My two greatest outlets, the interests that allow my brain to relax from the stress inherent in the balancing act that is my college career, are sports and music. When the weekend rolls around and I've had my fill of pompous professors and put up with enough crap from my bosses, I unwind by watching about 17 hours of football between the NCAA on Saturday and the NFL on Sunday. Between classes and while walking around campus or in town I listen to my iPod, creating the soundtrack to my life, as the commercials say. The problem that is cropping up for me is in the difference between advancements in the two mediums.
Every year new storylines develop in the sporting world; situations occur that you could never have imagined. There are anomalies, the regression of the NBA and American basketball as a whole comes to mind, but, for the most part, sports fans are more entertained now by the sporting world than they ever have been before. This does a great deal to explain how far and deep sports have progressed in American society; basketball, football, and hockey were all in their infancy at the turn of the century as professional baseball was coming into its own. This provides a stark contrast to today, with franchises of the four major sports scattered across North America being followed passionately by millions, and covered daily by thousands. College and professional sports provide the basis and support for a multi-billion dollar industry integral to our existence as Americans, and it will only continue to expand in years to come.
Music, on the other hand, has regressed mightily. Most of my favorite bands have long since stopped touring, and of the ones that still do tour, like Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam, only Springsteen still has his fastball when it comes to writing new music. This isn't just a personal thing either; plenty of people have favorite musicians who have long since stopped performing, or may even be dead. This is a normal occurrence when you reach your 40s, but it shouldn't be happening with such stunning regularity as it does with college students; now should be the prime of our music-loving careers. When my dad and his siblings were going through college they had the opportunity to see in person The Who, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith (before the "Walk this Way" travesty), Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Temptations, Fleetwood Mac, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin to name a few from a list that goes on and on.
Yes, The Who still tour occasionally, but two of the original four are deceased. Yes, The Rolling Stones just released a new album, but Keith Richards has been clinically dead for at least 20 years.
What about today's music, why isn't it as good? Well, for starters, most of it isn't being created or performed by musicians. Behind every great band there have been driving creative forces, tightly honed musical talents that practiced for years before performing in public. Chuck Klosterman, a student of pop culture who has written at length on pretty much anything that you can think of, had this to say in a posting with Bill Simmons, a writer for ESPN.com, "I could insist that the greatest band in the world is actually four unsigned guys from Oregon who have never made a record and are just bouncing around the Portland club scene, and that this band is like what would have happened if Lennon and McCartney had formed a quartet with Keith Richards and Charlie Watts ... and a few crazy people would find my theory interesting and potentially valid. However, I could never claim that the best quarterback in the country is actually some 28-year-old dude working in a car wash in downtown Detroit, and that this person is substantially better than Peyton Manning."
The reason why this comment is incredibly relevant and true is because of the differences between how somebody becomes an NFL quarterback and how somebody becomes a hit musician. There are 119 Division I-A colleges, scores more in I-AA, all of whom send out scores of scouts to scour the country for athletes. If you are a good high school quarterback, you will be discovered.
There are five major record labels, and they are inundated every day with demos and promos. They invest in sure things, acts that they know will turn a quick profit like, for example, cute girls who already have their own reality shows, or tough-looking guys who have spent months at a time in the gym. This is how the whole cast of the Mickey Mouse Club has been able to land record deals in the past decade. Very rarely does the phrase "musical talent" enter the discussion; it is instead replaced with terms like "marketability."
This would never work in sports; no professional franchise would ever pass on an incredibly talented athlete because of his lack of marketability. Until we as consumers take a stand and simply stop buying or downloading this crap, record labels are never going to have to go back to how they used to do it, searching the nation like college recruiting coordinators, looking for the next big thing. Only then will today's music ever be as enjoyable as today's sports.
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