The Future of Music

"Pretty Lights is the future of music!"

...says one of my Facebook friends.

As far as Pretty Lights goes, it's damn fine music if I'm on a long car drive, or if I have to get some work done; it's ambient music to me, and as a musician, I can't agree with my half-there buddy who thinks this lame recycled-hoo-lah is the "future of music"; that's not possible.

Why? Because there will always be real musicians; people who speak through an instrument. People like this in large groups, of maybe 4 or even 28, will affect human beings more than a 4-bit version of a James Brown rhythm-section break; samples make sample-based music.

Even if it's not sample-based music, Pretty Lights is catering to a state of mind. The Grateful Dead used to do that fifty years ago, during a time similar to this where it needed consciousness-change the most. But what pisses me off about today, is that these Pretty Lights cats are catering to Mollyed-out disco biscuits; knuckleheads just floating on Ecstacy and following a trancy and acidicly poisonous beat; it's not music; it's instant gratification.

You know the beat, so you want to hear it; you know the stupid spacey, trancy sounds and the cheese-factory-sounding vocals; you've heard it before, and what you find familiar is the foundation of what you seek. However: human beings have since forgetten that upon hearing something completely unique for the first time (The Beatles, Nirvana, Eminem, Phish, The White Stripes), our state-of-being moves forward a step, and reconnects with things we do know, but things we didn't think we knew.

Lost you yet?

All you have to remember, is that if you're going to be a golden and appreciative listener, you should be looking for the new rhythm. All the rhythms on today's mainstream radio are all from House music and has sort of a Latin flavor; these aren't new ideas.

Realize that reggae was created out of thin air, just by taking the conventional downbeat out; one beat. Just one beat, and reggae was born. The drummer stopped hitting the kick-drum on the "one", and started playing it with the snare on the "two". By filling the empty spaces with chicka, chickas, reggae was born.

Music begins with rhythm, and in more complex terms, vibrations. This is all music. All music is vibration. Rhythm is the basis of everything. If a drummer to a rock n' roll band doesn't realize that it is HE who drives the band; he is at the foot of a long and steep path to finding out that truth for himself. New types of music will derive from new rhythms.

Just like new change will be brought on by social movement, music will take a new direction, and in an organic, real fashion, just as it always has. Because there are some artists out there, some of whom you've never heard, who know how to create something new and fresh that will crush and crumble anything you ever thought about Pretty Lights. Pretty Lights is nothing but a bunch of pretty lights; they're a crazy poster to look at when your on drugs; an enhancement to your detachment from reality.

Reality is here, and it's now, and it kind of sucks. What are you doing about it? Getting high on Molly?

Figure it out.