Music and the Minds Eye

Music and the Minds eye.

I have an abiding love affair with American pop music and the talented composers, lyricists and musicians of the first half of the twentieth century, and was at a loss to comprehend why it is so different today. As a teenager I remember my parents contempt for what the youth of their day considered to be music and how it had changed for them. Actually, there really wasn't much of a change from their day to mine. The flapper days and art deco music and the segue into the big band era was a change of rhythm more than anything else. It was still music to dance to - and to listen to!

Not so today. The anti-establishment movement which has been silently in effect for a much longer period than we ever realized (although we thought it began in the early sixties) is responsible for the product we endure today. The demolition of the American way of life as delineated by the Constitution is not accidental and the ugliness of what passes for music today is one facet of the whole. Familial relations, morality, political standards et al  have all been twisted into forms which are no longer recognizable as American. So it is with our music.

Music has been transformed into a visual product. Certainly we see people everywhere with earbuds and they are listening to their "music" - but our society today is all about visual. We listened to the radio. We heard the product, and the visual was in our minds eye. Our imaginations were at work. We created our own visual. People today grew up with a visual which had been crafted for them. It was a manufactured visual. When they listen to music today they don't create their own visual with their imagination, they see what they have always seen. Their musical memory bank is a manufactured product that always includes a contrived physical show. They accept that music is presented as a visual.

What passes for music today is to me an abomination. I know that will offend some who read this and I understand why you feel that way. You've never been exposed to an alternative. The music today is not the product; the visual is, and it's all about marketing sex, skin, trashy behavior, poor taste...and too often, actual filth. It's all about indoctrination; replacing a decent way of life with an inferior one.

Much of earlier American pop music is about romance, dreams, feelings of love and devotion. It's also about rhythm, syncopation and dancing. The lyrics tell story's about boy and girl relationships, happy times, sad times, but always with a melodious accompaniment. Nearly all of earlier pop music was written by foreign immigrants who came to America to embrace Americanism - the American Dream. They wanted to be American and to live in a free society. They felt it with heart and soul. They wanted to live and love and to raise families and to earn a better way of life - and so they created the music and lyrics that expressed their dreams. They wrote about life in America with music and words...beautiful music and words. Then too they wrote music to praise America, the values, the patriotism and the loyalty. This grew out of a national respect for the values and opportunities that America offered them personally.

If you don't know any better, and have no value system with which to compare, you have my sympathy, but believe me your existence is missing out on aspects of American life that we enjoyed and which you will probably never know.

You Tube can provide you with hundreds of examples of the two distinct genre's, but I'll list here just a sample of tracks you can listen to. You might be pleasantly surprised. This is from a CD that I put together for my own enjoyment from You Tube.

My Foolish Heart.                       Jim Haskins.

It Could Happen To You.             Joni James.

Stardust.                                   Artie Shaw.

Perfidia.                                   Glenn Miller

How Deep Is The Ocean.             Artie Shaw.

The Pleasure Of Her Company.    Vic Damone.

Time On My Hands.                     Artie Shaw.

Till There Was You.                    Peggy Lee.

At Last.                                     Glenn Miller.

Frenesi.                                     Artie Shaw.

You Belong To Me.                      Joni James.

They Say.                                  Artie Shaw.

A String Of Pearls.                      Glenn Miller.

If I Give My Heart To You.           Acker Bilk.

Out Of Nowhere.                       Artie Shaw.

Hold My Hand.                            Don Cornell.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.            Artie Shaw.

Moonlight Serenade.                   Glenn Miller.

All The Things You Are.               Artie Shaw.

Shangri La.                                Vic Damone.

An Affair To Remember.             Jim Haskins.

Begin The Beguine.                    Artie Shaw.

The Way You Look Tonight.        Jim Haskins.

My Foolish Heart.                       Margaret Whiting.

Close your eyes, listen...and create your own visual.