossy" by kelis. in my head im thinking, "oh sorry, but i only have good music." but i apologize nicely and in its place play fergie's "clumsy," a song that i had downloaded the night before because my sister-in-law requested it on a cd. it worked out. billie jean and the next episode later, i get one of the groomsmen floating towards me. "do you have any souljah boy?" i mistakenly thought of the album "a soldier's story" by dieselBOY (an album that i had perused at a borders YEARS ago, and only remembered it because of its sweet cover art).

"isn't that drum and bass stuff?" i reply. "uh, no, never mind," he says. not having any kelis was alright, but not having this particular artist in question bothered me. that night, i youtubed "souljah boy" and found this:

my immediate thoughts ensued, "WHAT THE %#$@ IS THIS $#*&?!!?" am i just out of the loop? or is this what kids today are actually listening to? after reading some of the comments posted on the video i understood. here is a recent one:"i luv this song its sick ITS POOPPPIIIIIN LOL IM WIGHT BUT YES I AM GELOUS THAT IM NOT BLACK GANGSTA"jesus, its worse than i thought. i continued to research what kids are listening to these days and what i found was borderline disturbing. its not so much that the music is complete rubbish, or that the lip synching is worse than britney's vma performance, its not even the awful lyrics, no no. i took direct notice at the crowds. LOOK AT HOW MANY KIDS THERE ARE. they are exposed to this. imo, brainwashed.

now i know lil chris is huge in the uk, but if he was on a see-saw of good and bad english music, and the beatles were on the good side... it would be freakin stand still.i hope this didnt... yeah it did. this was a rant and i apologize. but im just worried about the future. the future of music that my kids will be exposed/listen to. if i had a child right now, i would sit them down in front of this song. we need more music that inspires.

Comments (10)

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Augusts1 says Kinda surprised you know who The Waterboys are, being of the youngish variety yourself there Sam, lol. I was into them the first time they came around decades ago. From what I've seen there has always been trash music & music that inspires. I think the music that inspires always wins out cause the crap music fades away since it usually is associated with a fad of some type. And yet there is always a need for mindless party music just to cut loose with. I don't think you have to worry about the future of music since it's a constant battle & people always seem to discover the good stuff eventually once they get over the triteness of the fad music.

Permalink posted 09/24/2007
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Sam The Artist says haha, yeah its true, im a youngin. but ive always felt musically mature. "this is the sea" is one of the few songs that has ever made my eyes water. and i see your point. i remember vividly when i was in the 7th grade, i used to stay up every night and listen to the top ten count down on 107.7 "the end." the only real alternative radio station in the seattle area at the time. i remember one night listening to the list and saying out loud (to myself) "music has never been this bad." it hit me like a brick. i think Hole was playing at the time, but every song got continually worse (and these were the most requested songs of the night). but i think snap music is just a fad, or at least i hope so. it just seems so common now for artist to make music for money/fame rather than the beauty and soul that is apparent in good songs.

Permalink posted 09/24/2007
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Augusts1 says I think it's also a matter of growing older. I look back to what I used to listen to when I was growing up as a kid & I can't believe some of the stuff I liked. Record companies count on the "immature" tastes of young people because most(not all) follow what's popular. So once you grow out of that, if you do(& some never do), then you start discovering that there are MUCH better artists & music out there. Btw, I love Hole & Courtney Love's solo work, so it's also quite subjective as to what is "bad" & "good". But I'm sure there are artists that you listen to that I wouldn't care for either.

Permalink posted 09/25/2007
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contrabandwidth says My former brother in law used to DJ in High School around '84. Do you know what album he hated most? ??Thriller?? by Michael Jackson. That was all people wanted to hear. It's not a bad album, but I can definitely understand why you would be sick of it at the time. IT was all over the radio, MTV and then he had to play it. He refused to own a copy of the album later into life. As for the YouTube comments, what can you do but shake your head and sigh. I always liked Jeanene Garafolo's take on The Justin's and Britney's faking the "Blackcent". To paraphrase "What? Did you grow up hard in the Mickey Mouse club or something?" White people will always Co-opt black culture (and of course I'm not saying hip hop is strictly a "black thing" but when Justin, Britney and Christina all start talking with some sort of effected speech patterns and dialect that is attributed to a culture or group in which they do not belong, then they are co-opting it for their own purposes of credibility - end of my cover your ass disclaimer.).

Permalink posted 09/25/2007
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contrabandwidth says I personally love videos like this (Soulja Boy) only because they show little scenes of Atlanta (note the graffiti Pac Man ghost behind the artist at one point - you see that taggers work everywhere). Yep, the videos dumb, but I have more of a "Hey! I know where that is!" fascination with any of the like 2000 rap artists from ATL videos.

Permalink posted 09/25/2007
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Sam The Artist says augusts: but thats exactly it, when we were younger, we followed what was "popular," not so much what we "liked." how sad is that? radio stations play the same 5 songs every hour, TRL drives cookie-cutter bubblegum wannabes into our head. pretty soon you forget that a song is wack, and a no talent hack gets a platinum. yeah, i know its definitely a problem that its coming from my view of whats good and bad, and i cant speak for everyone, and that sucks. lol. but genres like snap music is (imo) so easy to create. anyone can do it and make a buck. hole does have a huge fan base, i was never a part of it. at first i didnt hear anything special in her music, but in the end i think it was her personality that got to me. but now that i think about it, maybe it was more because my favorite radio station was adapting to the times, and i wasnt liking where it was going, and in return, i had no where to go. HAHA, maybe IM the one who's stuck. contra: i can completely relate to your bro, thats kinda why i stopped djing. i didnt even want to do this wedding, but i couldnt say no to a friend. i knew that i no longer enjoyed listening to the music that everyone else expected to hear, so now if im in charge of music somewhere i play songs that people wouldnt normally know. and yeah ATL is so hot in terms of rap right now, that if you had access to an 808 drum machine you could probably score yourself a record deal and video showing off your hometown.

Permalink posted 09/25/2007
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contrabandwidth says Well, I think when you look at a lot of the dirty south sound or Crunk, you have to look at hip hops roots in oration more than it's musical roots. Hip Hop takes just as much from the oration one is used to in church as rock n' roll takes some of it's soul from Gospel. Hip Hop to me is kind of like comparing a comic book to a film or a novel - it can take elements from both mediums, but it is neither. It is it's own being. Much like you can't classify a great video game on the same level as a great movie or novel, it's a medium that borrows a lot from many parallel mediums, but has it's own purpose and end results. So basically, as much as it is music, it's something else too. Maybe the chant like chorus are meant to sort of bring people together or rally people to a common state of mind. Lots of music does this too, but this has less to do with musicianship and more with emphasis of a point, even if that point is as simple as "shaking your laffy taffy".

Permalink posted 09/26/2007
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Sam The Artist says totally. thats what ive noticed in this new style of hip-hop. its mostly a catch phrase that is repeated... or whispered. theres this rapper on youtube that has this song called "the money shake" or somethin, and thats the whole chorus, "do the money shake, do the money shake" and they even have a nifty little dance to boot. i think this would be the perfect example of what im tryin to say: which sounds exactly like his other song: thats what it is. its a phrase and a dance. all of them. every bloody one of them. but thats what theyre goin for i guess.

Permalink posted 09/26/2007
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ardyjormkiv says kind of frightening, isn't it?

Permalink posted 09/30/2007
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Sam The Artist says very

Permalink posted 09/30/2007