Ray Charles
Miles Davis
James Brown
Stevie Wonder
Jimi Hendrix
The Beatles
Frank Zappa
Todd Rundgren
Aretha Franklin
Sly & The Family Stone

...that have the performance or recording skills, innovative style and quality song catalogs of the 10 artists above?



tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

Frank McCombs
Meshell N'degeocello
Mint Condition
Rahsaan Paterson
Marcus Miller
Victor Wooten
Rochelle Ferrell.....that's about it.

I think the correct answer for meeting all of those qualifications is...

RipHer2Shreds said:

Lol.....

You might be able to add Jack White's name to that list in another ten years.

RipHer2Shreds said:

INfrigginDeed

sextonseven said:

Ya know, I like White Stripes, but the only album of theirs I've loved is De Stijl. It rocks my socks off!

Ray Charles -- Good question

Miles Davis -- again, good question but no equivalent

James Brown -- Prince will have to do

Stevie Wonder -- Me'Shell Ndegeocello, maybe?

Jimi Hendrix -- no equivalent.

The Beatles -- Radiohead, maybe? U2 might have to do.

Frank Zappa -- This is the easiest one to answer . . . if it's anyone, it's Beck

Todd Rundgren -- Josh Rouse, maybe? Heck, what about Norah Jones?

Aretha Franklin -- No equivalent, but Jill, Erykah and Ledisi might have to together work on filling that void.

Sly & The Family Stone -- We haven't had anything close since Prince disbanded the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution. But there may be a lotta elements (currently solo artists) that could band together to fill that void.
[Edited 1/23/08 10:22am]

theAudience said:

This is hard, and for some I would like to say there will NEVER be equivalents, but here goes with a couple...

Miles Davis - Sean Jones
Stevie Wonder - Marc Broussard
Aretha Franklin - Jennifer Hudson

Disclaimers:
Sean Jones is young and has not had the time to 'evolve'. It will be interesting to see what the years bring from him. And he will need to be careful that his marketers do not push him towards mainstream. He is not there yet.

Marc Broussard's voice is not as gentle as Stevie's, and he is primarily a vocalist. Nor does he have the composition talent. He is also young, so it will be interesting to see what happens with him. He is not there yet.

Jennifer Hudson is not there yet.

I'm not doing too well with this, am I?

I'll have to think on the others for a while....

The Beatles - Collective Soul (?)...maybe?...

Sly & the Family Stone - Arrested Development

I'm slowly chipping away at it....

RipHer2Shreds said:

I still don't have the first two White Stripes albums, but the last three each finished in my top five the years they were released. Add his work with The Raconteurs and Loretta Lynn and everything that Jack White seems to touch turns to critical gold.

The only close ones I can come up with might be

Frank Zappa--Steve Vai, but not as many albums. Not a huge stretch given their relationship. bwt, I played Hot Rats for my girlfriend and she was amazed. She said she always thought of Zappa as similar to Weird Al Yankovick but I understand why, kinda. But Steve is unfairly lumped in with metal head wankers in a similar way.

The Beatles--Radiohead, but not quite esp in terms of popularity/acessibility. Probably U2 would be the closest on the outside but they are not nearly at that level IMO. Badly Drawn Boy is becoming one of my favorite songwriters, with a definite Beatles vibe in the songs & production & even originality, but again not the popularity.

Sly Stone, Jimi, James, Miles--Prince, but Prince can't quite do all that, can he? No.

anyway, point well taken!
[Edited 1/23/08 13:43pm]

NDRU said:

Indeed....

theAudience said:

Too much time in that booth. You goin' stir-crazy, buddy.

...


Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with the Tumbleweeds on this one...that ain't even fair ...


and BTW, it doesn't help when promising Kats like Lewis Taylor decide to leave and take up plumbing, or whatever....



...
[Edited 1/23/08 14:31pm]

theAudience said:

nobody. the thing people fail to understand is that the stuff was new and exciting then./ Think about it. record changed everything previously before it. Music became global, people could take what other people where doing (that a century ago was music they may have never heard) twist it add their own ideas and do something completely original and exciting. Music changed sooo radically from I'd say 1920 - 1980, maybe more so than the entire history of human civilization before then. Now people and the artist who seem to gain support are uninspired, they go in with the defeated mentality that everything that culd be done has been. I take a recent quote from Ne-yo or whatever that hacks name is who basically said just that, that everything that could be done in music has been done. It's sad but as clinche as this is to say we have to wait for the next music messiah to turn everything on it's head and captures folks imagination and get them thinking. Who will it be, will it be you?
[Edited 1/23/08 15:04pm]

That's a stupid question

Since I've always got my eyes and ears open to the future of music (unlike most of the closed-minded, old fogies here in orgland), I'll have a stab at this one.

Miles Davis - the Marsalis brothers.

James Brown - Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Van Hunt, Wunmi (afro-beat artist).

Stevie Wonder - sorry to say, but Jamiroquai. And maybe Donnie.

Jimi Hendrix - Robert Randolph

The Beatles - Of Montreal, Radiohead, The 88, The Cardigans, Jens Lenkman.

Frank Zappa - Probably no one. But his son, Dweezil, is keeping the spirit alive.

Todd Rundgren - Travis Morrison (maybe), Matthew Sweet, Ben Lee, Josh Rouse, and Ted Leo.

Aretha Franklin - Alice Smith (possibly). But really, there's only one Queen of Soul.

Sly & The Family Stone - Tough one. Probably The Negro Problem, Plant Life, Fishbone, The Dirtbombs (who actually did a cover of "Underdog").

kdj997 said:

Salient points. But I bet there were plenty of music fans saying this 20 years after Charlie Parker died.

Think about it. If the Org were around in 1968 instead of 2008, the list would look much different. It would include Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck Berry, et al. And there would have been Orgers saying music is garbage right now and no one will replace them.

It's all about perspective, IMHO.

NWF said:

Because generalizing isn't close-minded at all...

Ryan Adams easily the most prolific artist of this decade by far.

John Mellencamp, he is one of VERY few that has embraced Rb/blues/rap/dance/rock/pop/country/folk and been able to put them all into his music and not have them sound "forced", i put him ahead of Springsteen and on par with Dylan.

Its hard to put them equivalent to anyone because of the time difference, but i think they all possess that kind of greatness that all mentioned do.
[Edited 1/23/08 21:59pm]

NWF said:

Clearly us "closed-minded, old fogies" have a much stronger handle on what the criteria amounts to.
[Edited 1/23/08 22:57pm]

You know what the fact is there are brilliant artists that can match or best those mentioned running around, maybe polished maybe rough, but the industry and unfortunately many listeners have been poisoned and are NOT checkin for them. That sentiment pretty much stamps out the environment that creates and encourages great music. What's left are people creating from this limited industry created model of what music is and again many people are victims of that and don't even know the difference.

People talk about technology shining a light on talent or making it easy to find them. BULL. SHIT. All it does is give labels another place to promote and people with inflated senses of their artistic ability a place to flash. You're swimming in this nonsense while some little weird kid is in the middle of nowhere killing it without his trusty digicam.
[Edited 1/24/08 10:23am]

Dance makes the point I tried to make in response to kdj997. The Mileses and Jimis weren't the icons we know today. At one time, Mozart was the flavor of the month.

There are artists with incredible ability out there who, Lord willing, will be heralded for decades to come, and there will be artists who follow them who will have to live in their shadow until their work can be fully appreciated.

It's all about perspective. We don't take it on faith that these geniuses are geniuses, most of us know by experience already. So we shouldn't take it on faith that no one's out there to replace them.

And I think we should focus on tA's question, as tA is one of the most respected cats on this here Org. He's asking where are TODAY's artists. He's not saying that they don't exist. It's a question that warrants answers, not criticism.

namepeace said:

I have no real conclusions, more confusions.

Part of me thinks one major reason why there ain't no more like Miles, Jimi, Zappa, James etc is 'cos they've already been in the building, done the decorating/ redecorating just fine and checked out. I do wonder now whether these guys and many more have done it all, or near as dammit. It's certainly much harder to innovate now than it was in say, 1966.

To generalise horribly - Most music revolutions in American history seem to co-oincide with social/ political changes/ unrest, such as European Classical Music loving Creoles in New Orleans way back being reclassified Black and having to associate more with their looked down upon black cousins, giving rise to jazz as we know it; the rise of Swing due to people wanting a good time during the Depression and then Be Bop, with certain cliquey musicians wanting their own, less commercial, virtuosic scene; the rise of Rock n' Roll, essentially a music of messy, forced integration, co-oinciding with the rise of a new phase of the Civil Rights Struggle; the rise and politisation of Funk in the late-'60s after folks got mad when King and Malcolm X were cut down.

Much as I love rock music, imo it basically died creatively around 1980. It grew about as far as it could and the rest since has been an epic coda of recyling and false dawns, fun and interesting as some of these may be. Similar with soul. Soul came out of the church, went for the money, went pop, then funky, then did a deal with funk when it was on its knees and birthed disco and then hip hop and so-called modern R n' B. End of story. The creativity runs out naturally, and then, much later, so does the commercial appeal ...

Personally, I'm coming to the conclusion that 'jazz' in most meaningful senses to me, more or less died with Louis and Duke, arguably its central and deepest well-springs. That's why Miles went into the electric jungle and McLaughlin went to India via Hendrix. Zappa was/is a subgenre of his own, rather like Duke's 'Ellingtonia' soundworld and the 'Hendrix Universe' Jimi was in the process of creating.

I'm not even looking for direct 'replacement figures' for the greats of old (perhaps a mistake to do so imo). I DO think there is some good new music and good, occasionally very good, new/ recent-ish artists (ie over the last 20 years ), but they're already sowing seeds in fields that have been farmed so many times, it's all going to desert, so to speak. But basically, to mix metaphors, most modern artists are doodling on the edges of masterpieces that were completed long ago.

Here's one mad speculation/ suggestion for a better future -I doubt it'll ever happen, but for all this music we love to have any really great continuity into the future, maybe we need some kind of major, innovative Blues revival, but intermixing with all the modern, multi-cultural flavours of now. Blues is arguably the main wellspring from which all this stuff came out of, if you add a little Church anyway. And imo Hip Hop, while exhibiting some superficial similarities to the Blues, ain't the 'modern blues'. Hip hop seems too locked in beats and limited subject matter imo, and 30 years into its history, is almost as much of a spent force creatively as rock, soul, funk, etc.

I'm talking about the pre-electric Blues here, mostly. Imo when Blues went electric, it became more formularised around guitar virtuosity and the male ego even more than before , perhaps to the detriment of further development. This and the general thread of achieiving awesome virtuosity on a given instrument is a sign that the music they are playing is already very well established in its forms, hence we know a 'virtuoso' of that music when we hear one. This generally means change is needed , as we saw with the calculated change of commercial taste in the UK in the mid '70s from 'Prog' and Rock in general to the 'back to basics' of Punk, and the rise of interest in Ska/ Reggae and synth pop.

And back on topic -

The Blues was/ is all about individual expression, not about virtuosity and technology. It was infinitely malleable and contrary (hence all its many musical 'children'), and the artists were often so different from each other regionally as to be working in different genres, were they not playing similar instruments. Maybe if, in some region today, there developed a new music form/ variant with strong blues roots that was new, fresh and of today's world, with, say, greater 'input' from Hispanic, West African and Arab sounds (yes, these have been used in Hip Hop but imo the beat obsessed mentality there limited the potential) we might be talking about a new chapter in the many histories of American Popular Music.

I strongly suspect though, that when/ if any truly great 'new thing' does emerge, most of us backward-looking fuddy duddys round here ain't gonna like it .

Maybe these things happen in longer cycles than we think (ie centuries)
[Edited 1/24/08 12:56pm]

Miles said:

Oftentimes I wonder: is it harder to artists to innovate, or is it harder for us to recognize innovation because our perspectives are shaped by our prior musical experiences/influences? Not a rhetorical question at all; I'm really asking.

Largely I'd agree that revolutions in art coincide with societal changes, as art imitates and reflects the life of a society in general. But many artists become intimately associated with the music of their era such that when they cease to be innovative, we assume that their genre ceases to be innovative as well. Like when you say that rock died creatively in 1980, I can't help but think that that's the same year Lennon was shot. Just a coincidence, I'm sure, but I hear many music fans say, "[insert genre here] died when [insert artist(s) here] ceased to [live/make interesting music]."

And it becomes a vicious cycle. The innovators, living or dead, fade into memory and invariably become fossilized, their public perceptions drained of innovation, excitement or creativity. Then the artists behind them become the standard-bearers. Such is why Kanye West compares himself to Michael Jackson and not Jackie Wilson or Ray Charles, and Van Hunt is compared immediately to Prince and not Sly or Curtis.

And I take a position not completely different from yours: that musical innovations are intimately tied to the perspectives of the audiences of that era. Today, there are people falling in love with music because of hearing TV On The Radio, or Feist, or Marc Cary, et cetera. Hopefully, that love with music will expand to artists preceding them and remain strong for artists that will follow them.

But I'm not without my own prejudices when it comes ot music. For example, I belief hip-hop began its death march with Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace, because it was drained of its diversity as artists and labels hustled to take their mantle. Its giants and other creative MC's have struggled to keep its spirit alive, but it's mainly going the way of disco.

But I agree, maybe the cycles are longer.

and well stated.

namepeace said:

Thanks for, along with others, getting it.

It is obvious that talent and innovation do not stop or start at a certain date in time.
The point of the question was to generate a discussion as to what is happening to those components present day based on a few benchmark artists as examples.

Some reasons are very obvious (sea change in music business model, lowest common denominator/bottom line theory currently adopted by record companies regarding "artists", etc.). Others may require deeper investigation, hence the question.

It just seems as if the ability to clearly see a progressive lineage has been clouded.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

Only lames like Lenny Kravitz and other assorted tools truly believe "there's nothing left to do." And the popularity of the non-music called hip hop as well as the abuse of synths has stunted generations.

It's not so much about an "answer" to those artists. I think it's a mistake to have this discussion from that perspective because no one wants a "new" whoever.

People want new legit music that goes somewhere else or takes something from others and blows it up.

From the shit in our faces to the stuff barely on the radar there's almost only non-music and recycled music. Everything else is buried.

I don't think it's a matter of it being "hard" to blow people's minds or that there's a lack of fire(things have gotten cozy though...but some scary shit is on the way ).

There seems to be a definite disconnect though. The reference of the connection to scenes and life is a really important point. Music has become an accessory to a lot of people, like a lot of things. Everything is a prop, a product, a part of an avatar. All thanks to corporate disease
[Edited 1/24/08 13:45pm]

theAudience said:

Agreed...and hence why I attempted to make a stab at it....there are plenty of artists out there to 'replace' them, but why would anyone/who would want to?

Goods topic, tA...hopefully more discussion will ensue....

When it comes to art, is there a lineage, per se?

True art ~musical or otherwise~ is individual to the artist, and cannot be reproduced.

Just thought/discussion material...