I agree that corporate/capitalist control of mass media music homogenizes it 
as bankable product. But I also think, David, that rock and roll--no doubt 
with some brilliant even current examples--has basically been played out. 
There's only so much stylistic range in a form. Once that range has 
basically been mapped, it's played out. Real explorers might find gold where 
others have somehow not ventured, but it gets harder and harder to really 
find new sweet spots. I know, the poets will say 'the sonnet is eternal' 
yada yada. Well, the sonnet is interesting, still, I suppose, partly because 
it doesn't scream sonnet at you. It's a slightly subtle form. It itself 
hardly matters. It's more a question of whether you can write something 
about the size of a sonnet and still do something that isn't stale. And 
language seems to have that sort of capacity. But rock and roll is a bit 
more pronounced. You listen to a sonnet and you might not know it's a 
sonnet. Listen to rock and roll and you identify it as such immediately. The 
form is all over it.

I didn't know Ute Lemper. Just had a listen to a couple on youtube. Ya. 
Well. I guess. I haven't heard the Winehouse/Bennett piece. My fave stuff of 
hers is the stuff she did with Mark Ronson. The recordings. The only video I 
saw of her actually performing live that I found memorable was an early one 
of her singing 'Teach Me Tonight' on TV. And she was so excited to be 
singing that song with that band on TV. She jumped up and down like a little 
girl when it was over. It went very well.

I think that successful music, these days, is usually a kind of a team 
effort. There's the immediate band. But also the producer. And, because the 
visual is so much a part of music these days, there's the video makers. In 
the case of someone like Beyonce, also the choreographers. But the producer 
is certainly one of the more crucial people involved. Ronson is a good 
producer and he and Winehouse just seemed to hit it off as collaborators. 
Amy was the songbird. Not without a brain, but the songbird. Ronson was the 
sound man. The producer. And they made some very hot stuff together. I 
linked to some of my faves of their work together at 
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=371 in 2010.

On only a slightly related note, here's the best song to be done by somebody 
from my home town: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JnGBs88sL0 . I don't like 
the video, but the song, I like that song a lot. Nelly and Timbaland really 
nailed that one. A team effort there, certainly, as is most of her music. 
And, by the way, Amy won the Grammys that year. Nelly's song lost to Rehab.

ja

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 9:42 PM
Subject: Re: Amy Winehouse


> That's a very interesting take, Jim. I'm sure you're right about her
> producer though even someone as out of it as I am has a suspicion that 
> there
> are many potentially different sounds out there hovering about the rock
> scene but they don't get taken up commercially. The wasteland of popular
> music since the 80s principally exists because of the amount of corporate
> and capitalist control that obtains, in the supposed 'free' markets of
> music. But I think you know that anyway.
>
> As far as I know someone like Ute Lemper in Germany does something like 
> your
> description of  Amy Winehouse , but in Amy's case I think the pastiche 
> falls
> back onto itself. I heard a snatch of her last currently available 
> recording
> yesterday, a duet with Tony Bennett, that cultural icon of the vanished
> mind, and it just sounded like a good old ersatz piece, itself a reprise 
> of
> a grotesquerie (that bizarre teaming of David Bowie and Bing Crosby once
> upon a time) but the signal it sent: Amy equals continuity with tried and
> tested musical money, as in notes, was telling.
>
>
>
> On 25 July 2011 21:29, Jim Andrews <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> one of the interesting things about winehouse was her relationship with
>> music from the past, and the way she brought that into relationship with
>> contemporary music.
>>
>> there are lots of nostalgia acts without much else going on but 
>> nostalgia.
>> but winehouse was more ambitious than that. and mark ronson, her 
>> producer,
>> is very skilled in all manner of sounds.
>>
>> when i was growing up, rock and roll was growing and changing and still
>> vibrant. the rock of the fifties sounds quite different from that of the
>> sixties and seventies. and then the 80's new wave changed it again. but 
>> it
>> has pretty much been all rerun since then, as far as rock and roll goes. 
>> dub
>> and rap have been the only really popular musics from the last twenty or
>> thirty years that sound different. but they're kind of palette cleansers.
>> musically, they're very dull. the lyrical content is the interesting 
>> part.
>> toward spoken word. the more interesting contemporary musics, it seems 
>> you
>> have to go out looking for it cuz it just doesn't show up on the radio or
>> tv. like at soma.fm, the music they play.
>>
>> consequently, the issue of relationship with the music of the past 
>> becomes
>> more important than it has been in previous times where the driving force 
>> of
>> mainstream music emphasized a singularly contemporary sound.
>>
>> and that's where winehouse really excels. in exploring how that
>> relationship with the past can work today. but not simply be nostalgic.
>>
>> ja
>> http://vispo.com
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> David Joseph Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>