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I hear very nice melodies once in a while among the "alternative pop" bunch, especially from female artists, but what I think is vastly superior from this very old era of music that we mostly perform, compared to any other that followed are the lyrics.
There's so much poetry and wittiness, clever word play, humor, even rowdiness in those words, that part is unmatched.
Agree with you here Buco. I think the language and norms of society have tended more towards the vulgar (and I mean that both in terms of profane as well as coarseness). The more TV and mass media we have, the less time is spent in general reading, writing, composing poetry, etc. There isn't as much emphasis on artistry, vocabulary building and simple words for lyrics are "good enough."
I think it is also totally a natural course of events that those of us of a certain age fail to find anything of interest in the current music scene. Our parents or grandparents probably didn't like early rock 'n' roll either, preferring the lighter sounds of Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, etc. It is for every generation to place their own popular music (from the age of ~15-30) as the best. Don't believe me? Go on youtube and look at the comments of a Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin tune. You'll see "Man, the 70s were the best decade ever for music!" Switch over to Depeche Mode or a-ha and you'll see "All music after the 80s sucks. I'm glad I grew up in a decade with real music..." Same for Nirvana or Soundgarden. Same for Coldplay or the Beatles or any other decade.
The songs from the 20s, 30s, 40s, etc that we still have left that were played by Django and are still played today were perhaps some of the best for their era. They stand the test of time because they are timeless. I hear fewer songs now that I believe are timeless. Part of me thinks that rock and roll distilled music down to basic power chords. The Beatles are probably the last popular music group who were comfortable composing music that could include sus chords, or other colorful extensions beyond a root-5 power chord. For us as musicians, who thrive on those colors and inversions or unique chord progressions, we appreciate them in the music we play. That said, our bass player always jokes that everything is just a V-I progression of sorts. Funny thing is, she's close to right.
Getting long winded here but my original point was hoping to find those one or two "timeless" songs from today or something that passes close enough to be in the cultural consciousness such that even an emo kid who couldn't care less about jazz could perhaps hear a tune he recognizes and ultimately realize that there is something cool about this style and perhaps be bit by the Django bug much like we all were at some point in our lives. It's all about the bridge...
Great discussion so far!
Its still an area tht is not well understood.
If I understand what you are trying to say, I have long felt the same. There can only ever be ONE original, and if that has a significant influence it will generate a new generation of followers and interpreters. As for guitar players, apart from Django, we could add Jimi Hendrix, Roy Buchanan, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian and maybe a few others. So they in turn influenced SRV, Danny Gatton, George Benson, and so on. I have not included the pre-war blues men as there is still debate about whether Son House, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton copied each other or even others who were never recorded, and although B B King was hugely influential (and one of my favourites for the last fifty years) how much of his style was a mix of others lesser known is still argued too.
So, then we had Django arrive on the Paris stage, soon followed by a worldwide fame and inevitably not only creating a demand for this new music, but through the Quintet, helping to breed a new generation of guitarists who went on to their own fame and spread the interest further (Joseph, Vees, the Ferrets etc) and in turn teaching their children and so on.
Many of their descendants and relatives are still making a living, some better known than others, and more significantly for the purposes of this forum, the baton is still being passed on around the world outside of the Gypsy community. Which is why we are discussing this now. Some have found they get the gigs by playing faithful copies of the well known Django repertoire, while others have used that as a starting point to explore new horizons. Both valid in their own way but to refer back to the earlier question of what is authentic, in this case I would suggest only really Django, Joseph, the Ferrets and those of the first generation; everyone else is a copyist to some degree though no less valid for it. Bireli, like Boulou, Babik, Saussois and now even David Reinhardt all chose to take it somewhere else so in turn I would consider their music more 'authentic' in today's terms than any of the note-for-note copyists just because it is new, fresh, real and being from their own mix of influences and therefore unique. Hopefully this does not start a big argument, I know some can get quite heated if they imagine a slur on their own views but I mean this to say ALL have their place and their audience, just that some are the true pioneers, and the rest still have their place as a link in the chain. Who knows, any one of the regulars on here may be doing a local bar gig and turn someone new on to the GJ genre, and that 'newbie' may turn out to grow into the next big star; we just pass the baton on.
That said, I enjoy the lyrics of more modern writers like the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, even Shania Twain. And the ABBA guys Benny and Bjorn wrote some great melodic songs even though their lyrics aren't particularly great.
But the thing I really dislike about most of the lyrics and music I hear nowadays on the radio is the repetition! the repetition! the repetition!
Plus the self-pitying delivery that usually accompanyies these banal lyrics, as if the singer is being subjected to some private torture. Oy!
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
He used a Yamaha APX i think, on 'Acoustic Moments' way back in the 80's.
He doesn't go in for specialist plectrums either like Wegen either. Last time i saw him he was using a Jim Dunlop 'Big Stubby'. He told a friend of mine it was for no other reason than they were easy to buy anywhere.
PS: nah. wrong show, wrong guitar. Good clip anyway.