Mellencamp on the State of the Music Biz...

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 24 Mar 2009 5:39 pm

Nice read....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mell ... 77836.html

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 24 Mar 2009 8:28 pm

This is just a microcosm of the history of America for the last 35 years in all spheres, every single one of them, not just popular music. Popular music and art in general is just a reflection of what's going on elsewhere. My opinion, of course.

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 25 Mar 2009 9:36 am

All I needed to see was his Reagan bash and his ignorance of the current reasons for the economic situation in the US to see where he is coming from.
Self serving rants don't interest me.

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 25 Mar 2009 9:52 am

Good article, and I've never particularly cared for his music. I kept looking for the Reagan bash, but I didn't see it.

Barry Blackwood · Post by **Barry Blackwood** » 25 Mar 2009 11:37 am

All I needed to see was his Reagan bash and his ignorance of the current reasons for the economic situation in the US to see where he is coming from.
Self serving rants don't interest me.

Really, Bill.

Glenn Suchan · Post by **Glenn Suchan** » 25 Mar 2009 1:11 pm

Mr. Mellencamp has some interesting takes on various aspects of the music business, at large. Some opinions, such as the "reason" record companies switched to CDs, need verification before I'll believe his "facts". Some of his remarks seemed like sour grapes to me. He's entitled to his opinions....
My opinion: Regardless of the industry, if you work for a mega-corp, you have to "play the game" by corporate rules. Why should music artists be any different? $:\$

I think, The Huffington Post jumped on the article because Mellencamp's political views run parallel to it's own, and because of oblique reference to Reagan and trickle-down economics. For the uninitiated, the "HuffPo" is a liberal Democrat (party) editorial website. It prefers to call itself a news site, but most news gets buried ala the style and technique of Rush Limbaugh's radio "news" program. Strangely enough, Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, once wrote articles for the National Review. For those not familiar, The National Review is a printed magazine (founded by Wm. F. Buckley) catering to the Republican (party) ultra-conservatives.

Periodically, I'll read both of those editorial journals to keep abreast of partisan political extremes. I have neither the time nor the stomach for Rush L. (insert emoticon for projectile vomiting, here).

BTW: I tend to like Mellencamp's music, but, as with some other music artists, I don't agree with much of his idealistic views. But what do you care, right?

Keep on pickin'!
Glenn

Mat Rhodes · Post by **Mat Rhodes** » 25 Mar 2009 2:06 pm

His argument is fortunately only directed at the commercial end of the industry. The upside is that I doubt the musicians and writers who are amateurs, part-timers, and dilettantes lose sleep over this stuff. The state of the (commercial) industry won't stop them from playing, creating, and listening to what they want to anyway. You can attribute that, for better or worse, to the democratization and accessibility of music via that technology he mentions.

edited for inaccuracy

Leslie Ehrlich · Post by **Leslie Ehrlich** » 25 Mar 2009 3:04 pm

The decline of the recording industry and popular music began in 1975, not the late 1980s. By the mid 1970s the major labels found out they could sell a whole lot more records by doing some market research and finding out what drum beats, what melodies, vocal styles, and arrangements 'worked'. The focus moved from creativity to production, and the results were disco and corporate rock. From that point it was all downhill.

Chris LeDrew · Post by **Chris LeDrew** » 25 Mar 2009 6:02 pm

Well, you can probably go back a lot further again, to white businessmen harnessing the "black" sound and getting white artists like Elvis to bring in the dough. Do you think that the watered-down Pat Boone Tutti Fruitti stuff sounded any good to black artists? To them, the apocalypse came a lot faster I'm sure.

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 25 Mar 2009 6:25 pm

To them, the apocalypse came a lot faster I'm sure.

Actually, the average black artist probably does a helluvalot better now than in what many of us probably view as the various "golden eras" of popular music. At least commercially.

This whole topic has the potential to go overtly political. I think it's possible to comment on the state of the American music biz, and American business in general, without necessarily turning it into a partisan political debate. Seems to me that there have been a lot of different types of political administrations in the last 35 years, and they - and lots of corporate types - share a lot of responsibility for the disintegration of the American business ethos over that time period.

Chris LeDrew · Post by **Chris LeDrew** » 25 Mar 2009 6:28 pm

Good point, Dave. Whenever I post in the Music section, I regret it.

Mat Rhodes · Post by **Mat Rhodes** » 25 Mar 2009 6:29 pm

"There should be a single Art Exchange in the world, to which the artist would simply send his works and be given in return as much as he needs. As it is, one has to be half a merchant on top of everything else, and how badly one goes about it!"

- Ludwig Van Beethoven

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 25 Mar 2009 6:31 pm

chas smith wrote:Good article, and I've never particularly cared for his music. I kept looking for the Reagan bash, but I didn't see it.

"Reagan's much-vaunted trickle-down theory said that wealth tricked down to the masses from the elite at the top. Now we've found out that this is patently untrue -- the current economic collapse reflects this self-serving folly."

Maybe he should have checked out how well the Reagan tax cuts did for the American economy and for the US Treasury. Written in 2001.

http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/bg1414.cfm

The economy that Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter was about as bad as this one. Maybe you guys don't remember trying to get a home loan at 16% interest!! At least Reagan did not use it for an excuse to vilify capitalism and socialize America.

The "current economic collapse" was brought on by the US government under Barney Franks and Chris Dodd, forcing the US banks to lend money to people who could not afford to buy homes and actually made the banks take on bad debt in the never ending Democrat "buy your vote for welfare checks hustle" they are famous for. The shysters at Fannie and Freddie are also culprits that no one had much to say about the untold millions they made in bonus and salaries.....come on.... You really give any credence at all to what some washed up pop star like "Cougar" has to say after he shows his hand with political crap.

If he wanted to talk about the music biz he should have left out his politics.

Barry Blackwood · Post by **Barry Blackwood** » 25 Mar 2009 7:07 pm

If he wanted to talk about the music biz he should have left out his politics.

Good advice. It also applies to this thread as well, which has unfortunately, already become too political, IMO.

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 25 Mar 2009 7:14 pm

Your wrong. We are discussing Cougar. He taints his article with his politics. I am just confronting his thought with some real facts. The truth always wins out, no matter what your politics are. He compared what is going on today with Reagan. Your not interested in calling him on it???

Charles Davidson · Post by **Charles Davidson** » 25 Mar 2009 7:18 pm

Was going to read it,but noticed it was on the Huffington Post,which is almost as deep in the cesspool as MSNBC,decided to do something MORE important,changed my cats litter box. DYKBC.

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 25 Mar 2009 7:32 pm

Charles Davidson wrote:Was going to read it,but noticed it was on the Huffington Post,decided to do something MORE important,changed my cats litter box. DYKBC.

I don't know much about the Huffington Post. Do they only allow articles with a particular political slant to them?

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 25 Mar 2009 7:46 pm

The "current economic collapse" was brought on by the US government under Barney Franks and Chris Dodd, forcing the US banks to lend money

Do you really believe that 2 guys caused the collapse of the world's economy?

One of the nice things about tax breaks for the super rich is, those bonuses didn't come out of their pockets. I can't wait until they trickle back down to my pocket.

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 25 Mar 2009 7:49 pm

I am just confronting his thought with some real facts. The truth ...

Real facts? Truth? Nobody has a corner on that market, IMHO. Not the Huffington Post nor the Heritage Foundation. Not any of us, including myself. We can observe, hypothesize, make predictions, and then compare prediction with reality as it comes down the pike - nothing more. Even the most prescient people I observe have extremely imperfect track records. That's not a criticism - it's an impossible problem.

IMO - nobody - not any politician, group of politicians, economist, or anybody else - can take either the credit or blame for what has happened in the music biz, American business, or the economy in general. It's an indescribably large, complex, and interconnected system - the idea that anybody can untangle the web of causes and effects and control this like a guided missile is absurd. All we see are symptoms, and we throw stuff at it and hope it sticks. I believe all social science is ultimately political - one can find supporting data for practically any point of view you want to defend. This is what makes this type of discussion difficult.

With all of this said, it is very hard to refute the obvious decline of the so-called American "culture" the last 30-40 years. I just don't think anybody knows exactly why. I have my opinions, but who cares? Like I said, I think there are enough distinct and often contradictory correlative explanatory variables to make a case for practically any reasonable theory anybody wants to put forward.

My opinion, of course.

Chris Schlotzhauer · Post by **Chris Schlotzhauer** » 25 Mar 2009 8:09 pm

You don't think Ahmet Ertegun, Col Parker, Sam Phillips, and a ton of others didn't see the potential to make a killing? Sure they were more hands on, but that was the beginning of the corporate music biz.
They were not faced with the tsunami of technology changes that we've seen in the past 20 years.

Leslie Ehrlich · Post by **Leslie Ehrlich** » 25 Mar 2009 9:40 pm

The 'trickle down' theory existed long before the Reagan administration. It is one of the central assumptions within classical liberal economic theory, a theory which advocates free markets and opposes government intervention.

Deregulation of industry, privatization of government services, and tax cuts for corporations and high income earners are all part of the neo-liberal agenda for economic reform. Neo-liberalism is an ideology strongly rooted in classical liberal economic theory and its principles were advocated to address the rising inflation and unemployment of the 1970s. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were the two most widely recognized political leaders that embraced neo-liberal ideas to get their economies back on track.

Did it work? I'd rather not say.

Henry Nagle · Post by **Henry Nagle** » 25 Mar 2009 11:18 pm

I took it that his point is that the music business is not so much about "music" as it once was- and I agree completely with that conclusion.

Politically, I thought it was a very mild essay. Nothing for anyone to get really upset about except for the record industry. I'm done with wasting energy worrying about that broken machine.

Mike Perlowin RIP · Post by **Mike Perlowin RIP** » 25 Mar 2009 11:44 pm

Several years ago I ran into Pete Anderson at a restaurant. Pete lives near me. We don't know each other very well, but we run into each other from time.

On this occasion he was upset. He told me he had just come from a recording session with Dwight, where some guy from the accounting department came to the studio with a chart that showed that hip hop was outselling country, and so he wanted Dwight to do some rapping on his now record.

Pete tried to tell the suit that they were trying to make records with some musical integrity, and that adding a hip hop element would undermine that, but the guy had absolutely no idea what Pete was talking about. All he knew about was how his bean counting chart showed that hip hop was bringing in more money tht Dwight's records were.

The only way Pete could get the guy off his back was to point out that changing Dwight's style could backfire and alienate his fans, and the record might not do as well as Dwight's previous recordings.

That was the only thing the guy could understand. The idea that music is a manifestation of the human spirit, and not simply a commodity, was beyond his comprehension.

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 26 Mar 2009 5:04 am

Dave Mudgett wrote:
IWith all of this said, it is very hard to refute the obvious decline of the so-called American "culture" the last 30-40 years.
Who determines the so called "decline"? Those Americans who don't have much of a part of the "culture" are just fine with a decline of it. Those who think they represent what the culture should be lament the decline of it. Who owns the culture???

Edward Meisse · Post by **Edward Meisse** » 26 Mar 2009 7:57 am

Leslie Ehrlich wrote:The 'trickle down' theory existed long before the Reagan administration. It is one of the central assumptions within classical liberal economic theory, a theory which advocates free markets and opposes government intervention.

Deregulation of industry, privatization of government services, and tax cuts for corporations and high income earners are all part of the neo-liberal agenda for economic reform. Neo-liberalism is an ideology strongly rooted in classical liberal economic theory and its principles were advocated to address the rising inflation and unemployment of the 1970s. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were the two most widely recognized political leaders that embraced neo-liberal ideas to get their economies back on track.

Did it work? I'd rather not say.

I just want to point out that here in the United States we use the term Neoconservative to describe what the rest of the world calls Neoliberal. Other than to say that we all collectively own the culture, I will stay out of the political discussion here and flee this thread before I get myself into trouble.