“Welcome to our restaurant, 80% of the food is leftovers.”
“Welcome to our boutique, 80% of clothing is secondhand.”
To a certain eco-minded type, these are features, not bugs. Remember when the prevailing cultural critique was that we demanded too much "new new new" all the time, and never cherished anything old?
Also - genuine question - how much of the current plays vs catalog plays chart is just a measurement problem of the pre-streaming era? In the 90s, if you bought the CD version of "Dark Side of the Moon" and played it 100 times, it only counted as one sale. But now if you play it 100 times on Spotify, the industry is going to count all 100 plays. So in some ways we are just getting the real numbers on how old hits compete for our listening time with new hits.
Restaurants have always advertised food like mom or granny used to make, traditional ethnic dishes or exactly what you need and expect after a wretched day or for a celebration. Food leans on tradition.
Meanwhile, vintage clothes are getting more and more popular with younger people. A lot of this is because the new stuff is crap, poorly cut and poorly sewn using cheap fabric. Goodwill and the like used to have clothing bargains but no longer.
It also is a truism in the music business that the average consumer will listen for the rest of his life mostly to the music he listened to between the ages of 18-21
And the average rock star will keep playing it until they burn out, or else become so stiff their fossilized remains are literally carried straight over to Madame Tussauds, or else they are seamlessly replaced by an animatronic double, or a holographic 3D avatar, or an AI 4D "Zombie," until all the money runs out.
Or, if Elvis: actual death occurs, and you spawn imitators...then imitators of imitators...then still more...until the end of time, or the snake eats its tail, whichever comes first.
Better: if your band is conveniently named ABBA, you just reverse the spelling to "ABBA," and:
"Gimme gimme gimme...a new band after midnight!"
Earth to rock stars: teenage rebellion music gets old when you become a grownup. Sadly, time goes in one direction only, and it is not yours. Only exception: Weird Al...because weird will never die.
Music is just like science: it advances one funeral at a time, not one birth at a time.
Easy money is one hell of a drug. It's why so many pro athletes go bankrupt, in spite of making millions.
The difference is that an aging musician can squeeze out a few dollars out of old hits more easily than an over-the-hill athlete. Or maybe autograph signings is the athlete's version of ribfests and Indian casinos?
Good point about clothes. Just today i bought 5 of the same hat from dollar general, bc its the only one i could find that i like, and theyre so cheaply made they only last a couple months. 10 bucks a hat. I would gladly pay 50 bucks for the same hat but made well, but thats not to be found around me(and ordering hats without trying them on never works out for me). So now hats for me are disposable.
I still get good jeans from gustin. The jeans i can get locally are all stretchy, and cant stand the gaff. My other clothes mostly come from thrift stores. When i find something good i look to see if i can still get it new, and i stock up bc ik itll be discontinued before long.
There is still quality clothes being made, its just alot harder to find. In my area its not to be found at all.
I thought a better analogy for the boutique would be "welcome to our boutique, 80% of the clothing is based on designs from 50 years ago". Restaurant would be "80% of the food recipes are from the 1950s". Sometimes one is nostalgic for those green jellos and mashed potatoes from a box...but not normally.
Classical music began to suffer from this in the 19th century with accurately printed scores and even more by the 1930s, with decent quality extended recordings. The genre suffered from anti-audience snobbery after 1945 and quietly suffocated. Now it's 95% repetition of existing repertory.
And every pianist’s or violinist’s debut recordings are yet another Tchaikovsky or Mendelssohn Concerto. Lang Lang, at first blush, seems an exception, until you consider, his first two releases were live performances. But when it came time for his first studio recording . . .
There is similar commentary in the literary community around the dearth of new literary fiction.
One of the potential causes is the paucity of literary writers, ostensibly because the modern economy has no place for high-risk, low wage creative work by high-end intellectual talent.
If you have a top 1% mind you would be nuts to do anything but finance, real estate, tech or consulting. Any creative pursuit (writing, screenwriting, acting) is no longer reasonable because you would be homeless.
In the 60s-90s there was always a gritty part of the city or a “lost” neighborhood where you could get cheap rent and be around other creative talent. That is gone.
Hollywood needs brilliance to function. Many great actors are shockingly smart and attended places Like Yale Drama School. If that talent can’t abide the current risk/reward, then the only people entering the business will be influencers and people who look like talent but lack it.
So we get bad business choices, bad acting, and terrible screenwriting because all of these are hard and require real brains.
I totally agree. This is why so much good music, art writing and culture came out of the 70s, 80s, 90s. The punks literally squatted and got by on as little as possible, or banded together in punk houses (something people could still do). Got by on a string of crappy slacker jobs and made what they made. The lack of affordable housing leaves people so tired from crap jobs and trying to make ends meet that they just want to zone out on some BS streaming service at the end of the day. The energy once had for making music or writing or whatever is lost between making ends meet, and not being bored enough because of access to too much streaming content.
Cheap living + a bohemian slacker job + boredom and free time = great culture and scenes.
I once told an erstwhile pro musician who was complaining about the lack of opportunities that what he should do is to get a job working for the government, preferably in a larger metropolitan exurb.
He has secured a roof over his head, health insurance, and union protection, he works 9-5, and not a minute more. After the working day is done, his time is his own. He can play out, practice, record, and if he starts to hit it big, he can quit his office drone job at any time.
Naturally, this guy did not want to hear that. He wanted the hookers-n-blow lifestyle, and he was entitled to it right now, damnit!
There is something to be said for the local musician, writer, artist. You can be local and national after all…and we are all local somewhere. Also I think having a partner and a job is grounding, a foundation to build off of.
The internet gives the local artist opportunities that never before were imaginable. But, by removing gatekeepers, it also makes life a lot harder for a certain class of artist.
Whatever - for better or worse, that genie is not going to go back into the bottle.
Good point you make about the lack of gatekeepers in the digital age vs the whole hierarchy of filtration that was in place in the analogue era. As a former (small-time) semi-pro musician , I wrote a bit about this on my 'stack, charting the steady demise of the music industry over the last few decades. It's one of the greatest ironies that "making music" (at least as a technical definition) has never been cheaper or easier, yet the sheer volume of dross serves to effectively suffocate the tiny percentage of very high quality material and writers/performers. There are of course other factors which apply and I covered , but this is a big one in my humble opinion.
This reflects a great deal of ignorance about real creatives.
It appears you believe music, art, design and writing is a pastime, fit in for a few hours after your job.
Art *is* the job. It is not a craft after work if you want to be elite. Symphony musicians practice all day every day. Painters paint all day. It is a crazy amount of work.
The point about cheap neighborhoods was not “affordable on 9-5” but “affordable through artistic pursuit and some waiting tables.”
Your attitude is why we don’t get nice things. That everyone has to work a bullshit 9-5 job.
I never said that artists were entitled to anything, and it might be worth introspecting on why you have such a strong response.
The original post is about why the content situation is so bad, and I was contending that it is virtually impossible for a talented person to dedicate themselves to the level necessary to deliver high quality cultural output.
If that is ok with you, crappy acting, screenwriting, production or even AI slop, then you be you. I want a world where there is artists because it is better. We are not entitled to art.
"In the 60s-90s there was always a gritty part of the city or a “lost” neighborhood where you could get cheap rent and be around other creative talent. That is gone."
This is so true and key to building a creative ecosystem. That's how the British fashion scene of the 90s and 00s was born as designers like John Galliano or Alexander McQueen went to live in East London (then a no-go zone) because it was cheap and they could afford studios to create their collections and store materials, which in turn attracted more designers to the area.
But nowadays with inflation, cost of living and extortionate rent not only in big cities but also in mid-sized ones across the globe, it becomes harder for creative people to afford to take risks or have the possibility to be nearby fellow creatives to build a movement/ecosystem so everyone is creating (those who can afford it) in their bubbles, isolated from those spontaneous collaborations and influences from the talent in their generation.
Bit sad when we come to think about it that at the end of the day what cultural influences are going to shape our time will come down to who has the money to create freely without worrying about rent.
That's so insightful. I've had the same feeling for ages but couldn't pinpoint the reason. as a younger millennial, all I've ever known was gentrification and unaffordable rent lol
Yes, and then there is the Hollywood nepotism to throw in as well. Even when younger people are making movies, it's someone like Gia Coppola. I liked Sofia Coppola's films. The new one from Gia, third generation, people are raving about, well, it's no Godfather. Well, yes, talent does sometimes run in families... but...
Superheroes and special people are partly why we are in the mess we are in. Whatever happened to celebrating Sly's "everyday people" -- We don't need more execs making creative decisions. We need more working class intellectuals like Harvey Pekar creating art out of their lived life. More janitors. More file clerks.
Anyway, I better stop now, as I feel a rant coming on. Praise Bob!
I wonder how much of this is that so many professions that used to be covered by working class people (like journalism, acting, etc.) are now filled by college educated people. I wonder how many people who went to Yale Drama School can have a real life connection to the regular guy.
Batya Ungar-Sargon made exactly that point about journalism -- it went from real people covering real stuff, without a lot invested in elite thinking, to becoming part of the elite and abandoning journalism in favor of being lap dogs.
BTW, as an ex-newspaper guy with a journalism degree, the age of reporters drinking hard went out a long time ago. The movies exaggerated it, as usual. If you have no connection to the field you may not realized that it has almost disappeared, except at the elite level (NYT), which is what you are probably thinking of. My former paper is now a headless zombie with no editor, having been bought up by a vulture capital chain.
I have photographed a lot of actors in my career, and I can assure you that they are a special breed, and have never been typical human beings. One of them I have in mind was a guy who never stopped acting, ever, and I wanted to shake him and say "Just cut it out and be yourself!" Acting can be a shell.
You’re so right about everyday people in movies. Nothing on the screen feels real anymore (well not nothing but you get my point) and part of the reason I think is because Hollywood is allergic to ugly people. We need more normal looking people on screen, too, imo.
I keep saying it: Pop music today isn't very good. Too many songs are unsingable. The singers seem to be mostly female, mostly very loud, mostly more concerned with costume and choreography. The audience is often (not always, but often) consumed by image and spectacle and doesn't really listen to the music. They don't know a chord change when it smacks them in the ears. Blues, on the other hand, seems to be taking a step forward. And jazz, the great American original art form, is producing some marvelous stuff these days. I know. I buy it. But the popular music of the 1970s was just better than the music of the 2020s so it is little wonder that the Eagles still fly!
I was born in 1963 and I have to respectfully disagree with you. I came of age in the 1970s and love and listen to a lot of music from that time still today, but there was plenty of crap on the radio in those days, and there is plenty of good music being made now in a wide variety of genres. You and I may not be the target audience for it, but that doesn't mean it isn't good.
I decided to look at the Billboard top 100 for 1975 just for fun. The number one song that year was Love Will Keep Us Together by the Captain and Tennille. I would rather go deaf than ever have to hear that annoyingly bouncy, saccharine piece of fluff again. And people might still be listening to the Eagles, but when is the last time you heard anyone talk about Freddie Fender, Carl Douglas, B.J. Thomas or the Average White Band, to name a few the artists who ranked in the top 100 that year.
Ken, every generation tends to dislike the music of a previous generation...until now, huh? I'll just stick with the numbers that show people are listening to more 1970s music. Truth be told, I don't listen to much of the 1970s stuff, but I don't listen to any of today's pop music. I recall when I was 12 years old and the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show program introduced young Elvis Presley in January 1956. My parents insisted Elvis was a flash-in-the-pan. I guess that was one debate that I won..
Full disclosure: I am, in fact, a jazz guy. My extensive music collection is filled with lots of bebop-related and big band music. That doesn't mean I don't listen to other music. Heck, I have three Patsy Cline CDs, also. But jazz is where my ears and heart reside.
Re "Love Will Keep Us Together," one of the great contributions that song, Toni & Darryl made to music is that they reintroduced America to the songs and songwriting of Neil Sedaka. In addition, they caused some people to take a new look at the not inconsiderable body of work of Carmen Dragon, Darryl's father. And besides, "Love Will Keep Us Together" was (and remains) a happy toe-tapping tune. Even jazz aficionados believe there is room for that kind of music in our world. The Captain & Tennille brought large numbers of people to hear live music and, IMO, anything that brings people out to hear live music (as opposed to today's live staged spectaculars) is a good thing.
My husband turned to me in the grocery store and said, "When do you think we won't have to listen to this song ever again?" It was a typical 80s ballad from some squish-band, a piece of nothing that doesn't deserve its longevity. I laughed.
This essay validates what I've been feeling for a while now -- and throws in some killer lines, to boot: "the value chain starts in the microwave." Thanks, Ted!
McKinsey is smart. They got paid. To be honest, the guys running HBO et al are smart. They got paid. The money isn't in making companies anymore. It's liquidation.
There's gotta be a sucker somewhere who is paying for all this. I don't have HBO, so it ain't me. On the other hand, isn't McKinsey at the heart of that "Deep State" they keep talking about, with tentacles everywhere? Follow the money.
"I'm from McKinsey & Company, and I'm here to help you!"...was believed by nobody except the CEO and his pals.
Friend of mine briefly worked for one of the giants on Wall Street. Job paid a lot, but was miserable. She took the money and ran. Now she is the captain of her own fishing boat, and happy!
The blood suckers are the ones who stay in that game. The famous guy was miserable as all hell. You reap what you sow. Cue the violins...
I used to work for an employee-owned company. Actually, I've worked for two of them. Not a panacea. Was sold to a tech company, who in turn were swallowed up by "private equity."
I don’t get how managing consultants justify their fees. Where’s the “skin in the game” when results are poor? It feels like a con. Swagger and brand recognition to churn out what Chat GPT could do.
I grew up thinking elite university grads were brilliant, but once I met them, it seemed most where just more self confident than the average person.
There is no skin in the game, just as with private equity/hedge funds. They do not have to demonstrate results, or benefit to the public. They are just players hop scotching along the Monopoly board to victory. They can win because normal people play by normal rules, but they don't.
I have worked with or know grads from Yale, Harvard, MIT.
The Yale ones are "well-educated," but normal people. The one Harvard grad I worked with slightly...well, they hired him to be a sports columnist at my newspaper...his first piece was so head-bangingly dumb I was actually joking: "What did he go to Harvard as.. a student?"
Hemingway did not go to Hah-vud.
MIT people I have known: smart, but not geniuses. Socially inept.
I can proudly state that the only job offer I ever turned down was from Yale! Not to be a professor...just the university public relations photographer. I told the guy I would have to think it over, as I was waiting on a possible newspaper job, which was what I really wanted and would have paid a lot more too. He said "Make the answer 'Yes.'" I thought: what an entitled twit...so this is the Yale sense of superiority...
I had a friend whose husband, a doctor, taught at the Yale Medical School, and she said they treated the doctors the same way: "We don't have to pay you much, you are lucky just to work here."
OK, have a nice day!
The reality is: the people running things often do not know what they are doing, even if they are smart. Reality is bigger than they are.
I would credit willingness to learn, and persistence more than a piece of paper any day.
But confidence LOOKS LIKE ability, so let the buyer beware.
Could we consider that at one level the 80% rule has always been true? For music, that 80% of all music heard has always been older catalog music? For movies, that newly released movies have always been ~20% of all movies seen that year? Billboard would only keep a tally of 'new' music (i.e. Sales, radio plays, etc), and movie tickets also the same. But does that speak for all media consumption?
Data today allows for more insight. Spotify can show us that because it catalogues all music consumption, new and old.
I do, however, agree about the remake culture of Hollywood, and the senators' ages. Those need to change!
"Could we consider that at one level the 80% rule has always been true? For music, that 80% of all music heard has always been older catalog music?"
I don't think so. I can confirm that c.1970, across the radio dial, songs 8-15 years old were already called "oldies", on maybe 2 stations, and distinctly retro-sounding, while there would be maybe a station or two or three (depending on geography) that might have a few weekly programs that catered to audiences longing for any kinds of popular music prior to the rock era (e.g. big band). That is, anything pre-1955-ish. Listening to 50+ year old music could only be done on occasional history-oriented special programs interleaved with educational monologues. Those were like visiting a museum. Yes, the infinitely-elongated "rock era" has managed to change the nature of time.
Even in the world of "classical music" the popularity of Really Old Music is a 20th-century phenomenon, growing vastly after LP recordings appeared. It was then possible to record the works of composers even older than Bach and still sell enough to cover costs, leading to the new interest in music back to the 13th century and before. Of course, LPs are even more obsolete than CDs, but the musical fad for R.O.M. has worn well and can be a refreshing change from the same old stuff.
Yes. The rise of the "classical" piece, played with church-like solemnity, was due initially to the spread of curated, accurately printed scores and copyright laws. Now you had to contend with Holy Writ. Composers wanted more control over how their pieces were performed as well, and improvisation (standard practice in Bach and Mozart's day) underwent a decline until it disappeared in the European classical music culture. I even wrote my junior piano class thesis on that topic! And that was back in the 80s. The rise of high quality recordings just reinforced the trend by the 1930s and 40s.
But why would you only listen to music on the radio? It makes sense that radio stations would play trending music. Wouldn't people be listening to their songs of choice on gramophones and tape?
It was easy and free, so it was relied upon. Unless you wanted to spring for whole albums, as singles were only issued for a few songs, or, you had friends with them. Those were the options.
This reminds me of the line attributed to Stan Lee that what Marvel comics tried to do (after its first, initial burst) was to present the illusion of change—make it seem like big things were happening but ultimately the characters ended up back where they were before. Now the whole culture is like that.
(By the way, if 80% of our food is leftovers that's bad, but if 80% of our TV is The Leftovers that would be such a dramatic improvement that it's hard to conceive.)
Stan Lee -- this makes me think of him and Steve Ditko, whose work I first saw in 1962-63 in their Amazing Adult Fantasy, billed as comics for grownups, though I forget the actual wording. I didn't think much of The -an adjective here?- World of Tim Boo Bah, though I tried to improvise a sort of recitative on "Behold the world of Tim Boo Bah! In this small world his will is all supreme..." and didn't do it very well.
And, to add some real information: the Wayback Machine is still at it, with pretty much everything that has appeared on the Internet. A couple of days ago I went on a long tour of it on a whim, in which I encountered not only the apparently complete catalogue of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley but a huge collection of comics including one little item among hundreds, a collection of Webcomics. Old and new stuff, preserved for whatever ages there may be. Well worthy of anyone's attention and, if possible, support.
It's also no coincidence that the re-heating corresponds to the rise of 24/7 entertainment on phones, decreased funding in schools, decreased outdoor time, and all sorts of other things. Creativity is hard work, and it's based on knowledge; we're not doing well encouraging knowledge right now.
Yes, the glut of 24/7 "content" is a crutch for developing the imagination needed to make good work and have any kind of inner life outside of said Simulacrum / Spectacle.
Exactly. It’s pretty much impossible to be original in any art form without a deep and rich inner life—but the spectacle keeps the young creatives too mesmerized and too uncomfortable with the isolation, silence, and reflection needed for good stuff to bubble up from their depths.
Bc consuming the spectacle has a very real effect on the brain. Just a little dumber each day. Years of this now has led to a general loss of mental capability
Creativity is also based on a certain amount of solitude (not loneliness, which isn't the same thing) and introspection. In an overconnected, overstimulated world, that's missing.
The problem is Risk aversion. Is the cost of making the movie goes up, the reluctance to take Risk also goes up. Same thing with Music and even politicians. As the cost of electing, a politician goes up, the risk of investing your money in time in a newbie goes up. So we rehash the same politicians, same songs and same movies. By the way, even “new” songs today rehash old riffs and chord progressions. It’s less risky to pay the original artist a royalty and use their song in a so-called “new” song then to actually write a new song.
In summary, all of this comes down to risk aversion as the costs of everything go up.
Every once in awhile, we see a blast of creativity. Physics had one around 1900. Art in the Renaissance. Music around the 1930s. TV in the 1950s.
Between these times, there resides derivative thought. I think we are in one of those phases. The newest thought seem to be Trump’s approach to governance, but little else is explosively creative. It’ll happen again, just ain’t happening now…
“The goal of getting back to your original position”. Yeah, TG, we remember that position. How sweet, and sustaining it was. Today’s audience has been brainwashed by the crazy from too much choice and we can’t go back. The everyday high has hooked the culture. Art demands low moments so there can be high moments. Like the lick fest over sung “look what I can do” vocals American idol produced vs Sinatra telling you a story. There’s too much of everything so it’s up to you. The FILTER is the new essential artist. This is where you come in. Keep pointing us toward the good stuff…moisturizer optional.
Christopher Lee famously read The Lord of the Rings every year. I haven’t read it that many times, but I’ve read it enough that I had to reinforce the spine with duct tape. I’ve watched Star Wars on VHS more times than I remember … I stopped counting at one hundred when I was twenty.
All this used to happen offline, unwatched by anyone other than the people around the TV and uncounted.
Today, if you stream video or audio, or read on an ereader, it is all tracked and analyzed.
They are just giving us what the data is telling them we are spending our time on.
Wow. I couldn't even start counting when I was twenty, because Star Wars didn't exist. But the "unwatched" bit and the contrast with the the present - this is profoundly true and a disaster.
“Welcome to our restaurant, 80% of the food is leftovers.”
“Welcome to our boutique, 80% of clothing is secondhand.”
To a certain eco-minded type, these are features, not bugs. Remember when the prevailing cultural critique was that we demanded too much "new new new" all the time, and never cherished anything old?
Also - genuine question - how much of the current plays vs catalog plays chart is just a measurement problem of the pre-streaming era? In the 90s, if you bought the CD version of "Dark Side of the Moon" and played it 100 times, it only counted as one sale. But now if you play it 100 times on Spotify, the industry is going to count all 100 plays. So in some ways we are just getting the real numbers on how old hits compete for our listening time with new hits.
Restaurants have always advertised food like mom or granny used to make, traditional ethnic dishes or exactly what you need and expect after a wretched day or for a celebration. Food leans on tradition.
Meanwhile, vintage clothes are getting more and more popular with younger people. A lot of this is because the new stuff is crap, poorly cut and poorly sewn using cheap fabric. Goodwill and the like used to have clothing bargains but no longer.
It also is a truism in the music business that the average consumer will listen for the rest of his life mostly to the music he listened to between the ages of 18-21
And the average rock star will keep playing it until they burn out, or else become so stiff their fossilized remains are literally carried straight over to Madame Tussauds, or else they are seamlessly replaced by an animatronic double, or a holographic 3D avatar, or an AI 4D "Zombie," until all the money runs out.
Or, if Elvis: actual death occurs, and you spawn imitators...then imitators of imitators...then still more...until the end of time, or the snake eats its tail, whichever comes first.
Better: if your band is conveniently named ABBA, you just reverse the spelling to "ABBA," and:
"Gimme gimme gimme...a new band after midnight!"
Earth to rock stars: teenage rebellion music gets old when you become a grownup. Sadly, time goes in one direction only, and it is not yours. Only exception: Weird Al...because weird will never die.
Music is just like science: it advances one funeral at a time, not one birth at a time.
Easy money is one hell of a drug. It's why so many pro athletes go bankrupt, in spite of making millions.
The difference is that an aging musician can squeeze out a few dollars out of old hits more easily than an over-the-hill athlete. Or maybe autograph signings is the athlete's version of ribfests and Indian casinos?
Bet it's not the money. They learned how to do this thing a long time ago, and just kept doing it. They didn't force themselves to grow.
Everyone is a cultural conservative. They like what they are used to.
If the same people kept learning, and kept growing, then let them keep on going!
My real objection is they haven't examined their teenage attitudes.
I mean, look at Taylor Swift, Inc. She is entering her mid thirties, and still singing about her ex boyfriends and how they "made her do" things.
Move on!
The rock-star life isn't good for anybody personally, or artistically.
Arrested development! Don't show me "attitudes," show me wisdom. We need it...
Good point about clothes. Just today i bought 5 of the same hat from dollar general, bc its the only one i could find that i like, and theyre so cheaply made they only last a couple months. 10 bucks a hat. I would gladly pay 50 bucks for the same hat but made well, but thats not to be found around me(and ordering hats without trying them on never works out for me). So now hats for me are disposable.
I still get good jeans from gustin. The jeans i can get locally are all stretchy, and cant stand the gaff. My other clothes mostly come from thrift stores. When i find something good i look to see if i can still get it new, and i stock up bc ik itll be discontinued before long.
There is still quality clothes being made, its just alot harder to find. In my area its not to be found at all.
I thought a better analogy for the boutique would be "welcome to our boutique, 80% of the clothing is based on designs from 50 years ago". Restaurant would be "80% of the food recipes are from the 1950s". Sometimes one is nostalgic for those green jellos and mashed potatoes from a box...but not normally.
Classical music began to suffer from this in the 19th century with accurately printed scores and even more by the 1930s, with decent quality extended recordings. The genre suffered from anti-audience snobbery after 1945 and quietly suffocated. Now it's 95% repetition of existing repertory.
And every pianist’s or violinist’s debut recordings are yet another Tchaikovsky or Mendelssohn Concerto. Lang Lang, at first blush, seems an exception, until you consider, his first two releases were live performances. But when it came time for his first studio recording . . .
Make America Fun Again! 1994-2014 was a golden age of American culture as new ideas and technologies combined to create timeless classics. We have stagnated since then with recycled slop - it's time for fresh cooks in the kitchen: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/make-america-fun-again-tech-culture-golden-age
It’s hard to remember the last great new film franchise to come out. Harry Potter? Hunger Games?
Remember when we didn’t have movie franchises?
Yes! It was all fresh, even if it wasn't all great. MAFA = Make America Fresh Again!
There is similar commentary in the literary community around the dearth of new literary fiction.
One of the potential causes is the paucity of literary writers, ostensibly because the modern economy has no place for high-risk, low wage creative work by high-end intellectual talent.
If you have a top 1% mind you would be nuts to do anything but finance, real estate, tech or consulting. Any creative pursuit (writing, screenwriting, acting) is no longer reasonable because you would be homeless.
In the 60s-90s there was always a gritty part of the city or a “lost” neighborhood where you could get cheap rent and be around other creative talent. That is gone.
Hollywood needs brilliance to function. Many great actors are shockingly smart and attended places Like Yale Drama School. If that talent can’t abide the current risk/reward, then the only people entering the business will be influencers and people who look like talent but lack it.
So we get bad business choices, bad acting, and terrible screenwriting because all of these are hard and require real brains.
And private equity just gets bigger.
I totally agree. This is why so much good music, art writing and culture came out of the 70s, 80s, 90s. The punks literally squatted and got by on as little as possible, or banded together in punk houses (something people could still do). Got by on a string of crappy slacker jobs and made what they made. The lack of affordable housing leaves people so tired from crap jobs and trying to make ends meet that they just want to zone out on some BS streaming service at the end of the day. The energy once had for making music or writing or whatever is lost between making ends meet, and not being bored enough because of access to too much streaming content.
Cheap living + a bohemian slacker job + boredom and free time = great culture and scenes.
I once told an erstwhile pro musician who was complaining about the lack of opportunities that what he should do is to get a job working for the government, preferably in a larger metropolitan exurb.
He has secured a roof over his head, health insurance, and union protection, he works 9-5, and not a minute more. After the working day is done, his time is his own. He can play out, practice, record, and if he starts to hit it big, he can quit his office drone job at any time.
Naturally, this guy did not want to hear that. He wanted the hookers-n-blow lifestyle, and he was entitled to it right now, damnit!
There is something to be said for the local musician, writer, artist. You can be local and national after all…and we are all local somewhere. Also I think having a partner and a job is grounding, a foundation to build off of.
The internet gives the local artist opportunities that never before were imaginable. But, by removing gatekeepers, it also makes life a lot harder for a certain class of artist.
Whatever - for better or worse, that genie is not going to go back into the bottle.
Thats so right. Itll have to be something new, that works within this new framework. The old "ways" are no longer viable
Good point you make about the lack of gatekeepers in the digital age vs the whole hierarchy of filtration that was in place in the analogue era. As a former (small-time) semi-pro musician , I wrote a bit about this on my 'stack, charting the steady demise of the music industry over the last few decades. It's one of the greatest ironies that "making music" (at least as a technical definition) has never been cheaper or easier, yet the sheer volume of dross serves to effectively suffocate the tiny percentage of very high quality material and writers/performers. There are of course other factors which apply and I covered , but this is a big one in my humble opinion.
This reflects a great deal of ignorance about real creatives.
It appears you believe music, art, design and writing is a pastime, fit in for a few hours after your job.
Art *is* the job. It is not a craft after work if you want to be elite. Symphony musicians practice all day every day. Painters paint all day. It is a crazy amount of work.
The point about cheap neighborhoods was not “affordable on 9-5” but “affordable through artistic pursuit and some waiting tables.”
Your attitude is why we don’t get nice things. That everyone has to work a bullshit 9-5 job.
Artists are not entitled to anything.
That is an unusually strident opinion.
I never said that artists were entitled to anything, and it might be worth introspecting on why you have such a strong response.
The original post is about why the content situation is so bad, and I was contending that it is virtually impossible for a talented person to dedicate themselves to the level necessary to deliver high quality cultural output.
If that is ok with you, crappy acting, screenwriting, production or even AI slop, then you be you. I want a world where there is artists because it is better. We are not entitled to art.
"That is an unusually strident opinion" that is rich, considering the strident tone of the paragraph I was responding to.
Art is a luxury. If our artist is diligent, he'll have eight hours a day after his bullshit job to do art.
"In the 60s-90s there was always a gritty part of the city or a “lost” neighborhood where you could get cheap rent and be around other creative talent. That is gone."
This is so true and key to building a creative ecosystem. That's how the British fashion scene of the 90s and 00s was born as designers like John Galliano or Alexander McQueen went to live in East London (then a no-go zone) because it was cheap and they could afford studios to create their collections and store materials, which in turn attracted more designers to the area.
But nowadays with inflation, cost of living and extortionate rent not only in big cities but also in mid-sized ones across the globe, it becomes harder for creative people to afford to take risks or have the possibility to be nearby fellow creatives to build a movement/ecosystem so everyone is creating (those who can afford it) in their bubbles, isolated from those spontaneous collaborations and influences from the talent in their generation.
Bit sad when we come to think about it that at the end of the day what cultural influences are going to shape our time will come down to who has the money to create freely without worrying about rent.
That's so insightful. I've had the same feeling for ages but couldn't pinpoint the reason. as a younger millennial, all I've ever known was gentrification and unaffordable rent lol
https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/cheapest-places-to-live
And isn't private equity just about squeezing and exploiting existing assets and not creating anything new? Just exhausting everything old?
This. So much this.
Yes, and then there is the Hollywood nepotism to throw in as well. Even when younger people are making movies, it's someone like Gia Coppola. I liked Sofia Coppola's films. The new one from Gia, third generation, people are raving about, well, it's no Godfather. Well, yes, talent does sometimes run in families... but...
Superheroes and special people are partly why we are in the mess we are in. Whatever happened to celebrating Sly's "everyday people" -- We don't need more execs making creative decisions. We need more working class intellectuals like Harvey Pekar creating art out of their lived life. More janitors. More file clerks.
Anyway, I better stop now, as I feel a rant coming on. Praise Bob!
100%!
I wonder how much of this is that so many professions that used to be covered by working class people (like journalism, acting, etc.) are now filled by college educated people. I wonder how many people who went to Yale Drama School can have a real life connection to the regular guy.
Yeah this is significant.
Batya Ungar-Sargon made exactly that point about journalism -- it went from real people covering real stuff, without a lot invested in elite thinking, to becoming part of the elite and abandoning journalism in favor of being lap dogs.
Is this what you were referring to?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUYaMFC3kAA
BTW, as an ex-newspaper guy with a journalism degree, the age of reporters drinking hard went out a long time ago. The movies exaggerated it, as usual. If you have no connection to the field you may not realized that it has almost disappeared, except at the elite level (NYT), which is what you are probably thinking of. My former paper is now a headless zombie with no editor, having been bought up by a vulture capital chain.
I have photographed a lot of actors in my career, and I can assure you that they are a special breed, and have never been typical human beings. One of them I have in mind was a guy who never stopped acting, ever, and I wanted to shake him and say "Just cut it out and be yourself!" Acting can be a shell.
More of the delightful Tracey Ullman on acting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRwFyiF2JEk
You’re so right about everyday people in movies. Nothing on the screen feels real anymore (well not nothing but you get my point) and part of the reason I think is because Hollywood is allergic to ugly people. We need more normal looking people on screen, too, imo.
Yeah. I like that about British TV and cinema: the people dont have new noses and all their old teeth replaced with implants.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a democracy, but rather an oligarchic gerontocracy. When our leaders wither, so too does everything else.
I keep saying it: Pop music today isn't very good. Too many songs are unsingable. The singers seem to be mostly female, mostly very loud, mostly more concerned with costume and choreography. The audience is often (not always, but often) consumed by image and spectacle and doesn't really listen to the music. They don't know a chord change when it smacks them in the ears. Blues, on the other hand, seems to be taking a step forward. And jazz, the great American original art form, is producing some marvelous stuff these days. I know. I buy it. But the popular music of the 1970s was just better than the music of the 2020s so it is little wonder that the Eagles still fly!
I was born in 1963 and I have to respectfully disagree with you. I came of age in the 1970s and love and listen to a lot of music from that time still today, but there was plenty of crap on the radio in those days, and there is plenty of good music being made now in a wide variety of genres. You and I may not be the target audience for it, but that doesn't mean it isn't good.
I decided to look at the Billboard top 100 for 1975 just for fun. The number one song that year was Love Will Keep Us Together by the Captain and Tennille. I would rather go deaf than ever have to hear that annoyingly bouncy, saccharine piece of fluff again. And people might still be listening to the Eagles, but when is the last time you heard anyone talk about Freddie Fender, Carl Douglas, B.J. Thomas or the Average White Band, to name a few the artists who ranked in the top 100 that year.
Ken, every generation tends to dislike the music of a previous generation...until now, huh? I'll just stick with the numbers that show people are listening to more 1970s music. Truth be told, I don't listen to much of the 1970s stuff, but I don't listen to any of today's pop music. I recall when I was 12 years old and the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show program introduced young Elvis Presley in January 1956. My parents insisted Elvis was a flash-in-the-pan. I guess that was one debate that I won..
Full disclosure: I am, in fact, a jazz guy. My extensive music collection is filled with lots of bebop-related and big band music. That doesn't mean I don't listen to other music. Heck, I have three Patsy Cline CDs, also. But jazz is where my ears and heart reside.
Re "Love Will Keep Us Together," one of the great contributions that song, Toni & Darryl made to music is that they reintroduced America to the songs and songwriting of Neil Sedaka. In addition, they caused some people to take a new look at the not inconsiderable body of work of Carmen Dragon, Darryl's father. And besides, "Love Will Keep Us Together" was (and remains) a happy toe-tapping tune. Even jazz aficionados believe there is room for that kind of music in our world. The Captain & Tennille brought large numbers of people to hear live music and, IMO, anything that brings people out to hear live music (as opposed to today's live staged spectaculars) is a good thing.
What's "taking a step forward" in blues?
"Woke up next morning..."?
My husband turned to me in the grocery store and said, "When do you think we won't have to listen to this song ever again?" It was a typical 80s ballad from some squish-band, a piece of nothing that doesn't deserve its longevity. I laughed.
This essay validates what I've been feeling for a while now -- and throws in some killer lines, to boot: "the value chain starts in the microwave." Thanks, Ted!
I know, I know ... I listen to the grocery store music and get the clientele's demographic profile pretty quickly.
Agree. And to that I would add old rockers who are still trying to rock. But, some of them honestly need to exchange the rock for a rocker!
A bit off thread but interesting nonetheless:
The HBO Max name change is just the middle act of a profitable show directed by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company;
In 2022, McKinsey was paid $55M to advise Warner Brothers to combine with Discovery.
From 2022-2025, McKinsey charged Warner Brothers Discovery $37M
by advising the company to change HBO to HBO Max, then to Max, then back to HBO Max.
In 2025, McKinsey billed Warner Brothers Discovery an additional $63M to determine that Warner Brothers and Discovery should be separate brands again!
So, is McKinsey that smart, or HBO that dumb?
McKinsey is smart. They got paid. To be honest, the guys running HBO et al are smart. They got paid. The money isn't in making companies anymore. It's liquidation.
There's gotta be a sucker somewhere who is paying for all this. I don't have HBO, so it ain't me. On the other hand, isn't McKinsey at the heart of that "Deep State" they keep talking about, with tentacles everywhere? Follow the money.
"I'm from McKinsey & Company, and I'm here to help you!"...was believed by nobody except the CEO and his pals.
Friend of mine briefly worked for one of the giants on Wall Street. Job paid a lot, but was miserable. She took the money and ran. Now she is the captain of her own fishing boat, and happy!
The blood suckers are the ones who stay in that game. The famous guy was miserable as all hell. You reap what you sow. Cue the violins...
I used to work for an employee-owned company. Actually, I've worked for two of them. Not a panacea. Was sold to a tech company, who in turn were swallowed up by "private equity."
Big "fishes" are eating little "fishes."
But we are humans.
I don’t get how managing consultants justify their fees. Where’s the “skin in the game” when results are poor? It feels like a con. Swagger and brand recognition to churn out what Chat GPT could do.
I grew up thinking elite university grads were brilliant, but once I met them, it seemed most where just more self confident than the average person.
There is no skin in the game, just as with private equity/hedge funds. They do not have to demonstrate results, or benefit to the public. They are just players hop scotching along the Monopoly board to victory. They can win because normal people play by normal rules, but they don't.
"Con" is a shorter spelling for "bloodsucking."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)
I have worked with or know grads from Yale, Harvard, MIT.
The Yale ones are "well-educated," but normal people. The one Harvard grad I worked with slightly...well, they hired him to be a sports columnist at my newspaper...his first piece was so head-bangingly dumb I was actually joking: "What did he go to Harvard as.. a student?"
Hemingway did not go to Hah-vud.
MIT people I have known: smart, but not geniuses. Socially inept.
I can proudly state that the only job offer I ever turned down was from Yale! Not to be a professor...just the university public relations photographer. I told the guy I would have to think it over, as I was waiting on a possible newspaper job, which was what I really wanted and would have paid a lot more too. He said "Make the answer 'Yes.'" I thought: what an entitled twit...so this is the Yale sense of superiority...
I had a friend whose husband, a doctor, taught at the Yale Medical School, and she said they treated the doctors the same way: "We don't have to pay you much, you are lucky just to work here."
OK, have a nice day!
The reality is: the people running things often do not know what they are doing, even if they are smart. Reality is bigger than they are.
I would credit willingness to learn, and persistence more than a piece of paper any day.
But confidence LOOKS LIKE ability, so let the buyer beware.
Could we consider that at one level the 80% rule has always been true? For music, that 80% of all music heard has always been older catalog music? For movies, that newly released movies have always been ~20% of all movies seen that year? Billboard would only keep a tally of 'new' music (i.e. Sales, radio plays, etc), and movie tickets also the same. But does that speak for all media consumption?
Data today allows for more insight. Spotify can show us that because it catalogues all music consumption, new and old.
I do, however, agree about the remake culture of Hollywood, and the senators' ages. Those need to change!
"Could we consider that at one level the 80% rule has always been true? For music, that 80% of all music heard has always been older catalog music?"
I don't think so. I can confirm that c.1970, across the radio dial, songs 8-15 years old were already called "oldies", on maybe 2 stations, and distinctly retro-sounding, while there would be maybe a station or two or three (depending on geography) that might have a few weekly programs that catered to audiences longing for any kinds of popular music prior to the rock era (e.g. big band). That is, anything pre-1955-ish. Listening to 50+ year old music could only be done on occasional history-oriented special programs interleaved with educational monologues. Those were like visiting a museum. Yes, the infinitely-elongated "rock era" has managed to change the nature of time.
Even in the world of "classical music" the popularity of Really Old Music is a 20th-century phenomenon, growing vastly after LP recordings appeared. It was then possible to record the works of composers even older than Bach and still sell enough to cover costs, leading to the new interest in music back to the 13th century and before. Of course, LPs are even more obsolete than CDs, but the musical fad for R.O.M. has worn well and can be a refreshing change from the same old stuff.
It sounds as if evolution in technologies, including recording, propagating, etc. are really tied into how music is perceived.
Yes. For instance I believe that live classical performances were a bit shaggier. Now they have to sound like a CD.
Yes. The rise of the "classical" piece, played with church-like solemnity, was due initially to the spread of curated, accurately printed scores and copyright laws. Now you had to contend with Holy Writ. Composers wanted more control over how their pieces were performed as well, and improvisation (standard practice in Bach and Mozart's day) underwent a decline until it disappeared in the European classical music culture. I even wrote my junior piano class thesis on that topic! And that was back in the 80s. The rise of high quality recordings just reinforced the trend by the 1930s and 40s.
But why would you only listen to music on the radio? It makes sense that radio stations would play trending music. Wouldn't people be listening to their songs of choice on gramophones and tape?
It was easy and free, so it was relied upon. Unless you wanted to spring for whole albums, as singles were only issued for a few songs, or, you had friends with them. Those were the options.
This reminds me of the line attributed to Stan Lee that what Marvel comics tried to do (after its first, initial burst) was to present the illusion of change—make it seem like big things were happening but ultimately the characters ended up back where they were before. Now the whole culture is like that.
(By the way, if 80% of our food is leftovers that's bad, but if 80% of our TV is The Leftovers that would be such a dramatic improvement that it's hard to conceive.)
Stan Lee -- this makes me think of him and Steve Ditko, whose work I first saw in 1962-63 in their Amazing Adult Fantasy, billed as comics for grownups, though I forget the actual wording. I didn't think much of The -an adjective here?- World of Tim Boo Bah, though I tried to improvise a sort of recitative on "Behold the world of Tim Boo Bah! In this small world his will is all supreme..." and didn't do it very well.
And, to add some real information: the Wayback Machine is still at it, with pretty much everything that has appeared on the Internet. A couple of days ago I went on a long tour of it on a whim, in which I encountered not only the apparently complete catalogue of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley but a huge collection of comics including one little item among hundreds, a collection of Webcomics. Old and new stuff, preserved for whatever ages there may be. Well worthy of anyone's attention and, if possible, support.
It's also no coincidence that the re-heating corresponds to the rise of 24/7 entertainment on phones, decreased funding in schools, decreased outdoor time, and all sorts of other things. Creativity is hard work, and it's based on knowledge; we're not doing well encouraging knowledge right now.
Yes, the glut of 24/7 "content" is a crutch for developing the imagination needed to make good work and have any kind of inner life outside of said Simulacrum / Spectacle.
Exactly. It’s pretty much impossible to be original in any art form without a deep and rich inner life—but the spectacle keeps the young creatives too mesmerized and too uncomfortable with the isolation, silence, and reflection needed for good stuff to bubble up from their depths.
Bc consuming the spectacle has a very real effect on the brain. Just a little dumber each day. Years of this now has led to a general loss of mental capability
Creativity is also based on a certain amount of solitude (not loneliness, which isn't the same thing) and introspection. In an overconnected, overstimulated world, that's missing.
The problem is Risk aversion. Is the cost of making the movie goes up, the reluctance to take Risk also goes up. Same thing with Music and even politicians. As the cost of electing, a politician goes up, the risk of investing your money in time in a newbie goes up. So we rehash the same politicians, same songs and same movies. By the way, even “new” songs today rehash old riffs and chord progressions. It’s less risky to pay the original artist a royalty and use their song in a so-called “new” song then to actually write a new song.
In summary, all of this comes down to risk aversion as the costs of everything go up.
It's also a human survival strategy to seek stability. Not to mention a human responsibility to self-regulate....
Tio Mitchito
Every once in awhile, we see a blast of creativity. Physics had one around 1900. Art in the Renaissance. Music around the 1930s. TV in the 1950s.
Between these times, there resides derivative thought. I think we are in one of those phases. The newest thought seem to be Trump’s approach to governance, but little else is explosively creative. It’ll happen again, just ain’t happening now…
“The goal of getting back to your original position”. Yeah, TG, we remember that position. How sweet, and sustaining it was. Today’s audience has been brainwashed by the crazy from too much choice and we can’t go back. The everyday high has hooked the culture. Art demands low moments so there can be high moments. Like the lick fest over sung “look what I can do” vocals American idol produced vs Sinatra telling you a story. There’s too much of everything so it’s up to you. The FILTER is the new essential artist. This is where you come in. Keep pointing us toward the good stuff…moisturizer optional.
Christopher Lee famously read The Lord of the Rings every year. I haven’t read it that many times, but I’ve read it enough that I had to reinforce the spine with duct tape. I’ve watched Star Wars on VHS more times than I remember … I stopped counting at one hundred when I was twenty.
All this used to happen offline, unwatched by anyone other than the people around the TV and uncounted.
Today, if you stream video or audio, or read on an ereader, it is all tracked and analyzed.
They are just giving us what the data is telling them we are spending our time on.
Wow. I couldn't even start counting when I was twenty, because Star Wars didn't exist. But the "unwatched" bit and the contrast with the the present - this is profoundly true and a disaster.