Music 140 paper #1
America, land of the free and home of the brave. What a great way to describe our country, but by today’s standards a more fitting way to describe out country would be the land of the not-so free and home of the too scared to be brave. This particular phrase would accurately describe the music industry, especially the rap culture within the music industry. Music and politics, they just don’t mix. It seems that everywhere we turn now a days some politician in Washington is trying to decide what we should be able to listen to. Bob Dole attempted to key a great deal of his campaign for President around the issue of music censorship. He seems to think that all of the trouble within today’s youth stems from the music they are listening to. I disagree, music is simply just another outlet for teens to express their feeling through. It happens everyday, when someone is in a bad mood they may throw on some heavy metal or something to portray how they feel. But that is where it ends for most teens. As an outlet to express themselves. Politicians want to be in touch with the youth of America, but yet they are out of touch. Take for example rap music. The lyrics found within many rap songs could be labeled as hard-core. But the government doesn’t want to stop at just labeling albums with parental advisory stickers, they want to ban them altogether. Florida made history when in February of 1990 "a judge in Fort Myers found probable cause that songs were obscene" (Matthews). Rap is just an outlet for people to voice their concerns, and the truth of the matter is the government doesn’t want all of these negative stories coming out. Especially if it is near election time, and the music is from your area. Why should our government just go after music? Every night on T.V our local stations often show the same dismal images rap music portrays, but on a daily basis. Rap seems to be taking a stronghold today because people are looking at it’s message, and the images coming from the inner cities. These are great problems which may have never come to light had rap music not pointed them out. Rap is not only a culture, but it is growing into an entire industry. "It is no wonder that Death Row Records has sold eighteen million records" (Saunders). In fact, Death Row Records has become "one of the most profitable independent record companies to emerge in the last ten years" (Saunders). Death Row Records has grossed nearly 125 million dollars in ten years. Gangster rap hasn’t always been that popular, in fact today’s gangster rap has evolved from many different styles. First there were the jump blues; then came James Brown. Then along comes George Clinton who led to the rap music which is popular today. Rap music is often associated with trouble, violence, and murder. While this may often depict the lives of many artists in the rap music industry today, many artists in the rap music industry have served jail time. Dr. Dre has served time for assault, and the late Tupac Shakur did time for sexual assault. Many rappers find themselves in trouble with the law. This often leads many people to discriminate against rap music because of the artists who are making the music. This isn’t much different from some early African American songs. Take for example "Rosie", this was a popular work song for prison workers in the south. This song is similar to the rap of today because it this song would describe the longings of the prisoners. Other prison songs would describe their lifestyles. No one attempted to ban these songs, and they all contained a particular message they were trying to get across. The same applies to the music of today. Many if not all songs are trying to portray some sort of agenda, be it political or social. No one goes out and tries to ban Alanis Morrissettes hit song "You oughta know" for containing the f word. Instead the song is play nationally all over radio, and actually hit number one on the billboard music chart. The only thing they do when it is played on the radio is make a feeble attempt to blur out the work f**k. Anyone with any sense of hearing can understand exactly what she says in this song. What about all of the songs which talk about sex? The group TLC wrote a song specifically dealing with sex, it was titled "lets talk about sex" the song wasn't explicit, but who defines explicit? Governmental censorship is not only constitutionally wrong, it is morally wrong. We need to decide what music we feel is right to listen to, and if we are not at the right age to make the decision, then it is up to the parents to decide what they feel is appropriate for their children to listen to. The decision shouldn't be made by some senator sitting in Washington. There are also many groups around the country which are concerned with fighting censorship. one such group is called Rock Out censorship. This is a sort of watch dog which informs members of various bills of legislation trying to be passed in congress to censor music. Some states they are watching are considering making it a crime to either buy or sell music that features the music industry's so called voluntary parental advisory sticker. This warning sticker is now the "dividing line between those people who enter the record store as a consumer, and those who leave with a police record" (Rock Out). Currently the government is trying to cut off their funding to one of the more powerful groups concerning censorship, the N.E.A. or National Endowment for the Arts. Bob Dole is a leading front runner in the campaign to cut this groups government funding. This may not seem like censorship, but this is just one of the governments many forms. Groups like the N.E.A provide assistance for musicians and various other artists. This assistance can range from legal support, to medical assistance if the artist is having a difficult time financially. They even provide legal defense for legal precedents against an artist involving their work. Many senators simply state that congress doesn’t know what it is funding. It isn’t up to congress to decide what people find they like and what they don’t. Parents seem to be lacking their decisive powers if they just complain about their kids buying questionable material. It is their responsibility to look out for what their children are purchasing, not congress. We also need to look all the way across the board at music when we question what is good and what isn’t. It appears as if we single out rap music, simply because it’s sales are so impressive. As of Dec. 96 rap music was the fastest growing single genre in music (Time). We need to clean up our acts, before we can hope to clean up the music people buy. We don’t complain about programming found on TV. We just laugh it off as if nothing had ever happened. When we start to realize that certain people buy rap because they are in a phase, we will then begin to hear less and less about the music, and all it’s so called negative lyrics. The popularity of music is constantly changing, one minute it is pop, the next it is hard rock. Because of these growing changes in music many radio stations have begun to change their formats on a daily basis. Even popular music television stations are changing, the types of music they can play. MTV recently announced that it would change it’s format to fit the demand of popular music for teens home from school over the summer. MTV used to be noted for playing videos, but lately all they have been playing is what seems to be game shows. This doesn’t sound too much like music television. Politicians sure don’t mind that they have cut back on playing videos. MTV is probably afraid of ending up in some sort of lawsuit, because some parent let their child watch a rap video. It is very sad when large companies who want to provide entertainment for people can’t for fear of being sued. Art and music need to be a part of everyone’s life, people just need to choose what they feel is right. We can’t let other people choose for us, after all we live in the greatest country in the world. A country founded on letting the people decide what is best for them, be it music, food, or lifestyle. It shouldn’t change for anything, not even what the politicians feel is right. Twenty years from now we will look back at rap music and laugh, it happens with every generation. It happened in the fifties, it happened in the sixties. There is no doubt the some thing will happen to the generations growing up in the nineties. Just let the phase go right on by, and the new one come in. after all many teens relate their lives to music as much today as they have in the past. Kids will be kids, and music will be music.Music 140 paper #2
The image that many young people are being labeled with is an image of stupidity and one of total disregard for authority. Many adults feel that various music groups, such as the Smashing Pumpkins and R.E.M, are polluting teenagers with visions that it’s cool to smoke weed and dress like a bum. Just because the younger generations are wearing clothes that seem too brash for their older counterparts it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to run out and buy a compact disc and actually try to live out the scenarios that the music is depicting. Many people who are much older than our generation perceive the band R.E.M as another left-wing rock & roll band. This image may look this way to them because of the way this band presents it’s lyrics. In many of the bands songs, they take a straight forward approach to issues they believe to be important. The first single from their 1994 release Monster is "What’s the frequency Kenneth?" The lyrics of this song are as follows "What’s the frequency Kenneth? Is your Benzedrine, uh-huh I was brain dead locked out, numb, not up to speed." Many adults might take this lyric to mean that you need to take this drug when you are feeling tired or depressed, simply because of the fact that they actually mention anything in relation to a drug. The way that Benzedrine is mentioned in the song could actually create some of the problem. It could be easily mistaken to mean that if you are feeling brain-dead, locked out, numb or just not up to speed that you should take this drug to help relieve those problems. The band, Smashing pumpkins is a hot item for people who like them to label with the image of glorifying drugs. Many people are quick to point the finger at all of the members of this band, but the problem stems from the death of their keyboardist due to a heroin overdose. Another member of the band has been let go because of a heroin addiction that he just couldn’t overcome. With all of the publicity surrounding them it is very hard for them not to be compared to drug addicts. Most people who heard about the drug problem certain members had, have now made up their minds that they are going to be stuck with a lot of people thinking all they stand for are drugs. This is simply because that is what people want to believe. Both of the images presented above are very popular with teenagers. R.E.M sings about the effects drug use can have on you. But the band Smashing Pumpkins deals more with issues centered around death and suicide. Many people don’t like this band for their clear descriptions of death. Death is an issue which many people are afraid to talk about, let alone be subjected to listening to it. All that the Smashing Pumpkins are trying to is point out the fact that death is very real and it affects everyone sooner or later. We blame the artists for swaying the teenagers when really all most of them are trying to do is to inform the teens about the dangers involved. This is the case in the song "What’s the frequency Kenneth?", the lyric goes: "What’s the frequency, Kenneth? Is your Benzedrine, uh-huh I was brain-dead, locked out numb, not up to speed." All that this lyric is trying to explain are effects that the drug Benzedrine can have on your body. Most of the people who are formulating this opinion about the association of drugs, teenagers and music must not be able to remember much about the days when they were growing up. They had the same type of issues to face back then. It’s just that now the issues we face are becoming more complicated than what people from the sixties dealt with. If I’m not mistaken, that is like the pot smoker calling the dope head stoned! The whole problem with society blaming the rock & roll industry for the drug addictions many teens are experiencing is that many teens have enough self control to stop themselves from running out and imitating every image that they are presented with. Most teens are perceive this as a lack of trust by their parents. Matters are even starting to get worse. We now have politicians who are claiming that Hollywood and the music industry are promoting and glorifying drug use. Like I stated before both of these industries are just merely trying to make people more aware of the problems we need to pay closer attention to. People must stop treating this generation of teenagers like morons. When people treat someone like a moron most people get a moron. Kids don’t listen to groups like the smashing pumpkins because they want to learn how to experiment with drugs. They listen to music as a release, something that they can possibly relate to or possibly using the music as a drug itself to relieve stress or other troubles. Most kids know right from wrong it’s just a matter of which direction they want their lives to go in. The same is true for the musicians who write these songs. They are merely showing a part of society that they think we need to become more aware of. Musicians can reach millions of people through their music and they are simply trying to inform people of problems they may not face every day. I personally believe that the root of this problem is in the hands of parents. After all, it’s their job to educate us in what is right and wrong. If that hasn’t been done, then that is where the problem lies. The problem is not in the lyrics of songs trying to inform us. Most kids don’t try drugs because they think that they will actually help them or make them become cool. They try them because they feel lost and are actually crying out to people to give them just a little bit of attention. If people would just take the time to actually show teenagers that they cared, then we might not have some of the problems we are facing today. The problem is being fueled by both the younger and older generations’ lack of understanding for each other’s points of view. We have got to start trying to see things from both sides or matters will simply get worse.Music 140 paper #3
Wild Child Ryan Cook Music 140 22 April 1997: Tom Petty, that is one of the more popular names in music today. Tom Petty’s popularity as spanned from the early seventies into the nineties, but is this popularity because Tom has a particular agenda he is trying to get across? Tom seems to be able to relate with today’s youth through references made in his songs. References of drug use. Tom got an early foothold in music in his hometown of Gainesville Fla. Gainesville is a college town home to the Florida Gators, and with this college town comes all the establishments of a college town bars, pubs, and clubs. Tom took full advantage of having these clubs at his dispersal, he would often visit the clubs to get a chance to hear the music playing and learn what kinds of music moved people. There were many different ways that Tom would hear music "Petty snuck into college frat parties to see big stars such as Del Shannon and the Shadows of Knight (Petty 1995)." There were many groups which inspired Tom to form his first band the Epics, but the Epics were short lived. The members of the band didn’t like the name, and decided to change it to Mudcrutch. Mudcrutch was influenced by many different bands and styles. In Playback Tom says that they were most influenced by British invasion bands and 50s rockers along with the musical style of the Byrds. The biggest single influence on the band would have to be Elvis Presley, Elvis was Tom’s favorite individual singer. Tom has never really worried about what people thought of his lyrics. He always thought that if he kept putting out songs that his following loved, his popularity would follow. He loved to write songs that people could relate to, but with these songs came new found popularity, and a new chapter in the band. They were now evolving into Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. This was a band which now had a huge following of what many parents would consider rebellious youth. This was a total surprise to Tom and members of the band, they loved it and wanted to keep the band growing. But they were not sure how. They decided that the best the way would be to write songs that their following could relate to. Many of the bands songs dealt with subjects such as war, hardships, and southern life. But they figured that a band from the seventies couldn’t expect to be popular with newer generations with older songs. This is where some of Tom’s songs start to portray a particular agenda. This agenda he was writing about would bring him new found fame in the nineties. Many teenagers of the nineties, have decided to experiment with different types of drugs, and their drug of choice is marijuana. When you listen to some of Tom’s more recent hit’s you will hear quite a bit of reference made to this drug. Two recent song’s Tom wrote make clear reference to this drug. The song "Mary Jane’s Last Dance" and "You Don’t Know How It Feels". If you look closely at the lyrics in "Mary Jane’s Last Dance" you will notice that the lyrics go "Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to cure the pain" (Petty 1993). The title itself is clearly a reference to the drug marijuana. Mary Jane is a fancy name given to the drug when it is talked about. There is also another recent hit that Tom wrote titled "You don’t know how it feels". This song was so popular that it reached number one on the Billboard music chart. But as you will see it make a clear reference to marijuana in the lyrics once again. The lyric that refers to the drug in this song goes " Let’s get to the point let’s roll another joint" (Petty 1994). The reference to joint clearly is talking about marijuana, because a rolled up marijuana is called a joint. Many teens today love to listen to Tom and his band because they give the teens something that they can relate to. Most of the teens know how rebellious Tom was in his youth, and they use his music as an escape. Tom may very well be bringing back the popularity of marijuana with his music. Only time will tell.