What Do We Know?
One of them makes music for a living. The other just really loves it. What Do We Know? is hosted by professional musician and producer Danny McCrum and hobby guitarist Mike Harrington. Each week they dig into the albums, artists, gear, history, and big debates that make music worth talking about. Expect strong opinions, genuine curiosity, and more laughs than they probably intended. Join the conversation.
What Do We Know?
22. WTF Is Genre?
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Is metal just classical music in a leather jacket? Danny and Mike have been asking a simple question: does genre actually describe the music, or just everything wrapped around it? Strip a metal riff back to its bones and could it just as easily sit next to a Baroque string passage? Swap a rock breakdown's distortion for an orchestra and does pop still sound all that different from classical rock, or modern rock, or anything else? If the notes underneath are often interchangeable, is genre measuring anything real? On this episode, Danny and Mike pull the idea apart, and ask whether it's ever been more than a costume.
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Yet again we forgot to decide who's gonna open this, so I'm just gonna go.
SPEAKER_03Maybe one of those times we'll remember.
SPEAKER_00This should really have m some more organization involved, I think.
SPEAKER_03Well, you were saying that we're already much more organized than the old podcast. Yeah. Baby steps. Significant. We'll get there.
SPEAKER_00Uh we've got a lot to get through today, so should we talk at twice the speed? Oh, okay. Go ahead. I've I I've got so many things to try and cram into this episode.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay. Well that's good, because I don't have that many.
SPEAKER_00The more I tried to research this, the more I kept thinking of things and stuff I you know, stuff I talk about often that I'm gonna mention that, you know.
SPEAKER_03It is a good rabbit hole. I I kind of noticed the same thing once I started looking. Um I went, holy crap, there's a lot more to digest here than I originally thought. I thought it was gonna be a little bit of a marketing gimmick, blah blah blah. But no, there is a bit more to it.
SPEAKER_00Yep, exactly. Well, let's get some housekeeping out of the way. We want to read out one of our recent uh messages from our listeners. This comes from Tom. He said this was uh in regard to the episode called Action Man, which is all about how to start things and also finish them. His message says, Wow, that latest episode, Action Man, really hit me deep. I just recently resigned from the corporate gig I've been in for the past two years, last Friday being my final day in the office, and I'm now looking back at various aspects of the music industry as a potential path forward. Additionally, about 15 years ago I had started writing a musical, and in recent months I've been thinking about picking back up on it. Again, I think this podcast has just pushed me over the edge to get back to it. So I'd like to say on behalf of Mike and I, I'm extremely sorry. Um you're making a mistake. Don't look at the music industry as a path forward. But no, we appreciate the message. Thank you, Tom. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks, Tom. Uh, we also received a message saying that you should swear less. Yes. Which I've tried to tell you as well. Oh, it was me, was it? Yeah, it's just you. Just me. I don't I don't think I've sworn once on the show. Bullshit. Uh we agreed off Mike that we don't really care about that because well, you say why.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I just I mean, to me, w you know, I think if it was something where it was a more scripted show where, you know, I'm trying to present the history of of so-and-so, um, and I have a script that I'm reading, then then I uh then I understand and agree. Um that wasn't really the style of show we were going for, you know, it was more so um just an open, honest chat amongst friends on topics that we're passionate about. Yeah. And truthfully, uh when I chat with friends, I swear, unfortunately, you know. And so do our guests as well. Yeah, so it's one of those things that um I definitely think we should try and limit it. Yeah. Try try and not just uh get away with cheap laughs by swearing, um, like the South Park episode. But man, that was fun.
SPEAKER_00Well, that could be considered an exception anyway. Yeah. But what I mean, what I I guess what I'd like to put on the table is if anyone is listening and they're thinking, yeah, you guys probably should swear less, uh, let us know. Because the only time that I would start to care is if I knew that it was putting people off the show. I don't think swearing is actually a sensible concept. Like it's just a fucking word. Yeah. And I did that on I did that on purpose. Um it's just a sound, who cares? You know, but I mean, if people are literally going, I don't think I want to listen to that anymore because, you know, of Mike's sailor mouth. Oh sorry. That's the only time I'll get it. I'll be better, I promise. All right, so set us up. Our subject today is genre.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Genre, what is it? Is it a meaningless concept? Is it a is it a marketing gimmick? Is it something that's actually valuable to artists and fans alike? Where do you land?
SPEAKER_00Uh do you want me to start with the conclusion?
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay, yeah, let's work up to it.
SPEAKER_00When was the first time you what is a genre? Well well uh okay, well you we'll go with your question then. What is a genre? Um Okay, I wasn't expecting that one. What is a genre? I mean, I guess this is state the obvious moment. It's uh describing the categories people break different types of music into. They try to put hard lines around these things where I think possible. Yeah, yeah. I think what we're gonna about to agree on is the hard lines don't make any sense. Yeah. But is that does that give you an answer you would agree with?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think so. Um I mean if you just go from like the defin like the you know, dictionary definition, it's a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content. Which I don't know if that actually makes a lot of sense to me, because you know, I think of genre pretty um independent of musical form. You know, that's something that I think can be.
SPEAKER_00Explain what you mean by that.
SPEAKER_03Um well, like if I think of musical form, I think of a song where it's like an AABA format or something like that, right? Which the arrangement of the song. Yeah, like you could have um all sorts of uh different formats that fit in the same genre. You know?
SPEAKER_00Yep. I mean when when did you first hear about the idea of genre as a concept? As a new but always been aware of it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think kind of as soon as I started listening to music, it was already, you know, that was already a the whole like genre lifestyle concept was already so embedded in pop culture that I don't think you could really get away from it. Right. It wasn't until I started learning more about like musical history and stuff where I started to actually think about the concept a bit more broadly.
SPEAKER_00I had a very strange conversation with my grandma when I was about 15, and this particular grandma was not a kind woman. She wasn't a very nice person, and she would go out of her way to say things to cut someone down or or whatever. She got an idea in her head about what she thought you thought or liked or whatever. And she she had this idea that I liked heavy metal, uh, and and I've got nothing against heavy metal, but it just didn't happen to be the style of music I was into anyway, because it was mid-90s. I was into grunge and alternative and things like that. Uh she made it that was ever metal. She would have just heard a guitar and gone heavy metal, you know. And so I'm sitting there in her lounge with the family, and we're having a just a normal, supposedly mundane, you know, Sunday afternoon catch-up sort of thing. And she goes on this big rant about how heavy metal is garbage and it's nonsense and it's all just noise and all this kind of stuff. It didn't, I mean, no one brought the subject up, and it was clearly uh aimed at me, right? Just as a dig upon a dig upon a dig. So of course I started to just zone out, you know, and just stop listening. And I started to pay attention to the music that was playing in the background. And she had some classical music playing. And I remember just listening to it objectively, and I've always loved classical music. And I remember just I remember just thinking, you know, if you just replace those violins with guitars. Add a little distortion. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's heavy metal.
SPEAKER_00It's so close to heavy metal, you know. And I've got a couple of pieces here to to to show us to have a quick listen to. There are clearly missing ingredients like a backbeat on the drum kit, sort of thing. Some of that stuff, but that could be Metallica, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, easy.
SPEAKER_00Dark note choices.
SPEAKER_03I feel like Darth Vader's about too much.
SPEAKER_00But it's definitely a precursor to all that stuff, isn't it? Absolutely. I mean that could be Man Maiden, that could be anything, you know? Uh hang on, I'll just I'll play the next one that I have lined up. Such a great spot. Very famous piece. Listen to it. Isn't that a great league guitar part? It sure is.
SPEAKER_03Wish I could play it. And I mean also if you think about, you know, you spoke earlier about how there's no real hard lines. If you think nowadays we sort of bracket classical. Classical is one genre.
SPEAKER_00Which doesn't make any sense. Centuries of development.
SPEAKER_03Anything with an orchestra, classical.
SPEAKER_00It's like exactly. Well, I remember just in that moment thinking my grandma's a moron, you know, like she's not actually listening to the music. And that's something we want to come back to soon, is that we I I think the majority of us actually don't listen to music, we listen to more the exterior of the music. Uh, and I want to show that in a few other contexts. But you to your point, putting the whole thing in one category and then just sort of calling it that has always bugged me because, for example, uh Miles Davis, who's one of the most famous jazz musicians in history, some of his albums like Sketches of Spain, which had that kind of nod to the Spanish sound, he did On the Corner in 1972, which is like funk fusion, another fusion album called Decoy in 1984, is quite different again. And he did Tutu in 1986, uh, produced by Marcus Miller, which kind of had an 80s funk fusion sound, which if I remember correctly alienated a lot of the jazz community because it was so far away from jazz. And it's one of the things I love about Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock and artists like that, is that they were so innovative they kept annoying their own fan base because the jazz community were already kind of doubling down on like this is jazz and that's not jazz, and the guys at the top actually couldn't have cared less. Bunch of cork sniffers. Well, yeah, it was going that way. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean it's it's it's gone that way, right? Right. I mean that happens today. You you get you get bands that have these, you know, long, illustrious careers. And I mean, I even kind of did the same thing with the Rush uh episode where I talked about how like I liked this part of their their trajectory and wasn't as big of a fan of these albums. But I still think it's cool that they're actually exploring and and learning those different things, right? Yeah. You know, like I I really don't think bands should ever be split and like they're this type of band, they they work in this genre. Right. I think that's silly. I think you should always be kind of influenced and taking bits and pieces from other areas.
SPEAKER_00That's an interesting point because and I didn't plan on talking about this, but I do think a lot of bands paint themselves into a corner. I think the artists out there who are more famous for breaking things up and changing things around and and and so on, I think they actually have to really proactively do that throughout their career just to keep people constantly on the back foot. Uh otherwise you start to go you start to get to know their sound and you go, Well, unless you sound like that, I don't like you anymore.
SPEAKER_03I'm not interested. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But we have people like, you know, who's a good example of someone who constantly changed. I mean, Bowie's one, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00And Prince was someone who never knew what he's gonna do next, and and so on, you know. So if if you came out with something and you're like, what the hell is that? Well, that's that's right, that's on brand.
SPEAKER_03I think a lot of the great bands were like that. Absolutely. And and a lot of those really like influential artists like someone like a Bowie who who is almost a little bit of a cornerstone where he didn't inspire so many other people, you know. That's something that um you don't get to that stage unless you're pushing your boundaries in one direction and then the next.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and yet when it comes to Metallica, who we've talked about quite a bit on the show, it's funny to me how much of a controversy the black album cause. It was a it was a bit slower, it was a bit more kind of radio friendly. But it was still Metallica. It's funny to me that that was a big deal. I just think, well, yeah, I mean they had already done three albums in a row that w that had the old sound. How many kicks of the can do you want?
unknownThat's right.
SPEAKER_00You better tell me, by the way, you've got a couple of MP3s you want to play, so tell me when you want to bring those up.
SPEAKER_03Uh well, yeah, so really I had I just did two different songs that I have. It's two two versions of the same song, essentially. Oh yeah. And um, when I was looking into genre as a concept, um, it kind of sparked uh a a a bit of a backlog of um learning that I did in university. I took a popular um music post-World War II, sort of like a history of pop music post-World War II course in university that was really interesting. And they talked about how genres and particularly how like the billboard charts and stuff came into being. Right. Um and if you'll permit me, I'll just read from the textbook. It's a little bit long, but uh this part is actually quite interesting.
SPEAKER_00So I'll just go for a post.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, go for that. Crossovers and covers. So hit records in the charts. In order to be successful, people who sell music for a living ultimately have to view it as a business. It is great if a record company executive, radio station manager, record store owner, or jukebox distributor like some of the music they sell, but this is by no means a necessity. Business people need to think in terms of markets, products, distribution, and promotion, especially given the fickle character of many listeners when it comes to popular music. And it is tremendously beneficial to be able to identify trends. If you can spot a trend, your chances are greatly increased for having the right amount of product where it needs to be, timed precisely to meet the peak consumer demand. If your timing is right, your profits soar. If you time it wrong, they plummet. Such inside information is usually not very interesting to most listeners, who just want to hear the music. So magazines devoted to the more dollars and cents aspects of the business have developed for industry professionals. The most important of these in the history of rock and roll in the United States were Cashbox and Billboard, both of which contain sales charts that attempted to predict trends in records and jukebox sales. Based on the most recent issue of Billboard, a store owner might have decided to order additional copies of a record that was climbing the charts, while making sure to get rid of extra copies of a record that was falling. Likewise, jukebox owners wanted the most popular songs in their machines. The more jukebox were played, the more they paid. Jukebox distributors would use the most recent cash box charts to decide which records to add and remove on their regular visits to service their regional clients. The charts in these industry periodicals were divided according to the professionals' assessments of how consumers could most effectively be separated. So they were driven by purchasing patterns. Thus, pop charts listed records that would likely be marketed to white middle class listeners, rhythm and blues, originally called race, and then sepia charts, followed music that was directed to black urban audiences, and country and western, originally called Hillbilly, and then Folk Charts, kept track of music directed at low-income whites. This system of parallel charts was based on assumptions about markets and audience tastes, not musical style. So, you know, that's kind of where a lot of the whole charts thing came from. And there was uh what they would call crossovers. So if a song started charting really well on the rhythm and blues charts, they might think, hey, we should cut a record of this for the pop charts. And you have to remember at this time, this was, you know, kind of before the 60s, it wasn't so much we didn't think of a song as having an original recording being like the correct version. You know, after the Beatles, they write their songs, they record their songs, that's the original. Anything after that is a cover. Yep. That wasn't how music was sold back in the day. Nope. You know, it used to be you liked this song that was sold, but maybe I like the uh Frank Sinatra version, or maybe you want the Bing Crosby version, or you want the Pat Boone version.
SPEAKER_00And there were professional songwriters that worked for rock companies, which is why a lot of those early songs will have like two people credited to them and you have never heard of them before.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00But they would they would write the songs and then put them up for sale, and they'd often get handed around or sort of negotiated over, and you'll often find out so-and-so turned this song down, and then your kind of mind is blown because you're thinking, well, that could have been a Sinatra song, and yet it ended up being someone quite different, you know. Well, how how could that song have existed if it had ended up being a Sinatra song? It's amazing.
SPEAKER_03And so the example that I've got here um is a song that first started charting uh well on the rhythm and blues charts, and they decided, you know what, we need to cut this same song um for our white middle class listeners. So the first one is by Little Richie, which I'm sure you will have all heard before. As in Little Richard? Little Richard, yes.
SPEAKER_00I assume you said Little Richie because you like old buddies.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm sure most of us know this song, right? Of course. So that that song was charting really really well in the rhythm and blues charts, but it hadn't crossed over. Um so they decided, you know what, we'll cut another version of it. And so Pat Boone, who was a direct descendant of Daniel Boone, actually, um, who was one of the most successful, you know, pop artists at the time, cut his version of it.
SPEAKER_00Which is it's actually not very different. It's not it's not very different, but it's it lacks the soul. Yeah. There's something missing. Yeah. That sounds kind of like the church version.
SPEAKER_03Yep. The uh comments under this video are hilarious. It's like this is uh rock music for Ned Flanders to make sure. Or, you know, I've never felt so light. Not an ounce of soul. But you know, so uh black artists rightfully were feeling ripped off in these situations. But this was all this was all a marketing thing, right? This was all just for those charts, and this was sort of how pop music um and our modern, you know, our modern version of our genres really started to originate.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It was based on the musical styles that you could that you could sell and market, more so than the actual music itself and the messaging or or what the music was trying to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that shows you also that the music itself hasn't changed, you know, but it's going to be framed differently. Um when it comes back to the idea of genre within a certain artist, like I was talking about Miles Davis, what I often think about is that you take an artist who's famous for his genre, and like Bob Marley, I think is an interesting example, because we think Bob Marley, reggae. If you actually sit and listen to all of his songs, not all of them are reggae.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_00He did he had lots of folk, he had lots of rock, there are all sorts of different elements in there. Not all of them have that classic chuck that sound, right? I think that's true about Miles Davis. I think that's actually true about a lot of artists. They don't comfortably fit within their own idea, which is why I've always thought of genre as being more like a colour picker. Um, you know those colour pickers, right? Mm-hmm. Where you see uh the people is that a common term, colour picker? When you open up the colour on a thing like Photoshop or whatever, and it shows you all of the colours in one circle? One or whatever.
SPEAKER_03One band.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it's all blurred together. Yeah. And I one one thing I don't know from a designer point of view, is there such a thing as like perfect red? Or is red just is it just encapsulated?
SPEAKER_03That's a that's a much deeper philosoph. That's the whole you know, you get into the uh how red is red.
SPEAKER_00But but that's it's the same thing. Isn't it? It's the same thing because you go, where on this is perfect red, because we all go about there, but then you know, a few millimeters either way, it's it's slight a slight variation of red, but at some point it stops being red. Right? And that's the same as genre, isn't it? There's stereotypical examples of the genre, which is actually incredibly finite, very small, and then one or two steps away, and it's a bit less of that and a bit more of that, and then it just very gradually becomes something else.
SPEAKER_03Now we're an acid funk jazz fusion.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03But that's what I think all the subgenres start to break out. That's what I mean.
SPEAKER_00So that's to me one of the reasons to me why genre doesn't make any sense. It's it's not a musical thing. It's a it's a it's a retrospective idea.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think I think it kind of it comes down to not some I sort of sort of said it before where it's music isn't about what it does or the emotions it evokes, or you know, if we go a bit further back in history, music was uh traditionally used for for much deeper things and and it was a real communal thing. You know, the whole idea of a single person owning a song probably would have just been laughed at. Right. Um but yeah, now now it much more it's kind of sold as a lifestyle thing, you know. If you're if you're into if you're into metal or punk or something, that's really a lifestyle that that they're trying to sell. It is much more of a marketing gimmick, I feel like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're part of that gang. I also think it's interesting that pop as a construct has been a constant moving target because you know, at one point the Beatles were pop, and earlier than that, I mean Sinatra property was pop. At some point, big band or swing bands would have been pop. Yeah, totally. You know, and so pop is whatever is popular's popular, you know. But what I also find funny about pop music is that and this is more a comment on these days version of pop, is that pop itself seems to be and we have to gener I have to generalise to make this point. So there's gonna be plenty of exceptions to this, but generally I think pop music is music without characteristic, as in without genre characteristic, as in I find interesting when you're introducing other people to to what like playing the music they haven't heard before. Um if it steps too far in the direction of a different thing, they go, oh well that's that's one of those. It's like pop is it's it's almost had any fingerprint of influence of outside genres shaved off it. We can't use that chord because that then it'll then be jazzy. Yeah. We can't use this thing because then it will be you know one of those. It has to be absolutely vanilla, and the only exception to that is when people double down on it. You know, so like Olivia Dean is a really popular artist right now, and I really think she's great. And she's really leaning into that jazz RBC. Yeah, we just got tickets, I'm pretty excited. Did you? Yeah. Oh, cool, yeah. It'll be a good show. Yeah, excited, should be good. Um, and so she's one of the pop artists that I really have a lot of time for because musically it's interesting. It's not yeah, it's not just all you know, hype and greye, you know.
SPEAKER_03I feel like she's one of the first pop artists I'm actually excited about in a little while. Because, you know, it sort of feels like that old school pop artist who is a proper musician, not just uh connected.
SPEAKER_00And this is where you know, it's not the I mean it's always talked about m by musicians that modern pop music is a lot of the same stuff like the same four chords used over and over again and and whatever. And I know that sounds like a uh what did you call it before like corksniffy sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, a little bit.
SPEAKER_00But really all that we're talking about is that pop music used to have all of the same moves and sophistication and inspiration and creativity and all that stuff. And then bit by bit because of a lot of different things and this is something we're gonna we're gonna talk about in a future episode that stuff has been taken out of pop music. Fucking on the marketing board rooms. It's not just that it's not just that we're gonna we're gonna talk we're gonna talk to Glenn Child about that on a on an episode soon. But but the actual building blocks in terms of the chords they use and the scale notes they use and things like that have become more and more and more vanilla. And it was interesting because um one of my friends recently sent me this song and said something about like why why is this song so interesting to me? And I found it to be a fascinating example. Do you know the song? Yeah One Republic Oh no I don't know the song I was thinking something different so when we're talking about music I think there are different categories that we can focus on. One of those categories is song composition the actual writing then there's production then there's the playing styles and the sort of what the in the what the actual musicians are doing and then it's the way it's all packaged up and marketed and things like that. Then there are more categories as well I think the production on this song is really cool. Like I really like the sound of those drums and the kind of drony overtone that's yeah and there's and there's like a lot of space in there and all that kind of stuff. It's like a more interesting drum beat than usual to exactly what I don't like is there's only three chords and they're the same predictable three chords. Now this particular guy is also someone who has zero interest in the likes of Ed Sharon and people like that because you know it's all the same stuff on repeat but these are the same chords Ed Sharon using and and one thing I don't like about modern pop music is that it's the same progression for the uh chorus as it is for the verse and in fact in most modern songs now the progression never changes. There's no bridge around there's no variation. It's not even AABA it's just AAA Yeah exactly and and so I was talking to to this guy about it and he's going well why is this interesting then? And I'm like well it's you know I mean firstly you're you like it and that's totally fine but it's the song is actually propped up by production not by writing because if I wrote you a chart for that song it's like three chords on repeat for the entire song I believe it's just like the one four five chords. And it would you would look at the chart and go, huh like that would be the most boring song to play just on guitar with no production. So I think people get turned around with that sort of thing. Here's another example that will I mean we are trying to grow the podcast but this is probably going to lose us some of this well then don't play it but just just have a listen to this piece this is a pretty famous iconic song you know the song not yet it's no secret this is love will keep us alive by the eagles I was standing all alone against the world outside you were so again if we're if we're judging the music and I'm not for a second putting the eagles down they're not my cup of tea but but the chords here are those same pop chords. Like this could easily be an Ed Shiran song too. So it's sort of the first I guess the main point here is why do we put some things down and celebrate other things when they're actually the same.
SPEAKER_03I think this one does it it does feel a little different though still doesn't it because it's a more much more stripped backed on the production side different to what?
SPEAKER_00Than the one we just heard. Oh yeah you know but I'm not comparing it to that I'm comparing it to something coming up gotcha yeah but so you've got these very comfortable chords in the scale multiple male vocal harmonies all of that now have fan and I'm not trying to say that simple writing is bad no more that's not my point.
SPEAKER_03But I think you could almost make the opposite point that simple writing that sticks is sort of like the pinnacle right you think of songs that that that ex you know that go expand past cultures and time and stuff like that. They're normally pretty simple earworms that get stuck in your head.
SPEAKER_00Although I I I mean that's a n a tangent really but I've noticed that through a lot of those songs there's always something in there that's just a bit slightly like a bit off a bit of a there's always like one surprise in there. Like um in Let It Be Let It Be uses a lot of the sort of straight up and down chords but then it goes to a B flat where that's out of the scale I mean it's in the key of C major there shouldn't be a B flat and that dun dun dun dun dun dun and that really it gives it its character. So I actually think while simplicity is fantastic there's a there's a difference between simplicity and mediocrity. Oh agreed yeah yeah so but check this out though you can see the screen right you can see who this is around you now obviously there's differences to the sound already and but those differences are uh production not the writing the writing is almost identical I'm not saying the song's plagiarized because that I'm just saying they're using the same chord formulas and the same melod melodic notes from the same scale and it starts off with that single male vocal. And then it goes a little bit of a pre-chorus just like the Eagles song it's exactly the same type of writing. Same descending hear that same descending progression that was in the other song.
SPEAKER_03And yet it does sound so much different doesn't it? Just it's just that production.
SPEAKER_00It's just the production because there's emphasizing different parts of the music. Exactly and then we get to the male vocal harmonies starting to layer up much like the eagles and what's so interesting about this to me is that people will be absolutely against boy bands and yet the eagles are celebrated as one of the great bands in history. I don't like boy bands myself but I that this is just an example to me of where we're not really listening to the music. We're listening to the marketing and the lifespan and production production but it's all the stuff that comes with it like that you know someone of a certain ilk doesn't want to say out loud oh no I love I love NSync you can this is a safe space you can say you love NSYNC by the way have you heard the new song by the Foo Fighters great song I actually like Nickelback but but this is another example people go I hate nickelback and they're like the running joke of all this stuff. I know again this is a plan for another episode but but tell me what is different about this from the Food Fighters there's a bit of difference in the production uh there's a couple of things yeah basically right the culture and around it exactly and and people love the the story of the food fighters the history with Nirvana yep they've got the Food Fighters have straight rate these guys don't you know but that could totally be the food fighters oh these guys are incredible lives like I've seen the food fighters and nickelback alive seen them both I've seen them I've seen Nickelback three times they're phenomenal lives people can talk shit and I get it and I understand and it's fun to hate on them and they were so uh prolific for that period of time where it just got shoved down everybody's throat.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00So I understand the pushback I mean talk about shoved down the throat I mean the foo fighters I desperately try to get away from the foo fighters. If I make the mistake of watching anything on YouTube that has anything to do with them the algorithm then gives me frickin' every second video as poof I have to tell the algorithm no not interested leave me alone I don't know how they how they have so much power in the algorithm.
SPEAKER_03I don't think it is you talk remember we were talking about the shades of red? Yeah it could just be certain bands as far as the algorithms and the current genres are concerned they could be that sort of touch point right so what do you mean like maybe the algorithms have decided that foo fighters are the correct you know shade of red for uh I don't know what would be the genre uh modern rock or pop rock or whatever. Yeah arena rock yeah I don't know but you know so maybe that's why because everything kind of gets pushed towards that sort of that sort of shading. Do you know what I mean? That could be why you see so much of a band like that.
SPEAKER_00Oh I mean I feel like I've got a pretty good grasp on why that music constantly gets put to us which again is what we're going to talk about with Glenn. But it's it's to do with actually the music industry behind the scenes in terms of the way radio stations program music changed significantly in the 90s and now radio stations are no longer interested they're not there for the music, they're there for the advertising. And so it's all about demographics. To be honest it always was not as much if you look at like the Payola scandals of the 50s but the but the again I don't want to blow this for the episode we're gonna do the Paola scandals only existed because radio DJs had their own show and could play whatever they wanted to and that is true and so Payola was giving said DJ popular DJ that a large audience trusted money to to favour a song right in the 90s radio DJs got the kick and they were replaced with radio programmers which is why we no longer have radio DJs and now we have radio presenters and behind the scenes radio programmers and radio programmers go our big client sells car parts and this is the demographic we think you're gonna be interested in car parts and here's the type of rock and roll that'll be you know so they they have to be able to show their advertisers that they're playing the right type of rock and roll and that is one of the reasons why when I took a rock song with my record company to some of the big stations we were told it has to be more like the Foo Fighters so there's that's why you've got this chip on the shoulder with the foo fighters you could you could be condescending and put it that or you could just say I'm experienced and know what I'm fucking talking about. There you go But I the point that I'm trying to get back to here is is I heard someone say this the other day actually I thought it was great. People don't listen to what they love they listen to what they know. And I think that's such an interesting concept because people do just I just mean average listeners tend to just listen to whatever's on the radio whatever's big right now whatever their friends have gotten into it's kind of like the easiest uh part of least resistance sort of thing where someone goes I think this is the greatest thing and I always think have you heard all the other things? Yeah and then there are people like you and I who are you know loud and proud music nerds who go out of our way to try and listen to all the different things so that when you say you love this and don't like that, it's actually because you have listened to a whole wide variety. I think that's actually more unique these days.
SPEAKER_03Yeah I would agree. It's I mean it's tricky because we don't we've talked about this before as well. We don't really have that sort of shared like monoculture where if something's big right now it's big for everybody. Everyone is um so fragmented so it is tricky you know uh radio DJs used to be a source where you could actually where bands would get exposed and and you would learn about that stuff. It doesn't really exist like it used to. So the whole the whole breaking out and and you know if you wanted to actually start your own thing that's kind of a new genre. The only example I can think of in recent times would be those crazy polka dotted French Canadian fellas. You know they're kind of doing something something that seems a bit new and unique. Yeah and and bullshit.
SPEAKER_00But I mean I've heard I've heard uh American comedians have have made the comment about other comedians who are regularly selling out stadiums who have generated this enormous audience to sell those tickets and um and yet don't really have a place in conventional stand-up comedy culture but they've just caught on online they've they've gone viral and they've reached enough people that they can set out a stadium but weirdly they're not kind of in the comedy culture. It's really strange some of these I think that's actually kind of cool. It's cool yeah I don't think they're saying it's not cool. I think they're just saying it's quite it's kind of like weird. But that's more to comment on on what you're saying that there's no collective thing anymore. Yeah. Um I I desperately need to get to the ad read I can't figure out how to I was just trying to make sure have I covered everything I wanted to say there. All I was going to say on the end. One more thing on that people aren't listening to music as in depth as they think they are I think we also have to be honest that we're gonna be impacted by sentiment and hype, marketing, production social. Yeah nobody lives in a vacuum. That's right nobody lives in a vacuum we we like the music we liked when we were 14 or the music you know we first you know our first partner or some the first person we dated the music we're listening to then or whatever, right? We we we're not really listening to things objectively was all I was going to say before I say something about guitar lessons. And and I I've been thinking about this do we continue reading the ad like like we're doing because it it seems a bit stiff and I I hate ads when when I'm listening right it's your business dude we don't have to read if you don't want to but but you know um why don't you spend uh a minute telling uh uh in your own original words why it's important to get a good tutor you don't even have to name Auckland guitar lessons sure just put me on the spot here you don't even have to mention aucklandguitarlessons.co.nz you know or or info at aucklandguitarlessons.co.nz just you know why should people get off YouTube and come to aucklandguitarlessons.co.nz well what I will say is you can learn a lot on YouTube a lot of a lot of a lot of people do yeah yeah um but it's one of those things where you know if you're cutting through the Amazon rainforest with a hatchet maybe you get to your destination in time but you might fucking spin around three or seven different times before you actually get there whereas when you have a tutor, you know you're gonna do a straight line because they've already been through the forest they already know all the pitfalls they know the areas to avoid um and that did make a huge difference for me.
SPEAKER_03You know I've been playing for probably near on 15 years just with the whole YouTube tutorials and stuff like that and I could play some campfire songs and I could have some you know fun with friends but I didn't understand what I was doing. I didn't understand the instrument um didn't understand any of the music theory behind that. Didn't have any feedback. Didn't have any feedback that was you know that was one of those things where um maybe you develop a bad habit right at the start and then you do that same habit for a decade. It's quite difficult to actually get rid of those habits. But having a good tutor is gonna you know give you that that sort of chance to to learn those things. Yeah. Get immediate feedback and actually improve um and learn things at a much deeper level. The other side is it's just really good to play in front of people. Yep. That's a skill that you just simply cannot learn on YouTube. You know you do need to get out there. You do need to go find people to play with and you know it it does uh really open up your music world.
SPEAKER_00Not to mention one more thing I'd add is knowing what to focus on in what order is important because people because people do get really fixated on certain tricks and whatever and they will miss out foundational things before they try and do the fancy bit or whatever and then wonder why nothing ever lands. So that's where someone with experience can can show you just sort of what to focus on first and what to go do second and and that sort of thing. So dub dub dub dot auckland guitar lessons dot codot and z and now I'd like to spend a minute with you complimenting me for my extremely original approach to the ad read you mean the one where you just threw me in the deep end and said here you go swim. Yeah okay yeah but isn't the whole point of marketing is to get people thinking and remembering right? Yeah so they don't just skip the ad. That is true. Now how many more notes do you have and how pissed are you going to be if I just like don't let you get a word in oh not not that many.
SPEAKER_03I think one of the main things I kind of wanted to talk about was how music genres in general have changed you know I feel like the way music is marketed and how much money it makes not in like the lives it changes or or the cultural aspects and trying to categorize music isn't really new. The way we do it nowadays where there's you know probably 5,000 different genres and you know we even did that poll in the group and I think there was 15 or 16 different answers in a day of what people actually thought was their favorite genre and they were just like the basic bare bone genres, not even all the weird subgenres. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00When we when any of us in the music world have to upload our music to anything you always have to click the drop down box and and then choose like what three genres you are or whatever. And and there's always like way too many of them and then there's also never the thing that you're thinking. Yeah. It's quite revealing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah I could imagine yeah. Well I think that's kind of goes back to that whole lifestyle thing now. Like lifestyle you know it reflects your desires and fantasies not your reality. Whereas you know people who might listen to country music all day they might be living in the city um or people who are listening to heavy metal or punk they're in their nine to five job working at a desk, you know, working for the man sort of thing but it's you're you're fantasizing about it. Right. But that's not the way music used to be classified. I found a really interesting um article from the 1600s uh there was a guy named Samuel Pepis or Pipus don't know how you say that but he had tried to classify um bards and ballads and he had gone all over um I think it was somewhere in the UK at the time but the categories that he came up with were things like devotion and morality history true and fabulous tragedy murders executions judgments of God states and times love pleasant love unfortunate you know so it was it was talking about the songs and the the emotions that they conveyed not in the lifestyle that it was trying to s to sell. Right. You know music was was used for for weddings and funerals and church mass and it was a communal thing where the the entire community was actually getting involved very very different to how songs are classified today. So there are there are different ways you can categorize this stuff. It doesn't have to be just a a marketing charting thing where we're you know we're trying to pit music against it and you're trying to sell a product as opposed to trying to actually connect with people.
SPEAKER_00Well I also I said a minute ago that genre is retrospective rather than creative. And what I meant by that is that when you're in the creative process I think thinking in terms of genre is actually stifling. I think I think it's incredibly negative. Once the thing's done then you start to think okay how are we going to market this?
SPEAKER_03It kind of fits in here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and and and in the old days with record stores, you know, which department is it going in? Which I always thought was quite funny because if someone was known for a genre that'd be in that genre department but then if they had done an album that was completely different it would still be in that department.
SPEAKER_03Because they already got bookended there.
SPEAKER_00So you'd find some like alternative rock thing in the jazz section or vice versa because because there were crossovers and and I always thought that was quite funny. But genre to musicians is actually more micro level. So in it it's the way that in my at least in my experience musicians talk to each other effectively about genre is when you're describing the part you're looking for and when you're saying can you make that more of a hip hop groove to the to the drummer can you make that more of a felonious monk kind of jazz thing to the piano player the the name of the reggae thing is called a skank for reasons I've never understood. So if someone says hey can you do a reggae skank then I know what that means. Yeah we talk about genre to describe the the thing we're looking for. That's interesting. What I have found frustrating in the past is when you go to a studio uh I think I mentioned this on the Dave Matthews episode uh when you go to a studio you're working on a piece and that piece that like your part of the piece has a sort of leans towards the genre and then everybody else in the equation then just defaults to that genre. And you actually have to work hard as the band leader to snap them out of it and go, no no no no I know what I'm playing sounds a little country but you know I don't want you to play a one five bass line I don't want you to play you know that type of groove or whatever. I need you to do something quite different. And that can often cause friction or confusion because musicians do actually utilize musical formulas to tell them how to respond to a situation. So that's that's kind of their training and then when you say hey you know all the stuff that you learnt to do yeah don't do that. That can be problematic. We're a fusion band now. And yet you can go and sort of look through most of the important stuff in history and hear that it is a l at least a huge amount of it is just mixes of different stuff. And I now look at all that stuff uh uh with a different type of respect. So when I listen to let's say Early Prince before he was a big name I would I would originally be really impressed by his creativity. But these days I look at it differently. Because now I've realized that creativity is actually quite a common thing. A lot of people are very, very creative. What I'm more impressed about now is that he got it over the line. Because he had to take it from that thing in his head and he had to get through all of those musicians and engineers and producers and record labels and he had to get everyone kind of like out of the way to get that idea to actually happen. And I know firsthand what it's like to go, I've got this great idea, but by the time the thing's finished, it's gone. Because someone roadblocked it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's been it's been warped from your original idea.
SPEAKER_00So what I want to play you next, uh I think you uh have been lacking Jesus.
SPEAKER_03So I'm not the only one who thinks that.
SPEAKER_00I want to play you this a little bit of this song by uh 1980s. Well this is from the 80s, uh, Christian country rock artist. This is a big hit by Stephen Curtis Chapman called The Great Adventure.
SPEAKER_03Never heard it.
SPEAKER_00I can't decide who this reminds me of. Like, is it sort of Brian Adams or John and Adams?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was just gonna say John Cougar.
unknownIn the usual way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I can hear him.
SPEAKER_03Jack and Diane.
SPEAKER_00It's a surprisingly cool guitar uh written, Jack and Diane.
unknownTry to make it.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that's that was the single. But I heard this, and this is why I dug this out. I heard this uh uh when I was in my early teens somewhere, and it kind of blew my mind because this is from his live show, and by the way, check out how unbelievably good his band is. But this is from the live show where he has a bit of a joke.
SPEAKER_01I came from a place called Paducah, Kentucky, and I have often wondered you know what would have happened if I would have written some of my songs that I've written recently. Songs like The Great Adventure. If I would have written this while I was still hanging around Paducah, Kentucky, it probably would have sounded a little different. You think? Maybe. Yes. I think so. It might have even sounded a little something like this.
SPEAKER_02Settle up here, horses.
SPEAKER_03That's my blue brass, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing. Let's follow my feet.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I like that. He's just doing his own song in a bunch of different versions. Yeah, awesome, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01When I was in college, they tried to teach me about real music. Okay? Now, if I would have written The Great Adventure while I was in college learning about real music, it might have sounded a little something like this.
SPEAKER_00I must have heard this when I was 13, 14, and I remember just thinking, I didn't know this was possible. But we've talked about this before, how songs are actually fluid. And you can interpret them all sorts of different ways.
SPEAKER_03That was that was a big, you know, talking about how good it is to get a tutor. Uh that was a big thing for me when we started breaking songs down to the form and intent, more than just he played this note on this fret at this time. Yeah. Um, because that's what you learn from YouTube. You learn a version of the song.
SPEAKER_04Hmm.
SPEAKER_03Not not even necessarily the version of the recorded song that you liked.
SPEAKER_00This this one, for example, is harder to hear it. Because it's taken it's really leaning into that. They're gonna watch form, you know. But the song is still in there. This is still the same loose progression and everything. How good are they though? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's such a dry guitar tone, but actually sounded really cool. It's jazz. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Jazz is supposed to be dry and plain, and yeah.
SPEAKER_01But after college, I moved to the home of country music.
SPEAKER_03It's a funny thing how uh if you can see the waveform, all of a sudden it's a it's a full wall. That's right. The sound really filled out.
SPEAKER_00And when we were talking at the start about how songs would get sold to different artists and then they'd be checked to suit that artist, that's exactly what this would have been sort of what you're hearing. Yeah, that's why these guys know how to do this. Yeah, I haven't I haven't the faintest idea who this band is, but they're unbelievable. And um boy, the maturity and the versatility they have in need just to be able to pull this off. And it's live so cleanly, it's so tight. But they're pulling on formulas. This is the natural sound, this is the that sound, this is the that sound. It's also a funny example because it's all based on like different sounds from within the those that region of the states.
SPEAKER_03Which I love I love when artists do that though. They just chose that versatility. It shows it shows a very high level of professionalism if you can pull the stuff apart like that. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Then there was this short little stint in a polka band once. No, I'm just kidding.
SPEAKER_00Well, now I want to hear the polka version. Another little example I wanted to play you was uh people will know this song, a very famous song by Sting. Oh, great song. And a few years ago, the guitarist Dominic Miller, who wrote that guitar part, put an album out with a Cuban band where they did rearrangements with a wide variety of songs. And this is off that album. Starts off more or less the same.
SPEAKER_03I think I need another nylon string guitar now.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00He collaborated with the Cuban band. I like the horn section. It's beautiful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03He wrote the reserve still too, like the horns is not overpowering or anything.
SPEAKER_00He wrote this guitar part as an influence from Bach. He was sort of playing around with the kind of a Bark-ish idea uh as a warm-up exercise. And Sting noticed it and said, What is that? I really like it, and they finished a song. Um I just love that because it again it shows that you just change some components around and all of a sudden it's over there now. Yeah. You know, where it wasn't, you know, anything like that before. So uh yeah, a few ex interesting examples there of how genre There's no hard lines. Yeah, there's no hard lines, but what I was gonna come back to though is that to the musicians it's micro decisions. So when Stephen Curtis Chapman's band played all those versions of the same song, they were moving the formulas to suit the the spec, but they weren't changing the song. So that's the difference between you know, the the actual writing of the song versus how it's then sort of executed.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, your style and how you actually play within that.
SPEAKER_00So I think that's the only sensible example of what genre is. That's the only actual meaning of genre is the the way that it informs a musician of how to proceed. But the way most people use it, I think, is m nothing more than just surface level. Yeah, I um I agree. Yeah. You've got other things to say. Did we just did we did we finally get to the end of an episode and actually we solved it?
SPEAKER_03Um Yeah, no, no. It's uh yeah, it's it's I never really thought of it from that sense. Um yeah, when I was looking at it, I was very much looking at it from the way it is sort of marketed and put in a playlist or something, as opposed to the actual um stylistic elements within the music. Do you know this song?
SPEAKER_00Yes, great song. I I thought of this song as an example of a song that has mixes of different stuff thrown together in the best way. It's a beautiful song.
SPEAKER_03There's a lot of really good artists that are doing stuff like this right now, actually.
SPEAKER_00That's right. I think there's something interesting happening because the music industry's sort of collapsed and then no one's making any money and sort of nothing's working.
SPEAKER_03People are getting creative again.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because for the longest time, well you can't your song can't be longer than this, you know, three and a half minutes, because then it won't it won't get on radio, and it it's now like it's not getting on radio anyway. Yeah, that's true. Let's just make it interesting. Uh but this song's beautiful. You've got you've got layers of different influences in there. Yeah, it's a great song. Like, how would you describe that guitar thing?
SPEAKER_03I mean, it's almost like a traditional Folky sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like a folky thing from the case. But that's also got that kind of Motown thing to it. Very soulful, obviously. This guy's a killer singer.
SPEAKER_03You almost got some of that like early classic rock psychedelia with like the real fluttery ambient stuff in the background, too. Yep. Really long tails on some of the reverb. Love that keys part.
SPEAKER_00And this is the kind of music that I really love because I feel like the musicians in this free. They're not serving some preconceived idea, they're just playing in a reactive way. And each of the musicians, I think, are bringing in their own life and experiences and influences. I I mean I know nothing about these guys, I might be totally wrong, but to me it sounds like they've just been all given free reign. Feels like it. Yeah. And doesn't it very often. It feels it feels fresh and alive, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Great vocals too. Amazing. He's incredible. Apparently he was busking or something and someone found him, and then this happened and he blew up, and there's some I can't remember the details, but there's some story to it. Um Yeah, so that's kind of I mean I've I've crossed a few things out because we're running out of time. But that's kind of the end of my point. Have we covered it? Have we solved it? You stopped you stopped talking, so I think we solved it. Oh sorry.
SPEAKER_03No, I just um Yeah, I just uh I don't know if I have a better feeling on what it actually is now than I did before. If anything, I thought I kind of knew what the genre was a little bit b before I started trying to do a bit of research. Right. And now I think I'm a little bit murkier. I think it is good? Oh totally, yeah. There's a lot more nuance to it than I maybe gave it credit.
SPEAKER_00It might be true for a lot of people listening too that they thought they had a pretty good hold on the subject and now they're kind of like, oh, okay, there might be a few other ways to look at this. Which is healthy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's kind of what I'm coming away with is um the majority of my research when I was looking at it was really around that sort of marketing and lifestyle, you know, selling a product versus the actual artistic impact of music. You know, music and art in general, um there's something the way that it actually affects the human experience, how do you quantify that and categorize that? Yeah. It's very difficult to do. What you can categorize is stereotypic demographics, um, you know, I guess musical forms and styles within it, which I didn't really think about too much until we started talking about this.
SPEAKER_00I think what we've also also shown you is that not everything has to be an anti-capitalist uh anti-capitalism cynical rant about we're all on fire and it's always the man's fault. I know, but I can normally get it back there. You know, I can normally find no I think you've talked about what have we learnt. Uh we've got to get to another thing, so I've got to move quickly here. We've already talked about what you've learned, I think. We need people's feedback. Yep, definitely. Throw us our throw us your opinions. It's okay if you're wrong.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think we're gonna need another episode on this at some point as well. This doesn't feel like we've really bottomed it out, so yeah, get involved. Um definitely what you think.
SPEAKER_00I definitely crossed some things out, like I said, because I'm like like that's gonna take half an hour to talk about that one. So we'll come back to it. Uh yeah, any thoughts? Go to our our usual places. And what are we playing? Are we playing something you've written? Uh yeah, we can try that one. Okay. Don't lean in and do it so formal. You threw me. I was in a roll. Head to Auckland Guitarlessons.co.nz or email. Info at aucklandguitarlessons.co.nz to find out more. Now you know what it's like. Yeah, there you go. You know how I always talk about lessons more? I don't know, I don't know. I I just there's way too many notes in that. That's fine. Sometimes more is more. Fuck it, more. Hey, don't swear. Watch the- watch the language.
SPEAKER_03Sorry.