by J.J. Vicars - SparkleFox Contributing Writer

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.

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.

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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