Likeness of music

Carlos Sanz Ramirez (acecsr@bitmailer.net)
Mon, 19 Feb 96 18:04 MET


The other day I was talking to a friend which I had lend some CD's.
I ask him whether he had liked them or not. He just told me that they had a
"likeness style" common to all the music I heard. Not bad music, not good
music: just "like music". At first thought, I disagreed "No way! You don't
get the subtle differences in the style..."(Said I in a superior feeling tone)

When I got back home I reviewed my CD's and began thinking seriuosly
about it. I'm not talking about the similarities that define a "style" or a
"sub-group" in music, but perhaps a lack of imagination and creativity or a
tendency to only follow the stream and not adding nothing new and
interesting. In most of the AJ-ish CD's I have, at the end, you can't tell
apart one group from another ( exagerating a little bit...). But it's not
only AJ: music stlyes are neatly distinguished, but inside those styles,
groups are so much similar they seem to have been created from the same
matrix ( as the new pop wave from the UK or the punk revival groups from the
west coast of the US).

Is it that the companies are putting pressure on the groups to
release their work according to the latest fashion on the street? Or it's
the artist the ones that are guilty of "overconcepting" their works but, at
the same time, lacking to give them a fresher, more stimulating turn?
Perhaps I'm re-opening the old "major labels vs. indies" debate, which I
don't intend because, in their own way, they all too sound similar.

I'm not trying to begin a flame contest here, I was just asking this
to myself, and now to you: Is this realy "likeness" of sound, or do I suffer
from neurosis and a rare hearing disease?

Un saludo,

Carlos Sanz Ramirez
E-Mail: acecsr@bitmailer.net
Madrid, Espana (Spain)

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Si las verduras tuvieran ojos y boca, no habria tantos vegetarianos.

If vegetables did had eyes and mouth, there would'nt be so many vegetarians.

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