Turn on the radio in just about any city in America and cruise through the stations. Sooner or later you'll hear at least half a dozen songs that are already tattooed onto your psyche. Walk into any Blues club in America and you'll hear the same renditions of the same standard numbers along with a host of Stevie Ray Vaughan clones. Pick up the free weekly in your town to see who's playing and inevitably you'll find a host of tribute bands. Why the redundancy? Isn't there anything fresh out there? Well, yes AND no. There are some fresh artists out there but they're not getting the exposure that could catapult them into the mainstream.

There are two culprits responsible for the current regurgitation of older music. The first is the major labels. To understand why we keep getting beat over the head with the same old stuff it's important to look at the business model of yesteryear and compare it with today. When the music industry as we recognize was still in its infancy, shortly after World War II, the people involved in the business aspects were a completely different breed than today. They were music lovers entrepreneurs who looked at the long term success of their artists. Atlantic Records is a prime example. Founded by the sons of a Turkish ambassador, the Ertegun brothers were die hard R&B fans who ventured into neighborhoods where kids of their privilege didn't normally go because they wanted to hear the music they loved firsthand. Keep in mind this was decades before the Civil Rights Movement, when segregation was still a fact of life. Eventually they translated their love of music into a business that was to influence the course of music from there on.

One of their most notable artists was none other than the legendary Ray Charles, but he wasn't legendary when they discovered him and he wasn't "Ray Charles" yet either. This is where the far sightedness of long term success and developing an artist come into play. Charles' early recordings were fairly derivative, sounding much like his heroes Nat King Cole and Charles Brown. This is not a crime, all artists are derivative in their infancy, learning by imitation just as each human being learns to speak by imitating his/her parents. But the Ertegun brothers recognized his potential, what he was capable of, and sought to nurture and develop it. And as anyone who saw the movie RAY knows, it was with MESS AROUND that Ray Charles was born, which led to WHAT'D I SAY, HIT THE ROAD JACK, I GOT A WOMAN, and so many other hits that defined American music in the 20th Century.

A more current example is Prince. Manager Owen Husney, who was instrumental in getting Prince signed to Warner Brothers in the 70's, insists that he could not get an artist like Prince signed to a major label today and it's easy to see why. When they were shopping him around in the mid 70's he was touted as the next Stevie Wonder, the wonder-kid who played all the instruments himself on his demo. And that's exactly what his first two albums FOR YOU and PRINCE sound like- a young kid with an abundance of talent who has yet to find his voice. The albums are typical late 70's R&B radio fare. A few good songs, but nothing really stand out. His third album DIRTY MIND is an underground classic revered by musicians and music fans in Rock, R&B, Punk and Techno alike. It has a sparse, dry sound that is intriguing but contains no radio hits. CONTROVERSY is the bridge to his 5th album 1999 which spawned two major radio hits, a couple dance club hits, and some 'fan faves'. Imagine that, breaking through with his 5th album! It simply wouldn't happen today. And finally his 6th album PURPLE RAIN puts him on the map forever. His 5th and 6th albums are the ones that made him a household name by defining the Pop music of the era and yet his first manager who helped get him signed insists it couldn't happen today. Why? Because major labels want an instant return on their investment from the first album. No way they're going to allow an artist four albums to develop his sound.

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 So if the major labels won't develop an artist what will they do? Appeal to the lowest common denominator. The majors were taken over by corporate executives years ago and now their business model is "the blockbuster"- put everything into one act and explode it all over the place with the intention of large immediate returns. That's all fine and well if you're selling video games at Wal-mart but if you're selling music you're shortchanging artists and audiences alike. Just to rub salt in the wound, for years major labels have been gouging customers with over inflated prices while paying artists as little as possible. This is the real reason file sharing took off big time and made the majors shaky. People were taping records long before the digital medium came about. Sometimes you couldn't afford all the albums you wanted to buy, but if you really liked one you eventually bought it anyhow because you wanted the real thing, not just a copy. File sharing is the digital version of taping records, it's nothing new. It exploded because people got tired of being ripped off and that's exactly what happened; the middle man screwed both parties. No wonder the public didn't want to pay for music anymore, nobody likes to get ripped off.

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The other culprit is the drop in standards among musicians coupled with the flood of amateurs and fueled by a lack of work. Another comparison of past and present illustrates the situation. Before theme restaurants and home entertainment people spent more time hanging out in clubs and clubs in return sought the best entertainment they could find in order to draw in customers and keep them drinking. Bands who could keep an audience in a club drinking and dancing got the work, and bookings were often for a week or more at a time. Chicago in the 50's was the breeding ground for Muddy Waters (left), Howlin' Wolf and Chess Records just as Jacksonville, FL in the late 60's was the breeding ground for the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. For decades Texas guitarists were known for "headcutting", the musical equivalent of gun-slinging. It was tough and it was competitive, and it made the musicians better. Most clubs nowadays book only for one night and expect the band to pack the place with their "following".

From the 60's onward many musicians took a cue from the Folk movement and decided they wanted to be artists rather than entertainers. This was all fine and well up to a point but for the last decade or more it has degenerated into self-absorbed navel-gazing. Learning four chords on acoustic guitar and "exploring your issues" does not make one an artist. Over and over again musician talk about "support live music". What happened to winning over an audience? The current crop of Blues musicians talks about "keep the Blues" alive and often have a very purist, elitist attitude towards what they consider authentic Blues, forgetting that Blues players of yore were entertainers who could play many styles of music and hold an audience's attention.

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Then there's the 10,000 Rule as explained by Malcolm Gladwell in his book OUTLIERS. Anybody who has ever achieved greatness has put in a minimum of 10,000 hours perfecting their craft, whether it's Jimi Hendrix or Steve Jobs. The average person puts in far less and this differentiates the greats. Ray Charles would rehearse his band every single day while on the road, going over the same show they played note for note every night (this is from a conversation between my father and one of Ray's horn players). James Brown would fine his musicians if they played a wrong note, their shoes weren't shined, or their suits weren't pressed. Lynyrd Skynyrd honed their chops rehearsing from early morning until around midnight for years on end at the Hell House, a tiny cabin out in the Florida swamps with no air conditioning. Play a wrong note and bandleader/vocalist Ronnie Van Zant (right) punched your lights out! In light of the 10,000 hour Rule is it any wonder these artists defined American music? They had higher standards than most and worked significantly harder.

The sad truth is most musicians today won't work that hard. They erroneously believe that the public should accept whatever they do and make little effort to win over audiences. And the major labels are only interested in a quick buck, they won't develop an artist. Why are the sounds of yesterday dominating today? Because the current state of the music industry is a sad reflection of America's general decline, our culture of instant gratification- corporate greed on one hand and the childish notion that success should be automatic on the other. Nobody wants to work hard to earn something of lasting value.

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So what's a music lover to do? Keep listening to the same albums over and over again? Not necessarily. People will always have a fondness for the music they grew up with and at the same time American music is a vast legacy we've inherited that deserves to be recognized and treasured. The improvements in digital technology make it even easier to discover these hidden gems and broaden our knowledge of who were are and where we come from. But what about where we're going? The future is not set in stone and our culture of music is a microcosm for our overall culture at large. Vote with your dollars!

There are some very good independent artist out their today who do hold themselves to a high standard. They struggle to make ends meet and come up with the thousands of dollars necessary to release an album, all the while doing so simply because something inside of them drives them to create. Some have been around for a while and were once associated with mainstream artists, such as Jill Jones, who sang with Prince on 1999 and played the waitress in PURPLE RAIN. She's also appeared with Miles Davis, Santana and Chic and has three solo albums out- JILL JONES on Prince's Paisley Park label- now out-of-print, highly regarded as the best of the protege' albums, TWO with Seal guitarist Chris Bruce, and WASTED as The Grand Royals. Another is Don Leady of the Tailgators, one of Stevie Ray Vaughan's Austin contemporaries along with Eric Johnson- his 2000 album ALAMO SUITE is an understated masterpiece. Others are up-and-coming singer/songwriters such as Tara Tinsley of Modesto,CA and Jeremy Gloff of Tampa, FL. Up in Detroit, MI guitarist Howard Glazer burns up the fretboard in a Blues-Rock style reminiscent of Johnny Winter and Alvin Lee while down in Texas bassist/bandleader Kenny Palyola fans the flames of Texas Blues as Houston's answer to John Mayall (all the important guitarist pass through his ranks) and guitarist Todd Moore keeps Austin weird alternating between the modern Rock of Dr. Todd and the Jam Band of grooves of Baby Anacondas. These artists have no label support, no guarantees of success, and nothing behind them but their own drive and wits. They do what they do because they have to and put heart and soul into it the likes of which will never be heard in the current mainstream.

Times are bleak but they aren't hopeless. The seeds are out there, but they need the proverbial soil and sunlight so that they may grow and bear fruit. We owe it to ourselves to do what the major labels won't but we also need to weed the garden and stop approving anybody and everybody who makes any kind of noise. Because the current state of the music industry with it's recycling of familiar sounds contrasted with a bland appeal to the lowest common denominator leaving the real artists out in the cold is only a mirror of our culture at large. It's no different from the rest of our society. It's who we are. And doesn't the same stuff over and over again eventually get boring?

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