A Long View

2008-04-03

I'll start by writing that I have had the blessing of being a singer/songwriter/rocker for 45 years. I watched and listened to popular music go from Big bands to the plethora of creative styles that permeate todays music scene. It's no great revelation that the industry requires that bands or single performers pigeon hole themselves into a tidy neat style package so that the can be made into a commodity nor should one denigrate those who want to make a living at performing for signing on into the system. It may be that by a happy accident the artist does that genre well and the buyer prefers that genre. In the beginig the industry picked those genres because people liked them and a market existed.

During the mid-sixties the American music scene lost a great deal of appeal to the public. Old forms were being brought out as new and the politics and culture of America and Europe was undergoing a transformation. World War II had traumatized the world and the old culural expressions couldn't hold the angst that filled the human heart. The fifties and early sixties gingerly stepped out to explore the innocent heart that had been wounded. Immature love and pre-pubiscent sexual themes out raged parents trying so very hard to create a world that was safe secure and pretictable. Bless their hearts because they had seen a world turned upside down. It's no wonder Rock and Roll scared the Jesus out of them. That generational struggle continued and expressed it's voice through a country that felt the desruction of it's culture and lost pride.

England suffered a terrible transition into normalcy after the war. Thr young there embraced Rock and Roll as an expression of their own frustration. Limited economic opportunity and a national dreary-ness acted as a back drop to a legitimate artistic expression. They bent it and reformed it into their own expression. For America the Beatles became the 'legate a latere' for the young seeking a self-understanding. (A fear ridden and purposely unexplored country for their parents. Perhaps rightly so.). Their journey, right or wrong, became our journey.
It resonated in America and was embraced. By the end of the sixties America too found a new voice and was argumentatively one of the most prolific of times for popular music.

I had the privilege to occupy that remarkable time as a performer. Now, so much of the retro- view of that time has been glorified as some Hippie Wonderland, it wasn't. The exploration of new societal forms was at times selfish , self indulgent, and down right irresposible. (A lot of that is still around today.) The grittyness and despair as well as the elation and hope is what defined it as an era. Out of that came wonderful music and an opulant sound track to the lives of so many of us.

I moved up and down the California coast and presented myself as a troubadour, mystic, and new thinker (How arrogogant in retrospect.) God will forgive me my excesses. I had the opportunity to sign with MGM and I got to play with great singers and amazing musicians. Sadly so many you have never heard because they perished before the world heard thier gifts. I often think about two talented people that I played lead guitar for the band. He was a concert pianist and she a virtuoso soprano, we signed with A&M. After the signing party they both tragically OD from heroin overdose. That story is still repeated over and over. A horrible legacy of that time.

Now that i have circled the barn let me get to the point. We all have turned a corner and have found ourselves again in a time where musical expression is shinning like a beacon. I am amazed at what is out there. Technology has opened the floodgate and the artists are walking through with heads held appropriatly high and so many styles and experimental work is being done. The internet as allowed music from the worlds cultures to seep into the work of writers and musicians. From an individual artistic position I still like what I like and don't like what I don't like- but I love the fact that I have the choice. As to what the culture will do with this influx-Who knows? Will a viable industry arise from this musical chaos? I believe it will. The music is out there like never before in history.

In the mean time all of us who choose to perform just need to find a way to feed and cloth ourselves while we do what we love. Here is a revelation- it has always been that way.
Ken Lehnig
The Burning Sage Band
More on www.klstoryteller.com

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