What is in artistic message?
Lately, I’ve grown interested in artistic message and messaging. Do I have a message? If I did, what would it be? What makes for good artistic messaging? I ask myself this stuff. I think it’s fun. But I also think it is important as someone who creates.
Why combine genres in a genre award show? What does that mean?
The news is filled with the new inductees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I personally don’t understand the attraction, despite liking a lot of rock music. I got to thinking about why and it is because of message. I love Wu-Tang, for example, but anyone who says they’re rock is jerking my chain. I’ve listened to them a lot. I have listened to rock a lot. They are not the same thing. Why do we have to pretend they are?
Fake inclusion.
I understand inclusion and I am usually for it. But this is fake. I don’t like fake. Build a rap hall next to the rock hall, I’m good. But we all don’t have to participate in the dumbing down of genre. The Rock Hall has lost its message and weight because it ran out of rockers or barred some. This is not a reason to take candidates from other styles of music. If you do that, you’re not the Rock Hall of fame anymore… Just a music hall. Which is fine, I suppose. If everyone wants that. But there’s no message to it. By diluting and convoluting the Rock Hall of Fame, it isn’t rock anymore. It’s lost the message it started with.
The water-sprinkler vs the laser.
Artists I work with and talk to want to include everyone, and I did too for a long time. I wanted to be like a water-sprinkler, giving everyone around me a sip. But I slowly became a laser instead. I want to sing to one person with a message. Look them in the eye, and say what I need to say. It happens often these imaginary conversations are liked by other folks too. But my intent kept my focus on what I was doing or trying to say. It can be intense. It’s conversational too, someone might disagree or have mixed feelings. The Rock Hall is none of this. It’s bland as hell. Boring. They simply try to be too many things to too many people and they lost the message of rock. They’re watering lawns, not searing lasers.
Intensity, clarity, and purpose give messages a sense of urgency that steps them above the Rock Hall. Some messages feel important before you even know what they are. The Rock Hall has none of that. Some messages are for thousands who mostly reside in the authors head. I detect this a lot in modern music. I think the message is get over yourself. But some artists have focus, purpose, and intensity for one solitary person. They often come off as singing to me specifically, not as part of a group. They are conversational in delivery. They make me want to talk to them just by doing what they do. The Rock Hall doesn’t come close to that level of message. It’s because they’re trying to engage everyone. That’s not a compelling message.
Sing to the back! (or don’t).
I talked the other day about looking over the heads in the front of the audience like Steve Martin suggested and how I’m unable to do that as a musician. I have to look folks in the eye and sing just for them. Lots of reasons from not getting tired as quickly to delivering a better performance vocally for everyone not just the person I’m looking at. But another main reason I do it is message. It sounds better if I am singing it to one person instead of a room full. Despite there being a room full of people. If sing to the back wall, I don’t get the sense I’m carrying a message. I don’t perform as well.
It may depend on how you send it.
Not every song has to have meaning. I get that. But songs are messages. I can’t help that’s what they are. That’s one part I hate about creative AI. I am not interested in trying to decipher messages from a computer. They’re tools. If they aren’t helping me with my messages, they aren’t helping me much at all.
Don’t tell me I’m weird for looking for Rock and Roll in a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Rock Hall is weird and irrelevant now as far as inductees go because they doubled-down on including everyone instead of just rockers. Inclusion is cool and important, but it’s not always right, or done right. Gaslighting me about Wu-Tang being rock when we all know, come on. Rap Hall of Fame? All about it!! But merging two radio stations and telling me they’re the same kind of music? Try harder.
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