The Tides Have Turned

It's funny the relationship technology has with music. When it comes to recorded music the state of technology, technique, and trend overwhelmingly decide the current musical climate. Aesthetic is simply irrelevant. In the 1970's instrumental rock music and balladry were king. The thick, fuzzy hum of the rudimentary studio technology perfectly suited the type of records that were popular of the era. Instrumental rock music continued its streak of popularity until the early 1990's when the DAT analogue recording era was made obsolete by precise, lossless digital recording and thus the manipulation of such. With the new age of audible clarity and experimentation gave rise to digital pop music that was an escalation of what we had seen in the later half of the 1980's with pioneering popular acts such as Madonna, The Police, and Michael Jackson's solo career, which mostly hedged their bets between instrumental recording and synthetic flourishes signaling the new age in recording. In the 90's when digital recording improved in both capability and ease of recording technology began to dictate that if you recorded instrumental rock music with the latest technology the result wasn't nearly as impressive as if you played to the strength of the technology and created more precise, synthetic pop soundscapes. Suddenly attempts to record instrument country or rock with the new technology did not benefit from the technology from the air, and sounded too safe and sterile. Thus continued the steady decline of the genres in popular culture. It's not the people disliked the concepts or cultures involved any more, but the recorded products did not benefit from the current climate and the genres had failed to successfully adapt to the changes.

The reason I bring it all up is because, of late, I have noticed that with the most current country recordings (notably recordings by Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, and Vince Young) that country music has successfully adapted to modern recording techiques. I listen to these new records and am simply enamored with their ability to make instrumental recording in the modern era regain its blistering instrumental professionality and impressive vocal qualities. I never gave up on the idea of country, but I never dreamed that Nashville would solve the riddle of instrumental music and pop recording technology before popular rock. It's a strange and gratifying world when Country and Rap, perhaps the country's two most maligned cultures, sit undeniably atop the current musical landscape... like adult versions of pure pop, with all the musical success in complexity and recording techique, but with true-to-life cultural relevance. In music history books rock music will be a footnote in the early 21st century. Perhaps next decade will see a return. One can only guess. There are no less people interested in the concepts, but the quality of the products will determine the public opinion, and that lies in the hand of the recording technology and the engineers, as always.