What Would You Do If I Sang Out Of Tune

Music today pisses me off.

There once was a time, not to long ago, when, to be successful as a musical performer one had to be able to carry a tune and/or play an instrument. Now-a-days you can just run your voice through auto-tune and presto now you're a virtuoso. Never mind that you have no talent and are, for all intents and purposes, a pretty face. This would be tolerable if not for one thing. It used to be that these people would release an album that was successful and when their concerts were disappointing owing to the fact that they had no talent, they would fade away. Much like "The Killers". Now, however, auto-tune has become "a sound" so artists like Kanye West are running their vocals through auto-tune even at their concerts.

Gone are the days of masterful, precise guitar playing of Eric "Slow Hand" Clapton, the earth shattering vocal prowess of Aretha Franklin and the genre defining genius of "The Beatles." There are a few shining points in the see of darkness. Jack White for instance. While I do not particularly like his music I can respect him for bringing back Ensemble Recording.

You see, most modern recording is done in parts. First a drummer comes in and lays down a beat. Next the bass player does his thing, then the guitar then the vocals and so forth. After which a sound man lays the tracks together, runs them through a computer to fix the tuning and BAM that's a hit song. This leads to clinical sounding music with no soul. 30 years ago a band would set up in a sound room and play the song same as they would at a concert, allowing them to build off and respond to each other more naturally. This leads to a guy as ugly as Keith Richards being as ridiculously famous as he is.

Those days are gone. Dead and gone. Instead, the people who get the deal are the ones who can be sold for their sex appeal. We do get lucky sometimes. Taylor Swift is super talented, but she didn't win American Idol because of her writing ability.   I could keep going on and on and on, but I'm starting to get angry. Suffice to say there is hope, not much, but some. And I will always here my dads voice saying "Tune it or Die."

Topic of discussion for this week: What's worse obligatory Christmas episode or obligatory Halloween episode?