The Glee Phenom

On Wednesday I dutifully stopped at the library to pick up some CDs my daughter, Carmen, had on hold. I came out of the library with 7 CDs that all had "GLEE" somewhere in the title. I wonder why this phenomenon is so prominent. I hear the music constantly from her iPod, the car stereo and the sound system. I recognize most of the music as it is the same music I listened to when I was a teenager on my Walkman (okay, maybe in my twenties), car stereo and sound system at home. I invariably make the unwelcome remark that she should listen to the version by the original artist in my collection at home (yes, I've even converted my vinyl to 320 MP3). She always responds, "I like this version better." I think she says this even if she hasn't heard the song performed by The Beatles, Carol King, Fleetwood Mac or Elton John. It's the principle that we established in the 60's that our parents' music has no value and that "our" music is superior.

I have to wonder why here in 2011 my daughter (and a lot more people) are revisiting the music of love, peace and rock and roll. I came up with a theory: There is an insatiable thirst for melody. We love melody. It has been scientifically proven that our bodies, our minds and our emotions react positively to melody. Its subliminal effect is proved to be way beyond anything previously suspected. It doesn't just affect us humans, it impacts our pets, our pests and our friends in nature (songbirds are the only animals who's heartbeat responds to music tempo like humans).

Much of 21st century music is built on a rhythm track. You see composers (yes, even the ones in Compton) first coming up with a beat track. It is the combination of the percussion rhythm that lays the foundation: percussion is the hook. It used to be that the hook was a simple melody (usually only three to five tones) that was easily absorbed by gray matter. This is the stuff that gets stuck in your mind and can drive you crazy, especially if you're a musician and your mind yearns for a full tonal scale. Now we organize everything around a rhythm that continues throughout the track without variation. Frequently this sound has been sampled and performed by a percussion synthesizer ad nauseum. Even the tempo of most of the music is the same, somewhere between 65 and 80 beats per minute which renders it easy to slowly grind to on the dance floor (electronic dance music is usually at 100 beats per minute - fast enough to give you a workout but allowing you to stay on the floor all night). If you Google "beat track" your search will return pages of tracks you can download and just "add vocals to". I note they don't say "lyrics" as most rap and hip hop is more of stream of consciousness improv with little tone playing off the beat track.

Enter "GLEE". Why songs from the 20th century? First of all, they have melodies that have been proven. Songs that achieved top 10 status for a number of weeks are usually the reservoir for selection. They know humans will respond to the tune favorably. Another reason, there is no reliance on the creative juices (read expense) of a group of composers like we had at Motown and other labels. The third advantage is that the rights for most of these songs are not terribly expensive to procure. I imagine that those that are find their way quickly to the round file. The people that produce "GLEE" are of the generation of the composers. If they are not themselves the owner of the rights, they probably enjoy being able to further enrich and old friend.

So where is music going? We saw with the introduction of MTV (they used to play music before the reality shows took over) that "underground" and "indie" rock would suffer. So would the works of someone who had chosen a vocal career because they lacked the video luster or charm and sexiness. The results included the heyday of disco while the creative groups came up with alternative, punk and grunge. Still, there was a melody, even with disco (although I don't like the Bee Gees after their first album, I can appreciate their vocal talents and harmonies). In my car I enjoy XM radio. There are quite a number of stations featuring pop, rap and hip hop. Being a subscription service they are not regulated in what words may pass from your speakers into your audience. If you look hard, there are 3 stations that play Jazz Fusion (Watercolors), jazz standards (Real Jazz) and prozac jazz (Spa). You can find "Symphony Hall", "Pops" and Opera if you like classical. The rest is the paradox of commercial free commercial radio. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to pay the subscription to be able to classical and jazz varieties along with NPR, BYU and other stations, especially living in the "middle of nowhere" (if you draw and X from the corners of the Oregon's boundaries you'll find Bend: eco paradise in the middle of the harsh eastern desert).

So where will we go from here? I don't know anybody that doesn't own a personal media device (iPod, MP3 or phone). We have the ability to create our own soundtrack to life. We can keep it to ourselves (headphones), share it (sound systems) or annoy the world (Boom and Kicker systems - competition between these systems is done using remote controls using hearing protection because the sound pressure level is dangerous - they also use a sound having nothing to do with music called "frogging" from a reference disc to achieve the absolute loudest output usually using only the sub woofers - most of these systems can't play regular music in a recognizable form).

I don't know how much longer the "GLEE" phenomenon will continue. It's already outlasted my expectations. I usually enjoy hearing a different arrangement of an old tune. If nothing else, it inspires me to play my collection of classics bringing back the joy and agony of adolescence. It reminds me of lost friends to chase down on Facebook. It reminds me of how proud I was to have an 8-Track recorder to compile my own music (remember the pause as it changed tracks in mid-song?). I can smell the incense and recall the black light posters. All this, and my daughter cheerfully offers to share "this awesome new song" she heard on "GLEE".