Searching Through Music
For nearly 50 years, musicians and songwriters have been searching, through music, to find words that will properly express what they feel and think. These artists and players have also been looking for answers, most of which never come directly from lyrics or song construction.
If it was really possible to find "the answer" inrock and alternative music, wouldn’t the amazingly deep searches of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Kobain and numerous others have led them to make a different decision? Wouldn’t they have known enough to stay around and tell us about it?
It’s interesting, in this time of alternative/indie/new-old rock music, that some bands play and sing in the style of those forerunners such as Gerry and The Pacemakers. That band from the Liverpool, England area, gave us "Ferry ‘cross the Mersey," a song about place.
Other groups try the psych-search style of such legends as The Beatles, whose album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was one of a few quintessential hippie albums of the 60s.
Then some try to extend the pounding energy of some Led Zeppelin tunes or combine the intellectual with the youthful, as The Who did. (This group has remained with us, except for drummer Keith Moon. He too, didn’t find what he was looking for in rock music.)
We can only hope that bands such as Hawthorne Heights, Drowning Pool, the Pixies, Spitalfield, Like Lions and ActionReaction have helped the cause or will at some point in the near future.
Tags: music, indie music, Searching Through Music, indie, independent music
May 27th, 2008 at 1:08 am
It is all about the fame. Some people can handle it, others just can’t. We are all searching in some form. Maybe not all through music. And yes maybe some in every “search field” end up not finding what they were looking for and end up in a bad place. But no more musicians than actors or inventors or just your average Joe.