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elSicomoro · 06-15-2003, 08:46 PM

Let me say it then, tw--As a musical scholar of sorts, I would say that a good chunk of music in the 90s was not meant to be sing-a-long. Look at what was popular--most of the decade was dominated by grunge, alternative-gone-mainstream rock, and electronic/techno music. Singable music per se didn't really seem to come into the picture until...oh, 1997 or so. There was certainly SOME--actually quite a bit of it--around here and there, but it didn't really achieve serious prominence until the time mentioned, IMO.

As an example, I'll use Chris Cornell--lead singer of Audioslave, but formerly the lead singer of Soundgarden, one of the godfather grunge bands of the late 80s into the 90s. He is one of my vocal idols...he inspired me to start a band in the early 90s. But trying to sing...and I mean really SING...a Soundgarden song like "Jesus Christ Pose" or "Slaves and Bulldozers" is very difficult if you don't have his vocal range. Vocal ranges and styles went all over the place in the 90s...screeching, wailing, distortion, etc. It actually started in the 70s, IMO, with punk...laid low in the post punk 80s...became popularized by bands like Sonic Youth and the Pixies, then went all over the place with bands like Nirvana and Ministry. But hell, even trying to sing a Mariah Carey song can be a real challenge.

And with electronic/techno, many of the songs were either sans vocals, or contained a very limited amount of vocals. Moby's Play album is a perfect example of that--on some of his songs, he sings. On others, he uses other vocalists or samples. Then there are the instrumentals. The first two singles from the album ("Honey" and "Run On") contained only samples from pre-WW2 music of the American south. I can sing those sampled portions...kinda...but I wouldn't really call them true vocals. And yet the songs are still great...IMO, of course.

I hope we're getting to the point now where a major label is no longer necessarily the key to making money off your music. If I wanted to, I could record some spoken-word shit, put it on CDs, then sell the CDs on my site for about $6 a pop...maybe more, maybe less. I can promote it on the internet, which gives me a nice worldwide audience...and maybe I can get some indie radio stations to play the shit. And I'm making...oh, $3-4 off every damned CD. The only people that are making money like that on the majors right now are bands like U2, REM, the Stones, etc. And while those folks are established artists, why the fuck should I have to wait 20 years to make paper like that?

My $0.05 (because I like giving more than my share)

06-15-2003, 08:46 PM	#11
elSicomoro Person who doesn't update the user title Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 12,486	Re: Re: Re: Re: Music: Pirated or Quality Let me say it then, tw--As a musical scholar of sorts, I would say that a good chunk of music in the 90s was not meant to be sing-a-long. Look at what was popular--most of the decade was dominated by grunge, alternative-gone-mainstream rock, and electronic/techno music. Singable music per se didn't really seem to come into the picture until...oh, 1997 or so. There was certainly SOME--actually quite a bit of it--around here and there, but it didn't really achieve serious prominence until the time mentioned, IMO. As an example, I'll use Chris Cornell--lead singer of Audioslave, but formerly the lead singer of Soundgarden, one of the godfather grunge bands of the late 80s into the 90s. He is one of my vocal idols...he inspired me to start a band in the early 90s. But trying to sing...and I mean really SING...a Soundgarden song like "Jesus Christ Pose" or "Slaves and Bulldozers" is very difficult if you don't have his vocal range. Vocal ranges and styles went all over the place in the 90s...screeching, wailing, distortion, etc. It actually started in the 70s, IMO, with punk...laid low in the post punk 80s...became popularized by bands like Sonic Youth and the Pixies, then went all over the place with bands like Nirvana and Ministry. But hell, even trying to sing a Mariah Carey song can be a real challenge. And with electronic/techno, many of the songs were either sans vocals, or contained a very limited amount of vocals. Moby's Play album is a perfect example of that--on some of his songs, he sings. On others, he uses other vocalists or samples. Then there are the instrumentals. The first two singles from the album ("Honey" and "Run On") contained only samples from pre-WW2 music of the American south. I can sing those sampled portions...kinda...but I wouldn't really call them true vocals. And yet the songs are still great...IMO, of course. I hope we're getting to the point now where a major label is no longer necessarily the key to making money off your music. If I wanted to, I could record some spoken-word shit, put it on CDs, then sell the CDs on my site for about $6 a pop...maybe more, maybe less. I can promote it on the internet, which gives me a nice worldwide audience...and maybe I can get some indie radio stations to play the shit. And I'm making...oh, $3-4 off every damned CD. The only people that are making money like that on the majors right now are bands like U2, REM, the Stones, etc. And while those folks are established artists, why the fuck should I have to wait 20 years to make paper like that? My $0.05 (because I like giving more than my share)