“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Replacing the old cliché of fame lasting 15 minutes, we now live in a new reality where our sense of historical perspective in terms of real events and social realities seems to extend back only as far as the last 15 days. As a result understanding of and respect for the past is literally vanishing at light speed from the collective consciousness.
We are caught up in a loop and seemingly have come unstuck in time as the future unfolds as repetition of the past in the context of a modern technological age. The lessons we have learned being re-written as Orwell prophesied with negative impulses from the past rear their heads in a cycle perpetuated over succeeding generations. The knowledge base grows exponentially, but becomes more devoid of imagination, historical fact and cultural perspective daily.
Was it 1958, or 1971 that Eurock was born? Beginning with the first record I bought, first radio show on FM, or last year with creation of the first podcast? I am relatively certain that the musical pulse that inspired my work for the past almost 5 decades was passed on from an earlier genetic incarnation long forgotten. Whatever the case, “the beat” and hunger for the sound of music of all sorts has been my life essence and still today remains my life blood.
Back in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s the audience for rock music was young and infinitesimal. Music was regional and bands rehearsed and recorded in garages. When the major record label executives “got into rock” they had little idea of the pandora’s box they had opened.
The discovery of each “album” (that’s what they were called back when…) sped up the pulse and unleashed a flow of new visions and emotions. The sacred combination of electrified notes and tone clusters being created spread like a prairie fire. Isolated artists and small entrepreneurs in far flung corners of the globe worked long months, saving small fortunes hoping to actually make their own “record”. How to sell it when done was an afterthought much of the time. In an act of happenstance it turned out “Eurock” was created in those times in a small apartment. Soon word of mouth spread far and wide about someone who actually wrote about and sold “weird music”, long before weird became a fashionable mainstream concept.
The rest is history which occurred as a sequence of fast and furious changes. Instruments were juiced by electricity and artists inspired by the freedom of a creative spirit that was flowing worldwide. During approximately a 20 year span never has so much uniquely creative music been made. Liberated by social and chemical experimentation the cultural muse was channeled into a new form of energy invoked by a higher calling.
Over the years Eurock has documented a body of work: a multi-media CD-ROM spanning 30 years of music by artists, many who went where none had ventured before. That was followed by a 700+ page reference anthology of writings chronicling the pioneers of the International experimental rock “second culture”. Recently podcasting a “live” version was conceived, firstly as audio & graphics, now in video format. Witness the miracle of the modern age.
Today the mode of the music has completely changed. With the push of a button anyone can create music at will – recording, duplicating and releasing a CD virtually instantaneously. With the advent of broadband you can sell, share and steal anything over the internet. The ether has become a super highway of information. Hard work and the alchemical magic of creative inspiration is becoming a rarity. When true mojo does get conjured by an artist it is all but lost in a black hole filled with billions of terabytes of informational debris swirling about us today, le voila, the new mercantile “marketplace”.
This revolution in sound created a new marketing dynamic run by businessmen concerned only with the bottom line. How much “product” can be moved, and money made. Over time a new breed of “artists” was created who made music they could sell. The end result being music as a commodity oriented toward what was marketable and would generate the highest commercial return.
As the cycle developed, new formats were (are) developed to “exploit” back catalog. Old creative ideas and styles get recycled ad infinitum by a multitude of new (and older) artists whose job has now become making a living by any means necessary.
This new music now results in a great shakedown in terms of getting good value for your money when you purchase some of the latest and “greatest”. The vast majority of music now you read about or hear be it progressive, electronic, rock, jazz, or any of the many other forms of cocktail music genres that exist, has us literally drowning in a flood of releases which glut the marketplace. Diminishing returns has set in all around.
Music is one of the few communal art forms that still has the ability to inspire and enlighten countless listeners. But now we have to venture outside the box of our own preconceptions to once again discover and appreciate it. The creative spirit remains aflame in many far off places.
I’ll end with a shout out to one of the pioneers, true believers and my friend from the original Krautrock scene Uli Trepte of Guru Guru & Spacebox fame. Late in May he died of cancer. We had conversations over the years and exchanged words of support for decades. He never stopped over the years, even though like many others who lived out of the mainstream he found there were fewer people who listened. I know he’s still playing somewhere up there in the great beyond. His creative spirit will never die. We closed every conversation and correspondence with the same sentiment, “Keep the Faith!”
