Deltadrummer
Platinum Member
Fair enough. I have always respected musicians like Bill Bruford, Herbie Hancock, Dave Samuels and Pat Metheny who are able to tightrope that fine line between the popular and the avant-garde. Beethoven wrote his late string quartets but also wrote very popular piano concertos, folk songs and of course that Sixth Symphony.
For me there is a distinction between pop and the popular. Verdi and Bernstein are popular but not pop. There is a distinction between a great songwriter, Bacharach or Joni Mitchell and Nelly, Kenny G or Brittany Spears. I think, as you noted, that a financially successful musician does need to have one ear to the greats that have come before and one ear to the people who are mucking up the radio dial. But it reminds me of a line in The American President (I think I've quoted this to you before) where Michael J Fox, the assistant says that the president needs to speak on these issues because if they don't the next nimrod will, he says, " If people do not have water, they are going to try to drink sand".and The Prez (Michael Douglas) says "People don't drink the sand because they don't have water. They drink it because they don't know the difference."
The musicians who I most admire: Steve Reich, Ralph Towner, Charles Lloyd, Dave Brubeck, Keith Jarrett are able to do what they want, well they're geniuses, and they get people to listen. It's the rest of us who have to worry.
When people get old and retire, they think of what they can do with their time, and often they want to read the great writers and hear the great musicians of their time, the ones they have missed because they've been concerned with doing other things.
For me there is a distinction between pop and the popular. Verdi and Bernstein are popular but not pop. There is a distinction between a great songwriter, Bacharach or Joni Mitchell and Nelly, Kenny G or Brittany Spears. I think, as you noted, that a financially successful musician does need to have one ear to the greats that have come before and one ear to the people who are mucking up the radio dial. But it reminds me of a line in The American President (I think I've quoted this to you before) where Michael J Fox, the assistant says that the president needs to speak on these issues because if they don't the next nimrod will, he says, " If people do not have water, they are going to try to drink sand".and The Prez (Michael Douglas) says "People don't drink the sand because they don't have water. They drink it because they don't know the difference."
The musicians who I most admire: Steve Reich, Ralph Towner, Charles Lloyd, Dave Brubeck, Keith Jarrett are able to do what they want, well they're geniuses, and they get people to listen. It's the rest of us who have to worry.
When people get old and retire, they think of what they can do with their time, and often they want to read the great writers and hear the great musicians of their time, the ones they have missed because they've been concerned with doing other things.