DIGITAL DOPAMINE!
LCD INTELLIGENCE
LCD…or ‘Lowest Common Denominator’ intelligence, is what ‘they’ have been trying to create in consumers over the years! You may ask, who are ‘they?’…well I'll tell you. Nearly all our consumed content is digital from online shopping, to watching movies and videos through to social media and chats. Look around you…almost everyone you see is on a mobile phone, or glued (not so much to the television now) to the computer! It's basically a form of digital dopamine…keeping the masses happy and docile, while decreasing their intellectual capacity through serving up non-value drivel!
DUMBING DOWN THE MASSES
It's my own and very personal opinion, that we, the public, specifically speaking, the socio-economic group that are classified as working class, have been in the process over the years, of being deliberately ‘DUMBED DOWN’ via education, entertainment and in particular… music! On television, in Britain in the nineteen sixties to the 'eighties, there was lots of educational content for both adults and children.
For adults, there was Open University, University Challenge and other educational content and other children's TV such as Blue Peter, Magpie, HOW and John Craven's Newsround all educated kids through information about how the world worked and also gave them useful practical projects to do also. Over the years 'though, this was slowly and subtlely replaced with stupid, dumbed down programmes for both adults and kids.
QUIZZES - CHEAP GIFTS - TALKING PIFFLE AND A ‘CAR!’
In the UK, we were assailed by a rash of inane shows offering cash prizes or the STAR PRIZE, usually a motor car. This was supplemented by cheap and nasty gifts to appease the brave show guests who were not just considered the poor, but were often the working/underclass who rubbed their hands with glee at receiving what they would later be able to buy in retail shops like ARGOS anyway!
BRAIN ROT SETS IN!
It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to discover that peoples' intellect was being slowly eroded by PROGRAMMING…hence the words TV Programme!!! All of a sudden, the good, intelligent content was being taken away and replaced by absolute piffle which had no intellectual value to the consumer at all. The television moguls, the powers-that-be, were inconspicuously and under-handedly substituting value for piffle. Like the froth on a coffee cup at the top, when the substance lies below, the British public were dumbed down, bit by iniquitous bit!
ZOMBIE REBELS IN SCHOOL!
In education, lessons were being dumbed down too, as were exams in order to boost the schools' bums-on-seats ratings and tie in with the HMI in Britain's ethos providing a happy atmosphere whereby pupils could almost rule the roost! ‘Sink’ as opposed to ‘magnet’ schools were able to climb the ‘ethos’ ladder (HMI - Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools) and everything looked rosy, except for declining discipline, failing exam results and quotients, producing educationally DIM pupils!
WHAT HAPPENED TO MUSIC?
In the time of virtuoso composers, JS Bach, Mozart and Beethoven etc, music was an art and a skill learned under the tutelage of former maestro composers. Like their contemporaries, these composers, when fledgelings, would have been taught by the best!
They would have been taught basic music theory, then composition with all it's complexities: form, counterpoint, harmony etc for years before they were considered ready to be unleashed on the public, unlike today where RAP…an untrained, childish, simplified rythmic form is king.
LET'S NOT LET RAP TAKE THE RAP!
But let's not put the blame on rap for the dumbing down of music. That started a long time ago. The age of rock and roll started the decline in musical training of ‘artists.’ People like Elvis (the pelvis) who stood onstage thrusting his pelvis at the pubescent young ladies in his audience, has long been copied (Michael Jackson anyone). Elvis took black Gospel and Blues music and appropriated them into ‘white boy’ rock, suitable for dumbing down the white wasp kids of the american middle class.
NO TRAINING NECESSARY!
All you needed was the ‘chutzpah’ and brass neck to stand up there and ‘shake-it-all-about’ for all you're worth. If you can warble out a tune, while looking delicious to the girls and an icon to be copied by the boys, then you've knocked it off big style! Don't worry about the rigorous musical training over four or more years, just get up and strut your stuff. From Elvis to the Beatles to Michael Jackson to Rap…no talent necessary!
ENTER THE DRAGON!
Never mind the talent, smell the money! That was the mantra for record labels who groomed artists for stardom. While classical and other forms of music such as folk were languishing, POP and ROCK AND ROLL were on the ascension! Nobody, it seemed was willing to listen to music that required a bit of brain power or imagination…just give 'em three quick minutes of pop slop or rock and roll and they were happy as little piggies in…well you know what!
BEATS AND PILFERING!
Then later, came the steal..er, I mean SAMPLING. Artists were now let's put it politely shall we, ‘borrowing’ other peoples' music, or at least bits of it, then sticking them into ‘their’ songs / tunes. This was called sampling. As if that wasn't bad enough, when rap appeared on the scene, melody took a nose dive and rythm was king! Beats were in and a good melody was OUT! Rap may be a form of social comment, a way to vent your spleen, but is it music???
THE FLIPPING DUMB DOWN!
When peer to peer music arrived it really set the cat among the pigeons. It robbed the robber baron record labels of their easy earned income! Then came the likes of Spotify and Daniel Eck. Mister X, sorry Eck, claimed he had a great idea for unknown musicians, to get their songs / tunes heard. The trouble was, people started scrolling through tons of songs and tunes because they were spoiled for choice! This had a retrograde effect for the struggling/unknown artist or band because the robber record label barons had also struck a deal with Eck to promote their top acts which meant all the dumbed down drivel parading as music was being given the top slots and driven twenty four hours a day / seven days a week every week, by force into the brains of joe public just like the days of Elvis all over again!
RE-EDUCATING THE NON MUSICAL PUBLIC!
My last thought is to state that we, the general public deserve music that is thoughtful, cleverly constructed and worth listening to…something most current pop-pap or rap-slop isnt!!!
The writing content in this blog is the intellectual property of James G. Conn
copyright, James G. Conn aka Tartan Composer May 11th, 2024.