David, I think this ignores how radically music production and
distribution has changed with new recording technology and the
internet. Yes, of course there are the big commercial labels, but
certainly in Melbourne (and I can't imagine that the UK is any
different) there's a huge energy of bands and musicians self-producing
or collectively producing, and finding their audiences, without even a
glance at the big labels. The best of them are making fabulous work,
drawing from all sorts of musical traditions. It's not wastelands out
there, it's rich and diverse.

And like Jesse, I think Amy Winehouse was a real talent. Shame she
became fodder for the cannibal tabloids.


On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 2:42 PM, David Bircumshaw
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
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> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>



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