Since I got my iPod, I have been listening during my morning walk to NPR’s Terry Gross interviews that I have downloaded. She is a wonderful interviewer and has showcased an enormous variety of guest politicians, journalists, grunge pop stars, etc. I would ordinarily ignore knowing about some of her guests from the entertainment world, but being a captive audience has its advantages. I am forced to broaden my knowledge into an area I normally avoid.

For instance, some pop music figures are quite personally engaging, some quite articulate and bright, and insightful, even if they have just emerged (as some have) from a period in their lives when they had a major drug problem and were self-destructing. Then some excerpts of their music are played. I am usually disappointed, since all this erudition hasn’t, for me at least, translated into compelling sound.

So I find my horizons expanding, even if I can’t remember who was being interviewed (unless I make notes). Years ago I typed manuscripts when publishing houses still hired manual typists for this sort of thing. I found myself reading stuff I would never pick off the shelf because I had to type it. Stuff I enjoyed also came my way. I typed part of Solzenhitsyn’s blockbuster “Gulag Archipelago” (actually every assistant in the trade department of then Harper & Row, was recruited for this project since there was tons of material that had been double translated, before it could reach English).

Thornton Wilder’s agent, Brandt & Brandt, gave me his last novel, “Theophilus North”. I typed Doris Kearn’s book about Lyndon Johnson, and I typed one of the Judy Garland biographies. And a free lancer at H&R gave me manuscripts he was editing for the company, among them, Eddie Fisher’s autobiography. I told him, after going through several chapters, that Eddie was a real sleaze. “Oh, geez,” he said, “I’d hoped I’d edited most of that out so that it wasn’t that obvious.”

Anyway, back to an interview I heard this morning on “Fresh Air” – a British pop star, Richard Thompson, was being lauded by a guest interviewer. The interviewer was a real fan and couldn’t get over how gifted Thompson was, how phenomenal his guitar playing, how fabulous his songwriting. Well, I googled Thompson on You Tube to get a more complete picture. He’s like the pop Yanni. His songs center around a few soulful notes, his facial expressions convey what passes for deep feeling among teens, although one of the reasons for this attention on NPR was that Thomson has just reached the age of 60.

The interviewer raved about his playing. Now I know it’s a different kind of music and another style, but technique doesn’t change. If Thomson ever heard the classical and flamenco greats of the past 50 years – Sabicas, Montoya, Bream, Segovia – he would junk his instrument and beg forgiveness from the Guitar God. To his credit, Thomson does play finger style, and that puts him way ahead of his contemporaries who thump along with three chords. But if calling him great is based on a comparison to truly nothing players, then it isn’t much of a compliment.

Then the reviewer played some of Thompson’s songs by a female vocalist who was with his band for a while, a woman whose voice and interpretation he said was a “perfect” match for this guy’s music. Well, yes, both incredibly mediocre.

At some point in the last 30 years, popular music changed from complex musical invention to three-note dirges sung in the current angst-filled style of the female “warblers” of today, who all exhibit a wispy tonal quality intended to convey desperation and courage in the face of insurmountable odds. Odds, incidentally, that have dogged all of humanity since the beginning and were not invented by the current crop of self-indulgent musical geniuses claiming emotional damage, while being brave about it through their special music, despite all. The young think that adversity, and sex, and being unappreciated and unsung are their unique inventions.

A few days ago I listened to a review of Woodstock during the celebration of its whatever anniversary. I was treated to some of the performances, one by Janis Joplin, who died not long afterward from a drug overdose. Her vocal at Woodstock sounded like a thousand fingernails on a blackboard while experiencing a particularly difficult bowel movement. Perhaps the “Good Taste” God, hands over his ears, handed her that final needle while whispering encouragement.

Many of you know I have little admiration for a great deal of pop “culture” – I have mellowed about the Beatles, even a wee bit about Elvis, who, early on, was just a too cute guy with a pelvic gimmick. I still think he was the epitome of shallow but some of his songs were okay. And, of course, he did not mature, but became a pathetic, bloated figure of excess before dying before his time, speaking strictly chronologically. Insofar as character, he’d already exhausted his range, so his death was just about right.

So, yes, I am again railing about the dumbing down of quality in the music world. Three notes does not translate to great music. There is only one Ravel’s Bolero. Tonic and dominant endlessly alternating with, finally, please, the leading tone thrown in to please the musical conservatives and give us a resolution, is not enough. Also those hemi-semi-quavery endings to many phrases do not convey emotion so much as a need for air as the waif-like vocalist gasps the last mournful note of the obligatory loss of something or other. It’s the old “Look at me, I have feeling.” No, my dear, you have gimmicks.

A good example of a long-ago ballad will give you an idea of compelling tonal complexity – listen to “That Old Black Magic” to know what a scale offers. Anyone who tries to sing it will tell you how very difficult those key changes are. Learning anything like them is mostly beyond the abilities of the current crop of superstar wannabes. Practicing to develop voice quality and range seems to be a lost art, so thank you, Taste God, for Susan Boyle.

xx, Teal