Slate: The Last Days of the Great American Showpeople

[rick]

From Slate.com --


"Manilow, Midler, Diamond, Streisand: The Last Days of the Great American Showpeople"


When I saw Bette Midler at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, it occurred to me that she is one of the last of a certain breed of entertainers. Midler was on Broadway in "Fiddler on the Roof." A friend tells me that before the show, during intermission, after the show, Bette would sing these old Andrew Sisters songs that she grew up with. When she hit with her first album, she would appear on "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" and sing old standards like "Lullaby of Broadway" and "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy." There are YouTube videos of Bette singing with Bing Crosby and The Mills Brothers. She knows of that old tradition of entertainers because she grew up on them and worked with some of the greats. Lady Gaga might have an appreciation for older material but there is no real tie to the showbiz of old. If you listen to Streisand in "I'm the Greatest Star," when she sings on the soundtrack of "Funny Girl" -- "I can make 'em cry, I can make 'em sigh..." she is using a vaudevillian style that Jolson might have employed.
Fade out, fade in. I was watching the Capitol Fourth on PBS last night and Nicole Scherzinger from The Pussycat Dolls was introduced by Bradley Cooper as someone who is equally at home with singing standards and jazz as she is on the London or Broadway stage. What has she done? Stepped into the role of Roxie Hart like 600 others have in "Chicago's" long run? She is on some silly summer replacement series called "I Can Do That" on NBC with Cheryl Burke, formerly of "Dancing With the Stars" and other people I have never heard of.

I'm going to be 58 this month. I feel like an "alter kocker" (Yiddish for old fart). I now understand what my parents must have felt in the 1960s and my Dad would yell at the TV at The Beatles. I can watch an Ed Sheeran on TV. Does it really move me? No. Do I like to go to YouTube and watch clips of performances by Linda and Bette, et. al.? Yes. Do I really want to sit and watch Pussycat Dolls videos featuring Nicole? No. I was watching one of those PBS Pledge Drives and Nick Clooney was the host. And he said something about how this current generation doesn't have the "reach-back" that previous generations did. I think, for the most part, he is right.

[moon]

I am glad you wrote this. I feel that we are losing the generations of real entertainers. For me there is a shallowness to the newer performers. They are lacking something and it might be that reach back you wrote about. As you wrote, there are not to many performers left who grew out of the old school way. Like her or not Barbra Streisand is another one left like Bette M who has that amazing repertoire of styles and has performed with some of the greats : Judy Garland. Frank Sinatra,. Barbra is kind of a national treasure as she has ties back to a disappearing breed of Americana entertainment. Bette, Barbra ,Tony Bennent. Yikes who else is left???

[Goldie]

I probably have more faith in the younger generation and especially the millenials to come up with some great entertainers. Even though things are gloomy I don't think we are in end times but we definitely are going through a shift of some sort. Hard to say what entertainment will be 50 years from now but it will probably be something quite different than we can imagine. I am expecting computer generated voices that have scientifically proven characteristics included in them to become the prevailing entertainment. I always wondered what it was about Linda Ronstadt's voice that is so appealing. One factor is vibrato. Most strive for that in their voice but few master it and even fewer have it naturally. It has a hypnotic characteristic that speaks to most people and has also been used in speaking form to perpetuate propaganda. It also releases dopamine which is an addictive natural substance.

So basically, listening to Linda Ronstadt is like having sex. Has anyone ever wanted to smoke after hearing one of Linda's albums (especially the Mexican ones)? Talk about vibrato!!!



[Music plays] Did Pavarotti finishing Nessun Dorma give you chills? If so, you can thank the molecule dopamine for those shudders of delight. Because a new study shows that musical thrills stem from the same brain chemistry responsible for the joys of food, sex and other more tangible rewards. The work appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience. [Valorie Salimpoor et al, Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music]

Many of the activities that give us pleasure are things that we, as a species, need to survive, like the aforementioned eating and mating. But what about more esoteric enjoyment, from evocative music or other works of art? Do they tickle the brain the same way?

To find out, scientists recruited subjects who reliably gets shivers when they listen to an affecting score. These chills are a more consistent, in-the-moment measure of pleasure than asking subjects to describe what they’re feeling.

The scientists then used brain imaging techniques to find that dopamine peaks along with emotional arousal. Such induced dopamine release could explain why people put a high value on some music. And why music can manipulate our emotions.

—Karen Hopkin

[moe]

Love the the "alter kocker" I hope you're not copyrighting the phrase, Eric, cause I plan to steal it!  Goldie-you have revealed the nightmare possibility for the future of music, computer generated vocals generated via electrodes implanted in focus groups consisting of teenagers (a group well known for their musical sophistication)  in a sense we are there with autotune, sampling and other techniques that separate the musician the music and the listener.

InterestingIy the idea of continuity was explored on PBS last night with Jerry Garcia (this was back in '89 while he was still alive) The upshot of the discussion is that he learned from all sort of musicians and that one of his greatest source of pride was that other younger musicians were borrowing from him.  Sound familiar? This is essentially what Linda said in "Simple Dreams".  For music from musicians to succeed in my opinion you need three things: live music so musicians can get together to and play in real time, a means to transmit the music to the listener at a level of quality that demands serious listening and finally and most importantly a means to get the players paid.  If we don't figure out a way of rewarding the creative crowd I think the implant crowd may prevail.